Having traversed countless realms, can you possibly be as clever as me?

Tsugumi raised an eyebrow, then suddenly walked over and picked Nero up before he could react.

"Huh? Qing, what are you doing?!" Nero exclaimed in a panic.

Tsugumi didn't speak, but placed her hands near Nero's temples, emitting a faint glow. Under the release of Goetia magic, Nero suddenly felt that the excruciating pain in his head had subsided.

On the contrary, the gradually spreading feeling of relaxation made Nero purr comfortably, like a cat.

Nero nestled in Tsurugi's arms and gradually relaxed until time passed and Nero fell asleep.

Tsuruga then picked up the dishes on the table—most of the dishes today were mushroom-themed.

Porcini, morels, chanterelles, and truffles... Hmm... Nero loves mushrooms so much, is he from Yunnan?

Well, Mediterranean people really love mushroom dishes; they even have a saying that mushroom dishes are "the food of the gods."

As for why—it really is because of a Roman joke by Nero.

My father was elevated to godhood after eating mushrooms.

However, Claudius, who was poisoned, did indeed die from eating the poisonous mushrooms that had been mixed in with the mushrooms.

"A little girl picking mushrooms, carrying a big basket on her back..."

Dongjiang hummed a children's song he had heard as a child, his gaze seemingly drifting to the corner. He then picked up his glass of wine from the table, glanced at it, and then jokingly downed it in one gulp.

Then he released his grip and smiled at Nero, who was pretending to be asleep.

"Your Majesty's headache should be gone by now. You can come to me if you have this problem again next time."

Nero sat up without a word, glanced at Tsugumi's empty wine glass and the mushroom she had eaten, and tentatively asked...

"How are you feeling, Qing?"

"Not bad, Your Majesty's wine tastes very good, it always reminds me of the taste of home." Dongjiang smiled, then wiped his mouth and stood up.

"Since Your Majesty is unwell, I will not linger any longer. Please rest well. I will take my leave now."

Having said that, he stood up and left. Watching his disappearing figure, Nero showed a disappointed expression, then pouted and looked at a shadowy spot nearby.

"Locusta, what did you promise Yu? Didn't you say that as long as he drinks the wine and eats the mushrooms, he would fall in love with Yu unconditionally?"

"Your Majesty, that's 100% pure. We finally managed to get the love potion from those Vikings."

The writhing shadow transformed into a short, green-haired loli draped in a heavy purple-gold robe. She spoke with a pitiful expression, holding an empty bottle of potion with a few drops of pink liquid remaining in her hand.

"I don't know why it didn't work, but it's really not my problem."

"Alright, alright, you may leave now." Nero frowned slightly, sighed, and waved for his chief apothecary and chef to leave.

"At least the mushrooms you made today were pretty good."

She had originally planned to take advantage of today's banquet to win over Tsurugi.

Although the young emperor was still somewhat shy, he was still, by nature, the Roman flower who was passionate about pursuing love.

When you meet a man you like, you should do everything you can to win him over – that's Nero's style!

Moreover, Tsurugi seems to have become increasingly tempting lately—for some reason, Nero slurped his saliva, patted his face, and tried to suppress the somewhat inappropriate expression he had just displayed.

Although his plan failed, Nero was not discouraged!

Now that it's confirmed that Tsurugi won't be leaving anytime soon, what's there to fear about the young empress?

With her irresistible charm that rivals Venus, she's not afraid of not being able to win him over!

Hmm! It turns out that relying on drugs is the wrong path!

Nero, whose mind was filled with pink, did not take Tsugumi's advice to heart. Perhaps from this point of view, she was indeed a person with the characteristics of a tyrant.

But is that part of her charm? After all, it's hard for those around a qualified, even powerful, monarch to like him.

Meanwhile, Tsugumi, having left Nero's terrace, which was filled with secret emotions and the faint aroma of sake, walked towards her mansion under the moonlight.

However, he stopped shortly afterward.

He has already circled the same area four or five times.

He was quite certain that even if he was terrible with directions, he wouldn't be that bad, and he didn't have that kind of endearing quality.

He stopped in the middle of a narrow alley. Ten steps ahead, there was a clear muddy rut on the stone slab. He walked forward, and ten steps later, the rut reappeared beneath his feet, exactly as it had appeared. But when he looked back, the path he had come from was no longer straight; instead, it had twisted strangely and disappeared into a thick fog.

"Illusion? No, a labyrinth? No, a bounded field?"

Tsugumi spoke with great interest, stretching out his finger and tracing patterns in the air. His fingertip shone without any light, but wherever it passed, the air rippled with a viscous fluid quality, creating imperceptible, stagnant waves.

It's confirmed, it is indeed something like a natural barrier.

If it was an illusion, no illusion in this world could deceive the eyes of a Marquis of Desire; if it was a labyrinth barrier, his attack just now was enough to tear a gap in it.

Therefore, it is a Reality Marble, or rather, it has an effect similar to a Noble Phantasm with a Reality Marble.

"The self-eating and regeneration of the concept of 'path'... temporarily 'stripping' or 'infinitely folding' the concepts of 'exit' and 'direction' from this area..."

Tsugumi nodded, stroked her chin, and answered the question in a way that seemed to fit the concept of a lunar person.

He did indeed know that although the magical knowledge imparted by Alaya-vijnana was useless outside of this world, it was still very effective in this world.

He recognized the peculiarity of this barrier, but he had no intention of breaking it. On the contrary, he had even guessed who was behind it.

Continuing down this path is just right, and it also aligns with his idea of ​​giving Nero a push.

Thinking this, he closed his eyes, shutting out all his senses. The faint sounds of the distant marketplace, the flapping of night birds' wings, even the whistling of the wind through buildings of varying heights—all vanished. Only an absolute, oppressive silence remained.

Five seconds later, he opened his eyes, and everything around him had changed.

He stood in the center of an incredibly vast, empty circular space. The ground was smooth, mirror-like black stone, reflecting no images, only an all-encompassing darkness. Above him was not a sky, but a slowly rotating, intricate star map composed of starlight, yet the arrangement of the stars was unlike the Mediterranean night sky in any season, but rather the radiance of an ancient divine age.

Tsugumi gazed at the starry sky with great interest, then smiled and looked ahead.

"Just one more question, surely none of you who ambushed me have the surname Animusfia?"

Several people walked in from behind the pillars.

The first to emerge was a young man carrying a wooden stick and wearing a plain white robe. Next came a burly man, bare-chested, with muscles as bulging as rocks, holding a stone axe that looked familiar to Dongjiang.

Not only that, but there were several others, and without exception, they all held prototypes of Heroic Spirit Noble Phantasms.

Golden wool, a broken shield depicting a painted world, a dilapidated chariot, and so on.

There were twelve people in total, and they were definitely not followers, but their attire revealed them to be priests from the Roman Pantheon.

"You usurper from a foreign land, you despicable heretic, we can no longer allow you to defile the sacred soil of Rome!!!"

The young man gripping Theseus's stick tightly shouted sternly.

"The bounty of Rome should be bestowed by the gods of Rome! The order of Rome should be interpreted by the priests of the Pantheon! You foreign magician, you should not have come here, much less dare to steal the glory of the gods!"

Listening to their righteous and righteous words, the demon Tsugumi took a deep breath and laughed with pleasure.

"What righteous words you speak, yet why does your desire tell me that you are nothing more than greedy for miracles and power?"

He looked at these people, whose eyes concealed greed, with a mocking expression, and cracked his neck.

"Alright, alright, we need to make room for Peter and the others anyway, so let's kill you all now, killing three birds with one stone."

Changing styles doesn't change anything, it's still all about killing! : 165. Jealousy and power turn into beasts.

As Tsurugi said, what these priests of the Roman Pantheon were really seeking was the secret about Tsurugi.

They greedily coveted the miracle of the heavenly delicacies that fell from the sky at Dongjiang, and firmly believed that he possessed a relic from the Roman gods.

Oh, I should say the Greek gods.

It's hard to say what happened to those machine gods after they integrated into the Earth's environment, but the treasures they created and brought with them were basically the same batch they had when they were in Greece.

So these Romans insisted on taking the stolen Greek artifacts, claiming they were gifts from their gods, and prepared to do the same thing to Dongjianggan.

"Since you understand, stranger, don't force us to take action."

The leading youth stepped forward, no longer concealing the greed in his eyes, and reached out his hand towards Dongjiang, subtly threatening him.

"Return the relics of the gods you have stolen, you heretical thieves! You lowly atheists have no right to possess the ancient property of the supreme god!!!"

As he spoke, he stepped forward, and the weapon in his hand, which appeared to be Theseus's Noble Phantasm, transformed from an ordinary stone club into a grotesque hammer through the leaking magic.

"Aren't you afraid of the emperor doing this?" Tsurugi asked with interest.

"Soon there won't be an emperor anymore," an old man holding a shield by his heel said coldly.

“Octavian promised that he would share glory with the Senate and the Pantheon and that he would have the entire empire collect ancient relics of the gods for us, but so far none of the emperors have fulfilled their promise.”

"We've had enough! The glory of the gods must return to the earth, and Rome will return to its origins, to the time of our great ancestor Romulus!"

Looking at the old man's demeanor, Tsurugi let out a contemptuous sneer.

Magicians? That's giving these people way too much credit!

In the age of gods, when there was a great deal of ether on the earth's surface, the conditions for becoming a magician were far easier than in modern times, and the easiest shortcut was to worship and follow the principles of the gods.

But after the Age of Gods faded, like the receding tide, those with ability retreated with the tide, continuing their mystique. Those without ability, however, clung to faith and worship whose meaning had vanished, attempting to recreate the glory of the Age of Gods.

Magicians are indeed mostly inhuman scum, but at least they have ambition and a spirit of inquiry. They are all scholars who dissect the mysterious and try to make this knowledge their own.

Although they were damned and inhuman, at least they had one merit: ambition. On the other hand, the people before Tsurugi were the kind of people who had no talent to be magicians, no ambition, and were just delusional fantasies about turning the world upside down.

At all times, these foolish and unaware skeletons in the tomb exuded a stench that Tsurugi found repulsive.

"Wow! Now that you mention it, I actually do have some!"

Tsurugi looked enlightened, then slowly put on his gloves, took something out of his hand, and grinned as he held it out.

"Is this what you wanted? Come and get it."

At the old man's signal, the burly man carrying Hercules's relics stepped forward and took the items from Tsurugi's hands. But the moment he opened his hand, his expression changed drastically.

"You dare to play me!!!"

He angrily flung away what appeared to be a soft, shriveled object, as if he'd thrown away something dirty. But Tsurugi caught it and took it back, tossing the glove to the ground and rolling his eyes at the furious, burly man.

"You ignorant fool, what you're holding is the most precious sacred relic in the world. If buried in the ground, it could make all the women in a city give birth!"

"You yourself don't want to touch it!!!" the burly man said angrily, pointing at the gloves at Dongjiang's feet.

"Alright, Voir." The old man reassured the burly man, then looked at Tsurugi and smiled coldly.