DLERB -Chapter 175 A Roman Veteran Scoffs: “Eastern Barbarians Deserve Ships?” — The Next Second, a Divine Kingdom Descends Upon the Sea!

Several months later.

At the far end of the Western Sea, between two towering pillars that seemed to support the heavens—

A tiny Roman patrol boat rocked gently with the waves.

Onboard, two soldiers wearing leather armor lazily cast fishing lines into the sea.

“Uncle Marius, are we really going to stay here feeding fish forever?”

The young soldier Gaius looked thoroughly irritated.

“What if… what if those Easterners really do attack?”

The veteran known as Marius yawned and spat into the ocean.

“Easterners?”

He laughed as though he had just heard the funniest joke in the world.

“You’re new here, aren’t you, kid?”

“I’m telling you, on these seas, only Roman warships exist!”

Marius patted the short sword at his waist, his face full of arrogance.

“As for those Easterners—where are they? On the other side of the ocean! And what lies there? The edge of the world! A bottomless abyss!”

“With those little rafts they cobble together from rotten wooden boards, they think they can cross the endless sea?”

He pointed proudly at the patrol boat beneath his feet.

“See this? This is a ship!”

“Those Easterners are nothing more than cowards who hide at home raising silkworms and weaving cloth!”

Gaius still looked uneasy.

“But I heard their emperor unified a massive territory…”

“Ha!”

Marius laughed even louder.

“A flock of sheep is still a flock of sheep no matter how many there are!”

“They’re only fit to provide us with silk—and their women!”

Stretching lazily, he leaned against the railing.

“Relax, kid. Out here, we are the law.”

“Forget enemies. You won’t even see a fish bigger than your arm.”

“When Rome’s fleets finally have some spare time, it’ll be our turn to sail to their lands and teach them how the world works!”

He was growing more animated with every word.

Then suddenly—

Gaius noticed the light around them dim slightly.

“Huh… weird…”

He muttered under his breath.

“Why’s it getting dark?”

Marius impatiently opened one eye.

“Dark? What nonsense? It’s barely past noon!”

Still grumbling, he sat upright.

“It’s probably just clouds—”

His words froze halfway in his throat.

Because he felt it too.

The sky really had gone dark.

Not the dimness of storm clouds blocking the sun—

But an absolute darkness, as though something enormous had completely eclipsed the heavens.

The two men instinctively raised their heads together.

And then—

They saw it.

A wall.

A black wall with no visible end was silently rising from the distant sea fog.

The wall was so high that it completely blocked out the sun above them.

“W-what… what is that?”

Gaius’s voice trembled violently. The fishing rod slipped from his hand and clattered onto the deck.

Marius rubbed his eyes hard.

He had been a soldier for twenty years, yet he had never witnessed something so terrifyingly strange.

That was no wall.

How could a wall move across the ocean?

The black “wall” drew closer and closer, becoming clearer with every second.

Finally, he saw it clearly.

It was the bow of a ship.

A bow so gigantic it defied imagination itself!

Mounted upon the bow was a savage black dragon head roaring toward the heavens.

Its jaws were stretched wide open. The mouth alone was several times larger than their entire patrol boat.

Two dragon eyes forged from gold gazed down upon them coldly from above.

Like a god gazing down upon two insignificant ants.

“Gods above…”

Marius’s legs gave out beneath him, and he collapsed onto the deck.

The Roman patrol boat he had always been so proud of looked no larger than a drifting leaf before this moving black mountain.

And it still wasn’t over.

“WOOOO—!”

A deep horn blast thundered from behind the monstrous vessel.

Then a second black mountain emerged from the fog.

A third.

A fourth.

A tenth!

A hundredth!

An entire forest of black giant warships filled every inch of their vision.

Countless masts rose like swords stabbing into the heavens.

Thousands of black dragon banners unfurled in the wind.

At that moment, the world itself seemed to lose all color.

Black and gold were the only colors left beneath heaven.

Marius’s mind went blank.

This was… this was what he had mocked as rafts pieced together from rotten planks?

These were the “cowards” who only knew how to raise silkworms?

The giant flagship Zhenyuan did not even notice them.

Or perhaps it simply disdained acknowledging their existence.

It continued straight ahead along its course, crushing through the sea like an unstoppable force.

It did not fire its cannons.

It did not release a single arrow.

Merely the colossal bow wave created as the ship split apart the ocean was already an unavoidable death sentence.

“Quick! Run! RUN!”

At last, Gaius managed to regain his voice through the overwhelming terror. Scrambling desperately, he lunged toward the oars.

Too late.

A monstrous wave more than three stories high crashed down like an invisible giant hand descending from the sky.

“BOOM!!!”

With a deafening explosion—

The sturdy Roman patrol boat failed to endure even a single second against the wave.

Like a biscuit crushed beneath a giant’s foot—

It shattered instantly into pieces!

Splinters of wood exploded everywhere.

Freezing seawater flooded violently into Marius’s nose and mouth.

He struggled frantically before finally breaking through the raging surf.

Coughing violently, he spat out mouthfuls of salty seawater.

Then he looked up.

The black city upon the sea was already right before him.

Its sky-covering shadow completely engulfed him.

He could clearly see the soldiers standing upon the hull—black-armored warriors holding long halberds.

Their faces carried no emotion whatsoever.

They merely stared coldly downward.

Like a human looking at an ant being washed away by rainwater.

Marius’s gaze met the savage black dragon head at the ship’s bow.

In that instant—

The old veteran who had boasted his entire life about Rome’s invincibility felt his soul ripped from his body.

A hot stream spread uncontrollably down his legs.

Within the freezing ocean—

He had wet himself.

“AAAAAH—!”

Fear completely shattered his sanity.

He was no longer a soldier of Rome.

He was only an animal that had seen its natural predator.

“MONSTERS!!!”

He screamed in a voice no longer human, completely forgetting about searching for his companion Gaius.

“The monsters are here!!!”

Turning around, he paddled desperately with both hands and feet like a terrified mad dog, using every ounce of strength in his body to swim toward the tall watchtower on the distant shore.