Ming Dynasty and New Rome and Infinite Magic Machine

Chapter 1579 Head
At the entrance of the Library of Alexandria, Shangluo unpacked his bundle and displayed two large stone coffins to Victoria.

Although she knew Shangluo would bring Oberon's head back, Victoria was still so shocked when she actually saw it that she was speechless for a long time.

"This is... Oberon's head?"

Shangluo nodded in agreement.

Victoria glanced at the time and looked at Shangluo: "You'll only have two or three hours to go out."

"Because we are only investigating this matter, we haven't actually solved anything—but once this matter is investigated thoroughly, it seems that it can explain a lot in itself."

“Unbelievable.” Victoria took a bite of ice cream to calm herself down. “I feel like I need to have a few more. Do you have any change?”

Fahrenheit took out his wallet: "Can you two please stop eating? You're spending my money, my old savings. After the drachma depreciated, I had no income, which means my assets have been devalued. But these drachmas were what I saved up little by little, and now you two are eating almost half of them with ice cream scoops. I'm really... heartbroken."

"Oh," Victoria thought for a moment, "So, I'll treat you next time?"

"It's not about whether to eat or not! It's just... never mind, I know you have absolutely no concept of money."

She jogged down the stairs, bought an ice cream cone, and jogged back: "Here you are! My Emperor! Your ice cream cone is here."

"Thank you." Victoria took a bite of a scoop of ice cream, letting it melt in her mouth to force herself to calm down.

“Oberon is dead. Shangluo, do you know what this means? It means that Rome’s greatest enemy didn’t actually exist several generations ago. It means that Rome’s decline had nothing to do with him; it was all his own doing.”

“I think so too. Because if he really is your greatest enemy, how come I didn’t sense his presence at all? I was thinking before that maybe he wasn’t planning to fight Rome for the time being, and was planning to come out after the Romans had self-destructed. That’s why I launched such a strong all-out attack on the Elves, because dealing with them while Rome is still around can at least allow Rome to still have some residual influence, right?”

"But now you find yourself hitting thin air?"

"It's not that we're fighting air. After all, according to intelligence from the front lines, the resistance from this 'Fourth Republic' is quite fierce. It's just that we didn't expect to be fighting an Oberon, but a bunch of... a bunch of rats?"

However, they shouldn't be truly regarded as mice. They may appear to be mice, but in reality, they are spirits.

"It looks somewhat like a degenerated elf to me." Shang Luo pressed his forehead. "So, the vessel a elf uses can actually affect its performance, right?"

【Um】

"Phaethon, what do you think?"

“I can only say it will definitely have an impact, otherwise Irodiasa wouldn’t have personally come to capture a Roman knight’s daughter as her confidante. Karin wasn’t randomly chosen; the Romans were the highest-grade material used to create elves. If they had used rats instead of humans, you can imagine the regression that would have caused to the entire elven civilization—speaking of which, Victoria. We sent you the interrogation records; have you read them?”

"You mean that 'Provençal stew'?"

Previously, the mouse kept mentioning the phrase "Provençal stew." Although it's a dish, it seems to encapsulate the conflicts of four generations. The implications are so rich that it's hard to believe these "mouse spirits" were motivated solely by making a dish.

After all, their actions elsewhere were very organized. Their battles on the front lines, including the earlier ambush of Shangluo and his men, all demonstrated the proper conduct expected of elves.

“That stew also intrigued me,” Victoria nodded. “Their previous actions were very cunning—ambushing us, controlling humans as puppets, and so on—these are things elves do. But here, their minds seem limited to the level of rats. What does that mean? It means that although most elves may have turned into rats, I’m certain that they still have a high-level command center operating.”

"Oh? Are you sure?"

"I'm almost certain of that—and this command center hasn't been weakened compared to the old Oberon; in fact, it's been strengthened. So now, it's important to examine what's inside. Actually, I've been pondering something: perhaps these elves, by focusing their main computing power on the most crucial strategic decisions, allowed that rat to reveal too much that shouldn't have been revealed to you. For example, this Oberon coffin—if there wasn't some conspiracy, it obviously shouldn't have been brought back by you so early. Because we can glean a lot of information from it."

"Hmm," Shangluo nodded. "So, your analysis is indeed very reasonable. Let's open the museum and test it then. Shall we open it here?"

“Wait a moment.” Victoria snapped her fingers, and four Dragon Fang soldiers, along with a large group of guards, walked over from the side. They had been there all along, just waiting for Victoria’s orders.

“Take this to the Muses’ Palace and let the sages examine it. Also, invite Lord Helios over, just in case anything goes wrong. And then, Phaethon, why don’t you come along and take a look?”

“Okay,” Fahrenheit nodded. “Then you two wait here for a bit, I’ll be back in a little while.”

"Hey, Phaethon, could you..."

“Here’s your wallet!” Phaethon slapped his wallet onto Shangluo’s phone. “Eat it if you want! I don’t need these drachmas anymore anyway.”

An hour later, Phaethon returned to the library entrance.

At this moment, Shangluo wasn't eating ice cream.
"What are you doing?" Phaethon saw from afar that Shangluo was standing behind the ice cream stand, making ice cream cones.

"The boss said he'd treat me to a meal if I did half an hour of work for him. Wait a minute, I'll be right there."

When Shangluo climbed back up the stairs, he had three ice cream cones with him: "Indeed, the fruits of labor are the most delicious." "But these are all data," Fahrenheit said helplessly. "You only bought the feeling of eating ice cream. In reality, no milk or sugar was consumed in the process. At most, some phytofuel was used."

"The important thing is the process—and, judging from this, everything seems to be going smoothly?"

“No, something is very wrong. Shangluo, we’ve confirmed one thing: you’ve been tricked, but your orbital bombardment makes up for it.”

"Isn't that Oberon's head?"

"Yes and no—physically speaking, that is Oberon's head. As in the legends, it was a handsome young man, but only 1.3 meters tall, with butterfly scales inside, seemingly traces of scale wings. Titania's head was right next to it, and as in the rumors, it was a girl 2.4 meters tall. They were the High King and Queen of the Elves. The former was a half-elf, Caesar, and the latter was a pure-blooded elven noble."

This was something Shangluo already knew—there are size differences among elves. For example, when Shangluo first met Karin, Karin displayed the form of a giant elf over two meters tall. But among the elves, the truly noble ones are often only half the height of a human.

It now appears that these great elves were all created from captured humans, transformed through human intervention. Although they were accepted as official members of the elves, they were not born of elves.

Those truly born from elves are the "true elves," like Oberon, who stand 1.3 meters tall and often possess insect-like wings. The type of elf varies depending on its species. For example, Oberon herself has magnificent butterfly wings, just like her mother.

As an elf born of elves, not transformed from them, Oberon possessed both the right to inherit the Roman imperial throne and the supreme throne of the Elven royal court, thus becoming the undisputed king of the entire elven world. The Royal Court of the Fountains of Romania, and Irodiasa, were all subject to this small figure standing at only 1.3 meters tall.

"Speaking of which, why did Irodiasa choose to give birth to her daughter in this way?" Shangluo asked. "Why didn't she give birth to a real elf?"

“This is the key,” Victoria explained. “If a true elf is to be born, it must be through love—yes, only love can truly give birth to an elf. That is to say, their parents must be united by love in order to give birth to a truly powerful elf from love. Irodiasa loves no one and is not loved by anyone, so she cannot give birth to a true elf. She can only capture a human girl and make her her daughter, just as she herself became an elf in this way.”

"Caesar's love is truly boundless."

"Yes, that's often the case. The birth of a true elf represents love. Many spells are like that—for example, some powerful murder spells only work if you genuinely wish the person dead. This means that casting such a spell is itself a crime, because your act of killing, your desire to kill, your motive for killing, your actions of killing, and the things that come with it all ultimately come down to whether you hit the target or not. This only determines whether the crime is completed or attempted; it doesn't require discussing whether the crime has actually begun."

"Huh? So that murderous spell you mentioned, is it... Avada Kedavra?"

"Huh? You actually knew that? But you're mistaken about one thing, it's..." Victoria blinked, "I usually can't just say this out loud. But I really don't want to kill you, so saying it out loud shouldn't be a problem, um, I guess."

She composed herself and began to chant, "Abracadabra!"

She didn't cast the spell; she truly didn't want to kill Shang Luo.

"It seems like it's missing a few notes?"

"The person who taught you this magic may have deliberately modified a few sounds to prevent you from casting real magic. I've heard that similar things happen where you are, such as scrambling the order of the 'Tui Bei Tu' to prevent laymen from making predictions from it."

"This magic sounds like it has a very special origin?"

"This magic itself is Aramaic, meaning 'As I wish!' It was recorded by the Roman Emperor Caracalla starting in the third century and later developed into a powerful magic capable of killing. And then, do you know why I'm saying this?"

Shangluo shook his head.

“I just glanced at the briefing that Phaethon sent over. So, you can speak now.”

Fahrenheit said, "It seems that Oberon had a magical duel before he died. It seems that the Elven court and the Elven rebels were exchanging blows with Abracadabra before—they really wanted to kill each other."

As Victoria said, a powerful spell like [Abracadabra] cannot be cast without a truly strong will. The marks left on Oberon's head testify to the intensity of the battle at the time.

"Since it appeared on the head, does that mean Oberon is dead?"

“No, we examined the wound, and the magic doesn’t seem to have killed Oberon. It’s because the magic established a sympathetic link with Titania, who was lying next to him.”

"???" Shang Luo was stunned for a moment. "Could it be..."

"Yes. The one who cast the spell was Titania. It seems that although her killing intent was overwhelming, her love was equally undeniable, causing her spell to fail at the last moment. The spell only blew off half of Oberon's skull and did not actually kill him. And the same mark was found on Titania's body."

"My God, is this supposed to be a family drama? What happened in the end?"

“I don’t know.” Phaethon shook his head. “But we’ve discovered something—though I can’t show you pictures directly, I can describe it: both of them have a round hole in the back of their heads. That’s a symbol of drawing out consciousness. This kind of magic has existed since ancient times; you can see similar holes in the skulls of many primitive people. And the holes were made after death.”

The truth of the case was revealed through the autopsy—a fierce civil war seemed to have erupted in the Elven court, with a direct confrontation between High King Oberon and Queen Titania. Both were severely wounded and ultimately beheaded. However, after their deaths, it appears that someone deliberately tampered with their bodies, extracting their souls.

“That’s the key,” Fahrenheit emphasized. “The other elves confirmed that both of them were dead because those killed by [Abracadabra] cannot be resurrected. However, the autopsy results proved that the [Abracadabra] on these two individuals did not cause fatal wounds, but rather kept them at a 'half-dead' level, preventing their souls from being destroyed and allowing them to be extracted. Even so, their souls must have been severely damaged. Now, their souls are most likely dormant somewhere. Perhaps, their act of releasing [Abracadabra] on each other was itself an act. They might be using a clever escape tactic.”

(End of this chapter)