“You guys couldn’t be more off the mark. This is all part of the job. Young master Nozomu is going to inherit the Iárnviðr Trading Company one day, and Ephy’s the perfect bait to get his ass in gear. That’s all,” Kristina stated.
“Hmmm?” Albertina peered directly into Kristina’s face, looking unconvinced.
“How annoying. Don’t think you can figure me out just because you’re the older one.” She returned Albertina’s gaze with a level gaze of her own. “Why would I lie?” she said.
“Mm, I don’t think you’re lying, but you’re not telling the whole truth,” Homura replied.
“Yeah, I agree. That’s what it seems like to me too,” agreed Hildegard.
She was cornered by their doubtful stares. They were all skilled enough to where they could sniff out even the slightest emotional shift in someone, even if it wasn’t obvious from their expression or tone. In other words, a troublesome bunch for someone like Kristina.
“Why are you so intent on playing the bad guy?” Homura asked.
“Pfft, at your age, it’s frankly embarrassing,” Hildegard teased.
“That’s just something that Kris does. She’s a good girl at heart, honest,” Albertina explained.
Kristina neither confirmed nor denied their accusations. “Even if you’ve realized, at least have the common decency not to say it out loud.” Really, they were such nuisances, good for nothing but making her uncomfortable—and yet, for some reason, she didn’t dislike it when they were all together. If she really thought they were so annoying, she could just refuse to hang out with them, but instead, she always tagged along. It was almost as though some part of her didn’t find their company that unpleasant. How strange.
“Ggghhh...mgghhh...dammit! Damn it all!” At a guard post a short distance away from the city of Megiddo, Thutmose III was beside himself with rage. The scene at the tavern a short while ago continued to replay in his mind. He had been completely overwhelmed, swallowed whole by that man’s monstrous presence. In the moment, his instincts had told him plain as day that he’d had no chance of victory against that man. However, now that some time had passed and he’d been able to collect his thoughts, he could no longer keep making excuses for his cowardice.
“I’m a pharaoh, dammit! I’m the king among kings who will rule this entire world one day!” Thutmose believed that with every ounce of his being. He was confident he had the strength and the capability to make it happen. Although this incident had thoroughly exposed his hubris, the pride he’d built up over so many years wasn’t so easily erased. For all the humiliation he felt, he was ten times as furious, and that anger consumed every inch of his heart.
“Forgive me, my pharaoh, but our investigation on Suohyuuto has turned up some results.”
“Speak!”
“Yes, my pharaoh. We’ve heard from multiple merchants that this Suohyuuto shares the name of the king far to the west of Ahhiyawa.”
“Far to the west of Ahhiyawa, you say?” Thutmose’s brow raised.
The merchants of the land of Ahhiyawa, known as Greece in the twenty-first century, would occasionally visit the Orient and Kemet, but this was the first Thutmose had ever heard of there being a land even further west. Normally Thutmose would have no interest in an unknown land that far away, but if this Suohyuuto person was the king of that land, it was a different story. Someone commanding that level of presence would undoubtedly set their sights on the Orient next. The reason he was here was probably the same reason Thutmose was—in other words, to invade and make this land his.
“We can’t let this territory slip out of our grasp,” Thutmose said, biting his thumbnail. His instincts as a warrior told him that in order to bring Suohyuuto down, they would need to have five, no, ten times more men than the enemy. In that case, now was the perfect opportunity. He had concealed his identity and status to stealthily observe the area, and there was no sign of Suohyuuto heading up a large army here. If he didn’t nip the man in the bud here, he would undoubtedly become Thutmose’s greatest threat and swallow up the entire Orient. There was no longer any room for hesitation—now was the time to act.
“West of Ahhiyawa, was it? Then our enemy’s ship is likely docked near the Kishon River. We will chase them down.”
Currently, Thutmose had an army of around one thousand. Although they were from a different country, his stepmother Hatshepsut had forged an alliance between the greater regions of Kemet and Megiddo, and those soldiers were currently serving as Thutmose’s bodyguards. The enemy, on the other hand, only had around a paltry fifty men at most. His victory was all but assured. This was no time to worry about honor and pride. They didn’t currently have that luxury. As the future conqueror of the world, he couldn’t allow a monster like Suohyuuto to run rampant any longer.
Once they’d departed the city of Megiddo and were on their way back to the ship, Nozomu let out an exhausted sigh. “Man, I feel like I just got thrown from Valhalla into hell.”
The disappointment of having severely underestimated the distance to his goal had taken its toll. It was like he’d toiled to scale a mountain, only to look back and realize he’d hardly climbed beyond its base—not to mention the peak was so high up that it was obscured by clouds, making it impossible to tell just how much further he had to go. It was enough to make him despair, to the point that he was at a loss on how to proceed.
“N-Nozomu, are you all right? Th-The fact that you gave it all you had was so admirable! I’m not just saying that—it really was!” Gripping her fist tightly, his wife Ephelia adamantly supported him. He was grateful for her kindness, and he knew she was speaking from her heart, but he couldn’t in good faith accept her praise. Compared to Thutmose and his father, he was a wimp of a man. Now that he’d realized that fact, it had lodged itself in his heart like a thorn he couldn’t remove.