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“I wouldn’t say that in front of Big Sis Homura if I were you,” Nozomu warned.
“I’d never. I actually value my life.” Arness forced a laugh. Even the perpetually coolheaded, dauntless tactician Arness trembled in fear when it came to Homura, it seemed.
“What we really need to worry about, though, is dad. He’s not gonna be happy that we had Big Sis Homura help.” Nozomu groaned, his expression grim. Homura’s very existence could be considered foul play. Whichever side she decided to join was basically guaranteed an automatic win. Nozomu seriously doubted his father would acknowledge his victory and succession to reginarch if he’d used her power to achieve it.
“I don’t think that’ll be a problem. He only forbade the use of knowledge from the land beyond the heavens, remember?” Arness replied as he flashed a confident grin.
His response did nothing to ease Nozomu’s anxiety, however. “But he did forbid our moms from helping, and I can’t help but think that I didn’t really earn it,” he said, pursing his lips in dissatisfaction. It wasn’t that he regretted his decision. He would’ve lost miserably without Homura’s help, so he hadn’t been in a position to be choosy. But it did make him resent his own powerlessness.
“You’re overthinking this, man,” Rungr said airily, inserting himself into the conversation. “Father himself practically wrote the book on unfairness. What right does he have to scold his son for not playing fair?”
“For sure. Knowing him, he’d actually commend you for cleverly exploiting a loophole like that,” Arness said.
“Yep. Like I said, he’s a rotten cheater himself.”
“After all he’s done, it’d be the height of hypocrisy for him to blame anyone else for the choice we made.” Arness and Rungr took turns disparaging their father.
“Perhaps they have a point,” Nozomu thought. If the stories he’d heard from everyone about “Suoh-Yuuto” were anything to go by, then it was rather likely they’d get away with using Homura in the manner they had.
“That being said, if he does take you to task, I’m ready to dispute it.”
“Same here. I’ll fight for you, Big Bro,” Arness and Rungr each stated, the pair sporting confident grins.
“Me too.” Even Wiz gripped her fist tightly.
When he recalled how jealous he’d been of all of them, seeing their unwavering love and support made him deeply ashamed, but grateful beyond words. Flawed and incompetent as he was, his siblings not only believed in him, but actively supported him, always toiling to boost his spirits. At first, he had thought he didn’t have anything worth taking pride in, but he now saw that wasn’t true. His beloved siblings—his greatest asset—had been his pride all along.
“Nozomu won, did he? That’s a relief.” When he learned of the outcome of the war from Kristina, Yuuto beamed. If Nozomu was to be king, he would need to inherit the throne without Yuuto’s help. Yuuto had already made that abundantly clear to Nozomu. Yuuto was, after all, an irregular existence within this world—an outright anomaly. Relying on him would never allow Nozomu to nurture the skills he’d require to rule as a great king. With that in mind, he’d forced himself not to get involved, but the truth was he’d been beside himself with worry.
“Hold on a second, Kris. You screwed up,” Yuuto said. “Didn’t you report that there were no signs of Babel using forbidden technology?” Stirrups, compound bows, and even the phalanx formation—none of them were ideas or inventions from this era. The fact that Babel had had them in his possession was like a bolt from the blue for Yuuto. He’d sent his children out based on Kristina’s report, convinced that they had had more than enough chance to claim victory, but the color had drained from his face when he’d heard that Babel’s army was much more formidable than previously assumed.
“I apologize for that. It seems the informants that I had ordered to infiltrate the Steel Clan were paid off by Babel to keep quiet. It was entirely my fault for not checking more thoroughly,” Kristina explained.
“You need to be more careful. You’re too focused on that niece of yours to do your job properly,” Yuuto warned.
“...I know.” She must have been aware of it, because, in a rare display of deference, Kristina hung her head. She was so taken with Yuuto and Albertina’s daughter Clea that she’d been spending every moment of her free time by the child’s side. If anything, “every moment” was a grand understatement, even—in fact, she made time to see Clea, often shortening her own work hours by foisting her responsibilities onto her subordinates so she could secure more hours with her niece. Her infatuation with the child had been the reason for her slipup here. Yuuto had always thought of Kristina as one to prioritize her work above all else, but this gaffe of hers had shown that to be a naive assumption.
That in itself, though, did make Yuuto rather glad on a personal level. For so long, her twin sister Albertina had been the sole recipient of her interest and affection. Yuuto had always found that a bit abnormal and lonesome. Even if it was just her niece, it warmed Yuuto’s heart to see her finally show affection toward someone else.
“They ended up trouncing Babel even with all the cheating he did, huh? I guess the kids are all right after all. I can’t treat them like children anymore, it seems,” Yuuto said.
“They did end up relying on Homura to bring the battle to an end, however,” Kristina pointed out.
“That, too, was only achievable with the strength Nozomu possesses,” Yuuto replied, a boastful grin playing on his lips. At a glance, Nozomu didn’t have any special talents. He wasn’t an idiot by any means, but he was average across the board. However, he did have a certain charm to him—an amiability that made him easy to get along with and that drew others to his side; a winsomeness that made everyone want to support him, to be his strength. To Yuuto, that was the most necessary quality of a king. It was the quality that Nozomu’s stepmother Sigrdrífa had possessed. Even if Nozomu and Sigrdrífa weren’t blood-related, that was something they shared.
Nozomu had a good heart, and he was gentle and sincere. With the conclusion of this battle, Yuuto now had proof that with Nozomu’s siblings at his side, he would be an exemplary reginarch.
“Now then, I know I may be sticking my nose in where I’m not wanted, but we’ve still got one tiny little thing on the agenda. We need to show a certain someone just how terrifying the consequences are for using forbidden knowledge from the land beyond the heavens,” Yuuto said menacingly.
That very day, a cluster of boulders descended from the sky upon Tarshish without warning, pulverizing Babel’s statues and unfinished ziggurats into rubble. The rumor among the populace was that it was divine punishment for Babel attempting to use the knowledge of the gods to reach and invade the domain of heaven itself.