Yuuto might be treating it like a concession, but he hadn’t given her anything — he was merely withdrawing the more forceful demands. It was a tactic referred to as “highballing.”
It was a negotiation tactic used in cases where one knew their actual demands would be refused from the start, so they issued even higher demands first, and then after those demands were refused, issued smaller demands, the ones that were originally intended.
In addition, because of the effects of the aforementioned “good cop, bad cop” tactic, he had planted the unsettling possibility that perhaps his proposal was rather kind.
Linnea had been completely taken in by Yuuto’s plan.
“Unngh, but...”
Still, it seemed Linnea wasn’t yet sold on becoming Yuuto’s younger sister. Apparently she was still resistant to the idea of becoming obedient to those lower-ranking dogs. If she shamelessly became the little sister to a “dog” and then returned to her country, she would not be able to avoid accusations that she had sold out her people.
Being viewed that way would be unbearably humiliating. She likely felt that death really would be better than such a fate.
“N-no, we of the Horn Clan will not place ourselves below you, the Wolf Clan...”
“I see. Then I guess I have no other option. We’ll have to have a second Van on our hands.”
“...?! Then you plan to burn our town to the ground?!” she exclaimed.
Yuuto’s comment was so casual, seeming almost like an afterthought, yet Linnea was seething. The sovereign of the Wolf Clan was looking down on her with cold, inhumane eyes, seeming completely unfazed by the now-threatening mood.
Van.
The name of a town that had once been a part of the domain of the Claw Clan.
It was no longer there.
That was because the man before her had burned it all to the ground, including women and children, not leaving a single resident alive.
“Only if you won’t accept my Chalice, that is,” Yuuto added. “I have no intention of pardoning anyone who would go against me.”
“...!”
His clear, cold declaration caused the blood that had flushed her face to now completely drain from it.
When Linnea had raised her troops to attack the Wolf Clan, one of the reasons was her feelings of righteous indignation at the Vánagandr — “The Tragedy at Van,” and at the sovereign who had ordered the attack. She could not accept something, or someone, so inhumane. Now the thought of that atrocity again weighed heavily upon Linnea’s heart.
Though she bore the title of “sovereign,” she was still a young girl, not even fifteen. This was the first time she had really understood since becoming sovereign the reality of her decisions impacting the lives of tens of thousands of people. Her body would not stop quaking.
“It doesn’t matter to me either way, so what’ll it be?” Yuuto asked. “Hurry up and decide. My offers don’t stay on the table long.”
“Urgh!!” she finally exclaimed. “Very well. I’ll become your little sister. However, I’m not becoming some child subordinate! Just a little sister!”
In the depths of overwhelming sorrow, Linnea accepted Yuuto’s proposal.
“Pheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew.”
Once the meeting of sovereign patriarchs had adjourned and Linnea was completely out of sight, exhaustion overtook Yuuto’s body, likely a result of maintaining such tension for so long.
Following that prolonged sigh, his body slid wearily from his seat onto the ground.
“A-are you all right, Father?! Has something happened to your body?” Sigrún rushed to Yuuto’s side, genuinely panicked.
Not a shadow of the coldness or hardness either of them had shown to Linnea remained. Realizing this, Yuuto couldn’t hold back a wry smile.
All of the Wolf Clan took so poorly to being called dogs, but the way Sigrún was acting now made it impossible not to think of a dog whimpering with worry for its master. Of course, there was no way he could say something so rude, so he said something else instead.
“I’m just tired. You always worry too much. Though I suppose I am weak and fragile by the standards of this world.”
“N-no, that’s not...” Sigrún’s voice shrank and her words trailed off.
She really does think I am weak, Yuuto thought with a wry smile.
But he didn’t fault her for that at all. When he had first come to this world, the food and water here hadn’t quite agreed with him, and he’d regularly had a hard time keeping anything in his stomach. He suspected that the image still stuck with Sigrún, even now.
“Tee hee! Slumped over on the ground like that, no one would ever believe you were the great ‘Hróðvitnir’ whose name is famous among our neighboring countries.” Felicia’s eyes narrowed in amusement.
Yuuto had slid to the ground, leaning his back against the legs of the chair for support, dignity be damned.
“That’s still infamy though, not fame,” he said pointedly, straightening himself up.
Following the incident at Van Yuuto had gained the alias Hróðvitnir ‘the Infamous Wolf’, along with a reputation for being an unforgivable and inhumane despot.
He had actually helped spread that reputation on purpose.
Just as with Sun Tzu, Yuuto had begun reading Machiavelli’s The Prince after becoming sovereign in order to properly gain knowledge befitting a leader. It said that those who would be leaders, while normally behaving benevolently, would have to be cool-headed or downright vicious at times. It also said that, if committing any such atrocities, they should be done all at once, rather than little by little.
It would make people fear you, take away their desire to fight you, and ultimately cull them into obeying you.
One famous example of this was the atrocity by Masamune Date at Odemori Castle. While capturing the castle, Masamune had led the massacre of its inhabitants. Upon hearing of this, his enemy Sadatsuna Oouchi had been absolutely terrified, and retreated from Obama Castle without putting up a fight. Reaching Obama Castle, Masamune captured it without having to spill a drop of his own men’s blood. Even the aforementioned Sadatsuna Oouchi later became subservient to Masamune.
In a sense, you could say the idea for the Vánagandr had been born from this event.
“I still cannot accept it,” Sigrún said indignantly. “Father never even committed an atrocity in Van. He’s such a benevolent person...”
“I’m not benevolent, just soft,” Yuuto said with a pained expression, muttering as he shook his head from side to side.
Reality is not so simple. Just as being cool-headed and dispassionate might let you avoid bloodshed at times, being too overly friendly might actually lead an enemy to think lightly of you, and only intensify the fighting and bloodshed as a result.
It was true that Yuuto had burned Van to the ground, but in reality, he had secretly relocated its residents to a town in Wolf Clan territory first. And thus, the legend of his atrocity had been born.
It is said that there can be no damming of rumors. If the truth got out and caused neighboring clans to look down upon the Wolf Clan as weak, that could lead to outbreaks of fighting in which far more Wolf Clan blood would be shed than that of the Van residents who had been spared. Yet though he’d known that risk, Yuuto hadn’t been able to kill those people. He couldn’t go that far. He couldn’t be that cold-hearted.
Even though the reality of this world, in which weakness and softness would be repaid in bloodshed, had been made clear to him time and time again.
“...Huh?”
He was suddenly embraced and pulled closer. In the next moment, a soft, warm sensation covered his face.
Again? As soon as he realized who it was, Yuuto panicked and tried to pull back.
“I find your generosity to be invaluable, Big Brother,” Felicia said. “Please do not blame yourself.”
Felicia’s soft, gentle voice somehow robbed him of the strength to resist. He could feel her heartbeat. It felt as if the self-loathing that had bruised his own heart was being healed.
“...Felicia, thank you, as always,” he said.
“Tee hee! I haven’t done anything you need to thank me for.”
“Still, I appreciate it.”
“I-I also have such respect for you, Father!”
“Ah, and thank you, Rún.”
“Yes!” A smile spread across Sigrún’s face like a flower in bloom. She was genuinely overjoyed at Yuuto’s simple words.
Yggdrasil was neither the time nor place in which Yuuto had been born and raised. There were many aspects of life here that were inconvenient, and homesickness regularly blew through his heart like a cold wind. But he also had people like Felicia and Sigrún who dearly cared for him, and who helped him.
A smile appeared suddenly on Yuuto’s lips.
“All right, let’s go. Back to our town, Iárnviðr.”
✦ ✦ ✦
