ACT 2
“It turned out to be quite the exciting wedding, didn’t it? Though, I suppose one could say that nothing could be more fitting for the greatest hero of these turbulent times. Now, Princess, you’ll be up next, I’m sure!”
It was the day after Yuuto and Mitsuki’s wedding ceremony, and Linnea had been spending a short break from work enjoying a bit of tea and pleasant conversation with her assistant second-in-command, Haugspori, when he suddenly hit her with this bombshell completely out of the blue.
Linnea was so taken aback that her tea went down the wrong pipe, and she sputtered and coughed loudly.
After a few moments, her coughing abated, and she fixed Haugspori with a reproachful glare.
“Where did that come fromǔ! You do understand the situation we’re in right now, don’t you?”
“I certainly do,” Haugspori replied calmly, not perturbed in the slightest by his patriarch’s angry tone. “According to the lord reginarch, we are facing a war far greater than any we’ve fought before.”
Haugspori was an Einherjar of the rune Ljósálfar, the Light Elves, and the Horn Clan’s strongest general. Linnea trusted him completely, so naturally, she had filled him in on last night’s war council meeting.
“That is precisely why I brought this up to you.”
“Hmǔ”
“Once the conflict is underway, the reginarch will be obliged to travel from location to location, to meet the enemy in battle, whereas you will surely be assigned to provide logistical support from here in Gimlé. Naturally, you’ll have very few opportunities to see him after that.”
“Hmm...” Linnea found herself unable to disagree. It made sense to her.
In fact, last year, Yuuto had only been present in the clan capital of Gimlé (and in Iárnviðr, before that) for about two-thirds of the time.
And he’d been here for less than half of this year so far, though that was also because he’d been forcibly transported back to his country of origin beyond the heavens for several months.
Judging by the current circumstances, it was almost certain he’d be spending even more time out of the city, with little to no chance of the opposite.
Faced with this belated realization of the obvious, Linnea was left speechless.
“Princess, if you don’t take care of things now, before that happens, you might find that several full years have slipped away from you without you even realizing it.”
“Nnngh...!” Grimacing, Linnea failed to stifle a pained groan.
She’d become seventeen this year.
In Yggdrasil, it wasn’t unusual to get married sometime around age fifteen, so she was already somewhat “behind” for her generation. She couldn’t afford to take it easy and put things off for several more years.
“Fortunately, Lady Mitsuki has said she will allow her husband to take concubines, and she even told you directly that she wished for you to support the lord reginarch. There should be no obstacles standing in your way.”
“Yes, it’s true that Big Sister Mitsuki did say that to me.”
Linnea thought back to that moment and sighed, remembering the admiration she felt.
Mitsuki had told Linnea that, in Yuuto’s new role as reginarch, he now shouldered far too heavy a burden for one man to bear... and that Mitsuki alone would not be enough to help him shoulder it.
Mitsuki was a woman like any other. There was no doubt that she would prefer to have Yuuto all to herself if she could.
And yet she had refused to be bound by natural human jealousy, placing more importance on how she could best support her husband in both body and mind as he dealt with his weighty responsibilities.
Linnea had been overcome with admiration for that inspirational attitude. She felt like it was no wonder Yuuto had chosen this woman to be his only wedded partner for life.
And, that was the source of her greatest obstacle.
“However, Father is devoted to Big Sister Mitsuki, and her alone, even though he’s surrounded by other beautiful women like Aunt Felicia and Sigrún. Someone like me would never even...” Putting it into words herself like this made her feel miserable.
Born as the daughter of a patriarch, she had grown up eating well and learning to care for her appearance.
In her own opinion, she believed herself to be at least modestly beautiful, but she felt like she could never match up to those two silver- and gold-haired pillars of beauty always at Yuuto’s side.
If even the two of them had failed to capture his heart, then what hope did she have?
“Well,” Haugspori responded, “setting Aunt Sigrún aside for the moment, I know that Great Aunt Felicia and Lord Yuuto are already in an intimate relationship.”
“Hwuh?!” Linnea blurted out, practically dumbstruck.
This was completely out of nowhere for her, something she never would have imagined.
“Wh-Wh-What are you talking about?!” she shouted.
Haugspori looked puzzled. “I’m not sure why you are asking me that. You can tell just by looking at them, can’t you?”
“N-No, I can’t, and that’s why I’m asking you!”
Haugspori let out a long, exasperated-sounding sigh.
Linnea, of course, felt her temper rise at this.
In Yggdrasil, the Oath of the Chalice was absolute, and the authority and status of a sworn parent was absolute as well. As Haugspori’s sworn parent, Linnea couldn’t help but feel offended by his terribly rude behavior just now.
However, her curiosity was stronger. She swallowed her anger and waited for him to explain.
Haugspori shook his head as if to say good grief, then continued. “In that case, I would suggest that you pay close attention to Great Aunt Felicia the next time you see her. Watch her movements, and the way she carries herself. She has always been an alluring woman, but now her mannerisms are noticeably even more feminine than before.”
“Hm. A-Actually, I got that sense from her as well.”
“Right? It’s evident even in the way she looks at Lord Yuuto. In the past, her gaze burned with a fiery passion, but now it is full of warmth, as if softly embracing him. Just by looking at that difference, there’s no mistaking that something changed between them.”
“Ngh... But, you haven’t heard Father or Aunt Felicia mention anything about it directly, though, right?”
“Well, they wouldn’t. Normally, one’s most intimate moments in the bedroom aren’t something to discuss with other people.”
“S-So, in other words, these are all just assumptions you’ve made, based on...”
“Ha ha ha! Princess, consider who you are talking with right now.” Cutting Linnea off with a laugh, Haugspori pointed a thumb at himself.
As the Horn Clan’s greatest archer, his arrows could fell even a bird soaring high in the sky with perfect accuracy, and this mastery with the bow had earned him fame throughout the entire Steel Clan. He was just as equally regarded for his prowess with the opposite sex, and it was said that any woman he set his sights on soon fell into his bed.
He had vast experience when it came to the ins and outs of romantic relationships, and that lent his words a certain weight on their own. Even without more solid evidence to back them up, Linnea couldn’t simply dismiss them as nonsense.
She gulped nervously. “If that’s true, then I can’t just sit around hesitating, either.”
“But still, what am I supposed to do, exactly?”
An hour had passed, and Linnea was still sitting in her office with her head in her hands, hesitating.
It’s said the best day to follow through on plans is the day you make them, but in Linnea’s case, she had already formally proposed marriage to Yuuto one year ago and had been rejected.
Even going to confess her feelings to him anew felt wrong on the day immediately after his wedding. It just felt too unprincipled.
“...Argh! I won’t accomplish anything just sitting around here! I’ve got things that need reporting to Father anyway, so I’m just going to go and see him!”
Linnea grabbed a stack of papers from on top of her desk and stood up.
“Ohh, going to ‘scout out the enemy,’ I see!” Haugspori said in an excited tone.
“That’s right,” Linnea replied. “After all, ‘Know your enemy and know yourself, and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.’”
It was a quote she’d learned from Yuuto, originally by someone called Sun Tzu.
In the end, what she’d learned about Yuuto and Felicia’s relationship from Haugspori was nothing more than his own account of things.
It wasn’t that she didn’t trust what he said, but this was something she wanted to confirm with her own eyes.
Rushing into things based on a misunderstanding would only wind up hurting her more, so she was at least going to avoid that.
“Take care, Princess, and good hunting.”
“Thanks.”
Linnea replied to Haugspori’s spirited sendoff with a single nod and set off for Yuuto’s office.
His office was the next room over, so it was a short trip.
“Father, I’ve brought some documents outlining the yield from this year’s autumn harvest,” Linnea announced, opening the door.
The owner of this office had only passed one night since his wedding ceremony, yet here he was at his desk, staring holes into a map and frowning.
He must have truly been locked in intense concentration, for he didn’t even notice Linnea entering the room.
“Big Brother, Lady Linnea is here to see you.” Felicia tapped Yuuto lightly on the shoulder, and he looked up with a start.
“Hmǔ O-Oh, sorry! Didn’t hear you come in. What did you need?” Yuuto greeted Linnea with a welcoming smile.
It looked just a bit clumsy and forced.
Linnea didn’t have to wonder why. He was surely racking his brain over how to deal with the situation caused by the imperial subjugation order against the Steel Clan.
“I’ve brought some documents outlining the yield from this year’s autumn harvest,” she repeated, handing over the bundle of papers she was carrying.
“There were losses at the beginning of spring this year, when the Panther and Lightning Clan troops damaged and pillaged our farmlands, but despite that, this year’s harvest still far exceeded last year’s.”
“Oh, really? I’m glad to hear that. You can’t fight a war on an empty stomach, as they say.”
“So, we will be going to war, then?” Linnea asked, her brow furrowing a little.
Honestly, Linnea had been wishing that for a little while the Steel Clan could focus purely on improving their domestic stability and production.
The former Panther Clan territories they’d captured were still heavily damaged from the last conflict. If she could teach the Norfolk crop rotation system to the other subsidiary clan patriarchs, overall food production within the Steel Clan as a whole could more than double.
A nation with plenty of food and a healthy economy naturally attracts immigrants from surrounding countries, increasing its overall population.
Given just a few years to bide their time, the Steel Clan would have grown to become larger and more powerful than all of the surrounding nations combined.
There was no doubt about that, which was why the subjugation order was such a terrible development.
“They’re probably going to make their move before the end of this year,” Yuuto muttered, returning his gaze to the map on his desk. “Though, even if they don’t, I intend to start things myself.”
There was a hint of something desperate and sad in his expression.
Linnea was originally from a different clan than Yuuto, so she hadn’t spent as much time with him as some of the other people close to him. Even so, she felt something was off, like she’d never seen him looking this troubled before.
“Father, I may not be dependable enough to solve the problems you are facing, but you can always speak to me about what’s troubling you.”
“Mm, yeah, you’re right. Actually, this is perfect timing. I’d like to ask your opinion on this, too.”
“Of course!”
Linnea replied immediately, the joy clear in her voice. That the man she loved and respected so much would rely on her, even just a little bit, was something that filled her with happiness and pride.
“Take a look at this for me.” Yuuto gestured to the map on his desk.
“This is a map of our region, correct?”
“Right. Currently, our Steel Clan shares its border with five surrounding clans: the Fang, Cloud, Panther, Hoof, and Lightning Clans.”
One by one, Yuuto indicated each of them on the map with his finger before continuing.
“As I mentioned in the council meeting last night, because of the imperial subjugation order against us, I believe that it’s highly likely that they’re going to come together through a military alliance, and then all attack us at the same time.”
“...Right.” Linnea nodded slowly, processing the weight behind what Yuuto was saying.
Hearing that information again while looking at the map, it was even more apparent just how bad this situation was going to be if Yuuto’s predictions were correct (and Linnea was convinced that Yuuto’s predictions were always correct).
Each of the five outside nations was on par with or greater in strength than Linnea’s own Horn Clan.
The Steel Clan had the combined strengths of its seven-member clans, but aside from the Wolf Clan and Horn Clan, individually they were all small and militarily weak. And since the enemy nations completely surrounded them on all sides, it clearly put them at a strategic disadvantage as well.
“So, my thought is that I could try and punch a hole in their coalition. If I could isolate even a single one of those clans and pull them into an alliance with us, then just like a river dam or a defensive line on the battlefield, once a hole has been made, it becomes possible to bring the whole thing crumbling down in a chain reaction.”
“O-Oh...” Linnea was so stunned, she could only give that vague reply and nod in response.
As far as Linnea had learned through her own research, in the history of the Holy Ásgarðr Empire, an imperial subjugation order had only been issued once before: over two hundred years ago, when the first divine emperor Wotan personally led a campaign to conquer the Jötunheimr region.
Since then, the empire had fallen into decline, and the situation now was completely different from back then.
Yet despite that, Yuuto had been able to look ahead and predict how events were likely going to play out, almost as if he’d already seen them occur before, and then plan countermeasures ahead of time based on those predictions.
And furthermore, every one of those plans made logical sense.
She’d felt it at the patriarch council meeting the night before, but once again Linnea found herself simply astonished at Yuuto’s powers of foresight.
Yuuto leaned his chin on one hand and sighed. “Of course, the problem, then, is that any one of those clans is going to be a tough nut to crack.”
Linnea immediately understood what he meant.
“That is true. For one, I can’t imagine that berserker Steinþórr has any desire to make peace with us at this point. The Hoof Clan still bears a deep grudge against us for killing their previous patriarch, Yngvi. As for the remnants of the Panther Clan to the north, they have even more to detest us for than merely killing huge numbers of their brethren in battle. We used their captured leaders as justification for installing our own usurper patriarch to rule over the prisoners of war we recruited, stealing their proud Panther Clan name to use for one of our own clans.”
Those clans all had deeply personal or emotional issues with the Steel Clan at this point, so trying to establish friendly relations with them wasn’t going to meet with any acceptance.
“That would leave the clans to the east,” Linnea continued. “However, this time, we have the opposite problem. We haven’t had much contact or diplomatic relations with either of them. It would be one thing if we had already developed friendly relations or had some sort of mutual interest, but without either of those, they wouldn’t have any motivation to willingly side with enemies of the empire.”
Indeed, from the perspective of those clans, being seen as aiding enemies of the empire could lead to an imperial subjugation order being brought against themselves as well.
That would be the starting point from which they’d have to try to negotiate an alliance. They wouldn’t be starting from zero; they’d be starting from below zero.
There was still more hope of success than with any of the three western clans, but she could picture just how incredibly difficult it would be to negotiate anything.
“Of course, I do recommend continuing to press for negotiations with those two, but in my humble opinion it might be best for us to put our main focus not on the five surrounding clans, but on one particular power further to our south.”
“Oh?” Yuuto’s eyes widened in interest.
“The superpower of the southern lands, the Flame Clan, shares the Lightning Clan with us as a common enemy, and their national interests align with ours. Additionally, we have used Ginnar as our representative to deliver multiple gifts to them, and we responded to their recent request to send soldiers as aid, which has built up a foundation for friendly relations. I think our greatest prospects for making an alliance and swearing the Oath of the Sibling Chalice are with them.”
“Furthermore, if the Flame Clan and the Steel Clan were able to form a strong alliance, several other smaller regional powers would likely approach us, concluding that it’s in their better interest to side with us rather than against us. Also, the citizens residing in our territories will soon learn about the imperial subjugation order, and such a strong alliance would go a long way toward dispelling their anxiety.”
Yuuto listened to Linnea’s explanation intently, nodding strongly, as if she’d said exactly what he was hoping to hear.
“Yeah, that’s just what I was thinking, too. I really should focus on the Flame Clan, then.”
Linnea breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing Yuuto’s agreement. The last thing she’d wanted was to give an opinion that was off the mark and make him disappointed in her.
“Oh, my... you are so truly impressive, Lady Linnea.” Standing at Yuuto’s side, Felicia let out a long, admiring sigh.
Linnea shook her head. “Not at all, I still have a long way to go. If not for Father’s explanation of the situation and his plan, my mind would have been too caught up in the vague, overall concern around our status as enemies of the empire, too clouded by that to think properly.”
She wasn’t saying this to be humble, but because it was honestly how she felt.
Technically, since Linnea was the second-in-command of the Steel Clan, she would have to take over his duties as reginarch if something were to happen to him. Just thinking of what that situation would be like made her shudder.
Eventually, she might have been able to come to the same sort of conclusions that Yuuto had, but at the very least, she could never do so with the sort of rapid speed that he could.
In times of crisis, what was most vital was the speed of one’s initial response. Going by her assessment of herself, Linnea was sure that in this situation she would have been a step too slow in choosing each of her responses, locking herself into a pattern where she’d watch the situation steadily worsen as she became more and more powerless to do anything to stop it.
“Lady Linnea, if you have a long way to go, then I am useless to begin with,” Felicia replied. “As you gave your explanation, all I could do was nod and think, oh, that’s true, agreeing after the fact. Perhaps it is because you were born and raised to be a patriarch. I find myself terribly envious of your ability to see the bigger picture of things.”
“It’s true,” Yuuto chimed in. “Linnea, you’re the only one I can really discuss these sorts of issues with. We share an understanding as fellow patriarchs.”
“...!”
Ba-dump. Linnea felt her heart pound loudly in her chest.
She once again recalled what Mitsuki had said to her before.
“As a patriarch, you would be far better than I would at seeing things from Yuu-kun’s perspective, understanding what troubles him, and supporting him the way he needs.”
At the same time, she also recalled that Mitsuki had mentioned she’d noticed something off about Yuuto, as if he were burdened by some sort of “tragic resolve.”
Back then, that comment hadn’t matched anything she’d seen in him, but now she felt like she understood it a little.
There was something about the way he’d looked just a moment ago, when he’d said: “They’re probably going to make their move before the end of this year. Though, even if they don’t, I intend to start things myself.”
It was a very aggressive, warlike attitude for Yuuto. And Linnea had sensed an odd impatience from him, like something else entirely was bearing down on him.
“Father!” Gathering her resolve, Linnea raised her voice and stepped in closer to Yuuto.
“Wh-What is it?” Surprised by this sudden intensity from Linnea, Yuuto flinched and pulled back a bit.
Linnea, however, kept up the pressure. “Tell me, is there another matter that has been deeply troubling you, aside from the imperial subjugation order?”
“Wha?!” Yuuto’s expression froze solid, as if she’d seen right through him.
Felicia’s eyes widened slightly. It seemed Linnea’s question had struck a chord with something Felicia had already suspected as well.
“If it is something that you cannot even discuss with Big Sister Mitsuki, your own wife, then I know it must be something terrible indeed, but please do not carry such a heavy burden alone. Even though I may not be able to take it from you, I humbly ask that you would share it with me.”
“Big Brother, I beg the same of you as well. You seem so incredibly tense as of late, and I am terribly worried for you.”
“...Going off of what you both just said, I’m guessing this means Mitsuki’s already noticed it too?” Yuuto asked, an incredibly uncomfortable look on his face. Linnea and Felicia both nodded gravely.
Yuuto took a deep breath and then let out a long, heavy sigh. “Looks like I’ve got a long way to go, too. I was trying not to give her more to be afraid of when she’s still in the middle of her pregnancy.”
Linnea gulped nervously. In other words, the matter Yuuto was keeping to himself was shocking or terrifying enough to be dangerous to Mitsuki’s pregnancy.
“Please tell me, Father,” she asked again. “What is it that’s happened?”
“...” Yuuto remained silent.
It looked as if he were still stuck trying to decide whether he should really tell them or not.
It was rare to see Yuuto, someone so skilled at decision-making, unable to make up his mind for this long.
At this rate, it didn’t seem like Linnea would get an answer. She glanced over at Felicia.
“Aunt Felicia, could you leave the roomǔ”
“Erm...” Felicia paused for just a moment, exchanged glances with Linnea, then nodded and replied, “Of course, I understand.” She herself surely wanted to know the truth just as badly, but her decision was swift.
“I’m sorry,” Linnea said.
“...No, it is all right. I leave Big Brother in your hands.” Felicia gave a small bow and left the office.
After watching her leave and waiting for the door to close behind her, Linnea turned to Yuuto, placing a hand solemnly on her chest.
“Father, I am the second-in-command of the Steel Clan. While it is loath to imagine the unthinkable happening to you, in such an event I am bound to succeed you as the reginarch, to inherit and carry on your will and principles. Of course, I understand that I am still lacking in many respects...”
“No, that’s not true at...” Yuuto tried to interject and argue that last part, but Linnea cut him off again before he could even finish.
“But even so! Preparing for the worst-case scenario is one of the most important duties of a patriarch. Even if it’s something you cannot speak about with anyone else, the more serious the issue, the more I have a right, an obligation, even, to know about it!”
Linnea spoke all of this without pause, her eyes gleaming with the light of her firm resolve and staring right into Yuuto’s.
Whatever the matter was, it was something that had managed to upset Yuuto to the point of impatience when even an imperial subjugation order had not frightened him or broken his composure. It was something that worried him enough to make him hide it.
It was surely something terrible enough to make the subjugation order pale by comparison.
Even so, Linnea could not back down now.
Mitsuki had told Linnea that she would entrust the care of Yuuto in his role as reginarch to her. That was all the more reason she couldn’t let him deal with this alone.
“...Yeah. You’re right. You’re right, of course. I should still tell you, at least. I have to, just in case.”
“Ah! Then...?!” Linnea leaned forward eagerly, prompting Yuuto to respond with a faint smile.
“Yeah, I’ll tell you. But don’t blame me afterwards if you wish I hadn’t told you.”
“No... that can’t be... How...?!”
Linnea could only shout in abject disbelief.
Yuuto’s account of her world’s future fate was simply far too nonsensical.
She felt that way despite the fact that she had complete faith in Yuuto, a blind faith that was almost religious in nature.
On the other hand, she knew for a fact that Yuuto wasn’t the kind of person who would lie about something like this.
She now understood just why he’d had so much trouble deciding whether or not he should tell her about this.
This was definitely not something he could let go public.
If information about this got out and spread, it would cause unfathomable anxiety to spread throughout the populace. In the worst case, people driven to despair might lash out in mindless violence.
“Yggdrasil will sink into the ocean?!” Linnea repeated, still incredulous.
“That’s right. Not as soon as any day now, of course, but in the fairly near future, it absolutely will.”
“Father, it’s not as if I doubt your words, but...”
“Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to believe me right away, either. But in the world I’m from, it’s something that’s already confirmed to have happened.”
Yuuto grimaced, as if it pained him to say that last part.
His expression didn’t give Linnea the impression that he was lying.
“...You did mention that the world you came from existed many thousands of years in the future of our world, didn’t you?”
Yuuto nodded. “I did. And in my world, or I guess I should say, in the era that I came from, this land of Yggdrasil doesn’t exist anymore.”
Linnea said nothing, and for a moment the room was held in a heavy, oppressive silence.
To Linnea, this land she’d grown up in was something constant and eternal, something that had always been here since from long before she was born. She had always looked out and seen the land stretching out endlessly as far as she could see, all the way to the horizons—no, stretching even beyond them.
And that was all supposed to sink into the ocean, leaving not a single trace behind?
It was as absurd an idea as the sun rising in the west and sinking in the east.
Still, if Yuuto was asserting this claim with so much confidence, it had to be because he had enough evidence to convince himself of it.
“...Th-Then what are we supposed to do?” Linnea asked weakly.
People were powerless in the face of the unstoppable force of a natural disaster.
If they knew beforehand that this cataclysm was coming, then they had no choice but to try to evacuate, but if all of Yggdrasil itself was doomed to sink, where could they even flee to?
“Right now I’m having Ingrid make a prototype sailing ship. I’ll mass-produce those, and then we’ll use them to escape Yggdrasil. I intend to take all of our citizens with us, and move us all to another continent.”
“Another... continent?” Linnea repeated back, stunned. “Such a thing exists?!”
There were continents aside from Yggdrasil.
Until now, it was something she never would have thought.
That, however, was not particularly unusual for someone living in her era.
During the same time period in ancient Mesopotamia, Sargon of Akkad gave himself the title “King of the Universe.” As for the Europeans, until the seafaring Age of Discovery, their concept of the entire world extended only to adjacent portions of the Eurasian and African continents, meaning their world only had one, contiguous landmass. The American Australian continents didn’t exist to them.
Thus, Linnea’s assumption that Yggdrasil was the only existing landmass in the world wasn’t an unreasonable one.
“It exists,” Yuuto said. “Several of them. Europe should be across the sea to Yggdrasil’s east, and the American continent to the west.”
“W-Wait just a moment, please!” Linnea shouted in confusion, her voice nearly going shrill.
The idea of Yggdrasil sinking into the ocean was already earth-shattering enough on its own, but the fact that there were other landmasses beyond the outer seas was enough to disrupt her concept of the structure of the very world itself.
Her mind simply couldn’t keep up with this.
She took a series of long, deep breaths. After about ten of those, she finally felt like she was calming down.
“If I’m being honest, Father, there are several parts of this that I don’t really understand, but I do at least understand why it must have given you a sense of desperation, and why you could not tell Big Sister Mitsuki.”
“Haha, I feel sorry for unloading it on you, but I have to say it does feel like opening up about it to you took a little bit of the weight off of my shoulders.”
“No, I’m glad you told me,” Linnea said, without any hesitation. “It is true that the very thought that this land will sink into the sea terrifies me. But that is still far better to me than allowing you to suffer with this knowledge alone. I may not be able to take the burden away from you, but please at least let me do whatever I can to make it lighter for you.”
“...Thanks.” Yuuto took a long, deep breath, and then slumped down against the back of his chair.
It was as if the sudden relief he felt had also let all the strength out of his body.
If something wasn’t done, then hundreds of thousands of human lives would be lost beneath the waves of the sea. Even if Yuuto was the greatest hero and ruler this generation had ever seen, it was still too heavy a responsibility for him to try to carry on his own.
“Still, this plan to transport all of our people to this other landmass across the sea... what an unbelievably huge undertaking.”
It was easy enough to put the concept into words, but the task itself would be unfathomably difficult to execute.
The Steel Clan alone had a population in the tens of thousands. Transplanting them all would require an enormous number of ships, even if one used multiple trips to try and reduce the amount that would need to be built.
They would also need enough food stores to temporarily support the survival of all of those people at their destination.
Just doing the basic calculations in her head made Linnea start to feel dizzy.
“Geographically speaking, are we going to be heading west to this ‘America’ landmass, then?” she asked.
The Steel Clan had already secured the westernmost lands of the Álfheimr region, including several ports along the western coast.
By contrast, reaching the eastern sea coast would require crossing through the Bifröst and Ásgarðr regions, then eventually through the eastern region of Jötunheimr.
Thinking of it from that angle, it would seem that America was the only choice.
“No,” Yuuto said. “That can be our last resort, but right now I plan on heading for Europe.” It seemed as if he was going off of a completely different logic.
“May I ask for the reason why?”
“This is something I’m planning to test and confirm at some point, but Yggdrasil is probably pretty close to Europe. In Plato’s Timaeus, he writes that there was both trade and war between the peoples of Atlantis and Europe.”
“Um, what is this ‘Atlantis’?”
“It’s a name that refers to the Holy Ásgarðr Empire. In your language, the name Ásgarðr means ‘the land of the gods,’ right?”
Linnea nodded. “Yes, that’s correct.”
According to the myths of her people, the land of Yggdrasil was formed from the corpse of Ymir, the first Giant, whose full name was “Aurgelmir.”
When the empire was founded, the name Ásgarðr was then derived from that.
Yuuto continued. “The name ‘Atlantis’ means ‘the island of Atlas.’ In this case, ‘island’ means any landmass surrounded by water, even a continent. Plato’s people, the Greeks, worshiped a pantheon of gods who lived in Olympus, and Atlas is the name of one of the greater Titans, a race of gods who were the enemies of the Olympians. In other words, to the Greeks, Atlantis was ‘the land of the other gods.’ You see how the meanings line up?”
“I see...”
“Well, we got a little sidetracked there, but the point is that over on the American continent, there isn’t anything in the language that links to Yggdrasil. Even three thousand years in the future, the people there still didn’t have wheeled vehicles yet. From that we can conclude that there was never any cultural contact between you and them.”
“The eastern lands of the realm are too far away, so I don’t have any information from there,” Linnea said, furrowing her brow. “But, it’s certainly true that I have never heard of any landmass out to the west.”
As part of Linnea’s duty to gather information, she often learned of foreign lands and their affairs from the stories of traders and traveling merchants, but she had never once heard of a western continent.
And, as part of her education as a patriarch’s daughter, she had learned all about the gods and myths of the Álfheimr region. She’d perfectly memorized all of it, and, again, there was not a single line written or sung about an entire other landmass beyond the western sea.
In other words, it must be so far away that they’d had absolutely zero contact.
“I’m having Ingrid do her best to work on this project, but even for someone like her, I honestly think it’s going to be too hard for us to build ships that can make a long-term voyage across the ocean to the west. I did give her some schematics for ships like that, but they’d require a lot of different technologies that we just don’t have enough experience with, yet.”
“So it’s like how it was with the refining of iron and the making of glasswares, then.”
“Right. Just having the knowledge on paper isn’t enough to be able to produce something.”
When Yuuto first introduced the knowledge of making refined iron and glass, nobody could successfully make either of them right away. Both projects took six long months of trial and error before they could reliably make the finished product.
“In other words, you are saying that if we want to safely transport a large number of people out of Yggdrasil to a new land, we have no choice but to head to the eastern coast...”
“That’s what I’m saying. Well, if things start to go bad, and we don’t have the time to take that option anymore, I’m willing to take the risk and set out west for America.”
Linnea gave Yuuto a puzzled look. “By that phrasing, does that mean that you know of some indicator or sign of when the end approaches?”
“According to the Timaeus, the land sinks into the sea after a series of several very powerful earthquakes.”
“Powerful earthquakes?” Linnea let out a long sigh. “That’s a relief to hear,” she said, relaxing a little.
At the very least since the time Linnea became a patriarch, she hadn’t received a single report of any earthquakes.
“Even so, the fact remains that we don’t have much time left. I’m still planning to march on the imperial capital Glaðsheimr by the end of this year.”
“...!” Linnea’s breath caught in her throat, and she turned to stare at Yuuto in shock.
There were already only three months left in the year.
And right now, the Steel Clan was still stuck right in the middle of the situation caused by the imperial subjugation order, with a war of unprecedented scale fast approaching them.
They would be using all of their resources just to try and deal with this situation, so the idea of pushing their armies into the central empire and all the way to Glaðsheimr just didn’t seem realistic.
But Linnea saw in Yuuto’s eyes that he was deadly serious, and meant exactly what he’d said.
In that case, there was only one course of action for Linnea to take now...
“You can’t just tell me something like that now!”
...And that was to lecture him.
Frankly speaking, Linnea was a little angry at him.
She’d wanted for him to have trusted her more, to have depended on her more.
“First of all, if we’re planning for the mass migration of our people to a new land and the invasion of Glaðsheimr at the same time, we’ll need to prepare a truly considerable supply of food. That’s despite the fact that until just a while ago, we were wracked by food shortages! How did you even think you would secure enough food?!”
“Uhh... um, we increased our number of livestock thanks to the Norfolk system, so I thought maybe we could slaughter them all and turn them into dried meat rations.”
“That is naïve! That would not nearly be enough. You also need to consider using forced consecutive planting.”
In agriculture, planting the same crops in the same fields year after year will drain the soil of its nutrients, wearing it out, a phenomenon known as repeated cultivation damage.
If one were looking at cultivating an area of land over the long term, on a scale of tens of years or hundreds of years, that was something that needed to be avoided at all costs. But if the land were going to be abandoned completely in the next few years, it was a completely different story.
They could ignore the four-crop rotation system and plant four times the normal amount of food crops in all fields consecutively. If it was just for the short span of one or two years, that would absolutely provide a dramatically increased yield.
“And we’ll need to prioritize only food crops that we can preserve for a long time after the harvest. That’s going to be very difficult to get the populace to accept, but I will manage it somehow.”
“Y-Yeah, I’m counting on you.”
“As I am sure you know, the preparations for generating all of that food aren’t something that can be accomplished overnight! More than anything, time is necessary! If you had just told me about all of this even one month sooner, this would have required entirely less effort and trouble, you know!”
Even Linnea couldn’t help but press that point sharply against Yuuto a bit.
After all, the autumn harvest had ended, and the people were already in the middle of preparations for the next planting. There really was no time left.
With the economic difficulties surrounding the harvest festival celebration finally settled and behind her, Linnea had originally been counting on being able to take it easy for just a little while, but now she would most certainly be spending every single day hounded by crucial and urgent work.
“S-Sorry.” The great hero-king Yuuto found himself overwhelmed by Linnea’s intensity, inching slowly backwards.
Linnea ignored this and slammed her palms against his desk, pushing in even closer.
“I know I am repeating myself here, but you should have at least told me about all of this sooner! If you had done that, our plans could have been more efficient, and we would have been able to make some stages of the preparations in secret!”
Linnea’s lecture continued. It was another full hour before she was finished.
When Linnea returned to her office, Haugspori was there waiting for her.
“Welcome back. How did things go?” he inquired, keenly interested.
Linnea nodded, returning his greeting. “Well, things are definitely going to get busier from now on! We’ve got a lot of hard work ahead of us!” She was practically bursting with excitement.
She had been berating Yuuto up and down for over an hour, but inwardly she’d been trembling from how moving the whole revelation was.
Yggdrasil would sink into the sea, and that was shocking—terrifying, even. But it was also a fact that without Yuuto here, millions of lives would have been surely doomed to be swallowed beneath the waves as well.
At this point, Linnea believed without a shadow of a doubt that Yuuto had been sent by the spirit of the divine giant Ymir to save the people of Yggdrasil.
She had received the honor of swearing the Oath of the Chalice with him. She had been blessed with the opportunity to assist him in his great and noble works. Her heart had every reason to dance with excitement.
Haugspori sighed. “...Is that so?” In direct contrast to Linnea, he sounded dispirited, and half-heartedly scratched the back of his head with one hand.
“What is that reaction for?” Linnea asked indignantly, pursing her lips.
Naturally, the sinking of Yggdrasil was something she couldn’t share with him, but it still felt upsetting to get such a disappointed reaction when she was so full of passion and purpose.
“Well, I just couldn’t help thinking to myself, ‘Oh, I bet she got way too wrapped up in talking about work, and so the conversation never moved in a more romantic direction.’”
“...Uh.” That sound was all that escaped Linnea’s lips.
It was only now that she recalled that going to speak to Yuuto about work was supposed to have been nothing more than a valid excuse to go see him, to learn firsthand of his current relationship with Felicia.
“So, allow me to ask again,” Haugspori said. “How did things go?”
“Well, um...”
Haugspori let out a long, weary, exaggerated sigh that could more suitably be called a groan.
This was humiliating.
“How did you manage to mess that up, Princess?”
“W-We got into a very serious and important discussion, so there was no time to bring that up!”
“Hmm, I can certainly picture it,” Haugspori mused. “And I can picture the same thing happening from here on, as well; all of your conversations being about nothing but work.”
“Ngh!” Linnea realized she could clearly imagine that future too.
“Honestly, Princess, you are just far too serious for your own good...” Haugspori stated, exasperated, but then it hit him. “Hm, perhaps then if you wish to discuss romance with him, it would be best to avoid using work as the justification for your meeting, and try to approach him during a break instead.”
“O-Oh, that’s a great idea! I think that would fit with my personality better, too.”
The duties of a patriarch were such that a mistaken decision, or even delay in granting an approval, could end up causing harm to many people.
Tasked with such a heavy responsibility, Linnea viewed not giving full attention to her job as an insult to the position and to her people.
If she was dealing with work, then she wanted to focus only on work.
With Yuuto striving so earnestly to secure the future of the Steel Clan, she felt a resistance to interrupting that for such frivolous reasons.
“In that case, you should act right away and go see him during his lunch break,” Haugspori proposed.
Linnea flinched. “H-Huh?! You mean today?!”
“Of course I do,” he replied matter-of-factly.
“C-Can’t it at least wait until tomorrow?” she asked timidly.
She’d only just finished discussing such a grave matter with him, after all. She wanted at least a day to reset things before trying again.
“What are you saying? If you wish to become closer to him, then seeing him more often is the only proper way to go about it, yes?”
“W-Well...”
“And in the first place, your position was originally that of an outsider. You began several steps behind the other women in terms of getting acquainted with him.”
“Urgh...” Linnea couldn’t say anything in response; he’d brought up a painfully good point.
Up until the founding of the Steel Clan, Linnea had been Yuuto’s sworn younger sister, but still an “outside sibling” — not truly part of his clan. She’d only ever been able to see him at most once, maybe twice a month.
Whatever the reasons may be, Linnea had certainly felt a difference between how he was with her versus with the women who’d served under him since his days in the Wolf Clan. It felt as if the two of them weren’t as able to readily confide in one another.
“You have finally become his sworn daughter, a much closer part of his inner circle, so what is there to be gained by hesitating now?! It’s true that in matters of love, it’s sometimes important to pull back and give the other person space, but fundamentally you should always be pressing the attack!”
“I... I see...” As Haugspori laid out one argument after another, Linnea found herself nodding in agreement.
It did feel a little bit like he was pushing her too forcefully on this, but she understood that it was because he wholeheartedly cared for her.
Additionally, Linnea was someone who lent credence to the words of an expert on subjects she had difficulty with. It was one of her strong points.
“All right. I’ll do as you say. However, I’m somewhat behind with my work for today, thanks to how distracted I was this morning. Let me at least take care of that first.”
“Understood, Princess. Please allow me to assist you.”
Linnea nodded. “Thank you, I’m counting on you.”
And so, Linnea spent a good while completely absorbed in her own office work.
As the second-in-command of a large nation like the Steel Clan, the volume of work kept her as terribly busy as Yuuto, if not even more so.
She needed to give careful scrutiny to the proposals that made their way up the chain of command to her, and send for the persons responsible if she had any important questions, listening to their explanations and then giving concrete instructions.
If the clan administration was like a human body, with Yuuto as the brain, then one could say Linnea was the heart that kept it alive.
Yuuto’s novel ideas and inventions were the driving force behind the growth of the Steel Clan, and anyone would agree that he was the symbolic “pillar” holding the whole confederation together. But one could also argue that they only needed him there to function, without necessarily needing him to perform daily office work.
However, if Linnea failed to perform her duties, there was no question that various parts of the government would start jamming up, causing all sorts of problems and confusion for the people at the bottom.
“All right, next is...”
With yet another task completed, Linnea reached out to grab the next document from the stack in front of her, only to have it pulled out of her hand.
“What’s the matter, Haugspori?”
“I apologize for stopping you when you are so engrossed in your duties, but, it’s time.”
“Time...? Ah!” Linnea shouted, suddenly realizing she’d completely forgotten about the plan.
Whenever she really concentrated on her work, she became unable to think about anything else.
“Reginarch Yuuto has gone to visit the Vingólf Garden. It seems he often takes his lunches there as of late.”
“Ah, right, Vingólf. It is a fine place to relax.”
Linnea was, in fact, very familiar with the location in question.
Her biological father, Hrungnir, had at one point in time been the governor of the Gimlé area, and Linnea had heard stories about how he met and fell in love with the woman who would become her mother at the Vingólf Garden.
It was the place which fostered the love between Linnea’s parents, and so she had visited it herself many times.
At this time of year, the place would be filled with the color of the cosmos flowers and other flowers of autumn in full bloom.
The thought brought back fond memories, and Linnea reminisced a bit as she made her way there.
Upon entering, she soon spotted Yuuto inside the pavilion at the center of the garden.
“Fath...” She immediately began to call out to him but stopped herself. Felicia, sitting next to Yuuto, had turned toward her and put a finger silently to her lips.
Linnea did her best not to make a sound as she slowly walked over to them. Yuuto was sitting with his head resting on his arms on top of the pavilion table, his eyes closed.
“He’s sleeping, then?”
“Yes, only just now, in fact. He had so much on his mind yesterday, I can only presume he did not sleep much last night.”
“I see. That’s understandable.”
Linnea knew just how overwhelmingly powerful Yuuto’s sense of responsibility was.
Faced with this unprecedented crisis and his duty to protect the clan and the many, many people who lived under its rule, he must not have been able to stop himself from continuing to think about the problem even after lying down for the night.
“Still, he will hurt his poor neck sleeping in this position.”
Felicia moved from her seat across the table, to sit right next to Yuuto. Slowly, and gently, so as not to wake him up, she lifted his head from off of the table and brought it to rest in her lap.
“Tee-hee.” With a soft giggle, she tenderly stroked his hair, and gazed down at his sleeping face, her eyes filled with loving affection.
Linnea was no expert in the intimate affairs of men and women, but she understood what she was seeing.
At the very least, the act of stroking a person’s head was disrespectful when done to someone higher in status. In the past, Felicia would not have allowed herself to do something so forward.
“Umm... Aunt Felicia... Have you, um, and Father, that is...”
It was hard to bring herself to ask the question directly. Linnea stumbled, unable to find the right words.
“Ah.” Felicia seemed to discern what Linnea was asking, though. She nodded and said, “Yes. Thanks to the intervention of Big Sister Mitsuki, I have had the honor of consummating my love with Big Brother Yuuto. And, well, it is right after his wedding ceremony, so the timing is a bit improper, but he has promised to grant me the honor of officially becoming his concubine at the first appropriate opportunity.” Felicia’s cheeks were flushed. She sounded a bit bashful, but also very happy.
“I-I see,” Linnea replied awkwardly. “So, you and Father are now...”
She could tell that her own voice was quavering.
She’d intended to be prepared for this, but actually hearing it firsthand, being told that the man she loved was in that sort of relationship with another woman, made her heart ache with jealousy.
In her thoughts Linnea tried to encourage herself, to tell herself that if he’d accepted having a relationship with Felicia, then maybe there was a chance for her, too... but she felt that small hope being crushed as her gaze wandered over the other woman’s beautiful, soft, voluptuous body.
That full, enormous chest of hers in particular!
Yuuto’s wife Mitsuki was also well-endowed in her own right.
By contrast, if Linnea were to look down at her own assets, she could also clearly see her own feet. There wasn’t enough there to block her view, after all.
When Linnea compared herself to the other two women, she couldn’t help but feel a sense of inferiority, questioning if she wasn’t outright lacking any womanly charm whatsoever.
“You’re incredible. Father’s heart was so devoted to Big Sister Mitsuki alone, as well-guarded as the armored carriages of the Wagon Wall, and yet you still coaxed it to surrender to you. I wish I could be so lucky.”
“No, it was entirely because Big Sister Mitsuki intervened on my behalf. Alone, I would have never...”
“There’s no need to be modest. Even as a fellow woman, I recognize how charming and attractive you are. So much so that it makes me envious, in fact. Meanwhile, I will always be treated like his younger sister, and I can’t be sure he even sees me as a woman.” Linnea let out a forlorn sigh.
Her rival in love was hardly the proper audience for her complaints right now, but she couldn’t contain her feelings any longer.
“Th-That isn’t...”
“No need to console me out of pity. I know well enough that my face and body are practically that of a child’s.”
“Erm, but...”
Felicia was trying to respond, but paused and trailed off, seemingly unsure what to say.
“And as for my personality, I’m a thoroughly boring woman. When I came to Father’s office earlier today, that was actually because I was trying to get closer to him. Yet despite that, before I realized it, I was going on and on with him about strategy and politics, every trace of romantic thought tossed aside.”
“I should hardly think it could be helped, given the situation at that moment...” Once again, Felicia tried to get a word in to assuage Linnea’s concerns.
“No,” Linnea said, shaking her head. “It’s more than that. If I think back, it’s always been this way. Whenever I talk with Father, it’s always, always about politics and work. It should be no wonder he doesn’t see me as a woman.”
“...Lady Linnea, this may be a bit presumptuous of me, but I honestly believe that your personality is in fact one of the qualities that makes you attractive, and that it is something that you, and only you, possess.”
“I already told you, I don’t need you to...” As Linnea frowned and began to protest, Felicia gently shook her head and cut in.
“I am not saying this to console you. Big Brother Yuuto is always talking about how he can count on being able to speak with you about important matters in depth. His ideas are very complex, and there are many times when they are too advanced for me to understand. However, you are different. He has said to me that you are the only one who can understand things right away after just a short explanation, and not only that, come back with constructive opinions from a realistic perspective. He says that that sort of thing truly helps him.”
“Big Brother said all that about me?” Linnea asked. She was so surprised that for a moment she unconsciously reverted back to the way she used to address him when they were sworn siblings.
It was true that many of the strategies Yuuto concocted were far removed from common sense, or assumed foreknowledge of things that other people didn’t have, and so even Linnea often had trouble comprehending them.
Also—and the plan he’d shared with her earlier today was a prime example of this—often the only solid thing was the concept and its conclusion. That is, he knew exactly what needed to be done, but the concrete details of how to actually make that work were much more spotty or vague.
Of course, from Linnea’s perspective, that actually illustrated a strength of Yuuto’s, rather than a shortcoming.
As ruling lord, the most important action that a patriarch must take is determining a proper course of action and then firmly committing to it. If the person meant to stand out in front of everyone and lead them forward was too focused on practicality and details, there could be no development, no forward progress.
That being said, in order to take Yuuto’s directives and convert them into concrete, feasible plans, someone needed to look at them critically from a pragmatic perspective, and point out their problems and flaws.
Since the formation of the Steel Clan, it had chiefly been Linnea who had taken on that role.
“I’m always finding fault with the details of Father’s wonderful ideas, and I just assumed I was always making him unhappy with that...” Linnea said, coming clean with one of the niggling concerns that had always been tormenting her.
Felicia shook her head vigorously, denying Linnea’s concern outright. “When the both of you were discussing how to deal with the imperial subjugation order, it was as if you each understood what the other was saying, instantly moving on to the next point without need for a single moment’s hesitation. To my embarrassment, I must admit that I could not keep up at all.”
Thinking back now, it did seem to Linnea like she and Yuuto had taken it upon themselves to discuss the topic at a rapid pace, while Felicia had mostly not entered into the conversation at all.
Linnea had simply assumed that Felicia had held back on account of being a sibling subordinate, a rank which was normally considered to be a step removed from the central planning of a clan’s government. But that assumption had apparently been mistaken.
“Lady Linnea, the reason Big Brother was able to open up and share his secret with you is precisely because you are the kind of person you are.”
“Did you hear from him about what he told me?”
“No, I chose not to broach the subject with him. After all... it is something he cannot bring himself to talk to me about.” Felicia cast her eyes downward, looking a bit lonely. But that look quickly passed, and she smiled.
“However, after he spoke with you about it, there was less pain in his expression, as if a small amount of the darkness hanging over his heart had faded away.”
“I see. In that case, I’m glad I could help him a little.”
“It is much more than ‘a little’! Big Brother Yuuto had been so worn down by tension and stress as of late that I could scarcely stand to watch. I worried that, if it continued, he might be pushed to his breaking point.”
This was coming from Felicia, who spent every waking moment of each day serving at Yuuto’s side.
If she was this openly apprehensive about it, then Yuuto really had been in a dangerous state.
“I’m just so glad you could help him. Truly...” With an expression of heartfelt relief, Felicia once again began gently stroking Yuuto’s hair. Yuuto continued to sleep peacefully, blissfully unaware of the concern he was receiving from the woman looking down upon him.
“Ugh, nghh!” Suddenly, Yuuto cried out in his sleep.
“Wh-What happened?!” Linnea asked.
“Most likely, he is having a nightmare,” Felicia explained. “He has them often, lately.”
“I... I see.”
This seemed pretty serious. It would explain all the more why Mitsuki and Felicia had been so worried about him.
“I think there is likely still a lot that Big Brother has been suppressing inside himself.”
“Yes, probably so.”
Linnea had managed to get Yuuto to confide his secret to her, but it was something he’d been holding onto alone for half a year.
Extraordinary hero though he may be, he was also still only human.
There was surely half a year’s worth of frustration, bitterness, and anguish he’d built up as well.
“Ah, of course!” Felicia suddenly clapped her hands together, as if she’d suddenly hit upon an idea. “This is the perfect opportunity. As Big Brother says, one must ‘strike while the iron is hot.’ Let us use this chance and get him to release everything that he’s been holding in.”
“Everything? You make it sound easy, but what are we going to do?”
“Tee-hee, well...” Felicia smiled mischievously, and as she described her plan, Linnea’s eyes went wide.
It felt so forward, and so hasty, skipping right past several of the proper steps for these sorts of things from Linnea’s point of view, but now Felicia was completely determined to go forward with it. She looked Linnea straight in the eyes and then bowed deeply.
“I humbly ask that you take care of Big Brother Yuuto. Please, help to heal his heart.”
“Y-You’re really sure I can just go in?!” Linnea stood facing the open door, unable to hide her trepidation.
They were in what some might call the innermost “heart” of Gimlé, a sacred place to which entry by the unworthy was unforgivable. Even Yuuto’s direct subordinates, his most trusted inner circle, were not permitted to enter this sanctum uninvited.
Despite this, Felicia’s response was a relaxed nod.
“Oh, there is no problem.”
“B-But still...”
“Why would you have cause to hesitate now? You have already been with him in this way twice before, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but those times I was together with everyone else, and going by myself isn’t exactly the same.”
“If you’re a woman, then show some courage!” Felicia’s hands were at Linnea’s back, pushing her forcefully through the doorway and into the room beyond.
One last shove pushed Linnea off balance, and as she was busy recovering her footing, the door was shut behind her.
“H-Hey!”
“I wish you the very best of luck!”
“Ngh...!” Linnea’s face flushed. With her only escape cut off, she stood there for a moment at a total loss.
However, she couldn’t just stand around here forever.
This was the kind of chance she had always wished for, that much was true. If she couldn’t even take advantage of that, then she really did have no hope at all.
“All right!” Steeling her resolve, Linnea threw off all of the clothes she was wearing and walked naked towards the far end of the room.
On the far wall was another door, and she opened it to reveal clouds of thick white steam that filled the air beyond, making it hard to see anything.
For Linnea right now, that was actually a convenience. It meant he wouldn’t be able to see her either, which lessened the embarrassment just a little.
“Ahh, now this is what paradise feels like. I feel alive again.” Yuuto’s voice echoed from a bit further in.
This room was an enclosed bath that Yuuto had ordered specially built when he moved the capital of the Steel Clan to Gimlé. Yuuto was a huge fan of hot baths, and every night after finishing up his work, it was his routine to come here and relieve the day’s stress with a long soak.
“Oh, hey, Felicia. Come on in, the water’s fine,” Yuuto called out, evidently having sensed Linnea’s presence in the room.
However, it seemed he’d mistakenly assumed she was Felicia.
There was currently an unspoken arrangement that had recently formed between Yuuto and his lovers: The person who would share the bed with him that night would join him in the bath beforehand. In other words, tonight was Felicia’s turn.
“Father.”
“Whuh?” Yuuto whirled around when Linnea called to him, and then froze up.
“L-Linnea?! Wh-Why...?!”
Apparently, even the war god reborn, ruler of the battlefield, was flustered by this situation.
Linnea felt her whole body growing feverishly hot.
Despite being a woman, she’d worked her way up to be second-in-command of the Steel Clan. She was responsible for the administration of one of the most powerful nations in the realm.
That said, she was still a young lady... Revealing her unclothed body to the man she loved was embarrassing.
Still, she screwed up all of her courage and spoke to him.
“I... I asked to switch places with her. O-Oh, and of course I’ve already received permission from Big Sister Mitsuki.”
“Those two...” Yuuto pressed his fingers to his temples and groaned. It seemed he’d already gotten the basic gist of the situation.
“Please, do not blame either of them, Father,” Linnea pleaded. “They were only worried about you.”
“What?” Yuuto frowned suspiciously, seemingly unable to make sense of this part.
“They agreed that the best place for getting you to lay bare your heart would be in the bath. You must still have a lot of bitter frustration and pain that you have kept locked up within yourself for the past half-year. As I already know the secret you were keeping, you have no need to hide those from me either. Just being able to talk about it with someone should help you feel better.”
“...Is it just me, or are those two just a little too overprotective towards me?” Yuuto shook his head wearily and sighed.
Linnea might well be the best person for Yuuto to talk to right now, but his wife and concubine had still just sent an unmarried woman to be alone in the bath with him. Even Linnea internally agreed that it was clearly crossing a line. But even so...
“That shows just how much of a dangerous state you appeared to be in to them, Father.”
“Do I really come across as that undependable?”
“There is no one more capable and dependable than you in all of the Steel Clan, Father. But that does not mean you can simply take every burden onto yourself in order to protect everyone else. That will eventually wear you down and break you.”
The fates of tens of thousands of lives were always resting on Yuuto’s shoulders.
And there was no plan, no strategy, that could guarantee happiness for every single person.
Following through with any policy creates benefits for some and loss or harm for others; that was the way of the world.
If one allowed oneself to feel pained over every person’s misfortunes, it would be paralyzing, and one’s mind wouldn’t be able to hold up under the stress.
In one sense, those who ruled over others needed to be somewhat insensitive to the unhappiness of other people.
And in that sense, Yuuto was lacking. He was far too kind.
“I’m fine, though, okay? I’m still young.”
“I am not talking about your physical body. What Big Sister Mitsuki and Aunt Felicia are concerned with, and if I may be frank, what I am concerned with, is your heart!”
“...Hey, I’ll be okay.”
The second time, Yuuto’s response was just a little delayed.
He likely realized himself that he was at his limit.
And it’s no surprise he is, Linnea thought to herself.
After all, the burden of such a terrible secret was far too heavy for one man to bear alone.
“Father, you are too reckless when it comes to your own well-being! Our people are facing a crisis like nothing we’ve ever seen before, and if by some terrible chance the worst were to happen to you, the Steel Clan itself would be in danger of collapse! Don’t you understand?! Big Brother, your body isn’t just yours alone anymore!”
Linnea had lost control for a moment, shouting everything in one breath. She stood there, panting heavily.
Yuuto gave her a wry smile, one that looked a little forced.
“Well, just come on and get in the water for now. It might be warm in here, but if you stand around naked you’ll probably end up catching a cold.”
He gestured for her to join him in the bath.
“...All right.”
Even after all she’d said, he was still trying to pay more consideration to other people than to himself. It saddened her, but she obeyed. Otherwise he might not be willing to listen to her anymore, or so she thought.
Once Linnea was in the bath, Yuuto looked up towards the ceiling, gazing into nothing as he spoke. “I know this sounds like an excuse, but, the reason I kept from telling you all wasn’t because I don’t trust you. It was because I thought not knowing would be easier on you. You could live your days without that fear in your hearts.”
Under the surface of the water, Linnea felt herself clenching her fists.
It looked like maybe some of what she’d said had reached Yuuto’s heart.
“Ever since I found out, I can’t stop thinking about it every day. Like ‘When’s it all going to start? What if it starts tomorrow?’ I have these nightmares where I see everybody drowning at the bottom of the ocean, struggling, in pain. I keep having them, you see. Again, and again.”
“...I know that must feel horrible.” Linnea’s own face twisted in sympathetic pain.
Every living person dies. The gods had placed this fundamental law upon the world, and no one could defy it.
However, the only reason a person could live his or her life without feeling suffering from constant dread about that fate was because, until that moment, death existed at “some unknown time in the future.”
And in this situation, it wasn’t just about Yuuto’s own death. Everyone in the world around him was headed for the same, certain death.
That fear had been assaulting him every single day without pause.
From this point forward, Linnea would have to go up against that fear as well, but she had her belief in Yuuto. It was a deep-seated conviction that Yuuto would do something to save them all.
But Yuuto himself didn’t have anything like that.
Just imagining what it must be like for him sent a terrible chill down Linnea’s spine. She was amazed that he’d even managed to endure it for a whole half-year by himself.
“Mitsuki’s pregnant now, and I’m sure as hell not gonna tell her and risk the shock causing her to miscarry. And Felicia’s strong, sure, but she’s actually pretty mentally fragile in ways too... Well, anyway, I was planning to finally tell everybody about it once I had the solution planned out and ready to go. I just thought, I’m the only one who needs to feel like this until then, you know?”
“You truly are a kind person,” Linnea said, but Yuuto reacted to those words with a weak, self-deprecating smile.
“Heh heh, well, that’s what I’d told myself, but it turns out it was harder than I thought, and much scarier than I thought. It hurt more than I thought it would. I just wanted to give in and tell someone, and I almost did give in, so many times. I bet that shatters your image of me, huh? The great man you called the most dependable and reliable in all of the Steel Clan, and he’s actually just pathetic and weak.”
“Th-That isn’t true at all!” Linnea shouted the denial at Yuuto at the top of her lungs.
Her heroic image of him hadn’t been damaged. There was no way that it would be.
After all, Yuuto had been given the choice to stay in his former homeland and live there alongside Mitsuki in peace.
He had thrown aside that option. In order to save the Steel Clan, nay, in order to save his family here, he had chosen instead to return to this land without regard for the danger to himself.
Acts of bravery ignorant of fear were nothing more than the recklessness of fools. Linnea’s father had taught her that.
He’d taught her that a true hero was someone who knew fear and still showed courage despite it, enduring the fear and pressing forward.
“H-Huh?! Wh-What is this?!”
Suddenly, Yuuto began shivering, his teeth chattering loudly, as if he’d somehow been snatched from the hot baths and tossed onto a snowy mountainside.
After finally opening up to Linnea, something in him had snapped, and now all of his suppressed feelings were pouring out.
“D-Damn it, I c-can’t stop shaking. I’ve got to protect everyone, I’m the goddamn reginarch, I have to pull myself together! Stop already! Stop!”
“...!” Linnea couldn’t bear it any longer. Before she was even aware of it, she had run to Yuuto and embraced him.
“It’s okay! It’s just you and me here right now, no one else. You don’t have to force yourself to hold it together, you can let go!”
“Uugh...!”
Yuuto let out a wordless cry, like a whimper, and returned her embrace.
As he shook, every shudder communicated the depth of his fear directly through his body and into hers.
Linnea knew that this wasn’t an act of love, but even if he was only holding her now because he was afraid, it still made her happy.
He was relying on her.
She was able to help him.
Yuuto had always been a great hero in Linnea’s eyes.
The young man shaking in her arms right now was far from heroic, perhaps, but if anything, the love she felt for him was stronger than it had ever been before.
All she wanted was to make him feel safe. That one desire filled her heart, and she clung to him tightly, her hands clutching against the back of his shoulders.
She wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, but eventually, Yuuto’s body stopped shaking.
Instead, she felt something else, something hard pressing against her near her belly.
Th-That’s...
Linnea quickly realized what it was, and she could feel the heat of her face flushing bright red.
Her body was already pretty heated up from the bath, so the combined effect made her feel dizzy.
“Uhh, I’m, uh, I’m fine now. You can let go of me,” Yuuto said, sounding pretty awkward.
“N-No, it’s... all right. I don’t mind.” Linnea felt like her face was going to catch on fire, but she somehow managed to get the words out.
“No, as a guy, if I stay like this with you, I can’t exactly control, what, um...”
“I’m saying that I don’t mind.” Linnea was stronger this time.
“No, listen, I can’t...”
“Big Sister Mitsuki has given me her permission to be with you. So if you are willing to love me, even a little, then please...!” Her voice trembled, but she put everything she had left into this declaration of hers.
If she were rejected now, she knew it would devastate her, and she might not recover for quite some time.
However, she couldn’t let this moment pass without telling him, and making her feelings clear.
There was a short silence between them, then Yuuto gently put his arms around her shoulders, and pushed her off of him.
It seemed like that was his answer.
“Y-You... don’t see me as anything more than a younger sister, do you? You don’t see me as a woman you could ever want to make love to, do you?” Linnea could feel heat behind her eyes, and tears began to fall down her face.
She couldn’t help asking, even though she knew these questions were unfair to Yuuto.
“...Of course I do,” Yuuto said, almost angrily, and he looked deep into Linnea’s eyes. “But I won’t be able to give my love to you alone. I won’t be able to marry you. You’re still all right with that?”
“...Eh?”
Linnea blinked several times in confusion. She had fully been expecting this to be a rejection.
It took a moment for her to process Yuuto’s words, but as soon as their meaning dawned on her, she shouted, “Yes! Yes, it’s all right, it’s totally okay!”
She nodded her head vigorously, over and over. Yuuto had just agreed to accept her love, and the last thing she wanted was for her short delay to make him think she had hesitated over agreeing to his conditions.
“You do know you’re technically nobility, right, ‘Princess’? The patriarch of the Horn Clan, and daughter by birth of the previous one? Are you seriously okay with settling for this?”
“I don’t mind at all. If I can have your love, then I don’t care what form it takes! But what about you, Father? Are you all right with this?”
“Yeah, I am. There’s no point in holding back anymore, really. If you eat a bite of poisoned food, you might as well lick the plate clean, as they say.”
“Wh-What does that mean?! I hope you’re not calling me poison!” Linnea protested.
Yuuto flashed her an impish grin. “Heh heh, sorry, sorry. You’re right, there’s no way a girl as cute as you could ever be poisonous.”
He leaned in and brought his face close to Linnea’s, and she closed her eyes.
She knew that whatever dark things might be waiting in their future, the pure happiness she felt right now was something she would never forget.
“How is it, Linnea? Do you like it?” Yuuto asked.
“Yes. It... it feels wonderful,” Linnea replied in a breathy tone, and let out a sigh.
She could feel Yuuto’s own slightly rough breaths against her ear.
“Does it hurt?”
“N-No, I’m all right. It doesn’t hurt at all.”
“Are you tense? You can let yourself relax a little more.”
“R-Right.” Linnea nodded, but inwardly she knew that would be impossible.
She would have never thought Yuuto would do this sort of thing to her...!
“Okay, I’m going to put it on you.”
“G-Go ahead!”
All at once, hot liquid poured onto her back.
“Th-Thank you. I’m so honored to have you wash my back like this, Father.”
“Well, you washed mine just a few minutes ago. It’s only natural for me to return the favor.”
“You say it’s natural, but I’ve never heard of a custom like that.”
As far as the common knowledge of Yggdrasil was concerned, washing a person’s back was something only done for someone of a higher status than yourself, never the other way around. That was the custom Linnea knew.
“In the world I came from, this is what’s normal. All right then, how about we go relax in the bath one more time? You’re pretty worn out, right?”
“Ah, n-no, I’m all right.”
“Mmǔ What’s wrong, you dizzy from being in the heat too long?”
“No, it’s, um. I didn’t think it would be right for me to dirty the bathwater with blood...”
“Oh... I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.” Yuuto clapped his hands together and bowed his head in apology.
“No, I’m sorry for making you feel awkward...” Linnea trailed off, and her gaze traveled down to a certain part of Yuuto’s lower body.
It wasn’t worn out at all.
“Um, does that mean you want to do it some more?”
“Oh! No, this is just, it happened on its own while I was washing your back... I’m sorry I don’t have enough self-control.”
“U-Um, if it’s my fault you got like this, then it’s my responsibility to take care of it, right?”
“H-Hey, now, you’re still hurting from last time, right? You don’t have to...”
“I’m all right. If you’re willing, I can do it as many times as you want...”
“Um. Okay, then...”
“I am very sorry to intrude upon your bath!” Just as the air between the two new lovers was turning sweet again, they were interrupted by a sudden shout filled with urgency.
“Wh-What is it, Felicia?!” Yuuto shouted.
“It is an urgent message from one of our undercover spies embedded in the Lightning Clan,” Felicia replied breathlessly.
“The Lightning Clan? Is their army making a move?” Yuuto inquired, his face already that of a stern and commanding patriarch again.
Felicia had been the one to arrange this rendezvous between him and Linnea in the first place. If she was willing to interrupt it with a message, then it was one of serious importance.
Linnea swallowed nervously as well, apprehensive as to what this could possibly be.
Currently, the Lightning Clan was in the middle of a war with the powerful Flame Clan to their south. Perhaps the Flame Clan army had been defeated, and the Lightning Clan army was using that momentum to march back north and invade the Steel Clan. It seemed implausible if one were going by common military sense, but with that clan’s battle-crazy warriors, and in particular the man who led them, it was fully possible.
However, Felicia’s next words described something that was even more completely impossible than what Linnea had imagined.
“Steinþórr, patriarch of the Lightning Clan, has fallen in battle.”
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