The Pharaoh's inspection didn't take much ti; he quickly left again due to so urgent matter.
This allowed Shari to breathe a sigh of relief, and he too returned ho.
"Ho" was also his workplace.
Shari was in charge of the brickyard supplying bricks for the new city.
He was both the head of the work team and the supervisor of the brickyard.
The workers dug silt from the Nile to make bricks, and occasionally he would send them to collect papyrus reeds.
The mysterious foreigner living in his ho had been discovered during one such papyrus-collecting mission—but that mory wasn't a pleasant one.
Upon entering the brickyard, the workers all bowed respectfully to him.
When Shari saw the door to his room, he stopped in his tracks, looking hesitant and sowhat fearful.
After a mont's thought, he called over a nearby worker and asked, "What has that man been doing today?"
"He's been watching us make bricks all day," the worker replied.
"Watching you make bricks? What's so interesting about that?" Shari was puzzled.
That man was very strange—undoubtedly an incredibly powerful sorcerer.
But ever since Shari had told him the na of the current Pharaoh and that a new city was being built here for the Pharaoh, he'd shown an unusually intense interest in everything around him.
And the way he looked at Shari always made Shari feel as if he were being both pitied and mocked, which constantly made his stomach twist in unease—for reasons he couldn't explain.
But whenever he rembered the suffering he'd endured at this person's hands, Shari didn't dare have any opinions.
"Is he back?" he asked the worker again.
"He is. He's inside, resting."
"Alright, get back to your work."
Waving the worker away, Shari swallowed hard and quickly walked to the door, pushing it open.
Shari wasn't a wealthy man. Perhaps he had been once, but certainly not anymore.
His room was very simple, no different from that of an ordinary laborer.
Inside was a low, long bench made of fired clay, covered with a mat woven from rushes. It served as both his bed and his "sofa."
There was also a triangular stool and a crude table.
Aside from that, there was no furniture. In the corners of the room, jars and pots were piled up chaotically.
A young boy was sitting cross-legged on Shari's beloved low bench, one hand propping up his chin, the other resting on his leg in a contemplative pose.
The strange clothing he wore was just as odd as when Shari had first t him.
Oddly enough, even though he wandered around the construction site all day, he never seed to get even a speck of dust on him.
Although Shari knew this man was a magician, he had never seen such magic before.
Back when he had served in the royal palace as Ramses' tutor, he had often seen court magicians—but never one like this.
Seeing Shari push the door open, the youth imdiately raised an eyebrow.
"Why are you just standing there? Co over here!"
He shouted.
Shari wasn't known for having a good temper, but now he obediently shut the door and forced a fawning smile onto his face as he approached.
"It was noisy earlier—who ca by?"
"It was the Pharaoh," Shari replied, staring longingly at the "sofa" that once had been his but now was taken over.
"Ramses?" The boy's eyes lit up, and he leapt up from the bench so quickly that Shari's eyes blurred.
The youth was suddenly right in front of him.
"What a pity—I should have gone to take a look. Oh right, is he bald like you guys or different?"
The youth blurted out a string of words, confusing Shari completely.
There were a lot of things in that sentence he didn't understand.
"You don't get it? Forget it," the boy waved dismissively and stroked his chin. "Still, I really didn't expect this—so this is Pi-Rasses. Should've brought Mahamut and the others along to see. In three thousand years, there'll be no daylight here."
This "three thousand years later" youth was, in fact, from that future.
Born in the East, he was the King of Magicians.
During a mysterious battle with Horus, he had sohow crossed ti and space and landed in ancient Egypt three thousand years in the past—and had been separated from his companions.
His na was Hikigaya Hachiman.
After waking up in the Nile, the first person he saw was the man before him now—Shari, who had been about to whip him.
That absurd situation obviously didn't go as Shari had planned. Hikigaya had given him a thorough beating and, through the man's cries of pain, learned the ancient Egyptian language.
Everything after that unfolded naturally. Hikigaya decided to settle here for the ti being, especially after discovering he had arrived in the legendary era of Ramses the Great, who had only recently ascended the throne and had begun constructing the famous city later known in various forms as Pi-Rasses or Per-Rasses, aning "House of Ramses" in ancient Egyptian.
Most people, however, simply called it Ramses City.
The stories of this great Pharaoh were so abundant they could serve as an introductory textbook to Egyptian history.
He had practically been deified as the most outstanding man to ever live, and the Egyptian kingdom under his rule was considered an unstoppable force.
He himself was famously known by the nickna "Ramses II", or "Rasses the Second."
But removing the exaggerations and sycophantic praise, when viewed through the lens of true history, the Egyptian kingdom under Ramses II was far from glorious.
According to what Hikigaya knew, Egypt's 18th Dynasty had indeed been at its peak, but after the Amarna Period, it rapidly declined.
By the 19th Dynasty—where Ramses' family ca to power—although the early Pharaohs had tried to restore its forr glory, the downward trend was irreversible.
The achievents for which Ramses II was endlessly praised were rely the final struggles of a kingdom already heading toward its demise.
"You said the Pharaoh left in a hurry?" Hikigaya recalled what Shari had said earlier and asked, "Do you know why? You used to be his tutor, right?"
"Well… I'm not exactly favored by the Pharaoh anymore," Shari said awkwardly.
"I didn't ask that. Do you know what happened or not?"
"Yes, I think… I think the Queen fell ill."
At this, Hikigaya didn't ask any more.
That alone explained why Ramses II had rushed back.
In this era, the state of dicine was only marginally better than primitive survival—getting sick was like rolling dice with death.
And Hikigaya was already growing bored of the construction site. Watching workers all day was monotonous.
As for this guy, Shari—Hikigaya decided to let him be.
As for himself, Hikigaya Hachiman felt it was about ti to go see for himself what this Ramses II really looked like.
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