Upon waking in the morning, Alaric refused the maidservants' morning wake-up bite service.
This made the maidservants quite heartbroken.
They all wished to take things a step further with such a handsome, strong, and elegant young man.
Compared to those princes and nobles who were either decrepit with age or bloated with excess, Alaric was far more handsome and robust.
Yet compared to the palace guards, crude and foolish, Alaric was also far more refined and intelligent. A man like this was exactly their ideal.
These lustful women staring at Alaric's chest, waist, and hips while drooling was hardly a rare occurrence.
Although ancient Egyptian women were not as chaotic as those of ancient Greece or Rome, their level of openness was by no means low.
Ancient Egyptians regarded "adultery" as sinful, but did not place much importance on female chastity.
This meant that, compared to certain so-called beacon nations of modern times, praised by public intellectuals for their motto of "play around freely before marriage, stay chaste after", ancient Egypt was actually the civilization that truly practiced such ideas.
As a result, when it came to sex, Egyptian women were quite uninhibited. After the pharaoh's power declined, this atmosphere naturally spread to the palace maidservants.
Unfortunately for them, Alaric had already made up his mind from the very beginning.
In this land, the only flower he intended to pluck was the most beautiful one atop the highest peak.
Aside from the most beautiful brown-skinned beauty, Nitocris, he was interested in no one else.
At least, not for now.
After washing up and having breakfast, Alaric once again went to meet Nitocris.
That morning, Nitocris was scheduled to routinely receive Egypt's viziers and ministers.
Although she was still more or less a puppet queen at present, with no real control over political power, such meetings were an Egyptian tradition, and the formalities still had to be observed.
And during the audience with the ministers, whether to show off her authority or to signal intimacy, Nitocris naturally kept Alaric by her side.
"That one is the current vizier. He was originally a descendant of XXX; his relatives…"
"This is Egypt's general-in-chief. Both Upper and Lower Egypt's armies are under his command…"
"This is the Chief Justice. He…"
"Hey! I'm seriously introducing my enemies to you here. Are you even listening properly?!"
Before the meeting began, Nitocris, seated upon the throne, introduced Egypt's ministers to Alaric one by one, her great enemies, the people she regarded as her opponents.
However, to Alaric, these people were nothing more than ordinary mortals, utterly unworthy of being his adversaries.
As such, he wasn't particularly interested in their information.
This attitude naturally earned him a bout of coquettish displeasure from Nitocris.
In truth, although Nitocris herself was not a mage, she was still a very powerful runic caster. As a divine spellcaster, her level was quite high, she could be considered a formidable figure in her own right.
The fact that Alaric didn't even spare a glance at these mortal ministers, while Nitocris regarded them as great enemies, indirectly illustrated the limitations of divine spellcasters compared to mages.
Learning and controlling magic was extremely difficult, and required very high talent.
However, a mage's power belonged entirely to themselves and could be used freely, without fear of being abandoned by magic.
Divine spellcasters were different.
As long as they were sufficiently devout, almost anyone could perform decently; compared to mages, the talent required was not especially high.
But their limitations were severe, and all because of the gods.
Divine spellcasters, such as priests, clerics, and runic casters, derived their power from gods. As such, their use of divine arts had to follow divine will; they could not act however they pleased.
This was precisely why, despite being strong, Nitocris had no way of dealing with the ministers.
…
At the same time Alaric and Nitocris were conversing, the Egyptian ministers, watching the two standing so close together and whispering intimately, began murmuring among themselves.
They exchanged words, trying to obtain information about this exotic young man who had suddenly appeared and gained the pharaoh's favor.
Alaric clearly had a very close relationship with Nitocris, even engaging in small gestures that only intimate companions would share. This made the ministers uneasy, and jealous.
Since ascending the throne, Nitocris had shown no particular favor toward any man.
Perhaps because she had once been the queen of the previous pharaoh, and to preserve the dignity of the late Pharaoh Merenre II, Nitocris had been especially restrained in matters of men and women.
There was no evidence that this female pharaoh had, or had ever had, any lover.
Yet this very behavior only made the Egyptian ministers, who viewed her as a puppet, covet her even more.
After all, even though they had jointly hollowed out the pharaoh's authority and seized true power over Egypt, who wouldn't want to go one step further?
The pharaoh's loss of power was merely a lingering consequence of Pharaoh Pepi's weakness. Traditionally, Egypt was a land where the pharaoh wielded supreme authority.
Thus, in the ministers' eyes, the current Nitocris was nothing more than a stepping stone to greater heights.
Especially those ministers who hoped that they themselves, or their sons and younger relatives, might win Nitocris's favor, become princes consort, or even seize the throne.
Moreover, Nitocris's peerless beauty, unmatched throughout Egypt, was another reason for their covetousness.
A visage inherited from the gods was naturally beyond comparison with mere mortals.
"Who is that guy? Why has he gained Her Majesty's favor?"
One minister impatiently sought out a maidservant and questioned her.
Back in the days when the pharaoh was "heaven" itself, such collusion between external officials and internal servants would have been a capital crime.
But now that the pharaoh's power had waned, faced with such blatant betrayal, Nitocris couldn't even properly punish that maidservant, at most, she could expel her from the palace.
The maidservants obediently approached the minister and answered his question with remarkable speed.
"He claims to be a traveler from a foreign land, and also an excellent musician. Just yesterday, he was teaching Her Majesty an exotic instrument."
Perhaps because Alaric had flatly refused to take things further with them, the maidservant felt no guilt whatsoever about selling him out.
Thus, the ministers suddenly understood, and naturally equated Alaric with those flashy, all-show bards.
After all, people who relied on looks and a bit of talent to gain the favor of nobles and highborn ladies had existed everywhere, throughout all ages.
Toward things they neither understood nor liked, most people instinctively assumed them to be fake.
Once they had labeled Alaric as a mere bard, matters became much simpler.
Find an opportunity to expose him, then kill him, or at the very least, drive him out of the country.
For these self-important Egyptian ministers, that seemed far from difficult.
At least, that's what they believed.
And among them, some had already begun to harbor even greater ambitions.