1. Is This Amazon?
The Country Girl is Loved by Everyone — Episode 121 has been uploaded.
"There it is."
The Country Girl is Loved by Everyone.
It was the web novel I'd been faithfully checking for the latest chapter every single day these days.
Honestly speaking, it wasn't the kind of story I'd ever recommend to anyone. A run-of-the-mill reverse-harem, female-oriented romance fantasy. If you asked me whether the plot was fresh or entertaining? Absolutely not.
There was the Crown Prince of the Empire, the heir of the Mage Tower, even the disciple of the Sword Saint. Male leads occupying one throne apiece, all of them meeting a heroine who'd come up from the countryside to the capital, being healed of their respective wounds and traumas by her pure-heartedness, and falling head over heels for her. No gloom and doom, no apocalyptic stakes — a textbook healing story through and through.
So was the heroine exceptionally charming, then? Not that either. She had a decent talent for crafting magic tools, sure, and she never did anything catastrophically blood-pressure-raising to infuriate the readers. But that didn't mean she was charming enough to obsess over.
So why on earth had I been shoveling down this gloriously bland pabulum of a novel for so long, you ask? The reason was simple. It was because the settings and looks of the side female characters — not even minor leads, but background women who flitted past like set dressing — happened to be exactly my type. If it weren't for these pointlessly high-quality illustrations, I'd have dropped the series ages ago.
But by the nature of the romance-fantasy genre, the girls in my wheelhouse got used up as helpers or one-off devices to push the heroine and her men together, one by one fading into the air until they were forgotten. And if I had to pick a single favorite out of all of them, there was no contest. It was her.
The daughter of the northern ducal house. Ceris Argent.
Because the northern lands were so much barer than everywhere else, her family was chronically strapped for cash — hardly befitting the lofty title of duke. And yet she was the youngest daughter of that house, which for generations had held back the incursions of the barbarians and demonic beasts of the northern Demonic Lands on nothing but the weight of hereditary duty.
She'd held a surprisingly long run for a side character, appearing again and again — and apparently, that run ended today.
"……So she's really gone, huh."
I muttered it flatly as I scrolled down.
The reason was absurdly simple. When the heroine opened up about her childhood trauma — being attacked by savages in a backwater northern village, losing her home and her parents — the Crown Prince wiped away her tears and issued a reckless order to the northern ducal house: a full-scale subjugation of the barbarians.
But pushing through the demonic beasts of the Demonic Lands and exterminating that many savages single-handedly was beyond what the ducal house could manage. Naturally, they requested troops and supplies from the imperial family. The reply that came back was pure mockery: "What does it need support for, to subdue a few uncivilized savages?"
When the duke dug in his heels and declared he couldn't march without aid, they painted him as a traitor, insinuating he meant to join hands with the barbarians and raise the banner of revolt against the throne. And so, in the chapter uploaded today, the young lady soothed her furious father and set out for the Demonic Lands herself, vowing to carry out the imperial decree.
And there, in the forests of the Demonic Lands, she threw her life away for nothing.
The other girls had faded into the background, sure, but at least they were still alive. My favorite had died and been written off the board entirely.
If the world inside that novel had been real, the young lady wouldn't even have gotten to die in peace. She'd have been dragged off by those brutish savages, subjected to every unspeakable cruelty they could invent, and only then put out of her misery.
"Well. No reason to keep reading this anymore."
With nothing left to hold onto, I turned off my phone screen and, without a shred of regret, closed my eyes and let sleep take me.
"An unfamiliar ceiling."
And I wasn't just saying that — it really was unfamiliar. Not the ceiling of the cramped studio I'd stared at for the past two years, but a strange one: a radial lattice of wooden beams spreading out from the center, covered over by hides of a dull yellow.
Was this a dream? The very moment I tried to work out whether I was dreaming or awake, a dark shadow loomed over my field of vision.
"What the — an orc?"
Yeah, this had to be a dream. Because an orc's face — the kind you only ever saw in fantasy novels — was shoved right up against mine.
So is this dream's theme getting kidnapped by an orc, or what?
The moment the surly brute saw me blink, he bugged out his eyes and let out a bellow.
"OOOOOOH!!! HEY!!"
With that deafening roar, the man turned and bellowed for someone outside.
Just as I tried to prop myself up to figure out what the hell was going on —
"AAAAAAGH! SON OF A—!"
A searing pain as if my whole body were being crushed shot up my spine and sprinted straight into my brain. It felt like every muscle and bone in my body — every single organ — was being wrung out like a rag.
What — so it's not a dream?
The pain was far too vivid to be a dream. Gritting my teeth, I forced myself to bear it and managed, barely, to lift my head.
"God, that sucks…"
Right after the orc's mug, the next thing I saw was the man's bare skin — because he was wearing essentially nothing. A ragged fur pelt, barely covering the essentials and his backside, and that was it.
With my aching head craned up, I looked around and found the shabby interior of a tent propped up on wooden frames. The man roughly threw open the tent flap and screamed at the top of his lungs.
"THE GREAT WARRIOR OF OUR SILVER MANE WOLF TRIBE HAS AWAKENED!!!"
The moment his cry ended, people came pouring into the cramped tent.
And the second I saw what they looked like, I knew for certain.
Oh… I've been transmigrated into another world.
Of course I thought that — every single one of these people, men and women alike, was dressed like the natives you'd only ever see in a nature documentary. Actually, no, they were at least a step above those folks, layering on a bit of leather here and there for modesty.
The scene in front of me was surreal, but the pain wracking my body was achingly, painfully real. There was only one way both of these absurdities could be true at the same time.
I had possessed someone else's body in another world.
The next thought that followed was: but why me? I had never, unlike some people, dumped a fourteen-thousand-character wall of feedback into a comments section. I had never muttered to myself, "Ugh, why is this character acting so stupid, this is suffocating," while trashing fictional people. And I hadn't been gloriously flattened by a truck from another world with its high beams blazing, either. I'd finished my convenience store shift like any other night, lain down on the bed in my cramped studio, closed my eyes, opened them — and here I was, possessed.
While I was cursing up a storm inside at this unbelievable reality, the crowd that had swarmed in encircled the bed and started shouting at the top of their lungs.
"OOOOOH, it's true!"
"The great warrior really has awakened!"
"He's been chosen by the land of plenty!"
Ugh, could you people possibly be any louder…
If you're going to transmigrate somebody, how about into a noble family overflowing with doting maids, or a cute childhood friend turned fiancée, maybe? But just then, as I was frowning against the eardrum-shattering noise, the tent flap was thrown open yet again.
The man who stepped inside was a hulking mass of muscle, like he'd mainlined a bowl of steroids, draped in an enormous coat of fur with the fangs of beasts hanging in a rattling cluster around his neck.
Hold on — is that actually a coat, or is it literally just a beast's hide?
As the giant of a man strode toward me with two others in tow, the crowd that had been making the tent shake fell abruptly, utterly silent.
The man gazed down at me, lying there on the bed. And then —
Shiiiink.
He split into a grin so wide it bared every one of his yellowed teeth.
It was clearly meant to be a smile of good cheer, but on a face that savage, it was terrifying enough to send a chill crawling up my spine.
"Prepare the festival."
The instant that one heavy pronouncement fell, the people who'd been holding their breath erupted into a fresh round of crazed cheering.
"OOOOOOH! ULGA! ULGA! ULGA! ULGA!"
Oh… I have absolutely no idea what's going on, but could somebody please make it stop? I'm a patient here…
I don't know how much time had passed. Then the orc-faced man from before ducked back into the tent, hoisted me up out of bed in one motion, and slung me over his back.
"I hate this so much…"
Being carried piggyback by a middle-aged slab of naked, sun-darkened muscle. Thank God I was wrapped head to toe in bandages, at least. If I hadn't been, we'd have been bare skin pressed straight against bare skin, and just imagining it was enough to make my stomach lurch and my gag reflex kick in.
"Hmm? What was that, o great warrior?"
One more thing had become certain: the people of this place were clearly born with their default volume cranked to maximum. He was right beside my ear — why did he feel the need to scream?
"…Nothing."
"Right! Let's get moving! Everyone's out there waiting their necks off for you!"
Carried out of the tent on the man's back, I found a bonfire the size of a small building roaring under a night sky thick with stars. Around the flames, a huge circle of people was tearing into roasted meat, downing drink, and raucously enjoying the festival — and the moment they spotted me being carried out, they let out another blood-boiling roar.
"The great warrior!"
"RAZKAL!"
"RAZKAL!"
"RAZKAL!"
Just then, the hulking brute in the fur pelt from before — the one with the ferocious face — raised one thick arm into the air. At that single gesture, the din that had been shaking heaven and earth stopped dead, as if sliced clean with a blade.
So that big man really was the chieftain here. The one in charge.
"Carry the great warrior of the Silver Mane Wolf Tribe — my 'Third Fang,' Ulga's own — to the altar."
At the chieftain's command, the man carrying me strode forward in long, deliberate steps and gently laid me face-down on a stone altar set directly in front of the bonfire.
"Hold on! …What is this?!"
What — am I being offered up as some kind of sacrifice?!
I panicked and tried to push myself up, but the pain kept my body from moving the way I willed it.
As I flailed desperately on the altar, an old figure came shambling toward me, hung from head to toe with the bones and feathers of every kind of animal. The face was so withered and puckered I honestly couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman.
One look at the outfit told me everything I needed to know. The shaman that pops up in exactly one per primitive tribe.
No, seriously — am I actually being used as a sacrificial offering here?!
"Heh heh heh. Lie still, child."
The shaman drew a glinting, coldly gleaming dagger from within their robes. The shining tip of the blade descended slowly and came to rest against my back.
"Wait! I don't want to die!!"
But my scream was swallowed without a trace beneath the crowd's chanting of that name — Razkal, Razkal — as if it had never existed at all.
I wanted to thrash and struggle, but the crushing pain wracking my whole body left me unable to move so much as a finger. The shaman offered no answer, only an unreadable smile.
"Heh heh heh…"
And then the blade against my back began to move — slowly, smoothly — downward.