I Picked Up My Favorite Character
"Hmm... I suppose it's about time I headed back."
Roughly a year had passed since I fell off that cliff.
And all that time spent rolling around in the forest like a beast, suffering through every hardship imaginable, had certainly paid off.
The moment I flexed my arm lightly, the surface of my skin hardened like steel.
Having bludgeoned demonic beasts to death the barbarian way, I was gradually coming to understand why these people were a fundamentally different breed from knights and mages.
In the novel, knights and mages had to sit still and steady their breathing to accumulate mana within their bodies.
But these barbarians never needed any such complicated process to begin with.
Their bodies absorbed faint traces of mana deep into their skin, their joints, and the fibers of their muscles with every idle breath.
Of course, that alone wasn't enough to make anyone truly strong.
But whenever they hunted and fought, dragging in ragged, violent breaths, this body swallowed up more mana in a single inhalation than it would in an hour of stillness.
In other words, barbarians were a race that grew stronger the more they fought, bled, and broke on the battlefield.
"I should collect my reward for the second trial, too."
The moment I focused my consciousness, a tattoo covering my arm surfaced above my skin, glowing faintly.
The Engraving of Urma.
When I first entered the forest, I hadn't even known how to use it, but a year later, I could summon its power effortlessly at any moment.
Its effects, as far as I'd figured out, were simple.
An ability to firmly compress the mana within my body.
On paper it looked unremarkable, but used well in actual combat, it multiplied my fighting efficiency several times over.
Resting atop a tall tree, I decided to return to the tribe and rose to my feet.
"Now, which way was it again..."
The instant I was slowly scanning my surroundings in search of the cliff I'd fallen from a year ago, I heard voices coming from below.
Holding my breath, I quietly peered down through the leaves.
"Picked up an Imperial female, huh. Been a while."
"Heh heh, tell me about it. We got damn lucky."
Seven barbarians, snickering and chatting among themselves, were passing beneath my tree.
Hunters out on a raid? I'll wait until they've passed before moving.
Wanting to avoid an unnecessary confrontation, I quietly resolved to let them go by.
Hm?
But the moment my eyes landed on the shoulder of the man trailing at the very back, I had to tear my plan apart.
Civilized clothing of fine quality, nothing like the barbarians' garb.
A silver-haired child who looked about my age was slumped over, lugged along like a sack of cargo.
Silver hair...?
Could it be—that girl?
Silver hair wasn't the exclusive property of the Argent family, but it was far from a common color.
And a silver-haired girl my age, found here at the northern border of all places? The odds that she was the Argent family's princess were overwhelming.
I have to make sure.
If, by some remote chance, that really was Ceris, I couldn't just let the barbarians haul her away.
Stealthily reaching behind my back, I closed my hand around the haft of my axe.
I awakened the Engraving of Urma, compressed mana into my right arm, and quietly kicked off the branch.
Dropping with my full weight behind the blow, I drove the axe straight down onto the crown of the man carrying the child.
Crunch!
The barbarian's skull split open like a watermelon beneath the biting edge, and crimson gore sprayed in every direction.
Caught completely off guard by the ambush, the barbarian died on the spot without so much as a scream.
The sound of the explosion behind them made the barbarians whirl around all at once, and their eyes went wide at the sight of me, appearing out of nowhere.
"What the hell is this brat?!"
Before they could react, I wrenched the axe free and caught the child with my other arm.
Then I retreated a step and hurled the axe with all my strength at the one who'd been carrying her.
Thud!
"Guhk—!"
Unable to block the flying axe, the barbarian took the blade deep in the center of his chest.
Staggering at the sight of me cutting down two of their comrades in the blink of an eye, the men quickly recovered and exploded with rage.
"You son of a bitch!!"
The moment my feet touched the ground, I carefully laid the child down beside me.
Seizing the opening, I closed the distance in an instant as one of them came swinging his axe down at me, clamping my hand around the back of his neck.
Crack!
I poured strength into my grip and tore his throat right out.
Four left!
Having killed three in a heartbeat, I shoved the collapsing corpse straight into the path of the men charging in behind it, cutting off their line of advance.
I sprinted straight at them, snatching the axe still buried in the corpse.
Then I leapt off the man fumbling to catch the body and split open the skull of the one at the very rear.
Thump...
The body of the man with the shattered head crumpled limply to the ground.
Standing amid the corpses, I calmly pulled the axe from my crown and lifted it free.
Gulp.
I wiped the blood from my face with a slow sweep of my forearm and stared at them in silence. The moment my ink-black eyes met theirs, dry clicks echoed in their throats.
Only then did a deep, spreading terror begin to bloom in their eyes.
Dealing with the remaining three was nothing.
Terror-stricken and robbed of all will to fight, they were nothing more than prey.
Once I'd finished off the last three, I carried the fallen child and the woman who appeared to be her knight into the shade of a tree.
So... she really is Ceris.
A sword and shield crest was emblazoned clearly on the woman's armor.
The coat of arms of the Argent family, exactly as it had been described in the novel.
If this knight belonged to the Argents, there was no doubt whatsoever that the silver-haired girl beside her was Ceris.
I gazed down at the young Ceris, still unconscious.
She makes you want to give her a little poke...
My hand almost drifted toward those cheeks, as soft-looking as fresh rice cakes.
No. What am I doing, I'm not some pervert and she's a child.
Shaking my head, I brushed the stray thought away.
Meeting the real, living, breathing Ceris—a miniature Ceris, no less—with my own two eyes instead of an illustration had apparently left me dazed for a moment.
But how on earth did she get captured by barbarians?
I began sifting through the novel's setting in my head.
Oh, right! She joined a demonic beast subjugation campaign, got ambushed by barbarians, and was abducted—and her escort knight was killed in the incident.
I glanced at the blue-haired woman lying beside Ceris.
Is this her, then? The escort knight?
In the novel, this incident was the very reason Ceris developed her deep, visceral loathing of barbarians—the hatred she would gnash her teeth over.
"Ugh..."
At that moment, the young Ceris stirred, letting out a faint groan as her eyes fluttered open.
The instant she raised her gaze and met mine, her eyes went round as a startled rabbit's.
With a frightened expression, she carefully looked around.
When she saw the blood-soaked ground and the barbarian corpses sprawled in every direction, she began trembling like an aspen leaf and burrowed into the woman's—Rene's—arms.
"Hey, I'm not a bad guy, you know."
Sensing some deep misunderstanding, I offered a casual greeting, but Ceris clearly couldn't understand a word I said.
Wait, seriously? We can't talk?
The original novel did establish that the Empire and the barbarians spoke different languages.
But when I'd transmigrated, I'd conversed with the barbarians so naturally that I'd simply assumed I came with the basic language patch pre-installed.
Apparently, I could only speak the barbarian tongue this body's original owner had used.
"Hmm, this is a problem..."
As I was racking my brain over how to explain the situation, the blue-haired knight woke with a grunt of pain.
"#&%@!!"
The young Ceris cried out something urgent at the sight of her waking knight.
"@#$%@&!!"
Fully conscious now, the knight wrapped one arm around Ceris, swiftly scanned her surroundings, and fixed me with a sharp glare.
Right—when words fail, there's really only one option.
"Home! You two! I! Take you home!"
I threw every gesture I had into an all-out performance of body language.
"Ah, damn it. Whether you understand or not... do houses look different around here?"
I raised both hands over my head, forming a triangle for a peaked roof.
The knight, who had watched my desperate pantomime with eyes full of suspicion, cautiously whispered something into Ceris's ear.
Then, warily meeting my gaze, she gave a small nod.
"Okay, I think we got through. Let's go, then!"
At my gesture for them to follow, the two of them rose carefully, still refusing to let down their guard.
And so I led the way, cutting a path through the forest.
"Are you all right, my lady?"
Rene, who had been carefully trailing behind the barbarian-looking child, asked in a low voice.
"I'm fine. What about you, Rene?"
Rene gingerly touched the back of her throbbing head, then checked her palm.
"It seems the bleeding has stopped, thankfully. I'm all right."
The young Ceris looked at the back of the barbarian boy walking ahead of them.
"That boy... he really is a barbarian, isn't he?"
"Yes... judging by his appearance, I believe so."
"Then why would he help us?"
Ceris couldn't shake the sense that something was strange about the young barbarian who had saved them.
"You mustn't let your guard down yet. It could be a trick—lull us into feeling safe and then drag us off to his village."
Rene stayed sharp, never once loosening her grip on suspicion.
But Ceris felt—perhaps nothing more than a vague instinct—that the boy truly meant to help them, purely and simply.
KRAAAAGH!
At that moment, a demonic beast burst ferociously out from behind a massive tree.
"My lady!"
Reflexively, Rene tucked Ceris behind her and stepped forward to block the way.
She was just bracing to receive the beast's claws as it hurtled toward her, mane bristling—
Thud!
—when an axe flew in from the side and buried itself squarely in the beast's skull.
Tracing the axe back along its flight path, I saw the black-haired barbarian boy already walking toward the dead beast.
He plucked the axe free with practiced ease and gave a short jerk of his chin—come on, let's move.
He looks about my age... but he's really strong.
Unlike herself, who had been frozen helpless when the beast and the barbarians had closed in—
—the sight of the black-haired boy snuffing out a demonic beast's life so effortlessly filled the young Ceris with awe.
"Looks like we're almost there."
I lifted my head, and two colossal mountain ranges filled my vision.
The great barrier dividing the Empire's north from the Demonic Lands.
A single road threading through a gap in those rugged peaks was the only passage linking the two lands.
The sight of the range's majestic ridgeline looming close ahead meant we had all but reached the threshold of the Demonic Lands.
Glancing back, I found that the two of them seemed to feel it as well—their expressions had brightened noticeably at the approach to the north.
Just as I turned my head forward again to keep walking—
"#@&%$&#@!!"
An urgent shout rang out from somewhere far beyond.
Then the thunder of hoofbeats shook the earth, and the two people behind me darted past and rushed ahead.
Before long, a band of riders burst through the dense forest, galloping toward us.
The man at their head, silver-haired just like Ceris, leapt from his horse and swept her up in a fierce embrace.
Ceris's older brother—Klaus, I take it.
He'd apparently been leading the knight order back into the Demonic Lands in search of the two abductees.
With both of them confirmed safe, my part here was done.
Good. Everything's settled, then.
The moment I quietly turned to leave, knights closed in from every side, encircling me with swords drawn and leveled.
Ah, damn it... this has gone badly wrong.
"@#%$@& &@&$&@#!"
One of them roared something in a voice seething with fury and slashed his sword down at me without a shred of mercy.
Damn it!
Just as I swung the axe in my hand to parry the blow—
"#@$&%*!!"
—the young Ceris's desperate cry rang out from behind me.
