Barbarian-Style Human Resources Management
'He's going to give us... wisdom?'
Cold sweat poured down the knights in streams. They simply could not make sense of Caric's words.
Wisdom, nothing — one careless blow from that thing would leave them drooling idiots or crippled for life. Healing magic had its limits, after all.
There was a more fundamental question gnawing at them, too.
How in the world does that earthworm of a man produce strength like that?
A knight who had mastered aura could, in a manner of speaking, perceive an opponent's true essence. However frail someone looked on the outside, if their aura ran deep, they were strong.
By that logic, Caric ought to have been nothing but a big-bodied weakling. His aura was, quite literally, earthworm-grade — below that of an ordinary civilian. If anything, his body held so little of it that one might suspect a chronic illness.
And yet.
"Is there a next one?" — that was what he had asked.
Caric was strong to the point of absurdity. Heaving a knight in full plate tens of meters through the air? How was that even possible without aura?
"Hmm, everyone's so sparing with their words. A good sign."
Caric wore a contented smile as he surveyed the trembling knights.
"I can already feel wisdom beginning to take root in you. But it's not enough yet."
"Th-there must have been some sort of misunderstanding."
One knight worked up the courage to step forward.
"We were just— we were off duty that day, that's why we survived. We were only trying to return to our posts, that's all."
"I don't like your tone. Your manners are still sorely lacking."
What he meant was: stop talking down to me. The knight agonized — but one glance at the thickness of Caric's forearms ended his deliberation at once.
"...Please, let us go. If it is Your Highness's wish, we shall resign from the guard."
"Hold on. I can't agree to that."
Another knight cut in.
"Besides, to some savage like this, why would we— GYAAAAAAAGH!"
Caric hurled the interrupter clean over the fence.
Then he nodded along, as if nothing whatsoever had happened.
"Go on. Finish what you were saying."
The knight swiftly elected to say something entirely different.
"I apologize!"
He bowed low to Annette.
"Please forgive us. We shall never appear before Your Highness again."
The other dregs bowed to Annette one after another. For men who had arrived in such high spirits, it was a stunningly quick about-face — then again, they had just watched two of their number sail off into the distance and come down as pancakes. It was the limit of common rabble, a limit even expensive armor could not hide.
"..."
Watching those wretched bowed heads, Annette found her feelings rather complicated. A cool rush of satisfaction ran through her, and with it an equally bitter aftertaste. Were the people who had tormented her her whole life really only ever this much?
Just then Caric, who had been quietly watching her expression, spoke up.
"Annette, just say the word. I'll turn every last one of them into musical instruments."
Her head turned toward him — and without quite realizing it, her expression grew markedly lighter.
"Musical instruments?"
"Yeah. Each of them will produce its own distinctive timbre. String instruments would be far too gory, but I'm confident I can keep things tasteful with wind and percussion."
It was a joke — or perhaps a proposal — that could only have come from Caric.
Annette laughed without a sound. Horrific as the content was, she could feel the heart behind it: he meant to do this for her. Thanks to those few words alone, her mood lifted considerably.
So the decision came easily. There was no reason to waste another minute on people like this.
She looked at the knights, who were still bent at the waist.
"Get out of my palace."
The voice that came out was startlingly cold and unmistakably regal — her own manner of speech with traces of Caric and the Emperor folded into it.
"Show your faces here again and I will consider it treason."
Having delivered her verdict, Annette turned and entered the palace with Lily.
She truly looks the part of an Imperial Princess now.
Caric stayed where he was, watching her retreating figure with a satisfied smile.
Once she had gone inside, he addressed the men who still didn't dare straighten their backs.
"Now pack up and go. And naturally — you'll be leaving all your armor behind."
He had no intention of skipping the looting.
"Servants and maids who were just standing around playing dead — you lot move too. Strip the armor off the unconscious ones and bring it here."
With every last piece of armor collected and stored away in his subspace, Caric finally stepped inside Camellia Palace.
Annette and Lily were waiting in the main hall.
"Thank you for your hard work, Lord Caric."
Annette spoke first, her tone utterly matter-of-fact — the tone of someone for whom hurling knights through the air and stripping off their armor raised not a single eyebrow. At some point, she had fully acclimated to Caric's violence and eccentricities.
Lily, however, was another story.
"You really are... remarkably strong, Lord Caric."
She looked fairly shell-shocked.
"Hearing about it and seeing it with my own eyes truly are two different things."
Lily had been only half convinced by the stories Annette had told her yesterday. She'd assumed a generous helping of exaggeration and embellishment must have crept into the account of Caric. But now she could see that he really was the monstrously brutal barbarian from those stories — in presence and methods as much as in strength.
"I appreciate the compliment."
Caric answered with perfect confidence, then continued as though about to share some extraordinary secret technique.
"It's all thanks to good food, a good mindset, and plenty of sleep."
"...I see."
Lily decided against poking holes in it.
"But even someone like me can't run a whole building."
"That's my role, after all."
"Even so, managing this palace alone is impossible."
They were short on people.
"Father did send over a roster — servants, and guard knights for the escort."
Annette went on.
"But most of them will be spies or green recruits."
"Can't be helped. Lily will just have to keep them in line. Still, we could use one more person we can actually trust."
Fortunately, Caric already had a solution. He drew a token out of his subspace.
Annette recognized it at once.
"That's the one you received from the head of the intelligence bureau, isn't it?"
"It is. I'm going to fetch a shadow magician."
Celis Labrume.
One of the original novel's officially certified cheat characters — and, in the original timeline, someone the First Prince's faction eliminated early on.
"Wait — wasn't she something like an informant?"
"She does that job too. With her shadow magic, think of her as a one-woman army. She'll serve as your guard, but in a pinch she can double as clerical help or a lady's maid."
"Hmm... if you say so, Lord Caric, then I suppose that's how it is."
Would someone that capable really submit to being put to work so docilely? Annette had her doubts — but when Caric said something would work, it usually did.
"I'll head out and recruit her. Quick trip, on my own."
Saying this, Caric pulled a whole bundle of shamanic skulls from his subspace. Some were for communication, some for holding the fort in an emergency — just in case anything happened while he was away.
Truthfully, there was probably no need to go to such lengths. The Imperial Palace was a safe zone. Even the existing guard couldn't bring themselves to set so much as a boot inside the Camellia Palace building itself.
"Y-you're going alone?"
But the moment Annette heard those words, her heart abruptly began to pound.
"Wh-why?"
"Because it's faster."
"Um — yes, I suppose it is, but..."
In truth, Annette had felt this same way last night as well. It was the first night since the assassination attempt that she had slept apart from Caric. Falling asleep or waking, the absence of the person who was supposed to be there left her strangely hollow and unmoored — even though she had, at long last, returned safe and sound to the home she'd lived in all her life.
"I'll be back before you know it."
But in the end, Annette nodded. This was necessary business, after all. And it was only a matter of being apart for a few hours.
"Still — once your business is done, you come straight back. No stopping anywhere else, understand?"
"I'll do my best. If anything happens, I'll contact you with these."
Caric handed the bundle of skulls over as naturally as could be.
"Yes. You'd better."
As she answered and absently accepted what he was offering, Annette's eyes flew wide open. Her gaze creaked downward. At some point, her hands were clutching a whole heap of rat skulls.
"Hyaaagh!"
"Hmm, surely the connection won't get blocked by the palace barrier or anything? The communication ones are Grannie's specialty skulls, after all."
"L-Lily! Please, take these!"
"...Very well."
Lily gave the two of them a distinctly peculiar look, but offered no comment.
After receiving a document stamped with the Imperial Princess's seal to serve as his pass, Caric left the Imperial Palace on foot. The carriages all bore the imperial crest, and riding in one felt far too conspicuous.
The whole way, he drew stares. Inside the palace and out, everyone gawked at the barbarian with the murderous build, wondering what he was up to this time. The only difference was that within the palace walls, people murmured every outlandish rumor imaginable amongst themselves.
So apparently I devoured an octopus-headed demon alive, then spat it out in front of the First Prince because it tasted bad?
He couldn't tell whether they actually believed that nonsense or were simply trading it around for amusement. It was hardly something a barbarian as fastidious about etiquette as Caric would ever do. Prejudice was a truly terrifying thing.
In any case, asking directions from the ever-helpful citizens of the empire along the way, Caric arrived at his destination: a shabby tavern with no signboard at all.
A rather classic rendezvous spot.
Before entering, Caric closed his eyes for a moment and honed his senses. And once he had the answer he was looking for, he opened the door and stepped inside.
Even in broad daylight, a scattering of customers occupied the room.
"Welcome," the bartender said, polishing a glass.
Caric walked up to the counter and set the token down on it with a clack.
"I'm here for Celis."
The bartender's eyebrows twitched.
"Well now. You're the first guest I've ever had who was quite this careless."
"No need to be careful."
"Hmm. No need for caution, is it. Is that really so, Caric?"
The bartender spoke his name — one he had never been given — as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"You are certainly strong. But an attitude like that won't keep you alive for long."
"Hm?"
"Even that Crowell ended up dead in the end, didn't he? And he was a man who made a career of cutting royal throats."
"You're saying I'll be no different? You seem to have misunderstood what I meant about not needing caution, but that's an interesting story all the same."
"Is that so. Then please, have a seat. I don't mind a conversation with a man like you."
"Gladly. After all, 'you' are exactly who I came here to talk to."
Caric said this with a nod — but he did not take the seat in front of the bartender. Instead he strolled toward a corner as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Nothing occupied that spot save for a pool of shadow that hung conspicuously darker than the rest.
"Should I just fetch a chair and sit, then?"
Caric addressed the empty air. Nothing happened.
"Caric? What on earth are you doing over there?"
The bartender asked, bewildered. The customers' stares were steadily converging on him as well.
Caric paid them no mind whatsoever. He closed his eyes and focused on his senses once more — the same way he had once picked out the Emperor's communication orb hidden among the Imperial Guard.
The instant his senses locked on—
Caric reached into thin air and seized someone by the nape of the neck. Then he hauled them up and out.
From a spot where nothing had stood a moment before, a woman abruptly appeared.
A black bob, violet eyes.
A beauty whose face was the very picture of unbothered indifference. Even dangling limply from his grip, her gaze stayed bone-dry.
Looking into those eyes, Caric gave the token a little wave.
"You. Become my comrade."