I Became a Barbarian
"Great Warrior Aiden! Prove it today!!!"
"Prove what, exactly."
"Prove it!!!"
A burly warrior with an axe bellowed the challenge.
He stood roughly two meters tall, hard muscle writhing loosely over his leather armor as though it had merely been draped across the frame, his arms layered with old scars upon scars.
This was a barbarian settlement — a place known as [Court of the Hunting God].
Five years I'd lived here, and I still had no idea what the name was supposed to mean. All I could think was: what kind of a damn place name is that?
"Prove your strength!!!"
These barbarian bastards were all cut from exactly the same cloth. They'd whine at you to fight over nothing at all, and they spoke in chopped-off fragments.
Worse still, they'd drop the subject of their sentences entirely — there was a time when I couldn't make out a single word of what they were yelling.
"Aiden! Eat! My meat!!! Fight here!!!"
"Excuse me???"
It was exactly one week after I'd transmigrated into this body. That was what a barbarian who'd appeared out of nowhere said to me.
"Sorry, but could you run that by me again???"
"Eating meat!!! Fight!!!"
"???????"
Roughly, here's what he meant: he wanted to fight me — a hunk of meat that happened to eat — right here and now.
"How is anyone supposed to parse that?"
Well… not anymore, at least.
"Prove it!!! Strength!!!"
That shout basically meant he wanted a round with me.
I lifted my greatsword and stepped up in front of him, smooth as anything.
"Your name?"
"A warrior who loses, dies!!! Meaningles—"
"Then die."
THWOOOM——!!
His head burst apart in a single blow.
The onlookers' cheers exploded.
"Next Great Chieftain, amazing!!!!"
"Smitten!!!!"
"So cool!!!!"
I raised a hand with practiced ease and greeted them.
"Adon."
They roared back like lunatics.
"ADOOON!!!!!"
Adon. The one said to be the progenitor of all barbarians in the distant past.
I'd read in chapter 2 that he'd shattered mountains and leveled cities with single blows.
"Right. That's what it said."
I tilted my head back toward the sky for a moment, remembering the day I'd fallen into this world.
It was a day like any other. I'd gotten off work and was heading home.
That part's a lie. I was just at home.
My job was teacher — the kind of job you could find anywhere. An elementary school teacher, at that.
I'd been combing through web novels to research my next lesson material in depth: [A Comparison of Modern Novels and Novels of the Past].
Researching the old novels was easy, ironically enough, thanks to all the trend-chasing trash flooding the market these days — with that much data piled up, the results came out in no time.
This time, it was the modern novels' turn.
Here are the titles of the novels trending these days.
But the answer that came back was a complete mess.
[Mecha King Sejong the Great's Earth Conquest]
[I Reincarnated as the Protagonist's Little Sister's Panties]
[The Otherworld Elf High Politician Corrupted Into a Female (R19)]
[GeForce: The Only Fusion Archmage in a Cyberpunk World]
"What the hell is any of this supposed to be…."
In the end, I went straight to a web novel site called Novelnya.
I steered my mouse past the Plus membership ads plastered across the screen.
"I'm only reading four or five of these, so there's no need to actually pay for anything."
There were free serials and Plus serials. From what I remembered, free works were free from start to finish, while Plus works were only free up to around chapter fifteen.
Well, if I was reading anyway, the paid stuff would probably be better built and more fun — so I moved my cursor over to the Plus section.
And there, among the titles streaming down the page, one work somehow caught my eye.
"Two hundred forty-two chapters, and only twelve hundred readers?"
Just how badly did someone have to write for numbers like that?
Was the prose a slog, or was the premise simply bad?
Lost in those thoughts, I clicked on chapter one without even realizing it.
And then…
"The final… chapter…."
When I checked the clock, it was somehow already the small hours of the next morning.
The story was far tighter and more entertaining than I'd expected — my palms were slick with tension the entire way through.
The fact that I'd gone ahead and paid for the Plus membership midway through was a bonus.
"Whew… heh… heh heh… now… I can sleep…."
Muttering to myself, I tapped the final chapter.
Exhaustion washed over me, and I closed my eyes for just a moment.
And when I opened my eyes again, I'd been dropped into the body of one Aiden Penwolf.
Aiden Penwolf. Supreme commander of the barbarian tribes, and the next Great Chieftain.
At first I nearly jumped out of my skin, but these days I just let it roll off my back.
No amount of wailing or arguing was going to get me sent back to my old world, after all.
I'd been living in this body for five years now.
Barbarian tribal society was warmer, and more human, than you'd ever expect.
"The weak die!!!!!"
"You're weaker!!!!!!"
Lines like those — only a human being could deliver them.
"Drink the deserter's blood!!!!!"
"He hasn't been dead long!!! It's warm!!!"
"GRARARARARARA!!!!"
Anyway. It was warm.
I stared at those barbarians and heaved a sigh.
"What the hell are these bastards supposed to be."
Barbarians were still stuffed to the brim with things I simply couldn't understand.
They'd demand a duel over every little thing, or come to blows insisting their own catch was bigger.
And on top of that — three months from now…
these people were fated to be annihilated by the Leonhardt Duchy of the Kingdom of Vers in the span of a single week.
And Aiden, their supreme commander, would have his head taken off in one strike by the protagonist, Ruines.
That's what happens in chapter 2 of the novel.
I know — it makes no sense for the supreme commander of an entire host to fall in a single blow, but…
The tags answered that question for me.
Either way, I had to stop what was coming.
I refused to die a pointless death in a place like this.
So over the past five years, I'd fought my way through countless duels and climbed to the rank of Great Warrior.
Speak in the name of a Great Warrior, and even barbarians passing by would lend you a proper ear.
The title of next Great Chieftain helped too.
Things were off to a good start. I genuinely believed that with an elementary school teacher's skills, I could civilize these savages.
"It was mine to begin with, why would I hand it over!!!"
"Doveran's right!!! It's all mine!!!"
That was the response I got when I told them not to covet what belonged to others.
"Why is it yours!!! It's mine!!!"
"All of it's mine!!!"
"Duuuuel!!!!!"
The two barbarians in my class started dueling right there on the spot.
Hm. Hopeless.
Their intelligence was, in a word, in shambles.
The whole idea of civilizing them had been wrong from the very beginning.
It honestly amazed me that their tribal society functioned at all.
I suspected a worldbuilding error, but there was no one around to hear the complaint anyway.
Still, thank goodness I'd kept the instincts of a civilized man with memories of a past life.
Why?
Because I could always run.
If the way to dodge death is staring you in the face, isn't not running the stranger choice?
I've never understood people who get dropped into a total stranger's body and then thrash around desperately trying to survive in it.
Where do they even find that kind of sense of mission and willpower?
Night had fallen.
"Even rolling in a dung heap, this life is the better one."
Muttering the old saying, I packed my leather backpack to the brim.
"So this place really is a dead end. A trash novel where the logic and the worldbuilding are both a hopeless mess."
Still, it was a fun read.
I muttered under my breath as I cinched the backpack straps tight.
"Alright, Aiden Penwolf. Let's get our heads in the game. Today's lesson objective… no — let's begin the survival strategy briefing."
I spoke as though barking orders at myself.
"First. Secure distance. These barbarians have noses like hounds, so we need at least ten kilometers between us. Erase every trace you can, and move fast."
I rose from where I'd been sitting.
"Second. Vocabulary purification. Five years of 'ooga booga' with these ignoramuses has left my IQ in shambles. The moment you set foot in a proper village, standard speech only. Butcher the grammar, and you butcher the person."
I drew a deep breath, then counted off on my fingers again.
"Third. Secure funds. Around here, strength and meat are everything — but the world out there is cold, ruthless capitalism. Pack money, not meat. A barbarian with empty pockets is a guaranteed F."
"Fourth. Avoid the original story. My name is Aiden Penwolf — a nameless mob who gets his head taken off by the protagonist in one strike early in the novel. Don't so much as sniff around the protagonist, and keep your routes to a minimum."
At the most important step of all, I paused for a beat.
"And last — fifth. This one matters most. If a sudden event pops up, ignore it. Without fail."
I pressed a hand to my chest and spoke like a man taking a vow.
"I am not the protagonist of this world. I'm Extra Number One — a background extra quietly coasting along until I die of old age. Knowing your role is a survival essential. A strictly mechanical route is the one and only correct answer that leads me to the true ending (death by natural causes)."
I checked the weight of my backpack one last time.
"That concludes the survival strategy briefing. Clocking out… no — initiating escape."
I slipped out of my shabby hut and stole away down the mountain path.
Trudge, trudge.
Still… five years of my life in this place…
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
I quickened my pace.
My gut feels hollow.
I ran for a good long while.
I was rummaging through my backpack for a drink of water when—
"Kyaaaaah!!!"
A scream tore through the air, sharp and piercing, from somewhere deep in the forest.