I Picked Up Something I Shouldn't Have Picked Up Again
The silence of the verdant forest was shattered by the crisp scrape of metal and the solemn cadence of hymns. A procession wound its way up the rugged ridges of Black Mane Mountain. At its head stood a woman dressed in holy vestments so blindingly white they stung the eyes—Saintess Ivona. With every step she took, faint divine power bloomed from her toes and drifted among the fallen leaves like mist. Yet the Holy Knight Commander Leon, trailing respectfully behind her noble figure, had no idea what she was truly seeing. Before the Saintess’s eyes, it was not heaven that unfolded, but a dazzling display of yellow fireworks.
Oh Lord...... Your humble lamb...... In these harsh mountains...... Is being tested to the limits of her mortal flesh......
Ivona’s slender legs trembled. Ever since leaving the Holy See to purify this mountain lair known as the ‘Demon’s Den,’ she had maintained a complete fast—not a single drop of water—for seven full days. It was meant to let her hear God’s revelations more clearly, but all she could hear now was the agonized screaming of her own intestines twisting in protest.
“Your Holiness the Saintess! Just a little farther! The den of those blasphemous bandits is almost within reach! The moment we purify that place, the Lord’s glory shall descend upon you!”
Holy Knight Commander Leon shouted, fist clenched tight. To him, her staggering looked like the noble struggle of a saint enduring divine trial.
“Commander...... In my ears...... I hear the whispers of angels...... So very sweet...... and greasy......”
“Oh! As expected of the Saintess! Even in this barren, wicked land you still perceive divinity! What does the angel say?” Leon asked, voice thick with emotion.
Ivona barely managed to lift her heavy eyelids. Inside, she answered honestly. It’s not an angel...... It sounds more like the sizzle of that mountain rabbit I saw yesterday, roasting over charcoal...... with all those juices dripping down......
That was the limit. Ivona’s vision went black. She crumpled like a snapped lily and rolled helplessly down the ridge.
“Your Holiness! Your Holinesssss!”
The knights’ horrified cries echoed across the mountains like a wave of shock.
Deep in the backwoods of Black Mane Mountain, where the trees grew thick and wild, the silence was broken not by a beast’s roar or a flashy magical chant. It was the desperate, all-out scream of a man sprinting at full speed after one single hen.
Rodin moved in a low crouch, parting the underbrush. The stealth technique that not even the continent’s strongest knights could detect was currently being used for one purpose only: tracking down a single female chicken named General.
Shuk—!
Every time Rodin’s toes kicked off the ground, a heavy gust of wind swirled the fallen leaves into miniature tornadoes. The prize breeding hen he had gone to the trouble of buying at the market a few days earlier had jumped the fence, an incident far more serious to Rodin than any imperial declaration of war.
“Hey, General! You can’t even pay back your own fertilizer cost and you’re running away? This is so bothersome, seriously!”
Rodin stepped on a tree root and launched himself skyward. The leap was elegant, destructive, and completely ignored the laws of gravity. He stretched out a hand to snatch the hen’s tail feathers.
But something got in the way.
Slide—.
“......Huh?”
What his fingers closed around wasn’t feathers. It was a piece of soft, smooth, strangely cool white fabric.
Having lost his landing point, Rodin tumbled to the ground and clicked his tongue.
“Aish, damn it...... Missed her. What the hell is this? Some kind of wrapping cloth lying in the middle of the path......”
Rodin glared down at the cloth in his hand with clear irritation. It was the hem of a dazzlingly white robe. And the owner of that robe was collapsed right in the middle of the forest path, blocking the way.
At Rodin’s feet lay a woman dressed in radiant white. Her garments were embroidered with intricate golden thread, and even while unconscious, a faint divine aura rose from her body like heat haze. Any ordinary man who saw her would have fallen to his knees, calling her the Goddess of the Forest and offering prayers.
Rodin’s brow only furrowed in annoyance.
“What the hell, is she dead? Hey, get up. You made me miss the chicken.”
He gave the woman’s shoulder a few careless nudges with the toe of his rough boot. The noble Saintess’s body flopped like a rag doll under his indifferent prodding.
“......She’s not actually dead. She’s still breathing.”
Rodin scratched the back of his head roughly, clearly bothered. The ideal choice would have been to pretend he never saw her and keep walking. But this was deep in the forests of Black Mane Mountain. Leave her here and wild dogs or monsters would tear her apart. The smell of blood would drift over and ruin the hygiene of his precious cabbage patch.
“Ugh, now I’ve got extra baggage. This is such a pain.”
He carefully tucked one of General’s fallen feathers into his pocket, then looked down at the ‘cloth bundle’ on the ground.
“You’ll have to repay the chicken I missed with your body. The field work at our house is pretty brutal, you know.”
He reached for her the same way he would reach for a fat radish he had just pulled from the soil.
Rodin strode toward the stronghold with Saintess Ivona slung over his shoulder. Most men rescuing a beauty of her caliber would have used the classic princess carry, but romantic consideration like that simply didn’t exist in Rodin’s world. She hung over his left shoulder exactly like an eighty-kilogram sack of freshly harvested rice.
The Saintess’s noble hair dangled toward the ground, sweeping up dirt as he walked, but he paid it no mind. In his right hand he gripped both of General’s legs—the same hen he had dramatically recaptured while searching the forest.
“Why is this woman so pale? Looks like she’s never done a day of field work in her life. She needs to smell some fertilizer and wake up.”
Ivona’s body bounced limply on Rodin’s shoulder with every step. One hand held a flapping chicken upside down, the other shoulder carried the living symbol of the Empire’s divinity. The sight was a bizarre harmony of sacrilege and livestock affection.
“General, you worked hard today. I’ll give you premium feed when we get back, so don’t run away again.”
The chicken flapped. The Saintess dangled. On the Mercenary King’s broad shoulders, imperial authority and holy sanctity shook without mercy.
“Oh! There he is! It’s the boss!”
Dagan, standing guard on the gate tower, shouted. Gil hurriedly opened the gate and rushed out to meet him. The moment they saw Rodin’s bizarre appearance as he strolled back yawning, both men froze with their mouths hanging open.
“Whoa...... Boss! Like always, you never come back from a walk empty-handed!”
Dagan ran over, eyes sparkling. His gaze locked onto Ivona slung over Rodin’s shoulder.
“Boss, is this a goddess this time? That outfit’s shining something fierce! Last time it was the princess, now a fairy dropped out of the sky?”
“Shut up. I picked her up while catching a chicken.”
Rodin answered indifferently and shrugged. The motion made Ivona’s head thunk against his back.
“As expected! Went out to catch a chicken and came back with a goddess! This is the class of the Mercenary King! Kill two birds with one stone—catch a chicken, pick up a goddess!”
Gil clapped, deeply moved.
“Hey, Dagan. Take this. She’s heavy as hell. Throw her in the warehouse or lay her next to the cabbages.”
“Come on, Boss! How can you stick someone this precious in the warehouse? We have to bring her into the main house!”
The subordinates were making a fuss, preparing to receive Ivona, when a chilly aura began to leak out from inside the stronghold.
“Rodin...... What exactly is that?”
A low, icy voice. Veronica walked out slowly with her arms crossed. Her eyes were not on the chicken in Rodin’s hand but on the ‘white woman’ being supported by Dagan and Gil.
Rodin answered in his usual carefree tone.
“Oh, Princess. This? Just some baggage I picked up in the forest. And this is our General. She had a rough day.”
“Not the chicken! Can’t you see the pattern on that woman’s clothes?”
Veronica’s voice shook. She was an imperial princess. There was no way she could fail to recognize the golden cross emblem stitched into those robes—one of the most sacred symbols in the entire empire.
“That is the Holy See’s saintess vestment! And not just any—it belongs to ‘Ivona,’ the one they’re talking about as the next pope candidate!”
“Saintess? What’s that. She looks like she can eat well. Put her in the fields and she’ll grow some muscle.”
At Rodin’s outrageous remark, Veronica clutched the back of her neck.
“No, why do you keep picking up things you shouldn’t pick up! Having me—an imperial princess—wasn’t enough? Now you’ve brought home a saintess too, Rodin!”
“Kidnapping? I just cleaned the road. I’m thinking of sentencing her to three days of fertilizer duty for obstructing traffic.”
“No! Absolutely not! Lay her on the sofa in the main house right now and treat her like royalty! If this gets out, our stronghold will be branded a ‘den of sacrilege’ and we’ll have to fight tens of thousands of holy knights!”
Rodin shrugged as if the whole thing was bothersome and headed toward the main building.
“Holy knights? Can we use them as fertilizer too? Fine, since the princess is making such a fuss, I’ll lay her down for now. Hey, Dagan! Give General some feed. She must’ve been really stressed today.”
Veronica let out a deep sigh as she watched Rodin’s retreating back. She had only just confirmed her feelings with him and secured her position as the lady of the house, yet here he was dragging home a saintess of unreal beauty from who-knows-where. In her mind, wariness toward this new rival threatening her place as official wife was already tangling violently with the looming political war against the massive Holy See.