The Kidnapped Prince is Mine Now - Chapter 32

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 32
I flexed my fingers within the leather gloves, objectively assessing my condition. All ten digits responded to my command.
Yet the skin that had burned with tingling pain and numbness as the bitter cold pressed in now registered no discomfort whatsoever.
This too was a warning sign.
‘Am I going to lose my fingers?’
How had things deteriorated to this point? I forced my fog-laden mind to work. The beginning of our journey surfaced, hazy but discernible.
It had not been bad at first. The Northern Empire lived up to its reputation—perpetually cold and harsh. Yet there had been no winter rain or blizzards. Those who read the weather predicted such conditions would persist for some time.
‘The clouds hang low without sagging, and the air remains dry. When the wind dies, snow typically follows—but with winds this fierce, we should be fine.’
That prediction was only half correct.
Until we entered the Snowy Mountains, the weather differed little from what we’d experienced at Graupels Castle. Unmelted snow accumulated heavily, impeding our march, but the hardship fell within anticipated bounds.
Something went wrong on the third day. That is to say, from this morning.
The treacherous terrain required us to scale rock faces. I was bound tightly with rope and hauled upward like cargo, entrusted entirely to the knights’ strength.
It was then I saw it—an enigmatic symbol carved into the cliff face.
‘…?’
At first, I thought it merely a scratch mark. My vantage point revealed only a few deliberate curves etched into the stone corner.
The knights who had scaled the rock directly likely hadn’t even noticed those curves. The marks were visible only from a certain distance, at a particular angle.
Then, when a vicious wind sent the rope swinging violently, I glimpsed something beyond the corner that made me doubt my own eyes.
An expanse filled with illegible characters and metaphysical geometries….
‘A circle?’
An immense circle—one no single person could have carved. Part of it occupied a section of the sheer, savagely hewn cliff face.
Even then, the whole was invisible. Only about a third of the carved pattern entered my field of vision before disappearing again.
I wondered if I’d glimpsed a phantom, but no opportunity to verify came. The capable knights hauled me upward with impressive speed.
After brief deliberation, I approached Rotar Eisenrit, who was receiving reports from the scouts. Lowering my voice so only he could hear, I described the symbol on the cliff.
‘What on earth is that?’
‘…It resembles traces of magic, but I cannot be certain.’
An ominous feeling settled over me, yet we had no leisure to investigate the symbol. We pressed forward. And then——
‘An, an avalanche?’
‘No, wait. This is….’
We were engulfed by a sudden blizzard.
Snow fell with terrifying ferocity—visibility reduced to mere inches. Had the Holy Knight Order not been present, one might have attributed it to divine curse.
We had been wandering through that blizzard for over an hour now.
‘At this rate, we’ll truly die.’
The supply wagons the knights had been rotating through were abandoned the moment the blizzard struck. If we failed to find shelter within an hour or two, everyone faced mortal danger.
The scouts departed immediately—a handful of veteran knights, including the Holy Knight.
But——
‘…Why haven’t they returned?’
Despite waiting for what felt like an eternity, the scouts did not come back.
Rotar Eisenrit made his decision before it was too late.
‘We have signal flares; we’ll use them if necessary. We leave markers and move on.’
Some argued for assembling a new scout party, but the proposal was swiftly rejected. In this unpredictable mountain wilderness, further division of our forces would only diminish everyone’s chances of survival.
And so we pressed forward. I wasn’t hoping for a deep cave—anywhere sheltered from the wind would do. A cliff face where snow accumulated less heavily, the shadow of a boulder, or if all else failed, a crevice in the ice wall. We moved toward any such refuge.
An hour passed like this.
No matter how far we walked, no shelter appeared beneath the blizzard’s onslaught. There was no trace of the scout party that had vanished ahead.
All that filled my vision was pristine white snow—beautiful, yet capable of silently swallowing a handful of humans without a sound.
Just as I thought we might be consumed here, Rotar Eisenrit called for a halt.
“Any further advance is suicide. We’ve found a large boulder—position it to block the wind, clear the snow from the ground, and set up camp.”
The knights responded swiftly to Rotar Eisenrit’s command. It seemed I was the only one whose body had frozen solid like ice.
Of course, being this much of a burden was expected. At least I hadn’t collapsed and forced someone to carry me on their back.
I stood quietly in a corner, careful not to obstruct the knights’ movements. Soon a large shadow fell across my back, and the snow pelting down on my head ceased.
When I cautiously raised my head, I saw Rotar Eisenrit shielding my body with both arms and his head. He looked down at me and asked.
“Are you all right?”
All right, he asked.
Rotar Eisenrit seemed fine. But I was neither Northern-born nor a mass of muscle like the knights.
“This feels like the end.”
“Don’t say such things, even in jest.”
Rotar Eisenrit seized me, my lips frozen and stammering, and dragged me behind the boulder. Then he picked up a shovel and began digging at the ground near the rock.
“A human excavator without equal, it seems.”
What? Did someone read my thoughts?
I turned my head sideways and my gaze collided with amber eyes. Wolfgang’s eye corners crinkled slightly as he continued.
“And here there’s no shortage of walking corpses.”
Could jokes really emerge in a situation like this? For the record, what I’d thrown at Rotar Eisenrit earlier wasn’t a joke—it was a prophecy.
He watched as Rotar Eisenrit carved out a space deep enough to bury a person, then lowered his voice.
“You saw strange markings a few hours ago, didn’t you?”
“Ah, yes.”
I hadn’t managed to tell Wolfgang, who had been far away. It seemed Rotar Eisenrit had shared the information.
“It’s strange, isn’t it? Monsters and beasts lack the intelligence or purpose to carve markings into rock faces.”
“That does seem to be the case.”
“What are your thoughts?”
“…”
Mysterious markings. And snow that poured down without warning.
An intelligent being. A group. An unfriendly disposition.
Several words drifted through my mind, but nothing crystallized into certainty.
Still, if I had to consider one possibility.
“The Other Races.”
Those who occupied Drakenloch, the land beyond the Snowy Mountains.
“That’s where the greatest likelihood lies, isn’t it?”
I turned my gaze and asked Wolfgang. I saw something flicker in his eyes.
“You speak of the Unbelievers, then.”
“They’re called barbarians too. People have attached every name they despise to them, haven’t they?”
“I attempted to call them as befits a Holy Knight. Do you know anything of the Other Races?”
“No.”
I knew little about them. Except for one thing.
‘Those filthy non-humans’ souls should be collected swiftly as well.’
The fact that Maximilian in my previous life had been desperate to capture and exterminate them.
In other words, even while bringing the Empire under his heel and conquering foreign lands across the sea, he had failed to subjugate the non-humans beyond the Snowy Mountains.
“I’ve only heard they’re hideously ugly.”
“By their aesthetic standards, we’d look the same way.”
“Hmm, would we? I’ve never been told I’m ugly in my entire life.”
“….”
I left Wolfgang to his nonsense. I didn’t have the energy to argue anyway.
Instead, I approached Rotar Eisenrit, who had just finished assembling the tent. I set aside the pleasantries about offering help and asked him directly.
“Can we go in now? I’m ten seconds away from freezing to death. Ten, nine, eight….”
“Yes, please come in.”
The knights’ tent had just been erected as well. Like penguins at the South Pole, five or six of them seemed to be huddled together in a single tent.
‘But Rotar and I are the exception.’
The only woman. The only married couple. In many ways, my position was difficult, standing apart from them.
I descended into the two-person tent with Rotar Eisenrit’s escort, and he followed behind me, lighting a candle in the center of the tent.
“It would be warmer if we lit charcoal for a brazier, but there’s a risk of asphyxiation. Still, now that we’ve blocked out the snow and wind, it should be considerably more comfortable.”
As he spoke, his movements were swift in opening the tent entrance slightly. He seemed to be someone well-versed in survival in extreme conditions.
“And there’s one more thing we must do to avoid dying from hypothermia….”
“I know that already.”
I cut off Rotar Eisenrit’s explanation lightly and unwound the muffler that had been covering my face, casting it aside. Along with the snow-dampened winter clothes and shoes, and the undergarment beneath them.
Rotar Eisenrit, turning to look back, immediately fell silent. I felt his gaze sweep rapidly across my bare body.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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