Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel 2025 - Chapter 639
Chapter 639: Political Schemes (3)
In truth, most of the research into the newly discovered essences was done while we were still on Basement Floor 1, but I still handed most of the essences I had to Raven.
The way I saw it, all wizards were obsessive. Although figuring out the unknown brought them joy, they also enjoyed the mere process of research itself. It was like how people chewed gum. Some people spat it out as soon as all the flavor was gone, but others just enjoyed the very act of chewing and would chew on the tasteless gum for the entire day.
“Then…I’ll do my best to research them.”
I didn’t so much expect that more experimentation would unearth something new. Rather, I decided to just give them to Raven so she could manage and store them. And it’d be nice if she did get to discover something new along the way.
Speaking of…
“Ah, by the way, what did you mean in that letter? You said you had something to show to me.”
“Right, I completely forgot about that,” Raven realized. “It’s the essence of Hipramajent that Ms. Ainar obtained during the expedition. The passive ability that we didn’t have all the information on, I think I know what it is now.”
“Oh, really?”
“After coming back to the city, I used the information we obtained back then as a base and compared it to information we already have here, and I found something similar.”
“So what’s the passive ability?”
Raven crossed her arms and set her still-small shoulders. “Do you know about Ramangsis, the rank three monster?”
She asked it with a pretty confident tone, and I found myself confused. How was she able to look down at me with her short height? Hmm, maybe the answer to said question was that her chin was raised as high as humanly possible—
“Ah, it’s only natural that you might not know.”
What was she talking about?
“So, the Ramangsis—”
“Isn’t it a rare monster that appears in the rifts of the ninth floor?”
Raven’s shoulders flinched when I stole her words. I could see the angle of her chin drop down a few notches as well. “Huh? You… You knew…?”
Yeah, of course.
When I smirked at her cute reaction, Raven jerked her chin up again before saying, “Still, you only know half of it! You can’t find the Ramangsis in the ninth-floor rift using ordinary methods.”
“Well, yeah? It’s a monster you can only encounter if you use the Achievement of Gabrielius that’s hidden in the rift.” As a socially adept barbarian, I conversed with her while nodding along.
But what was this?
For some reason, Raven had stopped talking again. The angle of her raised chin also fell quite a bit more than before until she was no longer looking down at me.
“Mr. Yandel…” From that same position, she asked with a careful tone, “Do you perhaps…know what that Achievement is?”
Wondering why she was asking something so obvious, I said, “Yeah?”
Her eyes shot wide open.
Through that, I could obtain one piece of information. “Do you…not?”
As always, her silence was my answer.
“Huh.”
It wasn’t even funny. You were looking down on me without even knowing that much?
“I-I mean! It’s natural not to know! How would high-ranking information like that be written in the books…? Just information about the abilities of essences fetches a fortune! And even if you scour through the history books to look for people who’ve had the essence, there would only be… Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Hmm…”
I was late in noticing it, but our positions had swapped at some point. I was now the one with crossed arms looking down at her, and Raven was looking down at the ground as if embarrassed.
However, even in that state, Raven forced herself to speak as she squeezed out, “So… What’s the Achievement?”
As expected of a wizard.
Even in this situation, she was still curious about that.
***
After explaining the hidden secret of the ninth-floor rift, Raven explained the passive of Ramangsis as if to repay me for my information.
To be honest, I already knew what it was.
This social etiquette.
But this time, I didn’t interrupt her and paid attention to her explanation.
“Ramangsis’s passive ability is called Perfect Pair. You might be able to tell just from its name, but it’s a pretty special ability if you look into it.”
Hmm, well, rather than saying Perfect Pair was a special ability, it might be more correct to say it had a special activation condition.
“First, it is a support ability, just like as we hypothesized. It targets its user and one other person nearby to give them both a very powerful blessing.”
“Oh?”
“But this passive ability can’t be activated whenever you want. It’s not active normally either. It needs to fulfill a very special condition…”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know the specifics, but from what I could find from the records of people who’ve had it in the past, it activates most often between a man and woman… Especially when the two have been together for a very long time.”
Well, that was to be expected. To have Perfect Pair activated, the one who held the essence needed to have max favorability with one other person. That was why whenever I got the essence, I would go out of my way to get food for an ally and buy her flowers every day to increase the stat.
Ah, and the essence was one that couldn’t be used by the player character. Due to the inner workings of the system, the player wasn’t able to gain any favorability with NPCs.
But would I be able to use the essence in my current state?
My curiosity as a gamer was ignited for the first time in a while, but I wasn’t planning on eating Perfect Pair anyway. I didn’t have the slot for it in the first place. Besides, efficiency-wise, it was much more beneficial to feed it to an ally and get their favorability up toward me.
…But that makes me sound like a piece of shit, doesn’t it?
In any case, I knew the passive now, so it would be a waste to not use it.
How should I put it? It was a great skill that was above its ranking if it could just activate, to be sure.
…But is it even possible to activate it?
It was no easy feat to reach 100 percent favorability within the game, and it was practically impossible between same-sex pairs. If the stat ever got locked around the 90 percent mark, it could only be raised via lovey-dovey moments, which only had limited availability between different sexes.
Still, Ainar…?
I couldn’t imagine Ainar getting into that sort of relationship with a man whatsoever. They were all just male friends to her, including me.
“So I’m theorizing that maybe it only activates between a male-female lover’s relationship… Hey, I’m doing my best to explain here. What are you thinking about?”
“Uh, I was just thinking about how we could activate that ability.”
“…That’s fair.”
It was something I would need to spend more time thinking over. It would be a waste to just abandon the skill, but I wasn’t going to buy her bread every day and flirt with her just to try and activate Perfect Pair either.
…I should just ignore the fact that the skill even exists.
With that, I decided to seal away the decision about Perfect Pair within my mind. The essence was good enough even without the passive skill, anyway.
“Anyway, thanks for that, Raven.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not like I ended up being of any help to you.”
“Still, you figured out that it was a passive ability that requires some hidden condition. That much helps me worry less.”
“Hmm… I guess that’s true?”
Did she want me to thank her or give her the opportunity to be humble?
Whatever the case, with our first topic resolved, we spent some time going over a few more small things. As we did, the conversation drifted to how I should get checked since I was here anyway, and it led to me sitting down in that familiar seat to become a test subject for her.
Eventually, when we got hungry, we even went and ate in the cafeteria inside the magic tower.
“Wow, it’s already late. It must be dark outside now.”
“Can’t check because there aren’t any windows here. By the way, Raven, could I borrow a communication crystal?”
“Who are you trying to contact?”
“I’m going to call the holy land. When you get the connection going, tell them this for me. That I’ll be sleeping over in your laboratory for research reasons, and that I’ll go straight into work tomorrow from here.”
Raven tilted her head. “But I don’t have any research left here that needs you.”
I sighed. She was somehow oddly slow on the uptake for some things. “Just do it for me.”
“Eh? Sure… It’s not a problem on my part…” She trailed off before looking at me with eyes brimming with curiosity. “But can I ask why you’re doing this?”
Since I didn’t want to bring up the topic of marriage and make this even more awkward, I just gave half the truth. “Just.”
“…Just?”
“I don’t want to go home today.”
“…Eh?”
“Let me sleep over.”
And I couldn’t be bothered getting a room in an inn either.
***
I fell asleep on the roughly laid bedding.
Raven, who had a bed in the corner of the research lab, had gotten up first and woke me up the next day by tapping my side with her foot.
“…Wake up. How long are you going to sleep? You won’t be able to leave on time at this rate. Didn’t you say you had something important you needed to do?”
“Ugh…”
“Did you sleep well?”
“Yeah, pretty good. The floor was nice and warm. Huh? Did you wash up already?”
“…Of course, I wash myself as soon as I wake up. Did you think I was going to stay dirty the entire time?”
Hmm. Well, every time she traveled outside of the laboratory, she looked disheveled as if she didn’t shower for a few days. Maybe she got sensitive to those things after becoming a soldier?
“Anyway, thanks for letting me sleep over. I’ll come visit you later.”
“No, don’t come. You’ve just made me more tired.”
“Huh? Tired? Didn’t you fall asleep early yesterday too?”
“…That’s not what I meant. I need to continue with my research, so how about you leave already?”
After being kicked out in the morning, I quickly left the magic tower. I then got on a carriage at a nearby platform and headed toward the Royal Capital of Karnon.
Today was the day.
Human, dwarf, elf, barbarian, beastperson, and dragonian.
Today was the Races Summit where the leaders of the six races that made up the huge city of Rafdonia gathered together to exchange words and ideas.
Now that I think about it, this is the first time I’ve gotten to come. Finally.
Although it had been a long time since I became the chieftain, this was the first Races Summit I was attending. The building the meeting was taking place in was a place I had passed by a few times as well. Six pillars held up the roof, similar in style to those Roman temples. The foreign-looking building had always caught my eye.
…I have some time left.
Since I’d been kicked out early in the morning, I had some time left before the meeting began, so I went into a nearby restaurant and spent the time eating some food. Since it was a Karnon restaurant, the prices were much higher than I expected, so I was a little caught off guard, but what could I do? I was hungry and needed to eat something.
Do I have a food budget too?
After finishing my meal, I tapped my belly before entering the building where the meeting was taking place.
“…Mr. Bjorn Yandel. Have you come alone?”
“Is there a problem with that?”
“No… Not at all. Please enter. The others are waiting for you.”
To note, all the guards guarding the entrance were of all different races, but for some reason, there weren’t any barbarians here.
Are we supposed to bring our own guards and station them outside? Hmm, I don’t think I heard about anything like that from the previous chieftain…
I wondered if that old man really forgot to tell me about something like that, but it wouldn’t be out of character for him if he had.
“Good work.”
After encouraging the guards standing at the entrance, I entered the room and saw everyone sitting there. The great individuals who represented the six races.
However, the interesting thing here was that I recognized two familiar faces. The head of the dragonians, Mr. Dragon, and…
Looks like the beastpeople sent the Red Cat tribe this time as their representative.
The pure-blood house of the Red Cat tribe. The house head of Karlstein and Missha’s…
I guess he’s not technically her biological father?
In any case, he was the man in her father-slot of the family tree.
“It has been a long time. I would never have imagined you would rise to such a position back then.”
“I get it,” I said understandably. “I’ve known for a while that you people lack imagination.”
“…Seems you still hold some hostility toward me?”
“Not at all.”
And in truth, there was no hostility here. Back then, I was just a brat with nothing to my name. Now, I was important enough that this old man couldn’t dare treat me like that anymore.
“Let’s end our private talks there,” the representative of the elves said.
“Bjorn, son of Yandel, could you sit down as well?”
I slowly took a look around. Although everyone here was of importance and status, I didn’t feel pressured. It was because of one very simple thing.
Looks like…they use the round table here as well…?
The meeting room was centered around a huge round table.
After slowly moving to the empty seat that I guessed was mine, I sat down before putting one hand on my chin while tapping the handrest with my other finger.
Although this was my first meeting here…
Tap, tap.
I felt my confidence inexplicably rise.