Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel 2025 - Chapter 643
Chapter 643: Coming Out (1)
The palace wanted me to marry a human noblewoman.
I could think of a few reasons that might lead them to such a choice. A naive person might be happy that they caught the interest of the palace and assume the palace would now start supporting them.
“Lapir, I’ll ask just one thing.”
“Go on.”
“Does the palace want to put me on a leash?”
Mr. Dragon struggled to give me an answer. “Well, I don’t know that much. However…your decision will only provide the palace with another answer.”
“If I marry into the humans, it would mean I’m lowering my head and doing their bidding…”
“And if you refuse, it would mean the opposite.”
I now understood why Mr. Dragon had told me that my marriage would be used politically no matter who I married.
“Lapir, is your promise from before still on the table?”
“If you’re talking about the unconditional support and cooperation from we dragonians to you, then of course. My offer still stands. Ah, in all things that don’t involve the king, of course, just as I said back then.”
“Right…”
“Might I say, you are taking far too negative of an approach to this?”
“I’ve got a habit of thinking about the worst-case scenarios first.”
I would probably need more time to mull it all over by myself. With that, I asked Mr. Dragon a few more questions before moving on.
He doesn’t know if this is the action of the king, or who my potential fiancee is going to be…
Still, since I’d gotten this warning, I would be able to keep my calm during the Palatial Meeting and respond accordingly.
“So, if marriage was the first point, what’s your second one?”
What Mr. Dragon wanted to tell me next came as a complete and total surprise.
“It is about the sealing of the labyrinth.”
“And by sealing, you mean…?”
“As I said—no more, no less. I don’t know the reason either, but the sealing of the labyrinth will be a topic that is brought up during the Palatial Meeting.”
“So you’re saying it’s not confirmed yet?”
“No, it is. It will only be brought up as a sort of formality, but the decision seems to have already been made internally.”
“I see…” I asked what this sealing was going to be about, but he didn’t seem to know much about that either.
As I shifted on my feet, uncomfortable and stuck in my thoughts, Mr. Dragon said, “Since it’s come to this, could I give you another piece of advice?”
I nodded. “From you, sure.”
“You are the chieftain of the barbarians and a noble of the Kingdom of Rafdonia. You are also the leader of the Anabada Clan, which is growing at an incredible rate.”
It was similar to what I’d said during the Races Summit, and I had a rough idea of what he was trying to say.
“Regardless of how you see yourself, you cannot live as a warrior who fights for his sake alone.”
The warriors of the holy land, the thousands from Bifron who were now servants of my house, and my allies.
“You have countless people for whose lives you are now responsible. No matter how you think, no matter how you wish to act—your marriage will not be just for you alone.”
Mr. Dragon was letting me know gently. No, it was more like he was calmly scolding me.
“Make this decision for them. For your sake as well.”
It felt as if I just got hit over the back of my head.
I mean, from the perspective of Mr. Dragon, it would seem I was trying to postpone my marriage to avoid responsibility. Political marriages between nobles weren’t a matter of choice. For them, love was a luxury, and luxury always carried the connotation of inefficiency in every age.
“That was all I wished to tell you. I hope you don’t take offense.”
“…None taken. You aren’t wrong either.”
Maybe I was a romantic. I still hadn’t been able to shed my shell of modern values, yet really, that didn’t apply here. There were cases like this in modern times as well, and I didn’t mean just those marriages of convenience between rich people. Everyone needed to face the reality of what marrying someone meant.
“I hope this was helpful for you.”
“Don’t worry. It definitely was.”
That wasn’t lip service. I was being genuine. Thanks to him, I got an idea of what I needed to do.
***
“Where’s Ravien?”
“Who can say? That child doesn’t come by the holy land these days. To be honest, even I don’t know what she is doing.”
“Do you not talk to her regularly?”
“You will understand when you have children of your own. Conversations don’t happen just because I want to have one.”
“…I see.”
“At some point, it becomes difficult to talk with them when the conversation isn’t necessary. Ravi, she wasn’t like that when she was young…”
It was a little funny to see Mr. Dragon complain about it. Maybe all parents ended up like that.
In any case, after finishing up with Mr. Dragon, I took his suggestion and met up with the little dragon Pen for the first time in a long while.
“You’re here? I thought you were never coming back.”
“Are you saying you don’t know what happened to me?”
“I’m relieved. You came back alive.”
Her annoying behavior seemed to have mellowed out, and she was more tender overall, perhaps because I was the one who brought the heart of the Dragon Slayer.
“So…” she began. “Do you notice anything different?”
“No.”
“I got taller! By this much!”
“Oh.”
Now that she said it, I did notice that she had grown a little. Though she did still have her childish personality.
Right, her body’s internal clock froze because she’d cast a curse on that Dragon Slayer…
Thanks to her body recovering, her growth seemed to have resumed once more.
“Just you wait. I’ll become like my older sister soon.”
“Uh…” Aiming for Ravien’s looks might be too greedy for her. Even if she grew at the same rate for another year, I doubted she would be able to escape her “small” classification.
But even I wouldn’t say something like that to a child who only just regained her health.
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll cheer for you,” I said instead.
“Anyway, since you’re here, tell me some stories.”
Afterward, I passed the time by telling her about my adventures on the underground floor, then spent the night in the Dragon Temple. When I woke up, I had breakfast with Mr. Dragon and Pen before leaving early for the Royal Capital of Karnon.
The life of a noble is pretty good.
I arrived at the Palace of Wisdom, where the Palatial Meeting would be held, a day early. I then spent the day lazing inside a VIP room where I was assigned.
Well, I tried to, at least.
Knock, knock.
I didn’t know how they knew, but as soon as I entered the palace, nobles kept coming to meet me.
“Haha, I came to stop by after hearing that you arrived early, Baron Yandel. Could we share a conversation over tea?”
Some came purely to gain social points with me.
“I have an offer for you, Baron Yandel. Do you wish to hear it? I will guarantee that it will be of benefit to you.”
Some were solicitors who acted like honest businessmen.
“I heard that you were looking for a marriage partner…”
Others came to sell me their daughters.
What’s this?
There was even a mysterious letter passed through the gap at the bottom of the door.
Midnight. Garden fountain. Come quietly.
The random letter only had these three things written on it, and I couldn’t find any marks that could tell me who the sender was. For a moment, I wondered how best to deal with it.
How can I hold back on a mystery like this?
But when the promised time of midnight finally came, I snuck out the window to the place written in the letter, the fountain in the middle of the garden maze.
After a short while of my standing alone, the unknown individual who had sent me the letter showed up.
“Jerome Saintred.”
It was the captain of the First Knight Order of the Palace, holder of the noble title of count, and the guardian of the kingdom known as the Knight of Light.
Well, it was actually the ancient hero who had stolen the body of the man with said credentials, Dragon Knight Cornelius Bruinrid.
“I never expected it would be you who sent me that letter.”
“I felt it would be best to meet in secret like this. Fortunately, you didn’t have any rats trailing you.”
“So, why did you call me here?”
When I asked him directly what he intended, the village chief furrowed his brow. “Do you really not know? Or are you saying that because you have no intention of keeping your promise?”
Oh, right. I promised to give him back his item as soon as we left the floor.
I quickly opened the sub-space and took out the Heart of Karui I’d been holding onto for him.
Something’s nagging at me…but I did promise him.
I didn’t have a choice to begin with. The village chief could take a myriad of extreme measures if I didn’t give this to him.
After taking the item, the village chief looked closely at it, trying to see if there was anything wrong with it, before putting it in his pocket.
“Are we done here?” I probed.
“That was the most important matter.”
“So there is more?” I got the feeling that handing over the Heart was only the appetizer. I heightened my focus as I stared at the village chief.
“The Palatial Meeting will bring up the topic of your marriage.”
“I know.”
“Then this will be simple.”
I told myself to maintain a poker face no matter what he said.
“If possible, marry that woman. This is the last lifeline the palace will throw for you.”
“Lifeline…?” I echoed slowly, fighting to hide my surprise. “What are you trying to say?”
“Just as it seems. If you do not take their offer, there is a very likely chance that you and your allies will not be safe.”
Maybe this guy had just lived as a monster for too long, but as an ordinary barbarian, I was finding it hard to keep up with the tempo of the conversation. “I’m finding it hard to understand, so slow down a little. Give me more details.”
“The palace… No, the prime minister is wary of your growth. You can legally take multiple wives, and you have women in your life who could take those positions.”
The daughter of the Red Cat Tribe’s family head, Missha Karlstein.
The pure blood of the elves, Erwen.
Even the daughters of Mr. Dragon.
Of course, I wasn’t planning on marrying them all. However, those who saw marriage as only a political tool would be very wary of my actions. Although it didn’t feel right for me to say it, a situation could arise where the nonhumans banded together and united under the banner of the extraordinary hero of the barbarians.
However, there was one question I had regarding that.
“I understand what you mean. But why does it matter if I marry a noble of human birth? Even if that happened, if I take in another woman after her—”
“Because that will make it impossible.”
I flinched. “Huh?”
The village chief looked at me with a smirk. “Under the laws of Rafdonian nobility, there is a situation where even a titled noble can only take in one wife.”
“…Ah.” Only then did I remember a noble rule I had been forgetting. “When the husband and wife are both titled nobility…”
“So you know. But to be precise, it takes effect when your wife is of a higher noble rank than you are… I don’t know how a law like that hasn’t been overturned in the last thousands of years.”
The village chief mumbled something that spoke to his age, but his words went in one ear and out the other.
No, wait…
Among the noble houses of Rafdonia, daughters of a noble house very rarely inherited the title. Even more rare were noblewomen ranked higher than a baron.
Are there still unmarried women among the titled nobility…?
Not from what I knew.
…No, there weren’t any, at least not when I was studying up about nobility back when I first earned my title. But now?
Time always brought about the winds of change.
“W-w-wait…”
In the current noblescape of Rafdonia, there existed one such person. A female noble of higher rank than me who wasn’t married yet.
“Are you talking about Countess Ragna Peprok? She’s my marriage partner?”
“Correct.”
Marquess, are you nuts?