Please, Spare My Life

Ian Justin is the only powerless member of a mage family.

He dies from magic before turning twenty-four, and is cursed to regress to age twenty-two whenever he dies.

After sixteen deaths and a seventeenth restart, Ian heads to the Radford ducal territory, the only place without magic, in order to survive.

However, the House of Radford restricts entry to outsiders.

With no choice, Ian joins the one and only line for admission.

"What line is this?"

"It’s the line of candidates for Duke Odellia’s spouse-selection trial."

"What?"

Ian is faced with a choice.

First: leave Radford, die, and regress again.

Second: take part in Duke Odellia’s spouse-selection trial, then die after failing?

"...Obviously the second one!"

Right there, Ian becomes a candidate for the duke’s spouse and enters Radford.

He never imagined he had even the slightest chance of passing the trial.

Whoever is chosen has nothing to do with him.

His goal is only one thing:

survival.

*

Odellia calmly makes a suggestion.

"If we want to share secret documents, the only way is marriage. Should we get married?"

They had agreed to be friends.

So marriage?

To put it bluntly, it was ridiculous nonsense.

At the moment, Odellia was just saying whatever came to mind.

‘What an absurd proposal.’

It took less than a second to judge it in his head.

Ian answered without hesitation.

"Yeah. I’ll do it."