'Hoo—.'
The unit Derrick commanded counted its troopers in the hundreds alone.
He was a seasoned soldier, hardened down to the bone, but even Derrick had no choice this time.
Because the man across from him was a war hero.
'The war hero, Zeron.'
The rumors about Zeron ran wild.
That he wielded a sword like a Sword Master, that his magic was as mighty as an Archmage's, that the divine power he channeled outshone a Cardinal's, that he scattered curses like a black mage who'd struck a bargain with a demon—. Things like that.
It made no sense. A Sword Master is a Sword Master, and yet he was supposedly also an Archmage, a Cardinal, and a black mage all at once. And every last one at an expert level, no less.
It didn't add up.
Of course, it wasn't that no one had ever mastered more than one. But aura, black magic, divine power, and magic — these four powers formed a chain that bit and bound one another.
A knight who wields aura is weak to a black mage; a black mage can bring no power to bear against a priest who handles divine power. That was how it worked.
On the front lines there were plenty who handled several powers. But at best those were side branches.
No matter how great a war hero Zeron was, it simply made no sense for one man to wield all four powers at an expert level.
That was why everyone assumed the rumors had been blown out of proportion.
Derrick was one of them.
But after running an operation alongside Zeron, Derrick realized the rumors hadn't been exaggerated in the slightest — if anything, they'd been understated.
"Have I got something on my face?"
"N-no, sir!"
"Don't 'no' me. If you've got something to say, say it."
"Th-then— how is it you can use aura, magic, divine power, and black magic all at once, sir?"
Derrick, who'd hesitated a moment, blurted out what he'd been curious about. Zeron's brow furrowed, but Derrick — already pulling out a notebook to take notes — didn't see it.
"You just max out every stat to S."
"......I beg your pardon?"
"I'm joking."
Zeron added flatly. His voice was so flat it didn't sound remotely like a joke. He turned the subject as if nothing had happened.
"The aura...... I'm from a fallen prestigious house of swordsmanship, you see."
"Ah, is that so."
"The head of the house was bent on reviving our ruined family, so he beat me with aura every single day. Called it the family's secret art."
"What? What kind of barbaric—"
"Apparently, when your bones or muscles rupture from being struck with aura, the aura builds up inside you. Well — it worked wonderfully. Made me good and sturdy, after all."
Getting hit with aura hurts several times more than getting beaten with a club. And he'd been struck with aura, over and over, ever since he was a child—. Derrick was at a loss for words, but Zeron himself went on as if it were nothing.
"Then one day a witch showed up out of nowhere, burned the house down, and kidnapped me. Said my sturdy body made good material for experimenting with fusing black magic and magic. Thanks to that, I can use black magic and magic at the same time now."
A witch was something the world classified as more dangerous than a demon. To a witch, a human was nothing but an experimental subject. To be kidnapped and experimented on by such a creature—. In some ways it was even more horrific than the aura training.
"Then the Theocracy suddenly raided the witch and dragged me off, saying they were rescuing me. To raise me as a Battle Priest."
"A-a Battle Priest, sir? That ghastly—"
"Oh, you know of them?"
"......One of the men I trained with was a former Battle Priest."
"Then you must have had it rough."
At Derrick's sour reply, Zeron nodded as if he understood completely.
"Yes — every time we went into battle, he'd strip off his clothes and stab swords into his own body while cursing his god—"
"Not every Battle Priest is like that. Though, granted, most of them are. I keep my clothes on, at least."
"Th-that's a relief."
"What if I caught a cold otherwise? Tsk, tsk."
"......? Ah, yes, exactly!"
Something felt off, but for now Derrick just nodded along. The man was a war hero, after all. Who was he to dare call it strange? Then he gently steered the subject.
"You've achieved a tremendous feat this time, sir. Everyone's saying the war might end thanks to you. They're all saying you'll become the youngest Grand General in history."
"Bullshit. I'd have to be out of my mind to drive a stake into the army."
Zeron said with open distaste.
The Imperial Army — the greatest army on the continent, called the mightiest force in human history. In the Imperial Army, the rank just below Commander was Grand General. To describe such a Grand General as a 'stake'—.
It was a vicious joke. The worse part was that there wasn't a trace of humor in Zeron's voice.
Just then, Zeron rose from his seat. Derrick hurriedly stood as well.
"Go bust your ass, then. Berrick."
Zeron clapped Derrick on the shoulder and walked off. It's Derrick, not Berrick—. Derrick swallowed the words that had climbed to the tip of his tongue and threw up a salute.
"Honor to the Empire—!!"
Zeron didn't look back, just waved a hand.
Watching Zeron's retreating back, Derrick found himself wondering.
Zeron was already a war hero. And now he'd achieved a feat that would turn the tide of the war. Derrick couldn't even guess what kind of reward he'd receive.
'Maybe, just like the rumors say, the youngest Grand General in history could be born—.'
Derrick's eyes sparkled with anticipation, like a boy's.
***
"......What? You want to be discharged?"
A middle-aged woman with an eyepatch over her left eye fixed her gaze on me. 'Red' Cassandra — one of only five Grand Generals in the Empire, and among the very strongest of them. I gave a light nod.
"Yes, I'll be discharged."
"Did that bastard Brown call for you?"
"Grand General Brown did summon me once, but—"
"That bastard dares lick at what's mine? I'll have to rip his tongue out."
I'd have liked it to be a joke, but sadly Cassandra meant it. Cassandra was the sort always hunting for an excuse to fight another Grand General in the first place. I spoke quickly, before a civil war could break out.
"I refused, of course. How could one body serve two Grand Generals?"
"Then why?"
Cassandra's lone eye glinted viciously. Just meeting that gaze was enough to choke the breath out of me.
"The war isn't over yet. You're not unaware that if you're discharged now, your records get wiped."
She was right. The unit I belonged to was a classified one. If I were discharged now, every military achievement I'd piled up would be erased.
Still, it didn't particularly bother me. They weren't records worth keeping anyway — if anything, having them erased made it easier to move.
"Doesn't matter to me."
"The war's about to end. So why is the one who contributed most stepping out?"
The war's about to end—. That was the talk going around the front lines lately. But no. Sadly, the war was never going to end.
"I have something to do."
"Like what?"
"It's a secret."
"And here I thought we were closer than that."
"Don't say things that'll be misunderstood."
"Misunderstood? We've rolled around stark naked together, haven't we? Very passionately, too."
"That was inside a Greater Demon's belly."
Cassandra laughed out loud. It sounded just like a bear laughing. Her eyepatch crinkled slightly.
"Not that I could stop you anyway. You're a fucked-up bastard, after all."
"Well, they do say the junior takes after the senior."
Cassandra put a cigar in her mouth.
"The other troopers will be sorry to see you go."
"They'll be thrilled. Aren't they the lot who've been itching to drag me down?"
"You always want to torment the ones you like."
"Cut the bullshit—."
A curse slipped out before I knew it. Cassandra's single eye curved into a thick arc.
"Look at you, throwing manners out the window the moment you're discharged."
"Well, even a Grand General's just some old geezer once she's discharged. Or — an old hag, I suppose."
"I'm unmarried, so call me a young lady."
"My conscience won't......"
When I said it with a straight face, Cassandra laughed a ringing laugh.
"Fine, get discharged."
Cassandra said it as if granting a great favor. I bowed my head deeply toward her.
"Thank you."
The unit I belonged to wasn't a place you could just leave because you wanted out. Even for Cassandra, this was quite a stretch.
"So what'll you do once you're discharged?"
"I'm going to Elysium."
"Why? Going to teach, with that personality of yours?"
"What a thing to say. Where would you find an intellectual like me?"
"Hahahaha!"
Cassandra burst out laughing, clutching her belly. She laughed so hard my ears stung.
"Anyway, I'm not going to be a professor."
"True enough. If you became a professor, you'd have plenty of visitors coming to call. I'd like to drop by myself."
I couldn't bring myself to deny it.
"Then are you enrolling as a student?"
"How would I enroll at my age?"
"True. It'd be creepy. You were all fresh-faced when I first saw you. Now you've turned into a full-blown old man."
"I'm still young."
"And I'm a young lady."
I couldn't bring myself to nod. Cassandra tapped the ash from her cigar and asked,
"If not a professor and not a student, then what?"
"I'm going to get a job in the security corps."
"Now that's a funny joke. Why not just say you'll be the headmaster instead?"
Cassandra laughed hard. She clearly didn't believe me.
A natural reaction. Elysium was the continent's foremost academy — but in the end, it was still just an academy.
This place, the Southern Front, was where those who graduated top of Elysium ended up. And on that Southern Front, I ranked among the top ten. For someone like me to discharge and head off to Elysium was a story even I, the one doing it, found hard to believe.
But there was no helping it. The game I'd been possessed into was an academy story. And not just any academy — a romance fantasy, an academy inside a romfan.
Romfan was originally a pink-tinted genre where romance took center stage. So why had I, possessed into a romfan, ended up rolling around on a battlefield—
'That damned stat distribution.'
[Tutorial] Survive.
Time remaining: 0 days, 2 hours, 14 minutes
I stared at the translucent window and combed through my memories.
***
'Graduation Is Harder Than Romance,' 'Yeonjol' for short, was a game that had never been officially released. You could only play it if you received a separate invitation. Even I, a connoisseur of trash games, had gotten an invite and started Yeonjol.
Yeonjol was...... a hundred-percent pure, organically grown piece of garbage.
There were several reasons Yeonjol was such a trash game, but the most fatal of them was its bullshit difficulty.
Yeonjol was so hard that even the kind of people who gobble down most trash games like they're delicious all threw up their hands and quit. And yet I kept clinging to that game. There was no grand reason. Just plain stubbornness.
And so, on the day I hit my second year with it, I finally cleared the game. True to a trash game, the ending was a sad one, of course. I was flipping past the ending credits, meaning never to touch it again and shut it off, when I noticed a button on the home screen that hadn't been there before: 'Hard Mode.'
'A hard mode? In a romfan?'
As if entranced, I pressed Hard Mode.
Hard Mode cannot be undone once begun. Do you wish to proceed?
Something felt off, but back then I waved it away easily.
Next came the character creation window. Naturally, I crafted the appearance with great care. Customization was the most fun part of Yeonjol, after all. A decadent, handsome man who looked like he had some kind of story to him—.
And then came the stat window.
Yeonjol had four stats in total. Aura, black magic, magic, and divine power — those four.
Just as I was about to allocate my stats, a notice came that I'd been granted a perk I'd never seen before. A perk called [One Who Reached the End]. Thanks to the perk, my bonus stats quadrupled.
Yeonjol was originally extremely stingy with stat points. Normally, even if you poured every point into a single stat, A was the ceiling — but if you funneled all the bonus stats into one, you could even reach S+. S+ was a grade I'd never seen before either. Sink it into aura and you'd surely become a Sword Master.
But instead of concentrating my stats in one place, I spread them all evenly. It was because of the affinity system. Stats were tied to each stat's resistances, so going all-in carried far too much risk.
Warning! Your stat dispersion is too high.
Yeonjol, being a romfan game, set each character's backstory according to the stats you chose. Invest in aura, and the character would be set up as a genius born into a prestigious house of swordsmanship, and so on. Setting every stat to S seemed to have caused an overload.
It was a bit strange that a mere game would throw an error just because I'd spread my stats out. ......I should have stopped there.
You were born into a falling house of swordsmanship. The head of the house, recognizing your talent, forcibly carries out the family's forbidden secret art for the prosperity of the house. The moment the secret art succeeds, a witch appears, turns the house into a sea of fire, and kidnaps you. The witch experiments on you, fusing black magic and magic. After years of brutal experiments at the witch's hands, you are seized by the Theocracy and made to undergo Battle Priest training. You barely escape and flee to the front lines, beyond the Theocracy's reach.
Even though it was a character's story, a chillingly vicious backstory unfurled at length.
Do you truly wish to proceed?
Of course, I pressed 'Yes' without a second thought.
The reason was simple.
'Because I didn't know I'd be possessed into it.'
I really didn't know.
Truly.
TL Notes:
TL Note: "Yeonjol" is a Korean-style abbreviation of the game's full title — clipped from the first syllables of "(Yeon)ae-boda eoryeoun (jol)eop" ("Graduation Harder Than Romance"), the way fans shorten long titles.