Having your parents die overnight, and receiving a terminal pancreatic cancer diagnosis during a health checkup you'd put off and put off.
Compared to unfair screwjobs like those, being transported into <Jjam Academy> was easy enough to laugh off.
The moment I possessed this body, I quickly set myself the goal of 'clearing the game through politics.'
An unshakable mentality despite a sudden situation, a cool-headed assessment of my own abilities, and even a self-directed plan for the future.
'Doesn't that put me in the top one percent of possessors?'
Even after mulling it over myself, it was a clean start with nothing to fault.
And the action I immediately took to achieve that goal was...
"Please, please……."
Setting out a bowl of water and praying.
Chapter 01 - Damn, Possessors Need Money
It would not be an exaggeration to say that <Jjam Academy> began at random and ended at random.
Background, name, sex, appearance, stats, and even the most important Job Quest.
It was an extreme game of chance where fortunes rose and fell from the very beginning according to the seed value bestowed by an invisible die.
"This is seriously ridiculous."
And the character I had taken over, Lloyd Schultz, was an orphan.
Lloyd Schultz's parents had served as civil servants of the Solarian Empire their entire lives, and the setting said that they had recently filed a change-of-address form with the afterlife due to old age.
In a way, that was not all bad.
If I suddenly gained new parents after having lived without parents for nearly twenty years, it would have been more than a little awkward.
More importantly, there was something else that mattered right now.
If this possession was the start of the game, a Job Quest would soon be assigned at random.
'I hope I get something that lets me make the most of my political clout.'
A Job Quest.
It was a major matter that determined not only <Jjam Academy>'s early-game growth snowball, but even one's future route.
People even called the random seed values by the job name bestowed on them by the Dice God.
I was aiming for Chancellor or Cardinal.
They were the jobs I had played most often, and the ones that let me make the most of political clout.
On the other hand, if possible, I wanted to avoid field jobs like mage or knight as much as I could.
It had been unfair enough to become a contract slave to the military as a Korean orphan made later in life. I did not want to become the Empire's version of that too.
Then, as I waited for a message from the status window with my morning coffee.
[Job Quest Issued!]
With a cheerful chime, the Dice God lifted the curtain and revealed my future.
[Time Remaining: 9 years, 364 days….]
[Objective: Enroll in the Imperial Solarian Academy]
[Reward: ???]
"Fuck……."
A cheerful expression of gratitude escaped my lips on its own.
***
Jjam Academy Nude Patch, One-Minute Watch
Is an academy seed good?
It came up while I was rerolling seed values.
Anonymous: Damn that title.
Anonymous: Of all things, you got that kind of seed lol.
Anonymous: Bro, bro, are you rich?
Anonymous: First, let's just grind hard as mercenaries for three years.
Original Poster: Why would an academy seed go mercenary?
Anonymous: Because the tuition is fucking expensive?
Anonymous: But if you grind as a mercenary for three years, isn't that a mercenary seed? (Genuinely don't know.)
Anonymous: Rather than go to the academy, just quit the game.
***
The Imperial Solarian Academy was expensive. That was because it was an academy.
"Wow, the tuition is insane."
Forty gold per term.
One gold was worth about one million won, so I had to burn a full forty million won just to enroll. And that was only the cost of 'enrollment.'
Once dormitory fees, meal costs, and miscellaneous expenses were included, it easily exceeded fifty gold.
By that calculation, I had fallen victim to a fifty-million-won-deletion bug the moment I was transported here.
Even if I hypnotized myself into thinking of it as an investment for <Jjam Academy>'s early-game growth, it was a dizzying sum to imagine for someone who had grown up in an orphanage.
The bigger problem was that entering the academy did not guarantee early growth.
Students from prestigious families with once-in-a-generation talent, extravagant faculty, a chairman with formidable authority, and forces of evil lying in wait.
And, if you could earn it, a diploma that guaranteed advancement.
Those were the sort of clichéd elements one normally associated with an academy.
And I could say with certainty that not a single one of those elements existed at the academy in <Jjam Academy>.
'Why? Because the Emperor and the nobility are on very bad terms.'
Power was a cake that could not be shared.
And the Emperor and the nobles each wanted to eat as much of that cake as possible.
That was why the two factions could not get along.
If that is difficult to understand, think of the relationship between a president and the opposition party.
In such a relationship, there was no way nobles would send their one and only heir—the pillar of their family—to an academy in the 'Imperial Capital' as both a sacrificial offering and a hostage.
That was why the Imperial Solarian Academy was a slop bucket whose only impressive feature was its costly tuition.
'Then how the hell does a slop-bucket academy, a trash-tier regional college—no, a trash-tier capital college—keep running?'
Sons of concubines, bastards, and so on.
The 'byproducts of unprotected sex' of important people from the clergy, mage towers, and merchant guilds, nobles included, were thrown into the slop bucket.
Those important people paid the expensive tuition, neatly resolving the would-be complications to their inheritance and honor caused by their nether regions.
Meanwhile, the Emperor, plagued by a chronic labor shortage, gathered up children with a dash of noble blood and trained them as Imperial civil servants.
That miraculous win-win arrangement, born from checks and balances, was the true nature of the Imperial Solarian Academy.
'Haa, should I just reroll?'
At times like this, ordinary <Jjam Academy> players would boldly reroll their seed.
The reason for completing a Job Quest was to build up an early-game snowball, yet an academy seed gave you a contradictory Job Quest that demanded the enormous sum of fifty gold from the very start.
Of course, I had intended to reroll it too.
'But how am I supposed to do that?'
Unfortunately, it was impossible for me.
To reroll, I first had to 'quit' the game. And there was no way someone who had been transported into it could do that whenever he pleased.
Even when I wildly pressed the status window floating in the air just in case, all I gained were more stacks of self-loathing.
'Hoo…….'
Still, I decided to run my optimism circuit as best I could.
First of all, I had drawn the capital start I was most familiar with. And my status was not commoner, but gentry.
My new parents, who had worked as Imperial civil servants all their lives, had become honorary court nobles upon retirement. As their child, I had become gentry, placed between nobility and commoners.
I had not inherited an estate or a massive fortune, but at least I could narrowly avoid hearing, 'How dare a mere commoner……?'
As a Royal Light from the Sacred Light Orphanage, I had already experienced firsthand how cold and ruthless a caste society could be.
The simple fact that I had not started at rock bottom gave me great relief.
Moreover, the academy was, in effect, an officer school for Imperial civil servants.
Therefore, it was not impossible for me to rise to the position of Chancellor, the job I knew best and had played most often.
At least in theory. A Chancellor was still an extremely high-ranking civil servant.
"So what do I do now?"
Unfortunately, the optimism circuit that had been whirring so fiercely soon became a brick.
I had a house in the capital in my name and an inheritance large enough to keep me from starving to death right away.
But that was all.
[Time Remaining: 9 years, 364 days….]
[Objective: Enroll in the Imperial Solarian Academy]
[Reward: ???]
The miserable conditions remained unchanged: I could not even begin the Job Quest that the status-window bastard tauntingly showed me, 'Pay fifty gold and get into the slop bucket.'
As an old community comment had said, enlisting as a mercenary to earn tuition was practically impossible as well.
In a world where a three-headed demonic doggy could spawn at random, working as a mercenary was little different from making a 'big decision.'
That did not mean I could ignore the Job Quest entirely. That was simply a guaranteed bad ending.
I had seen quite clearly how every No-Job-Quest Run, once popular in the community, ended in a spectacular death.
I had no intention whatsoever of personally trying a method that time billionaires who were obviously masochists had already failed at.
In the end, no matter how hard I racked my brain, I only had one choice.
'The slop bucket. No, enrolling in the Imperial Solarian Academy.'
It was rather absurd that I, who had been on the verge of pinning on a golden badge only yesterday, was now worrying about how to earn a mere fifty million won.
Even so, I could laugh sincerely.
After all, unfair lucky breaks always came in life after unfair screwjobs.
Collapsing during my election victory speech, a high chance of either a coma or death, being transported into a game I had been forced to play, and then drawing an academy seed that everyone avoided.
'How sweet will the unfair lucky break that comes after this full-on barrage of unfair screwjobs be?'
https://ko.dict.naver.com/#/mini/search?query=솔직히
To be honest, it had to be sweet. Otherwise, I could not clear this game.
That did not mean I waited with my mouth open like Newton for an unfair lucky break to arrive.
Just as an unexpected holiday gift comes to a diligent orphan.
I left the house in my name, something I had never possessed in reality, and set off.
My destination was the Imperial Patronage Association in the Imperial Capital.
After retracing my experience playing the Chancellor seed, I had thought of a way to solve the academy tuition problem.
"Welcome. What brings you here?"
"I'm here to apply for a scholarship."
"Please fill out these documents, then wait for the interview evaluation."
It was simply 'getting into the academy with someone else's money.'
As Member of Parliament Han Gyeong-su said, politics was a sport played with other people's money.
Unless they were rich from the start like Trump, most politicians did not do politics with their own money.
Just as you had to greedily gobble up the unclaimed money of government subsidies to run an election campaign, rent trucks, make campaign songs, and hire part-timers to dance while handing out flyers at intersections.
The Imperial Solarian Academy was the same.
Sons of concubines, bastards, and the other products of those important people's unprotected sex.
What money could they possibly have to burn fifty gold every six months? Of course their families paid for it.
So I had no need to enter with my own money either.
"Welcome. You're interviewee number 101, correct?"
"Yes, welcome. I'm Marta Inglebert, an interviewer for the Imperial Patronage Association."
The issue was a 'justification.'
I had not inherited even a trace of those important people's blood, nor was I a candidate for a parliamentary seat in an Imperial Capital constituency.
How was I supposed to gobble up the blind scholarship money from the Imperial Patronage Association, which the Emperor sponsored?
"I would like to hear each of your stories in detail, but realistically that is impossible, so I will give you a three-minute limit. Shall we start immediately with interviewee number 100?"
"I-I have always longed for a chance to repay the grace of His Majesty, the great Emperor……."
For one thing, if I acted like number 100 beside me, who was rambling on about a personal story no one would care about, I would certainly fail.
It was also a problem that he did not lead with the point in his interview self-introduction.
But number 100 had already accepted the Imperial Patronage Association as the party with the upper hand, made himself into the subordinate party, and lowered his head.
'Look at that. The interviewers' expressions have already gone completely cold.'
The public might seem to like politicians who bowed their heads before them, but they never truly followed them.
The man, Lee Seong-min.
One of only three hundred golden badge holders in the Republic of Korea.
I would bend at the waist a full 540 degrees before Member of Parliament Han Gyeong-su, who could put a golden badge on me.
But I would never bow my head to mere voters. I was a true gladiator of Yeouido.
The unbearable gap in my tuition would end now.
From this moment on, I would become a scholarship student.
"Yes, I heard you well. Next, interviewee number 101?"
How?
The answer was to drive a wedge between them.
Between the Imperial Patronage Association funded by the Emperor.
And the patronage associations operated by important people such as nobles, the clergy, mage towers, and merchant guilds, who were trying to snatch up the rare talent that appeared in the capital once in a blue moon.
"Why should the Imperial Patronage Association sponsor interviewee number 101?"
"Because if you don't, I'll receive sponsorship from the Nobles' Patronage Association."
"……What did you say?"
I would drive a wedge between them with everything I had.
Because the foundation of politics was establishing who was on your side and who was on mine.