Chapter 1

Phew…

The unit under Derek’s command alone numbered in the hundreds.

He was a seasoned soldier with years of battlefield experience, but even Derek couldn’t help feeling tense this time.

After all, his superior was a war hero.

Jeron.

Rumors about Jeron were endless.

They said he wielded a sword like a Sword Master, cast magic on the level of an Archmage, commanded divine power brighter than a Cardinal’s, and spread curses like a dark mage who had made a pact with demons.

It made no sense.

If he was a Sword Master, then he was a Sword Master. But an Archmage, a Cardinal, and a dark mage too? And supposedly all at the highest level?

Impossible.

Of course, there were people who mastered more than one discipline.

But Aura, Dark Magic, Divine Power, and Magic formed a chain of opposing forces.

Knights who used Aura were vulnerable to dark mages. Dark mages were powerless before priests who wielded Divine Power. The balance continued in the same fashion.

There were quite a few people on the front lines who could use more than one power.

Still, they were merely dabblers.

Even if Jeron was a war hero, there was no way he had mastered all four disciplines.

That’s why everyone assumed the rumors were exaggerated.

Derek had been one of those people.

But after fighting alongside Jeron during several operations, Derek realized the rumors weren’t exaggerated at all.

If anything…

They had been understated.

“Is there something on my face?”

“N-No, sir!”

“Then spit it out if you’ve got something to say.”

“Um… how are you able to use Aura, Magic, Divine Power, and Dark Magic all at once?”

After hesitating for a moment, Derek blurted out the question he’d always wanted to ask.

Jeron frowned slightly, but Derek had already pulled out a notebook to take notes and failed to notice.

“Just raise all your stats to S.”

“…Excuse me?”

“I’m joking.”

Jeron added it in a completely flat tone.

It sounded nothing like a joke.

Without missing a beat, he continued.

“As for Aura… I come from a once-famous family of swordsmen that fell into ruin.”

“I see.”

“The head of the family insisted he’d restore our house’s glory. So he beat me with Aura every single day. Said it was our family’s secret technique.”

“…What? That’s completely insane.”

“He claimed that if Aura shattered your bones and muscles enough times, Aura would accumulate inside your body.”

He shrugged.

“To be fair, it worked pretty well. I ended up becoming ridiculously tough.”

Being struck with Aura hurt several times more than being beaten with an ordinary club.

And he’d endured it since childhood.

Derek was speechless.

Jeron, however, continued as though it were an ordinary story.

“Then one day, a witch suddenly appeared, burned down my family, and kidnapped me. She said my body was durable enough to serve as the perfect subject for experiments combining Dark Magic and Magic.”

“So thanks to that, I learned to use both.”

Witches were regarded as beings even more dangerous than demons.

To them, humans were nothing more than experimental materials.

Being abducted and experimented on by one…

In some ways, it sounded even worse than his Aura training.

“Then the Holy Kingdom suddenly attacked the witch, ‘rescued’ me, and dragged me away.”

“They wanted to train me as a battle priest.”

“A battle priest…?”

“The terrifying kind?”

“Oh? You know about them?”

“…One of my academy classmates used to be a battle priest.”

“You must’ve had a rough time.”

Jeron nodded knowingly.

“Y-Yes. Every time we went into battle, he’d strip off his clothes, stab swords into his own body while cursing God—”

“Not every battle priest does that.”

“Though… most of them do.”

“I keep my clothes on.”

“T-That’s… a relief.”

“What if I caught a cold? Honestly.”

“…?”

“Ah… right.”

Something felt strange about that reasoning.

Still, Derek simply nodded along.

His opponent was a war hero.

Who was he to question him?

Instead, Derek changed the subject.

“You’ve accomplished an incredible feat this campaign. Everyone’s saying the war may finally end thanks to you.”

“They’re all saying you’ll become the youngest Grand General in history.”

“Bullshit.”

Jeron grimaced.

“Why the hell would I nail myself to the army for life?”

The Imperial Army was hailed as the strongest military force on the continent.

The rank directly beneath Commander-in-Chief was Grand General.

Yet Jeron had just compared becoming one to driving a stake into his own life.

It was an absurd joke.

What made it stranger was that not a trace of humor could be heard in his voice.

At that moment, Jeron stood up.

Derek hurried to his feet as well.

“Well then, work your ass off, Beric.”

Jeron patted Derek’s shoulder before walking away.

It’s Derek… not Beric.

The correction rose to Derek’s throat before dying there.

Instead, he snapped a salute.

“Glory to the Empire!!”

Without turning around, Jeron simply waved one hand.

Watching his departing figure, Derek suddenly wondered.

Jeron was already a celebrated war hero.

Now he’d accomplished something capable of changing the course of the entire war.

Derek couldn’t even imagine what reward awaited him.

Maybe… just maybe… the rumors are true.

The youngest Grand General in history might really be born.

His eyes sparkled with youthful anticipation.

* * *

“…What?”

“You want to retire?”

A middle-aged woman wearing an eyepatch over her left eye stared at me.

She was one of only five Grand Generals in the Empire.

Among them, she ranked near the very top.

‘Red’ Cassandra.

I gave a small nod.

“Yes.”

“I’m retiring.”

“Did that bastard Brown recruit you?”

“Grand General Brown did ask once—”

“That bastard.”

“He dares lay his hands on what’s mine?”

“I ought to rip his tongue out.”

I wished she were joking.

Unfortunately…

Cassandra meant every word.

She was the sort of person constantly looking for an excuse to fight the other Grand Generals.

Before she accidentally started a civil war, I hurriedly explained.

“I turned him down, of course.”

“How could I possibly serve two Grand Generals at the same time?”

“Then why?”

Her single visible eye glinted dangerously.

Just meeting her gaze made it hard to breathe.

“The war isn’t over yet.”

“You know that if you retire now, all your military records will be erased.”

She was right.

My unit was classified.

If I retired now, every achievement I’d earned would disappear from the official record.

Still…

I didn’t mind.

They weren’t exactly accomplishments I wanted remembered.

If anything, having them erased would make things easier.

“I don’t care.”

“The war’s practically over.”

“And you’re the one who’s contributed the most.”

“So why leave now?”

The war is almost over.

That was the rumor circulating throughout the front lines.

But…

No.

Unfortunately…

The war would never end.

“I have something I need to do.”

“What?”

“It’s a secret.”

“I thought we were closer than that.”

“Don’t say things that invite misunderstandings.”

“Misunderstandings?”

“We’ve rolled around naked together.”

“Very passionately.”

“Inside the stomach of an Archdemon.”

Cassandra burst into laughter.

It sounded almost like a bear roaring.

Even the eyepatch over her eye wrinkled.

“I can’t stop you anyway.”

“You’re a stubborn bastard.”

“They say juniors take after their seniors.”

Cassandra bit down on her cigar.

“The others in your unit will miss you.”

“They’ll celebrate.”

“They’ve been trying to drag me down for years.”

“People only torment the ones they like.”

“Oh, come—”

A curse escaped my mouth before I could stop it.

The corner of Cassandra’s eye curved upward.

“So you’re already getting cocky because you’re retiring.”

“Well, once a Grand General retires, they’re just an old man.”

“…Or an old woman?”

“I’m unmarried.”

“So call me a young lady.”

“…Have some shame.”

The moment I answered with a completely serious face, Cassandra laughed loudly again.

“Fine.”

“Retire.”

She spoke as though granting me a tremendous favor.

I bowed deeply.

“Thank you.”

This wasn’t the kind of unit where someone could simply resign because they felt like it.

Cassandra was pulling quite a few strings for me.

“So.”

“What are you planning to do after retirement?”

“I’m heading to Elysium.”

“Why?”

“Planning to become a professor?”

“With your personality?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Where else would you find someone as intellectual as me?”

“Hahahahaha!”

She laughed so hard she had to clutch her stomach.

Her booming laughter practically hurt my ears.

“Anyway.”

“I’m not becoming a professor.”

“If you did, plenty of people would come looking for you.”

“I might visit myself.”

I couldn’t deny that.

“Then are you enrolling as a student?”

“At my age?”

“How could I?”

“True.”

“That’d be creepy.”

“When I first met you, you still looked fresh-faced.”

“Now you’re a complete old man.”

“I’m still young.”

“And I’m still a young lady.”

I couldn’t bring myself to agree.

Cassandra tapped the ash from her cigar.

“So if you’re neither a professor nor a student…”

“What are you going there for?”

“I’m getting a job as a campus guard.”

“That’s a good one.”

“You might as well tell me you’re becoming the headmaster.”

She burst into laughter again.

She clearly didn’t believe me.

Which was only natural.

Elysium was the greatest academy on the continent.

But in the end…

It was still just an academy.

The graduates who finished at the top of Elysium’s class all ended up here, on the Southern Front.

And among the soldiers stationed here…

I ranked comfortably within the top ten.

For someone like me to retire and become a security guard at Elysium…

Even I found it hard to believe.

But I didn’t have a choice.

Because the game I’d transmigrated into…

Was an academy game.

Not just any academy game, either.

It was an academy setting inside a romance fantasy.

Normally, romance fantasies were filled with love and rosy relationships.

So why had I spent my entire life fighting on battlefields instead?

That damned stat distribution…

[Tutorial] Survive.

Time Remaining: 0 days, 2 hours, 14 minutes

Staring at the translucent window floating before me…

I recalled everything.

“Graduating Is Harder Than Dating,” abbreviated as Yeonjol, had never officially launched.

You could only play it through an invitation.

As someone famous for seeking out terrible games, I received one and gave it a try.

Yeonjol was…

A one-hundred-percent organically grown disaster of a game.

There were many reasons it was considered garbage.

But the biggest was its absolutely ridiculous difficulty.

Even people who proudly devoured every terrible game they could find eventually gave up on Yeonjol.

Yet I kept playing.

Not because I had some grand reason.

It was simply stubborn pride.

After two years…

I finally cleared it.

Just like every terrible game, it ended with a bad ending.

Thinking I’d never touch it again, I watched the ending credits.

Then I noticed something new on the title screen.

Hard Mode.

“Why does a romance fantasy need a Hard Mode?”

Almost hypnotized, I clicked it.

Hard Mode cannot be reversed once started.

Proceed?

Something felt odd.

But at the time, I didn’t think much of it.

The next screen was character creation.

Naturally, I spent ages customizing my appearance.

Character customization was the most enjoyable part of the game.

I made myself into a decadently handsome man who looked like he carried countless tragic stories.

Then came the stat screen.

There were four stats.

• Aura
• Dark Magic
• Magic
• Divine Power

Just as I was about to allocate my points, a notification appeared.

It announced a special trait I’d never seen before.

[One Who Has Reached the End]

Thanks to it, my bonus stat points were quadrupled.

Originally, Yeonjol gave stat points very stingily.

Normally, even dumping every point into one stat only reached Rank A.

But with the bonus…

You could push a stat all the way to S+.

I’d never even seen that rank before.

Putting everything into Aura would almost certainly make the character a Sword Master.

But…

I didn’t put everything into one stat.

I spread my points evenly.

Because of the elemental advantage system.

Each stat determined your resistances, so specializing in only one felt too risky.

Warning!

Your stat distribution is excessively balanced.

In Yeonjol, your chosen stats determined your character’s entire backstory.

If you invested heavily in Aura, your character became a genius born into a prestigious family of swordsmen.

Since I’d raised every stat to S…

The game seemed to overload.

For a mere game to bug out because I spread my stats…

That should have been my cue to stop.

You were born into a fallen family of master swordsmen.

After discovering your talent, the family head forcibly subjects you to a forbidden secret technique in hopes of restoring the family’s glory.

The moment the technique succeeds, a witch appears, burns your family to the ground, and kidnaps you.

She performs years of brutal experiments attempting to fuse Dark Magic and Magic within your body.

Eventually, the Holy Kingdom captures you and forces you into battle-priest training.

You barely escape and flee to a battlefield beyond the Holy Kingdom’s reach.

It was only a character background.

Yet reading it sent chills down my spine.

Are you sure you want to continue?

Naturally…

I pressed Yes without hesitation.

The reason was simple.

I never imagined I’d actually transmigrate into the game.

I truly didn’t.

Really.