Re-Enlistment? You've Got to Be Kidding Me
Yoon Tae-oh, a sergeant in the South Korean Army, and the word sergeant itself carried entirely different weights depending on how closely you examined them. While a soldier implied a noble duty—protecting the nation through mandatory service—the rank of sergeant represented something closer to enlightenment. It was the state of having endured every conceivable form of boredom the military could throw at a man.
Yoon Tae-oh, sergeant of the 22nd Infantry Division of the Republic of Korea Army, stood at the absolute peak of that boredom.
“……Fuck, time is seriously crawling today.”
Tae-oh lay sprawled across his bunk, counting the stains on the ceiling. Yesterday there had been sixty-eight. Today, thanks to the humidity, one more had appeared—sixty-nine. The Ministry of National Defense’s clocks might run backward, but a sergeant’s time moved at the pace of the hyperbolic time chamber from that famous manga.
That was when something unusual pinged on Tae-oh’s radar.
In the corner, a fresh private who had just returned from his hundred-day leave—Private Jeon Woong-jae—was sitting ramrod straight, completely absorbed in something.
“Hey, you. What’s that? Bring it here.”
At Tae-oh’s lazy drawl, Private Jeon Woong-jae shot up like a spring.
“Private! Jeon! Woong! Jae! Present!”
Tae-oh snatched the object from the private’s trembling hands the moment he arrived. The instant he saw what it was, his brow furrowed deeply.
“Dude, what the fuck. Even if the military’s gotten softer these days… you’re seriously reading a book for chicks in here?”
In his hand was a novel adorned with bright pink floral patterns. The title alone was ominous.
‘What the hell is this…’
It was a classic romance fantasy novel—commonly abbreviated as “rofan.”
“Th-that’s not it! It’s actually fun! I swear! That’s the original novel for the game you always talk about, Sergeant—Imperial Conquest!”
Tae-oh’s eyes snapped open.
“What? Imperial Conquest? This thing?”
Imperial Conquest. A mega-hit IP that no Korean gamer could possibly be ignorant of. It began as a brutally difficult souls-like action game, expanded into a vast open-world MMORPG, and had recently branched into mobile collectible RPGs and strategy simulations. A legendary series with a global fanbase.
Of course Yoon Tae-oh was a die-hard fan. Whenever he got leave, he’d hole up in a PC bang raiding in Imperial Conquest. Inside the barracks, browsing related communities on his smartphone was his only joy. At this point, he’d read every single post.
“This is supposed to be that world? Imperial Conquest is dark fantasy. What the hell is this crown prince engagement gift bullshit?”
“The game company just gave it a cool name. The original was like this,” the private explained.
The world of Imperial Conquest was one of continental-scale invasion by the Empire. Players took on the role of one of the invaders, waging war against other nations, different races, or monsters.
“Really? Is this any good?”
“It’s surprisingly addictive! The mix of medieval and modern sensibilities is perfect. The illustrations use modern fashion styles too, so it’s… really hot!”
Hot. A very important word.
One word like that was enough to move a soldier’s heart. Private Jeon Woong-jae’s eyes sparkled with confidence.
“If it’s not hot, I’ll beat your ass.”
Tae-oh flipped through the pages with mild skepticism. The first thing that caught his eye was…
Gulp—
The sound of Tae-oh swallowing was audible. Whoever the illustrator was, the art was on another level—even compared to the infamous coffee-mix magazine. No, this wasn’t just hot. It was downright vulgar. That was the only word for it.
“Fuck. Illustration—passed! Where’s the ‘passed’ necklace? Put it on the private.”
A crudely made paper “passed” necklace was promptly hung around Private Jeon’s neck.
“Will you read it, sir?”
“Yeah. I’m borrowing volume one.”
And so Sergeant Yoon Tae-oh began reading.
The background was indeed the Empire he knew. But the protagonist wasn’t a knight rolling around on the battlefield. Instead, it followed the beautiful young lady of a ducal house who could sway entire battlefields with a single word, and the cold-eyed crown prince.
Modern slang and profanity were subtly sprinkled throughout the prose, making it surprisingly easy to read. After all, they’d mixed modern flavor into a medieval setting. Medieval clothing wasn’t exactly appealing, after all.
“Huh… fuck… why is this actually good……?”
An unexpected exclamation slipped from Tae-oh’s lips.
What was supposed to be ten minutes became thirty, then an hour flew by before he knew it.
“Hey, put everything you’ve finished in my locker. You got the rest of the volumes after one?”
Private Jeon Woong-jae shouted excitedly.
“Yes! I bought all the way up to volume ten! I’ll bring them right away!”
And just like that, Sergeant Yoon Tae-oh’s remaining military service objective was set.
With twenty days left until discharge, he would safely complete his service by binge-reading this strangely captivating rofan novel. Ten volumes in twenty days? More than enough.
“Sergeant! Yoon! Tae! Oh! As of 202X, Month X, Day X, I have been honorably discharged! Reporting as ordered!”
In front of the guard post, brilliant sunlight poured down, glinting off the gleaming sergeant insignia pinned to Tae-oh’s cap.
A year and a half. A miserable stretch of time that couldn’t be properly expressed with just one curse word had finally come to an end.
Tae-oh turned around and took one last look at the base. Promising himself he would never come back here even to piss, he strode confidently out of the guard post.
“Keep suffering, you bastards.”
The air of freedom was sweet. Tae-oh pulled out his smartphone to make plans with his friends for drinks that evening. He sent a message to their group chat.
Most of his friends had also enlisted around the same time, so many were still serving. Still, there were quite a few he could meet today.
That was when it happened.
“M-move!! Get out of the way!!!”
A desperate scream rang out. Tae-oh’s head snapped toward the sound.
His vision filled with military green.
It was a K-511 truck—the kind soldiers commonly called a “two-and-a-half-ton.” An overwhelming mass of steel that made 1.5-ton trucks look like toys and could only be matched by 5-tonners. Whether the brakes had failed or not, the massive truck was completely out of control, barreling straight toward Tae-oh as he exited the guard post.
‘Huh……?’
Human reflexes could be pathetically weak sometimes. Tae-oh should have moved, but his body froze solid. The moment the enormous radiator grille filled his vision, only one thought crossed his mind.
‘Fuck… on my discharge day…? Is this for real?’
BAM—!
With a dull impact, Tae-oh’s world flipped upside down. Hot blood soaked the asphalt. Through his rapidly fading consciousness, he could see uniformed soldiers running toward him.
Tae-oh couldn’t close his eyes from the sheer injustice of it all. The ink on his discharge papers hadn’t even dried yet. What kind of dogshit death was this?
And then his vision went dark.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
A headache-inducing noise mercilessly hammered his eardrums.
“Wake up!! Wake up!! You worthless maggots!! The sun’s already high in the sky and you’re still sleeping?!”
A familiar noise and a bone-chilling, razor-sharp voice.
Tae-oh let out a deep breath and sat up.
“Huk!! Haaah!!!”
He immediately began patting himself down.
‘What… what the hell…? Didn’t I die?’
His whole body ached like he’d been beaten, but he was definitely alive. Yet the scene that greeted him when he opened his eyes was not a hospital emergency room.
It was the inside of a shabby barracks reeking of stale sweat and dried hay. And the rough, crude leather clothes draped over his body.
“What the—what is this?! Where am I?!”
In a panic, Tae-oh looked down at his hands. They were rough and calloused. They moved as he willed them, so they were clearly his own hands, yet something about them felt subtly different.
‘I definitely got crushed by a two-and-a-half-ton and died……’
“All new recruits are to assemble on the training ground immediately!! You have three minutes! Anyone not out here in three minutes gets no dinner tonight!!”
The booming shout from outside the barracks caused Tae-oh’s brain to momentarily shut down.
“What?! New recruit?! Why the hell am I a new recruit?! I’m a sergeant who just finished his full term……”
Before he could finish, a massive man kicked open the barracks door and swung a huge palm straight at Tae-oh’s head.
SMACK—!
“Ow!”
“This bastard’s already spouting nonsense first thing in the morning! Of course you’re a new recruit! You think you’re some officer who wandered in here?! Get your ass to the training ground right now!!”
Behind the man, a flag fluttered with an ornate crest. A golden lion intertwined with a rose.
Tae-oh had seen that crest before.
It was the emblem of the Rose-rion Kingdom, the enemy nation in the rofan novel he had snatched from Private Jeon Woong-jae—“The Crown Prince Decided to Offer the World as an Engagement Gift.”
His mind went blank.
Yoon Tae-oh, Republic of Korea Army sergeant who had just completed his full mandatory service.
Five minutes after his discharge, he had been forcibly re-enlisted as a “transmigrated new recruit” inside the very novel he had been reading.
In utter disbelief, Tae-oh screamed at the top of his lungs.
“Fuuuuck!! Re-enlistment is crossing the fucking line, you bastards!! You’ve gone way too far!!!”
His desperate wail echoed hollowly through the barracks.
The only response was the instructor’s merciless kick.
THUD—!
“Shut up!! You think the others came here because they wanted to?! Get the hell outside!!”
Forced out onto the training ground, he found countless people already lined up in formation.
“Welcome to the military, recruits. From today onward, I, Viscount Robies, will be in charge of your training as commander of the Recruit Training Battalion.”
‘R-recruit training battalion? I have to go through that again? This has to be a dream… it has to be a dream.’
Tae-oh’s entire body trembled with resentment.
If you were going to make someone possess a body in a fantasy world, at least give them something decent—like the crown prince, or a duke. Hell, he’d settle for a fallen noble at this point! But no—his new reality was nothing more than a bottom-tier infantry grunt who might not even survive tomorrow.