A Bleak Beginning
The entrance to the Final Academy buzzed with tension as parents and reporters waited for the results of the entrance exam. I stood among them, scanning the massive electronic board that would soon display the rankings.
“When are they announcing it?” someone muttered.
“Any minute now. Just wait a little longer,” came the reply.
A female guild member turned to her superior, a woman puffing on a cigarette. “Boss, who do you think will take first place this time? This batch is supposed to be one of the strongest in history, so it’s really hard to predict.”
Lee Ha-eun exhaled a thin stream of smoke. “...Probably Cheon Yu-ha.”
Her eyes stayed fixed on the display board. If her prediction held, first place would go to the Sword Saint’s granddaughter. Cheon Yu-ha had been personally trained by the Sword Saint himself and already possessed strength on par with a C-rank awakener. Whatever the exam format, there was no way someone with that level of power would fail. That was why Ha-eun had bothered to show up in person—she rarely attended these events. She believed Cheon Yu-ha had the potential to become a true Ranker.
And if she did...
She’ll definitely become a nuisance.
The Sword Saint was a thorn in the side of both Ha-eun and her organization. That was why she had come—not just to watch, but to scout other promising talents who might one day rival her own people.
Suddenly, the board lit up.
First Place, Lee Sungjin: 01:35 — Iron Horned Rhino Subjugation
Second Place, Tana Erhen: 07:42 — Iron Horned Rhino Subjugation
Third Place, Cheon Yu-ha: 07:45 — Iron Horned Rhino Subjugation
Ha-eun’s eyes widened. The cigarette slipped from her fingers and tumbled to the ground, still half-unsmoked.
“Boss!” the man beside her shouted, pointing frantically at the board. “Lee Sungjin? Who the hell is that?!”
“Get the article up right now! Headline: ‘The Discovery of a New Star!’”
“Cheon Yu-ha didn’t even get second? She’s third?!”
Gasps and frantic voices erupted from every direction. Guild representatives scrambled for their phones. Reporters hammered away at their keyboards. The entire area descended into chaos.
Ha-eun stared at the board in silence. The name Lee Sungjin remained stubbornly at the top, blinking without error.
“Lee Sungjin, huh...” The corner of her mouth slowly curled upward. “How interesting.”
**
“Whoa.”
The first word out of my mouth after stepping into my assigned dorm was pure awe.
The penthouse was easily sixty pyeong, fully furnished with every convenience imaginable. The plush bedding and powerful air conditioner were nice, but what really caught my eye were the three separate bathrooms.
Not two. Three.
And all of this was provided completely free for the top-ranked freshman for an entire semester. Maybe reincarnating into this world wasn’t such a bad deal after all.
I unpacked my things and flopped onto the ridiculously soft bed. It felt like the mattress was actively pulling me in with some mysterious force. The facilities here were on another level. I vaguely remembered from the game that dorm quality scaled with rank. The rooms given to lower ranks were...
Nowhere near this nice.
That was exactly why I had aimed for the top spot. A person should eat and sleep in comfort, after all. Well, that wasn’t the only reason, but it was a big one.
Lying there and staring at the pure white ceiling, I let my thoughts wander. If all I had wanted was nice facilities, I wouldn’t have drawn so much attention during the entrance exam. I could have just followed the original scenario—let Tana Erhen take first, Cheon Yu-ha take second, and settle comfortably in the upper ranks myself.
Come to think of it, she got second place.
Tana Erhen. A name that had never been particularly famous before. But in the future, she would become one of the heroines of the Final Academy that I would encounter multiple times. I wondered what she was thinking right now. Was she satisfied with second place? Or was she burning with resentment for missing the top spot?
“Well, it doesn’t really matter.”
Whatever she thought, I had to take first. Especially when the reward for first place was the right to ask the Sage a single question.
The Sage. The official setting-obsessed character of the Final Academy... and its headmaster. According to the lore, he was a grand archmage who had already reached the 8th Tier. At the same time, he was a scholar who had lived for over a century in pursuit of truth. He possessed knowledge about nearly everything in existence. Being allowed to ask him even one question was an incredible privilege.
There were rumors that he had personally requested the position of headmaster despite being able to live in wealth and fame. It was also said that he was the one who proposed the special reward for the entrance exam.
“...That’s pretty much all the established lore for the Final Academy.”
I had checked it so many times that I could practically recite it from memory. Especially the parts about the Sage.
Truthfully, the standard route wasn’t for me to take first place. The proper path was to let Tana take first, Cheon Yu-ha take second, and secure a solid upper-rank position while collecting decent rewards. After all, I had seen hundreds of endings and had already asked the Sage almost everything I wanted to know.
That meant the right to ask him a question was actually less efficient for me than the second-place reward. There wasn’t much point in asking about things I already knew.
“If only my body wasn’t in this state.”
I gritted my teeth.
The Sage had lived for a very long time, pursuing truth. Surely he would know how to cure something as trivial as Erectile Dysfunction, right? Please, I was begging. That was exactly why I had gone all out for first place.
Outside, people were probably losing their minds trying to figure out who Lee Sungjin was, what kind of monster could finish the exam in first place. But I couldn’t care less. This was what mattered most to me.
With that thought, I slowly sat up from the bed.
Despite the horrific penalty I had chosen during character creation, my physical condition wasn’t as bad as I had feared. The weakness trait made me tire easily if I overexerted myself, but the overwhelming compensation from my other traits helped mitigate it. Besides, that kind of issue could be fixed with a few high-grade elixirs anyway.
The real problem was my current pathetic base stats. Even with all my traits and bonuses, defeating a C-rank monster during the exam had been possible only because the Iron Horned Rhino had relatively simple patterns. If I had faced something like an undead instead, I would have struggled badly.
Training was an absolute necessity. No matter how many powerful traits I had, they were meaningless with stats this low.
For now, I should focus entirely on training.
Taking elixirs or hunting for good equipment right away wouldn’t be efficient. Elixirs fundamentally strengthen the body. In game terms, it was like raising strength by 5. You usually saved them until you had built up a decent stat foundation first. Of course, the higher your stats, the smaller the gains—but even tiny increases mattered a lot at that point.
Right now, my body was still at the stage where simple training alone could raise my stats. Since I had to train anyway, there was no need to waste elixirs yet. There weren’t that many elixir-giving events early on either.
Besides...
I’ll need them soon enough.
An incident was going to happen in the near future. Now that I was inside this game, I had to prepare for it no matter what.
“Student Lee Sungjin. The headmaster is calling for you.”
“Yes!”
But first, I had to take care of this.
**
The headmaster’s office was a fair distance from the dorms. The academy’s main building and dormitories were quite far apart to begin with. After walking through the sunlight, I finally arrived and took in the full scale of the academy that I had only ever seen in the game.
It was enormous—easily dwarfing any university campus I could imagine. Almost everything a student could possibly need was available within its grounds. That was because once you entered the academy, it often took a very long time before you could leave again. Especially for new students, some weren’t allowed out until after midterms. The academy had clearly been designed with that in mind.
Because of this, there were plenty of things to see inside. Shops and restaurants were a given, but there were also famous brand stores, specialized equipment shops, and even a blacksmith’s forge where artisans worked. My eyes were drawn to all these sights I would never have seen in the original game, but eventually my gaze returned forward.
“Headmaster. I have brought student Lee Sungjin.”
“Good work.”
“You may enter.”
The instructor who had guided me left. I stepped through the finely carved wooden door and found an old man with neatly trimmed white facial hair waiting inside. The atmosphere around him was extraordinary, living up to his title as the Sage. The overwhelming presence of an 8th Tier master quietly dominated the entire room.
“Well, you probably already know why I called you here. There’s no need to drag this out. Do you have a question you wish to ask me?”
“......”
“If you don’t have one yet, you may postpone it. As long as it’s during this semester, you can ask at any—”
“...I do have one.”
At my words, the headmaster smiled gently and stroked his beard.
“Oh? Very well. Are you certain you won’t regret the question you are about to ask?”
“Yes. I’m certain.”
“Then that settles it.”
The Sage lifted a cup of steaming tea and spoke.
“So, what is your question?”
“Is there a way to cure Erectile Dysfunction?”
The Sage spat out his tea in a spectacular spray.
The teacup shattered against the floor.
And at the same time, my heart shattered into a million pieces right along with it.