A Grim Beginning
It was a grim start.
“What… what did you say?” The dean’s eyebrows twitched. Even though he’d clearly heard me, he asked again anyway. Probably wanted to confirm it was real. Not that it mattered.
“I asked if there was a way to cure erectile dysfunction,” I repeated, voice flat.
I knew he wasn’t messing with me. The question had genuinely caught him off guard. Still, it left a bad taste in my mouth. Since I couldn’t exactly throw a tantrum in the dean’s office, I kept my face blank and answered as dryly as possible.
“Ahem. Ahem.” The dean cleared his throat twice, clearly buying time. He stared at me for a long moment before speaking. “Judging by your expression, this isn’t a joke.”
The second the words left his mouth, his finger flicked. Mana rippled through the air, and the tightly sealed bookshelf in the corner sprang open. A small, perfectly round pill floated out. It carried a sweet, fragrant scent. One look told me it was no ordinary medicine; it practically radiated spiritual energy.
“This should take care of it.”
“This is…”
“An elixir. Its effects aren’t miraculous, but it ought to be enough to treat that… condition of yours.”
I stared at the elixir with a sour expression. I’d asked a question and immediately gotten a magic pill lobbed at my face. Was it really that simple? I’d never picked the erectile dysfunction trait in any previous playthrough, so I had no idea how the penalty actually got removed. That was why my first thought had been the all-purpose elixir that could wipe out every penalty trait at once.
But solved this easily? No way. I didn’t know what standard the dean was using, but this clearly wasn’t elixir-grade. Probably mid-tier at best. If a penalty this heavy disappeared from something that weak, it never would’ve given me that many starting points in the first place. Power always demands a price. Same with points. Erectile dysfunction was no exception.
Even so, I carefully pocketed the pill. I didn’t think it would work, but if it did, great. And hey, it was still an elixir. No downside to eating it.
“With that matter settled… anything else?”
“Anything else…?”
“It feels a bit awkward to treat that as an official question. Still, if it’s something I can answer, I’ll do so within reason.”
What was this now? So handing over the elixir wasn’t the end of it? My eyes widened. I’d only burned the opportunity because it didn’t really matter if I wasted it. But another free question? That was unexpected. And not a bad deal for me.
If the dean was serious, it meant he’d answer questions up to a certain level. I had no idea where he drew the line, but the fact that I didn’t actually have any questions for him hadn’t changed. Still, I couldn’t just throw away free value.
“Then, instead of a question, may I make one request?”
“A request… As long as it’s reasonable, I don’t mind.”
The dean’s eyebrow twitched when I skipped the question, but he shrugged like it was nothing.
“Please grant me permission to stay out overnight this semester. No more, no less. Once is enough.”
“Stay out overnight?”
“Yes. About three days.”
The dean stared at me. After a moment of thought, he spoke slowly. “You’re saying this while fully aware that first-year students in their first semester are forbidden from leaving the academy except for official experiential learning?”
“Yes. I’m also aware that special circumstances allow for up to three days.”
“And you have such circumstances?”
“I do.”
“You won’t tell me what they are even if I ask, will you?”
“……”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
His fingers drummed rhythmically on the desk. He seemed to weigh something in his mind before finally nodding.
“Do as you wish.”
“Thank you.”
I bowed politely. The dean waved his hand, opening the door with magic as if the conversation was over. I started to leave, then stuck my head back in.
“Oh, Dean?”
“Hm? More to say?”
“Besides this elixir, is there anything else that’s good for a man—”
“There isn’t!”
The door slammed shut with terrifying force.
I clicked my tongue at the firmly closed door. That reaction was way too strong. Pretty sure there’s at least one more option. Shame.
“Well, whatever.”
It was still a better haul than I’d expected. An overnight pass was something you could never get through normal game routes. To earn the right to leave campus in the first semester of first year, you needed truly special conditions. Your body had to be absurdly weak, or you needed a desperate reason to go outside. Otherwise, the academy kept you locked in.
The reason was simple: they had no idea what might happen to you out there. Inside the academy, instructors and the dean kept interference at bay. But they couldn’t babysit every student who stepped outside. Most who did ended up getting contacted by guilds.
Outside the academy walls, mediocre guilds and shady contracts were everywhere. Those guilds pounced on any academy student they saw. Entering the academy meant you were a promising talent with a bright future. Since direct contracts inside the academy were forbidden, they waited until students were outside where no one could watch.
Plenty of students had already been burned by those arbitrary contracts. That was why the dean had personally instituted the restriction on outings and overnight stays. At least for the first semester. Only after they’d been properly educated to avoid such traps would they be allowed out.
That was why this pass mattered. I was bypassing a rule the dean himself had created. If it hadn’t worked, I would’ve found another way. Anyway.
The reason I’d specifically asked the dean for the overnight pass was simple.
Need to secure some funds.
Academy tuition was no joke, but as the top freshman, that wasn’t a problem anymore. Support money and scholarships would cover it. But there were things support funds and scholarships couldn’t buy. I needed cash. Enough to purchase every elixir I could get my hands on and keep buying more.
Equipment could wait. If I had the elixirs, that was enough. Good weapons and gear were useless in the academy right now anyway. I could stock up on those later. For now, elixirs came first.
That thought had struck me the moment the dean handed me the pill. Sure, the ultimate elixir was basically a panacea, but sitting around waiting for it with my thumb up my ass was stupid. Better to consume everything available.
Even though most of the game’s story took place inside the academy, there were definitely events tied to outings and overnight stays. Some of them involved elixirs circulating on the market or hidden in dungeons. Snagging those would get me money and let me clear troublesome episodes ahead of time. Two birds, one stone.
Well, that’s not the only reason.
If my immediate goal was restoring my masculinity, my overall goal was still demon extermination. I’d killed that thing hundreds, thousands of times in the game, so it felt boring as hell. But now that I was here in the flesh, I had no idea how it would go. It might be tougher than I thought. Maybe I couldn’t even handle it alone.
So I needed to eliminate as many variables as possible.
I stopped in the middle of the hallway and recalled the game’s strategy guide. In the game, there were characters who could delay the demon’s summoning or weaken its power. Some existed only for that purpose, while others would naturally join the protagonist’s party if you progressed their routes.
“You’re Lee Sungjin, right?”
The voice calling my name made me slowly lift my head. A female student stood in front of me. I looked at her while recalling the protagonist’s inner monologue from the game.
Fiery red eyes that looked ready to devour me at any moment. Hair the exact same shade cascaded down carefully. She was undoubtedly a stunning beauty, but what truly captured attention was her palms—calloused and hardened from years of effort—proudly offered forward.
Sword Princess.
“I’m Tana Erhen.”
The runner-up of this semester. The student who would have taken first place if not for me. The girl standing before me, extending her hand with pure goodwill and zero inferiority complex, was scheduled to be murdered by the demon during the upcoming first-semester midterm episode.
“Haah.”
After the freshman top student Lee Sungjin left, the dean let out a long sigh. She released the mana she had been cloaking herself with. The dignified elderly figure vanished instantly, replaced by a girl who looked no older than a middle-schooler sitting in the oversized chair.
“Ugh. This damn body.”
In exchange for transcending human lifespan, her body had stopped aging. Maintaining the appearance of a middle-schooler had become something close to a complex for her. That was why she used magic to overlay an illusion of an elderly sage whenever she needed to project dignity and wisdom. That was the image the world knew as the “Sage.”
I almost got caught once.
When Lee Sungjin—the top freshman—had asked about curing erectile dysfunction, she had nearly dropped her illusion on the spot. If not for her superhuman self-control, the spell would have shattered.
“They say there’s no normal genius, but…”
That guy seemed legitimately insane. The dean—currently in the form of a little girl—clicked her tongue in disbelief. No matter how talented or well-born someone was, people usually showed restraint in front of the Sage. To boldly bring up such a condition right in front of her? Whatever his intentions were, openly mentioning that kind of affliction was basically announcing that he was crazy.
“He can’t have been serious.”
Erectile dysfunction. The words were vulgar even to think, but the dean knew there were already treatments for it. Before high-grade elixirs and hierarchies became common it might have been called incurable, but these days it was perfectly treatable with proper care. Even in serious cases, consuming the right elixir or building up one’s internal energy was usually enough to purge it.
There was no way a freshman capable of subjugating an iron-horned bull couldn’t handle something like that.
“Maybe he has a different illness he’s too embarrassed to mention?”
Any sane person—or at least anyone only moderately insane—wouldn’t have said something like that. Yet when she remembered the final thing he’d asked on his way out, she couldn’t help but wonder if he really was just a complete lunatic.
“Aish, seriously!”
In all her long years, she had never met someone who would say such things directly to her face. For the first time since taking the position of dean, her mind genuinely went blank.