We're Fucked
As soon as his eyes opened, Schluss spat out a curse.
“Uh, fuck. I’m back.”
“······?”
Alexia and the examiners watching him stood frozen, mouths hanging open. The spell’s mana reaction had vanished. In other words, the spell itself had been destroyed. And the one responsible was…
“Would you please let me finish? I’m withdrawing from the entrance—”
“Full marks!”
“Sorry?”
“I’ll award full marks! No objections, I trust?”
“No… objections…”
Alexia’s sharp declaration left the examiners clicking their tongues in clear discomfort, yet they still voiced their agreement. Disliking a commoner and judging raw talent were two entirely separate matters.
“······Sorry?”
Schluss, the person in question, simply stood there with a blank, stupid expression, unable to process what he’d just heard.
“You don’t seem to grasp it yet. You’re the top admit! Unless someone else somehow scores perfectly after you!”
“But what did I even—”
“Now get out! We have to prepare for the next examinee!”
“Wait, what the hell is—”
Alexia waved her hand dismissively. Two staff members appeared behind Schluss, seized his arms, and hoisted him off the ground.
“At least explain what’s going on here!”
“Haa……”
The examiners watched his dangling figure being forcibly removed and let out sighs so heavy they seemed to hollow out the floor. They were the ones who needed an explanation.
How had a commoner who looked utterly talentless managed to pass the chairman’s notoriously brutal special exam? And not just pass—if it had only been a pass, that would have been lucky. He had scored perfectly. It was an event without precedent since the founding of the Imperial Academy.
A commoner passing the special exam. A perfect score on the special exam. Both were historic firsts.
“Everyone agrees the testing process was fair, yes?”
“Yes. We agree.”
“Even I wouldn’t have escaped that one.”
At Alexia’s repeated confirmation, the examiners could only shake their heads in awe. The spell had been crafted personally by Alexia, a grandmaster of barrier magic. Five examiners had pored over it beforehand and found nothing to criticize except to call it “perfect.”
The theme of the barrier was ‘fear.’ It trapped the subject in an inescapable space, then showed and whispered the things they dreaded most. Escape was impossible because the interior had been turned into a complete ‘mana vacuum.’ With no mana present, inscribing or casting any spell became impossible.
While the victim could neither flee physically nor magically, they were assaulted on all sides by illusions of their worst nightmares. Few students had ever taken this special exam, but nearly every one of them had either pissed themselves, collapsed in tears, or fainted on the spot.
That was why Alexia had set the passing bar relatively generously. Overcoming the fear, refusing to panic, and at least attempting to do something—anyone who managed that possessed extraordinary mental fortitude. She had planned to grant them the minimum passing score for the entrance exam.
“……I wonder what that boy saw.”
“Indeed.”
Yet Schluss had simply stood there inside the barrier, completely still. Expressionless, as if none of it affected him. When he casually tilted his head and examined his hands and feet, Alexia and the examiners had actually paused the test to double-check the spell, wondering if something had gone wrong.
Something he feared most should have appeared before his eyes. What on earth had he seen that left him so utterly unfazed?
But the real shock came immediately afterward. He had endured the fear barrier so nonchalantly that Alexia was about to declare his passage and dissolve the spell.
“Then Schluss shall be considered passed… Huh?”
“What is it, Chairman?”
“Whaaat?!”
None of them had ever seen Alexia lose her composure so badly.
“The spell… it’s breaking!”
“What?!”
The examiners’ faces filled with horror at her urgent follow-up.
Breaking a spell. It sounded simple, but it was anything but. A spell was a circulating circuit inscribed upon external mana and powered by it. Because it was essentially embedded in outside mana, anyone nearby could interfere with it, even if they weren’t the caster.
Controlling it, however, was an entirely different story. Only the caster knew the key-code. Anyone else would first have to analyze the spell’s complex structure, reverse-engineer it to steal the key-code, or locate a security vulnerability. That process was mandatory.
High-ranking mages could often accomplish this using interpretation or calculation magic. That much was understandable.
The real problem was that Schluss had been standing inside a mana-vacuum barrier. He had received zero magical assistance while reverse-engineering the spell.
“Ugh! Uuuugh…!”
Crack…! Craaaack…!
Despite Alexia pouring every ounce of her power into stopping it, the spell’s control transferred to Schluss and shattered completely.
That was why Alexia and the examiners had been left speechless with shock.
Back in the present, Alexia and the examiners sat in a circle, facing one another. The excuse about preparing for the next test had been just that—an excuse. No other applicants were attempting a double major this year besides Schluss. They had simply needed him removed so they could talk freely.
“Maybe he’s just good with calculations. He looked pretty clumsy earlier. I doubt he’d amount to much as a combatant.”
That was Sergei von Pruist, professor of Combat Magic.
“Haha! That may be! But with mental strength like that! I believe he could overcome anything!”
“That’s true, but…”
“If he fails to adapt to combat magic, Professor Sergei can simply fail him! He’ll give up on the double major himself!”
“Well, that works. This is my first time seeing a special-exam passer too… Never imagined we’d be having this conversation.”
“Oh! Now that you mention it, Professor Ludwig saw one before I arrived, didn’t you? A special-exam passer!”
“……Yes. There was one.”
Ludwig answered with a furrowed brow, as if Alexia’s loud voice irritated him. Every examiner’s gaze immediately locked onto him. Having served for over twenty years, he was the longest-tenured member of the Imperial Academy.
“Gawain von dem Schulzenburg.”
“Ah! The magic knight!”
“So even he passed the special exam!”
Everyone nodded in understanding at the name Ludwig had quietly spoken.
Gawain von dem Schulzenburg. The patriarch who had transformed the Schulzenburg family—from a mere mercenary household—into the emperor’s most cherished knightly house. The strongest mage and knight in imperial history. His martial skill was said to be unmatched, and his magic had revolutionized both academia and combat in ways that would echo through the ages.
“……Wait. A passer? Not a perfect scorer?”
“Correct.”
Ludwig’s curt reply froze the room. Even Gawain had ultimately failed to destroy the spell. Then what in the world was that commoner?
“Once the entrance exam results are released, I’m not sure he’ll even survive long enough to enroll,” Sergei muttered, shaking his head with a sigh.
The noble families would undoubtedly throw a fit. A commoner enrolling at all was already outrageous. But the top scorer? Dozens of spies would be hired to dig up everything about Schluss. Some houses might even attempt to assassinate him.
“It’s been so long since anything interesting happened! This is going to be fun, don’t you think?”
Alexia’s eyes sparkled with unmistakable excitement. She didn’t even try to hide it. Ordinary human life was so unbearably boring to her that she could hardly stand it.
The examiners saw this and—
“I agree.”
“It’s going to cause one hell of a storm.”
—chuckled and readily sided with her.
One thing was certain: winds of change had begun to blow through the Imperial Academy. Where those winds would lead was now everyone’s primary concern.
3 Shop Coins have been awarded as a reward.
The subtitle floated across my retina the instant I dismantled the spell.
Shop coins. What kind of shop are we talking about here?
You may purchase items using Shop Coins.
Activation requires all stats to reach 10 or higher.
Ten or higher, huh… Strength and agility could be raised through desperate training, sure. But how the hell was I supposed to raise mana sensitivity or potency? Without finding special items, it looked impossible.
I knew where every item was—I’d written the damn novel—but they were all buried in dangerous territory. Going after them now would get me killed instantly.
……No answers. Don’t most possession stories just hand you a shop from the start?
“You son of a—”
These little author’s notes stuck onto every damn element kept grating on my nerves. Ten is average? You stuck me inside a body that couldn’t even reach average and you have the nerve to say that?
When I get back to reality, I’m hunting you down first.
“Still… it really is something.”
I lifted my head and looked around. Outside the Imperial Academy. The imperial capital of the Freya Empire—Flare—spread out before my eyes. The setting I had carelessly scribbled down, a city of three million people, the largest on the continent, had become reality.
“This is actually insane.”
Being suddenly possessed was still shitty. But to stand here and feel no emotion at all would be a lie. Every writer had fantasized about this at least once in their dreams.
If I really couldn’t keep writing, was this the world’s way of telling me to finish the story with my own two hands?
If I ever returned to reality, I’d make sure to say thank you first.
Then I’d kill that bastard.
Fucking prick.
“Welcome, sir. Just one?”
“Yeah. One draft beer.”
“Understood! That will be—”
“Thirty tyrion, right?”
“Yes, exactly.”
I had wandered into the first tavern I saw and sat down. The price of draft beer was indeed thirty tyrion. I remembered that clearly. Thirty tyrion was roughly equivalent to three thousand won. I had set the currency that way for my own convenience.
“What the…”
I dug through my pockets and found eight coins. All of them were ten-tyrion pieces. So my entire fortune was eight thousand won…?
“Here you are, sir.”
“……”
The beer had arrived. I couldn’t exactly refuse to pay. In the end, I surrendered thirty of my precious tyrion.
“Khaa……”
I took a long swig and organized my thoughts.
My name was Schluss Heinkel. Judging by both name and clothes, I was a commoner.
“Hmm……”
The mirror on the tavern wall showed a face that wasn’t ugly, at least. That was a relief. I wasn’t ripped by any means, but I had lean, functional muscle and calluses everywhere—clearly used to manual labor. Good. That much was fine.
The problem was that I knew nothing beyond that. Where Schluss lived. Who his family was. Whether he even had any. What the hell this guy actually did for a living. I had no idea.
‘Profile.’
I tried muttering it inwardly just in case—
“……Damn it.”
Nothing happened. There was a stat window but no profile window. The system really was half-assed.
Looked like I’d have to run around and ask people to slowly uncover who Schluss Heinkel actually was.
“Oh.”
A thought struck me mid-sip. The special exam during the entrance test. Why had I forgotten about that?
It was an exam of extreme difficulty that even Erika—one of the named characters—had passed with flying colors. The barrier was called the Barrier of Fear. It was supposed to show and whisper whatever the victim feared most…
But I hadn’t seen or heard anything. My vision had simply gone pitch black and all sound had been cut off. The barrier couldn’t have malfunctioned, so why?
I had a mountain of fears. If a swarm of cockroaches had appeared I would’ve been sobbing snot and tears. Yet Alexia and the examiners clearly didn’t think so. They probably believed I had no fears at all, or possessed superhuman mental strength.
“Ha. I’m screwed.”
I had somehow entered the Imperial Academy as the top scorer and was now being treated like some kind of superhuman. Meanwhile the person in question had stats that mostly fell below average—absolute trash among trash. If I hadn’t possessed him, he would have been smoothly rejected.
By the way, where was the real protagonist of this novel, Hurtlocker Siegfried, right about now?
“Shit.”
I remembered.
In the original story, the protagonist Hurtlocker barely passed the Imperial Academy with the lowest score. But if the guy who was supposed to fail—Schluss—had scored perfectly instead… that meant Hurtlocker had failed.
We’re fucked.
We are properly, completely fucked.
And when I say fucked, I don’t mean the story is ruined because the protagonist is missing from an academy story. Hurtlocker isn’t the kind of guy who disappears from the plot just because he failed the entrance exam.
On the contrary, he would end up influencing the story even more than in the original.
The protagonist of this novel, Hurtlocker Siegfried, was a spy from an enemy nation currently at war with the empire. A terrorist dispatched to kill every student and professor at the Imperial Academy.