The Prodigal Heir's Ruin
Trade city of Peluah. This dazzling metropolis where all the continent's gold flowed.
The name Carnoble meant credit and power itself. And I, Elpanso Carnoble, was the sole heir to the mighty Carnoble Guild.
My father was Peluah's legendary merchant. A monumental figure who started with nothing and built the guild into one of the continent's giants. But while he was the perfect businessman, he fell short as a father.
His miracle child, born late in life past fifty—me—he simply spoiled rotten, cradling me endlessly. And the result? Predictably, I grew into Peluah's most infamous wastrel, a ne'er-do-well without equal in history.
"Hey, smash every last barrel in here! Tonight, all this tavern's losses are on me—under the Carnoble name!"
"Ooh! As expected of Young Master Elpanso!"
"No one on the continent matches the young master's generosity!"
Back-alley thugs, third-rate mercenaries, and sycophants eyeing my coin always swarmed around me. I squandered the guild's vast wealth like an endless spring.
Whenever guild members fretted or Father sighed, I'd just snort derisively. 'It's all gonna be mine anyway—what's the big deal about spending a little?'
Arrogance at its peak.
The golden age of Carnoble, which seemed eternal, began its swift twilight when Father collapsed from sudden illness.
At his deathbed. Father's face, gaunt and withered on the sheets as he gasped for breath. The stern, towering man I'd known looked so small—it threw me off inwardly.
But what shook me more was the hollow gaze he fixed on me in his final moments... and his last words.
"......I."
"Father, speak. I'll lead the Carnoble Guild well. Don't worry."
"......I... fathered you."
That was it. Father breathed his last with that cryptic sigh.
Before grief could hit, fury surged through me. I fathered you? What the hell did that mean? Resentment for his playboy son? Distrust in my abilities? How could he leave such a damning final word for his only child?!
"Just watch, Father. I'll make the Carnoble Guild the continent's greatest! I'll prove you wrong, crystal clear!"
I vowed it inwardly at the funeral, veins bulging. The wastrel Elpanso was dead. The era of the great executive Elpanso would dawn.
But reality was cruel. Exactly one year after I seized full control with bold ambition, the Carnoble Guild vaporized.
"Young Master Elpanso—no, Guildmaster. Uncle Barto fled in the night with the ledgers!"
"W-what?! That man's a founding pillar alongside Father—impossible!"
"The merchant fleet we sent south was raided by pirates! The escort captain was in league with them!"
"N-no way...!"
Failures, betrayals, scams. Those who groveled spine-bendingly before me while Father lived turned into snarling wolves the moment he was gone.
Traps in their cunning contracts. The collapse of the mine I'd ambitiously invested in. Embezzlement by insiders.
Tearing down the fortress-like Carnoble Guild took just one year.
"Haha... hahaha...."
I slumped on the dust-blanketed floor of the empty mansion, laughing like a madman.
The opulent furniture and art were long carted off by creditors. All that remained was the clothes on my back and my empty, starving gut.
Only then did Father's final words pierce my mind like a dagger.
[I... fathered you.]
Now I understood. Not resentment or anger.
Regret. Father regretted unleashing upon the world the very fool who would dismantle everything he'd built with blood and sweat.
He lamented raising a dimwit who'd starve his guildmates and plunge the guild into the gutter—all with indulgent love.
"Aaaah... uwaaaaaah!"
I pounded the floor with my fists, sobbing. Idiot. Trash. I'd ruined the Carnoble name Father devoted his life to.
I clawed the stone until my fingers tore and bled, but spilled water couldn't be gathered.
Days of clutching my famished belly, shedding tears of regret day and night. I barely clung to my fraying sanity.
'I have to live. Survive first... then do something.'
Dying was easy, but going like this? I couldn't face Father in the afterlife.
I crawled to the mansion's hidden secret chamber. Even the creditors missed it—a small wooden box passed down through Carnoble generations.
Click.
Inside lay a bizarre heirloom of unknown purpose. A metallic pendant, intricate gears meshed with countless parts.
Father never knew its use, but it was the family's priceless treasure, handed down since the founder with strict orders never to sell or lose it.
"Forgive me, Father. Forgive me, ancestors. But... I don't even have bread for tomorrow."
With trembling hands, I picked up the relic. Pawning it might buy a few days' food.
As I wiped dust from it with my sleeve—
Whirr—!
"Wha—huh?!"
Suddenly, the pendant's gears spun wildly. A blinding blue light erupted from its core, too intense to face.
The light swallowed the dark mansion in an instant. I felt massive buoyancy, sucked into a vortex of radiance.
Conditions fulfilled.
A mechanical voice echoed in my skull. Agony tore through my body like it was being ripped apart. Consciousness plummeted into an endless abyss.
"......Hey! Get up already! Thermodynamics exam today!"
A shout pierced my eardrums as rough hands shook my shoulder.
I gasped, eyes snapping open.
"Hah! Haah!"
Unfamiliar air flooded my lungs. Not the mansion's dust and mold.
Before me: a stark white square ceiling and a strangely glowing elongated glass tube.
'What... the hell?'
I bolted up, scanning the room. Cramped but tidy. On the desk: glowing rectangular slabs I'd never seen. Walls plastered with papers in unrecognizable script.
"You nuts? Knew it when you chugged booze all night. Wash up and move! Exam in 30!"
A bespectacled stranger before me packed his bag, spouting gibberish urgently.
Dazed, I stared at the corner mirror. No golden-haired Peluah wastrel Elpanso.
A black-haired, weary young man gazed back.
Lightning struck—alien memories cascaded into my mind.
To sum up:
Name:Kang Woojin
Affiliation: Korea University, Mechanical Engineering, Junior
Current Status: Unknown world called Republic of Korea. College student on academic probation verge.
Amid skull-splitting pain, I absorbed twenty years of this body's owner's life.
Republic of Korea—a bizarre nation. 'Science' and 'machines' ruled over magic.
And Kang Woojin, the youth I possessed, had entered the nation's top university, Korea University, but drowned in booze daily, crumbling in sloth.
Just like... me.
"Hey! Woojin! What're you doing? Hurry up!"
My friend yelled from outside.
I touched the mirror's face—Kang Woojin's, not mine.
Illusion? Afterlife? Or the family relic's miracle? No clue.
But one truth hammered my chest.
'Fallen into the body of another slothful soul.'
Then, crystal-clear knowledge surfaced. This world's mechanical engineering oddly meshed with the ancient lore in the Carnoble pendant.
If I mastered this knowledge fully.
If I grasped this civilization's immense power!
My heart raced anew.
'Why this happened? No idea.'
But if this was my second chance...
"......Coming. Heading out now."
Spewing the alien tongue, I grabbed a thick textbook from the desk.
From that day, a rumor stirred at Korea University Mechanical Engineering.
Kang Woojin, perennial bottomfeeder and academic warning regular, had lost his mind.
I holed up in the library, sacrificing meals and sleep.
Calculus and engineering math, once alien, soaked in like sponges—thanks to my ledger-crunching instincts from Carnoble.
'No—Kang Woojin’s brain was brilliant to begin with.'
He aced the cutthroat entrance exam for the top school amid millions. No fool.
With that mind, I toiled bloodily. No day or night. Eyes bloodshot, hair matted, meals hasty triangle kimbap at the desk.
But it wasn't grueling. Pure ecstasy.
Honest numbers immune to betrayal. Mechanics and thermodynamics yielding precise outputs.
Each fact was a weapon forging me stronger—I felt it in my bones.
One late night in the central library. Alone in the empty reading room, scribbling designs furiously.
My caring classmate friend set a canned coffee on my desk.
"Woojin."
"Yeah."
I replied, eyes glued to the blueprint.
"What's with you lately? Joined a cult? Family emergency? They say sudden change means death—you're terrifying, studying nonstop."
His worried tone. I finally set down my mechanical pencil.
Outside: Seoul's glittering nightscape, unimaginable in Peluah, twinkling like stars.
Why cling so desperately?
I turned slowly to him. Dust-choked mansion and Father's final lonely gaze still burned in my mind.
"......No more."
"Huh?"
Wetting my parched lips, I answered in a sunken voice.
"No more regrets."