Is This Game Fun?
I opened my eyes. The surfacing of consciousness, awakening, a new birth—any phrase would fit the perfectly clear change that had come over me.
……...
Yet everything inside me rejected it. I wanted to slam my eyes shut again immediately. Life is suffering, after all, so a new birth could only mean new suffering.
The main issue was simple. “My head… hurts…”
The headache was excruciating.
Where am I? What was I supposed to be again?
Thinking was difficult because of the pain. My memories were hazy, my senses scattered everywhere like ink dissolved in water. All I could register was that terrible agony was tearing through my entire body.
“What the hell… is going on…”
“The young master has opened his eyes!”
An unfamiliar voice rang beside my ear. The only thing I barely understood was that the “young master” he spoke of probably referred to me.
Young master… me?
Between my blurry vision and the static filling my skull, forming a normal thought was nearly impossible.
“Are you all right? Can you see what’s in front of you?”
“I feel like I’m going to throw up…”
“I’ll call the physician at once. The head of the family will arrive soon, so please stay conscious.”
One word cut through the noise and lodged in my ear.
“Head of the family… Dad?”
It acted like a trigger. Starting with “head of the family,” other words cascaded like dominoes. Head of the family, dad, son, household, me, unique ability, and Descent.
While my mind was occupied by the chain reaction of keywords, another voice reached me.
“Yes, I mean your father—Lord Heliont Helisbort.”
“Heliont.”
Heliont Helisbort, current head of a count family in the empire. Forty-one years old. Two sons and one daughter. No concubines. Hobbies include gourmet dining and magic. His unique ability is…
“Ah…”
“Young master?”
“It came back to me. Yeah, that was my father.”
The moment I recalled him, the static in my head and the nausea began to settle. With every returning memory, the drifting fragments of my self-awareness and ego gradually filled back in. And the clearer my sense of self became, the more information about myself surfaced.
“I am Helio… Helisbort.”
“…Correct. It appears your memory is intact.”
“Eight years old, male, youngest son of the count family.”
“…Young master?”
“The protagonist of Academy Great War?”
I shook off the hand holding me. The flood of knowledge and memories helped me grasp the current situation. I looked around.
This feels off.
The knowledge in my head provided plenty of details. It told me the grade and origin of the wood used for the desk, the artisan who wove the floor fabric, and exactly what cloth the bedsheets were made from. Yet despite all that, the awkwardness remained. Knowledge was supposed to accumulate through long exposure, after all.
Obviously, because the place I’m in isn’t some tiny three-pyeong room but an antique-filled space.
Everything here felt impossibly distant from the everyday life of a modern Korean person.
“Ah, so that’s it. That was the answer.”
“Young master?”
In the end, the foreign memories supplied the explanation. I had been possessed inside a game.
“Hahaha, did you hear that, dear? This boy actually said we’re all characters in some game!”
“Hehe, Nora and Rad said the same thing. Don’t tease him too much.”
…So this isn’t possession after all.
It had all been a misunderstanding. I hung my head at my parents’—especially my father’s—enthusiastic laughter. The shame of a chuunibyou patient confronting his own past crashed over me.
Academy Great War. A game with incredibly high quality that was considered a masterpiece of its era. Unfortunately, opinions about it were sharply divided in almost every aspect. The kind of game that would be perfect if you sliced it cleanly in half. Didn’t the developers notice how weird that was? It flip-flopped between GOAT and JOAT. A superstar of the gaming world that year, it spawned countless nicknames and insults.
Thanks to that, even people who had never played it knew about it. You could call it famous for being famous. There was no need to say more. That was the game I had mistakenly believed I’d been possessed into.
“Sigh, so—pfft—our son. Has your mind cleared up a little?”
“…Yes, it has.”
Father finally stopped laughing. Of course I felt embarrassed for doing something so cringeworthy, and I was annoyed that he was laughing way too hard, but that feeling didn’t last long.
He dropped everything and ran the moment he heard I collapsed.
From my faint memories, he had been greeting a rather important guest. The fact that he abandoned that to rush here meant, as his son, I had to accept at least this much teasing.
“Looks like it was a pretty old soul. Just yesterday you were clinging to me going ‘Daddy~’ so cutely.”
“You’re even fabricating memories now that I lost consciousness for a bit…”
“All right, you weren’t exactly clinging. But you did call me Daddy.”
“…….”
It was true, so I had nothing to say. Still, that simple remark suggested the aftereffects of the ability went beyond a mere fainting spell.
“So, whose soul was it to affect you so strongly?”
Among the game’s detailed settings there was something called a unique ability. From simple things like ignition to top-tier powers like regression, a vast array of abilities existed under that name. However, they were closer to character concepts than actual skills. They were keywords that gave consistent direction to everything from one’s occupation to detailed functions, traits, and ultimate moves.
Now that all of it had become reality, it had changed slightly—or perhaps it had always been this way. The unique ability had turned into a power passed down through blood. A natural talent that made nobles truly noble. That was a family’s unique ability.
Naturally, I had one too. The Helisbort family’s unique ability was Descent. It allowed the user to summon another person’s soul and borrow their knowledge and abilities.
What Father was asking about now was the soul I had descended.
“To make someone faint and leave their memories this murky, it must have been no ordinary soul.”
“Ah, that’s…”
“Yet you regained consciousness right away. As expected of my son. You truly are the greatest genius in the Helisbort family’s three-hundred-year history.”
“Um……”
“So it must have been an incredible soul, right? To see this world as nothing but a game, it might even be a soul from a higher dimension!”
“……Please stop teasing me.”
He chuckled for a moment at my answer, then waved his hand dismissively.
“For now, there’s no serious strain on your body or soul. The fainting and memory haze were only temporary effects from the shock.”
“Should I be relieved I wasn’t injured?”
“Of course that’s important. It’s a blessing there are no aftereffects. Still, souls strong enough to cause this much shock usually result in complete failure. Your talent really is something else.”
“…Thank you.”
At yet another tiresome remark about my talent, I stared at Father with a sullen expression. He looked apologetic and offered me more cookies before continuing.
“Oh dear, I’ve upset you. So what exactly happened? Whose soul did you call, and who was it?”
“Um… that’s…”
It wasn’t just the cookie in my mouth that sealed my lips. The explanation itself wasn’t difficult, but it was honestly a bit embarrassing to tell someone.
The reason was simple.
“It would be so convenient if I knew the future, wouldn’t it?”
Those had been the last words pure, eight-year-old Helio spoke before fainting. For a child, it was an incredibly world-weary thought.
“Should I try calling it?”
And unlike a normal child, I had the power to make it happen. As a result, I attempted to summon my own future self, and something did arrive.
“Uh, this is…”
The soul of an ordinary man named Oh Ji-o, thirty-two years old, living on Earth. Instead of a regressor (self), I had gotten a possessor (similar). So it was half success, half failure.
“Umm… well……”
I hemmed and hawed because I didn’t want to answer honestly, and I also didn’t feel like making something up. In the end I told the truth.
“…I tried to descend my future self.”
“Well, well. You really are a child of House Helisbort.”
Father let out a small laugh and ruffled my hair.
“It’s practically a rite of passage that everyone in our family tries at least once.”
“…I thought I was the only one.”
“Oh my, I must have overestimated you. Your older brother and sister already walked that road long ago.”
Apparently people’s thoughts weren’t all that different.
“To think you believed you were the only one who would have that idea… I didn’t realize I was evaluating you that highly, my son.”
“Ah.”
After that, Father spent a long time teasing me under the theme of “Helio, the greatest intellect of all time and absolute genius who casually comes up with ideas no one else could possibly imagine.”
“However, from today onward, refrain from doing it unless absolutely necessary. The imperial family dislikes anyone changing the future.”
The expression on his face as he said this was completely serious, making it clear this was no joke.
“…Yes.”
I nodded obediently. Now that I possessed an adult’s knowledge, I understood exactly what he was worried about.
“Good. I’m glad you understand.”
In a society with strict social ranks, earning the displeasure of those above you didn’t just endanger yourself—it endangered your entire family. Even more so if that person possessed not only power but also unusual abilities.
“So while trying to see the future you ended up summoning a soul from a world that views this one as a game.”
Apparently satisfied that his warning had landed, Father returned to the topic of Descent.
“…In a way, you could call it a success.”
“True. I’ve heard that kind of future foresight tends to be quite accurate.”
Father nodded.
“While you saw it as a game, there were people who perceived it in the form of books or plays.”
“That’s interesting.”
If game possession existed, book possession was plausible too. I nodded in understanding, and Father chuckled again before stroking my hair.
“You’re finally starting to sound like our son again. It took a while, so it seems the compatibility was better than I thought.”
“Actually… the one I descended was me from a parallel world.”
Oh Ji-o (32) was a version of me from a world parallel to this one.
It’s a shame that, like any modern person, his martial arts and magical abilities are close to zero.
But there was enough merit to make up for it. Oh Ji-o was a player who had played Academy Great War.
Like most games famous for being famous, the actual number of people who had played it was smaller than expected, so the fact that my parallel-world self had played it was quite lucky.
Of course it’s disappointing he wasn’t a veteran with ten thousand hours.
According to Oh Ji-o’s memories, the standard trope was receiving memories from someone who had played for ten thousand hours, but unfortunately he hadn’t reached that level. Still, he wasn’t a casual player who had dropped the game after one playthrough either. He had cleared it six times and diligently gathered information on the related communities.
“Information gained through Descent does not deteriorate… so that’s what it meant.”
“As expected of your talent. You’re already examining the fine details?”
Father looked at me with a mixture of surprise and delight. His tone was still teasing, but his eyes shone with pride.
“Yes. It feels like I remember every trivial detail.”
If I had to describe it, it felt less like recalling memories and more like searching through data. I couldn’t call it up instantly because it wasn’t truly “my” memory, but precisely because it wasn’t mine, I could confirm even the tiniest details Oh Ji-o had seen.
Story analysis, setting, item acquisition routes, progression, endings, gacha results… Even though I only skimmed the information, it’s all perfectly clear. Of course, pulling up the right piece at the right moment is a different problem…
Thanks to that, I had succeeded in my original goal of learning the future of this world.
“…Though the future I wanted to check first isn’t very good.”
“Yes, so you’ve learned it too.”
Father smiled bitterly. From his reaction, it seemed he already knew. After all, a game needed events to exist.
Academy Great War…
In that sense, Academy Great War had a notorious reputation. The first half pretended to be a cozy academy-raising game full of cute events, but—
…The fact that a war breaking out is practically set in stone.
In the latter half the great war would begin and the game would transform into a strategy title.