Assessing the Situation
"One glass of whatever's cheapest, please."
At my words, the stout proprietress brought over a cup brimming with cheap liquor.
Thud.
The sound of the cup hitting the table cut faintly through the noisy tavern.
"Always going for the cheapest stuff, huh. Here you go."
It was broad daylight, and I was sitting in a tavern drinking. A wastrel's life, maybe — but so what? I had been possessed into a game world. A little deviation like this didn't seem all that bad. Honestly.
…Anyway, to sum it up: I had been dropped into the world of my favorite game, Garand Eternity Saga.
The moment I arrived, I had desperately called for a status window. But true to its nature as a dusty old relic of a game, nothing so convenient as a status screen floating before my eyes ever happened.
Even so, I managed to learn quite a lot without much trouble. Or rather — more accurately — upon being possessed into this body, its memories had simply settled into me as if they were my own.
My name was Swen. Twenty years old this year. No noble blood, so no surname. No family attached, either. The perfect form of a rolling, disposable extra character — the kind tailor-made for possession. That should make it easy enough to understand.
The only way back to my original world was for this continent to be unified. More precisely: if the nation I belonged to succeeded in unifying the continent, I would be able to return safely to where I came from.
Pretty standard cliché so far.
The situation I had been handed couldn't be changed. Next came checking my own stats. Since I couldn't pull up exact numbers through a status window, I tested them the hard way — by moving my body.
Even climbing a small hill behind town left me winded. Martial power and physical strength were clearly low. Somehow I had become eight years younger than my real age, yet I felt even frailer than my old body. Somewhere between five and fifteen, I guessed.
Charm… honestly, I wasn't sure. Looking in a mirror, I wasn't particularly ugly — but I wasn't handsome, either. Aside from hair that was nearly pure white, there was nothing distinctive about me. Thoroughly average, I supposed. This game had a medieval fantasy feel, so characters came in every hair color under the sun. Besides, there had never been any in-game text stating that Charm determined a character's looks. That was just my vague assumption. In the game, Charm mainly affected persuasion and diplomacy. Call it fifty or sixty, maybe.
There were other stats, too — Politics, Leadership, and the like — but I had no way of checking those right now. Once I enlisted under some army, I would find out.
And the most important of all… Intelligence.
After several days of experiments since the possession, I was certain.
My Intelligence… is one hundred. No question.
"Ah, you again. Back at it today, eh?"
A middle-aged man I had grown familiar with over the past few days walked up beside me as I nursed my cheap drink. Just a neighborhood guy. Not a named general or anything I recognized from the game.
"Good afternoon."
"Right. You hear the news? The Brans Army retook Heisel Castle."
"Is that so?"
Of course they had.
The Brans Army was the force that held the territory this city belonged to — a nation led by one of the game's named characters, Lin Brans.
Lin Brans. The most gifted of the three talented Brans siblings. Despite the difficult position of being the third child and a woman, she had inherited the throne from her father purely on the strength of her own ability. Her two older brothers now served under her as generals.
If you had to sum up the Brans Army in one phrase, it would be this: the recommended starter faction.
No particularly harsh modifiers across the board, a solid talent pool — if you just learned the game's basics, you could unify the continent without much trouble. Once you'd cleared the game once, there was no real need for strategy anymore, so players tended to drop them pretty quickly. That was the Brans Army.
"Incredible, really. You, I mean."
"Me?"
I played dumb on purpose.
"You called it — that the Brans Army would lose Heisel Castle to the Walnut Army's sudden invasion. And then you called it again — that they'd retake Heisel even though anyone could see they were charging back in without any real reorganization."
The Walnut Army was a thoroughly ordinary nation, the kind a mid-to-upper-tier player might pick for a no-frills run. In this world-line, they had apparently spawned right next to the Brans Army. Pitiful, really. Lord Walnut would probably be for the executioner's block before long. They were one of those nations that could never unify the continent unless a player took them over personally.
The power dynamics of the game had been transplanted wholesale into this world — so even ordinary citizens like this man naturally assumed the Walnut Army could never beat the Brans Army.
But when I ran the prediction, the Walnut Army could take Heisel Castle. I didn't know why. No matter how I turned it over, the only conclusion that came out was the Walnut Army wins. And they did win.
That alone was unlikely enough. Then the Brans Army, without even properly regrouping, scraped together their routed troops the very next day after losing the castle and threw them straight back into a retaking operation.
This man had insisted the Brans Army would struggle this time, laying out every argument for why. And yet, for some reason, the only conclusion that surfaced in my mind was the Brans Army wins. Again, I didn't know why — only that I felt it. No: I was certain.
And today, the result had come in.
It wasn't just these two situations, either. I had discussed the current state of affairs with all sorts of people, and every single time, things went exactly as I expected. Only after dozens of cross-checks did I become sure of it.
It defied common sense — but it was as if the entire universe were throwing its weight behind me, making everything unfold exactly as I thought it would.
Given that this world was the world of Garand Eternity Saga, there could only be one explanation.
My Intelligence was one hundred.
"Well. It just seemed that way."
"What are you, some kind of prophet? I'm heading off to gamble in a bit — can you tell me if I'll win?"
He grinned as he said it. I fielded it with some light small talk.
"Haha, that's a bit… Mister, you'd be better off not gambling at all."
"You're right. If I gamble again this time, my wife really will divorce me."
Would this man win or lose if he gambled? Unfortunately, I couldn't predict that. Apparently, Intelligence 100 only let me perfectly predict things that fell within the scope of what the game itself considered predictable.
If I could call everything, I'd be the one at the gambling table.
Having Intelligence 100 didn't suddenly make me a genius with brilliant strategies pouring out of my head. But my predictions about the questions put to me hit one hundred percent of the time. Whatever the answer was, it was correct — the optimal decision available. Just like how Intelligence 100 characters in the game always gave the right advice when consulted.
Is there some way I can put this to use?
I said goodbye to the man as he left, then sank back into thought.
In truth, my ability came with something of a penalty. My predictions only worked when someone asked me a question. Sitting alone and thinking, Can Nation A beat Nation B in War X? produced no clear answer. Until now, I had only been able to respond because the man had asked me directly what I thought would happen. That tracked, too — in the game, strategists of this type never volunteered anything until they were asked. Once a question had been put to me, though, I could run the prediction as many times as I liked.
Anyway.
This was a game world, and it ran by the game's rules — but the me breathing here was no avatar. I was a living, breathing human being.
These were chaotic times. Making a name for yourself wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but sticking your neck out too far was a sure way to get it cut off. In the game, a player would hit the conscription button, raise about two thousand soldiers, and march on the neighboring castle as a matter of routine. Those two thousand troops became two thousand HP, grinding through fierce battles. But what had felt like hit points in the game were two thousand actual people. When the number dropped, people died. And I was not some godlike being overseeing that process — I was a value of one among those two thousand. A single unit that could be conscripted at any time.
Of course, becoming a vassal of the unifying nation would let me return home safely. But I had no idea how long unification would take, and the odds of dying along the way were uncomfortably high.
So rather than chasing glory, my plan was to join the Brans Army as a modest retainer, draw a steady salary like a civil servant, and live quietly. If the Brans Army unified the continent, great. If some other nation capable of unification rose to prominence in the meantime, I could just change jobs. That was my isekai life plan.
Which was why I was killing time in a tavern in the middle of the day, wasn't it? In this game, talent recruitment happened in taverns — and with my Intelligence at one hundred, someone was bound to take an interest and come collect me.
But over the course of a week, only a single sovereign had come to recruit me. For a character with Intelligence 100 sitting unemployed, the AI was supposed to come scout you without fail. This shouldn't have been possible.
In the game you could check character stats… but now that it's a real world, there's no way to be sure.
Even the man I'd just been talking to wasn't some game element. Neither was the cheap beer I was drinking. The game had never been polished enough to model things at that level of detail.
So… even if I sat around in taverns forever, the Brans Army wasn't going to come pick me up?
Looks like I'll have to go knock on doors myself.
Was I going to have to move my own body if I wanted to make something of myself? It could get dangerous… but it still beat sitting around as a nobody and getting dragged off as a conscript. Weak as I was, I was still a man — and in this game, conscription could pull from the entire adult male population. That meant I could end up as disposable infantry and die as a meat shield.
I drained the cheap cup and was turning over how to get into the Brans Army when—
"Um… Lord Swen. Might I trouble you for a moment?"
"…?"
I turned toward the woman's voice that had called my name.
Cute, cream-colored bobbed hair. Eyes as red as the strawberries on a strawberry cake. Clothes that looked expensive but somewhat worn from long use.
Her name was Lunarien Iniang. In the game, her nickname was Luna — the ultra-hard-mode sovereign designed for expert players, the worst difficulty the game had to offer.
Her starting territory and forces were pathetic, less a proper nation than a band of fallen nobles playing at being an army. Her talent pool had enormous potential, but early on it was barely any help. Stick it out long enough, though, and every companion who followed her became SSS-tier — the so-called "Return of the King" playstyle.
I had said only one leader had come to recruit me over the past week. That leader was Luna.
"You've come again?"
"Y-yes. I found myself wanting to talk… Would that be all right? I'll buy the drinks."
"The drinks won't be necessary."
I had played as Luna before, so I knew the state of her army's finances better than anyone. I'd sooner squeeze blood from a flea.
"Then…"
She carefully took a seat. It struck me again how stunned I had been the first time we met. That outdated pixel art had never hinted at beauty like this. If I had known Luna was this pretty, I would have run a lot more unification campaigns with her.
"Um… Lord Swen. I'm terribly sorry to keep imposing on you like this, but… please, won't you help me…?"
"As I've said, Lady Luna, my talents are far too meager to serve under you."
At my polished refusal, she shook her head hard.
"That's not true! I've heard that you are a person of great renown. It's embarrassing to admit, but our army currently has no strategist at all… We truly need your help, Lord Swen."
"…"
The truth was, turning her down this time would make five rejections. She had come four times in a single week. After three refusals she should have taken the hint — yet she kept coming back to recruit me, the sovereign herself, speaking in honorifics the whole time.
I felt bad for her, but I only had one life. I could not join the Luna Army, which would vanish from the map before long right alongside the Walnut Army.
Maybe I've been too gentle about it.
It seemed time to deliver a dose of cold reality.
"…Lady Luna. Might I be so bold as to offer a few words?"
"O-of course…! Please, speak freely."
"Why did you raise an army, Lady Luna?"
"That is… t-to unify the continent, so that everyone might live in peace—"
"In other words, you mean to become emperor?"
My uninterrupted follow-up left her slightly flustered.
"Th-that's right."
"How strange, then. Someone destined for the throne, yet you humble yourself before everyone — myself included."
"Th-that's…!"
Caught off guard, she couldn't finish the sentence. I already knew this was her personality from the game, but from her perspective it must have felt like I had read her mind.
"You seem kind to all people, Lady Luna. I won't call that nature a flaw. But in this age, it is a virtue we cannot afford. I do not believe you are a sovereign who can unify this continent. And so I cannot enter your service."
"………"
That should be enough to keep her from coming back. I was sorry, but I already had my plan.
I turned away from her and knocked back another cup of cheap liquor — and from beside me came the sound of her body trembling, of quiet sniffling.
"I… see…?"
"…"
Lunarien Iniang was a fragile person. She loved peace, and raising an army to plant that peace was admirable enough — but she was utterly unsuited to be a founding sovereign in an age of chaos. Leave her to the AI in the game and her army was guaranteed to fall.
Her tears tugged at me… but there was nothing for it. I only had one life.
"In your eyes, Lord Swen… am I… someone who cannot unify this world…?"
"…"
Well, I mean…
…………
…………
…………
In that instant, my world stopped — just for a moment.
……Huh?
The question Luna had put to me.
Can I, Lunarien Iniang, not unify this world?
And—
the conclusion reached by my Intelligence of one hundred.
That is not so.