I Got Expelled

I was born an orphan with nothing to my name.

Then, against all odds, I got into the most prestigious academy in the world.

And in the end, I got expelled.

Seondo — the finest school on Earth. Eastern martial arts and sorcery, Western magic and alchemy, all under one roof, taught by a faculty and attended by students unmatched anywhere else in the world.

Inside its campus, a World Tree pierced the sky, and the great volcano loomed on the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠distant horizon. Walking the streets, you would occasionally brush shoulders with Grand Mages and masters of the Super-Peak Realm.

Leaving all of that wondrous scenery behind me, I boarded a train. The interior walls and even the floor were inlaid with gold and gemstones — an opulence so overwhelming it felt almost absurd.

I stared at them blankly for a while before pulling myself together and dragging my modest little suitcase down the corridor.

Rrrrrumble─

After a long walk down that seemingly endless hallway, I finally stepped into my assigned room. Despite being a single, the space was spacious and comfortable. I dropped straight into the chair at its center and buried my face in both hands — because if I didn't, I felt like my sanity was going to pack its bags and walk out on me on the spot.

No, come to think of it, maybe it already had.

"……Son of a—"

Not even a high school graduate. A middle school dropout. I'd gone from a student at the most elite school on the planet to just… a dropout, plain and simple.

Damn it. How did that make any sense?

They'd accepted me as if they intended to teach me better than anyone on Earth, then kicked me out after half a year for being physically weak. What exactly was wrong with these people?

"……Damn it, damn it, damn it—"

How long had I sat there, cursing on repeat, when—

─Jolt.

Suddenly my body lurched backward. The train had apparently departed.

After keeping my face buried for a good while longer, I finally glanced out the window sideways.

"……"

Blue sky. Clouds drifting right in front of my nose.

A train. Flying. Though, having departed from a school that floated in the sky, I suppose it was only natural.

……Little by little, my eye level began to sink. The ground kept drawing closer and closer.

It looked so much like my own circumstances that I could only gaze at it with a tangled heart.

"……Haaah."

I squeezed my eyes shut.

But before I could fully block them out, I heard the squeal of brakes, the sound of the train coming to a stop. Just like at departure, a light jolt rocked through me — and in that moment, I understood.

I had arrived on the ground.

I had fallen.

The ground I returned to after six months was exactly as I'd left it. In the good sense, it was peaceful to the point of tedium; in the bad sense, an orphan like me still didn't have a home.

For a while I bounced from one sauna to another, bawling my eyes out — 'I'm not even a high school grad, I'm a middle school dropout!' — but even that phase was brief.

"Damn it."

I had no money.

Even to eat and sleep at a sauna, you need at least a little cash eventually. Wasting time crying over a finished education wouldn't put food in my mouth — I had to get moving if I wanted to survive.

I needed money.

So I took up odd jobs — or rather, mercenary work, the one trade that hired even the uneducated fairly and without question.

"──Uryaaaaaah! Wipe every last one of them out!"

I started with clearing out monsters that had escaped through dungeon breaks and worked my way up to roaming foreign warzones where live ordnance screamed overhead in real time.

Why such brutal work, you ask? Well, I'd ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠never been the type for books or electronics. At the end of the day, I was a man who ate with his fists.

The only thing I had going for me was stored up in my body, so what choice did I have?

"Die, you bastards!!!"

"Hey, Choi! Incoming missile! No — shit! I'm telling you, if you don't dodge that, you're DEAD!"

I could die any day. That risk was always there. But even a nobody like me could actually do this work, and if I managed to survive, I could live loud and proud. Besides, things went better than I'd expected.

"……Ah, so you're that person's—"

My connections from school, brief as they'd been, had the grace to link up into a network. Even though I'd been expelled, the mere fact that I'd once attended the famed Seondo Academy was enough to get people calling for me.

Sometimes I wondered what it would've been like if I'd actually graduated, but that was water under the bridge — the most pointless kind of daydream there is.

Either way, suffering was inevitable, and I rolled around in the dirt every single day. To exaggerate only slightly, I rolled across an entire continent.

And somehow, I survived.

After roughly a decade of that hellish mercenary life, people had started calling me a veteran. The world began to acknowledge me as a master. The money rolled in faster, and buildings went up under my name. I still couldn't be sure when death would come for me — but life had gotten comfortable.

And then, a sudden thought struck me — me, who'd carried a quiet inferiority complex about never graduating from Seondo, never finishing the Academy. Did any of that really matter anymore? Dropout or not, what difference did it make now?

"Yeah. At this point, I'd call that a success."

Like a mercenary starving for coin, I'd groveled in the muck like a dog — and I'd been paid every won I was worth for it.

The view in front of me proved it. Smiling contentedly, I poured myself a glass of fine wine, the red liquid dancing inside the crystal.

I settled onto the balcony, took a long swallow, and savored the panorama spread out before me.

"Mmm. So this is the Han River view, huh?"

A lush green riverside park in the heart of the city, a wide blue river stretching to the horizon. People chattering away around me, cars flooding the Gangnam roads.

This cursed Han River view. It was for this that I'd ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠spent the last ten years crawling through hell.

"Pretty, my ass. It's just ridiculously expensive."

But even so, all those years of suffering didn't feel wasted.

I made it.

Whatever anyone said, nothing but comfortable days lay ahead of me. In wealth, in strength — I'd climbed higher than the kid getting expelled from the Academy had ever dared to imagine. Having rolled across every patch of ground on the planet, I was recognized wherever I went. Friend and foe alike — you could say I'd built an enormous network.

Yeah. I've come this far. It's fine to take a break now, isn't it? I worked hard enough all those years. Time to start living a little easier.

I was pushing thirty anyway. Maybe I'd just open a dojo and raise some disciples. Call it the Choi Gangjun School of Martial Arts, or something.

"Ooh. Not bad."

Nodding in satisfaction, I got to work planning my retirement in earnest. Where would I buy the next building? Which faction would I partner with, which school district would I take over?

Right — no more rolling in the dirt. Time to be a teacher. That was the correct path. Why keep living on a knife's edge when I didn't have to?

No more suffering. I painted a rosy future across the inside of my eyelids.

"……So I run the dojo, meet a wife cute as a rabbit, get married, have a son and a daughter — now THAT'S what I call a life……"

But maybe I'd gulped down that kimchi soup a little too greedily.

──Fweeeeeeeng!

At the sudden shriek of noise in my ears, I turned my head toward the window.

"……Huh?"

And then my neck snapped back around — because I was looking at something achingly familiar, something that should never, ever have been visible.

A meteor shower, blazing like fire.

The shooting stars falling from the sky right now were nothing you'd make a wish on. This was an 8th-tier elemental magic seen only on the battlefield — Meteor.

"……Oh, son of a—!"

The apocalyptic spell poured down like rain.

──KWAGAGAGANG!!!

Han River Park exploded.

A wind of fire swept through. Heat and acrid smoke chased at its heels. Mushroom clouds rose — and the Han River view was replaced by a view of a burning hell.

Faced with carnage that had erupted in a single instant, I couldn't help but wonder, 'What… is this a dream?'

"……Rosy future, my ass."

It was the beginning of the Third Great War of Good and Evil across the whole world.

The Demon King had moved.

What followed wasn't a peaceful life, but an inescapable war that swallowed the entire globe. It was the worst job I'd ever taken as a mercenary.

No — could you even call it a job?

I wasn't crossing battlefields to make a living anymore. I crossed them to stay alive. Because if we didn't fight, everyone died.

So I fought like a cornered dog, desperately, doing whatever it took to cling to one more day of life. I struggled and flailed against that senseless violence, and in flailing, I grew stronger. I kicked and thrashed until the very end.

And stronger still.

I grew strong enough that I could count the people stronger than me on one hand — and I survived a long, long time.

And then,

I died. I finally, actually died.

GRGRGRGRGRGRGRGRGRGRGRGRGRGR—!!!

With that roar, my vision flipped to total blackness.

"……"

I didn't open my eyes. To be precise, I couldn't work up the courage to.

Somehow, I had a pretty good idea of where this was.

The last thing I remembered was being smashed face-down into the ground while Meteors rained down on me in a relentless barrage.

'Damn it. So it's hell, huh.'

Though — no smell of brimstone. So maybe not.

If I dared to hope a little, maybe it was heaven. I had, after all, never committed any sin worse than killing my enemies on the battlefield.

……I knew it was a shit-for-brains line of reasoning. But either way, I prayed, desperately, that what lay beyond my eyelids would be a clear blue sky and pure white clouds.

Yeah — please, PLEASE let it be heaven!

Even as I told myself it was a pointless hope, I carefully, cautiously cracked my eyes open.

"What the hell is this."

What spread before me was neither a scarlet inferno nor a world above the clouds.

It was a gymnasium of overwhelming scale — I could count on one hand the things I'd ever seen to compare with it. And the closest thing to a comparison was the one I'd attended over a decade ago, that famous school's own.

Worse, students in familiar-looking uniforms were swarming everywhere I looked.

'……What is this? Wasn't I dead?'

I definitely should have been. And yet not only was my body perfectly intact, I seemed to have grown younger outright — I was even wearing that era's uniform.

As if I'd gone back to my student days.

"……Damn it."

I stood there dazed by the unexpected sight — and only then did it finally register.

The hall, built pointlessly wide and sturdy, big enough to swallow a baseball stadium whole. Students of every race and nationality — angels and heavenly demons, werewolves, cyborgs, a Russian boxer. And there, in the middle of it all, Dragon Vice-Principal conducting the entrance ceremony with magic in full swing.

Faced with that absurd, nostalgia-wrenching scene, I understood at last.

I had gone back to my godforsaken school days.