Just Max Every Stat to S
‘Phew.’
The number of soldiers under Derek's command ran into the thousands. He was a seasoned veteran with plenty of calluses on his soul, but even Derek was powerless this time. His counterpart was a war hero, after all.
‘The war hero, Jeron.’
Rumors about Jeron abounded. That he wielded a sword like a Sword Master. That his magic was as devastating as a Grand Magus's. That his divine power outshone a Cardinal's. That he cast curses like a black mage who'd sold his soul to a demon.
It made no sense. A Sword Master was one thing, but a Grand Magus and a Cardinal and a black mage, all at once — and every single one of them first-rate? Impossible.
Of course, people who had mastered more than one discipline did exist. But the four great powers — Aura, black magic, divine power, and magic — formed a chain, each link devouring the last. A knight who wielded Aura was weak against black mages, and a black mage could not so much as raise his hand against a priest channeling divine power. The front lines had their share of practitioners who handled several of these forces, but at best they were side branches, dilettantes.
Even for a war hero like Jeron, commanding all four powers at a top-tier level was absurd. Which was why everyone assumed the rumors were inflated. Derek had been one of them.
That is, until he ran an operation alongside Jeron and realized the rumors weren't exaggerated at all. If anything, they were understated.
"Is there something on my face?"
"N-No, sir!"
"There is, huh. Then say what you have to say."
"W-Well — how is it that you can use Aura, magic, divine power, and black magic all at once?"
Derek hesitated for only a moment before blurting out the question that had been eating at him. Jeron's brow creased, but Derek, already pulling out his notebook to take notes, didn't notice.
"You just max every stat to S."
"...I beg your pardon?"
"That was a joke."
Jeron added it flatly. So flatly that it didn't sound like a joke at all. Then, without missing a beat, he changed the subject.
"The Aura... I come from a fallen swordsmanship house, you see."
"Oh, is that so?"
"Our head of family declared he'd restore our ruined name, and he beat me with raw Aura every single day. Called it the family's secret art."
"I'm sorry — what kind of ignorant—"
"Supposedly, when the Aura strikes you and your bones or muscles tear, Aura accumulates in the body. The results were excellent, I'll admit. It made me sturdy."
Getting hit with raw Aura was several times more painful than taking a plain club to the body. And he'd been subjected to it since childhood. Derek was struck speechless, but Jeron carried on as if nothing were out of the ordinary.
"Then one day a witch appeared out of nowhere, burned the estate to the ground, and abducted me. My body was sturdy, she said, so I'd make a fine subject for fusing black magic with magic. That's how I came to use both at once."
The world ranked witches as more dangerous than demons — because to a witch, a human being was nothing more than an experiment in waiting. Being abducted by one and experimented on — in a way, it was more horrifying than the Aura training.
"Then the Holy Nation raided the witch's lair, and they dragged me off, saying they'd save me. Something about training Battle Priests."
"A Battle Priest? You mean those horrifying—"
"Oh, shut it."
"...I had a comrade who came out of the Battle Priest program, sir."
"Sounds like you had it rough."
At Derek's sour reply, Jeron nodded with the air of a man who understood completely.
"Yes, sir. Every time we deployed, he'd strip off his clothes, drive a sword into his own body, and curse God while doing it—"
"Not every Battle Priest is like that. Though admittedly, most of them are. I keep my clothes on."
"Th-That's a relief."
"What, you'd rather catch a cold? Tsk tsk."
"...? Ah — yes, of course!"
Something about that rang hollow, but Derek nodded along anyway. His counterpart was a war hero. How could he possibly presume to call it strange? He stole a graceful change of subject instead.
"You've earned an enormous achievement this time, sir. Everyone's saying the war might finally end thanks to you. They're saying you'll become the youngest Grand General in history."
"Bullshit. You think I'm insane enough to hammer myself into the army as a post?"
Jeron said it with undisguised revulsion.
The Imperial Army — the finest military on the continent, the strongest force in human history. Within it, the rank directly beneath Commander was Grand General, of whom only five existed in all the Empire. To call such a rank a post — it was a vicious joke. Worse, there wasn't a trace of humor in Jeron's voice.
Just then, Jeron rose from his seat. Derek scrambled to his feet after him.
"Right then. Go bust your ass, Berik."
Jeron clapped him on the shoulder and strode away. It was Derek, not Berik — but the correction climbed all the way to the tip of Derek's tongue and died there, swallowed as he snapped a salute.
"Glory to the Empire—!!"
Jeron didn't turn around. He only waved a hand over his shoulder.
Watching that retreating back, Derek found himself wondering. Jeron was already a war hero — and now he'd achieved something capable of reshaping the entire course of the war. Derek couldn't even begin to guess what reward awaited him.
‘Perhaps the youngest Grand General in history really will be born—’
Derek's eyes sparkled with a boy's anticipation.
"...What? You're discharging?"
A middle-aged woman with an eyepatch over her left eye stared me down. One of only five Grand Generals in the Empire — and among them, a contender for the very top: 'Crimson' Cassandra.
I gave a light nod.
"Yes. I'll be discharged."
"Brown. That bastard's the one who called you, isn't he?"
"Grand General Brown did reach out to me once, but—"
"That son of a bitch dares lay his filthy hands on what's mine? I'll tear his tongue out."
I hoped it was a joke. Sadly, Cassandra meant every word. She was, after all, a woman perpetually hunting for a pretext to brawl with the other Grand Generals.
I hurried to speak before a civil war could break out in the office.
" Naturally, I refused him. How could one man serve two Grand Generals at once?"
"Then why?"
Cassandra's lone eye glinted, razor-edged. Merely meeting her gaze was enough to choke the breath in my throat.
"The war isn't over yet. Discharge now, and your record gets stricken — you know that, surely."
She was right. The unit I belonged to was a classified one. Discharge now, and every bit of military achievement I'd accumulated would be wiped from the books. Not that I particularly minded. It wasn't as if my record was flattering — if anything, having it erased would make moving around easier.
"Doesn't matter."
"The war's about to end. So why does the single largest contributor walk away?"
The war is about to end. That was the talk drifting along the front lines lately. But no. Unfortunately, this war was never going to end.
"I have things to do."
"Like what?"
"That's classified."
"And here I thought we were a little closer than that."
"Please don't say things people could misunderstand, ma'am."
"Misunderstand? We rolled around naked together, didn't we? Quite steamy, as I recall."
"We were inside the belly of a Great Demon, ma'am."
Cassandra laughed out loud — a sound rather like a bear's growl. Her eyepatch creased slightly.
"Can't stop you anyway, I suppose. You're a thorough bastard."
"They do say the juniors follow their seniors out, don't they."
Cassandra set a cigar between her teeth.
"The others will miss you."
"They'll be delighted. They're the ones who've been tearing their hair out trying to drag me down."
"That's how it works. When you like someone, you want to torment them."
"Spare me the bull—"
The curse slipped out before I could stop it. Cassandra's single eye drew a thick, amused arc.
"Well. Off you go, then."
She said it with an air of magnanimity, and I bowed my head deeply toward her.
"Thank you."
My unit was not the kind of place where you simply said 'I quit' and walked out. For Cassandra, this had taken considerable effort — she'd bent her own rules for me.
"So. What will you do after discharge?"
"I'm going to Elysium."
"Why? Planning to teach? You?"
"Now, now. Where else would you find an intellect like mine?"
"HAHAHAHA!"
Cassandra doubled over, clutching her belly, and roared with laughter. She laughed so hard my ears rang.
"In any case, not as a professor."
"True enough. If you became a professor, half the continent would come knocking. I might go take a look myself."
I couldn't bring myself to deny it.
"Or are you enrolling as a student?"
"How would I enroll at my age?"
"Fair. It is grotesque, isn't it. When I first met you, you were all fresh-faced and dewy. Now look at you — a complete old man."
"I'm still young, thank you."
"So am I, young lady."
I could not bring myself to nod. Cassandra tapped the ash from her cigar and asked,
"Not a professor, not a student. Then what?"
"I'm going to get a job with the security detail."
"What a hilarious joke. Why not announce you'll run the place as Principal while you're at it?"
Cassandra burst out laughing. She clearly didn't believe a word of it.
It was the natural reaction. Elysium was the finest academy on the continent — but it was still, in the end, an academy. The valedictorians who graduated from Elysium at the top of their class came here — to the Southern Front. And I had stood among the top ten of even this Southern Front.
For a man like that to take off his uniform and go work security at an academy — even I found it hard to believe, and I was the one saying it.
But there was nothing to be done. The game I'd transmigrated into was an academy story. And not just any academy story — an academy story inside a romance fantasy. A rofan.
Rofan was, by its nature, a genre where love reigned as the pink-hued protagonist. So why had I been wrung through a battlefield after transmigrating into one?
‘That damned stat distribution.’
Survive.
Time Remaining: 0 days, 2 hours, 14 minutes
Staring at that translucent window, I dredged up my memories.
Graduation is Harder than Love — or Yeonjol for short — had never received an official release. The only way in was by invitation. Even I, a self-confessed connoisseur of trash games, had received an invitation and started playing.
Yeonjol was... a one hundred percent organic, farm-to-table disaster of a game.
There were several reasons it deserved that reputation, but the most lethal was its absolutely deranged difficulty. It was hard enough that players who gleefully devoured even the worst garbage games had spat out their tongues, cursed, and quit. And despite all that, I kept at it.
There was no grand reason. Just simple, stubborn spite.
Two years in, I finally cleared the game. True to form for a trash game, it was a bad ending. I had no intention of ever playing again, so I was rolling through the end credits, about to shut it off — when I noticed a button on the home screen that hadn't been there before. Hard Mode.
‘A Hard Mode? In a rofan?’
I pressed it as if in a trance.
Once Hard Mode begins, there is no turning back.
Proceed?
Something about that felt off — but I brushed past it without a second thought.
Next came the character creation screen. Naturally, I poured immense care into the appearance. Customization was the single most entertaining part of Yeonjol, after all. I built something in the vein of a decadent, dissolute beauty with the look of a man carrying a tragic past — and then came the stat window.
Yeonjol's stats came in four flavors: Aura, black magic, magic, and divine power.
Just as I was about to allocate my points, a notification arrived — a first-time perk had been granted. He Who Witnessed the End. Thanks to that perk, my bonus stat points had been multiplied fourfold.
Yeonjol was famously stingy with stat points. Normally, even dumping every point into a single stat capped you at A-rank — but funnel the multiplied bonus into one stat, and S+ was within reach.
S+ was a grade I'd never even seen before. Pour it into Aura, and becoming a Sword Master was a certainty.
But I didn't dump everything into one stat. I spread it evenly across all four. It was the elemental affinity system, you see — each stat governed resistance to the others, and going all-in carried far too much risk.
Stat dispersion is excessively high.
A romance fantasy game, mind you — yet it wove each character's entire backstory around the stats you'd set. Invest in Aura, and the character was locked in as a prodigy born into a renowned swordsmanship house. That sort of thing.
When I set all four stats to S, the game seemed to strain under the load. For a mere game to glitch out just because I'd spread my stats around — that was more than a little strange.
...That was where I should have stopped.
You were born into a declining house of swordsmanship. Having glimpsed your talent, the head of the family forcibly enacts the house's forbidden secret art for the sake of its revival. The moment the secret art succeeds, a witch appears, reduces the estate to ashes, and abducts you. The witch experiments upon you, fusing black magic with magic. You endure years of cruel experimentation before the Holy Nation seizes you and puts you through Battle Priest training. At last you escape, fleeing to a front line beyond the Holy Nation's reach.
It was a character backstory, yet the litany of settings was cold-blooded enough to send a chill down the spine. It went on and on, ruthless and unrelenting.
Do you truly wish to proceed?
Of course, I didn't hesitate. I pressed 'Yes'.
The reason was simple.
‘I didn't know I'd transmigrate.’
I truly didn't know.
Really.