Becoming the Archmage

Everyone dreams of turning their life around.

Getting into a good university. Winning the lottery. Landing a great job. Human desire has no end. Plenty of people, whether they put in the work or not, still pray for a stroke of luck.

I was no different. Stuck at home doing nothing, burning through empty hours, I yearned for the lottery—or something just as world-shaking—every single day. Whether the heavens finally answered my prayers or not, I transmigrated into a novel. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠And not just any novel: one I had already finished reading, one whose entire plot I knew cold.

Is it just my nature?

I adapted to the air, the atmosphere, and the rules of the novel world with startling speed. Most people in my position would have been terrified, spending a day or two thrashing through the shock. I was different. I didn't startle easily in the first place—but more importantly, I had been preparing for something like this for a long time.

For quite a while, the same kind of headline had been plastered across every news cycle.

Articles about the flood of missing persons in Korea. The numbers climbed year after year, and the press competed to churn out the same story like some grim annual festival. Every piece carried the same little addendum.

The Destined to Perish Novel Gallery.

It was a sub-forum on the community platform Ready Outside. Think of it as a department inside a university. Just as Seoul National has its medical school and chemistry department, Ready Outside had spaces for games, hobbies, and every other niche under the sun.

The Destined to Perish Novel Gallery had been the media's favorite punching bag for years. The reason was simple: the people posting there pretended to be missing persons and wrote the strangest things imaginable.

Inside the Destined to Perish Novel Gallery—PerishGal for short—people gathered who claimed they were missing persons transmigrated into novels. The government dismissed them all as trolls. One look at the headlines told you exactly which way public opinion had swung.

The reason neither the government nor the press believed anyone from PerishGal was simple. Whenever they were asked to prove they were actual missing persons, they produced nothing.

It should have been easy. Name, age, gender, address, phone number, resident registration number—there were endless ways to verify an identity. If they truly had been transmigrated into novels and could still post on a community board, why not just write down their personal information?

But not a single person in PerishGal ever posted their details cleanly.

A post that inflammatory drew comments fast. Under the anonymous handle, someone left a short reply.

A few of them insisted they were genuine missing persons and tried to offer proof, but not one of them ever managed a proper name or address. All they ever spit out were strings of numbers that meant nothing to anyone.

I found out later that those combinations of numbers the PerishGal people claimed were their personal information were ASCII codes—and when you converted them, they spelled out the word aggro.

The government even went so far as to request cooperation from Ready Outside's admins and track user IP addresses, just in case. Every time they followed an address belonging to someone claiming to be missing, they found some completely unrelated person.

I once overheard police muttering in frustration after another empty house search.

"Another dead end. Looks like they're using a VPN again. Senior, can we just ignore that whole community already? How many times is this?"

"We're supposed to investigate, so we investigate. Nothing we can do. Damn weirdos wasting our time."

Everyone wrote off the self-proclaimed transmigrators of PerishGal as trolls. They hadn't proven a single thing, after all. But I saw it differently.

If it were pure lies, they know far too much about the insides of those novels. And this many people trolling in perfect sync at the same time? Something's off.

I built a hypothesis on my own. The Destined to Perish Novel Gallery was a real gathering place for transmigrators. And the reason personal information from Earth turned into those grotesque numbers was some kind of restriction placed on them.

"So my theory is that those people really did transmigrate. When they try to say an address or a name and it comes out as nonsense numbers, maybe whatever god or force shoved them in there put a limiter on them?"

"Ugh... that is so goddamn weeb of you. Please stop calling me. We weren't even the kind of friends who talk on the phone."

I had called a girl I used to know from a part-time job. What I got back was pure disgust and a block. Sadly, she had been my last friend. More precisely, the last woman I still had any connection to. As you can see, even that was gone now.

Whatever the people around me thought, I believed real missing persons lived inside PerishGal. But reading the posts alone left too many questions unanswered. So I uploaded one of my own.

The responses were roughly the same. They had transmigrated into some world, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that world was from a novel.

But still, none of them could speak their personal information from Earth.

Sure enough, everyone I asked spat out the same ASCII string—236 150 180 234 183 184 235 161 156. What the hell was this place? I started reading the board from the very first post.

Looking closer, quite a few of them knew exactly which novel they had landed in. I started compiling the titles they listed, one by one.

Amazingly, every single novel existed on a subscription platform. For 9,900 won a month you could read everything, so I favorited them all and started speed-reading.

While I read, I never stopped checking the Destined to Perish Novel Gallery. The people inside still shouted about themselves, and Korean society still treated them like trolls. Nothing changed.

I thought differently. Transmigrators genuinely existed in that gallery—and someday, I might become one too. Holding onto that vague conviction, I went back to the novels.

The reason for reading when transmigration was a real possibility was simple. If it ever happened to me, knowing the full plot would be an enormous advantage.

Locked in my room staring at novels on my phone, the people around me looked at me with pity. They muttered about a life failure drowning in delusions, escaping reality. I ignored them and kept reading.

Anyone who has ever touched an overpowered protagonist story knows how broken it is to start with full knowledge of the plot, the setting, the cast—and above all, the hidden pieces. Assuming even the slightest chance I might transmigrate, I read as many novels as I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠could and stored every scrap of information.

Like a man possessed, I stayed home and read novels nonstop for two years. Exactly two complete works a day. Speed-reading could have let me do more, but I paced myself—some of those series ran close to a thousand chapters. By the time I had carefully finished around 1,400 works, the mysterious call came for me too.

"Healing magic, one cast for one gold~"

"Memory enhancement magic, ten gold a cast. Exam coming up? I'll even throw in an efficiency boost elixir special for you~"

"Small monster disposal, thirty silver a head."

Bizarre clothes that looked ripped from the Middle Ages. Strange creatures drifting here and there. Swords, shields, and staves hanging at people's sides.

"It worked."

My first transmigration produced a cheer instead of panic. I had succeeded, just like the others. This was the moment I had hoped and hungered for.

I scanned my surroundings in a rush—architecture, clothing, the magic people used, the mana, every similar detail hammered into my skull. Once enough pieces pointed at a single novel, I whooped again.

I transmigrated. And into a novel I already finished, no less.

Out of more than three thousand titles, I had only managed 1,400. Part of me had been quietly terrified I would land somewhere completely unknown. But as if rewarding two years of mad reading, I had dropped into a novel I had already completed.

The title was The Talentless Mage Dreams of Becoming an Archmage.

A story about a protagonist with zero magical talent gathering opportunities and hidden pieces until he finally reached Archmage. Perfect for people like me who started with nothing.

Guided by the System, I opened the gallery for the first time. Sure enough, the Destined to Perish Novel Gallery appeared right in front of me. That settled it completely. The mass disappearances really were transmigrations.

I immediately wrote a post.

I didn't even wait to check the comments. I tore after the hidden pieces like a madman. If the protagonist claimed even one of them first, things could get ugly.

Next came the opportunities.

"Hoho... I truly like the look in your eyes. So. You said you wanted to learn magic?"

A former Archmage, now living in hiding among the poor, concealing his identity—a reclusive master of the craft.

"I told you I don't teach mage trash, didn't I? Get lost. Wait—hold on. The energy in your body is strange. Did you take an Ascension Elixir? If so, that's a different story."

A man with a rotten personality but absolute skill, known as the Sword Saint.

"Oh my? You want to handle summons? Greedy, aren't you. Your body is already packed with magic and sword energy. Wait... what? You said you've never once handled a summon, right? Then why is the aura of a legendary species coming from inside you...?"

A mage hailed as a master of summoning magic, and beyond her, dark mages and every other opportunity I could force into place.

I remembered exactly what each key figure cared about, used their interests to become their disciple, and received their teachings. With the hidden pieces I had already monopolized countless times, every lesson sank straight into my bones and flesh.

Eleven years and five months after transmigration—

I had become an Archmage.