Survival Methods of a Transmigrator Who Doesn't Know the Original - 1
When I first transmigrated into this magnificent and beautiful world, there were exactly two things I twisted my whole body over with regret.
The first was having encountered the original work of this world—a work whose name I can no longer even remember. I have no idea how insane the being that dumped me here must have been, but at least they weren't crazy enough to throw in someone who didn't even know whether an original work existed.
The second was that, having already come across the original, I only dipped into the free chapters and spat them out. If I had known I would suddenly suffer the catastrophe of transmigration, I would of course have binged it all the way to the ending. But I only vaguely watched the free webtoon episodes and left it at that.
On top of that, the free chapters covered childhood stories, so there was nothing particularly useful in them. Even when I first saw Luise at the Academy, I only recognized who she was after hearing her name. To me, the original work was about as meaningful as a shark's fin cup ramen with 0.0003% actual shark fin added. In other words, endlessly meaningless.
Other people go around wrecking the original plot and all that.
As for me, even while I was getting tossed around, I couldn't tell whether something was from the original or just my rotten luck. A transmigrator who doesn't know the original is an utterly powerless being.
But after a long period of endurance, the time finally came when I could see a ray of light. Even without knowing the content of the original, the mere fact that an original work exists in this world allows for a great deal of deduction.
If the protagonists gather at the Academy, then of course incidents will break out at the Academy. In any work, accidents and incidents inevitably erupt with the protagonists at the center. In other words, if I simply block the people or organizations that seem likely to latch onto the protagonists, I can skip the original-work crises I don't even know about.
That was why, the moment my Academy assignment was confirmed, I immediately ran to the Intelligence Director and asked for information sharing. Fortunately, my heartfelt request moved the Intelligence Director enough that he accepted without fuss.
"I'll cover up the last incident for you to a reasonable degree, so please just take care of this for me."
"Hmmm..."
Of course, that heartfelt sincerity came with a little token of goodwill mixed in. Asking with empty hands would have been too cold.
And so what ended up in my hands was this list of "Academy-Wrecking Candidates." There were more of them than I expected, which was unpleasant. Just imagining playing a tower-defense game against these bastards at the Academy made me dizzy. At least I'd secured the list in advance—that was a relief.
For now, I needed to get back to the club room before something blew up among the six main characters, so I quickly checked the antisocial groups that were even slightly connected to the six protagonists.
Nothing related to Luise or Erich.
Luise was a harmless child with no enemies, so there was no reason for anyone to attack her out of grudges. Erich had only just entered the Academy, and if anyone held a grudge against him, it would be against the Crassius family rather than Erich personally. Groups like that had long since been buried by me or the family head, so no problem there.
No need to worry about Ainter either.
At present, the most threatening existence to Ainter was probably me. But I had no intention of stepping up to deal with Ainter myself, and the Crown Prince wasn't about to ignore me on-site and send some other killer. Ainter was safe.
The problem is the remaining three.
Unfortunately, their statuses were dazzling—royalty and a saint candidate—so the possibility of terrorism targeting them couldn't be ignored. If they got terrorized in their own countries it wouldn't matter, but as Academy students, any terrorism would also mess up the Academy and the Empire.
First, the group associated with Ryutis's story was the 5th Empire.
It was a hardline hawkish faction claiming that the Armein Kingdom should overthrow the Kpelleofen Empire and become a new empire. The name "5th Empire" supposedly came from their desire to succeed the Kpelleofen Empire—the fourth empire in continental history—and become the new one.
Of course, they spouted claims with no basis in reality, so even Armein's political circles shunned them. But the crazy ones who get shunned are the ones who commit crazy acts no one could have imagined.
There was a possibility they would stage a terrorist attack on the Academy where Ryutis was staying, induce chaos in the Empire, and use the death of their own prince as a pretext to cry for war against the Empire. After all, Ryutis wasn't the prince who would inherit the throne anyway.
Even so, the possibility of sacrificing their own prince and launching a reckless terrorist attack that would put their own country in crisis if discovered? At the very least, it wasn't lower than the possibility of an Armein prince stubbornly insisting on enrolling in the Imperial Academy. Fuck.
Next, the group associated with Later's story was the Five Pillars.
It was a group opposing the movement of the Uven Alliance to break free from a simple alliance of five kingdoms and unify around Later's homeland. Since they took a position of protecting tradition, they were larger in scale than the 5th Empire. As far as I recalled, the Empire was even secretly supporting them—anonymously, of course.
Rather than taking out Later to pick a fight with the Empire, these guys were more likely to act in order to deliver a shock to Later's homeland. Later would be an easier target than other royal figures surrounded by royal knight orders and guards.
Attacking the Imperial Academy would inevitably create discord with the Empire—yet the possibility of them still staging a terrorist attack? Again, it wasn't lower than the possibility of stubbornly insisting on enrolling in the Imperial Academy. Damn it.
Lastly, the group associated with Tanian's story was the Twilight Cult.
It was a heretical group that worshipped gods other than Enen, the sole deity revered across the continent including the Holy Kingdom. A fanatic cult that opposed the Dawn Church which worshipped Enen, and sought to become the new mainstream religion themselves.
They were already the textbook example of fanatics who had pulled a massive stunt in the Empire as well—crazy bastards. Three years ago, while the Empire's attention was focused on the North, they assassinated the cardinal in charge of the Empire, and in response the Empire had shuddered and tried to smash the Twilight Cult that had infiltrated it. The Twilight Cult successfully escaped and was still alive to this day.
These guys would target Tanian, the next Saint of the Dawn Church. If they could kill Tanian, who had received the surname Enes in the sense of being the son of God, the prestige of the Dawn Church and the Holy Kingdom would be driven into the ground.
And the Empire's wrath over its own prestige being driven into the ground alongside them? Considering that sort of thing would mean they weren't fanatics. Besides, they had already offed a cardinal on Imperial territory, so it wasn't anything new.
There were also groups that seemed likely to target the Academy itself rather than being tied to any one protagonist: the republican terrorist group Red Wave, and the revived Apels restorationist army Third Glory.
These bastards revived again?
I only just learned that the Apels restorationists had re-formed. The Apels restorationist forces were the ones the Empire had so tenaciously tracked down and wiped out root and stem. And now they were reviving again? Wasn't this a group created far too blatantly just for the original work's crises?
Even the Intelligence Director must have found this reincarnation absurd, because at the bottom of the paragraph covering Third Glory he left an evaluation dripping with emotion: that a thoroughly rotten corpse had begun wandering the world again. An appropriate assessment.
Anyway, the organizations that seemed likely to create crises in the original work came to these five. I was impressed once more by the Intelligence Director's ability to quickly compile this vast information and send it to me.
And I was also impressed by my own fate of having to stop these five.
Fuck.
The difficulty is wrecked. Who set this difficulty? At least with a reasonable difficulty there's some satisfaction in clearing it—this is just a complete mess.
I shuddered involuntarily. Even two or three villain groups would be a headache, but already there were five that seemed about to swarm the Academy. I don't know who the original author is, but I can tell they're serious about wrecking the Academy. Did they get seeded a lot by professors during their college days...?
I quietly tucked the communication orb into my coat and leaned my back against the wall. A minimum of five waves of defense—even when I was running around in the field, experiences like this were rare. I never imagined I'd suddenly receive a surprise gift like this. A thoroughly unwanted surprise.
But what can you do? One of the reasons I was staying at the Academy was precisely to prepare for situations like this. Of course, even higher-ups probably never imagined there would be this many things targeting the Academy.
Honestly, I only deduced this because I'm a transmigrator. Who in their right mind would think those five organizations would leisurely set about wrecking the Academy? You'd assume they'd be scheming in the shadows to overthrow the system.
If I'd retired earlier, I could have avoided this mess.
My karma for failing to retire ran deep and wide.
Just letting out pitiful sighs wouldn't change anything. On the contrary, the longer I left my post like this, the higher the probability that something had already gone wrong in the club room.
I have to do this properly.
If I slipped even a little and a key figure got hurt or killed, there was no telling what kind of fate the Empire and I would suffer under that pretext. Without going far, my career would get fucked sideways. I want a smooth retirement, not a disgraceful downfall.
When all is said and done, my goal is simple. While staying at the Academy, detect and block in advance any internal or external factors that threaten the Academy. Thereby hold out until the original-work cast's safe graduation.
And while I'm at it, put in effort so that Luise's partner can be decided in that time as well. If Luise still doesn't have a partner by graduation, love-blinded lunatics might cross national borders even after graduation. If the Academy is Part 1, then Part 2 would proceed after graduation. I absolutely cannot stand for that.
...Come to think of it, wouldn't formally requesting a marriage from Baron Naiad's house be the easiest method? It would be hard for Baron Naiad's house to refuse a marriage request from the Crassius family, an Imperial count house, and Erich would get to fulfill his love, which is nice. The family head is the type who wouldn't care who he married as long as he got a grandson to carry on the family.
I shook my head and brushed away the temptation that had just flashed through my mind. Even so, coercive methods weren't good. On top of that, it was a method that didn't reflect Luise's wishes in the slightest.
My head must have been too complicated—that's why useless thoughts had drifted in. I almost felt sorry toward Luise for this.