A Collision with Destiny

Morning arrived, and as always, the Adventurer Guild was steeped in an uproar of noise.

Some adventurers drank themselves into a stupor, shouting raucously across the floor, while others bustled about ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in search of party members. In front of the sprawling quest board, people packed in shoulder to shoulder, leaving barely enough room to place a foot.

A hooded girl slipped quietly through the crowd. At her waist hung an unassuming sword, alongside a polished silver tag that glinted faintly—the mark of an experienced veteran.

Alice, a receptionist with five years under her belt at the Adventurer Guild branch, quickly looked the girl up and down before flashing her practiced customer-service smile.

"Welcome, Adventurer! How may I help you today—"

"Ah, it's me, Alice."

The moment the girl pulled back her hood, the surrounding gaze of the hall converged on her.

Even without proper upkeep, her appearance instantly turned heads—an innate elegance that survived the rough wear and tear of adventuring. Silky, midnight-black hair held an understated luster, framing a pair of striking eyes like finely cut amethysts. A lovely countenance where budding maturity met youthful charm softened into an affectionate smile.

"My goodness, Sian? Didn't you say you'd be gone for a while on your Gold Tag promotion quest?"

"Yes. I came back to report on that."

The receptionist's professional demeanor instantly melted away, her expression brightening with genuine warmth. It was the tender, fond look one might give a cherished younger daughter.

I answered her with a light crinkle of my eyes and rummaged through my pack.

"Here you go."

Thud.

Carefully wrapped and transported all the way from the northern frontier, the demon's horn struck the counter with a heavy, solid thud.

I brushed aside the floating descriptive window visible only to my eyes and set down an official certificate from the local lord right beside the horn. Alice's eyes widened in sheer astonishment.

Enjoying the receptionist's stunned reaction, I asked, "A baron-class demon's horn and a certificate of completion from the Lord of the Erelim Viscounty. Would this be sufficient proof of subjugation for my Gold Tag promotion quest?"

"Of course it is! Honestly, I was so sure you'd pull it off that I prepared it in advance. Though I never dreamed you'd be back this fast."

With an affectionate smile, Alice presented a small wooden case. Nestled within lay an antique, exquisitely crafted golden plate. I unclasped my silver tag and handed it over, taking the new badge into my hands. A single clean groove was etched straight through the center—the Gold Tag, marking the top five percent of all registered adventurers.

"Hehe... Thanks as always, Alice."

"Don't mention it. Thanks to you, our branch's performance metrics have skyrocketed. It's a win-win."

"Not at all. I was just lucky, really. And your help played a huge part in it."

Muttering modest deflections, I fastened the gold tag securely to my belt. Alice watched the back of my hand with a quiet, appreciative gaze before asking, "A Gold Tag adventurer and a Stigma bearer at your age... At this rate, you could easily aim to become the youngest Platinum Tag in history, couldn't you?"

A Stigma was essentially the in-universe equivalent of a character skill from Arcana Academy, the dating sim RPG into which I had transmigrated. True to its genre, it was an innate ability utilized by the heroines whenever they were successfully courted and recruited into the player's party. Manifesting in only a select handful of individuals across the continent, a Stigma granted authority to wield miraculous phenomena that defied conventional magical laws.

Where it appeared, what shape it took, and what power it bestowed were completely random.

In my case, it had manifested on the back of my hand as Blink—an ability that folded space to let me instantly reposition up to ten meters per jump, chainable up to five consecutive times.

Looking down at the faint engraving of crossed blades etched into my skin, I gave a self-deprecating laugh.

"Ahaha... Unfortunately, I don't think that's in the cards. It looks like I have to step down from adventuring for a while."

"Are you finally looking to settle down? Well, with your credentials as a Gold Tag at this age, another year or two of dedicated training would practically guarantee you an officer's seat in the Imperial Knights."

"No, I'm not really planning to join the knight order either."

Giving that noncommittal reply, I cast my eyes upward into the empty air.

Hovering right above Alice's head, completely invisible to anyone else, a translucent blue window proudly asserted its presence.

The word DEATH was highlighted in a lurid, sinister crimson. Grimacing slightly, I dismissed the prompt.

"After all, it's about time for the academy application window to open."

It was five years ago when I first regained the memories of my previous life.

Back then, I had been an ordinary South Korean salaryman who sank thousands of hours into an RPG called Arcana Academy. I had always been an unapologetic male-character purist—until the fateful day I rolled a female avatar for the very first time while eagerly waiting for the Part 2 expansion, only to wake up transmigrated right into her body.

You can hardly imagine my sheer panic when twenty-odd years of memories as an adult man collided with the reality of an orphaned little girl.

It was around that same time that the floating status screen first flickered into existence before my eyes.

With nothing to my name but canonical knowledge of the game's first part and a single Stigma carved into the back of my hand, this destitute orphan had been slapped with an absurd directive: Enroll in the Empire's most prestigious academy.

For a commoner without a shred of noble backing or pedigree, entering the academy required an astronomical sum of money. The tuition alone was ruinous.

So, the moment my past memories surfaced, I sprinted out of the slums and threw myself headfirst into the Adventurer Guild. My sole objective was to sweep up all the game's early hidden pieces.

Taking a guy who had been a shut-in gaming addict by nature and molding him into a competent, battle-hardened adventurer had taken an agonizingly long time.

Still, thanks to all that blood and sweat, I scraped together the tuition just before the deadline.

Sitting in the grand auditorium of Arcana Academy, I exhaled a quiet sigh of relief and glanced at the prompt shimmering in midair.

"Therefore, every student gathered here must take immense pride in standing as a scholar of the continent's finest academy..."

While the system calculated my rewards, I cast a lazy glance around the hall.

Apparently, principals delivering soul-crushing, endlessly droning speeches was a universal law across all dimensions. Having sat pinned to their chairs for over an hour, the incoming freshmen already looked glazed and lifeless.

"Phew..."

Knowing exactly how long this ordeal was slated to last, I felt just as miserable. Going by the canonical event scripts from the game, there were still two and a half hours of consecutive addresses lined up from various board directors and faculty ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠dignitaries. To make matters worse, sitting tucked away in this remote, nosebleed corner meant I couldn't even catch a glimpse of the main cast.

Having endured twelve years of Korean primary and secondary cram-school schooling followed by four years of college lectures, I liked to think my endurance for sitting still was second to none. But even my patience was rapidly scraping bottom. Or perhaps it was just my old gamer instincts kicking in, clamoring for whatever cheesy trick I could abuse to ditch class.

"Excuse me, Teacher... May I please step out to use the restroom?"

"Just make sure you don't take too long."

Having secured a plausible excuse, I slipped out of the stifling auditorium and instantly suppressed my presence. My plan was simple: kill some time outside until this farce wrapped up.

Adventuring was a line of work notorious for holding the highest fatality rate in the world. After surviving five years in that cutthroat meat-grinder, my stealth techniques were far beyond anything the ordinary security guards stationed outside the hall could ever hope to detect.

The real issue, however, was that the girl rounding the adjacent corridor corner failed to sense me as well. And on my part, my attention had been ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠thoroughly hijacked by the glowing status window.

Before either of us could register what was happening, we collided at full tilt.

"Eek?!"

"Oof?!"

Momentum threw my lighter frame backward, sending the other girl tumbling directly on top of me. A cascade of lustrous, silky silver hair spilled over us like an untethered curtain, blotting out the ceiling.

A dull throb registered half a beat late, and as my vision cleared, the details of the girl resting over me resolved one by one.

"Ugh..."

Transparent, crystalline eyes sparkled like masterfully cut diamonds. Delicate, finely proportioned features were set into an aloof, chillingly stoic expression. Her pristine uniform showed not a single crease of disarray, radiating the effortless, regal aura found only in the highest tier of nobility.

The instant I recognized that face, the pain in my back evaporated, leaving me utterly spellbound.

The girl pinned over me with a look of startled confusion was none other than the unconquerable heroine of Arcana Academy—and my undisputed absolute favorite character: Yelena Frost, eldest daughter of the Frost Grand Duchy.

"Uh... ah...?"

Yelena Frost had enjoyed immense popularity among the player base. She had bewitched countless gamers, myself included, despite remaining stubbornly romance-locked from beginning to end. Even though she only made her canonical debut late in the game during the third-year story arc and made only sparse appearances thereafter, her narrative weight in that chapter was massive. More importantly, every single illustration featuring her was an absolute masterpiece.

A glacier of a woman who maintained an ironclad, expressionless facade under any circumstance—when the developers finally dropped a CG where Yelena cracked the faintest, gentlest smile, the player forums had practically imploded in collective ecstasy.

Under ordinary circumstances, the old gamer in me would have been squealing in triumph at scoring a front-row view of my favorite character's live CG.

"..."

A brief, suffocating silence descended between us. Her habitual stoicism instantly snapped back into place. Those crystalline, diamond-white eyes peered down at me, perfectly devoid of emotion.

Silver hair curtained off the surrounding corridor. In this narrow, enclosed world, there was nothing to see but Yelena's breathtaking face—yet I couldn't muster even the ghost of a smile.

Because right now, I wasn't a player sitting behind a monitor. I was an orphan commoner who had ditched the entrance ceremony out of boredom, only to body-slam the heir to a Northern Grand Duchy. The academy claimed that social status was meaningless within its walls, but as with all such high-minded academic ideals, that was pure lip service.

"Did I truly fail to sense a freshman's presence...?"

"Huh?"

Rather than lashing out, Yelena merely muttered that tiny murmur under her breath and pushed herself up onto her feet. While my scrambled brain fumbled to parse what she had just whispered, she silently extended a slender hand toward me.

"What are you staring at?"

In that split second, my gears spun furiously. The safest, most sensible course of action would be to drop to my knees and beg for mercy on the spot. Yet despite knowing that, my hand moved on instinct and clasped hers.

Yelena was a staunch meritocrat who held no love for petty aristocratic posturing. As long as I observed baseline courtesy, she wouldn't hold a grudge.

Right, just keep it polite and respectful.

Unfortunately, I had completely forgotten that having lived a past life defined by the classic nerd trajectory—all-boys middle school, all-boys high school, engineering college, and mandatory military service—I had zero natural immunity to attractive girls my age. Let alone an otherworldly beauty.

Looking straight into Yelena's face, my mouth moved entirely on autopilot.

"Ah, sorry. It's just... you're so pretty that I lost my train of thought."

'I'm terribly sorry. I'll watch where I'm going next time.' That was what I had meant to say.

It took an agonizing extra second for my brain to realize that my inner thoughts and my spoken words had swapped places. Yelena's frozen expression cracked, a faint, telltale blush rapidly spreading across her cheeks.

Seeing that flush, my mind leaped to the worst possible conclusion: She's so furious that her face is turning red. My peaceful academy life is officially over before it even began.

"...What?"

"Wh-what? Ah, th-that... I mean... I am so sorry!"

Terrified by the fracture in Yelena's stoic mask, I couldn't bear to stammer out another word of explanation. I spun on my heel and bolted back toward the auditorium as fast as my legs could carry me.

"Wait—just a—"

Leaving a bewildered, uncharacteristically flustered Yelena frozen in the corridor behind me.

"..."

Three days before the class placement exams.

A familiar name resonated crisp and clear from Yelena Frost's lips.

"Temporary Class A, Student Number 13: Cadet Sian."

"..."

Bathed in the stinging, sympathetic stares of dozens of classmates, I squeezed my eyes shut. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠The prickling weight of their gazes felt like physical needles.

Was it really because of what happened in the hallway three days ago? Did she seriously track down my identity just for that? Maybe sprinting away like an idiot really was the worst thing I could have done.

As a whirlwind of chaotic thoughts collided in my head, Yelena looked down at me, her frigid, crystalline eyes flashing with sharp resolve.

"I challenge you to a duel."

"Phew..."

Looking at the merciless blue window that brutally severed my final avenue of retreat, I let out a long, defeated sigh.