The Adaptation Period (1)

When I opened my eyes as if waking from a long sleep, the first thing that greeted ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me was a Gothic ceiling that looked like it belonged in some decaying British aristocratic mansion. For a split second I wondered if this was a dream, but there was no time to wallow in such idiotic sentiment. The original owner’s memories slammed into me like a tsunami, trampling through every corner of my brain without permission.

In pain so intense I couldn’t even scream, with no room to panic, I was forced to accept the facts being hammered directly into my neurons. I had landed in America in 1979. The thirty-two-year-old Korean salaryman from 2026—drowning in debt, whose only pleasure was reading web novels—was gone. In his place stood twenty-two-year-old Henry Salisbury Debenzer, a freshly graduated Stanford engineer who had just buried his parents.

Is orphan-start the default setting in this world too? Or is it just some industry bonus coincidence?

Having been an orphan in my previous life as well, my parents’ deaths registered as nothing more than dry subtitles in a movie. Their memories sat in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my head in crisp high definition, yet I felt no heart-wrenching loss. It was less grief and more simple bewilderment. Reading someone else’s diary didn’t exactly invite emotional investment.

I couldn’t tell whether this was reality, an illusion, or an excessively detailed lucid dream. The situation was so surreal it felt like I was developing a brand-new mental illness. There were none of the familiar names I usually saw in novels, and although an unrealistic status window had appeared, the pain at least was rendered in full HD and felt completely real.

The one saving grace was that even if I holed up in my room in a daze, refusing to accept this madness, nobody came to bother me.

“Young master, I’ve brought your meal.”

Even when I stayed buried under the blankets all day and only picked at the food they delivered, the people around me simply chalked it up to “the enormous grief of losing one’s parents” and left me alone.

After spending what felt like forever like a corpse, a single thought suddenly lit up inside my skull.

Why the hell am I sitting here like an idiot? Dream or reality, who cares? If I just live well, isn’t that already a jackpot? This is the exact lotto-tier situation I’ve been wishing for my whole damn life!

My mind snapped awake. I slowly began to accept the current situation. I sorted the memories in my head folder by folder and started analyzing this body’s habits and speech patterns from the ground up.

The more I organized, the less I saw any need to run around until my soles bled like the protagonists in those novels. In fact, the idea of wasting precious time trying to earn money felt ridiculous. The family’s wealth was rotting from overabundance.

The Debenzer family?

No matter how deep I dug through my previous life’s memories, I had never heard of them. Yet for a family that supposedly only existed in this parallel world, the background was terrifyingly stacked. It went beyond generous—it was like someone had hacked the administrator account.

They might not crack the top ten American families, but they easily sat in the upper tier. A deep-rooted landowner clan in New York whose bloodline was practically American history itself. Their name was literally engraved on the Declaration of Independence as one of the Founding Fathers.

That alone would have crushed most families in a name-card battle. As if such glorious blue blood wasn’t enough, tracing the genealogy further revealed a British duke in the lineage.

After learning all this, I could no longer believe it was a dream. It was so unbelievable I was left speechless. Even as a Korean, there was no way a family like this wouldn’t have been featured in NewTube shorts during the old-money aesthetic craze. Every trivial detail about such clans used to get excavated.

That was the moment I became certain this was a parallel world.

Is this the Mary Sue setup from a munchkin novel?

Unless Iron Mans started flying around or I had somehow landed in Gotham, this background wouldn’t lose to any typical novel protagonist. Although I was from a collateral rather than the direct line of the British Cardish ducal family, it was 1979. This was the romantic ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠era where a single noble title earned instant respect and dignity.

Later, when British power declined and America’s momentum pierced the heavens, people might sneer at it as outdated, but right now British vintage charm—especially the gentleman archetype—still carried serious weight.

After the family changed its name to a title and settled in America, the surname differed from the British main house, but the family tree remained clearly connected, as if carved in marble. In short, I wasn’t some simple American nouveau riche. I held the legitimate bloodline of European nobility.

Overwhelming honor and legitimacy. Strangely, however, this family was difficult to find even among the top twenty, let alone the top ten. If they hadn’t intentionally chosen seclusion, how could such a background remain hidden? When I traced the memories, the reason was laughably simple.

Compared to other famous prestigious families, they had zero notable achievements. Politically, they had never produced a single congressman or senator. They cosplayed as pacifists, never revealing which party they supported, and maintained strict neutrality. Economically it was the same. People always called them rich, tycoons, great landowners, but they had only dipped their toes into various industries without ever claiming a champion belt in any single field. Unlike how “Rockefeller” instantly made people think of oil, there was no market this family overwhelmingly dominated.

In my judgment, the family’s golden age had ended the moment they signed the Declaration of Independence. Back then the area north of New York had been called “Debenzer Country,” boasting a million acres. But over generations they had sold it off piece by piece. Now only six thousand acres remained. Of course, six thousand acres near Manhattan was still an insane amount, but the downward curve since their peak was undeniable.

Did our ancestors sell the land to buy steaks? Turning a million acres into six thousand… if that’s a talent, it’s one hell of a talent.

There was another decisive reason their public recognition was rock bottom: the family had always been pathetically small in number. Whether it was intentional over hundreds of years or some curse on the bloodline, I didn’t know. They had continued in a single unbroken line without ever branching sideways, so unlike other American families there were virtually no collateral branches. Even illegitimate children were treated as precious. While other houses would have hidden such bloodlines, the Debenzers meticulously recorded them in the genealogy—like insurance. Only when an illegitimate line drifted more than two generations away would it be pruned from the tree.

The birth of descendants was considered more valuable than the honor or legitimacy the family had accumulated. At this point I was starting to worry whether our ancestors had suffered from serious physical or sexual dysfunction.

Could there really be some physical defect? At least the morning tent gets pitched solidly and reliably…

This generation in particular was extreme. Excluding me, not a single family member remained. No grandparents, no cousins, no distant relatives. Even the illegitimate lines had died out twenty years ago and were now extinct. In other words, I was the sole living creature carrying the grand name of Debenzer.

The only silver lining was that no matter how many days I spent holed up in my room in a daze, I didn’t have to worry about inheritance disputes carving up the fortune. A secluded prestigious house that ordinary people had never heard of, recognized only by the upper class or specialists with an “Ah, that family?” That seemed to be their general position.

Well, showing my face once at a social party or year-end gala would make that clear soon enough, so I set the matter aside for now.

Compared to the paternal side, the maternal family’s recognition was on an entirely different level. The reason “Salisbury” was attached to my middle name was obvious. They were the owner family of the New York Times, America’s representative daily and media empire.

The union of time-honored, honorable old money and a media empire that steered public opinion. That was the overwhelming background and specification I now held.

Therefore the inheritance left to me was, by 1979 standards, completely insane. Two trust funds, five charitable foundations, and the old New York Times headquarters building in Times Square—“One Times Square”—registered in my name.

But the real core was the assets tied up in those two trusts. The scale defied imagination. The maternal trust was a treasure money couldn’t buy: 3.5 percent of the dual-voting Class B shares and 1 percent of the Class A shares of the New York Times, plus 1.25 million dollars in cashable bonds and deposits. That alone would have been a luxurious start, yet in terms of pure asset volume the maternal side couldn’t even compare to the paternal.

The paternal legacy operated on another dimension entirely. The massive Westchester mansion I currently lived in, the six thousand acres surrounding it, the five-story stone “Debenzer Townhouse” right beside Central Park. Beyond that, the lists of real estate and bonds ran dozens of pages until my eyes blurred and I gave up reading. From what I could roughly grasp: fifty million dollars in immediately liquid government bonds and securities, various artworks convertible to cash at any time, and a legitimate five hundred kilograms of physical gold bullion that wasn’t even hidden slush funds.

The five attached charitable foundations totaled another ten million dollars, and the chairman seats for all of them had already been reserved in my name.

The most amusing part was that almost no taxes had been paid to inherit this enormous paternal wealth. The normal 1979 inheritance tax rate was a brutal seventy percent on anything above five million dollars. But the core paternal trust had been established before the 1976 tax reform using the legendary cheat known as a Generation-Skipping Trust. By cleverly avoiding retroactive application, the inheritance tax was legally zero.

After all, the property hadn’t been left to me—it had been gifted to my unborn child. I was simply the “skipped generation” in between. I held only management and profit rights, free to suck out all the sweet juice without paying a cent in tax. The charitable foundation contributions were also fully deductible as donations.

The U.S. government hasn’t done jack shit for me, but just the fact that they’re not taking my money is already making patriotism bubble up inside me. Oh, and I don’t have to join the military either? My god. I love America!

A sigh of relief and a sly chuckle escaped at the same time. Without this arrangement the inheritance tax alone would have been in the hundreds of millions. Including hidden assets I hadn’t yet uncovered, the total might easily surpass a billion dollars.

For reference, tens of millions of dollars in 1979 carried the purchasing power of several hundred million to billions in 2026 terms. They were printing dollars like crazy, but the echoes of the gold standard still remained and the dollar’s authority was ironclad. The perceived value when considering living costs and the actual power of money was simply beyond imagination.

In the end I only needed to pay the inheritance tax on the maternal trust portion. The family’s dedicated tax accountant neatly paid the 2.5 million dollars, and every procedure was completed. Since the tax had been paid anyway, the maternal trust assets were bundled together. Now only the single [Debenzer Family Trust] remained.

If IRS investigators ever saw my asset list they would probably clutch their necks and collapse, but legally everything was flawless. It meant there was no more money the state could legally extort from me.

This was a diamond spoon that transcended even an overwhelming gold spoon. When I thought about it calmly, this possession—or regression—had handed me the lottery of a lifetime. Compared to my previous life the entertainment options might feel a little lacking due to the era’s inferior technology, but I had received a life where I could live lightly forever without ever worrying about money—the greatest problem a human could face.

Even at current exchange rates, a hundred million dollars in 1979 already exceeded a hundred billion Korean won. The amount I had already identified was more than enough. And since I had fallen into the past, copying money with a regressor’s future knowledge was child’s play.

If someone asked whether tradition or honor—things that couldn’t be bought with money—were important, I honestly didn’t care much. The downside of being chained by annoying formalities while obsessing over tradition and dignity seemed far greater.

Besides, with me as the only one left in the entire family, who the hell is going to lecture me about etiquette and tradition?

I had a slight doubt, but the fact that my seed money was overflowing kept the corners of my mouth firmly raised.

Still, the real core of this new life was, without question, the ability. And not just any ability—a game system visible only to my eyes. This mysterious system that I had been too scared to even examine in case I accidentally broke it was undoubtedly the true cheat key that would define my entire life.

Even if the interface wasn’t as flashy as the ones I’d seen in my previous life and the contents were pathetically bare.

“Status window.”

I forced the awkward words out into the air. A translucent window appeared immediately, as if it had been waiting.

Fucking barebones…

Compared to the systems in all the web novels I had devoured in my previous life, this was even more empty than a convenience-store 1+1 promotional item. Normally you’d see dozens of stats—Strength, Agility, Stamina, Charm, Speech, Luck, and so on. The standard pattern was to grind experience, level up, and snowball into the classic “OP taste” that protagonists enjoyed.

My status window had exactly two stats: Health and Knowledge. The only other thing was this unfamiliar “Clone” category. Just in case, I swallowed my embarrassment and tried spitting out every command word I could think of. Nothing else responded. No settings, no logout, no screenshot function. No attribute shop, no observation system, not even a simple observation confirmation window. A skill shop? The silence made it clear I shouldn’t even hope for one. This shabby text window was apparently everything.

At least give me a tutorial or throw up a quest. Or have the status window AI pop out and talk to me, damn it.

Even though I had received an overflowing amount of good fortune, human greed truly knew no bounds. While I grumbled on the surface, my mind began spinning rapidly. With no manual, I would have to crash into things myself and figure out the strategy through trial and error.

Fortunately, the experience I had accumulated as a web-novel addict and game grinder in my previous life hadn’t disappeared.

Looks like there’s no RPG-style experience grind. Leveling seems to be done purely through points. Let’s see… if I tap the level section…

Whew, at least the confirmation window appears. Cancel for now!

I clutched my chest in relief. I had no idea whether raising the level would grant separate stat points or unlock entirely new functions. Still, the fact that a level-up confirmation appeared suggested I could manually adjust the stats as well.

I lightly tapped the Health stat.

So stats were also raised with points. That meant the level probably wasn’t just for raising stats. If I had to spend precious points to raise the level, there was a one-hundred-percent chance that hidden rewards waited after leveling up.

By the way, what exactly were these points? Tapping them produced no tutorial. 125 points… the number isn’t even clean. Why 125 instead of 100 or 150?

I drummed my fingers on the table, lost in thought. It was probably a combination of the default starting points plus additional points from some action I didn’t yet understand. Otherwise the number wouldn’t be so messy.

It had been 125 when I first opened my eyes, and two days later it still hadn’t changed. That made sense—I had done nothing but stay in my room, eat, sleep, and use the bathroom. There must be a way to obtain them, but I have no way to find out right now. Doing push-ups didn’t change anything, so it’s probably not simple grinding either. I want to raise a stat right now and feel the difference, but…

Rash investment was the fastest road to ruin. This was real life, and points whose source I didn’t understand were more precious than gold.

Let’s check the clone function first and then decide. It feels like the only real variable in this system.

Shit. This can probably be canceled later too, right? This is nerve-wracking. Press YES anyway!

Hmm… let’s go with male for safety.

The options were excessively detailed. I followed the steps as if in a trance. Why is it so granular? Whatever, let’s do this. North America!

After choosing the United States, White, Anglo-Saxon, and continuing through the dizzying list of selections, the window that appeared was unmistakably the layout of an internet encyclopedia—Wikipedia.

The only difference was five empty stars floating at the top of the page. Everything else was a blank document format filled with empty fields.

This is literally a wiki!?

Since I had come this far, I carefully tapped each information field. Name, age, education, career, and… Do I seriously have to create this entire profile myself? What about the portrait space? Oh! I’m supposed to sculpt it directly through customization? This is insane.

It was a function that didn’t lose out to the sophisticated character creators in modern games. I pulled myself together.

Even after regaining my composure, I remained locked in the room for a long time. I spent an entire additional day cross-referencing this life’s memories with my previous life’s knowledge and studying this bizarre yet wondrous system.