Chapter 1

“Ah, an unfamiliar ceiling....”

Kim Sunwoo murmured in a calm voice.

No, he was not particularly calm. He was so excited that his hands were trembling.

Just how long had he waited for this moment? An unfamiliar ceiling, an unfamiliar world—yes. Possession in another world, transmigration, reincarnation, anything at all!

In fact, he had spent an extraordinarily long time preparing for this moment. The important part here was that he had been “preparing.”

Any citizen of South Korea would already know the basic requirements for reincarnating into another world: submitting a 5,700-character critique filled with gratitude and reading the entire work through to the end.

Taking inspiration from that and going one step further revealed Kim Sunwoo’s “preparation process.”

Every novel, webtoon, and game he had ever read or played—anything he liked, meaning every work he wanted to be transported into—received a “5,700-character critique” from him.

Every single day, with heartfelt gratitude, without rest, using a different approach each time, meticulously and thoroughly.

Since it was a work he might possess a character in, he naturally memorized the story, setting, possible hidden pieces and relics, and even the relationships between the major characters.

He wrote 5,700 characters solely to crush the creator’s spirit, continuing until he heard the words, “Then why don’t you try writing it yourself?”

Of course, most cases ended with spineless authors abandoning their works, or with him being publicly mocked and banned across various online communities.

But in the end, he had won.

At long last, he had been transported into another world.

Now only one question remained.

What work was this?

“Status window!”

No colorful, blue augmented-reality display appeared.

But that was fine. He was not disappointed. Many of the works on the list he had left malicious comments on did not have status windows.

If anything, he had gained a clue that allowed him to eliminate possibilities from the list.

On top of that, he was in the body of a child who looked barely four or five years old. Both time and potential were practically on his side.

Even the old, worn clothes and shabby ceiling were favorable signs.

“A genius of this caliber, living in a place like this?!”

“He is a true hero among men!!”

“I shall give you the throne and all my riches! Just spare my life!!”

After all, every form of media on Earth had already proven that the more miserable one’s childhood was, the greater one’s eventual success appeared.

Kim Sunwoo smiled faintly and rose to his feet.

First things first.

Perhaps he should begin with something simple, like making soap.

Age four. First week after transmigration.

Kim Sunwoo discovered that his new body was named Ivan Petrovich.

He was bewildered to learn that his parents were tenant farmers and ignorant peasants who did not even know the name of their own country, let alone how to read.

After failing to make soap, he was severely scolded for playing around with lye.

He then discovered that soap already existed in this world.

Age four. Sixth week after transmigration.

Kim Sunwoo was finally allowed to travel around the village while running errands to deliver eggs.

The moment he saw a newspaper lying on the ground, he began to sense that something was strange.

“A society capable of printing newspapers and distributing them all the way out to a rural village like this can’t possibly be medieval.”

Most of the works on his “list of possible transmigration settings” were eliminated that day.

Age four. Fifteenth week after transmigration.

Kim Sunwoo finally heard the name of the country he lived in.

After also learning the name of the king, whom everyone had vaguely referred to as “His Majesty,” he immediately returned home and threw his precious “list of possible transmigration settings,” which he had carefully kept in one corner of the room, into the fire.

The country was unfamiliar.

The ruler was unfamiliar.

Even the surrounding kingdoms all had names he had never heard before.

The important question was no longer, “Which work have I been transported into?”

It had become:

“What genre is this world supposed to be?”

Please, anything but dark fantasy.

The survival rate of a modern Korean reincarnated as a tenant farmer, with neither a status window nor any special transmigration benefits, usually converged to less than five percent.

Age eight. Fourth year after transmigration.

A Demon King suddenly appeared, completely out of nowhere.

The war was still only a distant story from faraway lands, but the special newspaper editions distributed every day carried nothing but grim news.

Winter, age eight.

Kim Sunwoo’s—no, Ivan’s—father was seized by a conscription officer and taken away.

Ivan’s mother began doing communal labor for other households in order to feed her young son.

It was around this point that Kim Sunwoo’s sense of identity began to shift slightly out of alignment.

Age ten. Sixth year after transmigration.

Kim Sunwoo had become reasonably skilled at helping his mother with communal labor.

Age twelve. Eighth year after transmigration.

Kim Sunwoo finally learned how to read.

It was the reward for secretly setting aside eggs and delivering them to the village chief’s house for six years.

Age fourteen. Tenth year after transmigration.

News of his father’s death finally reached the village.

The absurd part was that the official notice had been issued two years earlier.

In place of his father’s life, they were given a few measly coins.

As he watched his mother sob, two thoughts occurred to him.

The first was that this world’s genre had to be a strategy simulation.

He had wondered why everything was so meticulously detailed. If this were an RPG, there ordinarily would not be this many countries. Wasn’t it normal not to fully implement background regions that the player would never experience?

It probably was not a novel or webtoon, either.

The world itself was proof. It was too subtly constructed to be an ordinary otherworld fantasy, with basic gunpowder weapons and steam engines existing alongside knights, mages, a Demon King, and various nonhuman races.

Anyone who tried writing a novel with a setting like this would inevitably hear things like, “What the hell does that mean, nerd?” or, “There he goes again, talking about stuff only he understands,” before the free serialization was abandoned halfway through.

In that case, he naturally had to head for the front lines.

If he lived and died as a tenant farmer in this backward countryside, he might never set foot in the main story.

Strategy simulations generally ended with someone conquering the world. He had to avoid an ending where he remained ignorant of everything and was conquered by the Demon King’s army.

His second thought was—

“Don’t worry, Mother.”

He stroked the hair of his mother, who had cried herself to sleep, then submitted an enlistment application to the recruiting officer.

The annual salary was fifteen copper pieces.

He signed a contract stating that the entire sum would be sent to his mother.

Ivan Petrovich did not want this woman’s hands to blister ever again.

It was not because he had suddenly developed some profound sense of filial devotion.

Rather, he pitied the extraordinary woman who had devoted her entire life to someone who was, in truth, a complete stranger.

And he felt guilty because by taking over the body of a young boy named Ivan, he had effectively killed her only remaining family member.

Age eighteen. Fourteenth year after transmigration. Fourth year of military service.

Thanks to a few minor military achievements and a little luck, Ivan’s status was changed from “conscript” to “regular soldier.”

He discovered that Ivan’s body possessed a far greater talent for combat than he had expected.

Age twenty-two. Eighteenth year after transmigration. Eighth year of military service.

When the front lines had been pushed back to a critical degree and half of the allied nations were in flames—

A Hero appeared.

At that moment, Ivan finally understood this world’s genre.

It was a Hero’s tale.

In other words, a traditional RPG.

However, the Hero remained nothing more than a distant story from another land, while the front where Ivan had been deployed continued to collapse miserably.

Age twenty-eight. Twenty-fourth year after transmigration. Fourteenth year of military service.

As the Hero’s party began eliminating the commanders of the Demon King’s army, the tide of war turned.

Ivan was reassigned to the “Unit for Securing Reclaimed Territories and Identifying Hostile Elements.”

Its long name could be simplified to this:

The Extermination Unit.

It was a special operations unit deployed after the Hero’s party killed an enemy commander and the opposing forces collapsed into chaos.

For roughly a year after that, Ivan traveled while sharing military encampments with the Hero’s party.

Age thirty. Twenty-sixth year after transmigration. Sixteenth year of military service.

The Hero’s party killed the Demon King.

Ivan decided to wait for the ending.

All he wanted was to escape this wretched world.

Age thirty-two. Twenty-eighth year after transmigration.

Even two years after the Demon King’s death, no ending appeared.

During that time, the Extermination Unit had been reduced to one-fifth of its original size.

When command stopped sending them new recruits, Ivan realized that his superiors intended to dismantle the unit.

After completing one final mission that was practically a death sentence, Ivan concluded that this entire situation must be an unusually long epilogue and applied for discharge.

His mother back home had already died ten years earlier.

He was completely alone.

He established an orphanage near the capital and took in children orphaned by the war.

It was a small act of hypocrisy.

Age thirty-four. Thirtieth year after transmigration.

Still.

Even now.

After all this time.

The ending credits had yet to appear.

The suspicion that this world might not have been an RPG after all became a certainty when a certain visitor came to the orphanage.

“Fuck.”

“Pardon?”

“Fuck. This was an academy story?”

“Senior...?”

The visitor smiled awkwardly at the orphanage director—war hero, eighteen-year military veteran, former member of the Extermination Unit, and acquaintance of the Hero’s party—who had suddenly begun swearing.

The visitor, who had been dispatched by the royal court, broke into a cold sweat as he recalled the orphanage director’s numerous nicknames.

The Great King’s Executioner.

The Logging Machine.

The Man Who Slaughtered the Seven Dragon Generals.

The Undying One.

The Reserve Unit.

A living legend among conscripts.

The ominous man looked ready to bury an axe in him if he said so much as one wrong word.

And so the visitor maintained an uncomfortable smile and quietly held his breath until the orphanage director’s anger subsided.