WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 31: A Night of Counting Stars (5)

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“Shall we introduce ourselves one at a time? I’m Yevgeny. Yevgeny Novikov Karamzin. I’m Kim Yujin, and I took over the body of the Karamzin Ducal House’s son!”

Eugene spoke as he wrote his name in Hangul on the clubroom whiteboard.

In front of the terrified Knight Department girl, the elf with a lazy expression that revealed none of his thoughts, and the murderous Santa Claus big bro whose mere presence still made Eugene’s knees shake.

“The last novel I read was [The Genius Swordsman Scoundrel of the Northern Duke's House], and now I’ve enrolled in the Theology Department to walk the path of a priest! Ah, I can see a Status Window too. Anyone else here see one?”

He threw up a hand and made a casual attempt at building some common ground, but everyone only watched each other warily.

Was there nobody?

Was a Status Window actually something incredibly special...? Eugene awkwardly lowered his hand and continued.

“Um. Umm.... Does anyone have anything else they’re curious about?”

“The ending.”

“...Pardon?”

“Explain the ending, setting, and storyline of the novel you read.”

Eugene fell into thought for a moment. Where was he even supposed to start?

Usually, long-running novels met one of three endings: a normal conclusion, indefinite hiatus, or becoming a cash cow.

The novel Eugene had read had been turned into a cash cow down to its marrow. It had run for over a thousand chapters.

The kind that was easy to read on the commute with an empty head, smooth enough to breeze through without any frustrating stretches, and had barely any actual substance.

In other words, there was no ending. The protagonist went to an academy, gathered hidden pieces, began fighting an evil mage family, and then a world war suddenly broke out....

The novel kept prolonging itself by repeating, “The mastermind was actually ~~,” every hundred chapters or so....

The kind of novel where even the author probably couldn’t imagine an ending anymore.

“Um....”

As Ivan listened to Eugene, he thought about it. It was definitely a story he didn’t know, and content he had never heard of.

To begin with, Ivan, or rather Kim Seonwoo, had been serious about novels.

That meant he had strict standards for choosing what to read. He had enough pride not to read a long-running no-romance cash-cow story with a dash of BL flavor, displayed gaudily on the front page of the main portal.

“Next.”

When Ivan turned his head, Oswald hesitantly stood.

“Oswald Eastvelpen. I am the second son of the Eastvelpen Barony. My father is a current Privy Councilor, and I am an elf from Kallion. As you can see. My Korean name was Park Jaeyoung. The novel I was reading was, um.... Um.”

Oswald squeezed his eyes shut and forced out the words.

“It was The Genius Mage Obsessed Over by the Villainess....”

“Oh. Romance!”

“Shut... your mouth.”

Oswald gritted his teeth at Eugene’s interjection.

“I didn’t even read thirty chapters! The story wasn’t that good, and by then the angst was already over. After that, it just kept force-feeding contrived frustration!”

“Oh, an expert.”

“Shut... your! Mouth!”

“How old are you? I was thirty-one in Korea, and I’m in my fourth year since transmigrating!”

“...I was twenty-seven in Korea, and this is my fourth year.”

“Then you’re undeniably the younger one! Want to call me big bro and get comfortable?”

“Hey, Ivan? I can’t work with this bastard.”

So this one didn’t know the ending or even the plot.

Ignoring the two of them as they bickered, Ivan nodded.

“Next.”

“Eek!!”

Yuri, who had been cowering the whole time, struggled to her feet.

“I’m Yuri... Frank. In Korea, I was Lee Yuri... I was an illustrator.”

“Wow! A working adult!”

“Um, I was twenty-nine... and this is my fourth year since transmigrating... I don’t have parents.”

“Gasp! Immune to insults about her parents...!”

“Is that bastard seriously insane?”

Eugene was bursting with energy at the sudden appearance of transmigrators around his own age. He seemed excited simply because more people in this damned premodern fantasy world could share information about their home.

Yuri, on the other hand, remained hunched in on herself.

“I, I didn’t mean I had no parents... This body has no parents... I’m called Yuri Frank....”

“What was the original work?”

“Eek!”

Yuri flinched at Ivan’s question and avoided his gaze.

Everyone focused on her mouth as a brief silence passed.

“What, is it a mystery? I’ll guess! Let’s see. An academy story, a regret, misery, obsession novel, so this must be a gender-bender story...! That’s the usual progression! W-were you actually a man in Korea...?”

“No!!”

“Or does it suddenly become a streaming story? Ah, maybe it’s unexpectedly a straightforward fantasy...!”

“W-well, it’s....”

“Be quiet, Eugene. Now then, Miss Yuri Frank. I’ll cast a spell to help you calm down.”

Oswald raised a hand with a warm smile. He specialized in Mind Sorcery, the school of mental magic.

That meant he could use buff skills such as [Bestow Courage] or [Guide Wisdom].

As mysterious purple mana began to ripple, Yuri jerked backward in terror.

“H-hypnosis!! Nooooo!!”

“...What?!”

“W-what are you going to do after casting that?! Y-you all know, don’t you?! You rapist bastards!!”

“I can’t follow the flow of this conversation. Ivan, what should we do about this?”

Ivan considered it for a moment.

She hesitated to reveal the original work, and she was suspiciously terrified even of his ordinary appearance.

The same went for Eugene, a normally handsome young nobleman, and Oswald, who always wore a gentle smile with kind eyes.

Ivan’s eyes widened in horror at a certain ideology that suddenly came to mind.

‘A feminist...?!’

As Ivan stood shocked after barely recalling a word from Earth thirty years ago, Yuri squeezed her eyes shut and stammered.

“I, I was dragged here... while working on an illustration! Th-the original work was a non... non....”

“Ah-ha! Correct! A noncon story!”

“Aaaaaah!!”

Yuri sank to the floor, covering her face. She wanted to go home. She hated them all. She was scared....

She had never imagined wanting to attend an academy with a pretty-boy playboy, a squinty-eyed hypnosis character, and a suspiciously strong gardener....

As Yuri sniffled, Ivan suddenly muttered.

“All of you are in your fourth year.”

“Ah, as for this big bro, he’s been here for a full thirty years.”

“How old is he this year...?”

“His body is thirty-four!”

“Oh... that’s terrible.”

Oswald looked at Ivan’s beard and sighed mournfully. How hard must it have been.... Oswald decided he should be understanding even if Ivan occasionally did things like a madman, then nodded.

“Come to think of it, we all arrived around the same time! What happened four years ago? Um....”

“The Demon King died.”

Ivan swept his gaze over them with serious eyes.

“The Hero killed the Demon King four years ago. Both of them were transmigrators.”

“Uh....”

“There are no stories in this world.”

Because this was reality.

Ivan barely accepted that sentence himself before continuing.

“But individuals have stories. Each person has their own story.... Just like the original works each of you read. Maximilian, who must have come here after reading a conventional Hero story, became the Hero. The Demon King was likely the same.”

“Then....”

“The Genius Swordsman Scoundrel of the Northern Duke's House.”

Ivan gestured toward Eugene, then pointed at Oswald.

“The genius mage obsessed over by the villainess.”

“Hah....”

Oswald shook his head with an uncomfortable expression.

“...And an unnamed noncon story....”

“Waaaaah....!!”

Yuri began to cry, sniffling.

“You all began your stories in settings similar to the original works you read. A black sheep from a ducal house, a mage loved by a noblewoman, and an unnamed noncon story....”

“P-please stop emphasizing it...!”

“Fine. But the stories that remain afterward are different.”

Ivan’s gaze deepened.

“A woman who knew the previous generation of transmigrators once told me this.”

“Live your story and finish your story. The ending your story reaches isn’t something decided by fate or the world. That is something you must decide.”

“At the end of each person’s story lies their own ending, and the path leading to that ending is not necessarily determined by fate.”

“Fate does not exist. On Earth or here, life is not trapped in a story with rails already laid down.”

“Do not wait for fate to end your story, disciple. Turn the pages of your own book. Until the very end.”

Remembering Enrika’s words, Ivan nodded.

“After spending thirty years in this world, meeting the Hero Party, then seeing all of you, I have formed a hypothesis.”

Ivan walked to the whiteboard.

“Fate does not determine a person’s future, but I believe it does intervene in a person’s past, in a person’s beginning.”

Suppose the world had desired a Demon King and a Hero, so it had transmigrated them into the roles of Demon King and Hero.

Then, immediately after the Demon King’s death, three other transmigrators appeared.

Each had transmigrated through entirely different stories, yet all had remarkably similar starting points to their original works.

And all of them had gathered here, at Saint Yansk University. Was that an incredible coincidence? No, this was some kind of design. It had to be.

That meant there might be a tendency in the kinds of stories the world desired.

What could be inferred at this point was....

“It is an academy story.”

“As expected! Ha!”

“And we have the ability to grasp the officially sanctioned flow in real time.”

Ivan gestured at Eugene.

“That one has a Status Window. It indicates the direction of the story in the form of quests. The kind that changes fluidly to reflect the current situation.”

“Oh....”

“From now on, we will....”

Ivan began writing large letters on the whiteboard.

- What story do all of us need?

- What ending will all of us reach?

- What do we need to do in this world?

“We will unite to figure these things out. We will understand our individual stories, analyze the world’s flow, and advance toward our ending.”

“Oooooh...!”

“Ah, wait.”

As Eugene cried out in excitement, Oswald raised a hand.

“We have not heard what Ivan’s story is.”

“Oh, right! I don’t know either. What was your story, big bro?”

“...I don’t know.”

“Huh?”

Ivan swept a serious gaze over all of them and spoke calmly.

“To transmigrate, I left malicious comments on over thirty works.”

“Oh... oh.”

“Goodness....”

Madman.

In the minds of all three, three red lines were drawn beneath Ivan’s name.

* * *

That night, all of them stood atop the tallest spire of Saint Yansk University, looking up at the sky.

“Then, the Korean Patriotic League, move out!”

“I said Returnee Party.”

“I’d rather we didn’t give it a name at all.”

Inwardly, Ivan was thinking of naming it the service club.

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Footnotes:

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