IWBNAM Chapter 1 (Part 1)
by Brie- Me, Here
I possessed a side character in an SF novel. All I did was play a mass-produced strategy web game based on the original story.
Lee Juwon wondered. Why am I here?
He remembered sitting on a bench on his university campus, killing the awkward stretch of time before the next class with a mobile game. It was a strategy web game titled Space Age Heroic Saga.
He hadn’t planned to play it at all. He already had another game he’d been deeply invested in, spending real money and everything.
But while browsing the internet, he accidentally clicked on an ad window and ended up starting a web game he had zero interest in. The moment he realized the mistake, he tried to close it right away. The art style felt like some old animation far from any modern illustration trends, and the overall gameplay looked like your typical mass-produced strategy simulator, so nothing about it grabbed him.
Still, since he’d already entered, he changed his mind and decided to try playing it once. He was bored anyway. And really, who doesn’t know? These mass-produced web games can be surprisingly fun in the early levels. It seemed worth using as a quick killing-time distraction.
The very early stage was, indeed, pretty fun. Just a few taps following the guide’s instructions, and buildings popped up, resources increased, and the player level climbed rapidly. Almost as soon as he started, he went from level one to level two, and after about ten minutes of eager tapping, he reached level five.
Listening absent-mindedly to the classical music playing as background BGM while tapping whatever the guide told him to, he found himself slowly becoming interested in the game. He had assumed it was just another typical third-rate web game, but after skimming the spaceship and hero introductions, he could feel that the world-building was surprisingly solid.
He recalled briefly seeing the phrase “40th Anniversary Edition Game of the Original Novel” on the ad window. Now that he thought about it, he felt like he had seen a novel with that title somewhere.
Where was it? Ah, it was on the platform where a popular alternate-history series was being serialized. The protagonist’s name must have been some kind of homage to a famous work, because several people in the comments mentioned the title Space Age Heroic Saga.
Let’s forget, for a moment, the memory of him thinking, while watching some older user excitedly showing off their knowledge, “Ah… elders….” There’s always a reason why anything remains beloved for so long. That was probably why he, instead of immediately closing the game window after stumbling into it by accident, decided to at least get a taste of it.
I should read the original novel later when I have time.
Stopping his mindless repetitive tapping, Juwon relaxed and lightly skimmed through the hero menu. For games based on famous original works, you definitely enjoy them more when you’re familiar with the source material, but to him, every character was a stranger. Now that he was just starting to find the game somewhat interesting, that unfamiliarity was a bit disappointing.
The heroes were clearly ranked, so he could tell who was important and who wasn’t, but the character introductions were too brief for him to know anything about their detailed storylines.
Well, not that you necessarily need that to play the game… The moment fast and easy leveling hit a wall, he’d drop it anyway. It wasn’t unfun, but he didn’t feel any desire to commit to it seriously.
That expected moment came soon enough. Going from level five to level ten took about thirty more minutes, even though getting to level five had taken only ten.
He would definitely need more time if he kept grinding levels.
Watching the flashy effects and gift notifications that appeared the moment he reached level ten, Juwon decided it was time to stop. He hadn’t started the game as a fan of the original novel, and he’d only entered by accident; he didn’t want to keep playing by investing his time and money into it. He could always come back later, after reading the novel and becoming a fan.
Even if I stop playing, I should at least try the summons.
Confirming that he still had some free premium currency, Juwon immediately opened the high-grade hero summon menu. He knew he’d only get a bunch of mediocre trash anyway, but it felt wasteful not to use it at all.
A single pull costs two hundred diamonds. A ten-pull costs one thousand eight hundred. He currently had five thousand six hundred twenty-five diamonds, enough for three ten-pulls and one extra single summon.
He spun the roulette with zero expectations. As expected, it produced nothing but trash with perfect consistency, making him snort. The items would be helpful if he planned to continue the game, but for someone intending to quit right away, they were completely useless materials.
The odds of summoning a high-grade hero were 0.1 percent.
Compared to the absurd rates in famous RPGs like Bloodline or Mushroom Kingdom, 0.1 percent wasn’t actually that bad. With about two hundred thousand won, you could pretty much guarantee a legendary-grade high-tier hero.
Fans with money probably went “Jackpot!” and pulled without hesitation. But for him, it didn’t matter whether he got one or not.
Lee Juwon spun the roulette again with an indifferent expression. He luckily got one hero introduction slip; you needed twenty of those to summon a hero, and the rest were just junk items. The third roulette gave him nearly the same results.
He hadn’t expected anything anyway, so there was nothing to be disappointed about. He told himself he would finish the final pull and delete the game. That was when he let out a small “Huh?”
It was a pull he had tried only because it felt wasteful to throw away the currency. Yet somehow, breaking through the 0.1 percent chance, the illustration of a legendary-grade hero filled his phone screen.
Black hair, black eyes, an appearance that carried a distinctly East Asian bloodline, and a cool, razor-sharp aura.
In the upper-left corner of the screen, crimson letters LR marked the legendary grade, and at the bottom, the hero’s name was clearly written.
[Nael de Azani]
Unsure if this was real, Lee Juwon widened his eyes and stared at the screen. Maybe he had accidentally tapped the hero introduction page and brought up the illustration by mistake?
But it wasn’t a hero introduction image; it was indeed a real summon result. When he checked his hero list and saw the legendary-grade portrait shining proudly at the top, Juwon made up his mind. I have to spend money on this! Unless the heavens themselves wanted him to play this game, how else could something this improbable have happened?
He would buy the beginner’s package and subscribe to the monthly plan.
He hurried to pull out his card and began entering his information. Just as he filled in the card number and password and pressed confirm, the phone screen suddenly went black. Then lines of text, presumably German, filled the display, dense like the regulations of an insurance contract.
Startled, he scrolled down, and far below were two rectangular buttons. One said Ja. The other said Nein. He didn’t know German well, but he at least knew the first meant yes and the second meant no.
It was a flashy screen just to ask for payment confirmation. Was this part of the game’s theme?
Juwon interpreted it simply and placed his finger over Ja. He only wanted to pay and actually enjoy the game properly.
“But I shouldn’t have done that.”
Juwon murmured as he looked into the mirror. Across from him was a man of mixed white and East Asian descent staring back. He knew this face. Even if the 80s-style animation design had transformed into the appearance of a real human, there was no way he wouldn’t recognize who this was.
How could he fail to recognize the one legendary-grade hero he summoned through a 0.1 percent miracle?
“Nael de Azani.”
He reached out and placed his hand against the mirror. A cold, smooth sensation met his palm. So this wasn’t an illusion.
“Reality? Is this really real?”
Was it that he, a nobody who wasn’t even a proper fan of the original work, had committed some audacity by drawing a legendary hero at 0.1 percent? He hadn’t been hit by a truck, hadn’t run into any bizarre alien creatures, hadn’t written a long rant criticizing the original, so why a sudden possession?
He tried hard to come up with a theory that could explain things logically. The most plausible was that he was dreaming. Maybe he had dozed off while playing, and his half-asleep mind mixed random thoughts together, creating an illusion that felt like possession…
“No. No.”
This wasn’t a dream. Not a hallucination. It was reality. Because the moment he regained consciousness in this world, everything came to mind: where he was, who he was, and what had happened today.
“I am….”
Lee Juwon turned his body and looked toward the bedroom. This was the room where the heads of House Azani had stayed for generations. After his father passed away, he had been the one using it.
And today’s date was February 14, in the year 3041 of the Common Era and year 874 of the Space Era. Today was also the day when five senior generals, recognized for their achievements following the new emperor’s coronation, would be appointed as the Empire’s new marshals. One of them was Nael de Azani, the Chief of Staff, whose body he had possessed.
“Like always, waking up at five thirty in the morning…”
Who woke up at five thirty? Certainly not Lee Juwon. Our newly admitted college freshman, living alone in a newly built studio near campus, had no need to wake up that early. The one who rose like clockwork in the early dawn was the soldier, Azani. That habit had been ingrained in him ever since entering the military academy, no, even earlier, back when he attended the general-track gymnasium in middle and high school.
“I am Nael de Azani… I am, my name is.”
As he tried to recall how any of this happened, remembering his distant life back on Earth, Lee Juwon finally accepted reality. It was a bizarre situation that defied all rational explanation, but somehow, he had become Nael de Azani, a character from Space Age Heroic Saga.
Fine. He understood it up to that point. So what came next?
“Ah…”
He didn’t know the original novel. He had only heard the title before. He had never read even a single page of it.
Sinking into frustration, Juwon sat down on the nearby sofa. It was fortunate that his memories had synchronized upon possession, but the problem was that it ended there.
He didn’t know the details of the plot, but he could roughly guess that the current point in the story was only about the middle. The plot said that the imperial emperor, one of the game’s two main protagonists, would quell the internal disorder and go on to conquer even the Republic, becoming the ruler who unified the largest territory in human history. But the current emperor, Sirius, had only achieved the unification of the Empire itself.
According to Azani’s memories, this world existed about a thousand years in the future from the 21st century.
In the 22nd century, in the year 2168, humanity succeeded in sending the first manned spacecraft beyond the solar system. That same year, the Earth Unified Government declared Space Era Year One.
There were many hardships, but people, armed with a spirit of exploration, pushed out into space. Progress accelerated dramatically. A golden age of two hundred years unfolded before humanity.
However, by the end of the 24th century, the Space Union began showing signs of decay. Space was vast, the pace of colonization was fast, and the Union no longer had the ability to control every region.
Independent powers formed everywhere. Planets prioritized their autonomy and rejected the Union’s control. The space medieval era had begun. Military factions sprang up, and eventually, some even declared secession from the Union and moved to establish independent nations. At first, they kept the façade of democratic republics, but in the end, ambitious men who called themselves kings appeared.
Dozens of kingdoms rose and fell in the chaos, leaving only seven kingdoms, two dictatorships, and the old Union. Among them, the nation that gained an overwhelming advantage was the Kingdom of Lumen, formed primarily by Germanic groups.