“Young Master... Young Master Allen!”
I could faintly hear Soldo’s angry voice, dragging me back to reality.
When I came to, I found I had suddenly been reborn into a fantasy world of swords and magic.
Or, more accurately, as a result of being forced to study day and night for the entrance examinations for the Royal Knight and Mage Academy of Yugria (aka the Royal Academy), Allen Rovene had reached his limit, and the stress had broken through into the memories of his—that is to say, my—previous life. It wasn’t so much that I had been reborn a few minutes ago, so to speak; it was more that I’d unlocked the memories of my life before this one.
“The examinations will be held in just three months, Young Master! Do you think you have the luxury of sitting around and staring into space?!” Even as the memories of my previous life flooded my brain in a strange, disconcerting way, Soldo’s lecture continued without interruption.
In my previous life, as per my parents’ plans, my youth had been wholly dedicated to studying. The word wasn’t really used anymore, but back then, I had been known as a “swot”—basically, someone whose whole life revolved around cramming for exams.
In this world, your academic credentials are everything—as a child, I’d taken that biased, old-fashioned ideology of my parents’ to heart and studied like a machine, never considering my own needs or interests.
One might think, Really? The first thing you think about after realizing you’ve been reincarnated into a different world is how much you studied? But that just indicated how absurdly focused my previous life had been on studying. Frankly, who I’d been then was the complete opposite of who I was now. My natural aversion to studying in this life had probably been a subconscious reaction to the toils of my past one.
Despite the fact that I’d studied like a madman in my past life, I hadn’t even been accepted into my first-choice school—the national university smack-dab in the middle of Tokyo, whose very name was synonymous with academic excellence. After failing the entrance exams, I’d had to wait an entire year before I could apply and get accepted into a different school. It’d been a fairly well-known private university, still within Tokyo; but while decent enough, it had definitely lacked the prestige of my top pick. Maybe I’d always been a little lacking in intelligence, even with all that studying.
The habits you forge in your childhood are a terrifying thing. By the time I’d become a university student, I’d developed a complex that made me feel vaguely anxious whenever I didn’t study and guilty if I ever tried to go out and have some fun. My “hobby” as a university student had been studying for my degree. My holidays had been spent studying for random licenses and qualifications. I hadn’t had a particular goal in mind—I’d just gone on obtaining a variety of qualifications that were realistically of little use to me.
Regardless of whether I’d loved studying or hated it, it had become ingrained in me as a routine, no different from brushing my teeth. Yet because of my average intelligence, I hadn’t even achieved all that much. How could someone study to such an idiotic extent without any goals in mind? When I looked back on my memories of that life, I found it impossible to comprehend how someone could just...
Wait, not “someone”... Me? Did I just call myself an idiot? Well, my past self, anyway...
“Young Master, you’re twelve years old this year. If we take into account the time needed for the journey to the capital, I have only two and a half months left for your instruction! Even if you do somehow manage to get accepted into the Royal Academy, your rank in the examinations and, subsequently, the class into which you are placed will have an unmistakable impact on your results thereafter—not to mention on your employment opportunities, potential promotions, and everything else in your future!” Soldo insisted. “It’s no exaggeration to say that these examinations will shape the rest of your life! Yet I don’t perceive any sense of urgency from you, Young Master. Are you even listening to me?!”
Just hearing Soldo drone on in his growling voice, I felt my mind wandering further. This was...a very different reality from the otherworldly reincarnations I’d imagined in my previous life.
Sure, I’ll take being born as the third son of a viscount. But aren’t I meant to be blessed with some sort of one-of-a-kind hidden talent? Shouldn’t heroes, saints, princes, and princesses constantly be visiting me, making a fuss over me and begging me to join their parties, all despite my insistence that I just want to live a laid-back life in the countryside? Isn’t that more like it?
Well, even if I didn’t go that far, I still felt a little cheated remembering what I had expected a life like this to be like. It was a bit unreasonable to suddenly awaken to life-changing exams knocking on my door instead of a princess. Being reborn into Hard Mode would be one thing, but no one would even dream of a mode like this! There’s no demand for this life, God!
Flipping through the memories of my past life, I found I had died of an illness at the age of thirty-six. I remembered it happening like this: As a result of my swotting at university, I managed to secure a job at a well-known food and beverage production company; my diligent, though not particularly successful efforts had finally borne fruit.
But it was then that I realized the real world was a far cry from the one in which “your academic credentials are everything,” as my parents had been so fond of saying. That world had long since passed. Of course, that wasn’t to say academic credentials were meaningless, but what truly mattered in the working world now were communication skills, the ability to identify and solve problems, and general intellectual curiosity—even toward matters not related to the work itself.
Essentially, it was all over for me. It was like I was being told to become a different person on the spot. As soon as I entered the workforce, people started calling me “Mr. Waiting-for-Instructions” and “Mr. AI”—essentially saying I was only good for completing routine tasks that didn’t require a smidgen of independent thought.
As I passed the age of thirty, I was being overtaken left, right, and center by my younger colleagues, and I knew something had to change. First, I needed to find a hobby other than studying, so I did the only thing I could think of—I searched “how to find a hobby” online. That’s just how pathetic I was. At that time, I couldn’t even comprehend what it felt like to be passionate about something.