I Must Become Sultan
A room spacious enough to comfortably accommodate several dozen people.
The walls and floor were decorated with marble and gold, while the furniture and bed bore the touch of a master craftsman.
A boy who had risen from a quilt embroidered with gold thread clasped his throbbing head.
“I’ve lost my mind.”
For a modern man who had been sitting in front of a computer just yesterday, this scenery was hard to accept.
That he had entered the body of a small boy who hadn’t even hit puberty yet, and that he had opened his eyes in a palace one would only see on a trip to Europe.
But the biggest problem was that this scenery was not unfamiliar.
Because it was a scene he had seen hundreds of times beyond his monitor until yesterday.
“…Why did it have to be inside this game?”
“Sultan, Rule the World.” That was the title of this game.
As the name implied, it was a game where you became the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, a conquering monarch who commanded the world.
That is, if you could actually ascend to the position of Sultan.
Because this insane game made even becoming the Sultan—the true beginning—fiendishly difficult.
The protagonist always started with the weakest claim to succession regardless of the era, and had to survive countless assassinations and schemes.
His life was so cheap that even if he died, his father the Sultan would simply shrug and say, “Hmph, he died sooner than I thought.”
Thanks to that, the difficulty was utterly absurd.
‘How bad must it be that all those famous gamers rushed in, yet no one had become Sultan?’
YouTubers and streamers from around the world had latched onto it to farm views and fame, yet this was the result.
He himself was a true gamer who had challenged it over four hundred times.
“I’d rather be having some crazy dream from gaming addiction.”
But if that were the case, the memories of the body’s original owner, planted alongside excruciating pain, were far too vivid.
There was a limit to what imagination could fill in; with Arabic script wriggling like worms embedded in his head, there was no way this was a dream.
As he clutched his head amidst the jumbled memories, a knock reached his ears.
“—Prince Yusuf, did you cough?”
“Enter.”
The voice, having not yet passed puberty, was quite awkward, yet an authoritative tone came out naturally.
To the body’s owner this place was home, but to him it was a den of demons.
Even if the opponent was a maid, he could not show the slightest crack.
A maid entered cautiously after opening the door, a small tray in her hands.
“What is that?”
“It is medicine, Your Highness.”
“Medicine?”
Yusuf, who had tilted his head for a moment, furrowed his brow at a suddenly surfacing memory.
It wasn’t difficult to locate among the stuffed memories, as it wasn’t from long ago.
‘Damn it. Circumcision.’
A circumcision for religious reasons.
So that was why it hurt.
He wasn’t some kid lured by fried chicken to get snipped; they had thrown a grand festival only to subject him to circumcision without anesthesia.
Well, on the bright side, at least he had avoided a second circumcision.
“Your Highness?”
Perhaps his thoughts had stretched on too long, for the maid called out again.
Yusuf glanced briefly at the medicine resembling herbal decoction on the tray and spoke firmly.
“I do not need medicine.”
“It may be bitter, but you must drink it for your health.”
The shell might be a child, but the man inside had eaten his fill of life; he wouldn’t throw a tantrum just because some medicine tasted bitter.
When he closed his eyes, just as the small, irritating icon at the bottom of his vision indicated, if this was indeed inside the game, he had to be careful even drinking cold water.
There were statistics that ninety-five percent of beginners died in the early game, and sixty percent quit entirely.
Naturally, he had no intention of drinking that suspicious medicine.
“I know my own body best. I said I do not need it.”
“As you command.”
As he watched the retreating maid, a semi-transparent window floated before his eyes.
[Poisoning Avoided, Score +2]
So they were pulling tricks right from the start?
He couldn’t even be happy that his choice was correct.
If he had drunk that medicine just now, he would have become the Boy Who Died of complications from an unhygienic circumcision, and not a single letter of his name would have remained in the history books.
Even if he kicked up a fuss trying to find the culprit behind the poisoning right now, it would only shorten his own measly lifespan.
Yusuf lightly slapped both his cheeks.
“This is no time to let my guard down.”
Unlike in novels, there was no time to blubber over why he had ended up in this situation while denying reality.
When you really thought about it, all those protagonists were frauds.
They only indulged in such worries because they had the luxury; from the perspective of someone who had just narrowly escaped death, he’d end up in a coffin faster than he could adapt to reality.
Rather than racking his brains over how he had entered the game or how to get back, he needed to take productive action.
“That is, if I don’t want to die immediately. First, I need to figure out what era this is.”
The Ottoman Empire could be largely divided into two periods in terms of succession.
The era of fratricide and the era of seniority-based succession.
The Turks, the root of the Sultanate, were a nomadic people originating from the steppes, and to them fratricide was a natural culture.
At this time, a prince’s fate was either succession or death.
Later, through a law code called the Kanunname, the Law of Fratricide was codified, allowing the Sultan to kill even his cousins.
Then was the era of seniority succession peaceful? Not at all. Where would such roots go?
Fortunately, during this time male royals who failed to become Sultan could at least keep their lives.
However, they simply had to live like idiots locked in the Kafes, meaning “cage” in Turkish.
Living up to its nickname, the Golden Cage, as long as they didn’t have children they could sleep with women and eat fine food, but being forced to remain cooped up indoors for a lifetime could not be happiness.
“Damn. Still, the cage is better.”
His life was equally cheap either way; if the Sultan decided, he would meet Allah immediately. However, the latter option offered a higher chance of survival.
If he was lucky, he could become like Mustafa I, who ascended to the throne thanks to mental illness.
After racking his brains and rummaging through memories, his luck was utterly terrible.
“And the current Sultan just had to be Bayezid II.”
One might not know that name, but the previous Sultan was Mehmed II.
The man who sacked Constantinople and destroyed the Eastern Roman Empire, and who created the Law of Fratricide declaring, “It is fitting to kill one’s brothers for the order of the world.”
So what did that mean? The Law of Fratricide was in full, active effect.
‘I’ve caught the worst possible luck.’
But surprisingly, this wasn’t even the worst of it.
Bayezid II was born in 1447, and Yusuf—a late addition who had not existed in original history—was born in 1489.
In real history, even by 1509 when the Sultan began to falter due to the great earthquake, four princes had survived; currently, seven out of eight sons were still alive.
Including himself who had popped in out of nowhere, that made a whopping eight princes, and he had to fight blood-soaked battles against elder brothers old enough to be his father.
“How is an eleven-year-old brat supposed to become Sultan in this situation? No. Let’s think positively.”
A positive mindset was essential to play a hopeless game over four hundred times.
At this time, not only East Asia but also West Asia used the traditional age reckoning system, counting the year of birth as the first year.
Since he was currently eleven years old, it was 1499, not long before the end of the fifteenth century, and Bayezid II died in 1512.
There were still thirteen years left, and there was plenty of time to distinguish himself before the current Sultan began to decline.
‘Until then, just holding onto my life is the biggest hurdle, but still, time is on my side.’
To push aside brothers who had already established themselves and become Sultan, he would need overwhelming achievements, but there would be plenty of chances to squeeze through.
Yusuf got out of bed.
He touched his arms and legs with acorn-sized hands and moved his body lightly.
Excluding the pain from circumcision, his limbs were intact as per memory, and although his lowered field of vision from becoming an eleven-year-old brat was annoying, it wasn’t a serious problem.
“Then next is this…”
The blinking icon visible when he closed his eyes. It was an interface he had been familiar with in the game.
Fortunately, pressing the icon required only thought, and three windows floated up.
[Talent] [Traits] [Shop]
All three were systems from the game.
Traits could only be obtained by collecting points from the shop, and with a mere two points he couldn’t even buy the first trait.
Moreover, even traits were limited since this was a historical game, not a fantasy game.
In the end, what gamers valued most was Talent.
Name: Şehzade Yusuf
Body – 3
Intelligence – 3
Charm – 3
Luck – 3
Extra Stats – 10
Regardless of era, the easiest and most accurate way to know someone’s status was to distinguish it from the name they gave upon introduction.
If one had a family name, you could tell which house they were from just by hearing it, but the Ottoman Empire was a country without surnames.
The bigger problem was that names used in the Islamic world were very limited.
There was an Arabian proverb that said, “If you call out Abdullah in Baghdad, a thousand Abdullahs will answer,” and if you exaggerated a bit further, half the population was Muhammad.
Eventually, the method the nobles devised was to attach offices and titles to names, and Şehzade was similarly appended to mean “prince” in this context.
In any case, distributing the stats below the name was extremely important.
‘Talent stats don’t change easily.’
Depending on which abilities were raised and by how much, the character’s fate changed drastically.
They could be raised from three, the level of an ordinary person, to a maximum of ten, and each talent had distinct strengths and weaknesses.
First, Body: at around ten, it was considered Lü Bu-grade talent.
Since martial prowess was outstanding, it was easy to earn the favor of the Janissaries, the empire’s elite infantry corps, and the Sipahi, the main cavalry corps.
Since the throne wasn’t won by playing rock-paper-scissors, military force was essential, but…
‘Which era’s Lü Bu are we talking about?’
The time when Lü Bu was worshipped as a war god was 1,300 years ago.
The Janissaries had already been using firearms as standard equipment since half a century ago.
To be precise, it was a hand cannon rather than a gun, but even if Lü Bu himself—or rather, Lü Bu’s grandfather—came, the era of solo rampage was long over.
Still, earning the favor of military factions alone made it a decent ability.
Next was Intelligence; at ten, it was Zhuge Liang-level talent dropped into the Ottoman Empire.
Honestly, he had never lived particularly smartly so he didn’t know how it would apply in reality, but in the game it handled domestic affairs well and devised tactics effectively.
With high Intelligence, it was easy to gain favor from bureaucrats including the Grand Vizier (Sadr-ı Azam).
‘Charm… this one’s a no-go.’
Charm was certainly a good stat. At ten, for men it was Liu Bei; for women, Casanova.
Like the Pied Piper, it led people around in droves, an ability capable of recreating fascism centuries ahead of its time, but…
‘It’s perfect for getting stabbed to death while walking down the street.’
Women screaming, “If our love cannot be fulfilled, I will destroy everything!” or men shouting, “Give me back my wife!” would plant a knife in your gut.
This wasn’t a possibility; it was a certainty.
Because humans die if stabbed once even after dodging a hundred times, players worldwide met similar endings.
The last was Luck; it made the lifeline of a character so unlucky they’d break their nose falling backward surprisingly tenacious.
An arrow would miss while you coughed and ducked, or you’d accidentally knock over a bowl of poison.
There were many cases of surviving by luck.
‘Now I have to choose which of these four to invest in…’
If you distributed them evenly without focus, you’d end up with a trash character, so the answer was to dump everything into one; fortunately, there was a conclusion reached through the collective intelligence of players worldwide.
Yusuf boldly raised his stats.
Dumping everything into Luck.
Once stats were allocated, there was an action one absolutely had to perform.
“Lady Luck, please let me live even just one more day.”
Having prayed earnestly, Yusuf steeled his heart.
Now, all that remained was to become Sultan from a mayfly-like prince.