My name is Danil Norman.
I am the illegitimate son of the Norman family, a venerable house of mages in the Jeinoba Empire.
Before I begin my story, there’s something I have to confess: I’m a reincarnator.
In my previous life, I was ordinary. I was an office worker at a major corporation. A full-time employee, even.
You think that sounds like an enviable past life? Well. Live the way I did and you won’t be saying that.
“Fuck. Is this any way for a human being to live?”
That was what I said every single day on my way to work in my previous life.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Friday, Friday.
Leaving on time was a fantasy, overtime was daily life, weekends were business trips. Public holidays were unpaid labor. How’s that? Incredible, right?
Was I really full-time? I was.
Then why was it so damn brutal?
Think of the CSAT.
Only the top few percent get into prestigious universities, right?
Promotion structures at big corporations are the same.
They move the ones who are good at their jobs upward. And to become one of those people who’s good at his job? Is there anything special to it? You just have to work your ass off doing overtime.
Thanks to all that effort, I became a deputy manager at a major corporation at thirty-two.
And then I immediately got the overwork-death ending.
‘I was pissed as hell.’
I suffered every hardship there was as a cog in the corporate machine, never even getting to feel any real happiness, and then—dead! That was my life.
It would be strange if I were satisfied with that.
So when I opened my eyes again and found myself born with a noble spoon in a fantasy world where magic and swords actually existed, I shed tears of joy.
‘Is this how Hong Gildong would feel if he weren’t discriminated against?’
My second life didn’t have much in the way of ups and downs.
Even if I was an illegitimate son, I was still a member of the nobility, and my family didn’t discriminate against me or treat me like an outsider.
My elder brother was a little wary of me.
I was a potential future rival for succession, so it made sense.
‘Don’t worry, Brother. I’m not interested in that kind of thing anymore.’
I meant it.
In my previous life, I had died after clinging to success and power.
After living such an exhausting life, I was supposed to live like that again? Was I insane? I’d rather die.
‘In this life, I’m going to live thin and long, happily and without stress.’
A YOLO life. That was the goal of my second life.
*
If I wanted to enjoy a YOLO life, what should I do first?
The answer I came up with was studying.
I had studied so much in my previous life to get ahead, and now I had to study again so I could laze around and enjoy myself?
It seemed damn contradictory and unreasonable, but what could I do? Complaining wouldn’t change the right answer.
“Life’s the same whether it’s modern times or a fantasy world.”
If you want a decent job, decent grades are essential.
This was a place where people lived too, so they cared about school grades just the same.
So what choice did I have? Dirty and petty as it was, I had to grind my grades.
To enjoy a YOLO life, I needed a decent job, and to get that, grade grinding was essential.
For that, I had to endure for now.
‘Fortunately, the second run isn’t that hard.’
I never thought the experience of studying for sixteen years would help me here.
Hm? So what job was I studying to get?
If you thought about it logically, there was only one, wasn’t there?
‘Let’s become a mage!’
According to my father, I wasn’t talented enough to be called a genius, but I did have enough talent to be considered gifted.
After gathering information from here and there, I learned that mages were a kind of specialist profession in this place, treated as quite valuable.
There was no reason not to aim for it.
‘To do that, I have to get into the Imperial Academy!’
To learn professional magic, I had to enter the Department of Magic at the Imperial Academy, the greatest educational institution in the empire.
Fortunately, my efforts paid off, and I was able to enroll in the Imperial Academy without much difficulty.
Oh, right. As an aside, my elder brother, who took the exam with me, failed.
I knew it from the moment he started getting lost in booze and women.
When he glared at me while I was being showered with praise by the family for passing the Imperial Academy, even though he’d brought it on himself, I was genuinely dumbfounded.
And when Father noticed and scolded him, telling him to grow up, there was no catharsis like it.
“This is where it begins.”
Stepping through the main gate of the Imperial Academy, I entered the final spurt.
The classmates who entered the Department of Magic had only one goal.
To become mages—and not just any mages, but full-time mages of the Magic Tower, the fantasy version of a major corporation.
Guaranteed salary, research support, and on top of that, honor and status.
Not only my classmates, but even seniors and juniors were busy declaring their ambitions to become Magic Tower mages every time they opened their mouths.
What about me?
“It’d be nice if I became a Magic Tower mage too.”
‘Are you insane? Why would I do that again?’
What about me, my ass.
I cosplayed as an ordinary magic student while internally recoiling in horror.
I told you before, didn’t I? Places where people live are all the same.
‘Factional strife, office politics, endless work and overtime. Ugh, my head.’
I’m not stupid enough to voluntarily choose a path of hardship in my second life too.
No matter what anyone says, in this life, YOLO comes before success. That’s what I decided.
So while everyone else was looking into this and that about the Magic Tower entrance exams, I searched for a job only a mage could do that would let me fully enjoy a YOLO life.
After investigating, I found there were quite a few decent jobs.
One day, as I continued managing my grades while searching for an even better job without settling, a group of people appeared in the academy auditorium with one year left before graduation.
“Silence! Today, special guests from the Magic Tower have come. Everyone, pay attention.”
“Pleased to meet you, my junior friends. My name is Karl. I am one of the elders of the Magic Tower.”
“Ooooh!!!”
The eyes of my classmates gathered in the auditorium sparkled.
It wasn’t unreasonable, since an executive-level figure from the major corporation they were aiming for had come.
But my friends were disappointed before long.
Because of a single thing the elder said.
“The reason I have come to see you today is to recruit for the Foreign Legion. We recently began recruitment, you see. I came here because I wanted to give my juniors the opportunity first.”
“Wow. Seriously?”
“Tch. I got my hopes up for nothing. I ran over thinking it was full-time recruitment.”
‘What the hell. Why are they reacting like that?’
Unlike me, who didn’t know what the Foreign Legion was, my friends seemed to know, and their reactions were lukewarm.
The man named Karl put his heart and soul into promoting the Foreign Legion.
The conditions were definitely decent.
Provision of rental housing owned by the Magic Tower, free living support up to the 5th Circle for those who wished to become official black mages, guaranteed employment until the age of sixty, and even a 10% discount on products under the Magic Tower.
With conditions like that, it wouldn’t have been strange for one or two applicants to appear, but my friends’ reactions were indifferent.
It was a chance to become a mage affiliated with the Magic Tower, something they wanted so badly. Why?
“Aren’t you going to apply?”
“What are you talking about? If I’m going in, I should go in as full-time. Why would I be insane enough to go in as a contract worker?”
“Contract worker?”
“What? You don’t know?”
My friend explained the Foreign Legion to me.
The Foreign Legion was the unit that handled the Magic Tower’s external dispatch work—in short, a miscellaneous-task unit.
They were dispatch specialists who went to places that requested the Magic Tower’s help and used magic there.
They were mages affiliated with the Magic Tower, but unlike full-timers, they weren’t assigned personal workshops or laboratories, and they almost never handled work inside the Magic Tower itself.
The lack of a promotion system was also not to be overlooked.
My friend enthusiastically listed, one by one, all the drawbacks of the Foreign Legion that Karl had not mentioned.
An ordinary magic student would have shuddered and lost interest. But I was different.
‘Wait a second. Is this an indefinite-term contract position?’
An indefinite-term contract position. Also known as a lifetime part-timer.
Promotion is almost impossible, but since the main work involves duties with less responsibility, there is almost no pressure for results.
The pay is low and the welfare benefits are bottom-tier, but for someone who wants to go comfortably for a long time, thin and long, it is the optimal choice.
For me, who dreamed of a YOLO life, it could be considered the best possible job.
“Seriously?”
For a moment, I was dazed by the reality that the dream workplace I had searched for so long had come to me on its own two feet. Then I straightened my posture and began focusing on Karl’s words.
The more I listened, the more certain I became.
‘I have to do this. If I don’t, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life!’
A workplace where I wouldn’t have to worry about promotion, and could live peacefully without political factional strife!
Indefinite-term contract position, you are my new light!
‘But… urgh!’
However, a realistic problem held me back.
It was none other than my family.
Our family was a mage household boasting three hundred years of history.
The family tradition was that it was only natural for a member of the house to become an outstanding mage, and with my elder brother, who had gone directly against that tradition, now on his third year of retaking the exam, they were placing their hopes on me instead.
And someone like me—someone who, from my family’s perspective, could more than easily become a full-time Magic Tower employee—was going to apply for an indefinite-term contract position? There would be an uproar.
My friends wouldn’t be a problem.
They’d cheer that one rival had disappeared.
But no matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t come up with a way to persuade my family.
‘Argh! What do I do about this?’
After returning to the dormitory, I fell into worry.
Elder Karl, who had ultimately failed to receive even a single applicant, had left behind the application forms, but the recruitment period was only three weeks.
How could I persuade my family within the time limit of three weeks?
‘Apply secretly? No. My family would be contacted right away, and the house would cancel it themselves. Damn it! I have to seize this chance!’
I couldn’t see any answer at all, but that didn’t mean I could give up.
I began thinking about how I could become an indefinite-term contract worker with my family’s consent.
But that worry came to an end in just three days.
“Danil! Something terrible happened!”
“Huh? What is it?”
There’s a saying that if fortune exists, so does misfortune.
An unexpected accident occurred that applied those words exactly.
Not on my end, but on my family’s.
*
The news my friend brought was astonishing.
“Heretic inquisitors?”
The shocking news that heretic inquisitors had descended on my family.
The truth was even more shocking.
My uncle—my father’s younger brother—had fallen into heresy.
And not just a little. He had fallen deeply. How deeply? Deeply enough to donate an enormous sum of money to that heresy.
In the process of judging that heresy, the temple discovered that there was a connection to our family, and so they dispatched heretic inquisitors targeting our house. Naturally, the family was turned upside down.
The result?
The best possible outcome, close to the worst.
The only one who had fallen into heresy was my uncle, so my uncle was the only one dragged away.
However, it was still true that a member of the family had committed a grave sin, so the temple held the family responsible and slapped us with a tremendous fine.
Thanks to that, the family avoided being completely torn apart, but it was left reeling.
To what extent?
We kept the territory, but the house’s cash reserves were emptied.
To the point that even the tuition of a child attending the Imperial Academy became a burden.
I saw this as an opportunity.
“Father, Mother. I will apply to the Foreign Legion.”
“What?!”
“Danil! What are you saying?”
“You know, don’t you? Someone has to reduce the family’s burden. And the person who can do that is me.”
At this filial statement from a fire-attribute filial son who saw the family crisis as an opportunity to become an indefinite-term contract worker, the expressions of not only my parents but also the elders of the family wavered.
“Danil. If it’s you, you can certainly become a full-time Magic Tower mage. I’ll find some way to cover your tuition, so don’t worry and—”
“Father. I’m not a child. The servants’ wages next month. Can you pay them in full?”
“……”
“If you remove my tuition, and if I enter the Foreign Legion and earn money, we can protect the family. We can overcome this crisis. You know that, don’t you?”
“Danil.”
“I am also a member of this family. Please allow me to share the responsibility.”
Father closed his mouth, and Mother wiped away her tears.
All the adults wore expressions filled with guilt.
“Because the family’s good-for-nothing caused trouble… we have ruined the future of a child who would have brought glory to the house. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
In the end, my parents allowed me to enter the Foreign Legion.
After that, everything proceeded swiftly.
Elder Karl welcomed me with open arms when I came carrying my application, and not only did he personally handle my withdrawal from the academy and my entry procedures into the Magic Tower’s Foreign Legion, he also spared no attention or assistance until I became a 3rd Circle black mage.
And so, after becoming an official 3rd Circle black mage of the Magic Tower as well as an indefinite-term contract worker, I learned the basic duties of the Foreign Legion and was immediately sent into the field.
At first, I made mistakes often like any newbie, and it was hard, but as I kept at it, I got used to it and it became manageable.
As expected, places where people live are the same no matter where you go.
Ten years passed after that.
My name is Danil Norman.
As of this year, I am thirty-two years old, a certified 5th Circle black mage, and an indefinite-term contract mage of the Magic Tower.