9th Grade Civil Servant In Another World Chapter 1 - This F*cking Another World (1)

It’s a brilliant summer.

A dazzling beach under the sunlight.

I had made up my mind to go on a solo vacation, walking along the sea with ice cream in my mouth.

Before I knew it, I was in another world, possessing someone else’s body.

***

Knock knock knock!

A kind-looking woman with tightly permed hair knocked on the door.

“Lucas, do you still have a high fever? I made some easy-to-eat stew and sandwiches. Could you open the door?”

But from beyond the door came only cold silence, with no response at all.

“He must be sleeping. Call me anytime if you get hungry.”

“Is that guy still holed up in his room?”

Someone asked while coming down the stairs leading to the upper floor. A young man with ordinary brown hair and a tall stature.

“Yes. He seems quite sick. Daniel, are you going out to play again?”

“It’s not playing, it’s a reading group. I’ll eat this.”

Daniel stopped adjusting his tie and grabbed a sandwich. The woman clicked her tongue and showed signs of starting to nag.

“If young people gathering to drink and make noise isn’t playing—”

Daniel gulped down the sandwich and lightly put his arm around her shoulder.

“They’re all productive activities. I’ll be back late, so you don’t need to prepare dinner, Mrs. Schmidt. Tell Lucas I went out when he wakes up.”

“Alright, have a good time. I should go do some cleaning.”

Following the sound of Daniel going down the stairs and the front door opening and closing, Mrs. Schmidt’s footsteps faded away.

I, who had been lying face down on the bed without moving a finger, finally let out a long breath.

“…Damn it.”

I carefully got up and approached the mirror in the corner of the room where things were scattered messily.

Even after almost two days, I still wasn’t used to the face I saw.

Jet-black hair and pale, sickly skin. Large eyes situated under deep-set eyelids.

No matter how I looked at it, it was the appearance of a Caucasian.

It was a decent-looking face, but when I frowned hard, I looked extremely ill-tempered.

“Shit.”

I cursed once more.

Life was completely ruined.

***

An ordinary and monotonous 32-year life.

I wasn’t handsome, nor did I have any special talents.

Family background? Looks? Abilities?

I was completely average in every aspect, with only a decent head for studying.

I desperately graduated from a top-tier university and desperately got hired by a large corporation.

As a typical salesman, I had to master drinking parties against my will, and while exhausted by office politics and frequent business trips, I ran around frantically with sweat on my soles, looking only at the shabby dream of owning my own home.

And now such a person like me got caught up in another world possession, which I’d only heard about in rumors.

And that without any warning signs whatsoever.

Someone might envy me, saying that falling into another world was fortunate, a precious experience that could only come from novels.

Mighty warriors and dazzling spectacular magic, stylish European-style buildings, majestic nature, mysterious and beautiful different races.

This world has everything you’d think of when you hear ‘fantasy’. So it would be natural to be delighted…

If only this place wasn’t an insane totalitarian state like Nazi Germany and North Korea combined!

***

“Ah, shit…”

I stood in front of a hard, square gray building and swallowed the rising nausea.

This seems to be my workplace.

“Long live the Great Supreme Leader!”

“Long live the Supreme Leader.”

My day begins with a resounding voice praising Supreme Leader.

Snap!

With a disciplined pose, I put my fist to my heart and shouted, and the guard standing in front of the shabby building responded in kind.

One might say that fantasy worlds are all pre-modern anyway, and countries with royal families are originally totalitarian systems.

But this place, the ‘Continent’, was definitely not ‘pre-modern’.

The Empire had fallen long ago, and the absolute monarchy that had flourished with splendid culture was beheaded by a republican revolution.

If we were to compare it to Earth’s history, this was at least the late 1800s.

A turbulent era where madness and war devoured the world, and in that gap, all kinds of ideologies, red and blue flavors alike, were gaining power.

I had fallen right into the center of that whirlpool, under the most vicious political system, in the ‘Schufaben Republic’ which was pointed at as the ‘axis of evil’ by neighboring countries!

1000 years ago, the great empire experienced civil war and was divided into numerous kingdoms and duchies.

300 years ago, countries whose borders had changed countless times through back-and-forth struggles entered a period of stability.

Schufaben was originally the territory of an ambitious count.

The count declared independence, established a dynasty, and waged bloody wars to devour all the lands where the ‘Schufabens’ lived, establishing a unified kingdom.

200 years ago, Schufaben’s war-mad king constantly waged battles and occupied half the continent, but fell due to rebellion and civil war, spitting out the land again.

30 years ago, the winds of revolution swept across the entire continent.

There were countries that cut off the king’s head and established republics, countries where the royal family quickly compromised and became constitutional monarchies, and countries that were torn apart after fighting.

Schufaben was fortunately a case where the revolution succeeded and a democratic government came to power.

However, in just 12 years, ‘Friedrich Kruger’, who had been a comrade of the revolutionary leader and commander of the knights, staged a coup.

He personally ascended to the position of Supreme Leader, purged his comrades, and was walking the path of dictatorship.

Ah, dear Supreme Leader Kruger!

In my view, Kruger was a typical insane dictator.

Schufaben, which was a republic in name only, had everything change with a single word from the Supreme Leader, and relations with neighbors were deteriorating.

The war-mad Supreme Leader was making enormous investments in the military, and it seemed like he might issue a merciless conscription order soon.

Fortunately and unfortunately, I wasn’t subject to conscription.

Because I’m a poor tuberculosis patient.

***

“Cough! Cough cough! Long live the Great Supreme Leader!”

“Long live the Supreme Leader.”

I entered the bleak four-story building and saluted everyone I met.

I stepped on the creaking wooden floor and headed to a corner on the first floor.

Archive room.

The room, about 30 square meters, was desolate.

On the wall where lime powder was falling off hung a proud civil service certificate.

「Lucas Redan.

Born January 1, 1875.

The above person is hereby appointed as a 9th-grade clerk assistant of the Schufaben Republic.」

My name is Lucas.

A former noble of this otherworld, and moreover from a fallen noble family, working as a clerk assistant at the very bottom… In Korean terms, a grade 9 civil servant.

Yes.

An another world grade 9 civil servant.

That’s my new identity.

***

When I entered the office, my throat kept tickling, and I felt an urge to shout something loudly.

‘I swear loyalty and obedience to Friedrich Kruger, Supreme Leader of the Schufaben Republic, and will faithfully fulfill my duties by obeying the law, so help me God.’

The loyalty oath that public officials recite when receiving their appointment letters.

It seems the guy named Lucas before I possessed him made it a daily routine to recite this while looking at his appointment letter every day.

Because this bastard was a hardcore fanboy of the dictator Kruger.

On the first day of possession, I was somewhat relieved by my younger age and more handsome face.

But it didn’t take long to realize that this guy Lucas was someone with only a decent exterior.

In the memories that struck like a storm, Lucas had been an idiot completely absorbed in Kruger’s crude totalitarian ideology since childhood.

Dreaming of becoming a war hero as an adult and personally receiving a medal from Kruger – is this really a dream for a 12-year-old kid?

What’s more horrifying is the fact that there weren’t just one or two kids like Lucas.

Perhaps because Kruger gained popularity with his refreshing handling of affairs in the early days of his rule, it seemed even more so in contrast to the chaos of the revolutionary government period.

Kruger’s coup succeeded easily also because the revolutionary government couldn’t withstand the aftermath of the revolution and became corrupt.

Anyway, Lucas had such ambitions, but as soon as he turned 20, he failed the physical examination at the military he had rushed to.

He was so skinny and frail that the instructors forcibly sent him home.

“I acknowledge your unwavering military spirit and loyalty to Supreme Leader. But how could you endure on the battlefield with such a weak body?”

These were the words of an instructor who felt sorry for Lucas.

He had been a sickly child from the beginning, and it was already a miracle that he had survived to adulthood without dying.

Frustrated, Lucas wandered around entertainment districts, squandering his meager inheritance on alcohol, cigarettes, and gambling. What a piece of trash.

Naturally, his health condition worsened further. It wasn’t exactly a specific disease, but his coughing became frequent, earning him the finger-pointing as a tuberculosis patient.

One day, after being kicked out by a bar owner he had been freeloading off of, Lucas wandered the streets and encountered the instructor who had rejected him.

And though he was human garbage, he had a talent for earning sympathy, so the instructor used his connections to introduce him to a 9th-grade clerk position.

This is a summary of the 25-year life of Lucas ‘The Hopeless’ Redan.

***

Today is the third day since I possessed this bastard’s body.

Fortunately, the past two days were weekends.

I holed up in Mrs. Schmidt’s boarding room, using illness as an excuse, and desperately pieced together my memories.

I finished understanding the situation, but accepting it is a different matter.

I still just want to cry.

I sat blankly in front of the desk.

The office was full of steel shelves, and each shelf was packed with thick documents.

The palm-sized window behind the desk faced between the adjacent building and an alley, so no sunlight came in at all.

Only one light bulb hanging from the ceiling provided dim illumination.

A moldy, dark archive room.

Looking at my memories, my assigned tasks were just organizing documents and occasionally correcting typos in reports that others had entrusted to me.

In a word, odd jobs.

It was extremely leisurely, but that’s why the salary was peanuts and it was a boring position.

“Sigh, what should I do…”

I meaninglessly put my feet up on the desk and rocked back and forth while falling into deep contemplation.

‘Can I survive?’

There were quite a few things hindering my survival.

First, this country.

The Schufaben Republic is currently facing a war crisis.

Well, it’s not like the crazy dictator declared he would unify the continent and become emperor, no.

But looking at how things are going, it’s ominously unsettling. Other countries’ governments are also casting suspicious glances.

I haven’t properly grasped it yet, but this world seems to be a place where magic and technology coexist.

Something like magical engineering, if you will.

Knights rampage across battlefields with swords containing transcendent power, mages throw fire and ice, and regular soldiers shoot guns embedded with mana stones.

On land, trains and carriages run together, and in the sky, airships and dragons fly around.

Just looking at the light bulb in this office, I can tell they’ve created technology similar to electricity using magic.

With this level of civilization, expecting no civilian casualties when war breaks out would be foolish.

Even if I’m not dragged to the battlefield, I’m bound to get hit by bombing or breath attacks or something.

Second, this body.

Even if I somehow avoided bombing or occupation, with this skinny, weak body, I’d be lucky not to die of illness on the refugee road.

And in wartime, shouldn’t I at least be healthy enough to beg or do something?

And third, this bastard’s rotten ideology.

“It’s not like I haven’t thought about defecting to a free country…”

Last night, after accepting this disastrous reality, my first thought was ‘Fuck this, let’s run!’

But without money or skills, what would I do for a living in another country?

Moreover, Lucas has a record of praising the Supreme Leader until people’s ears got callused. His job is also as a civil servant, who are said to be selected only from those with particularly strong loyalty.

With just a bit of investigation by the country I’m trying to defect to, all those activities would be exposed, and then they might refuse my asylum application or, worse, try to kill me as a spy.

“Even if I succeed in defecting, if Schufaben wins, I’ll be executed.”

The last problem is this.

The fact that Schufaben is really strong.

The count didn’t achieve ethnic unification by playing cards. The Schufaben region had traditionally been a military powerhouse thanks to its tumultuous history.

That’s why they can boldly declare ‘Come at me!’ to the entire continent.

But from my perspective, whether they win or lose, I have no future either way.

If they win, the entire continent will regress to imperial times, and if they lose, I’ll die from bombing.

“Becoming a king or saving destiny after falling into another world is truly fantasy.”

I muttered and got up.

No matter how much I thought about it, there was only one thing I needed to do right now.

Find a way to survive in this crazy world.

Let’s watch the situation.

An opportunity will surely come.

To do that, for now, let’s hold onto even this meager job. It’s a sweet position with nothing to do and where I can pick up information.

Surviving as a grade 9 civil servant in another world. Here we go.