3. The First Mission (2)
…So these are the twelve mandatory objectives…?
The purpose of Seunggyeongdo was to become Chief State Councilor.(There may once have been a game about becoming king, but that would surely have been erased immediately—along with the creator's life.)
Because it was a board depicting the ascent to the rank of high minister, it was called Seunggyeongdo. And now, the first objective I had to accomplish on that ladder was being presented before me.
But that objective was completely unexpected.
[1. Pass the Civil Service Examination (Bonus Objective: 1)]
What was that supposed to mean?
There had been a minor incident, sure—but I should already have entered service at the Office of Diplomatic Documents.
After a brief moment of thought, I realized the reason.
A special appointment, put simply, was a kind of preferential hiring.
On the surface, it was justified as discovering hidden sages through the king's discerning eye, or granting royal favor to the descendants of meritorious subjects.
In reality, it was a convenient tool used either for political maneuvering—as in my family's case—or when someone wanted to push forward relatives of royal in-laws.
And discrimination against non-regular hires was alive and well even in Joseon. If anything, it was worse.
Imagine this in modern Korea: someone skips the public recruitment process and parachutes into a respectable public corporation or major conglomerate as a rookie.
Every employee would seethe with resentment toward someone who had been "hired without effort."
But what if it turned out that this person was the chairman's nephew or grandchild?
After that, no one inside the company would dare speak of fairness or effort.
In such situations, keeping your mouth shut becomes "effort," and enduring quietly becomes "fairness."
Yet the upright Confucian scholars of Joseon were different—perhaps excessively so.
The very ritual of initiation originated from civil-service scholars who resented how descendants of powerful families received hereditary appointments without ability.
Who, they asked, could call someone a scholar if he flattered the powerful?
In the end, those who had not passed the examination, even if specially appointed, could not endure the surrounding disdain. They either took the examination or abandoned office altogether. There were cases of high officials rising through hereditary privilege, and such cases increased in later periods, but they were never the norm nor widely respected.
A representative example was Park Ji-won, a figure every modern Korean knows. He, too, entered service through special appointment, yet never passed the higher examination and spent his life drifting through minor posts.
I knew Park Ji-won in two ways: as a modern person, of course, and because his family was politically connected to mine, which stood at the core of the Noron faction.
Park Ji-won's grandfather was Park Pil-gyun, an active senior official of the second rank. And Park Ji-won's own talent was beyond dispute.
Even so, to my knowledge, magistrate or county governor was the limit of his career.
If even someone like him ended up that way, then someone like Kim Unhaeng—whose name wouldn't even remain in history—had no chance of lasting long after entering the Office of Diplomatic Documents through hereditary privilege.
Come to think of it, they said they'd make me a government official. They never said they'd help me pass the exam. These bastards are malicious in a really meticulous way.
I stopped cursing uselessly and organized my thoughts.
There was no need to narrow my options and corner myself. Calm down. Was taking the civil service examination truly the only way to become Chief State Councilor?
Of course, there were other methods.
Since I had already received a status window, it wasn't impossible to imagine gaining some cheat skill, overthrowing the country in a coup, installing a puppet king, and claiming the Chief State Councilor's seat in one stroke—a delightfully carbonated plan.
If only I had a brainwashing or hypnosis skill, that would be ideal. No violence needed. Just walk up to the king and it's over. Since when did I mistake myself for not being Chief State Councilor?
Who cared if the country fell apart afterward? Let someone else handle the revolution. I'd go home.
But the abilities I'd gained so far—language synchronization and disease immunity—felt like nothing more than basic survival tools.
No matter how I looked at it, expecting omnipotent cheat skills as some chosen hero of another world was pure self-delusion.
If anything, I was closer to a toy being toyed with by Lovecraftian ancient gods.
And if that kind of shortcut were possible, they wouldn't have called it Seunggyeongdo in the first place.
Step by step, climbing each rung—being exiled, encountering secret royal inspectors, perhaps even drinking poisoned wine if unlucky—until finally becoming Chief State Councilor. That was Seunggyeongdo.
Once your piece reached the Chief State Councilor square, all that remained was receiving a cane of honor and retiring as an honorary court attendee for the rest of your life. In other words, the process itself was the point of the game.
The twelve mandatory objectives were part of that same logic. Skipping them would clearly count as a rule violation—something impossible.
In games, clearing the main quest eventually leads you to the Demon King. If the first objective was passing the examination, then the remaining ones were surely milestones along the path to becoming a high minister.
Therefore, my path was to build a bureaucratic career in Joseon. And to do that, I had no choice but to pass the civil service examination.
Though all of this sounds long when spoken aloud, the thoughts passed through my mind in an instant.
I couldn't afford to be lost in thought for long in front of my father—especially not during a scolding.
Fortunately, my father didn't seem particularly suspicious. After all, even a modern person couldn't imagine his son staring at a floating status window on the floor.
Instead, he spoke with a hint of pity.
"You're trembling and groaning while prostrated before your father. You must be deeply aggrieved. If you have something to say, speak."
It wasn't why I was shaking—but I did have something to say.
In this society, reputation mattered. In the long run, I had to turn yesterday's rampage into an act of righteousness rather than a mistake.
I steadied my voice.
"The initiation ritual has been repeatedly banned by royal law since the time of our ancestors, yet it is carried out under the excuse of tradition, accompanied by plunder and abuse that have cost many lives. This deceives the ruler above and loses the hearts of the people below. Even scholars like Yulgok declared it contrary to moral principle, and I too—"
Ah. That hurt.
My father struck my forehead with his pipe. Strange—he'd always seemed like the gentle type.
"There is no greater disease of scholars than what you suffer from. You grasp nothing of fundamentals and only polish your clever tongue. Did Master Yulgok beat people with a stick when he saw the state of that ritual? No—he simply returned home."
His rebuke was sharp, but the very fact that he argued logically with his son showed how progressive he was by Joseon standards. I immediately bowed.
"I spoke recklessly."
"What will you do now? You dared invoke Yulgok—will you also return home like him?"
The question clearly guided the answer. I responded without hesitation.
"No."
"No?"
"Anyone can throw away his life or office in a fit of anger. But Jing Ke avoided petty conflict to burn his single life for a greater cause, and Marquis Huaiyin endured crawling beneath a thug's legs to achieve great merit. If I return home now, I will end my life as a mere common man."
This much eloquence was something even my modern self could manage. I felt a bit proud, but my father merely stroked his beard with amusement.
"You dare compare yourself to men of antiquity? How arrogant. Then what is your plan?"
I gave the answer he wanted to hear.
"They tormented me under the pretense of initiation because they looked down on me for entering through special appointment. I will rise through the civil service examination openly and leave them with nothing to say. That is the proper path."
My father looked as though he wanted to clap his knees in approval.
"Good! The way of the noble man. Even when obstructed by petty men, a noble man does not seek shortcuts or back alleys. Our country takes pride in scholars refusing office, but that is like praising a woman for never marrying. One should say office is unnecessary only after shouldering it well."
People often imagine late-Joseon scholars—especially Noron—as rigid zealots.
But humans are never that simple. Living in a Noron household taught me that.
My father, Kim Yong-gyeom, associated freely across social classes and cultivated knowledge in many fields. In this era, such behavior could be seen as eccentric at best, heretical at worst.
In modern terms, he had a pragmatic mindset—and naturally disliked the affectations of scholars of his time.
His words carried a familiar sneer: weren't those who bragged about purity simply people who lacked confidence to compete in court?
I agreed wholeheartedly. My very soul was on the line.
So I bowed deeply.
"I will keep Father's teaching close to my heart."
"I will ask the elders of the family about the situation. For now, remain under disciplinary confinement. The Office of Diplomatic Documents may not be prestigious, but it is still important. His Majesty will issue a response soon."
Damn it. Still a punishment, after all.
The Office of Diplomatic Documents handled foreign correspondence—an important post, as my father said.
But that referred to the department itself. In the broader view, this incident was nothing more than a disturbance caused by rash young men.
Even the Censorate stepping in would have been beneath dignity. The Director of the Office simply reported briefly to the king.
I had no way of knowing what happened deep within the palace, but the result was predictable.
The royal response, passed down through several mouths, was rather long—and exactly as expected.
The child sitting before me summarized it succinctly.
"Beat the troublemakers. In the end, everyone was dismissed from office."
The punishment was simple. Everyone who conducted the banned initiation ritual and disgraced the scholarly order was dismissed. Naturally, that included me.
But this didn't derail my mission.
Dismissal in Joseon was entirely different from modern Korean removal from office.
While both meant removal from duty, Joseon-era dismissal was closer to temporary suspension—and often even lighter.
Unlike modern civil servants, who are almost never fired unless they commit one of the three cardinal sins—embezzlement, sexual crimes, or drunk driving—dismissal in Joseon was handed out so freely it barely seemed to have standards.
Whenever something happened, dismissal came first. If the offense was serious, reinstatement never followed; if light, you returned to work after a few days.
Even stripping of rank sounded terrifying but amounted to much the same. Joseon history was full of people who returned to office after being stripped of rank multiple times.
Only exile made people say, Ah, now this feels like punishment.
So what mattered wasn't the dismissal itself, but the context.
And in this case, the context was essentially, You're all noisy—shut up.
Naturally, reinstatement would follow soon. You couldn't just mass-dismiss low-level officials and expect administration to function.
The boy before me nodded at my explanation.
"Indeed. In any case, thanks to this incident, your reputation has spread vividly throughout the capital."
I must be clear: I never had a younger brother like this. I was the youngest, doted upon by older siblings.
Though there was a six-or-seven-year age gap between us, in Joseon, calling someone brother wasn't about age—it was about closeness.
I had undergone the coming-of-age ceremony; he hadn't. That was the only reason for the deference. If we were both adults, we'd be friends, not brothers.
Yet he kept forcing this unapproved brotherhood upon me, citing "family ties."
Or maybe that's exactly why. Twelve years old… about a high-schooler by modern standards. Exactly the age to be drawn to dangerous things.
Whatever the reason, I couldn't drive him away.
Not only were the family ties real, but even if I became Chief State Councilor, this boy would become a hundred times more famous than me.
He was Park Ji-won—the future author of The Jehol Diary, grandson of the current Vice Minister of Rites, Park Pil-gyun.
Even if I hadn't known his future, I couldn't have dismissed him. Park Pil-gyun was a leading figure of the Noron faction. Offending his grandson was unthinkable.
So, forced to listen, I couldn't hide my discomfort at learning I was becoming a Seoul SNS celebrity.
"My reputation has spread?"
Park Ji-won stroked his nonexistent beard theatrically. Despite his age, his large frame made it oddly convincing.
"Ah, you didn't know? Do you know what nickname the young officials have given you? 'Dog-Beating Staff Kim Unhaeng.'"
"…Does that mean someone who only gets into street brawls?"
Unfamiliar with modern martial-arts novels, Park Ji-won looked puzzled.
"Not at all. It means a master of the Staff of Authority, who crushed the spirits of dog-like scoundrels. How could I not come see you myself? If someone asks me and I say I don't know, that would be disgraceful."
His voice was absurdly loud for someone barely past childhood. Embarrassed, I shook my head.
"Enough of that. Anyone listening will think I'm a market thug."
"Haha! Truly a model scholar. I hear you've resolved to study to overwhelm petty men with literary talent?"
Even my father had somehow turned into the parent of a senior student who'd just sworn to study. How much had he talked for even the neighbor's kid to know?
Still, that made things easier.
I gave a deliberately meaningful smile.
"Yes. And I plan to pass within a year."
Of course, I knew the regular exam was held once every three years, and that neither this year nor next had one scheduled.
But that didn't worry me.
By this era, special examinations were held constantly for various excuses—at least once a year.
And most were political goodwill exams.
They often included privileges like direct entry to the main exam or open eligibility beyond academy students. Taking the exam was certainly possible.
Park Ji-won was shocked for a different reason. Passing next year, at nineteen, would be among the youngest records in Joseon history.
"I never realized your learning was so vast and precise."
I was impressed. A twelve-year-old managing to politely say, With your brain? In a year? Truly destined for greatness.
But I wasn't lying.
I would take the exam. I had no choice.
That said, the Joseon civil service examination was no joke.
A regressor I knew myself had failed even modern exams with a fraction of the competition.
Useless. I needed other resources.
Yes. Other resources.
Sorry, Father, but I never intended to pass on my own scholarship in the first place.
All that mattered was passing.
And the first step of that plan involved the young master before me.
Lowering my voice and softening my tone, I said,
"I'm not that learned. Which is why I'll need your help."