Chapter 1954 - 1953: Poor Boy

[Age 19: Overall, your life in the Central Army is quite manageable. The wilderness reconnaissance unit is not as terrifying as you imagined. The location where you’re stationed doesn’t have many dangerous exotic beasts. By relying on teamwork and weapons, your unit can maintain a relatively low mortality rate.

You keep in touch with your grandmother. After you enlisted, she began to handle your mother’s issues. She contacted your mother and worked with your mother’s new husband to send her to an intervention facility.

Every month, you transfer 500 federal coins to your grandmother. Part of it is used for her medical insurance, which comes from a pharmaceutical company she worked for in the past. This company, now acquired by Welme, has been raising the medical insurance rates for years. The other part of the money is used for your mother’s rehabilitation treatment.

No matter how things are, everything seems to be getting better.

At the end of the year, you received an order to move to the South, where the exotic beasts are much more powerful than those at your current station, and the mortality rate is significantly higher.

You talked to your grandmother about this. She was a little worried, but there was nothing either of you could do.

In the first month at your new station, you encountered an attack from a C-level exotic beast. After suffering heavy casualties, you finally managed to kill the exotic beast.

Many of your familiar comrades died in this battle. You didn’t tell your grandmother about this and intentionally avoided the topic.

However, your bravery in battle earned you merit and a reward.]

[Age 20: In the first month of the new year, you received a ’reward’ from your superiors: an opportunity to choose a Talent among the Transcendent options.

Your superiors offered you three F-level Secret Medicines: ’Notary,’ ’Furious Man,’ and ’Farmer.’ ’Furious Man’ is the most popular Talent Sequence in the army because it provides substantial combat power even at the F-level.

’Notary’ also offers a significant combat advantage and is rumored to be the favorite Talent Sequence of career soldiers.

The ’Farmer,’ although it provides some physical enhancements, primarily offers information on the wilderness’s weather, soil, etc., categorizing it as a support-oriented Talent Sequence.

You ultimately chose ’Farmer,’ partly because its support nature would lower your mortality rate, and also because few in your unit chose ’Farmer.’ Its rarity could result in better treatment for you.

Your judgment was accurate, but the final outcome didn’t entirely align with your expectations.

Indeed, the unit lacked ’Farmers,’ so upon your promotion to a ’Farmer’ and owing to your past merits, you were assigned to the reconnaissance unit as a squad leader, with a stipend increase to 2,000 federal coins, but the reconnaissance unit is one of the units with the highest mortality rate.

You send 1,500 federal coins to your grandmother every month. She even called to ask if you had taken on a mission with a high chance of death. You could only tell her that you had been promoted.

Perhaps due to your high compatibility with ’Farmer,’ or sheer luck, your judgments on weather and environment are always accurate, even identifying tracks of powerful exotic beasts from plant markers on the ground.

Because of these accurate judgments, you’re able to avoid danger and provide effective intelligence to your superiors. You’ve received multiple commendations from them. ]

[Age 21: The mortality rate in the reconnaissance unit is not fake. Even though you’ve been cautious, you faced a C-level exotic beast attack at the beginning of the year. Your entire platoon was nearly wiped out, with only a few lucky ones including yourself surviving.

Almost all your subordinates died in the battle, with only one surviving, and you yourself were severely injured. If you hadn’t found herbs nearby to slow your injuries, both of you would’ve died there.

While the attack was sudden, it didn’t entirely escape your notice. Though you reported it, your superior ignored it, and there was no way to file a complaint since that officer also died in the attack.

However, during the action review, the command department noticed the materials you had provided, specifically commending and promoting you.

Later, you led the unit to locate the C-level exotic beast that attacked. After a long time, you finally killed it, earning merit in the process.

In the summer, the command department sent personnel to assess your mastery of ’Farmer.’ They believed you had mastered it well enough to be promoted.

The approval process for the promotion took over a month, fortunately, during which everything remained peaceful.

Finally, in the fall, you received news of approval. The command department offered you two choices for further Talent Sequences, ’Land Surveyor’ and ’Medicine Gatherer,’ which are the available sequences provided by your camp.

The command department explained these Talent Sequences to you.

The ’Land Surveyor’ is an advanced version of ’Farmer,’ providing better land analysis, fitting your current work well. If chosen, you’d receive a promotion immediately after being discharged.

The ’Medicine Gatherer,’ on the other hand, enhances your ability to identify herbs and plants, a Talent Sequence more related to medical fields.

You, lying on the hospital bed, chose ’Medicine Gatherer.’

The command department didn’t try to persuade you, merely informing you of the promotion risks associated with ’Medicine Gatherer’ before leaving.

You were promoted to a ’Medicine Gatherer.’

You continue working in the reconnaissance unit but are no longer sent to the front lines. Instead, you’re responsible for intelligence verification and auditing. The only other surviving soldier from your unit was also transferred elsewhere.

Afterwards, the army didn’t encounter any powerful exotic beasts, and your life gradually became stable.

Every few months, you managed to accumulate enough for a leave, returning to Keskein to reunite with your grandmother.

Sometimes, you feel that army life isn’t too bad. If promoted to an officer, you’d gain rank and an increase in income. However, your grandmother doesn’t want you to stay too long in the military, as she’s getting older and doesn’t want you undertaking dangerous jobs. ]

[Age 22: Under normal circumstances, if you had gone to university, you would be graduating this year. Of course, you’re almost ’graduating’ yourself.

Grandmother was hospitalized again. Her age is catching up, and her body is growing frail uncontrollably. Fortunately, the money you send helps pay for her medical insurance; otherwise, she wouldn’t agree to be hospitalized.

You are about to retire, and the captain personally came to persuade you to stay. You have great talent and have accumulated substantial merit this past year. Given time, you might even become a young lieutenant, but you were firm, and ultimately, they signed your retirement permit.

Typically, Talents acquired in the military require serving a certain number of years before retirement can be granted. For an E-level Talent Sequence, the usual service period is twelve years, and if one perishes during service, the Central Army recovers the Talent Sequence.

Should you insist on early retirement, a ’purchase cost’ matching the residual value of the Talent Sequence must be paid. Most soldiers cannot afford this cost, so banks in collaboration with the army usually intervene to ’help’ soldiers pay the fees.

The price is a long-term loan contract lasting twenty to thirty years.

However, in light of your merits during service, the Central Army waived the ’balance’ for your ’Farmer’ and ’Medicine Gatherer’ Talent Sequences.

You were quite satisfied with your life in the Central Army. As a poor kid from a small city, you received not just physical training but also learned about saving, balancing income and expenses, and basic tax knowledge from older veterans.

Similarly, you also help new recruits with these aspects.

You returned home, and the Central Army’s Veterans Affairs Department provided you with application materials.

You applied to Vitran Grammar School again through the veteran channel and successfully received admission once more.

You had also applied to some medical schools, but you couldn’t find a reputable gentleman to write a recommendation letter for you, as there was no such person among your relatives.

The vast majority of medical schools rejected you, with only a few private medical schools opening their doors to you, but the hefty tuition of thirty-six thousand federal coins per year made you abandon the thought completely.

You still chose Vitran Grammar School.

You applied for the veteran’s college subsidy, and the entire approval process took over a month, but eventually went through smoothly. Because of Vitran Grammar School’s public nature, the Federation covered ten thousand federal coins of tuition annually for you. You only needed to pay two thousand federal coins yourself, which indeed solved your biggest problem.

The money you sent back from the army was saved by your grandmother, alongside the student loans.

Finally, you had the money to go to college.]

[23 years old: Strictly speaking, your college life is not as wonderful as you imagined. The high cost of living in Vitland made you understand the term "big city" for the first time.

You rarely had common topics with those classmates who were four or five years younger than you.

However, during the first few months, you were happy; college is entirely different from the Central Army lifestyle, offering relaxation, happiness, and freedom.

Through your teacher’s introduction, you found a part-time job at the Vitran City Council, working as an assistant to a city councilor. Your main task was to help answer phone calls from visitors, which exposed you to more of the ’politics’ and ’big figures’ lifestyle.

Of course, apart from some election campaigns, you hardly saw the city councilor. In fact, there were several layers of gaps between you and such big figures.

This part-time job’s income wasn’t high, about 600 to 700 federal coins per month.

The expenses in the big city far exceeded your imagination, forcing you to take on more part-time jobs.

Your grandmother’s health was also declining, requiring you to send home at least 450 federal coins monthly to cover her living costs, her increasing medical insurance, and medication expenses.

Apart from the full-time college study, you often maintain three or more part-time jobs, leaving only two hours a day for sleep.

During these moments, you feel fortunate to have become a Transcendent in the army, allowing you to require less sleep than ordinary people.

Yet, despite this, your debt bills continued to grow.

Fortunately, you contacted a black market trader who bought Transcendent blood, enabling you to sell blood three times a week for a hefty price, greatly easing your burdens.

But sometimes, unexpected events would lead to breakdowns. After one part-time job, your uncle called to say your mother stole the money meant for your grandmother’s medical insurance to buy illicit drugs.

If it wasn’t for your uncle, you wouldn’t even know about it. Without insurance, your grandmother couldn’t afford hospitalization fees, leaving her no choice but a dead end.

You had to take out your remaining living expenses and transfer them to your grandmother, telling her it wasn’t a big deal.

The college life also brought frustration; you struggled to communicate with classmates several years younger than you.

You realized you had to graduate as soon as possible.

You applied for early graduation at school and began studying third and fourth-year courses in advance.]

[24 years old: The heavy coursework and three-part-time jobs left you barely able to breathe, with most of your time allowing only two hours of sleep and occasionally just one hour.

Your teacher admired you, advising you to further your studies and pursue law to become a lawyer, which could change your fate. But you didn’t have time to respond, as your grandmother was hospitalized.

You returned to Keskein and once again saw your grandmother lying in the hospital bed, her body slightly curled, starkly different from the vigorous and courageous grandmother in your memory.

She was now only so small, gazing at you, talking with you for many days.

Her illness remained treatable as long as she went to a better hospital and paid higher prices.

She convinced you to forgo her treatment.

Grandmother passed away.

You sat by her bed for a long time.

While sorting out her estate, you discovered how much debt she carried.

She only had an old house, bought when she was young with grandfather, and her debt nearly covered most of its value.

Most of this money was spent on helping your mother quit illicit drugs.

Uncle and mother argued intensely for several days.

After deducting debts, grandmother divided the remaining money into two parts, giving one to uncle and one to you.

Your mother came to you alone, claiming that this inheritance should be hers, as grandmother was her mother.

You ignored her.

You returned to school, completed all your credits with all A’s, finishing your academic study in two years. Unfortunately, grandmother couldn’t attend your graduation ceremony.

Your teacher wrote a recommendation letter for you, enabling two universities to open their doors for your graduate career. One was Eins Law School, a public university, and the other was Dawn University, one of the Federation’s top two universities and a coveted ideal institution, but a private university with high tuition fees.

In the end, you chose Eins Law School.

The reason was simple; the Federation Government and Eins Law School had joint assistance programs, especially with plenty of scholarships for impoverished students. Combined with the Federation veteran’s subsidy, this money could exempt you from all tuition fees.

Nonetheless, you still needed to pay substantial living and accommodation expenses yourself.

You applied to the school for a one-year admission delay, needing some time to save up enough tuition for yourself.]