I Need the True Ending to Graduate - Chapter 1

【 New Advisor 】

Right now, three letters are neatly laid out in front of me.

On top of a luxurious solid wood table made from expensive timber, something a broke graduate student like me couldn’t even dream of affording.

One letter was about Lucia’s thesis advisor being fired for plagiarism. Another was about Lucia’s guardian going bankrupt and no longer being able to act as her sponsor.

The last letter was a notice demanding payment of tuition and dormitory fees before the semester started.

I glared at the three letters.

I could tell from the name written in the letters that Lucia’s advisor and her guardian were the same person.

Karl Evenhart.

It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence that Lucia’s advisor and guardian had the same name.

Which meant that Karl Evenhart had lost both his fortune and his professorship. In an instant, he had become a penniless nobody.

A terribly unfortunate turn of events.

Misfortunes often struck without warning, like a mountain of overdue credit card bills. And the one misfortune had chosen this time was none other than Karl Evenhart.

Truly, a pitiful situation.

And thanks to his misfortune, there was now someone else drowning in misery.

That someone was me.

To be precise, me, who had possessed the protagonist Lucia in the 19+ romance simulation game Thump Thump Magic Academy.

A week before the thesis defense, the thesis I was working on disappeared, and I could only return to reality by reaching the game’s true ending.

And unless I could quickly find a new advisor and an amount of money that made me dizzy just thinking about it, not only would I fail to reach the true ending, I’d be expelled from the academy.

Misfortune was snowballing toward me.

***

Before I explain this situation, let me just say: I’m not really into romance simulation games.

But when a person is completely worn out and exhausted, they tend to get curious about things they’ve never tried before.

Should I say that the desires I’d been suppressing in order to get my work done ended up manifesting in an odd direction?

In my case, that direction was applying for a pre-order of the 19+ romance simulation game Thump Thump Magic Academy.

An ad for the game had randomly appeared in my algorithm, which played a big role in this.

Thump Thump Magic Academy was a game about Lucia, a talented and capable protagonist, going through her final days before graduating from Calypse Academy, the most prestigious institution of higher education in the Empire.

There were a total of three capture targets, each a handsome man with striking beauty.

Even though it existed beyond a dimension, the dazzling illustrations and fitting background music stirred my interest before I even realized it.

The sweet voices whispering to Lucia, the player, were appealing, and since it was a 19+ game, the steamy lines designed to spark and provoke sexual fantasies were also enticing.

Every element felt absurdly unrealistic, which made it all the more attractive.

Instead of a life overly grounded in reality, constantly shuffling between the library and home, buried in books, laptops, and thesis papers, I suddenly had the urge to live a dazzling and sweet dreamlike life full of romance and sex in the world of the game.

And that impulse drove me to act.

When I came to my senses, I had already entered the pre-order site for the game I’d never played before and submitted a reservation properly.

A cheerful pop-up appeared on the screen with a polite message thanking me for the reservation.

“……”

Even if it was an impulsive act, once it was done, I felt a bit embarrassed.

But there was no way to cancel the reservation.

‘It’s just my name and phone number anyway. Even if they send a text later, I can just not download the game or play it.’

Besides the game company and me, no one else would know I had pre-ordered Thump Thump Magic Academy.

That would remain true unless I went around bragging about it myself.

So I figured this fleeting impulse would have no impact on my life. Like a leaf fluttering briefly in the wind, it would simply pass by.

Later, when I met with an older lab mate, it would just become a silly anecdote about how stressed I was that I even signed up for something like that.

That’s exactly what I thought.

Until I possessed the game, a week before my thesis defense.

***

The conditions set by the game system for returning to the original world were simple.

First, become the protagonist, ‘Lucia,’ and successfully graduate from the Magic Academy.

This required writing a thesis, receiving guidance from an advisor, and undergoing a kind of review once it was complete.

Not much different from graduate school.

Second, raise the favorability of all three capture targets to 100%.

For reference, in order to raise favorability, you had to sleep with them.

All I remembered was the vague impression I got when looking at the game illustrations, but I was certain the content was intense.

…Still, since it matched my preferences, it wasn’t much of a problem.

Third, after fulfilling the second condition, uncover Lucia’s hidden secret and reach the true ending.

The system explained that no matter how many endings you saw with other characters, you couldn’t return to the real world unless you saw the true ending.

Additionally, the status window stated that time in the real world would stop while playing the game, and the player’s menstruation would not be reflected in-game to allow for unrestricted sexual activity.

It was ridiculous to suddenly fall into a game world, but denying the situation wouldn’t change anything, so I decided to calmly accept it.

‘Just when I didn’t want to write my thesis anyway, and the outside world is frozen in time, I’ll think of it as just putting off the unpleasant stuff for a bit.’

Besides, the guys were good-looking, so I had nothing to lose.

Of course, if I couldn’t reach the true ending, I wouldn’t be able to return to reality, my painstakingly written thesis would disappear, all the time I endured just to get that one piece of paper would be in vain, and my graduation would go up in smoke.

‘Still, isn’t it better to see the true ending and then write the thesis than to go back right now and write it…?’

Just as I was quietly accepting that graduating from grad school now had one more hurdle, three devastating letters arrived.

“……”

I’ve been through and will go through many things in life, but hearing that my advisor was fired for plagiarism was truly a shockingly rare experience.

On top of that, the fact that said advisor went bankrupt and now I might be expelled from the academy too was equally outrageous.

“…How could something like this happen?”

Even if misfortunes strike suddenly and all at once, this felt excessively harsh.

But it had already happened, and I couldn’t just complain forever.

And the moment I got expelled, whether it was from the academy or my grad school, graduation would vanish.

First, I had to get this situation under control. At the very least, I needed to create an environment where I could stay enrolled in the academy.

I calmly and thoroughly reexamined this wretched situation.

What I needed to do right away was find a new advisor within two weeks and come up with the tuition and dormitory fees within forty days.

But looking at the deadlines, securing a new advisor was more urgent, so it seemed better to take care of that first before dealing with the money issue.

Once I figured out my priorities and what I needed to do, the anxiety and nervousness eased up a bit.

“Alright, I need to reach out to professors now.”

From the information available, the academy seemed to operate under a system similar to that of grad school. Therefore, to make contact with professors…

That’s when it happened.

The status window, which had been quiet since I received the letters, suddenly popped up with a cheerful notification sound.

[Quest: Find Lucia’s research proposal in her room. (0/1)]

“Oh.”

The surprisingly friendly game system kindly informed me of what I needed to do.

It seemed there was a basic guideline in place for players, and as long as I followed the quests properly, there wouldn’t be any major issues.

Feeling reassured by the existence of a guide, I got up from my seat and walked toward the desk.

The wide desk, as antique and expensive-looking as the round table I’d just been sitting at, was completely covered in papers.

I examined everything in sight, but it was all a jumbled mess.

Some papers were summaries of papers she had read, some were excerpts from full theses, and others had geometric patterns drawn on them, likely remnants from magic circle research.

It seemed Lucia wasn’t the type to keep things organized.

“How does she plan to find any of this later when she needs it…”

Muttering to myself, I sat down in front of the desk and began sorting and organizing the papers in earnest.

It took some time at first, but as I got the hang of it, I started to speed up.

When I was about a third of the way through, I spotted a set of three clipped pages.

Digging through the mountain of papers, I picked them up and saw a bold, clear title written at the top line.

『Research Proposal』

“Ah, found it!”

No sooner had I found the research proposal than a chime rang out to congratulate me on completing the quest.

[Quest: Find Lucia’s research proposal in her room. (1/1)]

I set aside the status window and skimmed through the research proposal written by Lucia.

I couldn’t go around emailing professors to be my advisor without even knowing what I was researching. I needed at least a basic understanding of the content.

“……”

Even for someone like me who was clueless about magic, Lucia’s research proposal was clearly and concisely organized to a level I could understand.

‘She might be bad at keeping her desk clean, but she’s good at research.’

Though he got fired, the previous advisor must’ve seen her potential to have brought her in as his protégé.

From what I read, Lucia planned to research dimensional transfer magic.

She explained that her study would serve as a step in exploring what exists outside this world, whether other life forms, cultures, and worlds exist besides ours, and would hold significant value in expanding the boundaries of the world.

‘It kind of feels like space exploration.’

The rest was filled with rows of magical circles she planned to use in designing her own, none of which I could understand.

It was a solid research proposal overall.

Now, all that was left was to find a professor whose field matched this topic and sincerely ask them to become my advisor.

‘But how do I reach out to them?’