Magic was already obsolete.
Twelve-year-old Enlise often heard adults say that.
But she belonged to the generation born after the Steam Revolution. By the time she could remember, rumbling railways already covered most corners of the Empire, thick clouds of smoke from towering chimneys hid the spires of the Mage Towers, and firearms and ammunition had replaced the adventurers of old. So she had no idea what the Magic Era had been like.
Before now, the only place where Enlise had any direct contact with magic was her school's magic class.
That meant brick-thick Magic Theory Textbooks every semester, obscure and hard to understand, with more than half the contents to be memorized. The spells she struggled to learn were completely useless. They couldn't even light a flame, and matches were more useful.
But apparently, that was normal. They said that even in the Magic Era, only a small number of people had a talent for magic—one in ten thousand.
So what was the point of magic class?
Enlise looked at the fifty-three on her Report Card and wondered.
Among a row of nearly perfect scores, that fifty-three stood out. Even so, it was the highest magic score in her grade. The other children had done even worse. But Enlise still felt too embarrassed to show her Report Card to her guardian. After all, her new guardian, Mr. ...
"Hey, little girl, do you work at this shop?"
A voice interrupted Enlise's thoughts.
Enlise turned and saw a delivery Carriage stopped at the foot of the stairs. The driver waved to her. "I'm from the Item Shop. Your order has arrived."
"Order?" Enlise said blankly.
"Finally," another, gloomy voice said.
As the voice spoke, a figure abruptly appeared beside Enlise.
He was a young man who looked to be in his early twenties, tall and thin, with a nest of raven-blue hair. His messy bangs nearly hid his panda-like eyes, which were ringed with dark circles. His skin was so pale that his veins showed through. He looked as though he'd taken too many drugs—except that the Mage Robe he wore, with its dark red lining, made his appearance seem perfectly reasonable. Most Mages looked as if they were about to be carried off to their graves.
He was Enlise's guardian, and also her employer.
Of course, at Enlise's age, she was unquestionably a child laborer.
But few people cared about that nowadays.
The newsboys running all over the streets were only seven or eight years old, and there were even more factories breaking the rules. They still thought they were doing good deeds, after all. At least they were feeding some people and keeping those children from ending up somewhere worse.
Enlise was comparatively lucky.
She'd been taken in as a child by an Alchemy Workshop called "Magic Gear." She was supposedly a distant relative of the Workshop's previous owner, and was also its legal child laborer. When the former owner still had money, she'd even been able to attend the state-run Charity School.
Sadly, good times didn't last. In this era, Alchemy Workshops, like all old-fashioned handicraft shops, were being squeezed out by industrial products. Their sales got worse each year. After one major failure, the Workshop ran out of money. Its former owner fled after piling up a huge amount of debt, and Enlise had nearly been dragged off to pay it.
That was when Angell Cecilia returned from the Mage Tower.
Angell was the only son of the Magic Gear Workshop's seventh-generation-predecessor predecessor. He'd originally been the Workshop's first heir—hundreds of years ago—but he also had a decent talent for magic, so he'd been selected to attend the Mage Tower and left the family business to his cousin.
Now an Intermediate Mage, Angell had finally returned home after a hundred years, only to find the family Workshop bankrupt. So he'd had no choice but to use his savings to settle the debts and take over the Workshop. He'd also adopted Enlise, becoming her new guardian, and let her continue attending the Charity School.
Enlise was naturally very grateful to Angell.
That was why she felt so uneasy holding her Report Card.
Showing an Intermediate Mage a magic score of fifty-three felt terribly unfair to him.
Fortunately, Angell was too busy to pay attention to Enlise for the moment. His attention was entirely fixed on the goods delivered by the Item Shop.
"The remaining balance is two silver and five hundred cents. Thank you," the delivery boy said with a smile.
"...All right."
Angell replied woodenly. He searched every pocket he had before managing to scrape together the balance.
There was no help for it. Magic was the most expensive profession to begin with, and Angell had spent all his savings paying off the debts. He was desperately poor now and couldn't even afford a tip, so he didn't have the nerve to ask the delivery boy to help carry the goods into the shop.
Angell silently walked over to the goods and tried to lift them himself.
"I'll help, too," Enlise hurried to say.
Angell glanced at her and hesitated for half a minute as he looked at his own thin arms. At last, he didn't refuse.
And so, a skinny Mage and a small girl put all their strength into carrying the heavy goods inside.
Though Enlise was small, she was used to heavy labor. After catching her breath twice, she recovered.
Angell, on the other hand, leaned against the goods, his arms trembling and his face so pale it was nearly transparent.
"Mr. Angell, are you all right?!" Enlise asked anxiously.
At the same time, a Black Cat with two tails emerged from the shadows and asked the Mage in puzzlement, "Are you an idiot? Why didn't you use magic? Why carry it yourself?"
Angell looked as though he'd been struck by lightning. His face grew even paler.
The Black Cat didn't care about Angell's feelings. It nimbly jumped onto the table and continued criticizing him. "Besides, why did you buy a table? There are clearly so many tables in the Workshop."
"Ah, no..." Angell said slowly. "This isn't a table."
"Then what is it?" the Black Cat asked, puzzled.
Enlise also looked over the "goods" she'd just carried inside.
The "goods" consisted of four support posts and a square surface. It was a little taller than an ordinary table and a little bigger, and the edges of the surface were fitted with strange metal frames. There were odd buttons on the frames on either side. But from every angle, it looked like a table.
Angell answered, "It's an 'Arcade Machine.'"
"A borrowed machine?"
"It's a machine for playing games."
"A machine?" The Black Cat stared at the table with its mismatched gold and violet eyes, looking doubtful. "I can't 'see' any machine in there. It's a Rune Core, meow."
"It was originally a machine. I changed it into a Rune Core," Angell replied. Then he muttered in a voice so quiet that almost no one could hear, "It's not like I can go solder a circuit board. I'm a game designer, not an electrical engineer."
"What do you mean?" The Black Cat said it didn't understand.
Angell turned his gaze away, apparently unwilling to answer.
Seeing the man and cat locked in a standoff, Enlise asked with an awkward smile, "So, how do you play the game?"
At last, the conversation returned to the point.
"First, you need a fifty-cent coin..." Angell said.
He patted himself down but couldn't find a fifty-cent coin. Enlise took one out instead—it was one Angell had given her for grocery shopping—and handed it to him.
"I'll give it back in a moment."
Angell mumbled as he slipped the coin into a slot on the side of the table.
The tabletop immediately lit up. In its glowing white light, the projection of a beautiful girl appeared above it.
"Wow, she's so pretty~~" Enlise exclaimed, marveling at the sight.
She'd only ever seen glowing Electric Lamps and Magic Wands. She'd never seen an image that beautiful!
Angell seemed rather pleased by Enlise's reaction.
"This is a prototype. The whole game isn't finished yet, and there's only one character you can control, but you can try it out," Angell said, talking a little more because he was happy. "Hold down the button in front of you. Yes, the white one... Remember to gather your Mana. You know how to control Mana, right? I thought magic class was part of the current compulsory education."
"I-I do," Enlise said guiltily.
Her Report Card, with its magic score of fifty-three, was still in her pocket!
Fortunately, no matter how badly she'd done in magic class, Enlise could still manage the simple task of controlling Mana.
After all, this world was full of Magic Elements, and everything contained more or less some Mana. People could control them just as they learned school subjects. The claim that someone "had no talent for magic" was probably about the same as saying, "You're lucky your brain can handle compulsory education. Don't even dream of going on to higher studies."
Enlise had at least gone to school. She struggled to remember what she'd learned and gathered her Mana.
The Status Panel lit up.
The girl projected above the table slowly opened her eyes. Looking straight at Enlise, she smiled.
"Cecilia answers your summons. Are you my master?"
"Wow!"
Enlise cried out again, flailing her arms as if she'd fallen into water. "She spoke! She spoke!"
That wasn't actually what Enlise had meant.
She'd seen the Black Cat talk before, so she wasn't going to get so worked up just because a projection smiled at her.
What truly thrilled Enlise was that this was the first time she'd controlled her own Mana and caused something like a magical reaction. It felt like studying a foreign language for years, finally managing to talk to someone from another country, and having them understand her. It was so satisfying.
Unfortunately, the Intermediate Mage Angell couldn't understand how Enlise felt at all.
Was there really any need to get so excited?
He gave the girl a strange look, then continued, "Good. Keep doing what you're doing, and pull the joystick to the left."
"Like this?" Enlise tried gripping the joystick and pulling it to the left.
The white projected girl immediately turned to the left, keeping her walking posture.
"You can also try pulling down. That's for moving backward and defending."
Enlise pulled the joystick down.
The projected girl held her Magic Wand in front of her in a defensive stance and stepped backward.
"Up is for moving forward. Hold it there to run."
The projected girl took a step forward, then ran ahead.
"Press the red button to attack."
The projected girl raised her Magic Wand and threw out a ball of light.
"And left, left, up, right, right. That's the Ultimate Skill."
The projected girl raised her Magic Wand high, then—
She froze.
Enlise also slumped to the floor, weak all over. She was completely drained. Even carrying the heavy table in with Angell hadn't been this exhausting.
"Mental Power depleted." Angell understood at a glance what had happened, but that only made it seem even more unbelievable. "You can't keep going after just a few simple moves?"
"I-I'm sorry. My talent for magic is too poor..."
"That has nothing to do with your talent for magic! Even if you were a Goblin, those few moves wouldn't have drained your Mana. Running out of Mental Power only shows that you haven't studied enough," Angell said with a frown.
He wasn't criticizing Enlise—even though it sounded that way. He was only describing the facts.
As he spoke, Angell gently placed his hand on Enlise's forehead. A cool sensation surrounded her, restoring some strength to her weakened body.
But Enlise didn't have time to worry about herself. What she feared most was that Angell would be disappointed in her. She nearly burst into tears. "No, I didn't..."
She'd only scored fifty-three, but she really was top of her grade.
"If this child hasn't studied enough, then nearly everyone else has hardly studied at all."
The Black Cat, which had been watching coldly from the sidelines, spoke up.
It jumped onto Enlise's head and fixed its gaze on Angell. "You're not planning to make money with this... Game Table, are you? You might as well give up. Just the need to use Mana will rule out ninety-nine percent of your customers."
"I've already lowered the difficulty as much as possible..."
"Your idea of 'as much as possible' is from the Magic Era, meow? Most people nowadays can't even meditate!" the Black Cat declared coldly. "The times have changed!"