The Mage Association's Dilemma

A Rune Master?

A professional who wrote the Rune Cores inside Game Tables—or, more accurately, someone who made games?

Enlise thought about it with only a vague understanding.

Rune-related courses did not begin in compulsory education until the fourth grade. Enlise had not yet encountered this field of knowledge and could only resent being unable to help Angell.

Now that Angell was finally preparing to find someone to share this work, Enlise could only feel happy.

What Enlise had not expected was that the moment they entered the Mage Association, they were refused.

"Rune Masters? None."

The person in charge of the Mage Association replied impatiently.

It was the usual attitude of Mages.

Although the Mage Association was also a remnant of the Magic Era, unlike commercial organizations such as the Alchemy Workshop and Adventurer's Guild, which had collapsed the moment industry hit them, the Mage Association remained a high-end academic institution with considerable influence. Thus, the Association still occupied a large plot of land in Cecilia's bustling district, and its decor and furnishings remained as solemn and sacred as ever.

Unfortunately, that was only on the surface.

In recent years, the sharp decline in the number of Mages had turned the lively scenes of the Magic Era, when countless Mages gathered at the Association, into history. The magnificent Mage Association was now as quiet as a graveyard. No one came or went. Only a dying old man sat behind the large desk in the office of the person in charge, holding a pair of handheld reading glasses as he squinted at a Newspaper.

Even so, the old man seemed more alive than the pretty hostess at the Adventurer's Guild.

The irritating kind of alive.

"Where am I supposed to find you a Rune Master these days?" The old man did not even glance at Angell, concentrating solely on the crossword in the Newspaper. "Every Mage Tower is short of Rune Masters and assistants. There are simply no suitable candidates."

He waved his hand as though shooing away sparrows.

Angell did not give up. "You can register my request and notify me when you have candidates, can't you?"

"Then you'll have to wait at least fifty years!"

"I can wait." Angell was extremely persistent.

"Hmph. You can wait, but I won't live that long!" the old man muttered with great self-awareness.

He finally realized that if he did not handle Angell's request, the other party would keep pestering him.

The old man reluctantly put down his Newspaper, casually tore a sheet from the calendar beside him, tested the ink with a feather pen, then squinted through his glasses and shot Angell a sidelong look. "Tell me, what rank of Rune Master do you want?"

Enlise frowned indignantly beside him.

She had the feeling that even if the man recorded Angell's request, he would casually toss it away like waste paper.

Angell did not care. He simply said seriously, "My requirements aren't high. I only need a Rune Master capable of copying Runes and activating the magic within them."

"Hmph, those are called Rune Apprentices!" the old man snapped.

However, seeing that Angell's hiring standards really were not high, his expression improved somewhat, though his tone remained stiff. "Then what salary and benefits are you offering? Let me warn you first: even Rune Masters are protected by the Mage Association. Don't think you can pay them some worker's minimum wage! At least one gold coin."

Though he said that, his words still revealed the disdain that proper Mages held for Rune Masters.

The hierarchy of contempt in the magic industry went like this.

Combat-oriented Elemental Mages looked down on support-oriented White Robes. White Robes looked down on Black Robes. Black Robes looked down on every Mage except themselves. And all Mages looked down on those who could only write Runes.

Rune Mages were undoubtedly at the bottom of that hierarchy.

Angell was a Black Robe, so he felt there was not much difference between the old man before him and a Rune Mage. Neither was worth much.

"A base salary of one gold coin is acceptable." Angell nodded. "If their skills are exceptional and they have independent research ability, we can give them suitable raises."

"Sounds nice, but can you really deliver?" the old man grunted. "How many people are you hiring?"

"The more, the better."

"What do you mean, the more, the better?" The old man looked at Angell suspiciously.

"It means however many Rune Masters you can provide, I'll take them all!" Angell said.

His Workshop had enormous demand for Game Tables. One or two Rune Masters would not be nearly enough; he needed more than ten to keep things running.

But in this era, there were already very few places that needed so many Rune Masters.

Even the Magic Association had not encountered such a request in decades.

The old man immediately flew into a rage. "Are you here to mess with me?!"

"How could I be?" Who had nothing better to do than tease an old man?

Seeing that every wrinkle on the old man's face seemed to spell out I don't believe you, Angell had no choice but to press a hand to the chest of his magic robe. "I really do need that many people. If you are worried, I can swear an oath in the name of the Goddess of Magic."

In this world, swearing oaths was an extremely serious matter.

Almost all oaths came true, and more than a dozen countries had been destroyed because of them.

No one would joke about such a thing.

"...You're serious?!" the old man asked. This was no longer suspicion but disbelief. "You really only need to hire Rune Apprentices? You'll take however many there are? And pay them properly?"

"Of course I'm serious," Angell said.

However, the old man's solemn attitude made even slow-witted Angell sense that something was off. "Could it be that you have that many Rune Masters?"

"No Rune Masters, but there are some Rune Apprentices. They can only barely copy Runes," the old man said. The more he spoke, the more unbelievable it seemed, so he asked for the fourth time, "So you really are willing to hire them, pay each of them one gold coin per month, and take every last one?!"

"...Yes, I guarantee it!" Angell answered for the fourth time.

He was beginning to suspect the old man had dementia.

To avoid having the conversation continue going in circles without making progress, Angell took the initiative to ask, "So, exactly how many Rune Masters... Rune Apprentices can you provide?"

"This year's class has around thirty or forty..." The old man emphasized, "A full thirty or forty of them. Are you sure you want them all?"

"Yes, all of them. I even think that might not be enough." Angell was certain the old man had dementia. How many times was he going to ask the same thing? "I will provide follow-up Rune Master training, send them to the Association every year for rank examinations, and raise their salaries according to their ranks."

"Oh, God of Magic!"

The old man exclaimed. He looked like he had far more than dementia—he looked like he was about to have a stroke.

Of course, Hume Dunlop did not really have dementia.

In fact, Hume was not an ordinary staff member. He was the Grand Elder of the Magic Association and also served as the Branch President of the Association's Cecilia City branch. He was a genuine big shot.

It was simply that as the magic world declined with each passing year, Hume's position as Branch President became increasingly difficult.

And what gave Elder Hume the worst headaches was the employment problem of the City of Academies' magic graduates every spring.

This problem had been caused by the Magic Association itself.

Originally, the City of Academies had been a neutral city. During the Wild Era, it had been built under the leadership of Mages, a place that imparted knowledge and taught magic without regard for nationality or race. Thus, it was known as the holy land of scholars and the source of knowledge. Because of this achievement, Mages had earned a highly prestigious reputation in the educational circles of every nation.

But as the times changed, people's demand for knowledge changed as well. They no longer yearned to study magic and possess Mana. Instead, they introduced courses such as mathematics, Physics, chemistry, and Mechanical Engineering.

Unwilling to watch magic decline like this, the Magic Association forcibly required the City of Academies to retain its Magic Major, guarantee enrollment, and produce a certain number of magic graduates every year.

As a result, employment became a problem.

Mage Towers would not take these graduates.

Though it sounded strange, so-called "orthodox Mages" usually did not receive magical education at ordinary schools. Like Angell, they possessed magical talent found in only one out of a million people. From childhood, they were screened by the Mage Towers' Mana Detection Crystals, then directly brought back to Mage Towers by their teachers or senior apprentices for specialized education.

The Magic Major at the City of Academies, on the other hand, had been created during the Magic Era, when people had a strong demand for magic. It hired Mages to give appropriately tailored education to children with a bit of magical talent.

In Angell's terms, it was probably the difference between regular university students and vocational school students.

And for well-known reasons, even "graduate students" like Angell were unemployed, let alone "vocational school students."

Especially since the Magic Association had once issued the Mage Salary Ordinance, forcibly demanding high salaries to preserve the status of Mages. That made it even harder for those "vocational school students" to find work.

However, the Magic Association refused to acknowledge that Mages could not find jobs.

Thus, for students of the Magic Major, the Magic Association resorted to forced placement. And Cecilia, due to its "glory" as the Magic Capital, was regarded as the area with the greatest demand for Mages, so it had to take in two-thirds of the graduates every year.

Just thinking about it made Branch President Hume Dunlop want to resign.

He could only barely carry on by using the crosswords in the Newspaper to distract himself and stop thinking.

That was why Branch President Hume hated people who came to talk to him about "hiring" and "employment" at times like this.

But if the other party wanted to take on the employment of all the graduates—though only those from the Rune Major—that was another matter entirely.

Branch President Hume basked in the words "I'll take them all" for several minutes.

How many years had it been since he had heard such lovely words after becoming Branch President? It seemed the last time had been when the Dark Elves bought that batch of Blood Diamonds sixty years ago.

—After that, the Dark Elves never came again, because they discovered that diamonds could actually be mass-produced!

At that thought, Hume suddenly came back to his senses. He rose from his seat, not even noticing when he knocked his beloved Newspaper to the floor. He hurried out from behind the desk, seized Angell's arm with a claw-like, withered hand as though afraid the other man would escape, and all the wrinkles on his face unfolded into a smile like an old chrysanthemum.

"Come, sit over here! How can we let you stand while we talk?"

Branch President Hume pulled Angell over and forced him to sit on the sofa at the other end of the office. Then he shouted toward the outside, "Will, Will! Where the hell did you die? Hurry up and bring tea for our guests!"