Unknown Person

Angell met the Rune Apprentices he had recruited one and a half weeks after signing the agreement with the Magic Association.

It was four days later than the time promised by Branch President Hume.

"My apologies, we were delayed on the road," said Will, the assistant to the Branch President of the Magic Association, looking ashamed.

Angell expressed his understanding.

After all, this world had yet to develop high-speed rail, and the Steam Train was not fast. A trip from the City of Academies to the Magic Capital took three days and three nights just for the journey itself, and they had to pass through the notorious Mist Forest along the way. If even the slightest issue arose, delays were measured in days.

"You've worked hard," Angell said with stiff politeness.

He cast a glance at his future employees.

This was not Angell's first time recruiting staff (well, the C-section incident didn't count), and the game company he worked for in his past life was barely considered a major studio; every graduation season, he would go through this routine.

In Angell's impression, students coming from campus recruitment were all a bunch of naive fools.

They had yet to be beaten down by society and mostly thought too highly of themselves. The more chuunibyou ones were filled with fantasies of creating AAA masterpieces to save the gaming industry, their invisible horns so branched and twisted that no wrench could straighten them out. Therefore, Angell had to be prepared to give them a wake-up call.

In another world, as graduates of magic majors, it was probably about the same... right?

At least the rookie mages Angell had encountered at the Mage Tower before were all much the same.

Yet, the youths standing here now looked as if they had already been beaten down. There was no sharpness of youth to be found; most of them had numb eyes and dull expressions. Even though they were at the place where they would work and live in the future, their gazes were as dead as if they lacked even a shred of curiosity. The more timid ones among them kept their eyes fixed firmly on the ground.

Even with Angell's level of emotional intelligence, he felt the atmosphere was a bit strange.

Angell couldn't help but look at them a few more times, especially the one with the strongest Mana fluctuations among the group.

That child actually had a pair of horns, though not deer antlers, but a pair of massive bighorn sheep horns that twisted three times on each side of his head, looking like a Demon. Unfortunately, his expression was as dull as an old goat's, staring straight at the air in front of him. Angell was genuinely afraid he might let out a "baa" and lower his head to graze.

Assistant Will noticed Angell's gaze and wanted to say something.

But Angell didn't wait for him to speak; he withdrew his gaze as if uninterested and looked at the round, middle-aged man beside Assistant Will.

Among the group of youths, the presence of this middle-aged man was the most unreasonable.

"And this is...?" Angell asked.

"This is a friend of Branch President Dunlop," Assistant Will said with an awkward smile, his words vague. "He happened to hear about your recruitment, so he came to take a look."

For some reason, he didn't introduce the other party's identity or name.

"Haha, that's right, please don't mind me," the round gentleman said with a smile.

Angell, however, did not want people visiting.

It was just recruitment; Angell did not want the Magic Association or anyone else to have too much interference in his workshop.

—At the end of the day, his social anxiety had flared up.

"There's nothing much to see," Angell frowned. "These children must be exhausted after such a long journey, so let's just let them rest early today."

"No interview?" Will asked in surprise.

"In a couple of days, once everyone has adjusted their state."

"About that, could it be a bit sooner?" Assistant Will said, looking troubled. "The Association hopes you can make a decision quickly so we can adjust the quotas for other graduates."

As he said this, he looked at the students. "You don't need to worry about everyone's state; we rested well on the train, and everyone is eager to get the results... right?"

He asked that last sentence to the students.

No one answered.

The scene fell into a silence, and Will gave Angell an awkward smile.

"Fine, if you insist," Angell nodded, though he still had no intention of interviewing them immediately. He only said to the group, "Before that, everyone follow me to put your luggage away and have a meal first."

"Just treat it as a tour of the living conditions for future employees, meow!" Mithril chimed in from behind Angell to smooth things over.

It wasn't speaking to Assistant Will, but to the middle-aged fat man.

Mithril felt this fat man looked vaguely familiar and remembered he was a person of status, so it felt best not to offend him.

Unfortunately, Angell didn't possess that awareness at all.

He turned and walked away as soon as he finished speaking, regardless of the others' reactions.

The youths looked at each other, and a youth with smoky gray short hair followed behind Angell first, then the others followed one after another.

Assistant Will and the middle-aged fat man were left behind.

Will apologized dryly to the middle-aged fat man: "I'm sorry, Mayor Owen, the Workshop Master doesn't know who you are..."

"It's fine, isn't this exactly the effect I wanted?"

The middle-aged fat man known as "Mayor Owen" said with a chuckle; he didn't seem dissatisfied at all.

Seeing the other party's reaction, Will frowned instead: "But..."

"The treatment of graduates is one of the key points the Magic Association is concerned about, isn't it?" Mayor Owen said. "We might as well see how the workshop arranges for these children!"

Owen looked at Angell's back.

*

Owen Simor, the mayor of Cecilia City, had met Will, the assistant to the Branch President of the Magic Association, on the train.

Mayor Owen had just returned from a routine meeting at the Royal Capital.

That meeting had left Owen absolutely furious.

It wasn't that there was anything wrong with the meeting's agenda; rather, some bastard had once again tentatively proposed abolishing the magic courses within the compulsory education curriculum!

Owen knew that this was a trial balloon released by certain big shots at the top.

They had never intended for commoners to learn magic in the first place. They had only included magic courses in compulsory education because they needed the mages, who held lofty positions in academia, to endorse the policy. Now that they had obtained what they wanted, they were naturally preparing to discard the tool once its purpose had been served.

But what infuriated Owen the most was that many high-level mages in the Royal Capital actually supported this view!

They felt that compulsory education had been in place for many years, yet it hadn't produced many true mages. Sending students to the City of Academies was a waste of resources, and besides, there were no jobs for them anyway. They argued it would be easier for everyone if those courses were simply abolished.

Those idiots never stopped to consider that because industry had replaced the utility of mages below the intermediate level, low-level mages no longer possessed noble status. The nobility no longer spent the effort to cultivate their own descendants into mages as they had during the Magic Era! Now, the only ones attending the City of Academies to study magic were commoners!

With even that source of students gone, the lower and middle tiers of the entire mage system were being completely hollowed out—it was already nearly at that point, to the extent that many intermediate mages had to leave their Mage Towers because they lacked assistants to continue their research. Did those high-level mages really think they could sustain the future of magic on their own?!

Owen had been so angry at that meeting that he flipped the table, and the discussion naturally fizzled out.

Yet, Owen still felt uneasy.

He believed those guys wouldn't give up on their schemes so easily—those profit-driven people would love nothing more than to send all the children into factories to work for them after a basic education!

Therefore, when Owen passed through the City of Academies on his way back, he felt an urge to get off the carriage and take a look at those seeds that concerned the future of the magic world.

Unexpectedly, before he could even step off, he saw an assistant from the Magic Association leading a group of teenagers onto the carriage.

"The job placements for this year are already settled?"

Mayor Owen was very surprised. He certainly knew that his old friend Hume lost handfuls of hair every year over the placement of graduates.

Owen was actually quite optimistic—partly because he wasn't the one actually responsible for the task—and he felt that the Mage Towers would always be willing to cultivate those commoner mages graduating from the City of Academies when they were truly short-handed.

Perhaps this year was the turning point?

Owen asked with great interest, "Which Mage Tower are they going to?"

After asking this, Owen felt that the atmosphere was off.

Owen didn't have the emotional intelligence of Angell, but he noticed that when he mentioned the Mage Towers, some of the teenagers showed expressions of unwillingness, while others were filled with sorrow. Among them, the teenager with smoke-gray hair was clutching his suitcase so tightly that his knuckles were white from the effort.

"What's going on?" Owen's voice turned cold.

"Aha..." Will gave a wry smile.

He settled the students down and then explained to Owen about the Magic Gear recruiting Rune Masters.

Owen was enraged the moment he heard it.

"Nonsense! How can an Alchemy Workshop compare to a Mage Tower?!"

He finally understood why those teenagers had such expressions: didn't everyone study magic just to become a mage after graduating? The result was that they were going to an Alchemy Workshop instead of a Mage Tower; it was no wonder the teenagers looked as if their hearts had turned to ash.

"And isn't Magic Gear on the verge of bankruptcy? Even if it's to solve the employment problem, they shouldn't be sending people there!"

For a moment, Owen suspected that the Magic Association of Cecilia City had betrayed him as well.

"Their financial problems seem to have been resolved, and it looks like they've found a backer."

Will recounted the speculations made by Branch President Hume that day.

But Owen didn't buy it: "The Roy Family? Hmph, why would they have any interest in reviving magic?"

They were staunch Royalists!

Although the Roy Family had once been a magic family, they had always been best at trimming their sails to the wind. Especially after the Industrial Revolution arrived, the family immediately abandoned their magic traditions and chose to cozy up to the new nobility, even betrothing their eldest daughter to the future Crown Prince when she was only five years old.

Owen couldn't imagine that family supporting an Alchemy Workshop.

Owen said angrily, "Hume is a senile old fool! Just wait, when I get back, I'll pull out the last few hairs on his head to help him wake up!"

"Mayor Owen..."

"My Lord, Magic Gear is the Alchemy Workshop of the Cecilia Family—the very Cecilia that gave the Magic Capital its name."

Just as Will was wondering how to persuade Owen, a single sentence from Owen's Old Butler caused him to calm down.

"The Cecilia Family, huh..."

Owen sighed and leaned back in his seat.

"For the sake of its former glory, I'll go take a look first," Owen said, though his round face was filled with murderous intent. "But if he dares to ruin those magic seeds, even if it is the Cecilia Family, I will never let him off!"