The young people knew nothing of the adults' complicated thoughts.
They didn't know that the status of low- and mid-level mages was declining;
They didn't know that every year, the members of the Magic Association tore their hair out over how to assign their work;
They knew even less that someone at a Royal Capital meeting wanted to abolish magic education entirely, cutting off the City of Academies' supply of students;
—Or perhaps they'd heard people say, "Magic is outdated." But for common-born youths like them, and even their parents, simply getting into the Magic Major at the City of Academies meant receiving a substantial tuition subsidy. And becoming one of the lofty mages in a Mage Tower was the sort of respectable life they'd never dared dream of!
Silverleaf, the Chief Student among the Magic Academy of the City of Academies' graduating class that year, thought the same way.
Silverleaf was an orphan.
He'd been sent to an orphanage at the age of nine. Unlike the other orphans, though, he was glad his mother had died—not because she'd been a lowly streetwalker, but because she'd carried the filthy blood of a succubus, and that trait had manifested in Silverleaf through a skip-generation inheritance. The frivolous, degenerate woman had then tried to sell her son as a commodity. "It's only because you're still worth something that I didn't drown you as soon as you were born, you little burden!" she'd said without a hint of shame.
In truth, after his mother died and he entered the orphanage, Silverleaf's circumstances hadn't improved much.
But the dean's "ideals" seemed grander than those of Silverleaf's streetwalker mother, so he sent Silverleaf to school, hoping to make him more valuable.
"Fortunately," that dean also died when Silverleaf was eleven.
After that, Silverleaf bounced between factories and the streets, joining several of the orphanage's older children in using all sorts of illegal means to support their younger "brothers and sisters."
Even in the hardest times, Silverleaf never dropped out of school.
Not because he loved studying, but because he knew that factories and the gangs on the streets were all monsters that devoured people. If he stayed there, he wouldn't be able to save his "siblings"—or himself.
School, on the other hand, offered an opportunity. Starting in the third year, the Mage Tower began assessing students' mana. Children with especially strong mana could even skip compulsory education and enter the Magic Academy, with generous tuition subsidies.
Silverleaf wanted to gamble on his succubus blood.
That bloodline shouldn't bring him nothing but disaster. It ought to offer its bearer some protection, too.
And Silverleaf won the gamble.
He passed the mana appraisal in his third year and entered the Magic Academy.
But it still wasn't enough.
A mere tuition subsidy wouldn't be enough to drag his siblings out of that hell. Silverleaf had fought hard to earn the Chief Student position and receive the annual scholarship. It was also the only way to secure his "place."
Silverleaf had learned as soon as he arrived in the City of Academies that the Magic Academy guaranteed job placements, especially for the top students, who were sent straight to Mage Towers after graduation.
If he became a great mage, then nobody would be able to bully him or the people he wanted to protect, right?
Silverleaf hadn't expected that even this tiny hope would prove as fragile as a glass tower.
Their class hadn't been assigned to Mage Towers, as the older students had said they would be. Instead, they'd been sent to some Alchemy Workshop! Someone had even found a newspaper report suggesting that the workshop had gone bankrupt due to financial problems!
At first, Silverleaf had refused to believe the news. Half a semester earlier, his teacher and several others, including Mr. Will from the Magic Association, had let him know that he'd be given a position in a Mage Tower southwest of Cecilia. Why had everything changed?!
But the list Mr. Will checked only confirmed Silverleaf's worst fears.
Besides Silverleaf and a few other top students, they'd also taken away the ones with the worst grades.
Including Jack, the last-place student in their class.
Whether Jack even counted as a student of the Magic Academy was debatable.
He was probably talentless.
But his father, a ruined noble who'd been swindled out of his entire fortune after trying to make an investment, had been desperate to get his hands on the subsidy meant for magic students. So he'd forced his son to drink the family's secret potion.
They said the potion could forcibly create mana in a person. In the extremely unlikely event of things going perfectly, it could produce a Grand Mage capable of casting forbidden spells. Most of the time, though, it only created "fake mages" who couldn't actually cast spells.
Unfortunately, Jack hadn't been the exception. And because of the potion's effects, enormous horns had grown on his head the moment he entered the school—an Alien Creature brought forth by mana he couldn't release.
When the school discovered the fraud, it naturally tried to expel this fake. But the nobles' remnants of power showed their worth in this delicate situation. After a great deal of quibbling over how it was "within the rules" and "not prohibited," the City of Academies had finally accepted this impostor with humiliating reluctance and kept him like an animal.
Silverleaf didn't pity Jack.
Pity was a luxury reserved for people who had enough to eat.
Besides, what real difference was there between him and Jack?
So when Will put Silverleaf and Jack together on the same list, Silverleaf felt nothing but panic.
It was the panic of two animals being led together to the slaughter.
If he hadn't wanted a chance to ask Mr. Will what was going on, and if he hadn't needed that diploma, Silverleaf might have sneaked away from the City of Academies before boarding the train.
Unfortunately, he never found a good opportunity along the way, and then he was brought to the Magic Gear Alchemy Workshop.
The workshop's grand appearance and the lively crowd inside did nothing to soothe Silverleaf.
If anything, they frightened him quite a bit.
Silverleaf's rich experience in his younger years let him recognize that several of the customers had probably been "street types." He'd spent years trying to escape that environment, so he wanted even less to stay somewhere like this.
More importantly, the Workshop Master was a Black Robe.
A Black Robe who was said to eat children.
Silverleaf was long past the age of believing in fairy tales, but from what he knew of Black Robes, carving people up like lab animals and feeding them to cats didn't seem at all out of character!
The Black Cat on his shoulder looked pretty weird, too!
In short, the moment he entered the workshop, his succubus instincts had been telling him to run.
It was the feeling of coming face-to-face with a natural enemy!
Of course, he couldn't listen to what the man was saying—
"The dorm rooms are all private, with their own toilets. Those with girlfriends can apply for a double room later. But don't cook in your rooms. The cafeteria serves meals at set times. There's a public Resting Room and a kitchen downstairs, so if you really want to cook for yourself, use that."
Can't listen...
"Someone will come to clean each room on Mondays. Remember to put away your valuables that day to avoid any unnecessary misunderstandings," Angell continued. "The bathrooms are shared, too. You can use the washing machines in the laundry room whenever you like, or hang up a tag and leave your dirty clothes in the laundry basket. But the cleaning fee will be deducted from your wages at the end of the month, and we won't be responsible for anything that gets damaged."
No...
"As for your wages, you'll each get one gold coin a month, as agreed with the association. But you'll get overtime pay if you work beyond your fixed hours, and bonuses for outstanding contributions... Also, if you pass the Rune Master exam, I'll raise your wages to the standard rate for a certified Rune Master. Or, if you'd rather, I can recommend you to a Mage Tower—"
...Maybe working here for now wouldn't be so bad!
That way, Hannah could go to school, Big Head could get a new pair of shoes, and he could bring the weakest of the twins to live with him.
As Silverleaf made these calculations in his head, his body had already overcome its strange fear of facing a natural enemy. He raised his hand. "Then, sir, what do you need us to do?"
The Black Robe, who radiated a terrifying aura, gave him a cool glance.
"Get your luggage put away, then come with me to eat!"