Magic Association · Archives
"Mana Base Station? Mana Gear Station? Mana Machine Battle... Damn it, which one was it?! I should've asked for clarification!"
Branch President Hume irritably waved his wand, sending countless files darting around the archives like headless flies.
These files were backup records of mages' research projects.
Every magical project in the Eastern Territory that had applied to the Mage Tower Magic Association for research funding or materials was kept here.
Except for projects with an S-level or higher security classification.
But an Intermediate Mage's project would never be classified S-level or higher. And even if one were, an Intermediate Mage like that wouldn't be allowed to leave the Mage Tower so easily.
In other words, unless Angell Cecilia's "Magic Base Station" project had never applied for resources and had been paid for entirely out of his own pocket, there should have been a backup of his project files here.
That was how it was supposed to work, in theory.
But finding anything was incredibly difficult.
Mages tended to apply for projects on a whim, and their ideas were as wild as a Pegasus in flight.
Some, because they found formal clothes too much trouble and wanted to walk around outside all day in comfortable pajamas, started researching a "Feasibility Report on Mass Mind-Control Hypnosis Magic."
Others submitted a project titled "How I Became the Blood Clan Leader by Controlling Their Diet," but the contents turned out to be a guide to growing tomatoes and a thousand ways to cook them.
Black Robes, in particular, were experts at muddying the waters with their titles.
A perfectly ordinary title like "Analysis of the Magical Constants of Rainbow Ghost Mushrooms" might conceal records of cruel toxin experiments on ninety-eight species, with graphic notes on each species' reactions and autopsy data. Meanwhile, a project that sounded as gruesome as the "Guide to Demon Anatomy" was actually the record of a poor mage (male) who had been swindled out of his money and seduced by a demon, then gotten the demon pregnant. He'd documented his own C-section out of desperation, hoping to scam the association for living expenses.
Branch President Hume strongly suspected that Angell's "Mana Base Station" project was about building a massive chicken farm.
There was precedent for that!
Agent John, however, thought there was no need to bother with Angell's research project at all.
"Why make this so complicated? We only want to run a trial, right? We can just use the test model of the Game Table!" John said. His absurdly large eyes rolled around, and he didn't look like he had a good idea in mind.
In fact, he'd wanted to use this as leverage back at the Alchemy Workshop. "That Black Cat said the Game Tables would be rented out, so they'd only make money if enough people had them. We could get Owenka and the others to put a stop to that—"
"Amos! Shut up!" Hume snapped.
He deeply regretted taking this Gnome to Magic Gear today.
To put it bluntly, even if it sounded like racial discrimination, all Gnomes were a bunch of idiots who only looked clever!
Owen also gave John a cold look. "Magic education is important, but for Cecilia City, the commercialization of magic matters more! Magic Gear recently had a serious incident. You'd better stop eyeing it!"
"Hmph. The Alchemy Workshop is already a thing of the past," John grumbled.
Owen didn't want to waste any more time dealing with this shallow-minded Gnome.
Still, John had reminded him of something.
"...We really do need to keep troublemakers like him in check," Owen said, calling to his butler. "Bart, remind me when we get back to issue Magic Gear a certificate naming it a 'Cecilia Key Support Enterprise.' And warn the people under us to keep their hands to themselves!"
"Yes, Master," the old butler replied. He had been following Owen the whole time, yet somehow had no presence at all.
The other two people in the archives weren't surprised by Owen's instruction.
Not even Gnome John.
After all, Magic Gear had been around since the founding of Cecilia City. It had once been one of the city's signature workshops. It was one thing when the place had been failing through its own incompetence, but now that it had finally begun to turn things around, any halfway sensible official would be glad to see it thrive. And Owen, who was always looking to revive the magical economy, was more than glad.
If they could find records of Angell's past and get a clearer idea of his research project, they'd be able to put these policies into practice with greater confidence.
That was why they'd come to look through the archives.
Branch President Hume searched for a long time without finding anything. Frustrated, he sent the files flying back into their cabinets.
"Damn it, there's nothing!"
"Could it be that the Black Robe wasn't in Cecilia before?" Mayor Owen asked. "He's an Intermediate Mage, after all, but I'd never heard of him."
"Maybe he's an illegitimate son or something?" Agent John perked up at the prospect of gossip.
"That does make sense," Hume muttered.
He didn't agree with the pointless gossip about Angell being an illegitimate son. Rather, he realized that he truly had never met Angell before. But a Black Robe like him should've been memorable.
That meant Angell had been living in another city, outside Hume's jurisdiction.
But Angell Cecilia...
...The name still felt familiar somehow.
"I also think that Workshop Master looks familiar," Owen's old butler said, agreeing with him.
Owen was surprised. "But with your memory, you wouldn't forget anyone you'd met in the last fifty years."
"That's why I've been trying to remember whether I've met someone like Mr. Angell somewhere before," the butler replied.
"Hmph, why bother remembering? It must've been one of the workshop's previous owners!" John said.
"No. Mr. Angell doesn't resemble any of the previous owners," Butler Bart said, discreetly glancing at John. "Besides, humans aren't like Gnomes. Even if they look alike, their mannerisms can make them seem very different."
"Of course. We Gnomes are a united people!"
The little old man puffed out his chest proudly, forgetting his human heritage.
Faced with someone he couldn't beat, Old Bart could only smile wryly.
Owen's and his butler's conversation, however, jogged Branch President Hume's memory. "Fifty years... Right, I didn't hear that name recently. I heard it much earlier, much, much earlier..."
"Impossible. His blood smelled like that of an ordinary human," Owen said, perplexed. "How could he stay young forever? He's not one of those old monsters from Star Glory Tower—"
"Exactly! Star Glory Tower!"
Hume pointed at Owen and shouted.
Then he turned and rushed to a cabinet filled with crystal recordings. He pulled a black crystal from the one marked Year 123.
"This is it—Senior Angell Cecilia!"
"Senior?" John grinned at the words. "You could be his great-grandfather. Aren't you embarrassed...?"
The Gnome's snark came to an abrupt halt when the crystal projected its image.
It showed a boy of about fourteen or fifteen. He had pale skin, a slender build, and wore a loose, dark robe that looked like a Black Robe's. Long bangs covered most of his face, giving him a gloomy air.
Perhaps whoever had recorded the image thought that this wasn't enough to verify his identity. They said something to the boy, who looked annoyed, but still raised a hand and pushed his bangs back reluctantly. Beneath them was a pair of eyes with dark circles like he hadn't slept in a week. He looked off to the side and stubbornly refused to face the camera.
Avoiding the lens, the boy introduced himself, like any apprentice about to enter the Mage Tower:
"Angell Cecilia, fourteen years old, Intermediate Mana potential, applying for the Spirit Department... Psychological Healing White Robe. That's all."
With that look, he wanted to be a White Robe?
Was he sure he wanted to heal people's minds and not cause psychological trauma?
All four of them thought the same thing.
"So it really is the same person!" Owen exclaimed. "He looks much younger, but his aura is the same... Still, how did he not change at all?!"
"It is strange. Young people are usually unsettled and change their personalities easily, don't they?" John said. "And he even became a White Robe like he wanted. He was probably taken in by a Black Mage, so he must've been through even more..."
"No. The one who chose Senior Angell was a White Robe."
Branch President Hume gazed at the recording from the past, his voice full of emotion. "And a White Robe from Star Glory Tower, no less."
"Star Glory Tower..." Owen repeated with a sigh.
In this world, mages had many different classifications, but their ranks were relatively broad. There were basically only four:
Mage Apprentice (equivalent to high school if trained by a Mage Tower, or a vocational school in the City of Academies);
Beginner Mage (university graduate);
Intermediate Mage (master's degree to PhD);
High-level Mage (professor and above).
The highest rank a mage could reach was High-level Mage, commonly known as a Grand Mage.
The term "Archmage," as it was commonly used by the public, referred only to the degree of damage a spell could cause. It had nothing to do with research ability or depth of knowledge.
Compared with the broad ranking system for mages, Mage Towers had very strict ratings.
They were divided into Bronze Tower, Silver Tower, Gold Tower, Platinum Tower, Diamond Tower, Star Glory Tower, and the Tower of the Magic Emperor, which only the Magic Emperor could have.
(Angell: This ranking system feels like it was copied from somewhere.)
But the Tower of the Magic Emperor was almost mythical. Only a Magic Emperor with exceptional magical skill, immense popularity among the public, and the ability to lead could build one. Even Grand Mage Cecilia, who had carved out the Abyss, had never managed it. It seemed that only a few ruins left behind by the ancient Magic Dynasty remained.
These days, the highest standard a mage could achieve when building a Magic Tower was Star Glory Tower.
And Cecilia City, as the Magic Capital, had no fewer than five Star Glory Towers.
One of them was the Mage Tower of Grand Mage Cecilia, who had built the city.
"Was it the Star Glory Tower in Cecilia that chose that kid?" John asked. "They're family, aren't they?"
"Not at all." Hume shook his head. "Magic Gear and Grand Mage Cecilia had a complicated relationship. There's an unofficial legend that Grand Mage Cecilia was the eldest son of the Alchemy Workshop's owner and built Magic Gear for his family. But the history of Magic Gear seems to go back even further than Cecilia City itself. It was already there when this place was still a small village plagued by the Demon Race."
"Grand Mage Cecilia also had a complicated attitude toward Magic Gear. He rarely had any contact with the owners, never gave them anything, and even forced a curse on them. The owner of Magic Gear could never become a noble or marry into a noble family. They would forever be commoners."
"Good grief, sounds like they had a grudge!" John exclaimed.
Hume didn't comment on the family relationship of an ancient Grand Mage. He simply said, "The one that chose Senior Angell was the Star Glory Tower without an owner!"
The other three were genuinely astonished.
"That legendary..."
"That legendary one," Hume confirmed with a nod.
Of the five Star Glory Towers in Cecilia City, the most legendary wasn't the one belonging to Grand Mage Cecilia, but the Masterless Tower.
No one knew who had built it, or how old it was.
As far back as the records went, the tower had always been there.
It opened its doors at irregular intervals, but whenever it did, it was because an apprentice with the potential to reach Legendary rank was about to enter a Mage Tower. It was a tower that accepted no one but a super-genius.
"That year, the tower chose an apprentice with only Intermediate potential, and it caused a huge stir among those of us about to enter Mage Towers," Hume recalled. He sounded nostalgic as he spoke. "For years, we secretly hoped the Masterless Tower had changed its standards for selecting mages, until our hopes were dashed."
"Now that you mention it, I remember too." The butler nodded, recalling the past as well. "It caused quite a stir at the time, so my master ordered me to investigate the apprentices who had entered Star Glory Towers. That was how I found Magic Gear and met its owner at the time. He must've been Mr. Angell's father, right? He resembled Mr. Angell more than the previous owners of Magic Gear—or perhaps I should say Mr. Angell resembles him. That's why he seemed familiar."
Agent John felt vaguely annoyed.
He sounded as if he were looking for a flaw when he said, "But even if he was trained by the Masterless Tower, that doesn't mean he'll amount to anything, does it?"
"That's true," Hume said, nodding. "The Masterless Tower has a pretty high failure rate! If you can't advance to Intermediate Mage within three years, or become a Grand Mage within five, you'll be kicked out."
"But Angell had only Intermediate potential, and he spent more than a century in the Masterless Tower before returning?" Owen asked.
"..."
The archives fell silent.
Everyone was immersed in the feeling that they couldn't quite understand what was going on, but it seemed incredibly impressive.
Why did Angell suddenly seem more impressive than those "successful" Grand Mages?!
"Listen, could Mr. Angell have returned on some kind of mission?" Owen said. His tone had suddenly grown respectful as he spoke of Angell.
"A mission?"
Owen said solemnly, "The entire world is changing now, and magic is in decline. Those reclusive Grand Mages surely won't stand by and do nothing. Could Mr. Angell be an envoy sent by the Masterless Tower? Perhaps he came with the mission of restoring magic, which is why he developed that magical item that improves meditation and wants to conduct his research project at the school."
"Ha, you're overthinking it!" John said, incredulous.
"I think it's quite possible," Branch President Hume said, agreeing. He looked thoughtful. "Whether it's the Game Table's rental and sales plan or the proposed Mana Base Station (?), everything is clearly well thought out, with each step linked to the next. It's hard to imagine a gloomy Black Robe coming up with this sort of thing, especially after spending so many years in a Mage Tower. He'd be lucky not to have been left behind by the times, so how could he come up with such a mature business plan?! Just look at his Membership System. It's more cunning than many real merchants'! So there must be an even bigger organization behind him, advising him!"
"Didn't you say last time that it was Roy House...?"
"No, I didn't think deeply enough last time. I only saw the first layer. The truth is probably more complicated," Hume said.
He looked at Mayor Owen. "Just as you analyzed, Roy House has neither the motive nor the technology. And why would they commission a failing Alchemy Workshop? So I think the organization behind the Masterless Tower... behind Senior Angell, has its eye on Roy House's vast wealth and is preparing to pull them into its ranks!"
"Right! That makes sense!" Owen slapped his thigh. "That's why Mr. Angell approached the young lady of Roy House instead of its head. Roy House hasn't even realized it's part of the plan!"
"But if that person is an envoy of the Masterless Tower, does he need to go to all this trouble?" John asked. "If he just showed them a letter of introduction from those old monsters, even the Emperor would receive him as an honored guest!"
"That's what makes Senior Angell so cautious!" Hume stroked his beard.
He felt that he'd finally pieced it all together. "How powerful is the Anti-Magic Faction these days? It's not just local officials. Even our own Magic Association has plenty of fools who think magic is completely obsolete and should be abandoned. If Senior Angell directly claimed he was acting on orders from the Masterless Tower, those people would only pay lip service and drag their feet. They'd waste a fortune in money and effort, turning a good thing into a bad one. By starting at the grassroots, he can identify those pests."
"So his request for us to sign a Magic Contract was a way of making his position clear too!" Owen added. "What Black Robe's contract doesn't just secure their own interests, regardless of what happens to everyone else? But Mr. Angell asked us to draft one that would properly protect the children's bodies and minds. That makes his organization's position clear and tests us at the same time!"
"But he probably didn't expect us to uncover his true identity!" Hume said smugly.
The middle-aged and elderly men in the archives let out a sinister laugh.
"So, should we sign that contract?" John asked after their laughter died down.
"Sign it! Of course we should!" Owen said. "Now that we've spotted a golden opportunity, we'd be fools not to grab hold of it!"
The archives erupted in another round of laughter.
*
"Ow—"
Meanwhile, Angell, who had somehow acquired titles like "the exception chosen by the Masterless Tower," "the reclusive masters' closed-door disciple," and "an envoy dispatched by the highest-ranked Mage Tower," clutched one side of his face and groaned.
Mithril had just left five "loving claw marks" across his face.
"What do you mean, 'you'll pay for it'?! Where are you getting all that money to build a chicken farm, meow?!" Mithril scolded.
It thought it had already shown its owner enough consideration by not clawing him in front of the guests!
"It's not a chicken farm. It's a base station," Angell corrected.
"I don't care what you're building. You can't spend money recklessly!" Mithril said.
It had noticed!
It had noticed Angell had a very bad habit!
Whenever there was even a little money in the accounts, he immediately spent every last bit of it.
First, he'd taken the money they'd earned from the Game Tables and immediately spent it on supplies, buying more tables.
That was a necessary material expense. Mithril could understand.
Then, once they had more Game Tables, Angell immediately took all the money and went to the Adventurer's Guild and Magic Association to recruit people!
That was a necessary staffing expense. Mithril could understand that too.
Next, when he realized there was still money left, he started renovating the workshop and refurbishing the dormitory, promised the employees high salaries (and those were only promises, meow! Who knew where the money for them would come from?), and planned to make even more Game Tables and games!
Those were necessary for future development. Mithril could just about understand.
And now, he'd actually promised to build a Mana Base Station for the school!
With the workshop's money!
He planned to use the workshop's money for everything, as long as those adults signed a contract!
Mithril couldn't take it anymore.
It had lived through the period when the workshop was on the verge of bankruptcy. It couldn't bear the prospect of the deficit it could already see coming!
Mithril bared its claws and threatened Angell. "If you spend recklessly again, you'll have to step over my corpse!"
"It's all necessary expenses," Angell protested.
Besides, he had a whole theory to back him up:
"Once we have money, we'll expand the shop. Expanding the shop will definitely mean renovations and hiring staff, and hiring staff will definitely require generous pay! Money only counts if you spend it!"
"And besides, economies are inflationary! From what I've observed, no matter what a country sets its currency's value at initially, eventually wages end up worth dozens of times the largest denomination, and people use that largest denomination for ordinary purchases. The commoners here only earn twenty silver coins, while the largest denomination is one gold coin. Just think how much room there is for inflation! If we don't spend our money quickly, we're definitely losing out!"
Anyway, Angell would never admit he was living paycheck to paycheck.
Mithril wanted nothing more than to smack him. "I can't believe you managed to save enough in the Mage Tower to pay off the Workshop's debt!"
"It's mainly because there was nowhere to spend it," Angell answered frankly.
Mage Towers were usually closed off and self-contained.
Mages always had plenty of secrets, especially high-level mages who built their own towers. Who knew what world-destroying projects they might be researching? Naturally, they wouldn't let their subordinates and apprentices wander outside, so they had to take care of all their needs themselves.
In the hundred years Angell spent in the Mage Tower, he never once contacted the outside world.
In a place like that, there was nowhere to spend money. And sometimes, when a project didn't require much funding, he could even earn a little. Over those hundred years, Angell had unwittingly saved more than three hundred thousand, then spent it all paying off his debt within half a day of leaving the tower.
It really was sad to have a constitution that made it impossible to hold on to money.
Angell could only try to calm the frantic Mithril. "Actually, things aren't that bad. Didn't we just get a huge order?"
"You know those orders aren't finished yet, meow! We need to make them! That takes money! Money!" Mithril said.
Mithril's meowing gave Angell a headache. He could only helplessly pick up the pen and paper on the table and say:
"Anyway, let's figure out what we need to do first!"
What he really wanted was to replace the accountant first.