Entrance Ceremony (1)
Entrance Ceremony (1)
On a cloudy, chilly day in March, the spire bell tolled nine times.
─ The 1024th Tillet Magic Academy entrance ceremony will now commence. Freshmen and honored guests, please take your designated seats. Faculty members, please guide the students to their proper places.
The ceremony was held at the academy's northern open-air theater.
At the center of the Open-air Theater stood a lectern and a few chairs. The school had placed two chairs there for the top-ranked and second-ranked students.
From the opening rehearsal through the closing ceremony, every part of the program took place at center stage.
Faculty members lined the theater's perimeter. Throughout the ceremony, the professors kept staff-summoning magic primed in case of any unforeseen incidents.
Meriga Herlein was one such professor. Standing with her arms crossed while two high-grade golems loomed behind her, she embodied the very dream that drew freshmen with an aptitude for Earth Magic.
Beside Meri stood Kleis, slouched. Deep dark circles shadowed the skin beneath her eyes.
'Looks like she went claw-to-claw with the prince.'
Prince Clion had also applied to Tillet Academy and been admitted. There had been some suspicion over whether imperial family bonus points played a role in his acceptance, but the controversy died down quickly.
At any rate, the prince would be entering the Special Class. The Special Class was for freshmen whose entrance exam scores were so outstanding that early advancement or accelerated graduation was considered likely. Typically, the top 20 to 25 admitted students were placed there.
'The homeroom teacher's going to have their hands full.'
Meri glanced sidelong at her dead-eyed friend and stifled a sigh.
If fatigue alone were the measure, both Kleis and Meri were on the verge of collapse.
The problem was the carnivorous magic beasts that had been multiplying on Tillet Academy's back mountain.
The back mountain had traditionally served as a training ground for lower-year students. Since mostly low-grade magic beasts inhabited it, proper management ensured absolutely no harm to the citizens of the Capital City. Low-grade magic beasts were weak enough to subdue without magic anyway.
So they were routinely hunted as sacrificial targets to teach first-years facing monsters for the first time the fundamentals of combat. Under normal circumstances, the academy's Board of Directors would have kept the population at a reasonable level through supervision and oversight.
That was how it should have been.
'No matter how I think about it, something's off. There's no way the drake population could explode that fast.'
The sudden overflow of Iron Drakes—mid-grade magic beasts. That was the headache plaguing the Board.
Iron Drakes normally lived only deep in the mountains. Drakes were plentiful in mountainous regions, but the back mountain was small, so the resident population had never been large.
Yet in recent months, drakes had been crossing the mountain slopes with increasing frequency—a genuine nightmare for the board professors who managed the mountain.
A surge in carnivorous magic beasts inevitably meant a decline in low-grade magic beasts. Stronger beasts drew energy from weaker ones.
Unlike low-grade magic beasts, which even an untrained civilian could catch, the absolute majority of mid-grade and above were aggressive by nature. They did not hesitate to launch preemptive attacks on humans.
Upper-year students with some training might handle it, but most first-years who had just entered the academy had no idea how to deal with a mid-grade magic beast.
Even if a student had diligently trained in Magic Arts before admission, it made little difference. Knowing many attack spells was not the same thing as using the right spell at the right moment in a fight.
Three months had already passed since the professors first raised questions about the cause of the drake surge. They had dispatched investigation teams, but the cause still remained unidentified.
The only factor flagged was a cave at the deepest part of the back mountain.
The one established fact was that low-grade magic beast carcasses lay strewn inside and around that horizontal cave.
'Well, what can we do? Wait until the investigation team finishes their follow-up.'
For now, the school could only do one thing: identify and intercept any drake packs that might cross the back mountain and reach the Open-air Theater.
Half of the academy's faculty had positioned themselves at the path leading to the back mountain, ready to suppress any magic beast that emerged on the spot.
The overcast weather cast the entrance ceremony in a somber, dreary atmosphere.
Meri's instincts were especially uneasy today. The eye she had lost years ago on the battlefield throbbed with a dull ache.
Please, let nothing go wrong.
**
─ That concludes the president's welcome address for the incoming class. Next, the freshman representatives will recite the joint pledge.
On one side of the stage, two students sat passing the time while watching the back of the academy president.
One was the male elf who had entered as the top-ranked student.
The other was the second-ranked girl—or rather, she was not. Instead of the girl from the Gold-Eye Tribe, it was a red-eyed girl with a neatly trimmed bob.
Rote, who had placed third in admissions, was sitting in as a substitute for the absent golden-eyed girl.
'Why didn't she come?'
Rote was trying to deduce why Aether had not shown up at the ceremony. Maybe that was why the president's welcome speech barely registered in her ears.
Although attendance at the ceremony was optional, the overwhelming majority of Tillet Academy freshmen considered their admission to the school a source of immense pride. The competition rate was staggering, and just graduating guaranteed a fast track to success.
Even a commoner or a slave, upon graduation, received at minimum the title of baron from the emperor. For the lower classes, Tillet Academy represented the sole opportunity for upward mobility in the Empire.
And the honor bestowed upon the top-ranked and second-ranked students—those admitted with the highest scores—was on par with a war hero's triumphal return from the battlefield.
How many people could possibly dislike basking in that glory?
That was why, year after year, the top and second-ranked students attended of their own accord even when the school did not compel them.
Occasional eccentrics did skip, but throughout Tillet's thousand-year history, such cases numbered no more than ten. In other words, a top admittee's absence was practically an anomaly.
That anomaly had occurred this year. It was the first time in two hundred years.
"What could possibly be going on with the friend who entered as second-ranked that she hasn't shown up?"
At the question from a fellow professor, Meri snickered.
"Maybe she's off conked out somewhere?"
In the end, the second-ranked admittee did not appear even as the time came due.
─ As the second-ranked admittee has not yet arrived, the third-ranked admittee will join the top-ranked admittee in reading the freshman pledge.
The joint recitation of the freshman pledge by the top and second-ranked students was a venerable Tillet tradition.
Originally, Tillet had only the top student read the pledge, like other academies. At some point, however, the second-ranked student began reading alongside them. The story among graduates—spread as a rumor—was that long ago, when the Empire had nearly been destroyed by magic beasts, a married couple of top and second-ranked Tillet graduates had saved the nation.
From then on, the joint pledge was supposedly instituted in the hope that more heroes destined to save the country would emerge.
─ Mr. Vermel Horde and Miss Rote Saliere, please rise and come to the front of the stage.
Before rising, Rote shot a sidelong glance at the elf who had entered as top-ranked.
Like the Gold-Eye Tribe, elves were a race famous for their many handsome men and beautiful women. Looking down at the rows below the stage, Rote could already see female students who had evidently become his fans.
'Why didn't he study at Iliad? Why come here?'
That was the first thought that crossed Rote's mind.
It was not that Rote held speciesist views.
However, clear cultural differences existed between humans and elves. That gap could not easily be bridged. Elves who had attempted to study abroad in the Empire only to give up and return home numbered by the truckload every year.
Rote's guess appeared to be roughly on the mark. Vermel kept glancing around, openly betraying his unease.
In particular, he looked alternately toward the north, where the back mountain lay, and the south, where the Central Plaza and the fountain were. Since those two points were in completely opposite directions, the shifting attention was more disorienting for Rote than it was for him.
Watching Vermel rise with a face full of worry, Rote considered the reason this elf had entered Tillet. One hypothesis immediately came to mind.
Due to racial traits, elves were far more likely than humans to produce children born with the aptitude for Air Magic. The Iliad Academy, situated in the elven capital, was an institution that intensively trained such air-magic users.
Therefore, if an elf was born with an aptitude for an element other than Air Magic, enrolling at Tillet might be the better option. Rote thought so.
Rote stole a glance at Vermel's eyes.
An olive color with a faint jade tint—the eye color of one blessed by the spirits governing Air Magic.
Rote's thoughts tangled.
'With the skills to rank first here, he'd easily get into Iliad too.... Doesn't Iliad actually offer a bigger entrance scholarship?'
Tillet and Iliad were academies of equal standing. It was impossible to say definitively that one was superior to the other.
'If he wanted an education, a familiar environment would be better....'
Beyond cultural norms, one more difference existed between the Empire and the elven nation: the political system.
The Empire still retained a class system. By contrast, Kaurelia, the elven country, had become a state governed by a president and a parliamentary cabinet after a revolution several decades prior.
Different political systems produced different mindsets across a populace. Indeed, a great many Imperials regarded the class system as perfectly natural—a way of thinking utterly incomprehensible to elves born and raised in Kaurelia.
'No. There's no need to overthink it this far. Now that we're here, we're all in the same cohort.'
Dwelling on it any further was pointless meddling. Rote let out a short sigh and took hold of one end of the pledge document.
Vermel gripped the other end of the long parchment. His fingertips trembled faintly.
"When Mr. Vermel reads one clause, Miss Rote will read the next. Take turns in order, understood?"
Rote and Vermel both nodded at the vice president, who had approached to give them this brief instruction.
─ The two freshman representatives, please recite the pledge in a loud voice.
Vermel let out a low sigh and opened his mouth.
"So it ends up like this after all."
The moment those words left his lips, one of the pillars supporting the Open-air Theater was blown away.