Early one morning at the end of summer, a lone girl hummed to herself while walking down a path covered in a slight mist.
She appeared around fifteen or sixteen years of age. Her outfit was a boyish fit of a simple shirt and lose shorts.
Her hair, a little longer past her neck in the back and around her chin in the front, was an unblemished white. Her large eyes were an amber color like that of mead.
The raised corners of her eyes gave her somewhat of a stern look, but her carefree expression eased that sternness, giving her a strange amicability.

“Hmhmhmm, hhmm, hmhmhm!”

She hummed a hymn sung often in this Empire, “The One Who Travels the Plains.”
The Saint who travels the plains faces a dangerous journey, his feet become bloody and calloused with every step, and yet he continues to travel—She gave no thought to those heavy lyrics. She simply enjoyed the melody.
The girl’s humming was perfectly on pitch, and gave the distinct impression of the soft mercy and solemnity particular to such hymns.
She held the high notes without difficulty and resonated each and every low note clearly without faltering.
The girl with that unusually well-orchestrated humming stopped just as she saw the building she was looking for before her.
Rising up from the faint mist, with a pointed tower at the center and various wings to either side was an immense building. With a stone wall surrounding it on all sides, it gave the impression of a fortress of sorts.
Built in the Ihrsen Autonomous Territory in the East of the Empire was an esteemed structure that carried the weight of history.

—The Wedge Tower.

It was a tower where mages gathered, accumulating all forms of magecraft from across the Empire, protecting that knowledge and studying new techniques.

(It looks less like a tower and more like a castle I saw in a picture book though.)

The Wedge Tower originally had just been the tower at the center, but over time more and more additions have been made to reach its current form. That’s what the girl had been told by the person who sent her here.

“A bad mage lived in that castle. He captured the princess and locked her away.”

A sweet voice resurged in the girl’s head, reading aloud from a picture book.
The girl shook her head vigorously from side to side, driving out that voice clinging to her ears, and stepped towards the gate.
Before said gate stood a brown-haired middle-aged man who looked to be a gatekeeper.
“Oh?” When he noticed the girl, he sleepily lifted his eyes.
The girl picked up her pace and approached the gatekeeper.

(Greetings should be cheerful!)

The girl was not good at speaking respectfully, so she simply spoke the words just as she had been taught.

“Good Morning, My name’s Tia! I came here to become a mage! Nice to meet you!”

“Ah, I thought so.”

Hearing the gatekeeper’s words, Tia blinked her amber eyes and tilted her head.
Her white hair, wet by the mist, stuck to her cheeks.

“Thought so?”

“Girl, you came for the entrance exam, right?”

“Yep, I did! I did! I was told I could become a mage at the Wedge Tower if I passed the entrance exam!”

“The venue for the entrance exam isn’t here. It’s in the forest over there. It’s called the Serwio Forest.”

“Pyeh!?”

As Tia raised a shout of surprise, the gatekeeper cast his gaze to the Southeast and spoke.

“Every time, there’s one or two people who come over here by mistake. I’m here as a guide in case that happens. There was one other guy just before you who came here on accident and he went running off towards the forest in a hurry.”

“In a hurry?”

“Yeah. The exam starts in an hour.”

“Pyoeh!?”

The gatekeeper man narrowed his eyes and stroked his stubbled chin in response to her sound of utmost shock.

“Does that mean you’re surprised? That’s new…… Sorry, I don’t know much about the kids’ trends these days.”

“Thanks for telling me, old man! I’ve gotta run! Really fast!”

“Yeah, good luck.”

“Piyopp!”

Tia cheerfully raised a hand along with her response. “Pi… Piyopp?” The gatekeeper made a confused face, copying her while he waved back.
Somehow pleased, Tia ran towards the forest.

With her shoulder-length white hair flapping behind her like a tail, the girl ran with all her strength. Watching her from behind, the gatekeeper thought:

(……Is there something wrong with that girl’s legs?)

The girl wasn’t quite dragging her legs behind her, but she ran without bending her knees much. In short, it looked stilted, unsteady, and dangerous.
She’s headed for a dangerous test. One that demands not only one’s skill as a mage, but also physical and mental strength.
The man had lost both a wife and a daughter. Had that daughter still been alive, she would have been about the same age.
I hope she doesn’t die in this exam, the man secretly thought.

Magic—That referred to all things that use mana to bring about phenomena.
Once called the power of miracles, as time progressed, techniques for utilizing mana were formalized, and came to be known as magecraft.
There are entities in this world known as magical beings.
In the modern era, that refers to dragons and spirits. In ancient times, there were also monsters who are said to have since become extinct.
Monsters, who were accustomed to the use of mana, had no need for magecraft, and could manipulate mana as easily as moving their limbs or tails.
To resist such magical beings, human mages pursued research into magecraft and honed those skills. However, with the flow of time, the attitude of powerful individuals towards mages changed.
At times, mages were seen as indispensable assets to those in power and sequestered away. Other times they were condemned as heretics, and thus some forms of magecraft were lost with the ages.
Furthermore, as this Schwargald Empire was a union composed of what had been many small countries, cultures varied from region to region.
This was also true of their treatment of magic. For instance, a school of magic considered forbidden in the North could be an integral part of traditional rituals in the South. Such cases were common.
Saturated by modern magecraft, it was not unusual for regions to advocate for the elimination of magic from the old times.
The last holdout of those mages who have lost their place, established at the end of the old era in the Empire’s Eastern Autonomous Territory of Ihrsen, was the Wedge Tower.

—The Wedge Tower accepts all forms of magic.

The Wedge Tower, thus declared, had continued its mission of research and preservation from the old era to the present, and once every three years, admitted a new cohort of apprentices.
Regardless of ones age, sex, or background, once they pass the entrance exam, they would be allowed to live in the residential quarters of the castle and study as apprentice mages.
These days, it was customary for those who wished to study magecraft to do so at a magical university or mage training institute with high tuition costs.
However, the Wedge Tower charged no fees nor tuition. As long as one passes the entrance exam, even their living expenses would be covered to a certain extent.
Thus, many hopeful applicants gathered at the entrance exam once every three years.
The forgetful young girl who went to the wrong place for the exam, Tia, was one such person.

Desperately swaying her body as she stiltedly ran, the young girl Tia perked up her ears as the forest came into view in front of her.
She forgot to ask where in the forest the entrance exam was to be held, but she heard the voices of several people coming from within the forest. If there were that many people, that probably meant it was the meeting spot.

(Probably somewhere around the forest entrance… there!)

There wasn’t much time left, but it looks like she just made it.—While thinking that, Tia realized something. The hill she was running on dropped off to a sudden cliff.
She had to descend a significant amount to reach her destination, and Tia was at the top of the hill. If she chose to proceed down the safe route, she wouldn’t make it.

“Then…”

Before her was a cliff-like step. If it were a building, it was a height akin to jumping to the first floor from the second floor.
But Tia did not take the long route, and ran as hard as she could, stiltedly.

“If I can’t fly, then I just have to jump! Hmph!”

Despite the distance she had run, and without gasping for air, Tia shouted with a song-like rhythm and leaped. As she took off, she grabbed her knees tightly and pressed her messenger bag to her stomach, forming her body into a ball.
Tia fell down the equivalent of a one-story building, and without losing momentum, rolled along the surface. This method of movement was far faster than running with stilted legs.
Like a ball rolling through mud and grass, the white-haired girl tumbled down the hill.

At the entrance of the Serwio Forest to the Southeast of the Wedge Tower, around a hundred prospective students were gathered.
The Wedge Tower’s entrance exam had no age limits, so among the hopefuls were old and young, men and women alike.
If there were those who wore robes and held staves as one would expect a mage to, there were also those in traveling clothes, and those in armor bearing swords.
Standing a few paces away from those prospective students were two people. One was a thin man in his forties. His extremely thin blond hair was neatly cut around his chin, and he wore round glasses over his nervous face.
The other was a woman in her mid-twenties of average height and weight. Her tenacious brown hair extended to the middle of her back. Her bangs were cut rather short, giving her a somewhat youthful appearance.
Both of them wore robes well-befitting of mages. While there were some among the applicants wearing robes, only these two wore the belts signifying them as mages of the Wedge Tower.
The nervous-looking man took a pocket watch out of his robe and whispered as he confirmed the time.

“—Five minutes to go. Good. Let’s start the exam now.”

“Director Hegelich. If there’s still five minutes, shouldn’t we wait?”

The woman with short bangs spoke timidly, as Hegelich pushed his glasses up with a thin finger.

“Once one enters the Wedge Tower, a communal life awaits them. With that in mind, don’t you think it’s natural to do things five minutes in advance, Miss Röhm?”

“Yes…… But there won’t be another exam for three years…”

“There’s only one exam every three years. That is precisely why those who cannot challenge it with the utmost preparation are unqualified to grasp that chance. Those who cannot show up five minutes early are out of the quest—gyah!!?”

Before Hegelich could finish his sentence, he was trampled by something white and round falling out of the sky.
The white and round thing—The white-haired girl Tia who had formed a ball and rolled all the way here—stretched her limbs and shook her head while lying on top of the collapsed man. Her eyes spun.

“Piyoyoyoyo… Ah!”

Tia’s amber eyes blinked rapidly.
She was surrounded by a lot of people, and all of them were looking at Tia.
So those were the applicants. This was all of them. That’s a lot! —A little surprised, Tia, still seated, cheerfully waved her hand.
Greetings should be cheerful, after all.

“Hello, my name’s Tia! I came to become a mage! Nice to meet you!”

As everyone watched Tia from a distance, one woman approached her.
A woman with fluffy brown hair. It was long at the back but really short in the front.

“Hey, you. Would you mind getting off of Director Hegelich’s back?”

“Direc-tor? Hege-lich?”

The woman with short bangs was looking below Tia’s butt. Following, Tia directed her line of sight downwards.
She saw a back wearing a robe and neatly-cut thin blond hair. So, Tia gave a cheerful greeting.

“Hello!”

“Get off of me before you say hello!”

“Okaay,” Tia replied and got off dutifully. The man referred to as Director Hegelich stood up and wiped the dirt off of his robe.
Standing, Hegelich was quite tall.
As Tia tilted her head to look at Hegelich, he fixed his glasses while staring her down.
Due to the height difference, Hegelich’s silhouette appeared backlit and a dark shadow fell over his face.

“You want to apply to the Wedge Tower?”

“Yes.”

“You know you need a guardian’s approval if you’re under fifteen, right?”

“I’m fifteen.”

“…Very well. Miss Röhm, the documents.”

The short-banged fluffy-haired woman called Röhm handed a document to Tia.
It contained warnings and important information about the upcoming exam, written as bluntly as possible.
Seeing Tia’s eyes glaze over, Hegelich asked:

“Can you read?”

“I can read… but… writing is, a little… hard… very hard…”

The explanation paper in her hands contained a lot of formal and difficult turns of phrase.
Tia would prefer it it just cut to the chase and said “Do this! Don’t do that!”
Tia furrowed her brow and twisted her lips into a horrendous expression as she stared at the document, so Hegelich cleared his throat and spoke quickly.

“If you get hurt during the exam, it’s your own responsibility. You can bring any personal effects with you into the site, including weapons. If you fail the exam, you must not speak of its contents to anyone—Do you understand?”

“Does that mean…”

You can bring any personal effects into the site, including weapons.
Understanding the meanings behind those words, Tia nodded in realization.

“I don’t have to throw away all the candy I brought! Thank goodness!”

“…I suppose It was wise of you to bring emergency rations.”

Hegelich whispered with an exasperated expression before raising his voice once again.

“This exam is extremely dangerous, and more than a few have died attempting it. Therefore, I do not recommend children participate. If the reason you wish to enter the Wedge Tower can be fulfilled anywhere else, I recommend you go home immediately, you understand?”

Surely those words were intended for everyone present.
There were quite a few applicants who looked to be even younger than Tia.
Tia digested Hegelich’s words in her mind.

(The reason I wish to enter the Wedge Tower…)

Tia looked up at Hegelich.
It was obvious how she would respond. There was no reason for hesitation.
After all, this was all Tia had.

“I want to become a mage, learn flight magic, and fly through the sky!”

Magecraft made use of mana through formulas. Within that, there was such a thing as flight magic.
It was a difficult form of magecraft intended only for advanced mages, but if she learned it, she would be able to fly freely through the sky.
Hegelich looked at Tia with testing eyes.

“If you want to learn flight magic, you can do that at other magic schools, you know?”

“If I want to become a mage, I was told that anywhere else would be impossible for me.”

Ordinary magic schools or mage training institutes required high tuition costs and fees.
The only place one could learn magecraft without spending money in the Empire was this Wedge Tower.
Hegelich supposed Tia was, like many others, also from a poor family. Without asking any further questions, he directed her to sign the documents.
Tia signed her name with inept letters, causing Hegelich to remark “What poor handwriting…” as he passed the documents back to Röhm.
Röhm confirmed the documents and nodded.

“Very well, all is in order. Miss Tia Vogel, you are permitted to participate in the exam.”

“Then, let us begin the explanation of the exam. Ah, what a shame… Thanks to a certain someone, we have exceeded the scheduled time by seven minutes.”

“Ex-ceed-ed”
Tia repeated the word with a face that said she didn’t get it, to which Röhm whispered “Shh!” while putting a finger to her lips.

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