[V1C2] Mr. Fuzzy and Mr. Spiky-Smiley
Translated by Jodas 1: The Wedge Tower“Quiet down. I will now explain the contents of this examination.”
Hegelich stepped one foot forward and all of the idle chatter suddenly died down.
It was like when a strong creature emerged from the flock. Tia covered her mouth with her hands.
“From here on, each one of you will receive one of these bags. Inside are rations, a map, and a key.”
Beside Hegelich, his assistant Röhm lifted a cloth bag.
There was a horse cart parked nearby that seemed to be filled with a ton of the same things.
Each bag was not very big by itself, but there were over a hundred of them. Obviously they would make quite the pile.
“You all are to take these into the forest, and search for the Wedge Medals.”
“Something like this!” Röhm took something out of her robe’s pocket and held it up to the crowd.\ It was a medal about the size of her palm. Perhaps it had copper mixed in, as it had a slight reddish tint.
“If you get your hands on one of these and bring it back here, you pass. You have until noon on the day after tomorrow. That said, we will be staggering your starts in the order you submitted your documents.”
“Excuse me~?”
As Hegelich’s explanation reached a stopping point, one of the applicants raised a hand and spoke up.
It was a blond boy seemingly around Tia’s age. His oversized clothes were high quality but poorly fitted to his body and he wore them with the hems rolled up.
His golden hair reached down to his back, but because he let it flow freely without tying it up, it made him look a little girlish.
The boy tilted his neck and looked upwards at Hegelich.
“Isn’t it unfair to stagger the starts like that~? There’s a hundred and twenty-eight applicants in all. Even if you only stagger them by a minute, that adds up to two hours of delay, you know?”
A hundred and twenty-eight. Tia repeated that number to herself.
(Wow. That’s a lot! That’s how many people are here?)
She wondered if that boy had been counting each person one-by-one. He’s so smart. Tia didn’t even consider that there would be such a gap between the first person and the last.
As Tia offered him her respect, the boy glanced towards her and made some sort of hand gesture. He pointed at Tia and made a motion towards Hegelich.
The boy moved his lips and whispered something to her.
(… “You should say something too.” …? Say what?)
She didn’t quite understand, so she just responded with a wave. The boy looked up at the sky with a defeated expression.
“Ahem.” Hegelich cleared his throat.
“In all things, those who can anticipate any scenario and make preparations early will have an advantage. That is all it means.”
Speaking with a tone that allowed for no rebuttals, Hegelich glared at Tia and the blond boy.
She had no idea why she was being glared at, so she decided to just wave back. The glare only intensified.
“With that over with, I will now call your names in order, starting from the beginning of the list. Please come up and take your bag and depart immediately. Any who wish to forfeit the exam, please do so now.”
As Hegelich called out each number, the person he called would take a bag then enter the forest.
Tia sat down on a nearby rock and watched each one go.
She got bored as time went on, so she started humming to herself. That was when someone called out to her.
“Hey!”
Tia turned to face the voice and responded with a “Piyo!”
The one who called out to her was a large, red, and fuzzy creature—correction, a man with red hair and a beard that he hadn’t bothered trimming. The man wore traveling clothes over his muscular body and carried a bag across his body.
The top of his face was covered with curly red hair, and the bottom half was covered by a fuzzy beard, so she didn’t have a clue as to his age.
The red-haired fuzzy man spoke to Tia with a courteous voice.
“You’re the kid that showed up last, right? Did you also go to the Wedge Tower by accident?”
You also. Tia remembered what the gatekeeper had told her.
“Oh, the man at the gate told me there was another guy who went to the wrong place too…”
“Yeah, yeah! That was me! I messed up and went to the tower—”
The red-haired man played with his curly hair and laughed cheerfully. His honest and pleasant voice was clearly the voice of a young man. Because of the beard, he looked much older, but he might actually be surprisingly young.
The man reached into his bag and took out a dried plum that he handed. to Tia.
“Take this, as thanks for talking to me.”
“I can have this? Thank you so much!”
Tia took the plum with a great big smile and took a tiny nibble from it.
The red-haired man sat down next to Tia and bit into another plum from his bag.
“My name’s John Rose. You can just call me Rose!”
“Rose. I’m Tia. Tia.”
“Tia, nice to meet you! I’m second to last, so let’s wait together!”
“Okay!”
For a little while afterwards, The white-haired girl and the red-haired fuzzy man sat next to each other and made idle conversation.
There were quite a few other applicants aside from Tia and Rose who were having similar chit-chat. Among them, it looked like there were groups that had known each other to start with and came to this exam as a team.
As Tia watched one person after another have their names called and run into the forest, she realized something.
Some among the applicants talked to the test officials, then hopped aboard a horse cart parked a little ways away.
“Hey, Rose. Why are those people getting on that cart?”
“Hmm, maybe they’re forfeiting?”
“Even though they haven’t even entered the forest?”
“Now that you say it, I wonder…”
As the two of them twisted their heads about the question, they heard a low voice from behind them.
“White girl and fuzzy. Is it your first time?”
Both Tia and Rose turned around at the same time.
A young, tall man was leaning against a tree behind them.
It was a man in his early twenties with light brown hair stood spikily on its ends. He donned clothes that looked easy to move around it, and held a spear in his hand rather than a staff.
“If you pass the entrance exam to the Wedge Tower, you can become a Mage Apprentice and your living expenses will be guaranteed. However, it’s not rare for people to die during the exam…… Therefore, there are always people who use it as a means of reducing the mouths they have to feed.”
According to this man, there are people who are forced to take this exam because they’ve become a burden to their family or are a child of a large family that fell on hard times, or simply because they’ve outlived their usefulness.
If they pass the exam, then the Wedge Tower will take them in. If they die during the test, then that’s that.
…Thinking it through to that point, Tia noticed something.
“Huh? But what if you fail the exam without dying? What happens then?”
“Even if you fail the exam, if you so desire the Wedge Tower will still take you in as a servant.”
The Wedge Tower is an institution for mages, but it sounds like there are people who are not mages living there as well.
Someone has to do all the cleaning, cooking, laundry, maintenance and management of equipment and facilities, communication with outsiders, and more. With such a large campus, a certain amount of people are needed to do those jobs.
To summarize, there are three options available to those who are forced here by their families.
Either they pass and become a mage apprentice, they fail and become a servant, or they lose their lives during the exam.
The man with the spear cast his eyes towards the forfeiters lined up on the cart.
“However, It would be unreasonable to expect those who were chased away by their families with no intentions of becoming a mage to go through such a deadly examination. That’s why the test officials have decided to take forfeiters into their care from the beginning.”
“Hmm~?” Rose sounded as he stroked his chin beneath his beard.
“Then why don’t they just say ‘anyone want to be a servant~?’ right from the start and recruit them that way?”
“If they did that, then too many ordinary people would come. It would only make things worse.”
(……Huh?)
A question floated up in Tia’s head.
Why would it be a problem if ordinary people came to the Wedge Tower?
And why does this man know so much about the Wedge Tower?
“Pirorororo….” Unable to put those questions into words, Tia rolled her tongue, and the man with the spear looked between Tia and Rose.
“White girl and fuzzy. I spoke to you because I thought you might want to choose to be servants. If you want to forfeit, the sooner the better.”
Tia’s eyes widened to those words.
She would never forfeit and work as a servant.
“No. I’m here to become a mage.”
“Me too. I came here to study magecraft!”
“I see. I’m sorry for bothering you. However…”
The spear man stared towards the forest.
It looked as if he was seeing something deep in the forest with his sharp gaze.
From his warrior’s stance, she could feel the silent aura of a man determined to step onto a battlefield.
“There have been fatalities in past exams. If you ever feel in danger, you should forfeit immediately.”
I see, Tia mouthed.
“That means you failed three years ago!”
“Oh, so this is your second time!”
“Wrong.”
The spearman’s brows were unmoved by Tia and Rose’s indelicate shouts.
Without losing the glint of determination in his long, thin eyes, he spoke in a low, weighty voice.
“It’s my fourth time.”
At that moment, Hegelich, the test official, called out the number “Forty-three!”
“Number forty-three! Oliver Lange, come forward!”
“Well, I’m off. Here’s hoping we all live to meet again.”
With his cool parting words, Oliver Lange, who was taking the test for the fourth time, headed towards the test officials with spear in hand.
The impression of his departing form was that of an experienced warrior. As expected of someone who’s taken this test three times before.
“Good luck, Mister Spiky-Smiley!”
“Don’t call me Spiky-Smiley.”
Oliver spun the spear in his hands with a satisfying whoosh as it cut through the air.
Readjusting his grip on the spear, Oliver turned back towards Tia.
“People call me Oliver of the Red Rain. Make sure you remember it.”
“Get over here!” Hegelich, the test official, shouted at him, so Oliver headed straight in that direction.
—The Red Rain, Spiky-Smiley Oliver, who was on his fourth test.
Tia made sure to remember that name.
She was uncertain if she’d be able to remember everyone she saw when she came to the test site, but she had Fuzzy Rose and Spiky-Smiley Oliver down.
Next to Tia, Rose mumbled to himself as he counted something on his fingers.
“If this is his fourth time, that means, um, there’s a test. every three years, so… He’s been doing this for nine years! He’s been putting effort in from a young age, huh?”
“Nine years!”
That was a really long time. You can’t do anything for that long unless you have a serious obsession. Tia secretly looked at Oliver in respect.
Tia and Rose continued to pass the time lazily chewing on plums and making small talk.
There were 128 applicants to start with, but of them around thirty forfeited and chose to work as servants. Their turns came faster than they had thought.
“Number one hundred and twenty-seven, John Rose!”
“I’m off!”
“Have fun, Rose!”
Rose stood up, took a bag from the officials, and entered the forest.
Shortly afterwards, Tia’s name was called.
“Number one hundred and twenty eight, Tia Vogel!”
“Piyopp!”
Energetically raising her hand, Tia ran over towards Hegelich.
Hegelich stared skeptically at Tia as she ran without bending her knees or raising her arms.
“Is there something wrong with your legs?”
“Nope?”
Her legs weren’t hurt at all, so she answered honestly. Hegelich swallowed his words and spoke with a bitter expression.
“If you think you can’t do it, come forfeit immediately. You can’t become a mage of the Wedge Tower with half-hearted resolve.”
“I’m not half-hearted.”
The adorable smiled disappeared from the girl’s face. As her sweetness fell away, only a cold sharpness remained in her expression.
Those amber eyes looked as if to pierce through Hegelich’s body.
“After all, this is the only thing I want.”
“……Then get going.”
Hegelich pressed a bag with a map and rations into her arms.
His assistant, Röhm, tapped Tia on the shoulder and pointed her finger towards the forest entrance.
This entrance was on the opposite side of the one Rose entered through. It seemed like they were not only staggering start times but also entry points.
“You’ll go this way. If you want to forfeit, just come back here, okay? If you feel even just a little scared, I’d like you to forfeit.”
Both Spiky-Smiley Oliver and the test officers Hegelich and Röhm really wanted her to forfeit.
That attitude made Tia realize:
(Oh, that’s it. These people, they know.)