Ambition

North of Lausanne was an ancient red-brick building with four floors. This was the institution where the elders held meetings; although it wasn’t large, it held five hundred years of history. Although there had been renovations and decorations along the way, the outer appearance still remained the same as when the town had first been constructed. A large number of decisions that affected the entire Sequoia Kingdom.

The fourth floor had a total of thirty offices, sixteen of which were occupied. However, this place hadn’t always been half-empty; in the prime of the Association’s days, there were grand mages who couldn’t even get an office here. The Association’s influence over the Sequoia Kingdom wasn’t nearly as grand as before.

Even as the influence of the Mage Association grew over the past century, the number of mages had actually decreased. There were now less than 600 registered mages from the Kingdom that were level 8 or higher.

However, this was only a surface decline. The...