The Forms of Magic Power
The Forms of Magic Power
"What's going on? Did we discover a new witch in town?" he asked, rubbing his eyes.
"No, Your Highness!" Nightingale exclaimed excitedly. "Anna, Anna's ability evolved again!"
"Again?" Roland was not completely awake. "Didn't she already reach adulthood?"
"It's a post-adulthood evolution. I've never seen such amazing magic power. It acts just like an entity." Nightingale brought him a washbasin and continued, "Scroll and Wendy have never heard of it as well. Hurry up and take a look. Everyone's in the office waiting for you!"
Roland gave his face a cursory wash. After putting on his clothes, he went straight to the office on the second floor with Nightingale. When he went in, the eyes of 11 witches were focused on him. Anna's eyes were swollen, as if she had not slept well the whole night.
"Who can tell me what happened?"
The first to speak was still Nightingale. "When I passed by Anna's room this morning, I saw her sleeping at her desk with a pile of iron lumps. I wanted to wake her up, but when I got closer, I noticed her magic power had turned..." She paused momentarily, as if to think of a way to describe it. "Her magic power has become a fixed shape, like a revolving block."
"A block?" Roland approached Anna and carefully observed her. There was nothing unusual about her, except for her exhaustion. Then he noticed a cylinder on the desk. The cylinder seemed to be made out of pig iron. Its smooth gray surface and the flatness of its top was an unbelievable sight for him. "This is..."
"Anna made that," Nightingale said, "Using her new magic power. After a witch is awakened, her body will gather magic power. At first it'll as pale as the fog, but in a few years, it'll slowly become a whirlpool of gas of a different color. For example, Wendy's color is white and Leaf's color is green... As for Anna, her magic power was immense in the past. In adulthood, it became a lot more condensed, making it a dark green. But her magic power is now only the size of a fist. It's like a solid object, completely opaque." She picked up a quill pen on the desk to roughly depict it. "That's basically what it looks like now."
Nightingale's drawing was terrible, but Roland could still tell that it was a cube.
He looked at Anna. "What happened last night?"
Anna told him what she experienced. When she finished talking, the other witches were still confused. They did not understand what the tiny balls, vibration, and linking had to do with the evolution of her ability.
Roland was the only one who was a little shocked.
In his view, magic power was a form of energy and it was the witch who released it. Magic power could be transformed infinitely, but its form was ultimately dependent on the witch manipulating it. In other words, it depended on the witch's thoughts.
If his guess was accurate, a witch's thoughts could have far-reaching impacts on her magic power.
To put it simply, a man who had never seen a plane would find it hard to imagine a huge iron bird flying in the air. A man who had never seen the universe would naturally not know how wide the world was. It was one's knowledge and thoughts that limited the use of magic power. Every step in understanding the nature of the world would bring great progress in science and technology. Would that hold true for a witch's ability? The more they understood the world, the closer their magic power got to its origin?
"Let me see your new ability," Roland said curiously.
Anna stuck out her fingers. A mass of black flames appeared on her fingertips, looking nothing different from ordinary flames, except for the fact that they did not glow.
"Can your Blackfire change shapes freely?"
Anna nodded and controlled the Blackfire to the table. Soon, the Blackfire suddenly turned into a cube. Not yet all the people noticed what happened, the cube spread into a black cloth, almost covered the entire desktop, and then concentrated to the center gradually, it turned into a straight line. Roland could not help touching it and found that hair shaped slim black line did not move— that was so incredible, we all knew that even if it was hard as steel, when it was pulled into a filament, one could easily twist it with fingers. This was determined by the flexibility of the object, the absolutely solid material did not exist.
"Can you make it finer?"
"Yes, but you can't touch it anymore," said Anna, "Otherwise it'll cut you."
"What about the temperature? Can you control it freely as well?"
"Yes. Compared with the green fire, I can make it produce different temperatures at different parts."
Roland basically understood what Nightingale mean by the ability liked real substance, compared with the green fire which as gentle as water, her ability had been cohered at the moment, and it was not appropriate to describe her ability as flame—when Anna accepted the point of view that the world was made by the microparticle, her knowledge of the temperature generated by flame broke the horizon of the temperature generated by particle movements. What could be sure was the two sides did not control the particles, like they did not control the flame... Whether the originally ordinary flame, or the green and black flame after adult year, they were all the forms of magic power.
Even though both were heat transformed from magic power, the effects were totally different.
Roland could not help thinking that Anna was a true genius. Other than that, he had nothing more appropriate to describe her. After learning the theory just a few days ago, she immediately understood and even applied it to her magic power. Such thought and capacity for knowledge could only be found in talented people.
Anna's transformation also made him more interested in exploring the true meaning of the world.
It was a pity that Roland could never possess magic power. This might be the biggest regret for him after the time traveled. After all, most people had a superhero dream. If one developed incredible strength out of the blue, thus changing his whole life, how wonderful would that be?
"I think I've figured out the reason for the change in Anna's ability," he told the witches, leaving behind his regret in his heart.
"What's that?" the witches asked.
"Learning."
"Learning?" Scroll muttered, "Do you mean the class yesterday?"
"Exactly," Roland briefly explained what he guessed, "The knowledge will help you improve your ability and even dramatically transform it."
"Can I... do that too?" Mystery Moon asked timidly.
"Of course." Roland patted her shoulder. If not for the fact that steam engines were limited in number, and they could not find rubber, they could have made wires. The pile of strong magnets made with her enchantment would definitely come in handy.
Roland's original purpose in lecturing was to pass on knowledge to Scroll, in case he forgot more as time passed. Now that he accidentally discovered that such knowledge could also improve the witches' abilities, his class had become a necessity for all witches.
Of course, he understood not everyone had an outstanding talent like Anna. For Nightingale who would fall asleep in class, he naturally did not pin any hopes on her. From remembering to understanding, and from understanding to applying, there were many gaps in the process. He did not know how many of them could truly understand the knowledge and finally apply it to their magic power.
"Did you not sleep well last night?" Roland asked Anna. "Take a good rest first. I'll test your new ability a few days later."
"Yes." Anna nodded seriously.
"As for you all," he said, looking to the other witches, "from today onwards, gather in the living room after dinner from Monday to Friday to learn basic reading and writing. Scroll, you're their teacher that'll lead them towards enlightenment."