Release That Witch

The third witch was Hummingbird. She was small, just as her nickname depicted. She acted more reserved than the other witches when Roland asked about her ability. She just reached adulthood this winter and was a cute girl with symmetrical dimples, a delicate face and a sweet soft voice.     

Her ability was Object Lightening, which meant that she was able to greatly lower the weight of an object once she put her magic power into it. According to her description, the weight of an object would be close to zero. Roland asked her to demonstrate it with his teacup and found that the teacup almost floated in the air—that was to say, its weight was close to that of air. Of course, in the eyes of people in that era, air was weightless.     

That was the reason why the Witch Cooperation Association was able to cross the Western Region of Graycastle without worrying about food supplies. With the magic power of Hummingbird, bags of wheat and dried fish would become light enough for the witches. In that way, they could easily take a lot of food with them, which significantly relieved the pressure on supplies.     

Though Hummingbird had entered her adulthood, she still had not developed any derivative skill. Her magic power would come into effect only when she touched the object, which could not be a living entity. The larger the object was, the more time and magic power it consumed. However, once she successfully reduced its weight, the effect would last for several hours.     

The ability seemed to be perfect for transportation, and it would also be a large advantage in the coming war. Anyway, there were still too many unknown factors, and he needed to conduct further research.     

Roland wrote at the bottom of her parchment: Practice with stones of different weights and control the output of magic power so as to determine precisely the effective time of the magic power.     

After completing the first three practice plans, he ordered his attendant to bring another candle, making the room brighter. But even with this, in the waving orange candlelight, reading and writing were very tiring for his eyes.     

Roland made a yawn and flattened the parchment with the information of the fourth witch.     

She was different from other witches as she had a surname, and her full name was Soraya Zoen. She was born in a merchant family from the king's city of Graycastle. She had short brown curly hair and a pair of slender eyes. The freckles on top of her nose did not destroy her beauty; instead, they added a unique youthful vigor to her.     

Soraya just turned 19 and she also had a special ability. After she became an adult, she was able to paint everything she saw or imagined. With her derivative skill, the Magic Pen, she was able to paint without pigment or paper, and her painting would be exactly like a photo.     

Roland could list hundreds of ways to use this ability. As for her practice, he would ask her to paint several pictures every day.     

He then picked up the next parchment.     

The fifth witch, Echo, came from the Southernmost Region. She was a tall girl with a brown complexion, and her eyes and nose, which showed that she was a typical citizen of Sand Nation, gave her a very exotic charm. According to her description, she could imitate the call of any animal when she just awoke as a witch, and after she entered adulthood, she could skillfully imitate any sound in the world. She did not have any derivative skill.     

Roland named her ability as "Magic Sound", but did not figure out its usage yet. As for her training plan, maybe... she could shout as loudly as possible.     

The sixth witch was Lily, a 16-year-old girl with two ponytails and a doll-like delicate face. When she sat in front of Roland, she was quite nervous. Her ability was to prevent food from rotting, so she had become the most popular role in the Witch Cooperation Association since she awoke a year ago. Without food preservation, a lot of food would become sour and moldy during the journey. Lily, as well as Hummingbird, guaranteed the food supply of the Witch Cooperation Association.     

Whether she killed the bacteria by her magic power to keep food fresh or not was still to be confirmed. Roland decided to ask her to practice on all kinds of meat and fruits, and to confirm the duration of the preservation effect after the magic power ran out.     

Rubbing his stiff neck, he piled up the previous parchments. Only one parchment was left on the desk.     

And that was another pleasant surprise for Roland.     

The seventh witch was called Mystery Moon.     

She was obviously nervous when she walked into the office. Nightingale reassured her for a while and later whispered into Roland's ears to simply explain her situation.     

Among all the witches in the camp, Mystery Moon had the worst ability, which could be described as useless. Because of that, she was only able to do some chores which could also be easily completed by manual work. In addition, she was often blamed by Cara, so she had become very timid. She was afraid that Roland would also think that she was useless and hence drive her away from Border Town.     

Her ability was magnetizing objects. Before she entered adulthood, she could only magnetize metal objects, but now she was able to magnetize any object. She did not have any derivative skill. She had to touch the object to magnetize it in an extremely slow way. As she described, it cost her half a day to magnetize a stone of about a cubic foot.     

Her ability was indeed useless for the Witch Cooperation Association. The magnet was not rare in that era. For example, every huge ship sailing between the Fjords and the continent was equipped with a compass for navigation. On the continent, people did not need any compass to tell the direction as they could easily find other references. On the contrary, the magnetized objects would cause trouble to others. For example, the metal pots which were lightened by Hummingbird would accidentally fly toward the magnetized objects of Mystery Moon. For this reason, she was forbidden by Cara to use her ability in the camp.     

But for Roland, this silent girl was a priceless gift.     

That was why he would like to hum that song, "Super-Star"—was there any words more appropriate than the lyric of "You are electricity, you are light"?     

Electricity would be generated in the magnetic field, and electricity would also create a magnetic field in reverse. It was known by every student who had learned physics. Roland expressed his sincere gratitude to Faraday, Gauss, Ampere, and Maxwell in his heart. With electricity, there would also be light. Maybe he did not have to wait for long to create another miracle in his domain.     

As a witch who was forbidden to use her ability, Mystery Moon was still able to survive from the Demonic Torture. It showed that she was not mentally fragile though she appeared timid. At least she had more desire to live on than others. Roland was secretly thankful that she had just joined the association for nearly a year, or she might be ruined under Cara's rule if she had been restrained for a longer time.     

With these thoughts, he wrote down Mystery Moon's practice plan for the following days. She would magnetize a variety of objects to confirm the relationship between the consumption of magic power and the strength of their magnetism.     

After adding these seven witches, Roland now had a total of 12 witches working for him. Through inquiring about their abilities, he got a fair idea of the magic power. The traditional classification of combat type and non-combat type was unreasonable, and he preferred to classify them according to the characteristics of their abilities. In general, the main abilities of the witches could be divided into three types.     

The first type was the self-strengthening type, which was very rare. Up to now, he only knew Scroll belonged to this type. Her ability would come into effect automatically, so it would not be influenced by God's Stone of Retaliation. Even if she was forced to wear the stone, she could still have a photographic memory.     

The second one was the summoning type, and Anna, Nightingale, Nana, Lightning, Wendy, Leaf, Soraya, Echo, and Lily all belonged to this type. Their magic power could be summoned outside of their body within five meters. With various abilities, this type of witches was also most restrained by the God's Stone of Retaliation. Once they stepped into the Forbidden Area where their magic power was suppressed, any magic effects would disappear. However, before the magic power was suppressed, the results it caused would be everlasting and irreversible.     

The third one was the attaching magic type. For example, Hummingbird and Mystery Moon fell into this type. They had to get contact with their target to complete the slow conversion, which consumed lots of magic power and could be interrupted by God's Stone of Retaliation. But once the conversion was completed, the added properties would become inherent, which meant that they would still be effective even within the Forbidden Area. The duration of enchantment depended on the size of the object and the amount of magic power.     

"Maybe this was why the God's Stone of Retaliation could not relieve the bite of the magic power," he thought. God's Stone of Retaliation was unable to affect the gathering and flowing of the magic power; instead, it affected its transformation of magic power into ability. Described in computer terms, it affected the fore-end of clients instead of the backstage data.     

Roland put down the quill pen and rubbed his eyes. Anyway, he knew he would become even busier in the future.