Release That Witch

Roland felt slightly uncomfortable in front of this witch, it was not because Nightingale mentioned that she lied a lot since he had used to the various exaggerated flatters and rumors, and there were not many people being straight-forward other than the immediate family and a few good friends in the modern society.     

He simply felt that he had nowhere to hide in front of her, and the worse was that he knew that it was not an illusion as the vision without any barrier was truly her ability, and the clothes he wore were nothing as long as she thought about it. Roland involuntarily changed his sitting position and crossed his legs while sighing to himself for not having the same ability.     

Appearance wise, she was considered the unique one among the five witches. She had a green, shoulder-length, straight hair while her long and slender eyebrows were hiding below her tidy fringe. Her amber-colored eyes looked especially transparent without any depth, just like a mirror reflecting the lights. Roland felt a red mark would suddenly appear in them after staring for a while.     

Sylvie's ability was extremely easy to understand. She could see everything around her and even behind her, and her vision could penetrate through the obstacles. As for how far it could penetrate, it depended on her thought. Other than that, she also possessed a derivative skill similar to Nightingale's which could see the convergence and dissipation of the magic power.     

It slightly surprised Roland and wondered whether they would have the similar main ability if both their derivative skills were so similar. He asked Sylvie the question and she said that she had not encountered anyone with the same ability among the hundreds of witches in Sleeping Island after she hesitated for a while. Nightingale slightly pinched Roland's left shoulder to tell him it was the truth.     

Roland thought it was probably due to the rare sample.     

The last who came up to the stage was Candle.     

She had her Day of Adulthood during the Months of Demons last year, just like Anna. As a minor, her ability could only work on the light like candles, lamps, and torches but the magic power became stable after her adulthood and the effect was greatly enhanced that she could maintain the original characteristics of an object she was in contact with for a while—such as, after casting her magic power on an ice cube, it would still be emitting cold and not melt under the sun.     

The ability was simply incredible at the first glance and it could do things that a lot of conventional methods could not, however, Roland found that it was not as perfect as it might be after several rounds of the test. First of all, it belonged to an enchantment ability, and it needed direct contact with the target which limited her ability to consolidate the high-temperature object.     

Thus the desire of him obtaining a drop of permanently molted steel to provide unlimited heat to the blast furnace had broken, no one would dare to touch the thing with nearly 1,000 degrees of temperature. However, if it was turned into a fine wire, Candle would be able to hold on the other side to implement the enchantment, but yet another problem arose.     

The bigger the object solidification state was different from the normal, the more magic power was consumed and the lasting effect would be shorter at the same time.     

Roland verified this with ice-cubes where one of the ice-cube was put on the scorching ground and another was put into a basin after the same-sized of ice cubes were solidified. The former melted quickly within an hour while the latter decreased the water temperature and remained the original shape.     

It indicated that the effect would be worse if it was the red-hot iron-wire or iron rod instead.     

Finally, the volume was also one of the factors that limited Candle's ability, just like Hummingbird and Mystery Moon; the bigger object consumed more magic power. According to Nightingale's observation, her magic power lied in between the middle and lower levels, which looked like a golden haze and yet formed into a strong cyclone.     

Nevertheless, this seemingly introverted girl was still Roland's biggest harvest—the state of objects consolidation was completely priceless in the field of industrial production, and the key lied in the word "normality". The metal would be exhausted and the structure would be deformed fur to the effect of heating, cooling, friction, force and other factors. Roland did not need a hot drill caused by the friction, or a seriously worn-out gear, and if the key parts of a machine could be maintained at the normal condition, it meant that it could maintain the maximum efficiency and the highest precision operation.     

In other words, the burning fire could effectively improve the mechanical strength of inferior metals.     

…     

Returning to the castle office, Roland browsed through the abilities recorded again and began to plan for their future work content.     

"How was it?" Nightingale stuck her head out from the Mist and said, "Who's your favorite witch among the five?"     

"They're all good," Roland casually answered.     

"What?! You like all of them?!"     

Roland stared at Nightingale, and she stuck her tongue out and walked away while chewing on a piece of dried fish.     

Apparently, the most useful witches were Lotus and Candle at the moment.     

He could easily build a cob wall outside the city wall with the ability to transform the terrain—the rubble cement wall was originally chosen to build at the mountain pass in between the foot of North Slope Mountain and Redwater River in order to save the materials and accelerate the construction period, although it would be completed before the Months of Demons, it limited the town development scope towards the west. It was a matter of time to develop the field and Misty Forest as the population grew.     

The new wall would extend out to the edge of the forest while wrapping around the wood in order to almost double the town area. As for stretching out the defense line, it could be solved by leading the beasts to attack manually by expanding the military source. However, the First Army's firepower projection capability had undergone an earth-shaking change as compared to the use of wooden spears and preloaded flintlock last year, whereas the fort, bastian and other defensive measures would also be completed along with the new city wall.     

Other than that, he also planned to get Lotus to open up a route to the southern mountains in order to lead Border Town directly into Shallow Beach.     

Candle's task was to coordinate with Anna and Lucia to create a new generation of machine tools for the production of firearms and other mechanical equipment. If it went smoothly, Anna could also be freed from the boring production.     

Sylvie's task was pretty clear. It was mainly to explore the mine in the northern slope and Misty Forest. According to the miners, there were more than 100 natural caves in the mine of the northern slope and no one knew where they led to.     

As for Honey, Roland did not have much idea, other than simply strengthening the ability of information transfer without any radio in the era. He needed a lot of trained birds as the messenger pigeons, and the birds did not need to be as smart as Maggie, as long as they could deliver the intelligence to him as soon as possible.