Although there weren’t any witches with the ability of electricity or shaping material, which could have been used to raise the slow modernization speed, but this batch of witches was still able to bring Roland an ample amount of pleasant surprises.
First and most important of them was the witch called Leaves.
He spread all the records he had collected over the table and took hers back into his hands.
Prior to adulthood, Leaves was still only able to speed up the growth of plants and their fruits. But after her day of adulthood her ability had greatly improved, besides her growth control of plants she could now also manipulate them.
The first ability could be used to improve the quality of fruits and seeds, increase yield, and also increase their herbal effects. Her ability also had possibility of altering a plant’s characteristics and traits.
According to her explanation, if she put her magic into a plant, she was able to grow green leaves on a dead branch. While if she put her magic into weeds she could wrap them around her enemies’ feet and doing so entrap them. But the most remarkable thing was that she was able to integrate herself into a tree.
However, the bigger the plant, the more magic she had to spend to manipulate it. So she preferred using weeds during combat as it showed a faster effect while having a lower cost.
The range at which she was able to cast her power, even through physical materials (such as earth), was around five meters.
There was no doubt that the witch whose ability resembled her name and whose green hair also her appearance, would be a good helper to improve the agriculture. So her importance to Roland was self-evident — industrialization required a large population, and if there was a large number of people it also needed an adequate supply of food to support the population. This was achievable through either self-producing or through trade. If they used the former possibility and the production wasn’t efficient enough, most of their human resources would have to go work in the fields. The second point was very difficult to achieve because of this era’s ability to transport goods.
Now that he was able lay his hands on a Druid, Roland hoped to use only a few farmers to feed a large number of the industrial population, and with this accelerate the process of industrialization in his territory.
Therefore, in the future, he would let her practice improving the quality of wheat and barley seeds so that they would deliver a larger yield. As long as she only improved them by at least a little, it would still greatly help to improve his territory overall and raise the upper limit for the population. In addition, Roland had heard that the Fjords also had some unique types of food. According to Lightning’s description, it sounded like they had both potatoes and corn. If these rumors were true, then introducing those two plants as crops should become one of his highest priorities. After all, wheat itself wasn’t a high-yielding crop.
Roland carefully wrote down the future practice plan, and then put Leave’s data aside, and then he drew the second piece of paper from the table.
The second witch he had interviewed was named Scroll, she was also the oldest witch within the seven survivors, this year she was close to forty years old.
This was a really rare age for a witch. The older they became, the harder it was to resist the demonic bite. But when she described her ability to him, Roland could immediately understand why she had been able to reach that age.
Her primary ability was having a much better memory than the ordinary person. Her memory has become so good, that she could almost be regarded as already unable to forget anything. On her day of adulthood, she had also gotten a very interesting branch to her ability: She could read books and for a short period of time create a copy of it, because of this, Roland named her ability “the illusion of a book.”
Since she used her main ability almost all the time, Scroll could easily pass each Day of Awakening. This was also the reason, why even though she came from a very poor family, she was still so knowledgeable… This ability greatly enhanced her learning ability, especially for exercises where someone would need to remember important texts. Casting her branch magic was very taxing for her body, how long she could create a copy of a book was dependent on how much mana she had remaining within her body, usually it was enough for one to two hours.
Obviously, Scroll was a natural born teacher. If in the future he wanted to increase the standard of education, she was a teacher who could teach nearly anything. Well… as for now, Roland thought, her ability didn’t offer much to practice, so he simply put her file to the side while thinking: when I have some leisure time, I can write some primary math and primary physics problems down to teach her. So that when the time is ripe, she will be able to enlighten the education sector.
Chapter 98 New Witches, New Abilities (Part 2)
The name of the third witch was Hummingbird, she was a witch that had a small size, just like her nickname depicted. When asked to perform her ability she had acted much more cautiously than the other witches had. It was just in this year that she had become an adult, had symmetrical dimples on her cheeks and very delicate features with a waxy soft voice, summing it up she was cute.
Her ability was to “lighten an object”. When she put her magic into an object, it’s weight would be greatly reduced. According to her description, the weight would almost become close to zero. Roland let Hummingbird give him a live demonstration with her own cup, seemingly letting it float in the air — in other words, its weight was about equal to the air. Of course, in this era in the eyes of the people, the air had no weight.
It seemed it was due to her ability, that the Witch Cooperation Association was able to cross the Impassable Mountain Range. With the help of this young witch, the bags could be filled up with the wheat and dried fish and were still easily to carry. Like this, only a few people had been needed to carry a lot of materials, which had significantly reduced the trouble with logistic.
Although Hummingbird had already become an adult, but she still hadn’t developed any branch magic. To cast her magic, she needs to be in contact with her target, in addition the target wasn’t allowed to be a living entity. The bulkier the object, the more time would need to transform its weight and the more magic she would consume. However, once the conversion was completed, it would last for several hours.
This capability looked to be very suitable for the transportation industry, and it also had some promising uses in the upcoming war. But there were still just too many unknown elements, so her ability still needed to be more researched before that.
Thinking all this trough, Roland wrote at the bottom of her parchment: Learning to control the needed magic output, by training with stones of different weights, so that in the end she can precisely determine the effective time of her magic.
After finishing the first three training programs, he ordered his attendant to light another candle, making the room brighter. But even with this, in the waving orange candlelight, the reading and writing became much more tiring to his eyes.
Roland yawned and took the parchment with information concerning the fourth witch.
The fourth witch had a rare surname, with her full name she was called Soraya Zoen. She belonged to a merchant family from Graycastle and had brown short coils and a pair of slender eyes. On top of her nose she had a small freckle which didn’t destroy her beauty, instead, it gave her a unique touch of youthful vitality.