Candle suddenly heard a gasping sound, she turned around and saw Nightingale wearing a dumbstruck expression with charcoal lying in two pieces on the ground.
“Furthermore, His Highness has especially made it clear, that the five witches that came from Sleeping Island are not to be included in this arrangement. So it is their decision whether they want to stay behind and answer or if they want to leave and have a free evening.” Scroll looked one after another at Candle, Evelyn, and the others, before saying “No matter what your final score is, you will be able to enjoy the delicious afternoon tea.”
“Puh,” Evelyn patted her chest, turned her head and whispered, “I won’t be able to recognize all the letters, so I’m not confident that I will get the ice cream.”
Honey and Lotus immediately got up, happily saluted Scroll and left the hall afterward.
Plus, Sylvie, whose body had been feeling somewhat unwell and thus hadn’t even come to the hall, left Evelyn and Candle as the only witches from Sleeping Island in the hall.
“Do you want to stay?” Candle asked in a small voice.
“I want to try,” the other nodded, “Didn’t His Highness say that knowledge leads to evolution? If I don’t work hard in this respect, I’m afraid I will never be able to compare with them.” She showed a sly smile, “These days I’ve been practicing writing my characters in my room after the class, Lily and Mystery Moon also taught me how to read and write some common words.”
While mentioning this, the frustration within Evelyn’s voice immediately dispersed a lot, and her eyes became shiny, making it impossible for Candle not to smile.
“Yes, I’ll also try it.”
…
“Your Royal Highness, the test results have come out,” Scroll said while handing the summary over to Roland.
“You’ve worked hard,” Since the recent discovery beneath the Northern Slope mine Roland was still feeling quite puzzled. So he found it difficult to concentrate on his daily tasks, so he tried to focus on something less intense, “Huh? Was Nightingale’s performance unexpectedly able to meet the standard required?”
“Yes, but not only was it good enough, her grade was even in the forefront; which was partly due to her perfect language score,” Scroll reported with a smile, “After all, most of your topics were very simple. Furthermore, she has already learned how to read and write a long time ago, so her starting point had been much better compared to the other witches.”
“Tsk,” Roland smacked his lips, “I thought I could make her eat fewer sweets with this exam.” Even before his voice had completely fallen, he felt his shoulder being severely pinched. “In short, the result look quite good, all the members of the Witch Union have more than sixty, so it seems that your education is bearing fruit.”
“These results are also inseparable from their efforts.”
Moving his vision further down Roland asked, “Only two of the witches of Sleeping Island participated in the test?”
“Well, the one named Evelyn received five points, while Candle got thirty-six. The latter should already have some prior foundations, so most of her points come from kingdom language.” She replied.
That she, even after having followed the class for only two weeks, was still able to receive some points outside of the writing part right, shows that her individual quality is truly astonishing. Both instincts and external knowledge are components to the continual improvement of a witch’s magic.
The results of their own witches were also excellent, for example, Lily, Hummingbird, Mystery Moon and the others had only spent three months’ time from being illiterate before they grasped the basics of reading and writing, and with this they’ve already exceeded the majority of the people in the streets.
What would the future look like when the people could put aside their prejudices and work together with the witches to promote the level of society and civilization as a whole? Roland’s heart became filled with anticipation at the thought.
Chapter 275 Lucia and Nightingale
Lucia was cautious and solemn as she put three iron chunks on the floor of her bedroom before closing her eyes. She took a deep breath, and went through the experiences from her previous practice once more, then stretched out her hand and release her ability to surround the target.
This was the method of practicing that Anna had helped her come up with. Using three wrought iron ingots which had been especially melted by Anna that were made out of components that had nothing in common with each other, and all respectively containing silver, copper, lead, and some other impurities. Her task was to reconstruct them as pure substances while at the same time leaving behind the impurities and to also find the ingot that contained the highest amount of silver.
This meant that she had to control her magic output, and always needed to work on one target first.
Otherwise, it could happen that she broke the impurities further into their elements, which was what she had previously done at her home in Valencia, and was also the reason why she felt that her ability were so hard to control. Even if two pieces of paper looked the same, if they were restored to their original elements they could look very different. The fact that there was a relation between the amount of magic power she used and the effect of her abilities, was something she would never be able to comprehend by herself. Which led to the result that the components of some of the papers had been split apart several times, and ultimately turned most of the raw materials into water and gas.
After arriving in Border Town, the first lesson the other witches taught her, was that she had to practice controlling her magic.
Originally Lucia wasn’t convinced that those invisible and incomprehensible things could also be precisely be controlled. Only when Anna demonstrated how she was able to control the lengths of her black flame, was she finally able to discover how badly mistaken she had been. Not only could Anna adjust the output of her magic, and change the size and thickness of the black flame, she was able to reach a level of perfection in it each and every time.
“Elder sister, are you going to go practice again?” Bell curiously stuck her head out of the bed. “It’s just after lunch.”
Lucia’s hand trembled, and the iron ingot in her hand immediately turned into a pile of fine dust.
“I told you not to bother me when I’m using my power,” she said, turning around to knock against the top of her sister’s head, “Concentrate on reading your letters!”
“I’m unable to make sense of what I’m looking at,” Bell said fretful, “I can’t even understand half of the words’ meaning; I’m not like older sister, you can write and read.”
“That’s why it is important to read more; many words have a similar structure, so even if you haven’t seen them before, you should still be able to guess what it means. Literacy is a familiarizing process.”
“Alright,” Bell retracted her head.
Lucia focused her attention on the second piece of iron ingot, then exercised her control to slowly release her magic. She tried to imagine a thin layer of gauze covering the ingot, and wrapping it up evenly.
“Hey, I came,” the door suddenly squeaked, and the blonde woman dashed into the room. “Hey, are you practicing your ability?”
“Sister Nightingale!” Bell shouted carefreely.
The second piece of iron once again turned into a pile of fine powder.
Lucia sighed and put all the metal debris on the floor into a leather bag, feeling that it might be impossible to train today.
“Here, this is yours.”
Suddenly an ice cream with a rich aroma of milk was handed over to her.
“Thank you,” Lucia said, taking the ice cream, “But shouldn’t this only have been given out during the afternoon tea?”