Chapter 429: Element Separation
Translator: TransN Editor: TransN
Accompanied by howling wind and raging snow, Lucia entered the backyard of North Slope Mountain and closed the door, shutting the chill out of the room.
A circle of wooden sheds was pitched in the yard after winter kicked in. Although the lighting was somewhat affected, the houses here would at least not be buried in piles of snow.
There was a bonfire in the yard, and Lucia could even feel the heat of its flickering flames by the door. She took off her gloves and put her freezing hands above the blazes to warm herself up.
"Are you cold?" Anna, who stood at the workstation, turned her head and beckoned. "Come here, I'll warm you up."
"Ah... thank you." Lucia trotted to her. Soon bathed in warm green flames that gave her a languid and relaxing sensation from head to toe, she felt like she was soaking in the bathtub of the castle.
"Such a convenient ability..." Lucia thought enviously. "She's never afraid of the bitter cold."
"Are you warm now?"
"Yes!" she affirmed, nodding vigorously. "What are you making?"
"Some parts for new guns." Anna grabbed a long slim steel tube with a piston in the middle and pulled it back and forth. "His Highness says he's not sure if it'll work with the first shot, so it needs to be tested repeatedly."
These parts, bright and shiny from the outside, were apparently made from the best rolled steel and were carefully carved by the Blackfire. Before coming to the town, Lucia would have never thought that the surface of iron objects could be as smooth as glass, like artwork.
She had also made a contribution to their creation. Lucia could not suppress a smile at this thought. Both Roland and Anna had said that without high-quality materials, the finished products would still be damaged goods, even with precise and refined processing methods.
"His Highness didn't come with you?" asked Anna, who withdrew her green fire.
"He said that he still needed to take care of something and would come a little later. He asked me to first get familiar with my new ability," Lucia answered, twitching her mouth.
"What does your ability look like after the evolution?" Anna inquired with great interest. "There's probably no one in the Witch Union who created a bigger stir than you did upon entering adulthood."
Lucia scratched her head, looking a bit embarrassed. "I probably couldn't have made it without you and milord Spear."
"You already thanked me, no need to worry about it." Anna dismissed it with a wave. "Let's see your new ability."
Lucia agreed. She summoned the magic power in her body and again sensed the same odd feeling enveloping her heart—everything became strange and obscure, dividing into numerous tiny squares that grouped together by color, forming different color speckles. However, this time she did not suffer any pain from magic power bites, so she could calm herself down and carefully observe each single square.
She took one of the parts processed by Anna. There were lumps and bumps on its surface, which had been smooth and shiny earlier. With the help of the magic power, she could clearly see the color speckles on it—there were around seven or eight color blocks, the largest of which was cyan. As if an artist carelessly spilled various pigments on the floor, there were no patterns whatsoever in their arrangement. The only difference, however, was that each color speckle had visible boundaries that prevented them from mixing with each other.
It occurred to Lucia that these were not the tiny particles His Highness had referred to. These "squares" and "color speckles" were just too big to be considered as the fundamental elements of everything.
There's a larger classification than the particle, which is the element.
Small particles form larger ones in accordance with different patterns and rules, and these larger particles will exhibit entirely different properties due to their various structures.
Lucia used to have no idea about her own ability or its specific functions back in Valencia, but now she thoroughly understood the concept of elements. According to His Highness' description and classification, she believed it was elements that she had just observed.
After hearing what Lucia saw and thought, Anna pondered for a while and said, "It may be a type of derivative skill."
"Derivative... skill?"
"That's a rare talent," Anna explained, smiling. "There are only a few adult witches in the Witch Union who possess such a talent—according to Agatha, it only occurs on the Day of Adulthood. Once you miss it, you miss it forever. I believe it has a lot to do with the witch’s primary ability, or we can say, it supplements and strengthens the primary power. For example, Soraya needs to first mix pigments into paint if she doesn't have the magic brush. The same applies to Miss Scroll's Book of Magic. She once told me that although she could quickly memorize most of the books prior to adulthood, she couldn't share the contents with others because she didn't have any money to purchase pens and paper."
Anna paused for a moment before continuing. "Your main ability is separation and restoration, so I reckon these color speckles may be assisting you in accurately separating a specific type of element—you can give it a shot to see whether you can separate a particular color block or not."
Lucia nodded. She started to once again apply her power to the pig iron ingot by the workstation. Unlike the separation earlier, this time she cautiously transformed her magic power into a filament to pull the cyan squares.
The whole process was much harder than she expected. Lucia had never manipulated her magic power in such a laborious manner, but she was delighted to see her progress. Compared with her confusion prior to adulthood, she was now able to truly feel the magic power, as if it had become her own fingers—even an extension of her consciousness.
As more filaments clung to the color speckle, the squares finally started to loosen up and wriggle out of the iron ingot. Meanwhile, the rest of the color speckles also changed—their distinct boundaries began to wobble, and the whole iron ingot collapsed and crumbled into a yellow green crystal as small as half of a nail, next to which appeared a box-like iron block.
Lucia withdrew her power and wiped the perspiration from her forehead. She noticed the crystal and the block displayed different colors under the magic power than with normal vision—the previous cyan speckle had turned silver white, which was a color usually seen among pure iron. Nevertheless, the crystal still remained colorful, but if she did not look at it using her magic power, it just looked like a polished gemstone.
"What's this?" Lucia gently took the tiny crystal. Its size was not even close to that of the iron ingot, but it looked much more beautiful.
"It's probably a compound formed by the other elements in the pig iron," Anna suggested, her eyes glistening. "I'm not sure, but I can do a small experiment to verify it. If I've guessed right, do you know what that means? It means that you can separate some elements from an object and reorganize the rest of the elements, instead of breaking them up... Any useless, poor-quality materials can be reborn with the help of your power."