Chapter 97 New Witches, New Abilities (Part 1)
When Roland walked into the office, he was surprised to discover that the one waiting for him wasn’t Nightingale, but Wendy.
“What happened?” He poured himself a cup of warm water, “Where’s Nightingale?”
“She went to meet our sisters.”
“Are you,” Roland, having raised his cup, ready to drink, suddenly felt that something was wrong, “Wait a minute. What sisters?”
“Our sisters from the Witch Cooperation Association, they’ve come to Border Town,” Wendy replied.
“Aren’t they still busy looking for the Holy Mountain?”
He jumped to his feet. “How many people are there? The one that wanted to kill Nightingale… I seem to remember she was called Cara, is she also coming?”
“No, your Highness… they were unable to find the Holy Mountain. When they finally managed to enter the wildlands, they were attacked by terrible monsters, ultimately only seven sisters survived.” Wendy reported what Leaves had told her, then she bowed to apologize, “You were still napping, please forgive us for deciding that Nightingale and Lightning should go and pick them up.”
“No,” Roland said while waving his hand in refusal, “You already know that I won’t blame you for what you decided. What are their abilities?”
“This I don’t know, but Leaves told us that they don’t belong to the fighting type of witch, perhaps…” Wendy hesitated, “They aren’t of much use to you.”
Non-fighting type? Roland’s heart was suddenly full of expectations, the God’s Stone of Retaliations and the witches small area of effect drawback, actually already limit the fighting capability of the witches by a lot. So production was their strongest field in any case. If there is a witch with the ability to produce plastics, I would be able to solve the problems of my rough processing technology. I could directly step into the mechanical production era; If they have a witch with an electrical ability with them, she would be able to turn the night into day for Border Town. If the next King took a witch as his bride, they would be able to lead us to the pinnacle of life. They could leading us to achieve ‘Deng Xiaoping’s’ four modernizations. Just thinking about these possibilities makes me already totally excited.
“Your Highness, if you don’t need them…” Perhaps the silence was too long for Wendy, that she began to worry and so whispered.
“No, how could that be possible,” Roland said , not letting her speak one word more, “As many witches as arrive, is as many I will accept.”
Around sunset, Nightingale returned smoothly with the last from the sisters from the Witch Cooperation Association. Roland, who was already waiting for them, had prepared a sumptuous dinner in the Castle Grand Hall, trying to wash away the memories of the hardships they had encountered during their travels.
The witches were obviously very hungry, but it was their first time dining in such a grand environment, they were all acting very reserved. For many of them, it was the first time seeing a Lord, not to mention that this Lord was even a prince of this country.
Fortunately, in addition to Roland himself, there were also the two local witches Anna and Nana who demonstrated how to act and not to forget there was also the lively Lightning. In the end, they were finally able to let go of their shyness, and start to enjoy the banquet even starting a happy conversation.
Roland was chewing on a slice of bread, at the same time he was also looking on with high spirit at the quite different styled women before him. Even with their uniqueness, they could all still be regarded as beautiful women. This was the great gift of magic – even with the technology of the science in the future, those witches wouldn’t have the need to use any of it. Even without cosmetic surgery, their appearance was still able to turn every head.
Since Karl still wasn’t finished with the construction of the living area for the witches, the only possibility was to place all of them inside of the castle. There were still four rooms vacant on the second floor. So Roland considered changing the single person rooms into double occupancy rooms. After all, those big beds were actually prepared for visiting nobility, it could easily accommodate two people and still have room to spare.
The Prince waited until the end of the dinner and then finally asked the long awaited question – what were their abilities.
Like a wolf herding sheep, Nightingale brought them one after another into the office. There Roland asked all of them specific questions about their life and abilities etc., all things that were comparable with a job interview. He recorded each of their characteristics, he also tested their abilities while being protected by the effect by a God’s Stone of Retaliation. When the last interview with the witches was finally completed, he took a deep breath and stretched out his tensed body. If he wasn’t afraid that Nightingale might be directly beside him, eavesdropping, he would have liked to start humming ‘Super-Star’.
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 dependant 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.
TN: Information to the Four Modernizations