Chapter 1015: Soaring Through the Skies (Part I)

The coming of age for witches always happened at the stroke of midnight.

It was one of the unsolved mysteries—magic power existed everywhere, yet no one could explain why it gathered most actively at that specific hour. Even a witch like Anna, with immense reserves, could exhaust herself entirely and still recover in full within an hour or two of midnight. By day, the same recovery would take a week or more.

Most witches never thought too hard about it. The Taquila survivors, when asked, tended to answer with some variant of “isn’t that just the start of a new day?” For most people time was divided into days, and magic belonging to a day was spent in a day. Weather changed every day. This seemed the same.

But Roland knew that days were human constructs—conveniences that needed correction. The calendar required leap years. Precision required leap seconds. People invented whatever made life easier.

Which made it strange that a witch’s magic power would consolidate only within a specific window. It was as though each Awakened carried a biological clock, always synchronized with the same invisible rhythm—regardless of where she was born or where she lived. The Southernmost Region and the Hermes Plateau both answered to the same stroke of midnight.

He had no means to study it further. The instruments didn’t exist yet. For now, it remained an observed fact without an explanation.

“Your Majesty.” Wendy’s voice pulled him back. “In addition to the measures I’ve described, is there anything you’d like to add?”

The measures were the safety protocols for the consolidation—refined since Lucia’s Day of Adulthood, now part of the Witch Union’s standard procedure. Even the Taquila survivors hadn’t had much to improve on them.

“Proceed as you’ve planned.” He thought for a moment. “And make sure to notify Margaret and Sander Flyingbird. I think they’d want to know that Lightning came through safely.”

Wendy hesitated. “Ms. Margaret is no problem, but Mr. Flyingbird—”

“He’ll be fine,” Roland said quietly.

She read his tone and asked nothing more. “Understood.”

Night had long settled over Neverwinter, but the top floor of the Witch Building burned like day.

The room had been rebuilt for these occasions—two normal-sized rooms merged into one, the outer wall replaced by moveable door panels that could swing wide if magic needed releasing. No more shattered walls. The bed was large and soft, and Lightning lay on it in a state of barely contained electricity, the absolute opposite of Lucia’s white-knuckled nerves on her own night.

The young explorer had been waiting for this for years.

Her left hand was tied to a wooden table fixed at the bedside, the Sigil of God’s Will pressed into her palm. At the first sign of painful contractions—the signal Lucia had described—she was to pour everything she had into the Sigil. The restraint was a precaution against involuntary movement under intense pain. Without Countess Spear to contain any overflow, the precaution mattered more.

Lightning barely seemed to register the restraint. She was too busy talking.

“If I awaken a derivative skill, I wonder if it solves the weight problem—then I could bring much more food and tools on long flights over the Land of Dawn!” She had been listing possibilities for the better part of an hour, each delivered with absolute conviction, her eyes catching light with each new idea. She looked, Roland thought, exactly as he had looked at eight years old trying to guess what birthday present waited under the wrapping.

He had almost always guessed wrong. The Transformer model would be a test-prep book with three hundred exercises.

“There might not be any derivative skill,” Mystery Moon said. “They’re not that common. Only a few people in all of Neverwinter—”

A pronounced sniff from somewhere in the room.

“Watch your words,” Lily said.

“Mystery Moon isn’t entirely wrong,” Agatha said, with the mild amusement she allowed herself. “The Union had statistics. About one witch in a hundred awakens a derivative skill on the Day of Adulthood. Compared to the increase in rank itself, it’s a secondary concern. The most important thing is the consolidation. Don’t worry about the rest.”

“Were the Union researchers making progress on analyzing the consolidation process?” Scroll asked.

“Only enough for reference—we don’t have enough cases yet to verify the pattern.” Wendy checked the record book. “But Lightning scores very well by the preliminary assessment. 85.9.”

“What does that mean?” Andrea asked.

“An assessment method we developed,” Agatha said. “Inspired by what we learned from Lucia—since magic surge during adulthood is predictable and strong, consolidation is theoretically easier to trigger. We evaluated Senior Witch promotions across four factors: total magical power, academic results, control ability, and individual will. Academic scores carry the most weight. It’s still speculative, but it gives us a starting point.”

“Academic scores.” Andrea looked at Ashes with transparent pity. “So some people simply can never surpass the Transcendent.”

The Transcendent shrugged.

“This is—” Phyllis made a soft sound. “Forgive me. I was thinking.”

Roland turned toward her.

“In the age of Taquila,” she said slowly, “advancement was the most sacred aspiration a witch could hold. Everyone wanted to win the deities’ favor, but no one dared say so openly—it seemed impossibly distant. If any witch admitted she was confident of evolving her powers, others would laugh.” She paused, finding the thread. “And now…” She looked at Lightning, still cataloguing possibilities from the bed. “I’m not saying it’s wrong. Only that the contrast is striking.”

“Like a merchant who woke up to find that the gold royals he’d bled for were no longer worth what they were,” Roland said.

Phyllis looked at him.

“That would be difficult,” he agreed. “But if we’re not stronger than our predecessors, we’re not moving forward. And this—” he nodded toward the room, the laughter, the debates—“this is what forward looks like.”

Phyllis turned back to the girl on the bed.

Lightning’s confidence had not diminished. “Not only will I consolidate—I’ll also gain several derivative skills, because the most outstanding explorer deserves the most rewards!”

“Yeah!” Maggie thrust both arms in the air from her spot at the bedside.

“That is not how logic works!” Mystery Moon objected.

The room erupted. Roland shook his head, still smiling, and moved toward the door.

He had just stepped into the corridor when he spoke—to the man standing against the wall in the dark, still as the stonework itself.

It was Thunder.

Chapter 1015: Soaring Through the Skies (Part I)

Translator: TransN Editor: TransN

The coming of age for witches had always happened at the stroke of midnight.

This can be considered one of the unsolved mysteries of the witches. Even though magic power exists everywhere, there was no way to explain why it was the most active at this time. Even witches like Anna with immense magic reserves could entirely exhaust thier magic power and still fully recover within an hour or two after midnight. On the contrary, if the witches’ magic power only recovered at the pace during the day, then even a week’s time would probably still not be enough for them to get back to full strength.

Most of the witches did not care about this, and the Taquila survivors were no exception. When Roland asked them about it, the answers they gave were always along the lines of “isn’t that just the start of a new day?” For most people, time was divided into days. Therefore, the magic power of each day should be spent on that same day. Just like the weather showing changes every day, there was nothing weird about this to them.

But Roland knew that the days were nothing but a human construct created out of convenience. This lead to the creation of the leap year. To correct this error, people came up with the leap month and with the advancement of the time-measuring apparatus, leap seconds were also invented(i.e., 59 or 61 seconds in the last minute). Basically, people created whatever would make life easier for them.

With that said, it was strange that the witches’ magic power would only consolidate within a certain period of time.

It was as if there exists a biological clock in every Awakened so that she could always remain in sync with the flow of time. Regardless of when she was born and whether she lived in the Southernmost Region or the Hermes Plateau, she would always be linked to this phenomenon.

Unfortunately, due to the lack of more advanced observational devices such as the further research of magic power or the accurate measuring of time, both would be too difficult to accomplish at this time; so this theory would just remain a theory.

“Your Majesty.” Wendy’s words pulled him back to reality from his thoughts. “In addition to the above-mentioned measures, would you like to add anything else?”

The so-called measures were mainly designed to deal with the dangers of consolidating one’s magic power. Since Lucia’s Day of Adulthood, this factor had already been incorporated as part of the Witch Union’s standard protocol.

Even Taquila could not provide much more in terms of advice regarding this point.

“Let’s proceed according to your plan.” Roland thought for a moment and said, “By the way, don’t forget to inform Margaret and Sander Flyingbird. I think they would also like to know that Lightning has safely reached adulthood.”

Wendy was a little surprised. “Ms. Margaret would not a problem, but as for Mr. Flyingbird…”

“He’ll be fine,” Roland said softly.

“Yes, I understand.” Upon seeing his expression, Wendy no longer asked any more questions and agreed without further ado.

…

Night had long since fallen, yet the top floor of the Witch Building was still bright as day.

The top floor had already been transformed into a bedroom for the witches to use for adulthood. The room was the size two normal rooms so that it could accommodate more visitors, and the wall became a moveable door. If magic needed to be released, the two door panels could be opened directly, and the outer wall would no longer be blasted apart like last time.

Lightning laid on a large, soft bed, and seemed to be extremely excited. This was the exact opposite of Lucia’s nervous behavior when she was going through her coming of age. It seemed as if the young explorer had been waiting for this moment for a very long time.

A wooden table was fixed next to the big bed, with Lightning’s left hand tied onto it. She held the Sigil of God’s Will in her hand. According to Lucia, the moment painful contractions could be felt in her body, would be the moment when she would need to pour all the magic power into the Sigil. One hand was tied to avoid the young witch from losing control due to the intense pain, and inadvertently pointing the Sigil at others. After this danger was eliminated, the absence of Countess Spear and her powers was no longer that big of a deal.

Lightning was surrounded by her friends who had come to visit.

“Will I awaken with some derivative skill? If it can solve the weight problem, then I would be able to bring along a lot more food and tools to fly over the Land of Dawn!” Conversations on similar topics like that continued throughout the night. Lightning’s fluttering eyes seemed to shine as she listed out one possibility after another. She looked just like Roland back when he was a child and was trying to guess what kind of birthday presents his family had prepared for him.

But of course, he would end up disappointed most of the time.

For example, if he were hoping to receive a huge Transformer model, he would instead receive a prep-book with over 300 exercises.

“There might not be any derivative skill,” Mystery Moon muttered, “how can a derivative skill be that easy to obtain? Only a few people have this talent in the whole of Neverwinter.”

“Ahem…” After this sentence, Roland seemed to hear a nasally voice, full of pride in her rising tone.

“Watch your words!” Lily stared at her.

“Mystery Moon isn’t completely wrong,” Agatha said with a laugh. “The Union had some research statistics. A witch who can awaken a derivative skill when she becomes an adult is about one in a hundred, but compared to the raise in rank, this is nothing. The most important thing for witches is the ultimate ability to expand their main magic power, so you don’t have to worry too much about it and just focus on consolidating your magic power.”

“By the way, weren’t the Union witches trying to analyze the process of the witches’ adulthood?” Scroll interjected and asked, “How were the results?”

“What we found can only be used for reference. After all, there aren’t enough examples to verify it,” said Wendy, looking at the record book, “but Lightning’s score is really high. 85.9 points.”

“Eh? What’s that about?” Andrea asked curiously.

“It’s an assessment method we came up with,” said Agatha. “It was also a revelation from Lucia—Because the surge of magic power during adulthood is very obvious, it’d theoretically be easier to consolidate. We took all the promotion of Senior Witches as samples. A preliminary assessment was made, and points were scored based on the four factors of total magical power, academic scores, control ability, and individual will. Of course, we’re still at the guessing phase at the moment.”

“Academic scores… Do you mean test results?”

“Yes. That’s the largest part of the assessment.”

“I see… That means someone can never even hope to surpass the Transcendent in this life.” Andrea glanced at Ashes with pity.

The latter just shrugged.

“This is… crazy.” Roland suddenly heard Phyllis sigh.

“What’s wrong?” He turned towards Phyllis.

“In the Taquila age, high-level evolution was an extremely sacred thing for every witch. Everyone was eager to win the favor of the deities but never dared to openly talk about it, because it just seemed like such a distant dream. If any witch dared to tell others that she was confident of evolving her powers, she would surely be scoffed at by other people. But now…” Phyllis murmured for a bit then recovered her senses. “Sorry, I’m not saying that it’s not good, but the contrast between the two situations made me think…”

“I know what you mean.” Roland smiled lightly. “It’s like a merchant who woke up one day and found that the gold royals that he’d saved with his blood and sweat were no longer valuable. This would certainly be difficult for people to come to terms with.”

“On this point, I really can’t compare to Lady Agatha,” Phyllis whispered. “She had only come here a year earlier than me, but now she’s already in charge of the High Awakening research. She’s undoubtedly the genius of the Union.”

“Actually, this isn’t that difficult to understand. If we’re not stronger than our predecessors, how can we improve?” He said frankly, “As long as we’re still moving forward, this kind of scenario will continue to appear. Just look at them, doesn’t this feel like what hope is?”

Phyllis followed his glance and also looked at the girl on the bed.

“But the more ability you have, the better it is, right?” Lightning said confidently. “I think that not only will I consolidate my magic power, but I’ll also gain several derivative skills because the most outstanding explorer will surely get the most rewards!”

“Yeah!” Maggie who was standing at the bedside also raised her arms, in support of the latter.

“That’s not how logic works!” Complained Mystery Moon.

The room suddenly became boisterous.

Roland looked at the lively scene, shook his head with a smile, and headed toward the door.

“Are you not going to go in?”

After closing the door, he spoke to a man who stood in the corridor against the wall.

That person was Thunder.