Chapter 1017: Derivative Skill
Like Lucia’s Day of Adulthood, Lightning’s promotion was joyous—and, like Lucia’s, it came with a certain amount of collateral damage.
“Did anyone in the surrounding area get hurt last night?” Roland asked. He was listening to Barov’s voice through the phone, and he didn’t need to see the man’s face to know exactly what it looked like.
“Yes, Your Majesty…” A long, aggrieved exhalation came down the line. “One unfortunate fellow was on his way to the toilet when the explosion struck—he fell and broke his foot. Two others rolled from their beds and hit their heads. This morning, a crowd gathered at the City Hall to ask whether the city was being attacked by demons or demonic beasts. It took considerable effort before the staff could settle them. Your Majesty, if such a thing happens in the future—could you inform me beforehand?”
“How are the injured?”
“Sent to the hospital. None of their lives are at risk. But people are still talking. The central square bulletin boards have crowds standing before them waiting for an announcement.” A pause. “This was caused by a witch’s ability, wasn’t it? A single word from you beforehand would have saved me a great deal of trouble. It wouldn’t require you to explain anything—just a warning.”
“I know. But matters involving magic are inherently unpredictable. It wasn’t a question of trust.”
Roland let the silence do some of the consoling. “For the announcement: tell the citizens I’m developing a new weapon, and that similar incidents may occur in future. Reassure them that any real attack will be announced by a specific emergency signal—not by this. And have the City Hall cover the medical costs of anyone injured.”
“Yes… Your Majesty.” The tone of a man who had accepted the situation without fully forgiving it.
Roland hung up and turned to the girl sitting at his desk.
“You heard all of that.”
Lightning was pulling at a strand of hair with her fingertips and staring at nothing. “I made a mistake,” she said. “Please punish me by making me do two extra exercises.”
Maggie, perched atop the explorer’s head, turned her beak carefully aside and developed a sudden urgent interest in the ceiling.
He tried not to laugh and failed. “Lift your head. It’s not entirely your fault. I agreed to let you fly—I have to accept some responsibility for that. And the damage was limited. No practice exercises.”
Lightning looked up. Her eyes went bright as lanterns. “Really?”
“Don’t push it.”
She nearly launched herself across the room—he raised a hand and she stopped, vibrating.
He settled back. “But I want to understand what happened. You only flew for about fifteen minutes. Did the speed really drain your magic that fast?”
Her brightness dimmed slightly, replaced by genuine puzzlement. “I was confused by it too. I was trying to reserve some magic for the morning tests. I pushed the speed up to find the limit—and then the reserve was just gone. I almost didn’t make it back down.”
“Could you have gone faster?” Wendy, from the side of the room, looked up from her notes.
“Yes,” Lightning said without hesitation. “With enough magic, there was nothing stopping me from going faster. The wind disappeared from my ears partway through. It felt like—like nothing was in the way.”
“What about Maggie?” Roland asked. “Was she on your head the whole time?”
“Coo!” Maggie spread her wings briefly before the translation arrived: too fast, dizzy—held in arms.
“Only dizzy?” Agatha, seated beside the window, leaned forward. “Did you feel the change in airflow?”
Maggie considered this with the dignity of someone being asked to retroactively describe a storm they had survived. “Uhm…” Lightning pressed her fingers together. “Halfway through, the wind seemed to just—stop.”
Agatha nodded slowly.
“Was this type of derivative skill in the Union records?”
“Not directly. But we have enough from the Stone of Measuring and from what Lightning has described to make an estimate.” Agatha turned it over. “According to her account, she crossed the Impassable Mountain Range in approximately three minutes. The same journey normally takes half an hour. The sound—” She glanced toward the window, where the echoes of last night still felt recent. “—confirms it. She broke the sound barrier.”
Roland didn’t need to spend much time on that concept. Agatha’s ability to absorb new information had always been one of the Witch Union’s great advantages; a brief explanation had been more than sufficient.
“As for why Lightning wasn’t harmed by it,” Agatha continued, “that’s the derivative skill. I believe it’s magic synchronization—a type that appears rarely, mostly in witches whose main ability would otherwise be dangerous to themselves. It essentially creates a cocoon around the witch: a stable internal environment while the external one undergoes extreme change. The catch is that maintaining it is expensive. The greater the difference between inside and outside, the faster it drains magic.”
“So the high-speed flight wasn’t what exhausted her,” Wendy said slowly. “It was the derivative skill maintaining the cocoon.”
“Correct.” Agatha nodded. “Most derivative skills exist to support the main ability—like Scroll’s Book of Magic, or Lucia’s colored world. Without them, the primary power would be much harder to use effectively. Magic synchronization works the same way. It’s less that Lightning can’t break the sound barrier without it, and more that without it she wouldn’t survive the attempt.”
She paused. “The practical implication: rather than flying fewer times, Lightning should simply fly less fast. Subsonic speed drains her only normally. The synchronization cocoon engages at high cost only when the external-internal gap is severe.”