Chapter 131: The Manifestation of Magic

Nightingale woke him at dawn by sitting on the edge of his bed and pulling the quilt off his arm.

He recognized the method. The last time it had happened, it was Nana’s father discovering his daughter had become a witch. He sat up and rubbed his eyes.

“A new witch in town?”

“No.” She was practically vibrating. “Anna’s ability has changed.”

He had enough presence of mind to wash his face and pull on clothes before following her upstairs. The office held eleven witches when he arrived — all of them, or nearly — and their attention shifted to him in unison when he stepped through the door. Anna was at the center of it, sitting at his desk with the particular stillness of someone who had been awake all night and was now too deeply tired to feel it anymore. Her eyes were swollen. On the desk in front of her was a cylinder of iron, standing upright, its surface as smooth as polished glass.

“Someone tell me what happened.”

Nightingale had apparently been preparing the explanation. “I passed her room this morning and saw her asleep at her desk. When I went to wake her I could see that her magic had changed shape.” She picked up a quill from his desk and drew something on the back of a document — four lines making a cube. “Before, like all of us, her magic reservoir appeared as a colorful whirlpool when she reached adulthood. Hers was very large, condensed, dark green. Now it’s become a solid opaque cube.” She handed him the drawing. “And that—” She pointed at the iron cylinder. “She made that.”

Roland looked at the cylinder. He picked it up. The cut surface at the top was perfectly flat, with a surface quality that no tool available in this era could produce — he could see his own reflection in it, slightly warped. He set it down carefully.

“Anna. What happened last night?”

She told him. The lesson, the textbook, the candle burning out. The idea that temperature was particle motion, and that if her fire was a description rather than a thing, then the description could be changed. The filament. The cut. The cylinder.

The other witches listened with visible confusion — the talk of particles and vibrations and connections didn’t connect to anything in their framework. Roland’s heart, by contrast, was beating noticeably faster.

He had thought about this, in the abstract — had wondered whether the limits on witch abilities were inherent or environmental, whether a witch who understood more of the world’s underlying structure might express her power differently. He had thought it was possible. He had not expected Anna to demonstrate the proof in a single evening.

Because I taught her the model, he thought, and she took the model seriously.

“Show me,” he said.

She held out her right hand. A flame formed above her palm — black, completely lightless, the shape of an ordinary flame but absorbing rather than emitting. He reached out to touch it on instinct, then thought better of it.

“Can you change its shape?”

She spread the flame flat across his desk. It covered the entire surface like a sheet of black cloth. Then she gathered it to a point, pulled it long, and there it was: a thread, freestanding in the air, perfectly vertical. He pressed two fingers against it — rigid as steel, then, at her will, pliable as silk beneath his touch.

“Thinner?”

“Then don’t touch it. It will cut.”

“Temperature control — different temperatures in different sections?”

“Yes. That’s new. Before I could only adjust the whole flame at once.”

Roland straightened up.

He was certain now. Magic was energy, and the witches were its conduits, and the form the energy took was shaped by the witch’s understanding of what form was possible. A witch who had never encountered the concept of particle physics couldn’t manifest it. A witch who had encountered the concept and genuinely understood it — not memorized it, not accepted it as a fact, but understood it from the inside — could build an entirely new expression of her ability around it.

Which meant knowledge was a multiplier. Which meant the evening lessons were no longer optional for the witches.

Anna is exceptional, he thought. Not everyone will make this leap. But everyone can move further than they are.

“You should sleep,” he said to Anna. “I’ll look at your new ability properly in two days.”

She nodded without argument, which was how he knew she was genuinely exhausted.

“The rest of you,” he said, looking around the room at eleven witches of varying degrees of confusion and interest. “Starting tonight, the evening class includes everyone. Scroll will teach the literacy and arithmetic foundations on weeknights. I’ll handle the more advanced material.” He paused. “I know this sounds abstract. Trust that it becomes concrete.”

Mystery Moon raised her hand. “Can we really change our abilities too? The way Anna did?”

“I don’t know,” Roland said honestly. “But understanding more about the world has never made anyone worse at what they were already doing.”

He looked once more at the iron cylinder on his desk.

I should have started this months ago.

He picked up his pen.

Chapter 131 The Manifestation of Magic

Early at dawn of the next morning, Roland was woken up by Nightingale, who had stolen his blanket. He remembered that the last time he was woken up this way was when Nana’s father had discovered that his daughter had become a witch.

So, he sleepily asked while rubbing his eyes, “What’s going on? Did we discover a new witch in town?”

“No, Your Highness,” Nightingale was totally excited, “Anna… her ability has changed!”

Roland, who at this point wasn’t completely awake yet asked, “Wasn’t she already a grown-up?”

“Our ability can change even after we become an adult, but until now I have never seen such an amazing kind of magic. It’s just like a completely different entity.” Nightingale went to the washbasin, “Even Scroll and Wendy have never heard of something like this, make haste, you have to see it; the others are already waiting for you in the office!”

Roland casually washed his face, threw some clothes on and went with Nightingale to the second floor and into his office. When he stepped into the room, the eyes of eleven witches immediately focused on him. One of them was Anna, whose eyes were completely swollen, giving the impression that she hadn’t gotten any sleep last night.

“Who can tell me what happened?”

The first one who opened her mouth to speak was Nightingale, “Early this morning I passed by Anna’s room and saw her laying her head on the table and sleeping. On the table were also a pile of iron lumps. When I approached her to wake her up I discovered that the magic within her body had turned

into…” She paused for a moment, seemingly having to think about a way to describe it, “it fused into a fixed shape, like a constantly rotating cube.”

Roland went to Anna and stopped directly in front of her. There, he carefully examined her all over, but other than seeing that she was clearly tired, he couldn’t detect any differences. Then, he noticed the lengthy cylinder standing on the table; it seemed to be made out of iron, but its gray surface was very smooth and the top was also cleanly cut off, dazzling Roland’s eyes. “This is…”

“This was created by Anna,” explained Nightingale, “She made it with her new ability. When a witch awakens to her power, her body will begin to gather magic. At the beginning, the gathered magic looks like a cluster of fog. However, after a few years, it will turn into a colorful whirlpool. For example, Wendy’s magic is white while Leaves’ magic is green… Previously Anna’s magic reservoir was already very large and condensed into a dark green whirlpool on her day of adulthood, but now, the magic within her body has become fist-sized, solid and completely opaque.” She picked up the quill on his desk and began to draw its outline, “It’s almost like that.”

Although Nightingale’s painting skills were very rudimentary, Roland could still distinguish that it had the form of a cube.

Roland turned in Anna’s direction. “What happened last night?”

Hearing this question, Anna began to recount everything from last night. When she finished her story, the other witches were wearing a confused expression on their faces. They were totally unable to understand what these things that were coming out of her mouth, like small balls, vibrations, and connections had to do with the change to her ability.

Only Roland’s heart had begun to beat faster.

In his opinion, magic was a kind of energy, and the witches were its outlets. Magic could endlessly be transformed into different kinds of abilities, and in the end, the witch herself would decide what kind of effect her magic had. It always depended on how the witch manipulated it, or more precisely, it depended on the witch’s own imagination.

If his guess was right, imagination could have a far-reaching impact on the developing of their abilities.

In short, for a person who had never seen an airplane, it would be difficult to think of the idea that a huge iron bird could fly in the air; a person who had never seen the universe naturally didn’t know how wide the world was. The height of their own imagination and the breadth of their knowledge limited their use of magic. Each further understanding of the nature of the world had brought great advances in science and technology, so why wouldn’t that also be true for the witches’ abilities? The deeper their understanding of the world became, the closer their magic and their effect would come to the origin.

“Let me see your new abilities,” Roland asked, full of curiosity.

Anna spread out her arm, and on top of her fingers a black flame appeared out of the thin air. Even when taking a closer look, there was still no difference between the appearance of her flame and that of an ordinary flame, with the exception that it was black and didn’t create any light.

So, Roland asked further, “Can you change the shape of your black flame?”

Anna nodded, and under her control her flame moved down to the top of the desk. Then her naturally-shaped black flame turned into a cube. Not giving anyone the chance to react, the block began to spread out and turned into a black sheet-like cloth, covering almost the entire desk, then gathered at the center, gradually changing into a thin, upright line. Roland could not help but touch, only to discover that this long and slender object, resembling a hair, didn’t move a single jot. This was simply inconceivable. It seemed to be as hard as steel, but moments later he could easily bend it with his fingers. She could decide if it was flexible or absolutely rigid; a true body didn’t exist.

“Can you make it even thinner?”

“Yes, but then you cannot touch it anymore,” said Anna, “or else it will easily cut into your hand.”

“But you can still freely control its temperature?”

“Right, and compared to my previous green fire, I can now control it to such a degree that different parts of my flame can have different temperatures.”

Roland could now somewhat understand what Nightingale meant by completely new ability. Compared to her former green and warm fire, her ability at the moment had become completely different; describing it as flame like before wouldn’t be appropriate. When Anna accepted the idea that the universe was built out of microscopic particles, her control of the temperature had also achieved a completely new stage after connecting it with particle motion. It was certain that Anna wasn’t manipulating the particles the same way she had manipulated the flames before…. No matter if it was her original flame, her green flame she got on her day of adulthood, or now her black flame, they were her form of expressing her magic.

Although she converted her magic into heat in both methods, the true effect was very different.

She is truly a genius, Roland couldn’t stop himself from sighing, anything else than genius, he could not think of a more appropriate adjective. In the same evening of learning new knowledge, she was immediately able to fully comprehend it and apply it to create a new ability. Only very talented people could have this absorptive capacity and way of thinking.

Anna’s changes also made him more interested in exploring the true nature of the world.

Unfortunately, I don’t have my own magic, Roland thought, this is definitely my biggest regret after crossing over. After all, within the hearts of most people there is the dream of becoming a superhero, accidentally gaining an incredible power, and walking down a unique path. How much fun would that be?

“I might know why Anna’s ability has changed,” Roland spoke aloud, pushing back his regrets and coming back to reality.

“How has she achieved it?” The crowd asked.

“Through studying.”

“Do you mean something like yesterday’s teaching class?” Scroll unsurely muttered.

“That is exactly what I was talking about,” Roland began to explain his own speculation again, “The understanding of the world can help you improve your ability, or even completely change it.”

“I can… also change?” Mystery Moon timidly asked.

“Of course,” Roland reassuringly patted her shoulder. If there wasn’t a limited number of steam engines, and I hadn’t found the rubber, I would have been unable to produce wires, so her ability to create strong magnets would have become very handy.

The original purpose behind his action of imparting his knowledge to Scroll was to avoid forgetting what he had learned in his ordinary memory. But now, he had accidentally discovered that knowledge played a big role in forming the effect of the witches’ abilities. So, it became necessary that all the witches partake in his evening lessons.

Of course, he also understood, that not everyone had Anna’s outstanding talent. For example, he didn’t have the tiniest piece of hope for Nightingale, who always fell asleep during his lessons. He didn’t know how many of the witches would cross the difficult path of simply remembering something to completely understanding it, then understanding it to actually using it.

“Last night you didn’t get any sleep, so it would be the best if you got some rest now,” Roland said to Anna, “I’ll take another look at your new ability in two days.”

“Alright,” Anna nodded earnestly.

“As for the rest of you,” he looked to the other witches, “from today on, you will all come together in the living room after dinner to start with the basics and learn how to read and write on Mondays to Fridays. Scroll will be your teacher.”

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