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.