Chapter 300 Witch House
“Ahool, Ahool!”
At the newly rebuilt castle backyard, Maggie, fiddling with her wings and tail, was moving around under everyone’s appreciative gaze.
Although Roland had already heard about it from the witches’ own mouths, when seeing Maggie’s “demonic beast form” for the first time, he still felt genuinely shocked.
This enormous brown-skinned bird was ten meters long from the top of its head to the top of its tail, it had a wingspan of around fifteen meters. Its wings were similar to the fleshy wings of a bat, and when facing the sun, he could clearly see its thin blood vessels and its skeleton. Likely because its body was too long, the bird had four limbs altogether, which was as thick as an adult arm with claws at their end, which it used to support its body.
However, the most eye-catching thing was the head – it had three eyes, forming a triangular shape, on both sides of its head. Furthermore, the rest of the head was an entirely bloody mouth which was able to open itself as wide as a sacrificial bowl, very unlike a normal bird’s beak. Whenever Maggie opened her mouth to speak, she’d expose a row of sharp teeth and a long tongue, a sight which cause the other witches to shout out in fear.
“Is this the Devil’s flying mount?” Leaves exclaimed. “Fortunately, we didn’t run into such a monster during our time in the wilderness, or we would have never been able to run away.”
“If not for her evolving and getting this new ability, I’m afraid I wouldn’t have been able to come back,” Nightingale said while petting Maggie’s smooth neck. “I will prepare a pocketful of small pieces of grilled fish for you every day.”
“Ahool-!”
“I know, I’ll pour some honey over them.”
Hearing this promise, the bird’s tail began swinging more cheerfully.
Those fish are obviously all mine, Roland secretly sighed, without permission, she just takes the kitchen food to reward others, don’t make it sound as if you are doing something great ah!
“Alright, then let us check your new skill according to the old rules.”
“Ahool!”
…
After a morning of endless repeating, Roland obtained all the details about Maggie’s new beast form.
Following the previous convention of magnification, her brown skinned giant bird form was larger than the original Devil’s mounts, in addition, her lifting capability was also a increased, allowing her to carry two witches. However, the flight speed she could maintain when fully loaded was only about eighty kilometers per hour, which compared with Lightning was much slower.
Anyway, Maggie’s strong point was that she had sufficient enough persistence to carry heavy weights without having to reduce the height she was flying at, unlike Lightning. At the same time, this new transformation also consumed more magic, but after completely changing into a giant bird, no matter if she was flying at a high or a low altitude, or carrying one or two people, her magic consumption remained extremely little. The only issue to consider was her own physical power.
Nowadays, the amount of magic power Maggie could contain within her body had also increased by a significant margin, allowing her to jump from a place at the bottom of the Witch Alliance to among the middle level. Meaning that she could now change her form seven to eight times a day.
Apart from this, through Maggie, Roland could confirm one of his previous speculations.
The witches’ chance to evolve was due to their understanding of their own ability, regardless of whether they grasped this kind of knowledge through learning or in a sudden flash of realization, it could always provoke a change of their ability.
This also implied, that there existed a possibility for natural evolution – as long as they lived long enough, there would always be one or two lucky ones who could rise above others. When one compared their first ability with their ability after their evolution, it was like comparing heaven and earth, so much that even something rotten could become something mystical. Was that the reason why the Church was trying to suppress the wild witches?
After consuming lunch, the Lord’s castle area welcomed a major event.
After nearly four months of construction and decoration, it was finally the day that they would put the witch house to use.
Looking at the merely three-layer building, with less than fifty suits, Roland sighed endlessly. When placed into the future, this kind of house could only be regarded as being at the level of a self-constructed countryside home; but here, it represented the highest degree of architecture in the mainland – not because of its scale, but rather the technology behind it.
It was the first house made out of a mix of bamboo reinforced concrete, and bricks.
Roland could still remember how Karl, pouring the first column of reinforced concrete, had said to him with all sorts of feeling welled up in his heart, “That cement could originally also be used like this, that it can be shaped into any desired form when mixed with cobble, and also be used anywhere in the house… Your Royal Highness, I think it won’t be long until the stonemason occupation disappears from the masonry work.
Apart from the beams of the roof, all the other floors of the witch house were made out of precast concrete slabs. When he looked at those pieces of concrete slabs with holes in the middle, Roland felt like he’d returned to the time of his childhood – only back in the eighties could this kind of ancient building material still be seen. However, by the time he was ten, cast-in-place concrete floors had already replaced it, and in time the technique had been completely abandoned.
And now in Border Town, the “backward” technique of precast concrete slabs was once again reborn.
The Witch House was located on the left side of the castle, forming together the letter “L”. After the expansion of the garden, its area was three to four times larger than before, so even with those two buildings there was still enough open space left for Leaves to improve her various kinds of fruits and crops.
*
Evelyn, with a somewhat anxious and frightened feeling, checked into the brand-new house.
It was already more than one month since she’d came to Border Town, but until now it seems that besides serving His Highness wine she had done nothing else. Furthermore, with merely five points in the last exam, she was also at the bottom of all of the witches… Although Scroll had never announced the results to the public, this kind of thing was easy enough to guess as long as she did some private inquiry.
Even Honey, who only spoke to birds the whole day long had gotten seven points!
She suddenly felt that there was no difference between herself and an idiot.
Even so, she couldn’t detect any difference in the way His Highness treated her and the others. He would still find her to talk about the characteristics of the wine from time to time, often under the pretense of bringing a newly-made painfully burning white spirit. Furthermore, she had also got one gold royal as last month’s salary, something which aggravated her feeling of insecurity even more – compared to the other four, she felt like nothing more than a freeloader.
“There is actually a kitchen dedicated to cooking next to the living room, in addition, there is a strange little room which they’d painted white. Quickly come and look,” Candle, opened the bedroom door and started talking excitedly.
“Hmm…” Evelyn responded weakly without strength.
“What happened? Are you feeling unwell?” Candle asked in concern, while squatting down in front of her and feeling her forehead, “You’re not too hot.” Then she suddenly laughed and said, “Don’t tell me, are you missing sleeping in one bed together with our sisters from the Witch Alliance?”
For a moment Evelyn was silent, then whispered, “We have been here for over a month, right?”
“More or less.”
“Lotus is responsible for the construction of the new wall, which she will soon be finishing. Honey is in charge of training new messengers, and Sylvie, even accompanied His Highness to investigate those terrible monsters,” She said frustrated. “Only I still have nothing to do. I didn’t even get an arranged training plan, my exam’s results were also the worst… I really do not know why His Highness wanted me to come.”
“Oh.” After pondering about it a bit, Candle answered, “Why don’t you go and ask him in person?”
“Huh?”
“His Highness, Roland is Lady Tilly’s brother, you have seen how he treats us witches with sincerity. Even Sylvie, who always kept saying, ‘Keep away from Roland, be vigilant of the Prince,’ has changed her words, and even went as far as saying some words of praise yesterday.” Candle shrugged, “As long as you asked him with someone else present, it is impossible that he will chew you out, isn’t that right?”
It seems her words contain some truth. Evelyn thought, in order to no longer torture herself, she decided to act in accordance with Candle’s suggestion.