Er Mu - Release that Witch

Roland continued to look further down the list.

The second paragraph on the parchment was concerning the construction department, the following notes were divided into several groups, such like masons, bricklayer, mud craftsmen, carpenters, handyman and so forth. The total number that was engaged in this area was more than 1100 people, of which the vast majority were serfs who worked as handyman.

It was precisely because of these newly added people, that he was able to quickly build a batch of residential areas and factories — changing it to template buildings, mass production and routine process where all the important part needed to speed up the construction process. In Roland’s eyes, this degree of improvement was still not enough, but for the locals, it was already a completely different world.

The third paragraph was about the mining staff.

Similar to the construction industry above, the amount of Border Town’s local inhabitants were reduced to 25 people. They were mainly operating the steam engine, or were there to handle the registration of the ore and supervise the work. The remaining 1600 people were outsiders, it included mercenaries captured during the battle against Longsong Stronghold and all of the serfs sent in the rear.

“Recently there have been a few brawls in the mine,” Barov said, “mainly between the mercenaries and serfs, this is a concealed source of danger, Your Royal Highness. They are too many, once they start to make trouble, the twenty-five managers won’t be able to control them. I suggest that the First Army becomes responsible for guarding them.”

“Well …” Roland thought about it for a moment, “Alright, do it. For now, we don’t have enough manpower to set up a police force. I will speak with Iron Axe soon, fifty men from the firearms team should be sufficient.”

“What is a police…?”

“You can think of it as a kind of patroller, but the scope of their area is much larger. Basically, all the internal security will be done by them.”

During this era there was no separation between the inner and external force, because of this, they would permit the army to administer law and order. Furthermore, it was unlikely that it would turn into their own dark history. He had no intention of diverting his manpower to form a secondary force, considering he had his own huge enemy, the Church to look out for.

The fourth paragraph contained information about Border Town’s First Army.

After the end of the war against Longsong Stronghold, the achievements of the First Army sounded through the whole of the Western Territories, making them famous — three hundred people while only paying a minuscule price had overcome the 1500 man strong force of the Duke. Completely destroying any thought of resistance within the nobility of Longsong Stronghold.

After evaluating their merits and bestowing them with their rewards, Roland had doubled the size of the First Army, increasing it to the size of 600 people. Soon after the recruitment order was made public, the whole town’s square became packed with enthusiastically people who wanted to sign up. Roland still followed his old concept to select the member of the First Army. He chose the three hundred indigenous people, who had the best physical condition, and did not have a criminal record and let them join the First Army.

The rest was a summary of all kinds of technical personnel.

For example, the smelting and firing industry had substantially increased in the past month, from the initial no more than 20 people, they had risen to about 400 people. Thanks to the furnaces granted by the “furnace expert” Lesya, the North Slope Furnace Group could not only produce red brick but they could also fire cement and glass. At the same time, they had also erected three shaft furnaces. They were used to smelt the ore which had already pilled up n the yard. The produced ingots could afterward also be transported to the required areas.

As for education, chemistry, industry, animal husbandry, the people engaged within amounted to less than 50, so from a demographic point of view, Border Town still had a long way to go. But the fact that the original population of hunters and miners in Border Town could be changed into this within merely half a year, could be regarded as earth-shaking.

Today, the occupation of hunters had basically disappeared, from hunting for surviving it was now changed into a hobby. Excluding those people who became members of the First Army or joined the smelting industry, the current Border Town still had nearly a thousand individuals who were unemployed. While waiting for the literacy phase of the universal education finished. Roland decided to pull all of these people into the factory, and open up the prelude to the industrial era.

After Barov left, Roland went to the drawer and put the statistics into it. Looking back at Nightingale, he wanted to ask her what had happened with her but after hesitating for a moment, he ultimately wasn’t able to.

He already had a vague answer within his heart, but saying something like that was too embarrassing, and even if he guessed wrong it might even be even more embarrassing. So in the end, Roland swallowed his question and said instead: “Now with this done, let’s go to the North Slope Mine.”

“Do you want to go and see what changes Soraya’s new ability could make?” Although Nightingales behavior has become somewhat strange, her attitude was still the same as before, with a smile, she took off her hood and said, “Let’s go.”

Perhaps I’m just thinking too much into this, Roland thought, as he looked at the witch who quickly came to his side.

The ride on the hot air balloon on the other day had influenced far more than only one or two people.

He never imagined that Soraya would become the second witch who gave birth to a fundamental change of her ability.

In fact, even she wasn’t aware of the change.

Roland had only been present by chance when her talent appeared.

Since the hot air balloon was a gift for Anna, it had been placed in the castle courtyard. Whenever someone wanted to see the landscape from high up, they had to call for Anna and Lightning. But the day before when it began to rain, Roland suddenly remembered that the out of rattan weaved basket would become soft when immersed in water, and even if it later got dried it would still lose its toughness, thinking of this he wanted to take it back into the castle.

He had intended to let the servants do it but he then had second thoughts about doing so, whatever the outcome, the hot air balloon was his present to Anna, and the ropes and airbag were parts that could also be easily damaged, so he decided to personally bring it back to the castle. After he had called Hummingbird over and came to the vestibule, he got surprised by what he saw.

The whole basket had a pattern painted on it — it was covered by a bird’s-eye view of the scenery of Border Town. But unlike her previous photo-like paintings, her paintings unexpectedly looked like they would immediately stand up and come to life. And it also seems that the raindrops here couldn’t fall on Roland either. When he took a closer look, he discovered that her paintings had for the first time gotten a “thickness” to it.

It wasn’t strange that a picture had thickness. Theoretically, every real picture should have had a thickness — because the pigment itself had a thickness. In paintings, this thickness could even be put to use. By using brushes, strokes or scrapers it was possible to create rough textures, and through a variation of layers the realism itself could be increased, enhancing the expressive power of the painting.

But Soraya’s paintings were different, her paintings weren’t drawn with a brush and paint, but directly by using her magic.

Therefore, that she was able to create this thickness by shaping her magic was especially surprising.

He remembered that when he had softly touched those sticking out woods with his hands, it had really felt like he was scratching over branches and green leaves, it wasn’t the case that they were hard and solid, but rather soft like gum. And when he touched the ground, the tactile sensation was very robust, as if he had actually touched a stone.

Simply amazing.

As well as that those raindrops flowing down along the drawn landscape were unable to soak the slightest bit into the rattan.

Back in the castle, he immediately called for Soraya to come over, and then Nightingale also confirmed this point. When she observed Soraya from within her fog, the magic in Soraya’s body also wasn’t the same as before. Previously it was a golden whirlpool, but now it had condensed into a rotating… ribbon.

…

When they stepped into the military factoring compound, Anna approached and welcomed them laughingly, while giving Roland a big hug.

Since they had deepened their relationship, the intimacy she showed him had become significantly more. Roland rubbed her head in a good mood, and the silver clip stuck to her hair flashed within the sunlight.

But in the corner of the eye, initially Soraya had also intended to come over to greet him, but now she stood at her original place not knowing what to do, in the end, she began to blush and turned away, putting on an, I see nothing appearance.

“Cough,” Nightingale took Soraya’s hand and pulled her to the table, and asked deliberately, “Did you draw this?”

Roland smiled and shook his head, letting go of Anna and went over with her.

Only seeing that the whole table was covered with the demanded pictures, the paintings were exactly what you could see in the yard, the only difference between the paintings were the thickness, some of them were only about a millimeter higher than the paper, while some came close to three centimeters — this was exactly the training concept Roland had arranged for her this morning, testing how far it was possible for her to thicken her magic “paint”.

“Is this the thickest one?” Roland touched with his fingers a nearly three centimeters thick picture. The enchanted blue sky, that part of the picture was soft as if it has no texture in general, but when he slid his finger down to the yard’s wall, he immediately felt a sand-like friction.

It seemed to be exactly as he had expected, after the evolution of her magic pen, the pictures drawn by her were not only in line with the shape and color of the original, even the tactile sensation came close to the original object.

“It can also become thicker, but increasing the thickness, even more, the magical consumption becomes very large,” Soraya pointed at a brown protrusion on the table, “I wanted to draw the tree trunk outside of the wall, but I had barely drawn the basics of the tree trunk before I had already spent half of my magic power.

“This is your painting?” Roland reached with his hand for a ten centimeters thick painting, “I thought it was really a bark.”

That being said, however, its connection to the table was exceptional firm, the Prince used his hand to grab the tree bark and tried to pick it up until his two feet had left the ground, but even with this he was unable to separate the bark from the tree.

Seeing this, Nightingale drew a knife, yet even after a long time she was still only able to cut a small hole at the bottom. “This thing seems to have been embedded into the table.”

In the end, it could only be cut by Anna, she changed her black fire into a thin thread and swept it over the table. Afterward, the pigments began to emit white smoke and then it dropped off. The cut was smooth but not glossy. Instead it had several black scorched marks on it. Roland picked the fallen pigments up, and when he held it in his hand he discovered that it was far lighter than he had imagined.

“Why did you suddenly want to change your style… No, I mean, how do you decide to add thickness to your painting?” Roland asked.

“I think it was probably because I had seen this kind of scenery for the first time,” Soraya stated her memories. “When I was high up in the air and looking down on the earth, I felt, that the paintings I had made before — which you had said to be almost comparable to the real scene and had called a “photo”, was in fact not accurate. Especially when I used the basket to portray the scenery, and also when I had come down I thought even more in this way.”