Er Mu - Release that Witch

Therefore, the carriages for transporting the cement powder and gravel had been fitted with a cover plate as quickly as possible, to reduce the dispersion during the transportation. At the same time, he also used it as a chance to promote Leaves’ ability. Within a few days, the inside of the town was covered with shade providing trees, they were symmetrical parasol trees, which Leaves had grown one branch of after another, creating the impression that the scenery appeared to be full of green for as far as the eye could see. With Roland’s additional appeal to all of the people, that they should take the initiative and sprinkle water over the dust, the situation had quickly been improved.

The straight distance between the two places was less than 70 kilometers, but considering that the road had to avoid the extensions of the Impassable Mountain Range, the total length of the road would be around 100 kilometers and its expected construction duration would be one year. With roads of such excellent quality, some modern kinds of vehicles could also come in handy, such as bicycles and steam powered cars.

In his vision for the future, the development of education and the upgrading of the road were necessary steps to fuse the two cities together. Just like the cities of the later generations would energetically carry out urban integration. After the land between these two places was fully opened up, Border Town and Longsong Stronghold would slowly merge into one huge city. And in case he could even integrate the southern hill into the city, he could then open up a path through the edge of the mountains, and even get an outgoing sea port for himself.

Of course, being able to develop so much land would require an even larger population. And in response to the possibility of future wars, the city would need to be self-sufficient with its food production, while also providing a significant number of workers for the industrial production.From his preliminary calculations, he would need around one hundred thousand residents, while Graycastle’s largest city, King’s City, had only around twenty to thirty thousand people.

When thinking about this issue, Roland remembered that the North and South of the Kingdom of Graycastle, are both places that have recently experienced a war. So, when the winter comes, it is likely that there will be a large number of refugees coming who would be deprived of food and clothing. By offering them food and a warm shelter they can all be absorbed into Border Town.

Furthermore, I also have to take into consideration that there should also be many refugees within the Kingdom of Endless Winter and the Wolfsheart Kingdom. For that reason, it would be better to write Margaret a letter and ask her to help me to find out how the situation is within those two countries.

…

After he had finished to writing down the recent development program, the Prince folded the paper and placed it into the drawer. Afterward, he stretched out his tensed-up body and decided to go to Anna’s room to take a look at how much progress she had made with creating a lens.

Ever since he learned about the reasons for Soraya’s magical evolution, he was intent on making a microscope, which would allow the witches to observe the structure of cells.

If they could examine the unusual microscopic world with their own eyes, it might lead even more witches to evolve a new ability, the worst case being, he will at least arouse their interest in learning about it.

For the production of microscopes, creating the convex lens responsible for enlarging the object wasn’t difficult, the difficulty part laid in the problem that the focal length was differently for every hand-polished lens, therefore matching the eyepiece to the objective was a delicate operation, needing to adjust the distance between the two lenses repeatedly.

He had described the principle behind the convex lens only once, and then given Anna a few pieces of crystals that had a fine quality letting her cut the lenses and measure their focal length. Now, after three days, Roland’s heart was full of curiosity at to what extent Anna had been able to realize it.

When he came to the door of Anna’s room, Nightingale sent him a smile, standing against the wall. She seemed to be saying that she wasn’t going to follow him in, since she had reduced her stealth time, Roland no longer had to guess her whereabouts. And whenever he and Anna wanted to be alone, she would always choose to stand at a distant location.

When he opened the door, he saw Anna sitting at the table, playing with a metal tube.

“How is it?” He asked, stepping forward.

The moment after the question left his lips, he became shocked. There on the table laid several instruments which resembled an actual microscope, coming very close to the sketches he had drawn for her.

“With the few test products I made according to your blueprints, I can indeed see a lot of details which are usually very difficult to discover,” she looked up, letting her slender bangs slide down from one side of her face. “I used it to look at paper, leaves and stagnant water, and found out that they look very different from their usual appearance.” Since their experience during the hot air balloon trip, when they had both been alone. Anna no longer used any titles, which also made him feel very more relaxed.

“How did you do it,” Roland exclaimed, “The sketch was only a rough outline.”

“The outline was enough,” Anna laughed. “You see, as long as the eyepiece and the objective lens are fixed at the appropriate distance, they can play the role of the amplifier. Afterward, they only needed to be fixed to an iron pipe, and with this, the microscope’s body is completed. As I was testing the magnification of the lens, I found out that the objective and observation target had to maintain a particular distance within which I could see a distinct image; whenever my hands shook the image would become blurred. From your diagram I could see that, you needed a frame to which to attach the lens to, and a platform, which could be moved up and down to get to the best distance to the object.” She paused. “But it is harder to figure out for what the bottom piece is, can you tell what it is for?”

Roland swept his eyes over the drawing and discovered that this issue was his own mistake. It was a mirror, which was used to increase the light falling onto the object, but during this era, they had yet to invent the mercury mirror. The typical aristocrat still used a bronze mirror or an iron mirror to arrange their appearance. While they had a glass frame that was covered with a thin silver layer within the Imperial Palace, to get a better reflection effect. Even without this mirror, as long as the sunlight was strong enough, the microscope could still be used.

After explaining the mirror in detail, he couldn’t help being amazed by Anna’s comprehension. Even by solely relying on a rough drawing of an outline, she had created a product which came close to the finished goods, something which would be absolutely impossible for him to have done.

Seeing that when Anna had bowed her head to examine a new lens, she was exposing her fair neck, Roland couldn’t stop from stepping forward, and wanting to kiss. But she merely placed her hand on his face and gently pushed him back, “Later, Your Royal Highness, I’m busy now. ”

“Ah… fine.”

In the end, the problem of the mirror was solved by Soraya.

According to her, she had went and fetched some mercury from the laboratory, and spread it directly on top of the glass, afterward painting a shiny coated layer on top of it. In this way she achieved a similar effect to that of a mercury mirror, but also eliminating the risk associated with mercury vapor poisoning.

Compared to a pasted silver mirror, the overall coated mirror offered much better reflection. Afterward, Roland simply set aside a number of crystal glassware, so that each witch could get a small hand mirror. The small gift, which allowed the witches to clearly see their appearance made them all very happy, even Scroll who was usually always exposing a neutral expression revealed a rare smile. Seeing all this let Roland sigh in regret, although the witches weren’t fertility, they were still women at nature.

Unfortunately, this useful commodity could temporarily not be sold to the public at a low price. After all, its base was made out of the highly priced crystal glass. Furthermore, the laboratory had also consumed a lot of crystal glass to create this colorless, transparent container.

Kyle Sichi, contrary to what one might expect, knew how to create crystal glass, but the laboratory had been burdened with other tasks so that there were seldom any empty hands. Most of the apprentices were busy with refining the two acids, soaking the cotton fire. While the chief alchemist took two or three disciplines and concentrated entirely on solving the barrier to the creation of mercury fulminate. Until the industrial acid method was thoroughly researched, they still didn’t want to make anything else for the time being.

Apart from the reflecting mirror, Roland also suggested that instead of manually moving the stage to control the distance to the object, it could also be done by turning a small knob on the side. He only needed to describe the two alternation with a few words, before Anna understood what he meant. Summoning her black flame, the new stabilizing framework was quickly constructed. Afterward, she picked the two set of lenses with the highest degree of magnification, in this way creating the very first optical microscope.

Taking advantage of the sufficient afternoon sun, Roland called all of the members of the Witch Union into the castle’s backyard, thereby starting the first ever Fundamental Biology class.

…

When Lily came to the backyard, she discovered that the plants had become more lush and flourishing.

The grapes on the wooden frame had turned into a bright red-purple hue. A foggy memory told her that they were less than a week from turning ripe. From time to time, Lighting would fly up and pick a bunch of ripe grapes for everyone. And that big and silly bird which had recently joined Border Town, bluntly sat on top of the shelf, raising its head to peck at the grapes and swallow them down.

In the backyard under the shade sat His Royal Highness and Anna. They were happily chatting with each other, looking just like an intimate couple. But Lily knew, they were definitely not telling each other words of affection. In case she was to approach them to listen, she would definitely hear a bunch of unfathomable mysterious nouns belonging to a debate that she was unable to make any sense of…

For example, about how the small balls looked like, how a cat could be living and dead at same time, matter turned into a wave, and so on. This was probably also the reason why Nightingale would always keep a distance of five meters away from them. After all, when listening to them for a long time, any person would definitely become drowsy, ai!

Wendy was always waiting with Scroll, whenever she met her, Wendy would show a gentle and soft smiling expression. Sometimes, she even felt that from the other’s point of view she was seen as a child. Lily helplessly sighed, first looking at Wendy’s chest, then bowed her head to look at her own, there was indeed worlds between them.

When can they turn into that, maybe then I won’t be regarded as a child anymore.

After all the witches had arrived, Lord Roland put two gray-black metal utensils on the table, claiming that they made it that with them it would be possible to see the tiny world of microscopy. Lily thought, maybe the object won’t look the same after magnification, but that everything in the world is made up out of small balls? This had always been hard for her to believe, after all how could rolling balls form a solid rock?

His Royal Highness sent a guard to get a bucket of water, then took a few drops and placed them under the microscope, which was different from what Lily had expected. The water in the bucket was neither muddy nor was it dirty. Instead, it was so clear that she could see the sunshine reflecting on the bottom, as if there wasn’t anything there at all. Is it… is it really possible that you can see the flowing balls from under the microscope?

“Something is moving in the water!” To her surprise a sister shrieked, and the moment her voice fell, she shrieked again, “Ah, it ran away!”