Lucia walked into the backyard of the North Slope Mountain against the howling north wind and swirling snow, closing the wooden door to keep the cold out.
After winter set in, a wooden shed was erected above the courtyard. Although it affected the lighting somewhat, it at least prevented the snow from burying the place.
A roaring bonfire burned beside the yard, and Lucia could feel the heat radiating from the flames even standing at the door. She took off her gloves and warmed her icy hands over the fire, absorbing its heat.
"Cold?" Anna, standing in front of the workbench, tilted her head. "Come here, I'll warm you up."
"Ah... thank you," Lucia trotted to her side, and was immediately enveloped in a warm, green fire, like soaking in the castle's bath. She felt a comfortable and gentle warmth from head to toe.
What a convenient ability... Lucia thought enviously. She never had to fear the cold.
"Warmer now?"
"Mm!" She nodded vigorously. "What are you making?"
"Some new qiangzhi parts," Anna picked up a slender steel pipe with a piston inside, pushing and pulling it back and forth. "His Highness said that he's not even sure of succeeding on the first try, and that repeated experiments will be needed."
The parts were shiny and smooth, obviously made of the best steel, and meticulously cut by the Black Fire. Before coming to the town, Lucia would never have imagined that the surface of ironware could be made as smooth as glass. They were practically works of art.
And these works of art also had a contribution of their own. Thinking of this, she couldn't help but curl the corners of her mouth. Roland and Anna had both said that without high-quality materials, even with the most precise processing techniques, the finished product would be full of holes.
"Didn't His Highness come with you?" Anna retracted the green fire.
"He said he had some things to deal with and would be here a little later. He told me to familiarize myself with my new ability first," Lucia pouted.
"What did your ability evolve into...?" she asked with interest. "Probably no one in the Witch Union caused such a sensation at adulthood as you did."
Lucia scratched her head in embarrassment. "If it hadn't been for you and Speer that night, I'm afraid I wouldn't have made it to the end."
"You've already thanked me, you don't need to keep thinking about it," Anna waved her hand. "Hurry up and show me your new ability."
Lucia responded and began to drive the magic in her body. The strange feeling from that night surged into her mind again - the outlines of all things became unfamiliar and discontinuous, dividing into many small squares that clustered together according to color, forming patches of color. But this time she didn't feel the tearing pain of the magic backlash, so she could calm down and carefully examine each square.
She picked up a part processed by Anna. The originally smooth, off-white surface had become uneven. Surrounded by magic, the color patches on it were clearly visible - about seven colors, the largest of which was cyan. Their arrangement had no regularity at all, like a painter carelessly knocking over a pile of paint in a bowl onto the ground. The only difference was that they had distinct boundaries and did not encroach on each other.
These aren't the tiny particles His Highness was talking about, Lucia realized. If these "squares" and "patches" were truly the basis of all things, they were too large.
And above the particles was an even larger classification: elements.
The particles combine according to different rules to form larger spheres, which exhibit completely different properties due to their different structures.
If she was still confused about her ability in Gold穗City, not understanding its specific function, now she could clearly understand the concept of elements. According to His Highness's description and classification, what she was observing should be these things.
After telling Anna what she saw and thought, she thought for a while before saying, "This may be a branch ability."
"A branch... ability?"
"That's a rare talent," Anna smiled. "Only a small number of adult witches in the Witch Union possess it - according to Agatha, it seems it only appears on the Day of Awakening, and once you miss it,
you'll never get it again. I think it's closely related to a witch's main ability, or rather, a supplement and strengthening of the main ability. For example, Soroya's magic brush. Without it, she would have to mix the paints first before she could paint. The same goes for Teacher Juan's magical power. She once told me that before she came of age, although she could quickly memorize most of the books she had read, she couldn't share the contents of the books with others because she didn't have the money to buy paper and pens."
She paused and continued, "And your main ability is decomposition and reduction, so I guess these color blocks might be guiding you to precisely separate a certain type of element - perhaps you can try to see if you can isolate a certain color block?"
Lucia nodded and reapplied her ability to an ingot of pig iron next to the worktable. Unlike the previous decomposition, this time she carefully constricted her magic into thin threads to pull at those cyan squares.
The process was much more difficult than she had imagined. She had never manipulated her magic so delicately, but Lucia was also delighted in her heart. Compared to before adulthood, she could now more truly feel the existence of magic, as if it had become her fingers - or even an extension of her consciousness.
As more and more thin threads adhered to the color patch, the squares finally loosened. They were pulled out of the iron ingot tightly together, and the remaining color patches suddenly changed - the originally distinct boundaries trembled, and then the entire iron ingot collapsed, curling into a half-fingernail-sized yellow-green crystal, and next to it was a square block of iron.
Lucia retracted her ability and wiped the fine sweat from her forehead. She noticed that the colors of the two in the magical vision were different from those in normal vision - the previous cyan color patch had become silvery-white, which is the common luster of pure iron. The color blocks of the latter were still colorful, but without using the ability, it looked like a clean gemstone.
"What is this?" She gently pinched the tiny crystal. Compared to the iron ingot, its volume was insignificant, but its appearance was much more beautiful.
"This may be a compound of other elements recombined in pig iron," Anna's eyes sparkled. "I'm not sure, but we can do a small experiment to verify it. If it's true, do you know what that means? You can extract a certain element from a complete object, and the remaining elements will not turn into a pile of loose sand, but will recombine according to the conditions of losing that element... Any useless, inferior material can be reborn in your hands."