But in her eyes, the world has become completely different. A black filament appeared in the air in front of her. However, Anna naturally knew that she couldn’t really “see” it, that it was only in her own perception.
She took one of the ingots she had always trained with and which laid still on her desk and placed it in front of herself.
The black filament wrapped itself around the ingot in accordance with her will, she then quickly pulled it together. Like a hot knife cutting through butter her filament went through the iron ingot with ease. In Anna’s comprehension, the temperature produced by the filament was several times higher than that of her green flame but was limited to a very narrow range. The iron ingot was quickly cut into two parts, and when she took one of it into her hands she saw that the cutline was very smooth, and she could only feel a little heat when placed her finger against the cutline.
She then erected the iron ingot on her desk, placed her black filament on top of the ingot, and let it spread out until it was a completely flat string, perpendicular to each other.
This was the mathematical knowledge taught by His Highness, using a point as the center, and then use a quill connected to a string and then go one time around the center, they will be able to draw a precise circle. The area of the circle is equal to the length of the string multiplied by itself and multiplied by a fixed constant.
Anna controlled her horizontally spread filament and bended it downwards at the ends at a right angle, letting it penetrate through the ingot until it reached the top of the desk. And then she let it gently rotate around the point at the center — compared with her green flame where she could only adjust the temperature and whole body, the black flame composed of many particles could be turned into any shape and the temperature of each part could be controlled separately.
After one revolution, she had cut out the form of a cylinder.
Because the cutting line was so small, Anna needed to use a great effort to get the cylinder out. Like before where she had cut the ingot in two, the entire wall of the cut-out cylinder was also very smooth. In the moonlight, she could even see the reflection of her own face in it.
Early at dawn of the next morning, Roland was woken up by Nightingale, who had stolen his blanket. He remembered that the last time he was woken up this way was when Nana’s father had discovered that his daughter had become a witch.
So, he sleepily asked while rubbing his eyes, “What’s going on? Did we discover a new witch in town?”
“No, Your Highness,” Nightingale was totally excited, “Anna… her ability has changed!”
Roland, who at this point wasn’t completely awake yet asked, “Wasn’t she already a grown-up?”
“Our ability can change even after we become an adult, but until now I have never seen such an amazing kind of magic. It’s just like a completely different entity.” Nightingale went to the washbasin, “Even Scroll and Wendy have never heard of something like this, make haste, you have to see it; the others are already waiting for you in the office!”
Roland casually washed his face, threw some clothes on and went with Nightingale to the second floor and into his office. When he stepped into the room, the eyes of eleven witches immediately focused on him. One of them was Anna, whose eyes were completely swollen, giving the impression that she hadn’t gotten any sleep last night.
“Who can tell me what happened?”
The first one who opened her mouth to speak was Nightingale, “Early this morning I passed by Anna’s room and saw her laying her head on the table and sleeping. On the table were also a pile of iron lumps. When I approached her to wake her up I discovered that the magic within her body had turned into…” She paused for a moment, seemingly having to think about a way to describe it, “it fused into a fixed shape, like a constantly rotating cube.”
Roland went to Anna and stopped directly in front of her. There, he carefully examined her all over, but other than seeing that she was clearly tired, he couldn’t detect any differences. Then, he noticed the lengthy cylinder standing on the table; it seemed to be made out of iron, but its gray surface was very smooth and the top was also cleanly cut off, dazzling Roland’s eyes. “This is…”
