So I had wanted that my picture would become more like reality. I wanted it to stand up, just like this magnificent scenery. But even after several tries I failed to succeed… during a moment of frustration, I suddenly remembered what you had said about those balls.”
“Balls?” Rolland raised his eyebrows questionably.
“Well,” she nodded shyly, “that was at least what you had taught us. I thought that everything was made out of those small balls, then shouldn’t the pattern I drew also be the same? I made a few more attempts and imagined that the pattern illustrated by my magic pen were made out of colorful balls, all stacked to each other, and together formed a whole block of color. Then… the screen suddenly wriggled up, the green woods grew upwards, the dark blue river sunk, finally turning into the pattern you normally see. At that time, these changes shocked both Anna and me. If you hadn’t mentioned it, I would never have realized that my magic had evolved.”
“So, it was like this.”
“But compared to Anna’s black fire, with the exception that after the evolution my paintings seems to be more vivid, it seems it doesn’t have any other useful effect.” Soraya spat out.
“No … why?” Roland shook his head. “In my eyes, they are not just simple paintings.”
It would be a waste if she only used this ability for painting. He remembered the scene where the rain had slid over the surface of the basket but was still unable to immerse into one of the scenes — rather than a painting it was a kind of “coating” magic.
As long as the object’s surface was covered and formed a definite contiguous skin, it could be called a coating. The coating itself could be gaseous, liquid or solid, with all sorts of different applications to them. From the initial beautiful decoration, and later enforcing the durability of the object, all of these things could be considered as coatings.
Afterward, Roland launched a series of tests at the substances.
He became extremely pleased by the test results, its concept could be roughly summarized with the phrase: “The more energy her paintings consumed, and the longer she drew, the better they would become.” Her previous pictures were already hard to completely erase, as long as their medium wasn’t also destroyed, and now, after her ability had evolved, this characteristic would become even stronger in the future.
Firstly, there was the high adhesive force and the light mass of these “pigments”. While on top they showed some of the physical characteristics of the object — it could also change its flexibility according to the depicted object. Things such as painted clouds or skies, would be as soft as cotton candy, while still having a high resistance towards stretching and cutting. But when replaced with something made out of iron ingot, glass or material of a similar nature, it then became hard and brittle, and could be directly smashed with a hammer. In other words, due to its limited mass, its performance regarding flexibility was far superior to its display of rigidity, which was consistent with Soraya’s understanding of how the pigments worked.
Secondly, regardless of which characteristics were shown, its chemical properties remained very stable. Not only didn’t it react with dilute of sulfuric acid or dilute of nitric acid, but it also repelled water and oil.
When Roland filled a coated paper box with water, the thin bottom of the box didn’t show any marks of any water seepage. After pouring water into it, the clear liquid beads rolled in the box like dew on a lotus leaf. And when he touched the bottom with his finger he confirmed that even then it still remained dry.
For the high temperature resistance test, Anna went to the paper box and dropped some molten iron into it, the paper as supporter caught fire immediately, the coating itself however, except for stretching a bit didn’t change much. Only when Anna used her black flame to directly burn the coating, did it begin to deform and melt, emitting a white smoke until it finally turned into a mass of black jelly.
The fact that the coating also had an insulating effect totally excited Roland. After all, coated copper wires could be used the same way as enameled wire, which he had already proven by building a simple DC motor in the yard.
At this point, Roland had completely understood the capacity of Soraya’s new ability.
Unlike Anna’s black flame which entirely different from her previous green fire, Soraya’s new ability was more like an evolution of her previous painting skill. She could now draw a realistic “oil painting”, or she can also just draw her “photo” like the pictures from before. Her abilities could also be used in parallel, it only depended on what she had in mind to make.
