But then again, living in a house cave was much better than living in a wooden sheet with air leaking in all over the place. At least in winter, with a brazier and a kang[9], this house cave would become warm. So, in case he wasn’t able to build enough brick houses before the arrival of the Months of Demons, he could still temporary use those cave houses.
The last part of the test was the summary of the examination — Lotus’ ability belonged to the summoning type, she possessed no branching ability, and her ability to shape the terrain was effective within a five-meter range. During her casting, it was easily affected by the power of a God’s Stone of Relation, but the moment the land had been transformed it wouldn’t shrink back after.
“How is her magic level?” Roland asked.
“It looks like a brown cyclone, with a very dense center, compared to the other witches, her magic level is superb,” Nightingale said, “It is relatively close to Leaves’.”
“Consumption?”
“When raising the ground level it isn’t bad,” she said while looking towards the bulging stone wall at the food of the North Slope Mountain. “However, when using her magic to transform the earth it rapidly declines, I’m afraid she will only be able to maintain it for one or two double hours.
Roland nodded, Leaves’ amount of magic power was the third most within the Witch Union, second only to Anna and Soraya. After all, having enough magical power was the premise to continually putting one’s ability to use — of course, there was also cases like Nightingale and Lightning, who had abilities with a low power consumption and thus even with a small magical source they could still activate their ability during the whole day without facing any difficulty.
After recording the information within a book, Roland began the test of the second witch.
“Who wants to be next?”
“Me- me- me!” Honey raised her hand.
Seeing her enthusiasm, Roland smiled, “Alright, then let me see your ability first.”
The girl named Honey was of a similar size, even somewhat shorter than Lotus. She had passed her day of adulthood just in the previous winter and seemed to have a very lively temperament. She had a head full of short fluffy curling brown hair, which resembled some fried dough twists. Her skin was slightly darker, and around her neck, wrists, and ankles she wore chains of animal teeth.
Her primary ability was called “beast tongue”, which allowed her to tame all animals inside her range. With it she could tame animals from all species that would carry out her orders afterwards. However, the extent of the command wasn’t allowed to go over the ability of the animal and after the task was fulfilled the taming effect would automatically be lifted, or it could be lifted beforehand out of her own initiative.
Furthermore, Honey also had a fascinating branch ability: “animal messenger”. With it she was able to pass the taming command from one animal to another until it reached the target animal — for example, if there was only a bird around her, she could let it seek for a more powerful animal to serve her. Perhaps a grown cat, maybe a ferocious eagle, this process couldn’t be controlled by her, making the final result somewhat uncertain.
However, no matter if it were her primary or her branching ability, both were directly influenced by the God’s Stone of Retaliation. Especially animal messengers, a God’s Stone of Retaliation would immediately erase the instruction so that the animal would be set free. And also, the bigger the animal she tried to tame was, the more magic she would have to spend. According to her own words could she control a dozen birds at the same time, while in the event that her target was a cow, she would only be able to manage two or three at a time.
The third witch to be tested was Evelyn, she was about twenty-five to twenty-six years old, with an accent that typically came from the people of King’s City, which gave her immediately a somewhat familiar feeling.
According to Tilly’s list Evelyn was able to change low-quality wine’s flavor and style entirely according to her preferences, as long as she had tasted it previously before — from the beginning the reason that Roland had chosen this witch was evident, that was to get pure alcohol.
For this regards, Roland had carefully prepared a few bottles of good wine, with a concentration from 50 % until 95 %. Even though they were a bit spicy and burned, but as long as you only drank one or two mouthfuls of it, there shouldn’t be a big issue. The crucial point was to let her agree that the transparent liquid that burned the throat was indeed a type of wine.
