Chapter 1030: The Witch Airship?
“This semester at the Witch Academy is the most exhilarating one I’ve had in all these years! Fighting… it’s exhilarating!”
This exclamation revealed the heartfelt feelings of those senior students currently at the All-Purpose Workshop, taking on tasks.
Those who come to the All-Purpose Workshop to accept urgent tasks assigned by the academy’s battle department mostly belong to the belligerent group of students.
The urgent tasks issued here are generally assignments that regular members of the combat sequence cannot handle, such as enemy rear harassment, covert sabotage, targeted assassination, and temporary area patrols.
Only after the Union Society truly understood what academy warfare was did they realize how useful these tactics were. Warfare isn’t only about direct confrontations; there are also clandestine tricks involved.
The front lines are handled by the Witch Union Society, and the local battles depend on these free-spirited students.
—To motivate students to engage in battle, the All-Purpose Workshop collaborated with the task board to additionally list war points as a temporary currency, which can be exchanged for valuable items within the Union Society, most of which cannot be purchased at the academy. These items range from various materials to finished alchemical goods, potions, and various skill insights.
However, the Union Society clearly underestimated the enthusiasm of the students at the Witch Academy.
Those who clamored online in the academy for bloodshed were mostly serious.
Recently, aside from raging discussions about blood-soaked topics, there was another rumor circulating that captured attention.
That is, the prototype airborne warship for the Witch Academy has been built!
Many witches are skeptical about this until an “unknown person” from the Union Society revealed that the finalized plans included “Witch Warships,” which sparked widespread discussion.
Building a warship isn’t something that can be hastily conceived.
From theory to design, and then to implementation, without a long accumulation of experience, it can take decades of slow exploration.
However… the witches want warships not as main combat units but as a showpiece!
If it weren’t for the need to consider appearances, the Magic Research Society could simply weld a square iron box, inscribe anti-gravity runes underneath, and follow up with a controllable propulsion spell to achieve complex maneuvers in the sky.
Due to the lack of a professional shipbuilding yard, the first airborne warship of the Witch Academy was constructed in a makeshift enclosed shipyard, with a team of skilled artisans specializing in alchemy, rune engraving, spell solidification, forging, and a variety of other crafts working together to “create” it.
The blueprints came from a Witch Mentor and were directly copied, the outer appearance was replicated, and the internal equipment was pieced together, foregoing the power engine. While meeting the basic operational needs of the combat sequence, unnecessary components were minimized to shorten the construction time.
After all, the Union Society can’t afford to wait several years for a warship to be built.
The requirements for the first airborne warship from the Union Society were that it should have a sense of strength in its appearance, ideally showcasing the grandeur of the Witch Academy.
This was the most crucial point.
Then, it was required to have some level of protective functionality; if it got blasted by a fireball and ended up with a charred spot, that would be quite embarrassing.
Finally, the requirement was that it could fly, control its altitude, and not fly slower than a standard flying broomstick. That’s all they needed to be satisfied.
Given the current technical limitations, they can only hope to gradually optimize and improve the design, accumulating construction experience over time.
If worse comes to worst, they could have some witches flying alongside the airship on brooms for assistance.
As for the extraordinary energy to power the airborne warship?
If this is to be discussed, then the energy crystal mines collected by many society members in the Expanding Realm would be useful.
After all, many societies became suddenly rich overnight thanks to that part of the Expanding Realm, but the ensuing devaluation of extraordinary energy crystals meant that the surplus crystals had to be stored in the society’s reserves.
Thus, the emergence of the airborne warship had foundational conditions; it couldn’t rely on magic power as the basis for operation and turn witches into living batteries.
Magic power storage techniques are rather common in the Witch Academy, with even storage devices for everyday consumption present in the academy library.
Regardless, the plan for the witch warship has begun, and the sudden emergence of secret news about the warship on the academy network is certainly not just a coincidence.
After several months of research, even though they haven’t fully grasped the technology of warships, the “shell technology” is still taking shape.
A trend has begun to appear on the academy network, which means that the first airborne warship of the Witch Academy is about to take flight!
Some platforms on the academy network have already initiated spontaneous voting.
As for what to vote on…
Naturally, it’s for the name of the first warship!
…
While the Core Realm was still buzzing, the Expanding Realm was also undergoing a very cautious experiment.
If this experiment succeeds, the attitude of the witches towards the main world would instantly change!
Therefore, the witches participating in this experiment were all very excited, as they were involved in a transformation!
However, unlike those who were clueless, I, who directly led the ancient theory of ice consciousness nurturing experiments, knew very well that this was not something that could be achieved merely by burning with enthusiasm and passion.
Yet… this was my first time seeing hundreds of extraordinary witches assembling, all to assist me in conducting fortune observation and data comparison.
This was a transaction with the consciousness of the main world.
World consciousness is a silent, dying entity.
The Qi Observation Technique project resembles a specialized micro-expression master targeted at world consciousness.
Every decision and thought of mine could influence the fluctuations of fortune.
After spending so many days together, I had gradually become more familiar with Sister Lucy and the others.
Compared to before, when I was careful even to ask questions, they have slowly dropped their caution and are now more direct in asking whenever they don’t understand something.
I would also explain accordingly.
This was not only to break the awkward silence but also to alleviate the fatigue caused by prolonged focus.
More importantly, I wanted to tap into the wealth of experience from older witches!
Otherwise, I would often get stuck in thought by myself.
At this moment.
I let out a slight sigh, glanced at the spell image beside me, and then casually swiped away a hypothesized plan.
This was a list of errors I had compiled.
Consciousness nurturing is a field I had never encountered before, so I could only boldly hypothesize and carefully verify.
The senior witches beside me were also sighing as they watched me.
This was the most dedicated little witch they had ever seen.
Just in these few days, I had already proposed many hypotheses and then verified the mistakes.
This also let them see what it means to master a magical skill; it is far more efficient than running countless experiments!
What impressed them the most was the technique called Soul Drawing.
If they wanted to conduct a similar experiment involving the soul realm, it would require many specialized devices, adjustment of several parameters, and a large number of control groups to verify the error margin…
Yet with me performing a Soul Drawing combined with insights from the Great Knowledge Tree, the graphical data is presented in real time, data that would normally take them months or even years to confirm was obtained effortlessly.
After all, the time consumed during experiments is the waiting process.
Even if the data obtained this way may have considerable error, such efficient experiments could be repeated to find answers within the acceptable error range.
As they watched from the sidelines, they sometimes questioned if they were getting old.
“Little Li, take a break; you’re not extraordinary yet, your spirit will tire out.” Sister Lucia said as I found a verified hypothesis to discuss.
“Um… okay.”
I looked at Sister Lucia approaching me and finally nodded in agreement with her suggestion.
It was time for a break.
Not that I was tired, but the consecutive “failures” made me feel that I needed to change my thinking.
Though these wouldn’t count as failures to the other witches, who considered them normal trial and error, for me, they truly felt like failures.
Because I clearly understood what I was doing.
What I was attempting, even if the entire world had to facilitate it, propelled by the driving force of world fortune alongside the validation of the observation technique, having delayed this long without significant results was simply unacceptable.
Unless… my thought process was wrong from the start, wrong to the point that fortune itself couldn’t rectify it.
But… is that possible?
Or could it be due to some other reasons?
After I agreed to take a short break, the witches by my side immediately gathered around.
They were too curious, having observed me for so long!
After gaining my consent, they each took turns curiously engaging me in conversation. Even though all the hypotheses I had verified so far were incorrect, even incorrect hypotheses still had valuable thought processes, including the process of falsification being quite precious.
While there is an academic gap between me and the older sisters, that doesn’t impede their determination to communicate their thoughts with me.
“From the hypothesis you just disproved, the nurturing of the soul’s spirit, could we introduce an unknown spiritual concept to refer to a complex unknown collective, with the spiritual core coding as a mental network being the cradle of consciousness nurturing? Can this hypothesis complement another multi-dimensional consciousness network’s hypothesis?”
“Or use the consciousness network to annotate specific intervals of the spiritual concept set…”
“Not useful, there are too many unknowable quantities…”
Listening to my sisters’ hypotheses, I spoke up, “It might be feasible.”
Introducing such a complete life model to validate the life sequence could maybe directly observe without concerning ourselves with those unknowable quantities.
These days, I had also learned some specialized terms alongside Sister Lucia and the others, but specialized terms are just labels; if relied on too heavily, they can restrict one’s thinking.
After all, naming is merely an aid to understanding; it cannot stifle thought. The reason I learn these is just to facilitate communication.
Yet even so, the communication between me and the older witches remains less than smooth.
If all else fails… I took out a coin.
“The Coin of Laughing at Fate’s Incompetence,” “Reverse Luck,” or called “The Coin of Misfortune,” regardless of how it’s referred to, these are its titles.
Its existence feels like the world played a joke on me.
Its birth allowed that alchemist of fortune known as Trix to test its effects and side effects for me.
However, I did not interpret it according to the test data.
Perhaps in Sister Trix’s view, it is merely an extraordinary item with remarkable characteristics and side effects.
But to me, it is a medium of communication with the main world, drawing on fortune.
Of course, this communication isn’t the direct connection generated by spirit vision at the reality level but an indirect communication through a game of chance.
“Little Han… what are you doing?”
The witches were surprised to see me stand up; it hasn’t even been a few minutes of rest!
I couldn’t be starting again, could I?
What an efficiency fanatic!
However, some witches also noticed the coin I was fiddling with.
“I want to try the plan I just mentioned; if it doesn’t work, I’ll take a few days off to organize my thoughts,” I said.
Hearing me speak so decisively, the nearby sisters didn’t stop me.
Inspiration is unpredictable; their urging for Little Han to rest was also out of concern that she might stubbornly stick to one line of thought.
I once again walked toward that massive figure, casually tossing the coin in my hand and catching it.
Just as I was about to flip the coin to face the price I would have to pay…
My foot suddenly halted.
I looked at the coin of misfortune resting in my palm, the face up… was the one reflecting the silhouette of my face!
I held the coin with my thumb and index finger, gazing at the mocking curve at the corner of its mouth…
Did I… guess correctly?
How could that be… Sister Trix had validated under numerous experiments that when the coin of misfortune activated, it was impossible for the holder to get the expected side!
After all, a flip to the desired side would require paying an equal price to welcome the expected result!
Alas—
A subtle and swift cracking sound rang out between my fingers.
In my shock, “The Incompetence of Laughing at Fate” split in half, the originally vibrant red energy of fate began to dissipate in that moment, wisps of crimson fading away… a thread of fortune rapidly disappeared into the void.
This process I perceived as a moment shrinking!
Fortune doesn’t just vanish without reason, it dives deeper into the true time.
I was at the Floating World level of spirit vision.
Then, the layers I could not “see”… the real world… the place where the consciousness of the main world resides!
Then…
“Sister Lucini and all the sisters… shall we do this together this time?” I looked at the fractured coin in my hand and carefully put it away, turning to the group of witch sisters behind me.
“The composition of consciousness is complex and intangible; relying solely on my capabilities and wisdom as a little witch feels insufficient. Perhaps by integrating all of your thoughts and ideas, we might create different sparks?”
