Release that Witch

The theater performance was a great success. Within the last two weeks “Cinderella” had been performed three times, many of the citizens had even seen it more than once. If the first performance was the needed propaganda and announcement to attract so many people to come watch, the next two plays were completely self-sustaining. There were even citizens who came to the City Hall and asked when the fourth performance would be held.

Getting such a respond, Roland was naturally overjoyed; they were all so completely attracted to the story that almost no one raised any objections as to why Cinderella got help from a witch. Wait until “The rooster crows at Midnight” gets played next month, which was almost a special performance for the impoverished commoners, it was still unknown how the serfs would view the treatment and assistance of the witches during the drama.

Another thing that pleased Roland was that the crew had settled down in town and even accepted the existence of the witches – after the third performance, Irene took the initiative to find Rolland, and had asked him from where the unexpected “sound accompaniment” had come, so Roland then introduced Echo to her.

With Nightingale’s secret observation, they discovered that although Irene was clearly surprised, she didn’t show any resentment or disgust. After she regained her composure, she seemed to be very curious and peppered Echo with many questions, even making her demonstrate her magical sound several times over. The result being that Echo soon joined the theater group, becoming the master of music who was orchestrating from behind the scenes – in order to avoid the possibility of any accidents, Irene alone paired up with Echo when they did a sound rehearsal, withholding it from the knowledge of the cast. There was no doubt that the musical accompaniment would soon reach new heights at the upcoming performance.

Another matter that made him jubilant, was that the castle would soon step into the era of tap water.

The towering water tower stood tall and upright in the castle backyard. Its body and framework was made out of welded iron, giving it a triangular shape. Attached to the top of the tower —with a diameter of two meters and a height of three meters— was an iron bucket. The water valve within the bucket made it very convenient to control the water level. The tower was welded by Anna and afterward covered by a rust-proof coating by Soraya, and finally, with the help of Hummingbird’s magic, they eliminated most of the weight in order to install it on the previous erected cement base.

Due to the height of the castle, the water tower in the castle backyard was even higher than Redwater River’s river bank, with a height of 12 meters it was almost level with the castle’s peak. In order to prevent the tower from collapsing, Roland surrounded the tower by a wall and in this way connected the tower with the castle.

The steam engine was set up outside the backyard and used to supply the water tower with water by pumping up water from the well in the castle’s back garden. Taking a closer look, it could be seen that it was already the third generation of the steam engine, with the biggest improvement being the great reduction of the working noise.

At each connection point of the steam engine, a spacer was equipped – the light blue spacer was drawn with Soraya’s sky coloring, making it soft while also being very though, significantly reducing the machine’s vibrational noise. The inside of the cylinder and the piston’s edge were covered with a grass coloring, which lessened the leakage while at the same time also improved the operational efficiency. Components that were prone to tremors, such as the exhaust pipe, had been entirely replaced with coated hoses.

In order to prevent that the steamer from getting scorched and drenched by sun and rain, as well as for further noise reduction, Roland built a small house around it, and had Soraya coat all of the inner walls with a honeycomb design, which was used like a porous sound-absorption material. The practical test showed that even during the night, the noise of the machine would be so faint that the people sleeping inside wouldn’t be woken up.

However, Roland’s attempt to automatically feed the steam engine failed. He originally envisaged that the steam engine would be regulated by a fly ball which would control the valve in the wood box. As the steam pressure dropped, the fly ball was meant to open the valve, so that the firewood in the wood box would roll into the furnace, but that way the regulator would have to do a lot of work, otherwise with the weight of the fly ball alone it couldn’t drive the valve.

After a lot of deliberation, Roland finally decided to give up. At the beginning, the wood box would have to be filled to the maximum, and when it was used up it had to be filled again by a workforce anyway, in that case would be better to arrange for staff to just fill the water tank with water each day.

The final step was to install the water system into the castle – which included faucets, showers, pipes and the corresponding drainpipes.

The castle wasn’t like the brick houses of the newly constructed district, the holes, roofs and walls built out of stone caused the transformation of the castle to be very inconvenient. So this step had taken nearly a week, but in order to live a happy life, Roland personally directed Karl to change one room on the second and the third floor into a bathroom.

For this, Soraya’s new ability once again played a vital role, after the drainage pipes on the ground were paved with cement; she painted a thin layer of grass over the ground, not only making it waterproof, but in this way walking in the bathroom was like also as comfortable as walking on grassland. When she’d done this, Roland directly permitted her to coat the whole room. Turning the ceiling into a blue sky and clouds, while on the surrounding walls far-off valley and grassy areas could be seen and the walls of the bathtub became crystal clear, just like a jewel.

On the day at which the water system was working, the Prince called all of the witches to the bathroom to let them finally experience for themselves this wondrous achievement.

The water tank in the backyard was filled with water, so when he turned on the faucet, the water rushed out of the pipe.

“From now on, there is no longer the need to get the water from the well,” Roland proudly proclaimed. “It is not necessary to use the same bathwater for three days. You only have to stand under the shower and pull the lever.”

“Where does the water come from?” Lightning stuck out her tongue and tasted the water, “It’s sweet.”

From below Lighting, Macy stretched out her head and followed her example, “Very sweet goo!”

Seeing a third one trying to taste the water, Roland stopped Nana, “Those who want to drink water, can only do so after it has been boiled. The water from this can only be used for hand washing and bathing.”

“This is… the siphon principle, right?” Anna looked to Roland, her lake like blue eyes flashed with intelligence.

“What is that?” Hummingbird asked as she raised her hand.

Under Scroll’s teaching, every witch in the class had gotten used to the habit of raising their hand whenever they had a question.

” ‘Elementary Physics’ says when the level in two containers is not equal, and if the two tanks are connected by a pipe, no matter what shape the pipe has, under the force of gravity the liquid will always level out.” Anna explained what she remembered, “Our current position is lower than the water tower, so the water will continue to flow to here.”

“That’s entirely correct,” Roland praised. Being able to link the learned knowledge with the reality, really was worthy of a talented person.

“What about this?” Nightingale asked, curiously pointing to the shower, “Why does it have so many holes in the bottom?”

Roland turned the valve open, letting thin water droplets spray out, “It’s for the purpose of making it easier for people to take a bath. Just by standing under the shower, an individual can easily clean their body.”

“So that was the reason you were rolling around in the castle this whole week, to make it more comfortable to take a bath?” Lily curled her lips and whispered, “It’s really worthy of the luxurious life of a Lord.”

“Lily!” Scroll scolded with a frown.

“Never mind,” Roland waved his hand, indicating that he did not mind her words, “The pursuit of enjoyment is one of the biggest sources of human progress, and I am not an exception to that.”