Chapter 139: There Is Always a Bigger World

That day, after speaking with Magna, Melisandre left the Winterborne mansion.

She didn’t even speak with anyone, not a single word. She simply left the building with a deeply thoughtful expression on her face, called her giant owl, and quickly flew away.

Celeste and Rowena couldn’t help but wonder what exactly had happened when they saw her like that.

They could only learn about it later when they asked Magna about it, unable to contain their curiosity.

He also didn’t hide anything and simply told them what he had said about the Shadows.

"So you think Shadows actually automatically draw mana patterns with their imaginations?" Rowena asked in surprise as she looked into Magna’s golden eyes.

She actually thought the idea was quite likely to be true.

Especially knowing that Magna’s eyes had the special trait that allowed him to see mana patterns inside people’s bodies made his assumption even more believable.

Even Titus and Corvo were there in the room, feeling the same shock after hearing that.

The two Shadows had cast spells countless times without ever thinking about how it was actually possible. They had simply assumed the 5 Mothers had created them that way.

For the first time, they were really using their brains to try to understand it.

Rowena’s Shadow, Corvo, even raised his hand, and a stream of fire appeared in the center of his palm as he asked, "What do you see inside me?"

Magna looked at his body and could clearly see the golden lines running through it like blood vessels, forming a pattern.

Before answering him, he turned to Rowena. "Can you cast the same spell?"

Rowena immediately nodded as she chanted.

"O Eclipse of the Fading Sun, Darkness that has gathered since before the First Light, Blind Mother of Ash and Ruin. Grant me your sacred fire."

The same fire appeared on her palm, but it was more vibrant and larger.

Looking at the golden pattern inside her, Magna saw that it almost perfectly matched the one inside Corvo’s body, proving his guess was correct.

"Your pattern is just a little flawed. You probably can’t imagine the spell clearly enough while casting it." He explained it to Corvo, making the Shadow eye him strangely.

Because of that small flaw, his fire was lacking in size and quality compared to Rowena’s.

"Can you check mine?" Titus also asked as he used a spell, causing a spear made entirely of ice to appear in his hand.

When Magna saw the spear, his face slightly frowned as he remembered the last time a few of them had pierced through his body. Still, he turned to Celeste and looked at her.

Celeste immediately cast the spell as well, and an identical ice spear appeared in her hand. However, hers looked more durable and had a much smoother shape, making the difference in quality obvious.

"You need to improve your imagination more." Magna gave them the advice, as the patterns inside their bodies had quite a big difference.

Titus wasn’t disheartened by hearing that his imagination was lacking. Instead, he asked quite expectantly, "Do you have a method to make us use bigger spells?"

It was a problem for Shadows that they couldn’t use spells beyond the amount of mana they could get from their Witches.

For example, Titus had no way to use Celeste’s Glacial Calamity spell because he simply couldn’t draw enough mana to use it.

Magna shook his head. "That’s probably a flaw with the Shadow-Witch contract. You just need to find a better way to widen the mana flow so you can take more mana."

Though he had no idea how to solve that problem, everyone in the room was already looking at him as if he were some divine beast whose wisdom they were trying to benefit from.

Magna ignored their strange looks as he asked about something that had been bothering him. "By the way, she didn’t ask anything about my eyes. Do you think she doesn’t know about them?"

He knew Celeste hadn’t reported his actual bloodline trait or told anyone that he could gain new bloodline traits by eating mana-rich food.

But he knew she had reported the one about his eyes, as it was something that could eventually be discovered anyway.

"She probably knew but just chose to stay silent about it." Celeste answered as she was the first one to shake off the shock.

"The Tower has strict rules against speaking openly about rare bloodline traits."

Magna found that strange. "Why do they try to keep them a secret?"

Rowena had said something similar before as well, saying there were rumors that the Tower was secretly raising Witches and Shadows who had extremely rare bloodline traits, like Magna’s eyes.

As far as he knew, the Tower was the undisputed power in the world. Which made the secrecy illogical.

If no other force could stand above them, why bother hiding anything at all?

However, it seemed he was still just a little kid who knew nothing about this world.

Celeste laughed bitterly as she answered him. "The world is big. And there are many realms as big as ours, or even bigger. There are entities out there that terrify even the Tower."

Hearing those words gave Magna slight goosebumps, as Celeste’s voice was trembling slightly even while saying them.

Rowena also supported her with her own words, making the subject even more terrifying. "Even though we most of the time don’t approve of the Tower’s way of governing, it’s still there to protect us from unseen threats. That’s why they are constantly looking for and trying to explore new realms."

Magna finally understood why they were so eager to find and explore new realms, and why they were willing to risk so many people’s lives to do so.

It was like the idea that just because you couldn’t see any enemies didn’t mean you had no enemies.

Sometimes, finding your enemies before they found you was your responsibility, so you would be prepared when they decided to harm you.