Chapter 16 – The Goblin in the Farmlands

Chapter 16 – The Sprite in the Farmlands

The next day, Mo Lan was woken by the sound of bells.

Starting from six o’clock, the bells rang every hour.

At first, the extremely drowsy Mo Lan managed to force herself to ignore the sound, but when the bells struck nine times, she finally couldn’t hold back any longer and opened her eyes.

She was completely and thoroughly awake now.

She rubbed her dry, stinging eyes, shook her exhausted head, and went downstairs to wash up.

The water she’d carried back yesterday still had a little left, but after brushing her teeth and washing her face, there wasn’t a single drop remaining.

She didn’t even have drinking water anymore.

Resigned to her fate, Mo Lan grabbed the bucket and headed out. The doors of the dormitories on either side were still closed—Vasida and Sylph hadn’t gotten up yet.

“Mo Lan! Good morning!”

“Good morning, Senior Lilith!”

Atop the cistern behind the front dormitory’s courtyard, Lilith was filling the tower with water. “Off to fetch water?”

“Yep!” Mo Lan watched the slender trickle flowing from the tip of her senior’s wand and fell silent.

Was she envious? Of course she was.

But if the same magic power could produce a Light spell that was both large and bright last night, why was the Spring Water spell’s flow so thin and small? Was that really normal?

“How did you sleep last night?” Lilith asked.

Mo Lan nodded, sporting two pitch-black dark circles under her eyes. “Not bad! It’s just that the morning bells were too loud!”

“Haha! Once you’ve learned the Silencing spell, it’ll be fine!” Lilith said with a laugh.

Mo Lan: “…”

Great, yet another spell to add to the list of must-learns for new students.

The Academy really was full of pitfalls at every turn. If you didn’t study magic properly, you simply couldn’t live a decent life here!

Mo Lan made her way toward the well.

This morning seemed to be a popular time for casting the Spring Water spell.

The senior students living in the front row of dormitories were all out in their courtyards, filling their own cisterns.

The more proficient a senior was in water magic, the thinner and more delicate her Spring Water spell stream appeared.

If Mo Lan hadn’t seen her own mother Shana—who wasn’t skilled in water magic—cast the Spring Water spell before, she would have almost believed that a thinner stream meant greater mastery.

She huffed and puffed back and forth between the well and the dormitory three to five times, and the seniors’ Spring Water spells were still flowing.

Fortunately, she wasn’t the only first-year little witch hauling water by hand in the morning. They all endured the seniors’ watchful gazes together.

Every single senior was warm and friendly, showing the utmost concern for their manual water-hauling efforts, yet not a single one offered to help them fill their towers with magic. They upheld the principle of “do your own work yourself” to the absolute letter.

Mo Lan lost count of how many trips she’d made. All she knew was that by the time the Academy bells struck twelve, her arms were so exhausted she couldn’t even straighten them, and only then did she stop.

The cistern was still only half full.

She hadn’t eaten breakfast either, and was both hungry and thirsty.

She cut off a small piece of breadfruit and gnawed through the whole thing with her brow furrowed the entire time. It was so sour she couldn’t even control her facial expressions.

Once her stomach felt somewhat full, she immediately stopped eating.

At this level of sourness, even if it was harmless to teeth and stomach, eating it as a staple food every day would be unbearable.

However, it was quite the pick-me-up. After finishing the breadfruit, all the discomfort from last night’s lack of sleep completely vanished.

Not wanting to gnaw on breadfruit again for dinner, Mo Lan found a vegetable basket and headed out the door.

Vasida passed by outside her dormitory carrying a bucket of water in each hand, her steps light and steady. Hearing the door open, she looked over.

“Mo Lan! Is your cistern full yet? I can help you! The seniors said the Academy forbids them from casually providing us with help in daily life, but there’s nothing wrong with us helping each other!”

Mo Lan shook her head. “I hauled some this morning. It’s enough for several days.” Although carrying water was tiring, she’d rather do what she could on her own.

After all, this was also part of the Academy’s training for them.

“So it’s still not full then…” Vasida said.

Sylph heard the voices and opened her door to come out too. She was gnawing on a breadfruit.

Vasida asked Sylph if she wanted help fetching water, and Sylph also declined.

She’d only gotten up a little later than Mo Lan and had already hauled several buckets of water herself.

Mo Lan then asked them, “Want to go collect ingredients together?”

“Sure!” Sylph had eaten breadfruit for both breakfast and lunch today. Her stomach was full, but just thinking about breadfruit made her mouth pucker with sourness.

“You two go ahead, I’ll pass. I ate too much last night and I’m still not hungry!” Vasida said.

For her, breadfruit provided a much stronger sense of fullness than ordinary ingredients.

Just stuff it straight into her stomach pouch—convenient and quick, without even having to endure the sour taste.

It was practically perfect for her.

Sylph went back to her dormitory and came out with a vegetable basket as well.

“The Ingredient Collection Station is near the planting area. We need to head that way!” Mo Lan said, consulting the map in the 《Newcomer’s Guide》.

“Let’s go!” Sylph swung her little hand with the basket on her arm.

The two of them walked out along the path at the edge of the dormitory area and turned left at the intersection.

After passing through the Breadfruit Grove, their view suddenly opened up wide.

Low fences enclosed a vast expanse of open fields.

Nearby were great stretches of farmland. Further away stood a row of buildings, and behind those buildings, the area was surrounded by tall, continuous hedgerow walls. The treetops peeking out above the walls were still visible.

The planting area was divided into farmland and an herb garden. Behind the hedgerows lay the herb garden.

The Ingredient Collection Station was at the row of buildings just outside the herb garden.

“Mo Lan! Look, quick!” Sylph pointed excitedly toward the farmland.

Mo Lan looked in the direction she was pointing, puzzled.

Exceptionally lush crops, large butterflies swooping and fluttering about—nothing particularly special. Compared to the farmland, she was more curious about what was growing in the herb garden, but unfortunately the hedgerow walls blocked her view.

“See that group of big butterflies in the middle—isn’t there a sprite among them?” Sylph could barely contain her excitement. “A tiny person with wings, who breeds and commands insects and tends to plants—exactly like the ones described in the 《Young Witch’s Primer》!”

Hearing this, Mo Lan hurriedly looked again, eyes wide. She stared for quite a while before barely managing to make out the one among the group of large butterflies that was different from the rest. Her excitement was every bit as intense as Sylph’s. “It really does look like a sprite!”

“Wearing a little skirt made of tiny green leaves—it should be a Green Leaf Sprite, the kind that specializes in cultivating and tending to plants! It’s so cute!”

Mo Lan, who could barely make out that the “butterfly” seemed to have arms and legs and was directing the other butterflies: “…”

Her eyes were practically bulging out of her head, and she still couldn’t see what the sprite looked like clearly, let alone identify what kind of sprite it was.

Remembering that Sylph’s father was an elf, Mo Lan didn’t find this strange at all.

Although regardless of the father’s race, a witch’s offspring would always be a witch, sometimes witches did inherit certain racial advantages and individual traits from their paternal bloodline–only beneficial traits were passed down, not weaknesses.

The elves’ extraordinary vision and hearing were among those traits.

Without the slightest hesitation, the two of them followed the small path between the fields, walking deeper into the farmland, the Ingredient Collection Station completely forgotten.

The Ingredient Collection Station would always be there—it wasn’t going anywhere. But an adorable, magical little sprite wasn’t something you got to see every day!