Chapter 59 – It Finally Sprouted

Mo Lan and her friends had barely finished dinner before Lilith shooed them out of her dormitory.

“Off you go, off you go! You have classes tomorrow!”

Every extra second spent with the younger students felt like another chip off her dignity as a senior.

Mo Lan and the other two, however, noticed nothing unusual about Lilith’s behavior.

Full and content, they happily headed back.

After washing up, Mo Lan lay on the wooden bed in her room. Using her Grimoire magic, she levitated the Grimoire above her—just like how she used to lie in bed back in her previous life, before the apocalypse, reading novels on a phone propped up by a stand.

Except that 《What Exactly Is Magic》 was far more tedious than any novel.

“Magic is the application of energy.

Energy exists in different forms, but only mana is the most fundamental energy. Mana possesses the greatest versatility and power among all forms of energy.

All energy forms beyond mana are merely variations of it…”

As Mo Lan read on, drowsiness crept in.

With a thud, the heavy Grimoire lost its support and dropped straight down, smacking her right in the face, eliciting a cry of pain.

All sleepiness vanished instantly.

She peeled the book off and rubbed her nose bridge, then checked the mirror. Thankfully, no lasting damage!

“I was wrong. The Grimoire spell is nothing like a phone stand!”

Mo Lan learned her lesson. She set the Grimoire aside and went to sleep.

“Dong~ dong~”

Another new week.

Mo Lan left the dormitory with her satchel on her back, the Grimoire floating beside her, a piece of Breadfruit Cake clenched between her teeth, and a scroll of parchment in her hands being infused with mana.

Hearing the door of the dormitory to her left open, she looked over. “Morning, Vasida!”

“Morning, Moira! Why are you carrying so much stuff?” Vasida had nothing but a single Wand in her pocket.

Living next to the Breadfruit Grove, her Devouring Stomach was stuffed full every day. She had gone from a little witch who would faint from hunger at the slightest mishap to the little witch with the most reserves in her belly.

With afternoon classes in the Planting District today, she hadn’t even brought snacks for lunch.

“Well, the walk to the Castle is so long—might as well find something to do along the way!” Mo Lan said.

Vasida rubbed her eyes, activated her Witch Sight, and looked at the parchment in Mo Lan’s hands. Sure enough, it was being infused!

You could do it like that?

“Moira, wait for me—let me grab my parchment too.”

She zipped back into her dormitory and emerged again looking just like Mo Lan.

“Let’s go! Time to get Sylph!”

Mo Lan and Vasida stood outside the yard of Dormitory No. 68, took a deep breath, and called out at the top of their lungs: “Sy~lph~! Time for school!”

Click~ The dormitory door opened, and Sylph came out cradling a flower pot. “Moira, Vasida! My Wind Chime Flower has finally sprouted!”

“Really?” Mo Lan and Vasida immediately crowded in for a look.

Sylph had planted the Wind Chime Flower seed that appeared in her Box of Ten Thousand Seeds on the morning of her second day at the Academy.

She kept it on her bedroom windowsill, and the first thing she did every day when she returned to the dormitory was check whether it had sprouted.

Mo Lan and Vasida had both heard her wonder aloud many times why the Wind Chime Flower still hadn’t sprouted.

Now, right in the center of the clay pot, a yellow-green sprout leaf had emerged, while another was still curled up, not yet unfurled.

“It really sprouted?” Mo Lan’s face was full of wonder. She even wanted to blow on it to see if it would jingle.

But since this was a seed from Sylph’s Box of Ten Thousand Seeds, reason told her to keep her mouth shut.

She could be forgiven for her lack of worldly experience.

The Emerald Creek Plains had plenty of wildflowers and grasses, but no Wind Chime Flowers. Mo Lan had only ever read descriptions of them in the little stories in the 《Young Witch’s Primer》.

Supposedly, when you blew on these flowers, they would jingle.

Some witches who loved liveliness would plant them around their homes.

Other witches who preferred peace and quiet would ruthlessly eradicate any Wind Chime Flowers in their vicinity.

Vasida, equally lacking in worldly experience, had a witch mother who was exactly the quiet-loving type—wherever she went, Wind Chime Flowers went extinct.

Vasida couldn’t resist. She pursed her lips and gently blew a puff of air.

Nothing happened.

“Haha!” Even Sylph couldn’t help laughing. “It’s still just a tiny sprout! It hasn’t even bloomed yet—you can’t make it ring! Once it flowers, I’ll give each of you a string to hang by your windows. When the wind passes through, they’ll jingle—they can capture the sound of the wind!”

Vasida: “…”

Mo Lan: New knowledge acquired!

Having shared her joy with her friends, Sylph contentedly carried her precious flower pot back to its place, then got ready to head out for school.

“By the way, what are the parchment scrolls for? Do we need them in class?” Sylph asked.

“Moira says the walk to the Castle is too long, so she’s finding something to do along the way,” Vasida explained. “You should bring a scroll too! Infusing while walking is no trouble at all—the sooner we finish copying the complete set of ‘The Birth of an Exquisite Cover,’ the better.”

Sylph was deeply inspired. And so, the number of little witches heading to school clutching parchment scrolls grew by one.

The other young witches wanted to follow suit, but their magical power penetration wasn’t strong enough to infuse an entire scroll at once.

“What’s the big deal? Just infuse a little, then unroll a bit more. Roll up the finished part as you go—by the end, you’ll still have a fully infused scroll of parchment,” Mo Lan said.

“(○o○)!” The young witches scattered in all directions.

Each ran back to grab her own parchment.

The new covers would take a while to finish, but blank inner pages could be prepared in abundance!

If they couldn’t copy every book in the entire Academy’s collection before graduation, they might regret it for the rest of their lives!

Along the mountain path, the young witches formed a long procession, infusing parchment as they walked.

Lilith, who had woken up early to fly to the library on her broomstick to copy “The Birth of an Exquisite Wand,” passed overhead and saw this scene. She was utterly dumbfounded.

She really wanted to wake up all her classmates who were still sleeping in and make them look—the first-years had gone absolutely mad with their diligence.

Thinking back to last year, what had they been doing on the walk to school?

Chasing each other around, gossiping and chatting?

And what were the juniors doing? Infusing parchment.

That overachieving junior was even infusing parchment while reading a book at the same time!

No, no—she had to get out of here!

“Wow! It’s Lilith! She’s heading to the Castle this early—she works so hard! As expected of a Sorceress!”

“All Sorceresses work just as hard! Though Moira puts in a bit of extra effort.”

“We need to work harder too!”

“Mm!”

The young witches watched the figure recede into the sky, encouraging one another.

Mo Lan glanced up briefly, then went back to reading the Grimoire.

“What Exactly Is Magic”—the book that had been so sleep-inducing when she read it in bed last night—felt packed with substance this morning.

This morning’s 《Fundamentals of Magic Theory》 class would be covering this very book, so reading ahead served as a preview.

With something to occupy her along the way, she actually felt the time had passed too quickly by the time they reached the Castle.

Today she needed to find the theory classroom she’d never been to before, so Mo Lan finally shifted her attention from the book to checking the map.