Chapter 78 – Moira! Help!
by spirapira“Vasida, Sylph, good morning! Why are you two coming out of the same dormitory?”
Sylph: “.(●-●).”
Vasida: “.(~).”
“Morning~ Moira~”
Mo Lan recoiled at the sight of their dark circles—one pair large, one pair small.
These two looked like they’d just been dug out of the ground.
“What were you two doing last night?
When I was staying up late before, you lectured me like you had it all figured out. Now that it’s your turn, you don’t know how to take care of yourselves?
Sleep deprivation affects mana growth—the Headmistress said so herself!”
Mo Lan said disapprovingly.
“Essays~”
“The essays~”
Vasida and Sylph wore miserable expressions. One grabbed Mo Lan’s left hand, the other clung to her right arm.
“Moira, essays are so hard to write! We spent the entire night and only finished one—’On the Magical Applications of Different Energies’!”
“???” Mo Lan’s vision went dark. “Don’t tell me you only started writing last night?”
“We started reading Volume Seven of 《The Continent of Valen》 at noon! I originally thought I’d definitely be able to finish the paper, but after I finished reading, I still had no idea how to start writing.”
Besides, the world of Valen didn’t have plagiarism checks!
“Can you show me what you wrote last night? Let me see where the problem actually is.”
“Here!”
The little witches all handed over the fruits of their all-night labor.
Mo Lan looked through them one by one.
Aside from Vasida and Sylph, who’d had more time than the others and managed to fill one small sheet of parchment, the rest of the little witches had written in enormous letters with minimal content—concise to the extreme. And even with so few words, they’d gone off-topic!
The essay title was clearly ‘On the Magical Applications of Different Energies,’ yet what they’d written was either ‘The Applications of Mana and Magical Power’ or ‘The Classification of Energies.’
Those who’d written something at least tangentially related were already doing well. Most had produced work completely unrelated to the prompt, reading more like casual journal entries.
Mo Lan even suspected they hadn’t found the corresponding chapters in Volume Seven of Mo Lan asked, puzzled.
“What’s prompt analysis?”
The little witches stared back with faces full of question marks, which in turn left Mo Lan dumbfounded.
She suddenly remembered how different she was from them.
In her previous life, she’d at least been a university student. She’d done countless practice problems, and deciphering an examiner’s intent was second nature.
After receiving Earth’s memories, her knowledge had only grown more extensive.
But the little witches were different.
Little witches were born knowing the witch language—they could speak and write it innately.
But before enrolling, the only books they’d ever read were the Mo Lan had an epiphany. If her guess was correct, this morning’s class would probably be a reckoning for their first assignment.
There was a good chance they’d be made to rewrite their essays after class.
The walk to the Castle was long—there was still time to salvage things on the way!
“Everyone, look at this title first: ‘On the Magical Applications of Different Energies.’ The title contains at least two keywords… Applications and Energies, right? Once you’ve identified the keywords, we can quickly search the reference book for the corresponding content. The table of contents and chapter headings are your best friends…”
Mo Lan’s Essay Writing Mini-Lecture was now in session.
The little witches floated their Grimoires open before them, following along with Mo Lan’s explanations.
“By the Sorceress! So that’s where the answer was! No wonder I couldn’t write anything—I was reading the chapter before it!”
“You found the answer that quickly? No wonder I spent all night writing while you, Moira, finished in just a few hours. I was reading from the very first word! So that’s how you’re supposed to use the table of contents and chapter headings!”
…
Mo Lan waved her hand. Time was running short, and she needed to leave them enough time to revise their essays. She pressed on:
“Once you’ve properly analyzed the prompt and know what to write about, and you’ve found the key chapters to read, the next step is to search the text with your questions in mind.
At this point, pay attention to key sentences.
If there are no key sentences, then you’ll need to extract and summarize the information yourself.
Lady Amisha assigns essays so that we learn how to read—how to find answers in books.
So our essays need to present the answers to the questions comprehensively.
Being concise and succinct is perfectly fine. What matters is being thorough and accurate…”
Step by step, Mo Lan broke down exactly how this essay should be written, laying it all out clearly for the little witches.
The little witches, who had been flailing about like headless flies, suddenly found both a method and a direction for writing their essays.