Chapter 199 – Eighteen Spells

Mo Lan composed herself. Picturing the casting effects from the Mo-Pic in her mind, she pointed her wand at the steel pen nib on the desk and cast the Sharpness spell.

Mana surged through her wand and enveloped the pen nib.

When it felt about right, she stopped casting.

Through her Witch Sight, the pen nib had indeed been coated with a layer of magical radiance.

Mo Lan gripped the pen and dragged it hard across the desk. The surface was scored with a groove half a centimeter deep.

The pen nib itself showed not the slightest sign of wear.

This was absolutely beyond what an ordinary steel pen nib could achieve!

Without question, the spell had succeeded.

She checked her Status Card.

【Magic: …Sharpness spell (Apprentice)】

Sure enough, it had already been recorded.

It wasn’t really all that surprising, when she thought about it.

The essence of Witch Magic was using casting commands to control mana or magical power to produce a specific magical effect.

Whether a casting command was clear and precise determined whether the spell would succeed.

In the past, Mo Lan might not have been able to accurately grasp the casting command for the Sharpness spell, because she had no reference and had to rely mostly on imagination.

But now, through the Mo-Pic book, she already had a crystal-clear impression of how this spell’s effects should manifest. Copying the model, she could reproduce it with near-perfect accuracy.

Although her casting speed wasn’t exactly fast, and she had to maintain intense focus throughout the process—with some extra mana loss during casting—none of that changed the fact that she had genuinely succeeded.

If the Sharpness spell worked, the other spells naturally could too.

The Vine Control spell required vine seeds or an existing vine plant as a casting target. Mo Lan thought of the loofah vines in the yard.

She used the Repair spell to fix the scratch on her desk, then pushed open the window in front of it.

Under the moonlight, the courtyard wall was covered in loofah vines.

This season’s loofahs had grown so well that they were encroaching on the growing space of the neighboring crops.

In the past, Mo Lan always had to manually guide the loofah vines by hand, reining in their growth. But now, she stared at the wall of loofah vines and cast the Vine Control spell.

Controlled by her magic, the loofah vines gathered themselves toward one section of the wall.

This spell was originally designed for controlling vines to attack enemies, bind them, or tie things up.

Vines under the Vine Control spell became tougher and harder to break free from, and the more formidable the vine was to begin with, the greater the magical enhancement it received.

Green Witches often planted thorny, poisonous, or fire-resistant vine plants along the fence surrounding their dwellings—all in preparation for this very spell.

Ordinarily they were just regular vines; under the Vine Control spell, they became bristling, ferocious sentinels.

Mo Lan’s freshly learned Apprentice-level Vine Control spell provided a barely perceptible magical enhancement to the loofah vines, but it turned out to be surprisingly useful for tidying them up.

When she used to do it by hand, she had to work painstakingly, trying her best not to damage the loofahs—like untangling a fragile ball of yarn.

With the Vine Control spell, she didn’t have to worry about any of that.

The only downside was that controlling a large area of loofah vines required proportionally more mana.

Fortunately, that amount of mana was nothing to speak of for a Sorceress like her.

Next came the Water Mirror spell. There wasn’t much to say about the Apprentice-level version—it was simply a magical mirror that could show reflections.

At most, she could produce a larger Water Mirror than other young witches. On her very first attempt, she conjured one large enough to reflect her entire upper body.

The clarity of the Water Mirror was quite decent too.

After that, a spider on the eaves was electrocuted by the Lightning Net.

A tiny, translucent spider emerged from the spider’s corpse, looking dazed and confused. Before long, it vanished.

No matter how she tried, she couldn’t summon it again.

Flames crawled over the spider’s carcass, and when the fire died away, not even a speck of ash remained.

A small pit appeared in the vegetable garden in the yard, and a palm-sized block of earth materialized on the desk. After a moment, the block shrank down to the size of a marble.

She picked up her glass of iced Breadfruit juice, took a sip, and tossed the little earth marble back into the yard.

Immediately afterward, blinding light and absolute darkness descended over the dormitory in rapid succession.

A small golden bird appeared from thin air. Mo Lan fiddled with it for quite a while, unable to figure out what to do with it. Somehow, the golden bird suddenly grew agitated, pecked her finger, then spread its wings and vanished.

Mo Lan could only read a flicker of irritation from it and had no idea what she’d done to provoke it.

She used the Cleaning spell on her injured fingertip, intending to heal the wound, only to discover it had already closed up.

She’d forgotten about the Apprentice-level accelerated healing she’d gained from integrating Vampire blood.

She picked up the pen—its Sharpness effect still lingering—and prepared to follow Senior Lilith’s example by testing the Healing spell on herself.

She mimed the motion several times, but in the end couldn’t bring herself to do it. She felt a twinge of regret for having electrocuted that little spider with the Lightning Net.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a second spider under the eaves for her to experiment on.

“Maybe I should try the Luck spell,” Mo Lan thought, and so she did. Then… nothing happened.

The Luck spell had been successfully cast—her Status Card had even recorded it—but she hadn’t been lucky enough to encounter some small creature she could test her magic on.

With wind elemental energy swirling around her feet, she took a lap around the yard but still couldn’t find any suitable casting material.

The Apprentice-level Luck spell had always been hit-or-miss, so this kind of result was perfectly normal.

Mo Lan didn’t dare cast it again. Although stacking the effect did work, this spell was best used only once per day. Whether or not luck actually arrived, it was best not to cast it again.

Overusing blessings would invite misfortune.

The Misfortune spell didn’t have that restriction, but it also couldn’t be stacked. More importantly, Mo Lan didn’t dare use it on herself.

Granted, an Apprentice-level Misfortune spell would amount to a prank at most, and like the Luck spell, it was hit-or-miss. But one of its magical properties was that it often “worked wonders” at critical moments.

Using this spell on an opponent was fine. Using it on herself—Mo Lan just couldn’t feel at ease about it.

Better to find a little spider or ant tomorrow and test it then.

On her way back to the dormitory, Mo Lan broke off a tree branch and brought it inside. She placed it on her desk and cast the Pathfinding spell on it. The branch spun on the desktop before finally coming to a stop.

Its thinner end pointed due south.

She’d barely read a few pages of Mo-Pic book 《The Apprentice Witch’s Practical Spellbook》, yet had already learned sixteen of the eighteen spells. The remaining two weren’t beyond her ability—she simply lacked casting targets.

“Wait—can I cast a spell without a target?”

Mo Lan cast the Healing spell at empty air. The magical energy, finding no target, simply dissipated into nothing. The spell itself had been successfully cast; there was just no visible effect.

She likewise cast the Misfortune spell at the air. A little dark cloud the size of an egg drifted out from her wand, wandering aimlessly in the direction the wand was pointing. After a moment, it reluctantly dissolved into the air.