Chapter 206 – Late-Night Snack Together

Chapter 206 – Late-Night Snack Together

Mo Lan and the others kept practicing until ten o’clock at night before finally calling it quits.

It wasn’t because they’d consumed more than half their mana.

The sharpening spell consumed far less mana than ordinary magic, and it had a sustained effect. Even after practicing for so long, they hadn’t used up much mana at all.

As for Mo Lan, although she’d also been practicing other, more mana-intensive magic, her total mana was considerably higher than Vasida’s and Sylph’s—already over three thousand Mana.

They only decided to stop because their stomachs had started growling so loudly they simply couldn’t ignore it anymore.

Mo Lan hadn’t had her fill of practice yet, but her stomach wouldn’t allow her to continue. “Looks like I’ll need to prepare some Breadfruit Cake before magic class from now on.”

“We could also go back and eat dinner first, then come back to practice! If we keep eating nothing but Breadfruit Cake, our Culinary Magic won’t get any practice. But let’s not worry about it today—it’s too late,” Vasida advised.

She also wanted to keep pace with Mo Lan and put in extra practice after class, but she didn’t want to eat Breadfruit Cake every single day.

Once she left the Academy, she would still need to rely on Culinary Magic.

Sylph chimed in as well: “That’s right! From now on we can bring the Mobile Kitchen Card with us. After class, we can go straight to the Ingredient Collection Station, or cook near the farmland. Any ingredients that aren’t available in the fields, we can just store in the farmland tool shed.

It’s not far from the Magic Training Grounds to either of those places.”

“True. And if we eat dinner early enough, we can use dietary fortification recovery magic to restore some mana too!”

Thinking about this, Mo Lan abandoned the idea of filling up on Breadfruit Cake. A proper meal wasn’t just about rewarding herself—it was also for practicing Culinary Magic and preparing for more magic practice afterward.

“How much more mana do you two need to use before you’ve consumed half?”

Sylph: “Two hundred and fifty.”

Vasida: “I still have two hundred and forty-five to go.”

She could now control whether or not to convert the food energy stored in the Devouring Stomach into mana for absorption.

During ordinary times when mana demand wasn’t high and the environment was perfectly safe, she wouldn’t draw on the energy stored in the Devouring Stomach.

This way, her mana consumption and recovery were about the same as any other young witch’s, and her food intake had decreased considerably too.

She only needed to eat a large meal all at once when the food energy stored in the stomach had been nearly “eaten” up by the stomach itself.

“It’s a shame that normally the stomach only eats my mana when it gets desperately hungry, but I can’t actively convert my mana into food energy to store in the stomach. I’ll just have to charge the extra mana into Gem Coins and save it,” Vasida said.

“That’s perfect for buying a few Dietary Fortification Cards! It’s not a waste at all,” Sylph said with a beaming smile.

“Then I’m buying a few Vampire Blood Cards, and Mutant Seed Cards!” Vasida said.

After their Sorceress Magic and cards had gone on public sale and they’d earned mana, the first thing they did was buy their friends’ magic and cards, beginning to improve themselves in every way possible.

Only Mo Lan, because she didn’t have much need for mutant crops at the moment, hadn’t purchased Sylph’s mutant crop planting magic.

Hearing Sylph and Vasida say they wanted to spend their surplus mana on buying cards, Mo Lan felt a small spark of delight.

This mana—whether it was charged into Gem Coins, used for card draws, or spent on purchasing cards—as long as it went through her Card Magic, she earned a cut from every transaction.

Sylph and Vasida were practically her best customers.

With that thought, Mo Lan said: “You’ve both worked hard practicing magic today. How about we grab a late-night snack together?”

Sylph’s and Vasida’s eyes lit up. The moment Mo Lan mentioned a late-night snack, their mouths started watering: “Sure! What are we eating?”

“For a late-night snack, it’s got to be barbecue with beer, obviously!” Mo Lan said. “I have spices back in my Dormitory. We just need to grab some meat.”

“Let’s go! To the Ingredient Collection Station!” Vasida grabbed the two of them and dashed toward the broom rack.

The three of them had barely flown out of the Magic Training Grounds when they came to a sudden stop: “Lilith! What are you doing here?”

“I just finished training and saw the skylight over here moving, so I came to check it out,” Lilith said.

“Have you eaten dinner yet? We’re about to go have a late-night snack,” Mo Lan asked.

Barbecue was always better with more people, after all.

“I could eat a bit more…” Lilith said. “I’m actually hungry too. What are you planning to eat? Barbecue! The weather’s nice tonight—why don’t we just grill right on the Cotton Grass Lawn!”

Mo Lan and the others looked up at the night sky. The moon was bright with only scattered stars—it was indeed lovely. “Sounds great!”

The four young Sorceresses flew off to the Ingredient Collection Station.

Passing by the enclosure where the Green Fruit Lamb lambs were kept, Mo Lan had an idea: “Let’s roast a whole lamb! Saves us the trouble of threading skewers.”

Lilith and the others didn’t know what Mo Lan meant by “threading skewers”—in Valen, barbecue was always done with whole animals or large cuts of meat.

But they had no objections to roasting a Green Fruit Lamb.

Green Fruit Lambs only ate a certain type of sour green wild fruit, so their meat had absolutely no gamey smell.

The older these sheep got, the firmer and tougher their meat became. It was the young lambs that had the most tender, succulent meat—rich but not greasy, delicious whether roasted or pan-fried!

Lilith drew her Wand and levitated a plump little Green Fruit Lamb out of the enclosure: “This one should be enough for all of us.”

Once they left the Ingredient Collection Station, they prepared to split up.

“I’ll go pick some lettuce from the fields. We can wrap the lamb meat in it,” Sylph said.

Vasida: “I have a bowl of steamed rice in my Dormitory fridge from yesterday. I’ll go get it and make egg fried rice!”

“Vasida, let’s go together. I need to grab some barbecue spices from my Dormitory,” Mo Lan said.

“Moira, you don’t need to go back for spices.”

Sylph said: “I recently cultivated a tree that produces a hundred common culinary spices. It’s currently in its mature phase—I’ll take you to my greenhouse to pick some. Whatever you need should all be there.

The greenhouse also has Fruit Lettuce growing. It has a better texture than regular lettuce and can even break down animal fat, so wrapping barbecue meat in it cuts the greasiness even more.”

“A tree that produces a hundred spices? Fruit Lettuce?” Mo Lan looked bewildered. “Sylph, you’ve grown something new again?”

Lilith and Vasida had long since purchased Sylph’s mutant crop planting magic and kept tabs on every new Mutant Seed Card that went on sale, so none of this surprised them in the slightest.

Only Mo Lan—after she had created the template for semi-finished Seed Cards and placed it in Sylph’s Management Card, authorizing her to add mutant crop seeds to complete the cards—had stopped paying attention entirely.

So she had no idea that Sylph’s army of mutant crops had gained new recruits.

The mutant crops she had seen before were mostly yield-boosting varieties like Giant-Eared Wheat, or ones that added some nice-to-have new functions to existing plants like Lantern Tomatoes. But a tree that produced a hundred different spices? That truly exceeded her imagination.

Mo Lan immediately changed her mind: “Let’s go. I’m coming with you to see this!”

“Then I’ll go ahead to the Cotton Grass Lawn and set things up,” Lilith said.