Chapter 218 – The Golden Bird Clan

Mo Lan brewed the soothing throat potion while Vasida and the others observed and studied from the side.

In the end, each of them filled a small bottle with the potion.

Just a tiny sip could restore a hoarse voice to normal. A bottle this small would be enough to get them through several Draconic classes.

Mo Lan finished cleaning up the crucible, then glanced at her watch. “Oh no! It’s one fifty!”

Lilith only felt a blur before her eyes, and suddenly the space beside her was empty.

Mo Lan ran the fastest—gone in the blink of an eye. It was obvious she’d been integrating the Vampire’s Super Speed quite extensively.

Vasida and Sylph had already reached the doorway.

Iris was a bit slower, having only made it a few steps out.

“Good thing third-years don’t have any required classes on Friday afternoons,” Lilith said.

She still had time to pick some Dewdrop Flowers before heading back to the dormitory for lunch.

Mo Lan and the others activated Super Speed, sprinting out of the greenhouse, then mounted their broomsticks and shot into the sky with a whoosh.

They pushed their broomsticks to maximum speed, racing all the way to Magic Training Grounds No. 1.

Amisha had just floated away from the training grounds’ skylight when she heard a shout: “Headmistress! Out of the way!”

Immediately after, a purple figure dove through the skylight.

A short distance behind, two more young witches called out: “Headmistress! Wait up!”

And after them, one more.

Amisha raised an eyebrow. Weren’t these the young witches from Draconic class? Their voices had recovered that quickly?

But what were they in such a hurry for?

While she was puzzling over this, Vasida, Sylph, and Iris—who had desperately caught up—all flew through the skylight ahead of her.

Just as Iris entered through the skylight, the Academy bell began to toll.

But she let out a long sigh of relief. “Made it!”

Regardless of whether she’d landed by the time the bell rang, getting through the skylight before the Headmistress counted as making it on time.

After Amisha entered, her gaze lingered on each of their four faces for a second before she spoke. “Magic Q&A class—you all took it last academic year, so you know the rules. Go ahead and ask!”

Mo Lan, Vasida, Sylph, and Iris: “⊙▃⊙!”

They’d forgotten it was Magic Q&A class. Although it was a required course, attendance was at each student’s own discretion based on their individual needs.

If you had questions, you came. If you didn’t, you could skip it. You could leave as soon as your questions were answered, or even show up partway through the session to ask something.

Even if they’d been late, it wouldn’t have mattered.

Their frantic dash now felt like a joke.

Iris rubbed her broomstick with a mournful expression—she’d been going so fast that a whole tuft of bristles had fallen off!

“No questions?” Amisha looked toward Mo Lan, and the other young witches did the same.

She was usually the first to ask, and she always had the most questions.

Moreover, most of the questions Mo Lan asked were ones the others didn’t understand either.

So every Magic Q&A class always began with Mo Lan’s questions.

“Yes, yes, yes!”

Despite the little mix-up, Mo Lan quickly shifted into class mode. She pulled out the little notebook she always carried in her satchel, flipped to a certain page, and handed it to Lady Amisha. “This is everything! All the questions I’ve accumulated over the break and since the semester started.”

Amisha was long accustomed to this. She worked through the questions in the notebook one by one with practiced ease.

“Can you definitively determine a potion’s medicinal properties solely from the vapor ring that appears when brewing is complete, along with the potion’s final color and viscosity? Without tasting it?”

“You can. Tasting is only necessary during the research and development phase of new potions.”

…

“Culinary Magic, Sewing Magic, planting magic, and tool-commanding Cleaning spells are all based on Magic Infusion. Are they fundamentally the same type of magic? Can a witch use Attuning to command any object?”

“Although they’re all based on Magic Infusion, they are not the same magic—they can only be called the same category of magic.

The cookware used in Culinary Magic, the sewing tools used in Sewing Magic, the farming implements used in planting magic, and the cleaning tools used in Cleaning spells are all distinctly separate and cannot be interchanged.

A witch’s Magic Infusion can attune many things. Some objects develop special effects after being attuned, but only certain items can be commanded by a witch after prolonged Attuning.

The effects of those that can be commanded are also fixed.

Currently, the known objects that can be commanded after Attuning are: cookware, sewing tools, farming implements, cleaning tools, and weapons.

These gave rise to the corresponding disciplines: Culinary Magic, Sewing Magic, Agricultural magic, Household Magic, and the flying dagger technique.”

…

Lady Amisha answered Mo Lan’s recorded questions one after another.

Her questions were, as always, different from those of other young witches. The others asked things like why a particular spell kept failing, why their magic progress had plateaued despite constant practice, or why their potion quality wouldn’t improve—practical concerns.

Only Mo Lan asked questions that were almost entirely theoretical.

These were things one would naturally learn from reading more books and gaining more experience. Amisha could answer them without much thought.

She worked through them without a moment’s hesitation—until the last question: “Can you practice magic on the messenger summoned by the messenger spell?”

Amisha faltered in a rare moment of shock. “Don’t tell me you’ve already been practicing magic on the golden bird messenger? Is the golden bird hurt?”

They were witches, not demons—who would think to use a golden bird messenger as a test subject?

Mo Lan shook her head.

She had written down this question on a day when she’d wanted to practice magic but couldn’t find a test subject.

At the time, the golden bird she’d summoned had pecked her in annoyance because she had no letter for it to deliver. That was when she’d wondered if she could test a bad luck hex on the golden bird.

It pecked her—surely making it suffer a bit of bad luck would be fair?

But because the golden bird didn’t look like a real, physical creature—more like a mass of energy created from mana—she wasn’t sure a bad luck hex would even work, so she’d abandoned the idea and simply noted the question.

Amisha breathed a sigh of relief. “Whatever you do, never use harmful magic on a golden bird. You’ll be put on the golden bird clan’s delivery blacklist! Unless you never want to use the messenger spell again.”

“Golden birds are actually real living creatures!” Mo Lan was shocked too. “They clearly look incorporeal! Oh—right, it did hurt quite a bit when it pecked me.”

“Not only are golden birds real, their entire clan shares a connected consciousness. Offend one, and you’ve offended the entire golden bird clan.

Golden birds don’t have much offensive power, but they can travel between the Elemental Plane and the Material Plane. They fly at extreme speeds and possess concealment abilities at the rule level—only those they acknowledge can detect their presence. They are the finest messengers in existence.

In all of Valen, only we witches have earned the golden bird clan’s recognition, allowing us to summon them from the Elemental Plane through the messenger spell at the cost of magical power, to deliver our letters.

All golden birds share an interconnected consciousness, so you absolutely must not do anything rash!

Offend them, and they have no real way to take revenge on you—but no golden bird will ever answer your messenger spell again.” Amisha emphasized once more.