Chapter 223 – Wilds Living Class

It looked easy enough when Mo Lan did it, but when the young witches tried it themselves, it was a different story entirely. They simply couldn’t manage listening to video lessons and casting spells at the same time.

Mo Lan could wear one earbud without it affecting her spellcasting at all. But when the other witches wore one earbud, either they’d focus on the audio and their spells would go haywire, or they’d focus on casting and retain absolutely nothing from the lesson.

In the end, they managed — barely — to listen to review videos of material they’d already learned while practicing Magic, so long as they didn’t expect much from the listening portion. It was still somewhat productive, at least.

For them, learning new knowledge required complete focus for it to truly sink in. They couldn’t afford even the slightest distraction.

During the next day’s Wilds Living class, Mo Lan sat with her hair hanging loose. Hidden beneath her hair, one ear wore a Bluetooth earbud.

One ear listened to a video lesson; the other listened to Lady Amisha lecturing from the podium.

Mo Lan had already finished watching “Wilds Living Instructional Video 1” the previous evening, so everything Amisha was covering now was just review for her.

Because of that, she devoted more of her attention to the ear wearing the earbud.

The video wasn’t playing at normal speed either — it was set to 1.5x.

Amisha noticed, of course, but thinking of Mo Lan’s learning ability, she chose not to call her out and simply let it be.

The Wilds Living class was quite different from all the previous courses. In Mo Lan’s view, it was essentially the witch version of social studies, humanities, and geography.

The textbook was called Mo Lan’s Guide to Living in the Wilds Mo Lan, and it contained a map of the Witch’s Wilds along with the terrain and major products of each region.

Since much of the class required visual attention, the lesson playing in Mo Lan’s earbud was always a different required course — Mo Lan’s Introduction to Valen Common Tongue Mo Lan.

It was through the textbook and instructional videos that Mo Lan gained her first clear understanding of the Witch’s Wilds in its entirety.

The Witch’s Wilds was roughly the size of Earth’s entire Eurasian continent.

Emerald Creek Plains, where Mo Lan was born, lay in the northern part of the Wilds. Further north beyond that were the human kingdoms.

To the east of Emerald Creek Plains was Starlight Forest, where Sylph was born. The northern edge of Starlight Forest bordered the Elven Woods.

To the west of Emerald Creek Plains, past the Leafless Forest, lay one of the most treacherous natural hazards on the entire Continent of Valen — the Poison Mist Swamp, perpetually shrouded in toxic fog.

South of the Poison Mist Swamp was the paradise of necromancer witches — Gloom Valley. That was where Vasida had been born.

Further south from Gloom Valley were the Greenvale Highlands, filled with alpine jungles and boasting the highest elevation in the entire Witch’s Wilds.

In the eastern part of the Greenvale Highlands, there was also an old-growth forest — Sunset Forest.

Between Sunset Forest and Starlight Forest lay the Sea of Roses. Lilith’s parents lived there.

In the central part of the Witch’s Wilds, there was a large freshwater lake — Spring Sight Lake.

The climate around Spring Sight Lake was the most comfortable in the entire Wilds, worthy of being called spring-like all year round.

The Witch’s Town on the shores of Spring Sight Lake was the only settlement in the entire Wilds.

The Witch Council was located in Witch’s Town.

Across the entire Wilds, 99% of the land was pristine, undeveloped wilderness.

The witch population had always hovered around thirty thousand, and some of those witches had even chosen to settle outside the Wilds.

Scattered witch homes dotted the wilderness like drops of water falling into an ocean — completely inconspicuous.

The Witch’s Wilds wasn’t home to witches alone as an intelligent race. There were also some alien races that had submitted to and aligned themselves with the witches.

Some had migrated from outside the Wilds; others had been brought back by witches from other realms.

Without exception, all of these alien races had signed the Wilds Covenant, rendering them unable to betray the witches or the Wilds for the rest of their lives. They had essentially all been allowed into the Wilds because they were useful to the witches.

These alien races weren’t numerous. The largest group, the Spirit Cat Clan, had fewer than fifty spirit cats in their tribal territory, and most of those were young kittens or spirit cats that had unexpectedly lost their masters.

All the other spirit cats had become witches’ magical familiars.

The pristine nature of the Witch’s Wilds had given rise to abundant natural resources — a rich variety of plants, animals, and minerals, with each region having its own specialties.

These things were natural wealth belonging to every witch.

Many newly graduated witches would go out and gather these resources from the Wilds to sell, earning a bit of travel money before setting off on their journeys.

But no one ever thought they could get rich by trading these raw resources.

Many times, a resource point would go years without a single witch visiting it.

And the resources in the Wilds weren’t easy to gather, either — they came with their own dangers.

The Witch’s Wilds belonged to the witches, but that only meant witches were the dominant intelligent species. It didn’t mean the plants and animals there deferred to them.

Some magical beasts, magical plants, or elemental beings had developed rudimentary awareness, but as long as they weren’t born with true intelligence and possessed only territorial instincts, they weren’t classified as intelligent races.

The dangers posed by non-intelligent species were nothing to scoff at either.

Only the areas around Emerald Creek Plains and Spring Sight Lake were relatively safe for lower-ranked witches.

Young witches leaving the Wilds mostly departed through Emerald Creek Plains.

In the Wilds Living class, the most detailed coverage was given to these two areas — what landmarks and resource points could be found where, all explained with perfect clarity.

Other regions were only touched upon briefly. More detailed descriptions could be found in this year’s elective reading, Mo Lan’s Complete Encyclopedia of the Wilds Mo Lan.

But even just the detailed coverage of these two regions alone amounted to forty instructional videos, each three hours long — a testament to just how vast the Wilds truly were.

Mo Lan suspected that even riding a broomstick out of the Wilds would take several days.

With such vast territory, it was no wonder that sentiments like “the Wilds are a witch’s ultimate home,” “born in the Wilds, return to the Wilds,” and “the deeper your experience, the more you can appreciate the beauty of the Wilds” had endured throughout witch-kind for so long.

The Wilds lacked only one thing — the bustle of civilization. After seeing the outside world’s prosperity and satisfying their wanderlust, it was always the Wilds that ultimately gave witches a place to settle down.

The more powerful a witch, the more willing she was to return to the Wilds to live.

Mo Lan had watched only two sessions of the Wilds Living video course, and she’d already decided: once everything was over, she too would find a scenic spot in the Witch’s Wilds with beautiful mountains and clear waters, build a lovely and comfortable witch’s home, and retire there in peace to enjoy life.

Oh, right — how long was a Sorceress’s lifespan, anyway? At what age would a Sorceress be considered elderly?

Mo Lan only knew that if a witch didn’t break through beyond the Peak level, her lifespan was generally around five hundred years.

“A Sorceress’s lifespan?” Amisha shook her head. “All three Sorceresses are in the prime of their lives. Even Lady Traci, the eldest among them, shows no signs of Mana decline or life force deterioration — and she’s already over eleven hundred years old.”

Mo Lan’s inquiry to Lady Amisha yielded no definitive answer.

All she learned was that when Mana began to decline and life force began to wane, that was when aging started.

Witches who hadn’t surpassed the Peak level began aging after three hundred. Beyond the Peak level, things became unclear.

Because as long as one was still exploring the Well of the Sky and one’s magical power was still growing, the aging process would not begin.