Chapter 232 – One-Way Sound-Dampening Magic Circle

Mo Lan looked around her dormitory, examining everything she could, forcing herself to stay awake until the Rune Eye on her eyelids finally wore off before resting.

For a first casting, having the Rune Eye last half an hour was already quite good.

The next day, the first thing Mo Lan did upon waking was touch her eyes.

Thankfully, they weren’t swollen.

Her eyelids seemed exceptionally resilient—she wasn’t sure if it was due to the Vampire’s rapid healing.

After all, her rapid healing had already reached the Beginner level.

She drew the “Reveal” rune on both eyes and headed out to wander around.

Looking here, touching there, she studied the traces of alchemical runes throughout the Academy.

The Breadfruit Grove had them, the farmlands had them, the Ingredient Collection Station had them, the Castle had them, and even the mountain path leading to the Academy had them.

Once she started looking, traces of alchemical runes were absolutely everywhere.

Within the entire Academy Core Area, the place with the most rune traces was the greenhouse.

There were several rune combinations and alchemy magic circles she had never seen in any book.

Supposedly, they were all the work of the previous Headmistress.

After wandering the Academy for half a day, giving herself a self-taught lesson in alchemical rune identification, Mo Lan finally called it quits.

Her accumulated alchemical rune knowledge had skyrocketed.

It wasn’t until lunchtime that Mo Lan checked the class schedule in the 《Academic Year Plan》.

All the magic classes on Monday through Friday afternoons had been replaced with introductory alchemy courses.

Fortunately, the class location was no longer the West Tower from first year, but the laboratory.

The laboratory was situated northwest of the Academy Castle, not far from the training grounds.

“This way I can go straight to the training grounds to practice magic after class!” Mo Lan thought.

That was good news, at least!

Unlike the training grounds, which could only be accessed by flying in, the laboratory was somewhere young witches of the same year had visited before.

But they could only walk around outside—there was no way to actually get inside the labs.

Ten minutes before two o’clock, the young witches flew to the area outside the laboratory.

The laboratory complex was similar to the dormitory area—a cluster of many small buildings.

The laboratory buildings were just larger and more solidly built.

Beginner Alchemy Lab No. 1 was located on the outermost perimeter, visible as soon as they arrived.

This time, the young witches were surprised to discover that the door opened with just a touch, and they could walk right in.

Unlike before, when the door simply wouldn’t open, or even if it did, they’d be blocked from entering.

Inside the laboratory, there were large solid-wood tables, bigger than any classroom desks they’d had before.

Judging by the number, they were meant to serve as desks.

The accompanying chairs were mobile, height-adjustable stools with casters and pneumatic lifts.

Around each desk-and-chair set, nine floor tiles were made of a blue-veined variety none of them had ever seen before. From a distance, they looked like individual blue carpets.

Everywhere else had ordinary stone tiles—the same kind used throughout much of the Academy Castle.

Between each blue-veined tile area, there was a gap of one stone tile.

The blue-veined tile areas seemed to correspond with the magical lamp tracks on the ceiling—each desk-and-carpet set was paired with two magical pendant lamps.

The lamps were all mounted on ceiling tracks and could be easily slid along with a simple Levitation Spell.

Though there was nothing on the desks, the classroom still gave the young witches an inexplicable feeling that alchemy was no simple matter.

Mo Lan’s eyes locked onto the blue-veined floor tiles and couldn’t look away.

To the other young witches, they were just somewhat unusual-looking blue tiles, but in Mo Lan’s eyes, every blue-veined tile area was enveloped in runic force, the tiles covered in ring after ring of runes.

There weren’t many places where the runes were unobservable—clearly the magic circle’s level didn’t exceed her observation ability by too much.

It was like a puzzle missing one corner piece—with some study, there was still a chance to identify what the puzzle depicted.

The young witches picked their seats by habit and were about to sit down when Mo Lan squatted beside the blue-veined tiles and didn’t move.

The young witches who had just stepped into the blue-veined tile area stopped in their tracks, rubbed their ears, and looked around in surprise.

“Why does it feel like your voices suddenly got quieter?”

“Sylph, can you hear me?”

“Vasida, are you talking to me?”

“Sylph, what did you say?”

“What’s going on?”

They were clearly not far apart, yet the voices reaching their ears had suddenly dropped dramatically.

“These blue-veined tiles have alchemy magic circles on them,” Mo Lan said.

The young witches all turned to look at the figure circling the blue-veined tiles near the front-center seat, examining something.

Mo Lan’s voice wasn’t quieter at all!

But why were everyone else’s voices so faint they couldn’t be heard clearly?

Vasida stepped out of the blue-veined tile area. “Moira, what alchemy magic circle?”

The young witches still inside the blue-veined tile area were surprised to find they could hear Vasida’s voice clearly now too!

“There’s a magic circle that dampens sound in one direction.”

Mo Lan explained while squatting and inspecting:

“Because of this one-way sound-dampening magic circle, sounds from inside the circle become very faint when they travel outward, but sounds from outside the circle traveling inward aren’t affected at all.”

This was the first magic circle she had identified. Because it was only a low-level magic circle, the runes were mostly visible, and she only needed to search her memory briefly to recognize it.

“This one should be a sensing magic circle. These two look like a fire-extinguishing magic circle and a waterproofing magic circle.”

Mo Lan straightened up, and when she looked at the desk and stool, she added: “The stool has them too—at least Intermediate level. But the types of runes involved in protective formations of various levels are pretty similar, just with different layers. It should definitely be a defensive magic formation, and it seems to activate through contact.”

“Wait, Moira, how can you even tell all that?”

The young witches rubbed their eyes.

They had been Attuning their eyes too—they’d had Magic Infusion active for over a year now, and even without actively Attuning their eyes, they could pick up energy traces.

But they couldn’t see anything!

“Rune Eye.” Mo Lan looked up and pointed at her own eyes.

The young witches were surprised to notice what appeared to be a layer of dark golden energy over Mo Lan’s eyes.

It looked like metallic elemental force, but the gold was darker than typical metallic elemental force.

“Rune Eye? What’s that?” Vasida asked.

“An auxiliary alchemy spell. It lets you see hidden alchemical runes. I figured it might be useful for alchemy class, so I just learned it last night,” Mo Lan said.

Vasida nodded. “With your learning speed, picking up a spell ahead of time is normal enough. But setting aside learning an alchemy spell—how can you already identify what each magic circle does? Have you finished learning all the individual runes?”

She had also taken the elective alchemy theory course, and she was still at the stage of learning individual runes.

“I haven’t fully mastered individual runes yet, but I can directly identify most magic circles and rune combinations. Though for alchemy magic circles that have emerged in the last two or three hundred years, I might not recognize them. I still have some alchemy books left to read,” Mo Lan said.