Chapter 281 – Senior Renée

Chapter 281 – Senior Renée

“Senior!”

Renée, who was in the middle of making breakfast, twitched her ears and said with amusement:

“Living alone really is too lonely—I’m actually hearing the voices of my juniors now.”

“It’s only the first week. Even if some third-years have started exploring the Inner Region, there’s no way they’d have reached the mountain forest area by now.”

“Finding my place would be even harder.”

“Senior, are you home?”

Renée: “???”

She heard it again?

Surely picking those megaphone flowers yesterday hadn’t damaged her hearing?

She stopped what she was doing and listened intently.

“Senior!”

Renée immediately looked toward the door. Were juniors really calling for her?

She hurried to open the door.

“Senior Renée! It really is you!” Sylph said.

Renée was even more surprised than they were. “Come in, quick—tell me how you found this place!”

Renée abandoned her attempt at cooking a new dish and let Culinary Magic handle a recipe she’d already mastered, while she sat down with Mo Lan and the others to chat.

“It’s so far from the mountains outside the Yellow Sands to here—how did you get here?”

“Senior, we didn’t come from the Yellow Sands,” Sylph said.

Mo Lan thought to herself that the area beyond the Yellow Sands must also be mountainous forest terrain.

“Then did you prepare antidote potions and fly straight over from the Green Marsh?” Seeing them shake their heads again, Renée was astonished. “Don’t tell me you rode broomsticks and charged in through Lone Peak Forest! As expected of Sorceresses—already this capable in just your third year!”

The three of them shook their heads once more. “We flew here from the Greengrass Plains.”

“What? The Greengrass Plains? That’s impossible! No matter how fast you fly, there’s no way to cross the Greengrass Plains in a single day. A place like that—once night falls, even adult witches can’t handle it, let alone you three!” Renée didn’t believe them.

Not until Mo Lan and the others produced their Academy map.

Through the grey mist shrouding the Inner Region, a green line cutting straight across the Greengrass Plains leaped off the page, proving they had indeed crossed it.

Renée was stunned. “How did you do it? The lightning fields at night are terrifying—so many young witches have been done in by them.”

“We dug underground burrows. When the lightning strikes the ground, it disperses across the surface,” Mo Lan said.

“Digging burrows? It’s not like nobody’s tried that before, but even the slightest gap lets the electricity in. And if you seal it completely, you start feeling worse and worse until you pass out. How did you dig yours?”

Renée was desperate to know the answer.

Her dwelling here was wonderful in every way—except that getting to the Academy Castle was no easy feat.

Each time, she had to set out a full week in advance, loop around to the Yellow Sands side, and fly through the desert to reach the core area.

The Yellow Sands had fierce sandstorms, but as long as you used Earth Wall to build a small shelter, you could ride them out.

The other regions were much harder to cross. One careless mistake and the Guardian Headmistress would have to come rescue you, and all your accumulated savings would be wiped clean.

If not for that, the seniors from the previous class wouldn’t have looked down on this spot, leaving it for her to claim.

If there really was a safe way through the Greengrass Plains, things would be much more convenient for her in the future.

“Of course you need to leave ventilation holes, otherwise you’ll go into hypoxic shock. All you need is a wire mesh over the vent to guide the electrical current,” Mo Lan said, pulling out the wire mesh she’d made earlier to show Senior Renée.

But Renée’s attention was elsewhere. “What’s ‘hypoxic shock’? What do you mean by ‘electrical current’? Are you talking about lightning?”

Sylph and Vasida were staring at her with equal astonishment. “So that’s why you made the ventilation holes? I thought you just wanted to let the smell of the roasted meat out!”

Mo Lan: “…”

Only then did she realize that witches had absolutely no concept of oxygen. But clearly, most living creatures in this world also needed to breathe—otherwise the Water Drowning Technique wouldn’t exist.

On second thought, it made sense. The intelligent beings of Valen were too busy studying Magic to bother with anything else. Magic solved everything, and the technology tree hadn’t developed at all.

Even the technological products that did exist all came from the Well of the Sky—otherworldly specialties brought back by Valen’s most powerful.

To witches, “ventilation” meant exactly what it sounded like—airing things out to get rid of smells, not survival.

Mo Lan went to considerable effort explaining why, in a sealed space, a person would eventually pass out and even die.

Renée, Sylph, and Vasida were deeply shaken. “Is that really how it works? What we breathe is only one component of the air, and without it we’d suffocate?”

Mo Lan nodded.

“Mo Lan, would it be convenient for you to compile this kind of knowledge into a written volume? The Witch Council would offer a reward,” the Headmistress’s voice suddenly chimed in.

Now they finally understood how Mo Lan had so easily figured out a way to survive the night of thunder.

“Of course,” Mo Lan said.

This also reminded her that when she had time, she should organize the knowledge from her Earth memories and submit it to the Witch Council, regardless of whether she thought it would be useful to witches or not.

Sometimes a different perspective revealed value she couldn’t see.

Spreading Earth’s civilization was simply what she ought to do, as a soul born of Earth.

If the hypothesis in Mo Lan’s reading of Mo Lan’s reading of Mo Lan’s—if the hypothesis in Mo Lan’s reading—if the hypothesis in 《Unsolved Mysteries of Witches》 about world consciousness being born from the souls and minds of intelligent beings was true, then “as long as civilization endures, the planet lives on” wasn’t just empty words.

“Senior Renée, do you know where Senior Lilith lives?” Mo Lan asked.

“Her? She lives in the forest outside the border zone between the Green Marsh and the Yellow Sands, near the Hundred-Year Vampire Vine. If you want to find her, it’s easier to approach from the Yellow Sands side,” Renée said.

The more Mo Lan heard, the stranger it seemed. “The forest beyond the Greengrass Plains’ snowfield is mountain forest, beyond Lone Peak Forest is mountain forest, and beyond the Green Marsh and Yellow Sands border is still mountain forest—don’t tell me everything outside those four terrains is mountain forest?”

“You guessed right. Some are alpine forests, some are gently rolling hill forests, and others are lake forests rich in water resources. They’re all places with lush vegetation—the only differences are the types of plants growing in them and slight variations in terrain and climate.”

“During the Divine Descent Era and early Magic Era, the witch ancestors mostly hid in various forests to survive. Our witches’ Magic system is also well-suited for living alone in forests. Forests of all kinds are the most common terrain on the Continent of Valen, so wilderness survival training focuses primarily on forests.”

“That includes seeking guidance and help from the seniors living in the forest—that’s part of the survival training too!”

Renée puffed out her chest proudly. Right now, she was playing the role of a witch senior who had already adapted to life in the wild.

“So, how about it? Want to set up a dwelling somewhere nearby?”

“I’ve explored most of the surrounding area, and I can share some information with you! I know a few relatively livable spots nearby—though none of them are as good as mine, of course.”

The three of them answered in unison: “Yes!”

Whether or not they ended up settling near here, there was no reason to turn down a senior’s intel. They’d take it as a backup option for now.