Chapter 340 – Fortune and Misfortune

Given the Ore Demon Bugs’ rate of digestion, after all these years, how much magical ore must they have consumed!

Surely they couldn’t have eaten through all the magical ore on both banks of the underground river!

Could the ‘minor fortune’ from the Fortune-Telling Spell have been referring to just that small handful of Spatial Magic gem fragments?

After walking forward for several days, the space above the underground river’s surface grew increasingly narrow, with fewer and fewer places to set foot.

Mo Lan had no choice but to ride her broomstick and fly above the river’s surface.

She was separated from the densely packed grey-eyed piranhas in the river by less than a meter.

If not for the Silencing spell, her broomstick and robes would have been covered in piranhas by now.

There weren’t many natural caverns along the way, but Mo Lan thoroughly explored every single one.

They were all dead ends — none led to the surface. Some even led deeper Underground.

Seeing that the underground river ahead had also reached its end, with nowhere for her to stay except the riverbed, Mo Lan had no choice but to stop temporarily.

The source at the uppermost reaches of the underground river, just like the downstream exit, was hidden within layers of rock.

Opening the Academy map in her Grimoire, she saw that her current position was already deep within the outer region.

At this point, she didn’t dare do what she had done beneath the core region — casually wrapping herself in a water-shield bubble and diving into a water channel of unknown conditions.

Especially after she noticed that not a single grey-eyed piranha in the underground river swam upstream through that entrance.

They would swim up to this point, then turn back downstream.

They were called piranhas, yet in this underground river with no humans to speak of, they had practically become herbivores.

Mo Lan hovered her broomstick in midair, then gazed at the spot where the underground river disappeared and used the Fortune-Telling Spell to divine the outcome of entering this place.

She didn’t dare use the Clairvoyance Spell — once precognition produced a result, the foreseen scene would inevitably come to pass.

If there was danger, seeing it through precognition would likely make it impossible to avoid.

The Fortune-Telling Spell was the safer option.

“Misfortune?”

Mo Lan turned around and left without hesitation.

A misfortune reading wasn’t immediately fatal, but it could mean serious injury, major financial loss, or being trapped in a dire situation.

Within the Academy’s environment, with the Headmistress as a safeguard, even the most extreme readings couldn’t produce a ‘great misfortune’ — the kind that meant certain death.

A misfortune reading was already the most dangerous outcome possible here.

She was currently carrying gem fragments that could very likely be synthesized into a complete Advanced Spatial Magic gem. She absolutely could not afford to take this risk.

Since the underground river’s source was a no-go, Mo Lan had to think of other options.

There was nothing left to mine along both banks of this underground river — she hadn’t even found a single ordinary mineral.

If she didn’t wipe out the entire nest of Ore Demon Bugs this time, once they fully digested the Spatial Magic gems, they would probably starve to death anyway.

After all, they couldn’t pass through the root wall to reach the Inner Region.

She still needed to find a way to the surface quickly, to collect surface resources for card-crafting materials.

With no direct exit available, there was only one option left — dig her own way back to the surface!

Back when she had told Sylph and the others that taking this route meant the worst-case scenario was digging her way back to the surface, she hadn’t expected her own words to become prophecy.

Digging her own way out — along such a long underground river channel, choosing where to start and how to dig required strategy.

She first recalled the natural caverns she had passed along the way, and selected the ones with an overall upward trajectory to divine with the Fortune-Telling Spell.

All came back as ordinary. One of them even showed minor misfortune.

Mo Lan wasn’t satisfied, so she went ahead and divined every remaining natural cavern.

“Great fortune?” Mo Lan confirmed the divination result in disbelief. “Why is it this one?”

There were nine caverns in total. Six had upward trajectories, meaning they should be closer to the surface.

Yet those all came back as merely average. Of the remaining three natural caverns with downward trajectories, the one that descended the deepest had produced a reading of great fortune.

“Great fortune?”

What did great fortune mean nowadays? For Mo Lan, it meant incredible treasure!

Those Spatial Magic gem fragments had only produced a minor fortune reading!

Who cared about reaching the surface — treasure was what truly mattered.

Without a second thought, Mo Lan flew toward that cavern.

After entering, she divined once more.

“That’s right, still great fortune!”

She walked and divined as she went, eventually arriving at the deepest point of the cavern — the lowest spot in elevation.

The Fortune-Telling Spell indicated that digging downward from here was the best course of action.

Mo Lan cast a luck spell on herself, then began digging downward with the Rock-Crushing Spell.

She didn’t need to worry about disposing of the rubble — a single {Construction Dumpster Card} solved everything.

Vasida’s dumpster card series was unbelievably useful.

At that very moment, Vasida had just had the tail of her broomstick singed by a fireball spat out by an Intermediate Infernal Explosion Demon Bear.

She fell from the sky.

Fortunately, her physical body was tough. She hadn’t had time to use Featherfall, but the fall left her completely unharmed.

Looking at her broomstick tail, now missing a good chunk, Vasida felt a pang of heartache. She shrank the broomstick and tucked it back into her bag, then charged toward the Infernal Explosion Demon Bear with her Wand in one hand and a clenched fist in the other.

After a hard-fought battle, she finally beat the demon bear into submission.

After the fight, Vasida rubbed her belly:

“Strange, how come I feel even fuller after fighting, without having eaten anything?”

The Devouring Stomach: “ヽ(。_°)ノ”

Sensing the Devouring Stomach’s reaction, she reached into her abdomen and summoned it out. Only after inspecting it did she realize what was going on:

“Which Orange Witch bought one of my trash bins! She keeps feeding me rocks, and I’m almost stuffed!”

She hadn’t even considered it might be one of the younger witches. None of the young witches would throw away that much rock for no reason.

Given the feeding frequency, and the fact that it seemed to be freshly excavated material, only an Orange Witch skilled in earth-element magic could manage this.

Meanwhile, Mo Lan, who had leveled up her Rock-Crushing Spell to Advanced through all this digging: “ヽ(｀⌒)”

Where on earth was this treasure!

She had been digging for days, and it was nothing but rock and dirt.

She had maxed out the range on her Metal Detection spell, and still no sign of any treasure!

Yet the Fortune-Telling Spell kept reading fortune — great fortune!

Advanced Rock-Crushing Spell! A single cast could effortlessly shatter a huge swath of rock. She had even controlled the spell’s intensity to expand its range, making her excavation efficiency higher than Earth’s most advanced large-scale rock crushers.

If this kept up, she was afraid she might dig right through this demiplane.

This demiplane wasn’t spherical like Earth!

Day after day of digging — if not for occasionally discovering some ore deposits in the depths, including various types of Intermediate magical minerals, Mo Lan would have given up entirely.

But the yield from these Intermediate magical minerals fell far short of matching a ‘great fortune’ divination result!

And when Mo Lan tried using the Clairvoyance Spell to foresee what this great fortune deep underground might be, the prediction failed — no result at all.

For now, she could only rely on the guidance of the luck spell and the Fortune-Telling Spell to keep digging downward.

At least there were barely any magical bugs this deep underground, so Mo Lan hadn’t encountered any real trouble.