Chapter 477 – Lance Mage Tower

Chapter 477 – Lance Mage Tower

“You?” Lilith and the other two were confused.

“That person likely guessed from the magical beast materials that there’s an Advanced mage in the carriage! In the Duchy of Lance right now, the only publicly known Advanced-rank or higher spellcasters are Grand Duke Clara and Marquis Dayla.

An Advanced mage is already enough for the humans of the Duchy of Lance to show serious respect and courtesy.”

Mo Lan continued, “It’s precisely because human merchants are clever that they won’t make things difficult for you at a time like this.

Humans are the best at reading situations—when someone’s identity and status are different, others treat them differently too.

Goblins will swindle whoever they can, take the money and run. They’re not the same as humans.

Especially a human merchant guild that has built its business to this level—they absolutely won’t casually offend someone they can’t afford to offend.

But if you were just ordinary people today, your situation and treatment would be completely different.”

Lilith, Vasida, and Sylph couldn’t understand this at all.

In the world of witches, those of the same race could be absolutely trusted, while those of other races required cautious interaction.

Witches roughly divided outsiders into three categories: those who bore goodwill and could become friends, those who harbored malice and needed to be kept at a distance or eliminated, and lastly those whose intentions were still unclear—to be kept at arm’s length without being entrusted with real trust.

How you treated outsiders was determined by their character and attitude, not by their identity, status, or strength.

Over the course of their lives, witches might come to know many friends from other races. They might be a shepherdess encountered during a journey, a queen or princess of some kingdom, or perhaps even a great tree that had developed a spirit of its own.

“How can humans be so… so hypocritical even toward their own kind?” Lilith said.

Mo Lan shook her head. “Not everyone is like that, but many are. The variance among humans is enormous—completely different from witches.”

Humans looking at witches found them just as incomprehensible as witches found humans.

When she herself had first used her previous life’s human perspective to learn about the witch race, hadn’t she felt exactly the same way?

Perhaps this was simply the difference between races.

Every race in Valen was different.

Not just in physical makeup and racial talents, but also in values and customs.

Though human society in Valen differed from Earth’s, the humans themselves were remarkably similar.

Lilith, Vasida, and Sylph immediately lost all interest in wandering around the city any longer.

They had wanted to experience a human city like ordinary people, to understand what human towns were really like, to see how humans and witches truly differed, and to try using their own wits to utterly demolish the legendarily clever human merchants in bargaining.

They hadn’t wanted to be fawned over and revered as important figures wherever they went.

They were playing the part of human mage apprentices, but they were still witches at heart. They couldn’t adapt to this sort of thing, and gaining advantages this way brought them no joy.

“Let’s go,” Mo Lan said. “Once we reach Lance City, things should be better. There are more mages there.”

“Mm.” The three of them nodded.

Zhizhi’s little hand rested on the toy wooden horse and gave it a gentle push. The carriage slowly began to move, passing through the city and out through the gate on the other side.

Without walking escorts slowing them down, their travel speed was much faster.

On the wide trade road, Zhizhi pushed the little wooden horse forward several notches, and the carriage raced along at full speed.

Inside the bumpy carriage, the four Sorceresses each claimed a corner, absorbed in their own studies.

For the rest of the journey, they took no more escort jobs, traveling straight to Lance City in a single carriage.

Across the endless plains, golden waves of wheat rolled like a sea of gold.

This was the granary of the entire Duchy of Lance—the Golden Wheat Fields.

In the center of these vast wheat fields stood a great city. That was Lance City. The trade road came from the north and led straight into Lance City’s northern gate.

Mo Lan and her companions’ magic carriage was racing along this very road.

They all crowded by the left window, leaning out to look.

But without exception, after only a few glances at Lance City ahead, every pair of eyes was drawn to something about a kilometer west of the city walls.

There stood a colossal structure that towered into the clouds.

Even though none of them had ever seen it in person before, they all recognized it immediately.

“Is that the Lance Mage Tower?”

“It’s so tall!”

“Standing at the top of the Mage Tower, you could probably see all of Lance City spread out below!”

…

From the outside, Lance City didn’t look much different from Parluf City, which they had passed through earlier—just larger and more prosperous.

Yet the awe it inspired in them was not even a ten-thousandth of what the Lance Mage Tower evoked.

Even Mo Lan couldn’t help but marvel at the wonder of Magic.

But she wasn’t marveling at the tower’s sheer height. What amazed her was that such a towering structure was built and held together entirely by Magic—no foundation, no concrete, no steel reinforcement—yet it was the hardest, most heavily defended building in the entire Mage Empire.

In the Mage Empire, only Advanced mages and above could establish a Mage Tower.

The higher the rank, the taller the Mage Tower could be built.

The Lance Mage Tower belonged to the Grand Duke of Lance. By classification, it was merely a second-tier Mage Tower—only slightly better than the lowest first-tier towers.

Yet even such a tower could extend its protection over the entire Golden Wheat Fields and Lance City.

From the moment it was erected here, the entire Golden Wheat Fields had entered an era of permanent peace.

Before that, this land had been part of Emerald Creek Plains, and magical beasts had been the dominant force here.

The entire Duchy of Lance had radiated outward from this very Mage Tower, developing from this single point.

The reason every race unanimously regarded Alchemy as the greatest strength of human mages was precisely because they had created alchemical marvels like the Mage Tower.

It was said that in the capital of the Mage Empire, Mage Towers stood as dense as trees in a forest. When fully powered, not even dragons, Angels, or Demons could breach the protective barrier sustained by the tower forest.

The capital’s tower forest of the Mage Empire was the only place in all of Valen that could contend with the Mainland’s top-tier combat forces through magical constructs alone, without relying on individual magical power.

To this day, it had only ever fallen to one person—Anita, the Fireworks Witch.

Her Firework Blast possessed unparalleled destructive power.

Mo Lan and her companions had all contracted the Firework Blast, but after testing it cautiously, they treated it only as a last-resort trump card.

It was a spell with no upper limit—capable of compressing energy to the absolute extreme and then detonating it like fireworks. As long as you had enough energy, you could set off as large a firework as you wished.

If the four of them poured all the disposable Mana they had earned so far into a Firework Blast, it would probably be enough to level the Mage Empire’s tower forest.

Sorceresses enjoyed the favor of the world consciousness, blessed with extraordinary talent—that was what gave them such power.

But the human Mage Tower was something mages had developed entirely through their own intellect!

Even the Alchemy used to create the Mage Tower was something mages had researched and developed on their own.

Humans might have all manner of shortcomings, but their wisdom was truly unparalleled—enough to compensate for their deficiencies in magical talent and physical ability compared to other races.