Chapter 517 – Green City

The next morning, Mo Lan began the second deployment of {Mo Lan’s Temporary Communication Card} (Cross-World Edition).

Another agonizing thirty-minute wait.

Thirty minutes passed. The card exceeded its usage time and became inert, yet still no response came.

“It’s been a whole day now, and Lady Carmela still hasn’t checked the card. What’s going on—could she really not have time to even pull out a single card?”

“Maybe the Well of the Sky really is that dangerous! Or maybe…”

“Even Lady Carmela has run into something difficult to handle.”

None of them dared to think too deeply about it.

“Today wasn’t a complete waste, though,” Mo Lan said.

“What did we gain?” Lilith looked up and asked.

“The card-crafting cost for this card was exactly the same as yesterday’s, which means Lady Carmela’s position hasn’t changed significantly.

Madam Amisha said that Lady Carmela went to the Well of the Sky to find Lady Anita. If she still hadn’t found her, her position should have been constantly shifting.

The fact that there’s been no change most likely means she’s already found her—perhaps she’s even already working on a way to rescue Lady Anita. She just temporarily doesn’t have time to deal with Card Magic.”

Mo Lan was comforting them as much as she was comforting herself.

Always prepare for the worst, but hope for the best.

This possibility lifted their spirits slightly.

“We’re almost at Green City. Let’s enter the city first and prepare for the wild mage experience-sharing event. We can try contacting Lady Carmela again after some time,” Mo Lan said.

The more urgent the situation, the more important it was to stay calm and know clearly what needed to be done.

The Dawn Society’s outreach was now more important to them than ever.

Lilith, Vasida, and Sylph all pulled themselves together and slipped into their role-playing personas.

Vasida prepared to go relieve Zhizhi at the reins, Lilith positioned herself at the carriage door ready to disembark, and Sylph moved to a seat by the window, preparing to push it open and survey the scene outside.

Mo Lan also moved to clear the table of cards that shouldn’t be seen by outsiders. Just as her hand touched the cards, the Valen-wide edition of {Mo Lan’s Communication Card} lit up with a dialogue box, and a new message popped up.

【Amisha: I’ve already made arrangements with the Witch Council. This afternoon, the Council’s witches will summon the golden bird to deliver letters to all witches explaining the situation. Within one week, every letter will be delivered. On your end, make sure to have the corresponding cards ready.】

【Mo Lan: Got it!】

Lilith saw the message and said, “Once we’re in the city, I’ll find us an inn as quickly as possible and get us settled. After that, Instructor, you can focus on your own matters—leave the experience-sharing event to us!”

“If we’re only making a brief stop this time, an inn should actually be a fine venue for the experience-sharing event. We should look for an upscale one with plenty of mages—that would make things easier for us!” Vasida said.

“We could negotiate with the innkeeper to put up a promotional poster inside the inn! That way we won’t have to waste time looking for something like the government bulletin board we used in Lance City,” Sylph said.

…

The three of them chimed in one after another, and without Mo Lan having to lift a finger, they had the post-arrival plans organized perfectly.

Mo Lan had finally, truly become the kind of instructor whose apprentices handled all the miscellaneous affairs for her.

She knew that recent events had deeply affected Lilith and the others.

The feeling was very familiar to her.

Mo Lan hadn’t always been this driven, this desperate to seize every resource within reach. In her previous life, before the apocalypse descended, she had been the kind of person who agonized daily over what to eat, what show to watch with dinner, who couldn’t put down her phone once she picked it up, and who always submitted her papers at the last possible minute. The most disciplined she’d ever been was when she was studying for the college entrance exams.

It was the cruelty of the apocalypse that taught her how tragic it was to be weak. That was why, after Earth’s world consciousness gave her a second chance at life, she treasured it so fiercely, pushed herself so relentlessly.

Because she never wanted to find herself in a situation as helpless as her previous life again.

Setbacks and tribulations really could be the most effective motivators.

Mo Lan was glad to see this change in Lilith, Vasida, and Sylph.

A Sorceress who hadn’t grown strong would always remain in danger. The faster they grew, the safer they’d be.

Mo Lan put away the cards, sat upright in the carriage, and picked up a mage’s magic textbook to read, leaving everything else in the hands of her “apprentices.”

The magic carriage passed through the city gates without any trouble, as usual.

The status of mages was just as elevated here in Green City.

But the demeanor of the common people was an entirely different story.

Sylph’s gaze fell upon the people queuing outside the city gates, and it took considerable effort to keep the shock from showing on her face.

It was the first time she had ever seen people so thin—looking as though they might collapse at any moment, yet still carrying such heavy loads on their backs. Some were eating black bread mixed with dirt, and others were so filthy that their original appearance was completely unrecognizable.

“Is the Duchy of Green… poor? Why are the commoners living in such terrible conditions?”

“The Duchy of Green is a textbook example of a nation that puts mage nobility above all else.

Due to pressure from the Mage Empire, it hasn’t gone quite as far as some countries in the Yala Empire, where the poor are treated as expendable.

But the entire nation’s resources are concentrated in the hands of its mages.

The Duchy of Green’s economy was never particularly strong to begin with, so naturally the commoners don’t live well.

At least they can survive, and most even manage to safely reach the age of seven. But if they fail to test positive for magical aptitude at seven, they’ll basically spend their entire lives working for the mage nobility…”

Before Mo Lan could finish, a wave of putrid stench wafted in through the carriage window. Everyone clapped their hands over their noses.

The carriage made a sharp swerve, and Vasida screamed in dismay: “The carriage ran over excrement!”

She had just spotted a pile of human feces on the road and steered the carriage to avoid it, only to discover that the road ahead was littered with fresh and dried human and animal dung as far as she could see—there was absolutely nowhere to dodge.

And mind you, they had already passed through the city gates. They were inside the city.

This was absolutely horrifying.

The wheels kept rolling and the carriage continued forward, but Vasida had gone completely rigid, her mind filled with nothing but the image of wheels crushing through excrement.

Right now, she wanted nothing more than to whip out her wand and cast a hundred Cleaning spells on both this road and their carriage.

At the carriage door, Lilith—who had been planning to step out and find a guide to lead them to a mage-frequented inn, just as they’d done in Lance City—quietly edged away from the door. Gritting her teeth, she urgently began searching the Card Shop for thick-soled shoes.

Sylph slammed the window shut with a sharp clap and abandoned any further thought of opening it to observe the outside.

Only then did Mo Lan continue what she’d been saying: “…Head straight for the inner city. The inner city is where the mage nobility hold their territory. The outer city is all commoners—the conditions are much worse.”

She had read about this in books, but even she hadn’t expected conditions to be so bad that the main road into the city was essentially a highway of dung.