Chapter 697 – Dreamweaver World 35

By Valen’s magical creature classification standards, the clear-sky hawk already fell within the category of low-tier magical beasts.

This raptor’s feathers would gradually harden under sunlight, forming a natural metal-like defense, while simultaneously absorbing light energy to continuously restore stamina—making it the ideal form for long-distance flight.

Mo Lan spread her iron-gray wings, riding the thermal currents as she glided through the upper atmosphere.

Her destination was Moonshadow Isle, home to the Shadow Tribe, masters of shadow magic.

She planned to settle there, transfer her race and class to Shadow Hunter, and study shadow magic entirely different from what Greenwood Village had to offer.

The voyage from Forest Isle to Moonshadow Isle was considerable—even at a clear-sky hawk’s speed, it would take several days of flight.

Moreover, she intended to use this interval to visit a small island near Forest Isle, where she could find a solo dream dungeon called “Beast Jungle” and use the Dream Chronodisk to practice and raise her magic level.

As her wings swept past the third ring-shaped coral island, she finally spotted her target—a solitary island blanketed in dense vegetation, with a twisted portal resembling a Gate of Dreams faintly visible at its center.

She dove sharply, reverting to human form just before reaching the canopy and landing lightly on the soft, mossy ground.

“This is the place…” Mo Lan took out the Dream Chronodisk—an item that could only be obtained for every ten Dream-Eating Tapirs hunted, capable of freezing time within a solo dungeon.

She ran her fingers across the starlight flowing over the disk’s surface, then stepped without hesitation into the dungeon’s portal zone.

However, the moment she entered the dungeon, the system notification stopped her cold:

【Adventurer level detected: Level 1】

【Current dungeon level cap: Level 20】

Seeing the dungeon’s level cap, Mo Lan’s heart sank. She tried channeling her mana and, sure enough, felt the restriction.

The dungeon level cap was equivalent to a world level cap.

What it limited was the energy tier of magic one could cast.

Although her Forest Warden class hadn’t been upgraded since her class change, allowing her to enter the dungeon normally, there was no way she could practice her magic—which was generally already at First Rank level—inside this dungeon. Forcing past the restriction would only trigger the dungeon’s rejection mechanism.

This dungeon simply couldn’t let her practice her magic.

“Looks like I’ll have to shelve that plan for now…” Mo Lan reluctantly withdrew her mana. The time-differential training offered by the Dream Chronodisk was certainly tempting, but it could only be used inside solo dungeons. Raising her magic level would have to wait until she found a solo dungeon with a higher cap in the Exploration Zone.

Still, since she was already here, she couldn’t leave empty-handed.

All those skill books she’d traded from the Federation—she hadn’t studied any of them yet!

This dungeon restricted magical energy tiers, but it didn’t prevent her from reading and studying here.

Even though she hadn’t yet transferred her race or class, hadn’t experienced the corresponding magical energy, and didn’t know how to convert her mana, she could still read through all the knowledge in those skill books and commit it to memory.

It would lay the groundwork for her future magic studies and save her some time.

While Mo Lan used the Dream Chronodisk to freeze time inside the dungeon and absorb the knowledge from the skill books, back in Greenwood Village, Downs rushed breathlessly to Heartwood Inn. Beads of sweat still clung to his forehead—he had clearly run the entire way.

At the reception desk, Goldencore was humming a little tune while tidying up the ledger, the pistil atop her head swaying gently to the rhythm.

“Excuse me,” Downs caught his breath, “is the guest in the room at the end of the third forked branch still at the inn? Could you pass along a message for me?”

Just moments ago, Old Groot had posted Moira’s transcript on the village bulletin board to advertise and promote the village’s Transfiguration courses. Only then did they learn that the dream citizens had their own teaching system—and that Moira had completed every single Transfiguration course in just two years, earning top marks across the board.

Looking at that long list of course names and grade assessments, they finally realized how many skills Moira had thoroughly mastered in such a short time.

So he’d rushed over to find her, hoping to ask about the Greenwood Village courses and whether the teaching was really as effective as it appeared.

After all, Old Groot’s tuition fees were genuinely steep.

“The room at the end of the third forked branch?” Goldencore flipped open the registration manual made from bark, her leaf-fingers sliding along the grain until they reached a certain spot. “Ah, that guest mentioned yesterday that she’d be leaving today. Her key is already back at the reception desk—she should have checked out and left already.”

Downs’s fingers clenched tight, his voice tinged with undisguised urgency. “Did she say where she was going?”

“Why would an adventurer tell us her itinerary~” Goldencore tilted her head. “But she’s probably leaving Greenwood Village! From what everyone’s been saying, her Transfiguration abilities have already surpassed the village’s own Transfiguration masters. Don’t you adventurers always leave the village to venture out into the world once your abilities reach that level?”

Downs recalled with deep regret the few brief encounters he’d had with Moira. If only he had investigated her situation more thoroughly.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t have simply assumed she’d been lucky and curious enough to discover the skill book secret on her own.

He’d never imagined she might have access to an even better channel for learning skills—that she had thoroughly mastered so many of them.

Now that he’d lost track of her, it was too late for regrets.

After leaving Heartwood Inn, Downs spent a hefty sum purchasing “auditor slots” from Old Groot, sending several Federation adventurers stationed in Greenwood Village—those with the Beast Speaker and Forest Warden classes—to attend the courses and test them out.

The results showed that having an Instructor’s guidance was indeed better than self-studying skill books, but the improvement was nowhere near as dramatic as what Moira had demonstrated.

As Downs pored over the information the adventurers had gathered from the courses, his frown deepened.

In Greenwood Village’s dream citizen course evaluation system, the level of Transfiguration achieved by “thoroughly mastering” a skill book was considered merely crude—far from enough to earn an excellent rating.

A complete Transfiguration course, attended on and off, took a full year to finish. Dream citizen students who completed one full term could generally achieve crude-level Transfiguration by the end, but to earn an excellent rating, the fastest anyone had managed before Moira was after completing three full terms.

But Moira? She had taken only one term of each course and earned excellent ratings in every single Transfiguration course. She had mastered animal transformation in one year, then mastered plant transformation in another—so thoroughly that even Old Groot saw profit in it, using her as a shining example to lure adventurers into buying the village’s courses.

This kind of learning efficiency was simply inconceivable!

“What on earth did we miss…” Downs murmured to himself. “Find her… we have to find her!”

After returning to the real world, Downs stayed up all night compiling a detailed report. His instincts told him that Moira’s inconceivable learning ability was an even more valuable secret than the skill books themselves!

And by that time, Mo Lan had already finished absorbing all the knowledge from the skill books and continued on her way to Moonshadow Isle. (End of Chapter)