Chapter 838 – Endangered Worlds

Mo Lan watched as Headmistress Amisha’s expression shifted subtly, confirming her guess was correct. She continued:

“My strength is growing steadily right now, and my resources are fairly abundant. This level of expenditure really isn’t much for me. Setting aside what I earn from selling cards, the Mana I naturally recover in just one minute is more than enough to craft all these cards.”

“The Mana you recover in one minute?” Amisha’s pupils contracted, her tone carrying incredulous shock. “What rank… are you at now, exactly?”

“Just a bit short of Sixth Rank,” Mo Lan replied calmly.

Her voice wasn’t loud, yet it struck like thunder in everyone’s ears. In an instant, as if a Silencing spell had been cast around Mo Lan and Amisha, the surroundings fell into deathly silence.

Sixth Rank?

Amisha was already several hundred years old. Before becoming Headmistress of the Witch Academy, she had spent ages exploring the Well of the Sky, honing her magical talent, studying magic of every discipline, and earning the revered title of Omnipotent Witch who had surpassed the Peak. Yet her Mana rank had only just stabilized around the Fifth Rank.

And Mo Lan, who had graduated mere decades ago, had already touched the threshold of Sixth Rank?!

Those witches who had yet to surpass the Peak might not have had a clear concept of what this meant. But beings like Amisha and Traci, who had truly visited the Well of the Sky and witnessed the broader world and its power systems, understood deeply just how vast—like an uncrossable chasm—the gap between each rank truly was.

The combined Mana of ten Fifth Rank witches could barely compare to a single being who had just entered the Sixth Rank!

Amisha’s mind churned with turbulent thoughts, and for a moment she was at a loss for words. She instinctively turned to her teacher, her voice tinged with a hint of dryness: “Teacher, back in your day… how long did it take you to go from First Rank to Sixth Rank?”

“…” Lady Traci was silent for a moment, seemingly reviewing those long, distant years, before finally letting out a soft breath. “Several hundred years, give or take.”

Ever since the situation in 《The Witch’s Wilds》 had stabilized, she had been rotating trips to the Well of the Sky with Anita and Carmela. Each visit lasted centuries, traversing countless otherworlds, completing innumerable tasks—and even now she had only barely reached the Seventh Rank.

Yet Mo Lan had only recently ventured to the Well of the Sky, had just finished exploring two otherworlds—one of which she’d visited using a Realm-friend invitation—and was already on the verge of crossing into the Sixth Rank.

The Realm-friend invitation was convenient, but without a task, there would be no rewards.

At this stage, natural Mana growth was extremely slow. One had to rely on things like origin Mana crystals from task rewards—items capable of increasing permanent Mana.

That was precisely why Explorers continually ventured into otherworlds to take on tasks.

But Mo Lan had completely escaped this constraint.

Traci gazed at Mo Lan with a complex expression: “Your growth rate… is fast enough to make even me envious!”

“It’s basically all thanks to Card Magic. However, the Card Magic market in Valen is essentially saturated now—new contractors and consumption growth are both leveling off. Going forward, my Mana growth probably won’t be as fast as before.”

Mo Lan also realized she was approaching a bottleneck. “It’s a shame that aside from our home world, other otherworlds won’t allow us to widely promote and sell Sorceress Magic.”

A spellcaster’s body, soul, and the magical energy they commanded were all fundamentally part of the resources belonging to their world.

The world consciousness of those worlds connected through the Well of the Sky would instinctively forbid otherworld Explorers from plundering resources on a large scale.

“It’s not as if such worlds don’t exist at all…” Traci said with some emotion.

She had originally thought it would be a very long time before Mo Lan would encounter these matters. She hadn’t expected her growth to far exceed all expectations.

Since the topic touched on certain secrets of the Well of the Sky and the otherworlds, it wasn’t appropriate to discuss them in detail in front of so many witches who had never set foot there.

Seeing that everyone had finished their meal and the atmosphere was relaxed, she casually extended an invitation: “Shall we go for a stroll in the mountains and forests over there? The scenery looks quite unique.”

“Of course!” Mo Lan readily agreed.

She distributed to all her witch friends a copy of the 《Mirror Space Ecological Zone Visitor’s Guide》 that she had prepared well in advance.

The guide was richly illustrated, featuring detailed introductions and behavioral descriptions of the mirror beasts and magical plants from various otherworlds in each ecological zone. It even marked which areas allowed interaction and which required keeping a safe distance.

The witches received the guide with great interest and immediately formed small groups, mounting their broomsticks and flying off enthusiastically toward the various ecological zones—snowy mountains, coastal bays, forests—ready to thoroughly explore this realm.

Mo Lan’s flying carpet rose slowly into the air carrying Traci, falling a step behind the others as it drifted unhurriedly toward a relatively secluded mountain forest area.

She casually produced a compact tea set, and her shadow pet poured steaming, fragrant tea for them both.

“You mentioned just now that worlds exist where large-scale promotion and sale of Sorceress Magic is permitted?” Mo Lan asked eagerly.

Traci didn’t answer directly, but instead posed a question of her own: “Have you heard of zero-level worlds and endangered worlds?”

Mo Lan thought carefully, recalling the knowledge she had gathered at the Otherworld Archives: “I know about zero-level worlds—they’re worlds where intelligent beings have yet to master magical energy, where the level of life is relatively low, and the world consciousness is comparatively weak.”

She paused briefly, then added with some uncertainty, “As for endangered worlds… are those worlds on the verge of destruction?”

Regarding endangered worlds, Mo Lan had never come across definitive information. She had only formed her hypothesis based on her experience with Earth’s demise.

“More precisely, endangered worlds are worlds where the intelligent species within them face extinction crises due to various causes, resulting in an extremely weakened world consciousness that is at risk of dissipating entirely.”

Traci took a sip of tea and slowly corrected and elaborated:

“What these two types of worlds have in common is that their world consciousness is exceedingly weak. So weak that they cannot actively contact the Well of the Sky to issue tasks, and at the same time lack the power to prevent powerful Explorers from descending into them or acting freely within their borders.

For Explorers, once they advance to the Sixth Rank, the returns offered by the routine otherworld tasks within the Well of the Sky gradually become insufficient to meet their needs.

At that level, many veteran Explorers break away from the Well of the Sky as a platform altogether. They turn their gaze toward the deeper reaches of the cosmos, actively seeking out these endangered worlds or zero-level worlds, harvesting the residual energy of their world consciousness and condensing it into origin Mana crystals through special methods.

Of course, not everyone chooses to plunder. Carmela, myself, and the others—most of the time we choose to rescue these worlds instead, guiding their intelligent species toward better paths of development, helping their world consciousness avert disaster, and even promoting the world’s level advancement.

If successful, the reward fed back by the world is incomparably generous—far surpassing any routine task within the Well of the Sky.”