Chapter 208 – Beer and Barbecue

“Advanced Culinary Magic? Doesn’t that mean you can apply to the Witch Council for the Culinary Witch title badge?” Vasida said in surprise.

“Mm-hm! Let’s go apply together after graduation,” Mo Lan said.

The Witch Council had established all sorts of magic titles—as long as the corresponding magic reached Advanced level or above, one could apply for them.

Among witches, title badges were the equivalent of professional certifications, and they even carried a certain degree of recognition among some of the other races.

“I wonder if I can raise my Plant Magic to Advanced before graduation and earn the Nature Witch title!” Sylph said. “And if I could also get the Green Witch title, or even the Potion Witch title, that would be even better.”

She had already decided to prioritize learning Plant Magic, wood-element magic, and potion-brewing magic—all of which complemented her Sorceress Talent.

But there were many branches of Plant Magic, and mastering all of them to Advanced level to earn the Nature Witch title was no easy feat.

Wood-element magic, which corresponded to the Green Witch title, had even more branches.

Potion-brewing magic was only one discipline, but the potion knowledge and brewing techniques involved were no easier to learn than the magic itself.

“There’s nothing you can’t do. You still have four years!” Mo Lan said.

Goals should be set ambitiously, of course. Her own goal was to raise all the Witch Magic she had learned to Advanced level before graduation!

As they chatted on, the lawn gradually fell silent.

Once the aroma of roasting meat burst forth, the moon no longer looked as lovely, and the stars lost their charm too.

Lured upright by the smell, they sat around the campfire, watching the lamb rotate on the spit and silently swallowing their saliva.

“How about some beer to tide us over?” Mo Lan produced a card, flicked it with a snap, and the card dissipated. Four crystal-clear green bottles appeared on the ground, and she handed one to each of them. “This one’s low alcohol—won’t get you drunk easily.”

“Bottles made of emerald? That’s way too extravagant!” Lilith swirled the bottle around.

“It’s just green glass,” Mo Lan said.

“This is glass? The color is so pretty!” Sylph held up the beer bottle against the firelight.

“How do you open this cap?” Vasida could hardly wait—she had never had alcohol before! Her witch mother guarded her own liquor very closely, and the Academy didn’t provide any either.

She looked at the metal bottle cap and instinctively twisted it with her hand. “It… it opened?”

A bottle opener that had just flown over from the Mobile Kitchen cabinet froze mid-air, then reversed direction and landed on Lilith’s bottle cap instead, latching on and popping it off with a press.

“So that’s what this little thing is for!” Vasida hadn’t even known what the gadget was before.

“Well, you don’t need it anymore—you can open beer bottles barehanded!” Mo Lan tried twisting one open herself, but even after using the Dietary Fortification Card for some time now, she still couldn’t manage it.

The card’s strengthening effects required long-term accumulation before results became noticeable.

The four young witches raised their bottles in a toast and took the first sip of alcohol in their lives.

Vasida: “So this is what alcohol tastes like! It’s not that great!”

“I think it’s pretty good,” Lilith said. “Though it would be better if it were red. Green liquor just feels weird—like vegetable juice.”

“Green is best—it looks full of nature’s flavor!” Sylph said.

Vasida disagreed: “Red and green are all well and good, but nothing is as alluring as deep black!”

What had started as a conversation about beer devolved into an argument about colors.

“The beer is actually yellow, you know.” Mo Lan sighed helplessly and crafted a colored glass beer mug card on the spot, matching each person’s hair color. “There—now you’ve got red, green, and black!”

Lilith poured her beer into the red glass. “Now that’s more like it. If only all the tableware in the Mobile Kitchen were like this!”

“If you really want that, you can bring me the card and I’ll do a secondary modification—swap everything to red glass tableware.” Mo Lan didn’t mind earning a bit more Mana.

“You can really do that?” Without a second thought, Lilith was ready to hand over her Mobile Kitchen Card for a complete overhaul. She was no longer the little witch who had to carefully spend every last bit of Mana!

“But if the material changes, all the Attuning you’ve done on the tableware won’t count anymore,” Mo Lan added.

“…” Lilith hesitated for a good while before choosing practicality over beauty. But she still couldn’t bear to part with the idea of glass vessels that tinted every liquid inside them red. “Moira, make a separate blood-red glass tableware set card! I’ll definitely buy it!”

“I want a green set!” Sylph said. “And it would be wonderful if it had some floral and plant decorations on it.”

Hearing this, Vasida wanted one too: “Then I want a black set, with a starry sky pattern!”

“Custom orders are a whole different price, you know!” Mo Lan said.

“Do we look like we’re short on money?” Lilith lifted her chin and gave a light hmph.

“I’ll have the designs for you in a couple of days! For now, just drink up!” Mo Lan said.

Passing out from a single drink was something that would never happen to witches or Sorceresses.

They were born with a certain resistance to alcohol. Drinking could make them light-headed, but they would absolutely never drink themselves unconscious.

Back when Mama Shana wouldn’t let her taste the wines of this world, Mo Lan had assumed that Valen also had rules against minors drinking.

It wasn’t until a holiday break, when she was reading various miscellaneous books in the First-Year Reading Room, that she learned the truth from a book exploring the relationship between alcohol and witches’ magical power.

Whether alcohol had any promoting effect on a witch’s magical power growth—the book offered no definitive conclusion, only a hypothesis.

But the fact was that good wines in Valen required both magic and Alchemy vessels in their production, making none of them cheap. Witches who weren’t financially well-off truly did have to ration their drinking.

Wine was a symbol of a witch’s wealth.

So it wasn’t that underage witches couldn’t drink—Shana’s mother simply didn’t have many bottles of good wine and couldn’t bear to share them with her. That was the real reason.

By the time they had drunk nearly half their bottles, the roasted lamb was finally ready.

A small knife sliced off pieces of lamb, a plate glided forward to catch them, a fork rested on the plate, and together they flew toward Mo Lan and the others.

The rich aroma hit them full force—one side charred and crispy, the other tender and succulent. A single bite brought satisfaction from the tip of the tongue all the way down to the stomach.

“It smells amazing! This is the best barbecue I’ve ever had!” Lilith had taken only one bite before deciding the lamb was too small.

If all barbecue tasted like this, she could devour an entire young lamb all by herself!

“The roasted mushrooms are ready too!”

The entire mushroom tray floated over.

Mo Lan was the first to reach her fork toward the tray. For her, she had already eaten roasted Green Fruit Lamb meat plenty of times—just never a whole one roasted at once.

That flavor was merely baseline.

The mushrooms, on the other hand, she had been craving for a long time.

“One bite and all the exhaustion from today just melts away!” Vasida said, eyes narrowed contentedly.