Chapter 220 – Schools of Magic

At the end of the chapter was a full page of reference books for in-depth study of Summoning Magic: 《Summoning Witch Magic》, 《A Witch’s Favorite Familiar Bestiary》, 《One Hundred Creatures Best Suited as Witch Allies》, 《The Art of Luring Familiars》, 《How to Obtain a Powerful Ally at the Lowest Price》, 《Summoning Witch Group Assault Tactics》…

Mo Lan searched for all of them in the Grimoire’s table of contents and found every single one. They were all books from the Second-Year Reading Room, and she had long since transcribed them into her Grimoire.

Yet in Mo Lan’s mind, these books ranked lower than the reference materials for Elemental Magic.

Now that she understood how Summoning Magic worked, Mo Lan knew she wouldn’t be taking the traditional path of a summoning witch who fought enemies through familiars and allies.

Rather than spending time raising familiars and seeking allies, she’d be better off learning a few powerful elemental spells for the same effect.

Still, she would need to learn the two core summoning spells—Familiar Summoning and Ally Summoning.

Learning them would let her create summoning-type cards to expand her card collection, and she could also contract one or two soft, fluffy little familiars to pet.

As for allies—unless they served non-combat functions like the golden bird, she’d mostly leave the rest to chance.

Fortunately, among the second-year witches, there were many with outstanding elemental talents, but not a single one who excelled in Summoning Magic.

Otherwise, her Summoning Magic progress might actually get surpassed someday!

The unique nature of Summoning Magic reminded Mo Lan of something. She looked toward the other schools of magic mentioned in the book. “Do these other schools of magic have special characteristics too?”

Mo Lan spent an entire day reading before she finally finished 《the Apprentice Witch’s Practical Spellbook》.

Apart from the elemental school, every other school of magic had its own peculiarities.

Some were special in their methods of study, others in the process of casting.

Healing Magic involved the power of life—injecting life force to heal the living, draining life force to deal death. Healing the living advanced one’s ability to deal death, and dealing death advanced one’s ability to heal.

Though healing witches bore “healer” as their title, they were equally terrifying in their lethality.

Healing Magic could only grow through the dual practice of life-giving and death-dealing.

Blessing Magic, Curse Magic, and Divination Magic all involved the power of fate. All required caution in their use—one should never recklessly cast blessings, curses, or divinations beyond one’s ability, lest it harm oneself.

In mild cases, it could affect one’s own fortune. In severe cases, it could damage one’s magical foundation and lifespan. In the worst cases, it could directly cause the caster’s death.

Spatial Magic required understanding the concept of “space” before it could be successfully cast, and it was extremely dependent on innate talent.

Mind Magic itself wasn’t particularly special, but one needed to exercise restraint when using it. The book recommended memorizing 《The Ten Principles of the Mind Witch》 before formally beginning study.

Necromancy required the coordination of multiple skills including dissection, anatomy, suturing, and perfumery.

Looking at it all, Elemental Magic turned out to be the easiest—it required nothing special, just the ability to convert elemental force, and its effects were the most straightforward.

Spatial Magic wasn’t bad either. The concept of space posed no problem at all for Mo Lan.

Setting aside her knowledge from Earth, her experience of transmigrating as a Soul from Another World alone was an immense help in mastering Spatial Magic.

Because worlds did not exist within the same space.

To traverse worlds was to traverse space.

The soul’s potential was the greatest of all—it was the physical body that limited the soul.

The book explained that Souls from Another World often possessed talent for Spatial Magic precisely because, during their passage between worlds, they had been touched by spatial power and gained space’s favor.

Mo Lan’s shrinking spell had also succeeded on her very first attempt.

Compared to Elemental Magic and Spatial Magic, the other schools were currently inconvenient to study and practice.

Take the luck spell and the bad luck hex, for example—using them on the Training Dummy did work. But what was the point?

Only living creatures had the threads of fate woven around them. The Training Dummy was lifeless, so casting Blessing Magic and Curse Magic on it could only verify whether the spell was successfully cast—there was no way to observe any actual effect.

And there was absolutely no difficulty to it.

The more fate-power one moved, the greater the impact on the future, and the harder blessings and curses became to cast.

The Training Dummy had no life, no power of fate—curse or blessing, naturally there was no difficulty.

The Training Dummy was far more qualified as a sparring partner for Elemental Magic.

For everything else, it was barely better than nothing—useful only for confirming whether a spell was successfully cast, completely useless for improving one’s magical proficiency.

“Thank goodness I pushed through and finished this book. Otherwise, who knows how much wasted effort I’d have put into my magic training!” Mo Lan sighed.

But this point also puzzled her, and she couldn’t help asking aloud:

“Headmistress, besides the Magic Training Grounds, does the Academy have other places to practice magic? Are there better training locations for healing, blessing, curse, divination, summoning, spatial, mind, and necromancy magic?”

“The inner and outer regions both have more suitable and more realistic practice targets.”

“What? We can’t start exploring the inner regions until third year!”

On Mo Lan’s Academy map, only the core area was clear and bright. Everything else was still a hazy gray.

“Every inch of the inner and outer regions may harbor unknown dangers. Now is the time for you to prepare for what lies ahead. Don’t be impatient.”

Mo Lan had also heard from the senior students that the Academy’s inner region had wild beasts, the outer region had magical beasts, and only the core area was completely safe.

With that, she made her decision.

In second year, she would focus on learning magic that could be conveniently practiced at the training grounds, improving her combat strength and survival ability.

She would study the theoretical knowledge of the other schools, and once she advanced to third year, she’d explore the inner regions and practice those types of magic then.

The various branches of Elemental Magic, Plant Magic, Alchemy Magic, potion-brewing magic, and Spatial Magic were all added to her priority study list for the year.

“Oh right, and Architectural Magic!”

She needed to study Architectural Magic in advance too, to ensure she could build herself a comfortable, safe dwelling before the end of third year.

Even if she’d only live there for one year, she couldn’t cut corners—this would determine her learning comfort for the entirety of her fourth year.

It might even be more important than her other magic studies.

Mo Lan searched for Architectural Magic in the Grimoire’s table of contents, but found no results.

That meant the Second-Year Reading Room had no books on the subject.

Learning Architectural Magic to solve the housing problem was indeed a third-year academic task.

But judging by how previous cohorts of senior students had performed, this task hadn’t been completed very well.

Mo Lan called out to the Headmistress again. “Headmistress, Headmistress—could I transcribe the Architectural Magic course textbook in advance and study on my own? I’ve already learned all the magic from the second-year curriculum, and I’ve finished reading all the textbooks too.”

“The Architectural Magic course?” Amisha’s voice came through with a hint of puzzlement, as if something had occurred to her, before she declined. “The content of the ‘Architectural Magic course’ is quite simple and doesn’t require advance study. If you have the capacity, you can begin deepening your study of the various schools of magic now.”