Chapter 226 – A Niche Way of Putting It

In the earth, substances other than soil were primarily composed of gold elemental force—stones, minerals, all fell within this category.

After all, imagination built upon a foundation of established facts was easy to realize, while conjuring something from thin air with no reference whatsoever was extremely difficult.

The richer one’s imagination, the more flexible one’s magic.

That was why the advanced study materials for the Gold Arrow spell included many metallic materials suitable for crafting arrowheads, as well as arrows of every conceivable variety.

For Mo Lan, none of this posed a problem.

She possessed all the memories of an entire planet from its birth to its demise. Although Earth had no magic, its physical matter was remarkably similar.

She was quite confident.

She searched her mind for the image of an arrow—a sharp arrowhead, a straight shaft—then channeled her mana, converted it into gold elemental force, and willed it into a gold elemental arrow.

On her first casting, she didn’t spend much effort refining the arrow’s shape.

Unsurprisingly, she succeeded on the first attempt.

It shot out with a whoosh and embedded itself straight into a training dummy’s body.

It was a golden energy arrow, quite short, with no fletching at the tail—just an arrowhead and a shaft.

But its destructive power was unexpectedly impressive.

It simply didn’t last more than a few seconds before dissipating.

The persistence time of a Gold Arrow spell’s projectile was one of the key areas requiring study and refinement when learning this magic.

During casting, it could be controlled through mana.

The more elemental force within the arrow devoted to maintaining the spell’s duration, the longer the arrow would persist.

The challenge lay in how much gold elemental force to allocate toward sustaining the spell’s duration during casting, how much toward the arrowhead’s sharpness and penetrating power, how much toward the arrow’s flight speed, and so on—all of these were problems to solve.

Precisely controlling mana conversion according to one’s needs was no easy feat.

This was something every Gold Witch needed to diligently research.

Even Mo Lan couldn’t master it overnight—it would require long hours of practice.

Fortunately, she had a sufficient reservoir of knowledge. Her difficulty lay in the fact that her magical control hadn’t yet reached the level of casting at will, rather than—like other young witches just beginning to learn magic—not knowing how to adjust a spell’s form to achieve stronger effects.

With the Gold Arrow spell a success, the Gold Blade spell, Gold Hammer spell, Gold Shield spell, and Gold Armor spell all went off without a hitch, each cast successfully with ease.

Of course, these were only the most basic effects. Flexible variation, mana channeling, mana conversion volume, and casting focus all still had much room for improvement.

Mo Lan’s goal for the day was to test every Gold magic spell she had seen in the Mo-Pic books, so she didn’t drill further into these spells and instead moved on to experimenting with the rest.

The remaining Gold magic spells were all support-type magic.

The sharpening spell also belonged to this category.

These spells had quite diverse applications.

There was the Gold Detection spell, which could sense underground mineral veins; the Purification spell, which could squeeze all impurities out of a raw ore to refine it; the Gold Shaping spell, which could alter the form of metallic substances; the Stone-to-Iron spell, which could transform rocks into blocks of iron…

Mo Lan had specifically chosen the Outdoor Training Ground today precisely for these spells.

The stones and earth scattered everywhere were all her casting materials.

Over a dozen spells, and Mo Lan tested each one several times—the whole process took less than half an hour. It really was a case of spending a month or so studying books, only for the casting results to come in an instant!

Having learned new magic, Mo Lan now had more spells to practice during her weekly afternoon magic classes. She began allocating three-fifths of her daily half-mana budget to the newly learned Gold magic, and two-fifths to the spells she had previously mastered.

She also adjusted her Saturday and Sunday schedule, planning to set aside several hours each day—just like during magic class—dedicated exclusively to practicing her spells, stopping only once she’d expended half her mana.

She was determined to advance both the quantity and the proficiency of her spells in lockstep, letting neither fall behind.

During Monday’s magic class, the young witches watched Mo Lan clad in a layer of purple elemental radiance, firing purple arrows at the training dummy one moment, hurling purple flying blades the next, and then pelting the dummy’s head with purple stones—question marks written all over their faces.

It was obvious these were all newly learned spells.

Though the spell effects appeared purple to the naked eye, under Witch Sight, the energy composing those spells was actually golden.

That was the color of gold elemental force.

Yet not a single one of these spells was familiar to them.

Vasida was the first who couldn’t hold back, asking Mo Lan, “You’ve learned new magic again?”

“Mm-hm! I just finished learning Gold magic,” said Moira.

“Gold magic? All of it?” Sylph was so astonished that her Vine Sorcery fizzled mid-cast.

Mo Lan nodded. “Aside from Alchemy Magic, there were only a little over a dozen spells total.”

The young witches collectively sucked in a sharp breath.

“What a niche way of putting it! I’ve never once heard of someone talking about learning magic in terms of an entire elemental branch,” Iris said, her mouth hanging open in a perfect O.

“Never heard of it? I haven’t even seen it in storybooks!” Vasida said.

Sylph sensed something was off. “Moira, at your speed, reading the Mo-Pic books and learning these dozen-plus spells would’ve only taken you a few days, right? You just started practicing today—don’t tell me you spent all that time before this just reading Gold magic books!”

“Yep, it took me a whole month to finish reading all the Gold magic books in the library!” said Moira.

“Oh my goodness! That many books!” The young witches felt their scalps tingling.

Mo Lan hadn’t merely learned the Gold magic spells—she had also studied the theoretical knowledge behind Gold magic. With her memory, reading something once was the same as memorizing it.

Looking at Mo Lan, then thinking about how they had been working hard for over two months and still hadn’t passed a single completion exam, they couldn’t help but feel a pang of bitterness.

They envied Mo Lan’s mind, but admired her dedication to studying even more.

Every time they thought she had pushed herself to an insane degree, she would break through their understanding all over again.

The study motivation sparked by the completion exam rewards had already begun to wane somewhat, but now it surged right back up.

As fellow Sorceresses, Vasida and Sylph felt the impact most acutely.

One of them was still researching planting and cooking, struggling to keep herself fed, while the other had been endlessly cultivating things, nurturing the mutant seeds that kept appearing in her Box of Ten Thousand Seeds.

More than two months had passed since the school year began, and in terms of proper Elemental Magic, they hadn’t learned anything beyond what was taught in the All-Element Magic introductory course.

They hadn’t even finished learning the few spells in the introductory course textbook!

And yet, trying to catch up to Mo Lan—they wouldn’t even know where to begin.

Mathematics, language, alchemy theory, Manifested Gifts, completion exams—each one tugged at their attention and devoured their time.

There was simply no room to squeeze out even a sliver of time to learn more magic.

All they could do was watch helplessly as Mo Lan charged ever forward, the gap between them growing wider and wider.