Chapter 297 – The Waterfall Cottage

A place that was easy to defend and hard to attack, conveniently located, with vast stretches of plantable land, and direct access to mine tunnels where magical gemstones could be excavated — if she didn’t claim it now, when would she?

Who knows, she might even be able to map out an underground route through Lone Peak Forest!

She didn’t need to check anywhere else. There was no place more perfect than this.

Mo Lan had already envisioned how she would develop this valley.

Since she’d decided to establish her dwelling here, the black-haired wild boar carcasses in the valley couldn’t go to waste. Preserving them on-site would give her a ready supply of stored meat.

She retraced her steps back to the valley and processed all the black-haired wild boar carcasses, separating the hides into one pile and the pork into another.

She materialized a {Large Freezer Card} and a {Diesel Generator Card}, placing them inside the cave.

Half the pork went into the freezer for frozen storage, while the other half was salt-cured to be smoked into cured meat later.

There was no need to build wooden or earthen houses — a stone dwelling integrated into the waterfall and cliff face would be far more suitable.

The original cave entrance was positioned too low, with the risk of water flowing back in during flood season.

Mo Lan planned to seal this entrance with stone and carve a new one higher up, roughly at the waterfall’s midpoint.

The original cave, roughly a dozen square meters, would make a perfect underground storage room once she carved some drying runes into it.

After choosing her location, she began excavating with the Rock-Crushing Spell.

The excavated rubble wasn’t wasted either — she floated all of it to the valley entrance, used Stone Shaping to mold the fragments into large blocks one by one, then bonded them together to form a stone wall that sealed off the valley entrance, leaving only a water outlet for the stream to flow through.

By the time she’d carved out the first stone chamber of her dwelling, the stone wall at the valley entrance had already risen to the height of a person.

She built the wall extremely thick, nearly flush with the mountain itself, and even thicker in some places.

She also deepened the channel where the stream flowed through, to prevent drainage problems.

The stone chambers were sized primarily according to her needs, none of them particularly large.

The first chamber through the entrance was the living room.

On either side of the living room, she planned one chamber each.

The left would be a kitchen-dining room, and the right would be a study doubling as an alchemy and potion-brewing laboratory.

On the inner side of the living room was a shared washroom, and beside it, a stairwell.

Going down led to the underground storage room; going up led to her bedroom.

The bedroom was as large as the living room, kitchen-dining room, study, and washroom combined.

It had a private washroom just inside the door, and beyond that, no partitions or dividers whatsoever.

The space was quite generous — after placing an oversized bed, there was still room to section off a wardrobe area, a vanity area, and a small sitting area.

Both the kitchen and the study had large windows carved into the cliff face.

The bedroom had two large windows.

None of these windows fell within the waterfall’s path, so even though the dwelling was inside the cliff, natural lighting wouldn’t be affected in the slightest.

Finally, the basement — Mo Lan renovated that as well, smoothing out the cave walls and carving out a small smoking room next to it.

She sealed the basement entrance to the mine tunnels with a stone door, then used mechanical knowledge from her Earth memories to construct it as a hidden door, blending it seamlessly with the surrounding stone walls. Without careful inspection, no one would ever notice there was a door there.

All the windows were side-hinged casement windows made of wood, though the wood surfaces were coated with a layer of stone using Stone Shaping, making them look just like stone windows while remaining much lighter. The front entrance featured a cleverly designed retractable portico and stone staircase.

When extended, it would push the waterfall’s water flow aside, allowing her to fly directly into the portico on her broomstick from the air, or walk through the front door along the stone staircase on the right side of the waterfall.

When retracted, it merged flush with the cliff face, leaving only a sliver of a gap.

Mo Lan planned to eventually grow green ivy and moss on the cliff face, or use magic circles to conceal all traces of the doors and windows. Only then would it truly become the waterfall cottage hidden within the cascade and mountain walls that she envisioned!

But achieving all of this would still require considerable effort.

For now, she had only completed the framework of the house, doors, and windows, and leveled the floors and walls.

The rest would require gathering various materials before she could finish.

For example: window glass, indoor lighting fixtures, furniture, various household magic circles, and so on.

Mo Lan didn’t intend to simply materialize everything with cards right from the start.

She planned to craft as much as she could by hand — it would both hone her magical abilities and give her a greater sense of accomplishment.

She never forgot that training her magical abilities was the ultimate goal.

But before all that, Mo Lan needed to make a trip back to the core area. She needed to prepare more Breadfruit Cakes to bring along for her mining expeditions, and also transport some of the food stored in the Dormitory to this location.

From now on, this would be her main base of operations.

She sewed two large sacks from the black-haired wild boar hides, hung them on the broomstick handle, and flew back to the core area.

*

Vasida had spent most of the day practicing at the Magic Training Grounds. Stomach empty and on the verge of passing out, she rocketed on her broomstick straight into Breadfruit Grove.

“Huh? Where’s all my Breadfruit? This morning when I came by, the trees here were still full of them!”

She flew a bit deeper in, but the trees were just as bare.

Besides herself, who could possibly eat that much Breadfruit in just a few hours?

“Hmm? What’s that?”

Vasida spotted what appeared to be a small green-tinged mountain in a clearing among the trees not far away, with wisps of smoke curling up beside it.

When she flew closer, she could finally see clearly — it was a mountain of Breadfruit. At its base sat ten juicers, ten steamer baskets, and various kitchen utensils flying about on their own.

Under a nearby tree, a purple-haired little witch sat with her nose buried in a book.

“So that’s why there’s so much less Breadfruit! It’s because you’re back, Moira!” Vasida said.

Mo Lan looked up, shielding her eyes against the glaring sunlight, and squinted over. “Vasida! Are you here to pick Breadfruit too? I’ve already cleared this whole area — head that way, the ones over there haven’t been picked yet.”

Vasida was so hungry she could barely hold on any longer, so she headed off in that direction first.

By the time she’d eaten her fill and returned, Mo Lan’s Breadfruit mountain had shrunk dramatically, transformed into Breadfruit juice and Breadfruit Cakes.

“What are you making so much Breadfruit juice and cakes for?” Vasida asked, puzzled.

“I’ve found a good spot to settle and started building my dwelling. Sometimes when I get busy, there’s no time to cook, so having a stock of Breadfruit Cakes to bring along is more convenient. As for the juice — it’s all unsweetened, practically undrinkable. I’m not planning to keep it,” Mo Lan said.

“All this juice, and you don’t want it? Then I’ll feed it to the Devouring Stomach!” Though Vasida was already full, she could still pour some extra juice into the Devouring Stomach.

The Devouring Stomach had starved her to the point of fainting before, but it had never made her throw up from overeating. Once something went into its belly, it never came back out.