Chapter 298 – Addicted to Mining

Chapter 298 – Addicted to Mining

“By the way, what’s the dwelling you found like?” Vasida asked while pouring juice into the Devouring Stomach.

“It’s a secret!” Mo Lan thought about her plans for the residence and smiled mysteriously. “Once I’ve finished building everything, I’ll invite you all over as guests. It’ll absolutely blow your minds!”

Vasida: “…”

Damn it, her curiosity was truly piqued now!

“At least tell me where it is. I’ll need to start looking for a suitable living spot soon too, and I might accidentally stumble right into your place,” Vasida said.

Mo Lan thought about it and realized she had a point. “Do you remember the valley I discovered during our first Wilderness Survival Class?”

“Wild Boar Valley?” Vasida remembered it very clearly.

“That’s the one!” Mo Lan said. “It’s right there. If you see it later, remember to take a detour! No peeking ahead of time!”

“Alright, alright, alright!” Vasida agreed readily.

Curious as she was, she could still honor an agreement.

Mo Lan spent two days in the Breadfruit Grove, stuffing a spatially-expanded pigskin sack to the brim, then went back to the Dormitory to fill another sack with rice and flour.

She also attended a Magic Q&A class along the way, having Madam Amisha answer all the questions she’d accumulated during this period.

After class, she went back to the dormitory courtyard to dig up trees and pick vegetables.

Going forward, she most likely wouldn’t be staying at the Dormitory regularly anymore. Her visits to the core area would gradually decrease, and without proper tending, the vegetable plots and fields would slowly be overtaken by weeds.

Once this school year ended, everything would be reset to the way it looked before she’d moved in.

She wasn’t too bothered about most things, but it was a shame about the passion fruit tree she’d worked so hard to grow.

So she dug it up roots and all, wrapped the root ball in burlap, shrank the whole thing down, and placed it in her sack.

The remaining space was filled with vegetables picked from the garden—one final harvest.

Once both large pigskin sacks were packed full, Mo Lan set off immediately, heading back to Wild Boar Valley.

Upon returning, the first thing she did was find a sunny spot and plant the passion fruit tree.

There weren’t many vegetables, and they couldn’t keep for long—she’d already eaten them on the way back.

She cleared new vegetable plots in the valley and planted some greens.

However, she didn’t plant grain crops like rice and wheat on a large scale.

Instead, she chose to buy several of Sylph’s {Giant-Eared Wheat – Seed Cards} and {Tree-Grown Rice – Seed Cards}.

A few plants would be enough to feed herself, and they were much easier to tend.

With the vegetable plots sorted out, Mo Lan loaded up on Breadfruit Cake, slung her pigskin mining pack over her back, and headed straight down into the mines without a moment’s rest.

Ordinary crystal ore—mine it!

Glass for sealing windows was hard to make with magic, but she could use Stone Shaping to mold crushed crystal into crystal panes for the windows. The transparency wasn’t much worse than glass windows, and there were multiple colors to choose from.

Crystal shaped through Stone Shaping worked perfectly fine—as long as it wasn’t used for Alchemy.

Ordinary metal ore—mine it!

The bottom of the valley entrance, where the stream flowed through, needed to be sealed with a metal grate to be truly secure.

Doors, windows, furniture, running water, drainage pipes, and mechanical doors all required some metal ore as well.

Ordinary gemstone ore—absolutely must mine it!

Large ones could be saved to craft spatial-attribute magic gemstones. Small ones could be kept to adorn clothing or to inlay and decorate furniture and ornaments.

And various magical ores were definitely not to be passed up either—they were essential for Alchemy.

The more she mined, the more engrossed she became.

The caverns along both banks of the entire underground river were like one enormous set of nesting-doll mystery boxes.

Open one and there’s always another. Wherever she went, wherever the Gold Detection spell sensed something, that’s where she’d mine with Mining Magic.

After expanding the basement three times, with various ordinary ores each piled into small mountains, Mo Lan finally stopped collecting run-of-the-mill ordinary ore and began mining only exceptionally high-quality ordinary ore or magical ore.

Every time she struck a vein of quality ore, she wished she could find even more. She simply couldn’t stop.

She even brought food and a tent card with her and took up residence right there in the mine tunnels.

When her Mana was nearly depleted, she’d pitch her tent and read. When she got tired of reading, she’d sleep. Mining and studying—two birds with one stone.

Once she was rested and her Mana had recovered, she’d continue following the underground river, exploring the ore deposits in the caverns along both banks one by one.

Only when her pigskin mining pack was full would she return to the basement to drop off the ore.

Then she’d go up to the valley to tend the vegetable plots, and finally set off again with a fresh supply of Breadfruit Cake.

After mining so much, Mo Lan had developed a practiced eye for it.

The magical ore reserves in the natural caverns along both banks of the underground river didn’t seem particularly abundant.

Only within rich deposits of ordinary ore would a small amount of low-grade magical ore form.

And only within rich deposits of low-grade magical ore would a small amount of mid-grade magical ore appear.

After all this time mining, Mo Lan had only managed to fill a single crate with low-grade magical ore. As for mid-grade magical ore—she had exactly one piece.

It was a fist-sized chunk of mid-grade magical copper ore.

Mo Lan had mined her way from the underground river channels at the southernmost edge of Lone Peak Forest all the way to the north-central area of the forest. In a straight line, she had traversed a good two-thirds of Lone Peak Forest.

Once again carrying a full mining pack back to the basement, she dumped out the ore and opened the crate where she kept the Breadfruit Cake—only to find it empty. That was when Mo Lan finally realized she’d been lost in her mining obsession for a very long time.

Both her Gold Detection spell and Mining Magic had leveled up to Intermediate through their high-frequency use.

Her Gold Detection spell had even reached mid-Intermediate already.

Mo Lan had never imagined that the first Elemental Magic she’d advance to Intermediate would be Gold Detection.

At first, she’d been mining to stockpile materials. Later, it was purely for the joy of it.

She’d accumulated more than enough materials ages ago.

Emerging from the basement, the Giant-Eared Wheat and Tree-Grown Rice she’d planted had grown quite tall.

However, because she hadn’t been using Mutant Crop Magic frequently enough, they weren’t growing very well.

Mo Lan hurriedly deployed her mutant crop planting magic alongside the Lush Flourishing spell and Fertile Soil spell in full force, giving the crops a thorough treatment that finally nursed them back to health.

“Headmistress, what’s the date today?” Having spent so long underground, Mo Lan’s eyes had been filled with nothing but ore of every kind, leaving her with the disorienting feeling of not knowing what year it was anymore.

“May third,” came the voice of the Guardian Headmistress.

“May?!!!”

Mo Lan’s voice came out almost shrill with surprise. “It’s already May?”

She hadn’t felt time passing so quickly at all. This school year was nearly at its end.

And at this moment, her Waterfall Cottage looked exactly the same as it had before she’d started mining.

Still that same empty shell with nothing but floors and walls—windows still without glass, interior doors still missing, furniture, ornaments, and magic circles all completely absent.

The enormous pile of ore in the basement, every Apprentice and Beginner-level magic book along with various miscellaneous texts cataloged in the Second-Year Reading Room, the Intermediate-level Elemental Magic books in the Third-Year Reading Room, and the All-Element Magic she could now successfully cast—these were the sum total of her gains.

The gains weren’t small by any means, but she’d been so addicted to mining that she’d completely fallen behind on building her residence!

“When is this year’s enrollment ceremony?” Mo Lan hurriedly asked Madam Amisha.