Chapter 324 – Skill Cards

The Perpetual series of cards were cards Mo Lan had created based on the Book of Cards’ inherent creation ability itself.

They included not only various food-type cards, but also clothing-type cards covering the area of dress.

The primary function of food-type cards, once combined with the creation ability, was to replenish a certain type of food or to order meals using higher-tier Gem Coins.

The function of clothing-type cards combined with the creation ability was to produce various self-repairing garments.

Unfortunately, creation also required costs, and the Book of Cards’ creation cost was knowledge and energy.

Knowledge was precious, but once acquired, using it incurred no additional cost.

Energy, however, was a different matter.

She had incorporated an alchemical rune combination capable of absorbing free-floating elemental force from the air, which allowed these functions to achieve a “something from nothing” effect to a certain degree.

But ultimately, true creation from nothing was impossible. For the cards to take effect, they either needed time to absorb energy from the air, or they needed to be actively charged.

To increase the value of this set of cards, she had not hesitated to lower the commission on many cards’ food creation processes. The highest-tier Earth Menu Card was even half the price of buying food through normal cards.

Adding the Gem Coin charging option had also meant giving up some profit.

It could be considered a concession on food pricing to meet the needs of Card Magic contractors with large food demands, and it was this concession that had raised the value of these cards.

For the second category of daily needs — clothing — beyond the self-repairing clothing cards, Mo Lan had also used the various alchemical rune combinations she had learned that could be applied to garments, creating magical clothing cards.

However, she also had to figure out a solution for the fabric that would bear the runes.

So for now, she had only provided an edelweiss sample along with the knowledge of warmth-retention rune combinations, producing a cold-weather outfit set.

It could be considered a card derived from Alchemy Magic.

Beyond that, Mo Lan lacked materials, and her Alchemy Magic studies were still incomplete — she had the will but not the means.

For the third category of daily needs — shelter — without the support of Spatial Magic and spatial-type magical materials, there was still little Mo Lan could do.

However, when she had mined the magic ore deposits, she had fed one piece of each type of magical ore to the Book of Cards as a sample.

Combined with Alchemy Magic, she had actually produced quite a number of corresponding protective cards.

As for the fourth category of daily needs — transportation — Mo Lan drew on her knowledge from Earth and created quite a few vehicle cards.

Bicycle Card, Electric Scooter Card, Automobile Card, Train Card, Ship Card, and even Airplane Card — Mo Lan had made them all.

They were all powered by Mana, magical power, and other forms of energy, though their use had certain thresholds and required specific road conditions.

Although she had equipped each card with a user guide, learning to use them still presented some difficulty.

These cards were of little use to witches — witches on average had brooms and could fly, and brooms upgraded through Alchemy Magic were more than sufficient for their needs.

But once Card Magic was sold beyond the Wilds in the future, these cards would surely cause tremendous upheaval among other races.

Worried about the impact on the witch race, Mo Lan had equipped all these cards involving Earth technology with a tamper-proof self-destruct feature that activated upon disassembly.

As long as the cards were kept firmly in hand, preventing the real technology from leaking out, all races that used the cards would become aligned with the witches on the same front.

That was the extent of what could currently be produced in terms of cards that helped meet daily life needs.

Mo Lan felt another pang of regret that it was not yet time to feed Spatial Magic gems to the Book of Cards as card-making material.

When she had mined the gem deposits, although she hadn’t found any Spatial Magic gems, she had deliberately selected some of the largest and purest specimens — the finest among ordinary gems — filling a small box, and used them for practicing Spatial magic.

She had been using Spatial magic on these gems daily to enhance their spatial properties, and by now every single one had become a Beginner-level Spatial Magic gem.

The more times Spatial magic was used on them, the better the gems’ quality would become.

She planned to feed the smallest one to the Book of Cards at the end of this academic year, aiming to create cards with larger spatial capacity in preparation for the fifth-year trials.

The rest of the gems she would keep on hand, continuing to slowly apply Spatial magic to them, waiting until their quality improved further before putting them to use.

After reviewing the daily life cards, Mo Lan began reviewing the survival-oriented cards.

At this point, there were far more magical abilities that could be combined into card creation.

Using the various Elemental Magic types she had studied best as the primary blueprint, and supplementing them with every type of magic she had learned so far, she designed many magic cards that combined multiple magic systems.

And they all came in complete sets.

Taking arrow-type attack cards as an example:

There was the Magic Arrow Card, which combined the piercing power of the Metal Arrow spell with the speed boost of Wind Walk.

Then there was the Silenced Magic Arrow Card, which added the effect of the Silencing spell on top of that foundation.

The Magic Poisoned Arrow Card added the effect of Leaf Venom.

And then there was the Invisible Magic Arrow Card, created by further combining the Invisibility spell from Dark-element Magic.

Beyond these, there were also magic arrow cards carrying fire damage, frost damage, electric shock effects, curse damage, and even spatial teleportation functions.

There were arrow cards that possessed just a single one of these functions, as well as the Super Magic Arrow Card that combined every function together.

Its damage was incomparable to any single-element arrow-type attack magic from before.

However, Mo Lan’s current proficiency in these magics was not particularly high — they were basically all at the Beginner level — so these cards temporarily only existed in Apprentice and Beginner versions.

What applied to arrow-type cards also applied to blade-type attack magic and blunt-weapon-type attack magic, all transitioning from carrying a single magical attack to carrying composite magic attacks.

Apart from water-element and earth-element magic, all other magical abilities had been utilized — except where inherent conflicts existed, like fire-element and ice-element, which couldn’t be used together.

Defense-type cards followed the same principle.

She combined the defensive effects of all her magics and created a Multi-layered Magic Armor Card, incorporating every magical ability that had a defensive effect. Its defense was superior to that of any single type of magic she currently possessed.

And she didn’t stop at one-time-use cards. Mo Lan also leveraged the creation ability to produce a set of skill cards.

She specifically used Gem Coins as the energy source for this set of skill cards.

In other words, a transcendent being who possessed some form of energy could gain the ability to cast magic simply by depositing Gem Coins and purchasing magic skill cards.

Likewise, using Gem Coins to cast spells directly through skill cards was far cheaper than using Gem Coins to purchase one-time-use cards for casting.

The catch was that skill cards themselves were priced much higher.

One path involved a high upfront purchase followed by long-term savings; the other involved a low purchase price for brief, fleeting use. Each had its own advantages.

Compared to the latter, the former was more cost-effective over extended use.

Witches could use these cards to compensate for their lack of talent in a particular element of magic.

As for other races, where magical knowledge was not publicly available and the cost of learning was extremely high, they would likely find these cards even more irresistible.