Chapter 335 – Preparations Before Departure

“Oh! Right! The formation stones too!” Vasida ran toward the base of the valley cliff.

“Those have already lost their power!” Mo Lan called out hastily.

The ore quality had been substandard to begin with, and the stones she’d forced into shape had already lasted as long as they possibly could. The magic circles had gone inert, and the magical energy within the ore had long since been completely depleted.

“Even if they’ve lost their power, they used to be magical ore! When I left, I even fed the wooden fence around the farmland to it—this is nothing!”

Vasida didn’t care in the slightest. She dug out every last one without missing a single stone and fed them all to the Devouring Stomach.

“There! Now it’s truly spotless.”

Mo Lan was in awe. “Even the Academy’s reset spell can’t match you!”

Vasida patted the Devouring Stomach. “Raising this bag isn’t easy—how can I not be frugal about it? And later, the Red-Eyed Bird carcasses—if you all don’t want them, I’ll feed those to it too!”

Mo Lan and the others had absolutely no objections.

Red-Eyed Bird wings were an absolute delicacy, but Red-Eyed Bird bodies? Even a dog wouldn’t eat them! That saying really wasn’t just talk.

“We’ll do it the same way as last time! I’ll be the bait, and you all pick up the corpses!” Mo Lan said.

Even after a full year, not one of the five—Vasida included—dared claim she could accurately shoot down multiple Red-Eyed Birds with a single spell while in flight.

So they were all quite self-aware and had no intention of fighting over the bait role.

However: “We can basically handle dangers in the mountain forest on our own now. This time, we don’t need to pair up for corpse collection, right?” Alba said.

“I’m fine with that,” Iris replied.

The other young witches: “No problems here either.”

Mo Lan said with some hesitation, “Hmm… I went to check earlier, and this batch has more adults than usual, but it’s still only around a hundred or so. Two rounds should be enough to take them all down. How about we all go together this time?”

“A hundred? Two rounds?” Cheryl’s eyes lit up with understanding. “Your Metal Arrow spell reached Advanced?”

Mo Lan nodded slightly.

The young witches: “…”

*

In the Ink-Leaf Tree forest, the Red-Eyed Bird chicks that had been left behind before had grown into the flock’s protectors, and a new batch of chicks now cried hungrily for food in the woods.

Mo Lan rode her broom straight into the forest with brazen swagger, crashing through recklessly, and steadily drew the aggro of a massive wave.

Even the fledglings that had just learned to fly nearly flapped their wings in pursuit, but the adults chased them back.

Mo Lan led the great flock of Red-Eyed Birds away from the Ink-Leaf Tree forest.

When she reached the spot where Vasida and the others were waiting, she turned halfway around and fired off a single Metal Arrow spell—fifty golden arrows.

Every arrow hit its mark, and the Red-Eyed Bird flock was instantly cut in half.

After their initial shock, Vasida and the others hurried to collect the fallen birds.

Before they’d even finished gathering this batch, Mo Lan looped around and lured the remaining Red-Eyed Birds back, having widened the distance again, and fired another Metal Arrow spell.

Instantly, only about a dozen Red-Eyed Birds still had any fight left in them.

For these last dozen or so, Mo Lan didn’t even need to accelerate to open up distance—she simply fired off a dozen arrows at even faster speed.

The remaining Red-Eyed Birds were less than three meters from her, seemingly about to snatch her at any moment, when in the next instant each was struck clean through the head by an arrow and tumbled into the forest below.

This time, Vasida and the others absolutely refused to split the wings evenly. “Don’t think we didn’t notice—you could’ve taken every single one of them down by yourself! You didn’t need us here at all!”

And that was indeed the truth. With her triple-layered defense of Bark Skin, Stone Skin, and Metal Armor spell, ordinary wild beasts could barely even scratch her now.

Still: “My hundred-cubic spatial ring doesn’t have enough room for all these wings! It’d be such a waste to let something this delicious go to nothing!”

Items inside a spatial ring couldn’t be reduced in size with the Shrinking Spell.

A hundred cubic units of space really couldn’t hold all that much.

“If even you can’t fit them all, we couldn’t carry everything even with shrinking.”

In the end, they insisted on stuffing Mo Lan’s spatial ring to the brim with its remaining capacity, and only then did they split the leftover wings among themselves.

Whatever wouldn’t fit became that day’s lunch.

Of course, they also didn’t forget to collect some Ink-Leaf Tree sap.

The other young witches all used Flash Freeze to preserve their Red-Eyed Bird wings in ice. Only Mo Lan—she marinated and roasted every single one right on the spot, and at the precise moment the doneness was perfect, swept them all into her spatial ring.

The spatial ring’s interior had a time-stasis rune combination: anything placed inside would remain in exactly the state it was in when stored.

Whenever she wanted to eat, she could simply take one out, and it would be as fresh as the moment it came off the grill.

That afternoon, Mo Lan and the others spread out across the mountain forest to hunt some wild beasts.

Mo Lan likewise prepared everything into finished dishes and stored them away.

Her spatial ring had essentially become a food storage space.

The outer region, where magical beasts roamed, was far more dangerous. Mo Lan didn’t know whether she’d have the opportunity to cook elaborate meals in the wilderness, so all of this was prepared for those extreme circumstances.

Of course, this food supply wouldn’t be nearly enough to last a whole year.

But many magical beasts were also exceptionally delicious ingredients, and some could even be cooked into magical cuisine with body-enhancing effects.

If the environment was relatively safe, she could simply prepare fresh meals from whatever ingredients were at hand.

As for her cards, she’d still rather avoid using them when possible. Whether the card library’s magic cards could undergo another upgrade before graduation depended entirely on whether her magical abilities could achieve another breakthrough.

That evening, Mo Lan and the others set off, taking the underground river route toward the core region.

By the next morning, they had arrived at the passage opening at the furthest downstream point of the underground river.

After sleeping for a few hours, they changed into the clothes they’d prepared for the enrollment ceremony and jumped into the underground river.

This time, none of the others asked Mo Lan for help.

They had all crammed hard on the Water Shield spell, and even though their water magic talent wasn’t particularly strong, they could at least form a water shield bubble around their heads.

When the young witches surfaced from Moon Lake, it was exactly noon.

At that very moment, the dormitories of the third-year witches and the residences of the fourth-year witches were all reset.

Mo Lan and the others had already prepared themselves to never return when they’d left their quarters, so they didn’t feel particularly upset about it now.

“It’s still early—let’s make a trip to Breadfruit Grove!” Vasida said.

She not only wanted to take this opportunity to stuff the Devouring Stomach until it absolutely couldn’t take another bite, but also to stockpile as many Breadfruit Cakes as possible.

Once they entered the outer region, she probably wouldn’t be able to farm in peace anymore. When that time came, with meals being hit or miss, she could handle it—but the Devouring Stomach couldn’t.

The other young witches had the same idea.

Iris even had some new cooking ideas. “I brought some beef. I’m planning to make the Breadfruit beef-stuffed sandwich from 《Breadfruit Cookbook》. Apparently, when Breadfruit flesh is paired with beef, the feeling of fullness lasts much longer!”

“Really?” Vasida had no idea about this. “If I’d known, I would’ve prepared some beef too!”