Chapter 34 – The Fifth Voice

“Why do I feel like this voice sounds familiar?” Lilith racked her brain trying to place it.

She only knew so many people, and it took barely a moment to recognize it: “It’s the Headmistress!”

“Correct! It’s me!”

Mo Lan, who had been startled by Lady Amisha three times in a single day: “…”

Was the elusive Headmistress’s voice truly omnipresent as well?

Once they knew it was Lady Amisha, the girls relaxed.

“Headmistress, what did you just say we couldn’t do?” Mo Lan asked.

“You must not freely share the breadfruit juice recipe with the young witches in their first, second, or third years.”

The Headmistress still hadn’t appeared—only her voice was present.

“Why not?” Mo Lan was puzzled.

“Over their many years of traveling through other worlds, the Sorceresses and Peak witches have discovered countless new species. There are several fruits similar to breadfruit that can both fill the stomach and replenish magic power or even mana itself—some even more effective than breadfruit. They all require special environments and magical laws to cultivate, yet in the end, breadfruit was the one chosen to be planted beside the Dormitory area. Do you know why?”

“Why?”

The four young witches wore expressions of utter bewilderment.

They had assumed breadfruit was incredibly precious and rare—that it was the only option!

There were actually better alternatives?

“It’s precisely because breadfruit tastes so awful!”

“…”

This was an answer Mo Lan and the others had never in a million years expected.

Since when was tasting terrible a virtue?

They had been racking their brains trying to make breadfruit palatable, and now they were being told it was intentionally this bad?

“Tasting awful is exactly what prevents you from becoming dependent on it! Breadfruit is merely a short-term stopgap until you learn Culinary Magic and recovery potions. If breadfruit were both delicious and effective, would you still push yourselves this hard when you encountered difficulties learning Culinary Magic or brewing recovery potions? Yet both of these are essential survival skills for your future. You don’t need to master them, but you absolutely cannot afford not to know them at all.”

Mo Lan and the others had no argument against this reasoning.

Indeed, growing through adversity was not only the Witch Academy’s longstanding educational philosophy—it was the very origin of witches themselves.

The Academy didn’t provide three meals a day, and deliberately planted an awful-tasting fruit so that young witches wouldn’t starve to death just because they couldn’t cook. It made perfect sense.

“Yesterday’s Breadfruit Cake was one thing—it already requires a certain level of cooking skill to make, and what’s shared is shared. But today’s breadfruit juice serving as an early substitute for recovery potions is not a good thing. After all, once you leave the Academy, there won’t be breadfruit available for picking at any time. You few may use it among yourselves, but you must not teach other young witches, and you must not slack off in studying Culinary Magic and recovery potions just because you have breadfruit juice! Once you reach your fourth year and begin arranging your own studies, whether to share the recipe will be entirely up to you. By then, your library access permissions will be fully opened as well. If you’re interested, you can read the ‘《Breadfruit Cookbook》’ compiled by past young witches—it includes breadfruit juices in various flavors!”

This time, after the Headmistress’s voice faded, it did not return.

Now Mo Lan understood why Lilith had said that whenever a young witch faced mortal danger within the Academy, Lady Amisha would immediately whisk them away for treatment.

Every young witch in the entire Academy was under the Headmistress’s watchful eye!

Mo Lan even suspected that it wasn’t just the blue-robed, purple-robed, and black-robed Headmistresses who taught their classes—there was probably a whole host of additional Headmistresses hiding in corners somewhere, secretly observing the young witches.

Perhaps every young witch even had a dedicated Headmistress watching over her. How else could the Headmistress appear so promptly? She even knew about the Breadfruit Cake.

“So it’s not that nobody knew how to cook breadfruit—it’s that the Headmistress required the recipes to be kept secret from the lower years!”

Lilith had only learned this today.

No wonder she often ran into fourth-year seniors in the Breadfruit Grove but had never once seen them eating breadfruit raw!

Unlike them, who frequently got so hungry they couldn’t be bothered to go find ingredients, and would just grab a fruit from the grove, give it a wipe, and start gnawing on it.

Those seniors had really kept the secret well!

“No wonder! Juicing isn’t exactly a stroke of genius—there’s no way nobody ever thought of it!”

Mo Lan had always felt something was vaguely off about that.

The powerful beings of Valen could travel between worlds! The cultures and specialties of other worlds were bound to influence Valen to some degree.

In a world like that, how could it possibly be a culinary wasteland?

She could accept not having something like soy sauce, but fruit juice? What was so special about that?

She had originally assumed it was because young witches were mostly unskilled at cooking when they first enrolled and hadn’t bothered researching it. Then, once they learned Culinary Magic and had access to so many delicious options, they simply couldn’t be bothered to experiment with breadfruit anymore.

As it turned out, the seniors had already compiled an entire breadfruit recipe collection—it just only circulated among fourth and fifth-years, and the younger students simply didn’t know about it.

She had underestimated the witches after all.

“Looks like we’ll have to drink this juice on the sly,” Sylph said.

“Good thing we didn’t make too much. If we keep it in the Dormitory and sip slowly, it won’t last long anyway,” Lilith said. “We’ll just make smaller batches from now on.”

Vasida, who had made a whole large pot: “Whatever I can’t finish, I’ll just dump into my stomach and be done with it—no point letting it go bad.”

“I suppose I’d better drink as much as I can tonight!” Mo Lan said with resignation.

She had originally planned to bring a large jug to class tomorrow.

Now that they had to keep the Honey Breadfruit Juice recipe a secret, carrying a large jug would be far too conspicuous. A waterskin at most.

Fortunately, the juice wasn’t very filling—she’d just need a few extra trips to the lavatory.

After the seniors and Vasida and the others left, Mo Lan began gulping down the juice in earnest.

She would drink for a while, then stroll around the yard, pull some weeds, turn over the soil, and then continue drinking.

Luckily there was only about a jug and a half left. Before long she had drunk most of it—she would finish the rest when she woke up the next morning.

The next morning, Mo Lan headed out with a waterskin full of juice and a packet of Breadfruit Cake.

She walked with Vasida and Sylph all the way to the Dormitory Intersection, but there was still no sign of Lilith.

The other second-year seniors were nowhere to be seen either.

“Strange, where are the seniors?”

Iris, who was nearby, overheard and told them: “You were walking at the back yesterday so you didn’t hear, did you? The second-years have their first class in the Herb Garden today. Apparently they’re getting ready to craft their Broomsticks! Going to the Herb Garden is closer than going to the Castle, so the seniors are probably all still sleeping right now!”

“So the seniors are about to have their own Broomsticks?” Vasida was green with envy.

“Pretty soon it’ll just be us twenty-seven first-years huffing and puffing our way up the mountain!” Cheryl heaved a long sigh.

“I wish I could skip straight to second year right now!”

“Don’t we all?”

…