Chapter 364 – Broom Beautification

Chapter 364 – Broom Beautification

So at first, Mo Lan had scoffed at the broom beautification rune combination, which seemed all style and no substance, and had immediately excluded it from her priority practice list.

But once she learned about the Advanced broom transformation rune combination, Mo Lan immediately buckled down and studied the broom beautification rune combination properly.

It wasn’t for any other reason — mainly because the broom transformation rune combination needed to be used in conjunction with the broom beautification rune combination.

The Advanced broom transformation was different from broom beautification.

Even if you added magical iron through broom beautification and gave the broom a mechanical style, it would still roughly be a long, narrow shape that you needed to ride while flying — you could still make out the broom’s original form.

But broom transformation could completely change the broom’s shape.

Although the effects of Advanced broom transformation were limited, when combined with the broom beautification rune combination, it could at most transform the broomstick into a flying carpet the size of a double bed. But even that was a massive change — from riding to sitting, or even lying down while flying.

Combined with the Spatial Tent Card, it had a few hints of her ideal mobile witch’s home. Mo Lan absolutely wasn’t going to pass that up.

She had already practiced drawing all these rune combinations hundreds and thousands of times in advance, so the chance of making a mistake was very small.

But because the runes were too complex, they all had to be drawn onto the broom handle.

Fortunately, this was essentially the endpoint of broom modification upgrades, so she didn’t need to worry about leaving much space for future rune work.

Even if witch broom modification techniques advanced further in the future, or her Alchemy Magic reached the Advanced level, she could always erase runes that had been directly drawn with Mana.

In the end, considering that after the broom was transformed into a flying carpet, Mo Lan might sit on it together with her friends and would need some carrying capacity, she added the Advanced load-bearing flight rune combination as well.

She would just need to make sure the load-bearing flight and Mana acceleration weren’t activated at the same time.

All in all, it took the better part of a month to complete the broomstick’s modifications.

All the rune combinations had been concealed, so the modified broom looked no different from before when held in hand.

But in reality, it was now a broomstick that could fly above the clouds to ultra-high altitudes, was impervious to wind and rain, resistant to extreme heat and bitter cold, could defend against Advanced-level attacks and below, could use Mana or magic gemstones to increase carrying capacity and load, could fly automatically along predetermined routes, and could switch between broom and flying carpet forms.

In broom form, the seat cushion was even more comfortable than the sofa in her living quarters. In flying carpet form, no mat was needed — whether lying or sitting on it, it perfectly supported the body with absolutely flawless comfort.

Since the Academy’s internal maps couldn’t be leaked or recorded, Mo Lan instead loaded the latest edition of 《Safe Flight Routes of the Continent of Valen》, which she had copied from the Academy Library into her Grimoire, into the broomstick’s route planning rune combination.

This way, after graduation, she would have map “navigation” whenever she went out and wouldn’t have to worry about getting lost.

After the broom upgrade was complete, Mo Lan rode the broom and took Zhizhi for a spin in the sky, testing out each of the broom’s functions. Everything worked wonderfully.

If it weren’t for the fact that her Wand still hadn’t been modified and upgraded, and she was worried about running out of time later, Mo Lan would have been reluctant to tear herself away from such a comfortable flying experience.

The Wand’s modification and upgrade didn’t have nearly as many bells and whistles as the broomstick.

There weren’t many types of rune combinations involved either — only three modification directions.

One was modifying the Wand’s appearance, one was modifying the Wand’s power, and one was modifying the Wand’s safety.

These three modification directions could be carried out simultaneously, and in many cases, the power and safety modifications also relied on the appearance modification.

There were two types of appearance modifications for the Wand.

The first was to use the original wand as the core and attach a larger outer “shell” to it.

In the most extreme cases, a slender little wand could be turned into a heavy, large wand that could be swung around to bludgeon people. This was suitable for witches who needed some melee combat capability while casting spells — they could use the wand as a weapon.

If the demand for power amplification was relatively high and there were no high-quality magic gemstones available, one would also need to choose the “large shell” option, as it allowed many magic gemstones to be inlaid as energy sources.

When the quality of the energy sources was mediocre, the more external energy sources attached, the greater the amplification of the wand’s power.

The other modification method was to make the wand smaller, while using certain rune combinations and special materials to transform the wand into the shape of a ring or bracelet.

In this case, there was virtually no room to add magic gemstones, so the power amplification would be greatly reduced.

However, combined with some safety-related rune combinations, this approach could maximize the protection of the wand itself.

It also freed up both hands, and if one was inclined to train, it was even possible to cast spells and engage in melee combat simultaneously.

For the Wand’s appearance modification direction, you could only choose one of the two.

Mo Lan chose the second option.

Compared to the power amplification effects, she was more worried about the wand slipping from her grasp, getting lost, or being damaged, leaving her in a situation where she had no wand to use.

Safety came first.

She planned to modify the wand into a ring to wear on her hand, and combined with the invisibility rune combination and anti-slip rune combination, she could achieve something close to pseudo-wandless casting — virtually foolproof.

This modification direction had higher requirements for the Alchemy Witch than the first option.

Because shrinking the wand down to bracelet size required solidifying a Shrinking Spell onto the wand.

Solidifying a Shrinking Spell was different from drawing spatial-type rune combinations — the former required the creator herself to know the Shrinking Spell, while the latter only required Spatial Magic materials.

To shrink the wand down to ring size, the Shrinking Spell couldn’t be too low-level — it needed to be at least Advanced.

For this reason, Mo Lan’s practice frequency for the Shrinking Spell was second only to Spatial magic, and only now had she just barely reached the Advanced level.

Besides the invisibility rune combination, anti-slip runes, and wand transformation rune combination, Mo Lan also left a small gemstone setting on the wand.

If needed, she could inlay an alchemically-treated magic effect amplification gemstone into it.

Whichever elemental type of gemstone was inlaid would amplify that school of Magic, and it could be swapped out.

When facing particularly troublesome enemies, even this small amplification could increase her advantage.

After the Wand modification was complete, it had become a small wooden ring with an empty setting on top.

When the Wand was restored to its original form, the inlaid amplification gemstone would become a small decorative piece on top.

But the moment Mo Lan put the wand ring on her hand, she hid it from view.

Only something that others couldn’t detect was truly the safest.

She casually cast a Cleaning spell at the mirror, and if she controlled her habitual wand-waving motions, it really did look almost identical to the wandless casting that only Beyond Peak level witches had access to — quite intimidating indeed.