Chapter 367 – Teaching by Outline

Chapter 367 – Teaching by Outline

The young witches looked puzzled. “What’s an outline?”

“All these books, finished in three days? Moira, are you serious?” Cheryl asked. “Even finishing two books in a day would be a stretch!”

“…” Mo Lan finally understood how they’d been so thoroughly stumped by an open-book exam that lasted three whole days.

“Were you really planning to spend these three days cramming through that absurdly long reading list word by word? It’s an open-book exam! You can flip through the books during the test!”

“But even if we can flip through the books, with the number of questions mentioned in the notice, if we have to search for each answer one by one, there’s no way we’d finish!” Vasida said. “I even think the Headmistress might be doing this on purpose—piling on a bunch of difficult questions so we fail the exam, then punishing us with a workbook to slow down our departure from the Wilds.”

After all, it had been explicitly stated that completing the workbook was recommended before leaving the Wilds.

Though it wasn’t a mandatory requirement, witches generally followed the recommendation.

After all, with the Headmistress repeatedly emphasizing that the workbook covered essential survival basics, not finishing it left one with a nagging sense of insecurity—a feeling that one’s abilities weren’t yet sufficient to face what lay beyond the Wilds.

“That’s exactly why you need to make outlines!” Mo Lan said. “What each book covers can be roughly figured out just by looking at the table of contents, right? At most, you skim through a few sections to get the gist.

Once you’ve outlined every book, you’ll have a general idea of what each one is about.

During the exam, with the outlines in hand, you’ll know which book to look in for which question.

Even if you still can’t answer every question, you shouldn’t be too far off the mark.

And surely not every question requires flipping through a book to find the answer?

The theory classes from first through third year weren’t for nothing.”

The young witches exchanged glances, jaws dropping. “You can do that?”

“What else would you do?” Mo Lan said.

“Moira! How do you make these outlines? Tell us, quickly!”

The young witches instantly forgot all about the fragrant dishes right beside them, their hearts set entirely on learning how to make outlines.

“The food’s ready,” Mo Lan said. “Let’s finish lunch first, and then we’ll talk! I’ll walk you through outlining a few books, and after that you’ll know what to do. As long as you have a rough impression of the scope of each book’s content, that’ll be enough to handle the exam.

Don’t forget, the Grimoire also has a search function—it can search for keywords. Searching across all the books at once casts too wide a net, making it hard and time-consuming to find answers. But once you’ve narrowed it down to the right book, searching becomes much easier.

So what we really need to do is use the outlines as a preliminary filter to narrow the search scope and save time looking up information during the exam.”

The young witches nodded eagerly.

They devoured that meal even faster than they’d ever eaten Breadfruit.

The moment they finished, each one clutched her Grimoire and looked at Mo Lan with anticipation.

Which left Mo Lan with no choice but to speed up her own eating.

After finishing, she tidied up the cooking utensils, stored the mobile kitchen back into its card, and clapped her hands before walking to the front of the sofa area.

She produced a mundane armchair, sat down in it, and casually used magic to write the words “《The Continent of Valen》” in the air like a chalkboard:

“《The Continent of Valen》 is a full set spanning several hundred volumes—it’s essentially the most comprehensive encyclopedia of the Continent of Valen.

I’ll use this set as my example. It looks like a lot of volumes, but what each book covers can basically be figured out just by reading the foreword and table of contents.”

She looked at the young witches and saw them sitting in silence, their eyes filled with confusion and surprise. Mo Lan asked, “What’s wrong? Or would you rather I use a different set of books as an example?”

The young witches all shook their heads.

“Moira, you’re using light-element magic Marking Technique, aren’t you?” Alba said with certainty.

“That’s right,” Mo Lan said. “This spell is quite convenient for writing on a board.”

She had learned it from Madam Amisha. When Madam Amisha taught classes, she used the Marking Technique for board writing and the Water Mirror Technique for projections.

“But where’s your wand?” Sylph asked.

“Moira, don’t tell me you’ve already surpassed Peak level? You’ve even learned wandless casting?” Vasida felt like the world had gone mad.

A witch learning Beyond Peak level wandless casting before even graduating—who would believe such a thing!

“How could that be! I haven’t even reached Peak level in a single type of magic yet! Let alone Beyond Peak level.”

As Mo Lan spoke, she held out her finger and temporarily dispelled the invisibility effect on her wand ring. “The wand is right here! I just reshaped it into a ring, that’s all.”

“Oh, so that’s what it is!” The young witches let out a collective sigh of relief.

Only Vasida and Sylph understood just how difficult it was to reshape a wand like that.

“So your Alchemy Magic has reached Advanced level, Moira?” Sylph and Vasida asked.

Mo Lan nodded.

Sylph and Vasida didn’t feel like talking anymore.

This past year, just fending off the various magical beasts around them and struggling to survive had been hard enough.

Both Alchemy Magic and potion-brewing magic required a stable, safe environment to practice properly.

With the constant threat of magical beasts, they had no way to practice alchemy or brew potions at all.

Over the past year, they had gathered plenty of magical materials, but in these two branches of magic, they had made zero progress.

Mo Lan’s advancement in Alchemy Magic alone made it obvious just how comfortably she had spent her year.

“If there are no more questions, I’ll continue!” Mo Lan said.

Thinking of the exam, the young witches rallied their spirits once more.

They could never catch up to Mo Lan’s level, but they couldn’t afford to fall even further behind, could they?

Then, as they listened to Mo Lan speak eloquently without even taking out her Grimoire—citing specific volumes, pages, and even paragraphs when referencing the books’ contents—

They hurried to flip through the pages of 《The Continent of Valen》 in their own Grimoires. Their page-turning speed could barely keep up with Mo Lan’s explanations, and she had to pause to wait for them to find the right sections.

Every detail she mentioned matched the books exactly, as if she were reading directly from them.

Now the young witches finally understood just how absurd Mo Lan’s photographic memory truly was.

It was as though the entire text had been transcribed directly into her brain.

Mo Lan walked them through a summary of the entire 《The Continent of Valen》 set and produced an outline—all in just over an hour.

“Now I’ll give you a few practice questions. Try using the outline to narrow down the scope and then search for the answers.”

Mo Lan said:

“Question one, listen carefully: Which human nation is closest to the Witch’s Wilds, and who is its current ruler?”

The young witches immediately turned to the outline they had just made with Mo Lan’s guidance:

“Human nations are in volumes 10 through 60 of 《The Continent of Valen》, near the Witch’s Wilds… Found it! Volume thirty-seven! It’s the Duchy of Lance, and the current ruler is Clara Lance!”

They found the answer in less than a minute.