Chapter 397 – Mentor Moira

Chapter 397 – mentor Moira

Even Alchemy Magic, which Mo Lan genuinely considered inferior to Witch Magic, yielded barely any impressive alchemical spell structures or blueprints from these books.

A mage’s alchemical spell structure was essentially the equivalent of a witch’s alchemical rune combination.

Although mages’ alchemical runes were all painstakingly derived through studying the laws of material transmutation, summarized bit by bit and assembled into individual spell structures—

They were far inferior to the exclusive runes witches received through the world’s favor, runes capable of achieving material transmutation.

But mages had strength in numbers, and their research into the application of runes and spell structures far surpassed that of witches.

There should still have been plenty of blueprints worth learning from.

When Mo Lan had read alchemy books at the Academy, quite a few witch alchemy blueprints were annotated with notes about which mage magical item had inspired the design.

Yet now, she hadn’t come across a single mage alchemy blueprint worth studying.

They were all outdated magical items—for instance, the spell rune structure diagrams for elemental crystal balls that measured elemental affinity and psychic power crystal balls that measured psychic power.

And they only went up to the Advanced version at that.

Mo Lan let out a disappointed sigh.

Lilith, having just finished another failed meditation attempt, noticed her expression and asked curiously, “What’s wrong? Is mage magic very difficult?”

“It’s not difficult, per se,” Mo Lan said.

Every spell structure contained in these books—she had already constructed them with psychic power in the time it took to read through them.

Even the spell structures for Advanced magic hadn’t posed any difficulty for Mo Lan.

It was as though clearly constructing images with psychic power in her mind was as simple as eating a meal.

“Not difficult? Then what are you sighing about?” Lilith felt a pang of sympathy for herself.

If even Mo Lan was sighing over something, how hard must it be for the rest of them!

“The mage magic that would actually be valuable to us—there’s not a single one here,” Mo Lan said. “The impressive ones in these magic books are all single-element Elemental Magic. Witch Magic is far more useful than that.”

Mo Lan flipped to the pages she’d just read, showing them the interesting Psychic Magic and composite magic she’d come across.

The Sorceresses were all captivated.

“These spells are amazing! How come there’s no Witch Magic like this?” Lilith said.

“With this many magic books, there’s really not a single large-scale composite magic, field magic, Oblivion spell, or memory reconstruction spell?” Vasida was still unwilling to give up hope.

“I’ve read through everything. Every spell structure that was in there, I’ve already constructed. There isn’t a single one. There aren’t even many Advanced single-element spells,” Mo Lan said.

“In her letter, Grandma Dayla already said these are all the mage magic books in her collection. She’d originally gathered them to donate to the Witch Council Library all at once. Since we wanted to study them, she went ahead and had a copy transcribed for us first.

It looks like we’ll have to wait until we leave the Wilds and acquire these spell structure diagrams ourselves.”

“Lady Dayla is the leader of the Governing Mages in the Duchy of Lance. She’s mentored three successive Grand Dukes, and even she doesn’t have structure diagrams for these spells. It seems it’s true that mages guard their knowledge—especially magical knowledge—extremely closely,” Sylph said.

At this point, Lilith, Vasida, and Sylph—still unaware of what constructing spell structures truly meant for mage magic—were merely disappointed that they didn’t have access to the truly powerful mage spells.

It wasn’t until over a week later, when they finally completed the first stage of the 《Sky Meditation Image》 and sensed the existence of psychic power, gained the ability to convert Mana into psychic power, and began learning about the mage magic they would use as their cover—that they suddenly recalled what Mo Lan had said days ago.

Looking at Mo Lan, who had long since set aside the mage magic books and was now researching the Contractor organization’s advancement system, they finally understood. She hadn’t stopped reading because the existing mage spells had mediocre effects—she had stopped because she’d already constructed all the spell structures, which meant she’d essentially learned them all, and had moved on to other things.

In that same amount of time, they wouldn’t even have finished reading through the books.

Moreover, only after truly understanding the process did they realize that while converting Mana into psychic power was easy, using that converted psychic power to construct spell structures was not.

Psychic power converted from Mana simply couldn’t exist stably within one’s mind, let alone be used to construct spell structures. Only psychic power cultivated through meditation could be used for construction. At most, when the psychic power developed through meditation became fatigued and sluggish, one could use Mana-converted psychic power to fill in spell structures for casting.

“So to cast Advanced mage magic, you really do need to meditate until your psychic power reaches the Advanced mage level?”

Vasida said, “If that’s the case, it’ll probably take us several years to get there, won’t it?”

Based on how long it had taken them to complete the meditation for “Sky Meditation Image 1,” their baseline psychic power was roughly equivalent to that of a decent mage prodigy.

Although their elemental affinity was quite impressive, no matter how high your elemental affinity was, you still had to construct the spell structures!

“How about we just don’t pretend to be Advanced mages? We could pose as mage apprentices instead!”

Sylph pointed at Mo Lan, then at herself, Vasida, and Lilith.

“A genius Advanced mage and her three mage apprentices.

It’s only a surface-level identity anyway. When we’re developing Contractor informants, we’ll eventually reveal a second identity regardless.”

“Oh, right! I think mages bringing apprentices along to help manage mundane tasks should be quite common among humans. In the 《Young Witch’s Primer》, every time a villain mage shows up, they always have a whole crowd of mage apprentices helping them with things,” Vasida said.

“And we could also conserve more psychic power for later, when we construct the truly powerful mage magic,” Lilith said, somewhat tempted. Her attitude toward mage magic had already shifted.

Mo Lan’s interest was piqued. “Sure, you can be my apprentices. But first—let me hear you call me ‘Mentor’?”

“…” Lilith, Vasida, and Sylph’s lips parted slightly, but the word simply wouldn’t come out.

Oh, come on—since when did witches have “mentors”?

They only had two honorifics: “Milady,” used to address senior Sorceresses, and “Madam,” used to address adult witches.

“That won’t do at all!” Mo Lan shook her head disapprovingly, barely suppressing a laugh. “What kind of mage apprentice addresses their mentor by name?”

Vasida looked down at her hands, which had curled into fists of their own accord. “I don’t know why, but my fists seem to have gotten hard!”

“Mine too…” Sylph said.

Lilith looked at Mo Lan with a smile that held no good intentions, revealing two dangerously sharp fangs. “Mentor Moira,” she said in the common tongue, then switched to Witch language, “please help your apprentices with their fist problem!”

With that, she transformed into a dark blur and lunged forward.

Even though Mo Lan had never slackened in her integration of the Vampire rapid-movement Blood Magic, she still couldn’t match Lilith’s speed.

She was caught in an instant.

Vasida immediately followed up, pinning Mo Lan’s arms and legs with an unbreakable grip.

Then Sylph’s fists landed on her—only to transform into gentle tickling, targeting all the spots where Mo Lan was most ticklish.