Chapter 398 – The Witch Council

Chapter 398 – The Witch Council

After a bout of laughter and teasing, Mo Lan could no longer keep up her “mentor” facade. Lilith and the others, however, had gotten quite used to calling her “Mentor Moira” in Valen Common Language.

If they were just pretending to be apprentices, each of them only needed to pick one apprentice-level magic to study, and that would be enough.

This was fairly easy for Lilith, Vasida, and Sylph.

It only took three or four days to construct an apprentice-level spell.

Vasida closed her book, full of anticipation:

“Next, once we copy some books at the Witch Council Library, we can finally leave the Wilds, right?”

Sylph nodded.

She and Vasida had recently finished attuning their parchment and filling it into their Grimoires. All that was left was to copy the books.

However: “Where exactly is the Witch Council, anyway?”

They had been on Spring View Island for so many years now. Everyone said Spring View Island was the only way to reach the Witch Council, but to this day, they had never found a single trace of it.

They had visited the Witch’s Town by Spring Sight Lake a few times, but the town only had individual witch residences — no Witch Council at all, let alone a library.

What they had noticed was that witches would frequently come to Spring View Island, suddenly vanish somewhere on the island, and then just as suddenly reappear.

Ordinarily, they could have simply followed a witch to find it, but Lilith absolutely refused to allow that. She insisted they search on their own first, and only if they truly couldn’t find it would she take them there.

The result was obvious — the three of them had scoured every corner of Witch’s Town by now and still hadn’t found the Witch Council’s exact location.

Even Mo Lan had only noticed that witches always came to Spring View Island after nightfall and left before dawn.

Based on this, she guessed that the Witch Council’s appearance might be tied to the time of day, but she still hadn’t seen the Witch Council’s true location.

Mo Lan turned to look at Lilith. “Senior, can you tell us now?”

“Fine!” Lilith said. “Wait until tonight and I’ll take you there!”

“So it really is related to time?” Yet the doubts in Mo Lan’s mind didn’t lessen.

Though she rarely went out at night, it wasn’t as if she never had. Even Zhizhi often went out after dark.

But not once had any of them found the Witch Council.

“You’ll find out when we get there!” Lilith said meaningfully.

Finally, darkness fell and night descended.

Mo Lan and the others urged Lilith to lead them out of the camp.

Lilith headed straight for the edge of Spring View Island:

“Alright, we’re here!”

“Here?” Vasida looked left and right. All she could see was the dark lake water stretching before them. “Where is it?”

Though she’d never been to the Witch Council, she knew it had a golden bird relay station and a library housing all of witchkind’s accumulated knowledge. It was definitely no small place.

“Don’t rush!” Lilith said, pulling four torches from her Spatial Card and handing one to each of them. “Light them with the Flame spell! It has to be the Flame spell, okay?”

The three of them curiously lit their torches with the Flame spell.

“See? The Witch Council is right there,” Lilith said, pointing at the water’s surface.

The three of them looked down at the water, then gasped in surprise. The surface of the lake, illuminated by the torchlight, was glowing on its own.

It wasn’t the torches’ light — it was a glow emanating from the reflection of the grass along Spring View Island’s edge in the water.

A soft, luminous green. Quite beautiful.

But clearly, Spring View Island had nothing but cushion grass and some ordinary wild grass — none of which glowed.

“Wait — that’s not Spring View Island! And that’s not a reflection of the island’s grass either!” Mo Lan said.

Sylph nodded. “The grass in the lake only has leaves shaped similarly to the wild grass on Spring View Island.”

“There’s another Spring View Island under the water?” Vasida crouched down and reached toward the glowing grass in the lake, but grasped at nothing.

Ripples spread outward in circles, and the luminous grass in the water shattered into fragments.

It looked so close, yet seemed impossibly far away. “Is it really just a reflection?”

“It’s a reflection from another space!” Lilith explained. “You could also call it an entrance to another space.

It was created by a Spatial Witch predecessor who used the Expansion Spell to carve out a hidden space beneath the lake.

Only after nightfall, when a witch comes to the shore of Spring View Island holding a torch lit with the Flame spell, will the torchlight open the entrance to the submerged space — which is where the Witch Council is located.

All we have to do then is jump into the lake, and we can go to the Witch Council! Like this! Remember, you have to ‘jump’ in!”

As she spoke, Lilith pressed her feet together and hopped into the lake like a rabbit.

The moment her toes touched the water’s surface, she vanished entirely from the lake.

Mo Lan and the other two hurriedly raised their torches and peered into the water.

On the Spring View Island within the lake, Lilith was poking her head up and waving at them, gesturing for them to hurry and follow.

Mo Lan, Vasida, and Sylph exchanged glances, then together shut their eyes and jumped into the lake.

It felt quite different from riding the Witch Academy’s teleportation black hole. The instant they jumped into the lake, it felt as though an invisible pair of hands had grabbed them by the ankles and flipped them upside down.

The sensation passed quickly.

Before their eyes was lake water as black as ink.

Only on the small patch of lake surface illuminated by the torchlight could they still see Spring View Island on the other side.

Behind them, beyond a small stretch of luminous green grass, stood a massive Obsidian castle.

The castle’s shape bore some resemblance to the Academy castle.

“This is the Witch Council!” Lilith announced. “Just like the Academy castle, the library is in the main keep — the entire main keep is the library!

The golden bird relay station is in the east tower, the Witch Council treasury is in the West Tower, the Witch Council administrative center is in the north tower, and the south tower houses the witch title evaluation office.”

Mo Lan stared in awe at this enormous space. Though the boundaries of the space were easy to discern from the pitch-black sky and lake water — unlike the Witch Academy’s demiplane, which looked natural — this had been created with the Expansion Spell!

“How powerful would an Expansion Spell have to be to create a space this vast?!”

Her Spatial Magic was already at the Advanced level, yet she was still nowhere close to expanding a space this large!

It wasn’t just a matter of materials — her magical proficiency simply wasn’t high enough.

“There’s no way Peak level Expansion Spell could do this, right?” Mo Lan said with certainty.

Her Expansion Spell was only one level away from Peak, yet forget creating even a tenth of this space — she couldn’t manage a hundredth. No, not even a thousandth.

Her Metal Shaping spell had already reached Peak level, but she’d never felt such a dramatic leap between Advanced and Peak.

Then the only possibility was Beyond Peak level.

But: “Is the gap between Beyond Peak and Peak really that enormous?”

“‘Beyond Peak’ is just Valen’s collective term for those who’ve surpassed Peak level and their magic. Above that, there are many more levels!”

Lilith said:

“Go to the seventh floor of the main keep later and you’ll see. All the books related to Beyond Peak are there. As long as your rank has reached Peak level, you can enter.”