Chapter 408 – Blood-Replenishing Cake

Mo Lan took a curious bite. The texture wasn’t very different from an ordinary red berry cake—it was only sweet, though the sweetness was slightly lower than a regular red berry cake, perhaps due to the influence of the Vampire Vine flowers.

For someone like her who didn’t have much of a sweet tooth, the sweetness level was actually quite nice.

She had just swallowed the cake and was about to offer some praise when a faint, almost imperceptible tang of blood-tinged sweetness rose in her throat, vanishing in an instant.

If not for the fact that Sylph, Vasida, and even Bi’er all paused briefly upon swallowing their first bite of cake, Mo Lan would have almost thought she’d imagined it.

But the blood-tinged sweetness didn’t have much impact overall—the cake was still delicious.

Only Bi’er couldn’t accept that lingering blood-sweet aftertaste and lost interest in her small piece of cake.

Sylph managed to eat one piece before feeling she’d had enough.

Mo Lan fared slightly better, only stopping once she was full.

Only Vasida and Lilith seemed to enjoy it particularly, and they were still eating.

“How is it? Do you like it?” Lilith asked.

“Well… it’s a cake with a rather unusual flavor. But the blood-replenishing and appetite-stimulating effects are honestly negligible. Potions work much better,” Mo Lan said. “For me, the most satisfying thing is the sweetness level.”

“It was fine at first, but the more you eat, the stronger that blood-tinged sweetness gets,” Sylph said with a frown. “I don’t really like that taste.”

“I quite like it!” Vasida said. “This cake not only tastes pretty good, but it also gives me a stronger sense of fullness than regular cake.”

“Is it because of the Vampire Vine flowers added to it?” Mo Lan asked.

A Hundred-Year Vampire Vine—and one that had formed a magical familiar contract with a Sorceress and been strengthened through it—its flowers would certainly be different.

“Not entirely. I’ve eaten Little Vine’s flowers before, and they didn’t work as well as this cake.”

Vasida had consumed quite a few magical plants and magical minerals by now. Though she still hadn’t fully figured out the detailed rules by which the Devouring Stomach absorbed food energy, she had made a number of discoveries.

Food energy gave her a sense of fullness, but food energy and the magical energy within food were not the same thing.

Magical plants and minerals rich in energy did give her a stronger sense of fullness, but delicious ordinary food had a similar effect.

The degree of fullness food gave her wasn’t determined solely by the magical energy contained within—the food’s tastiness and edibility were also important factors.

This red berry blood-replenishing cake seemed to contain more food energy than the red berry cake and Vampire Vine flowers combined, which was why it gave her a stronger sense of fullness.

The Devouring Stomach was also able to extract more energy from it.

In the end, more than half of the large cake Lilith had made went into Vasida’s stomach, and she heaped praise on Lilith’s skills: “The cakes you make are both delicious and filling—I absolutely love them!”

Lilith seemed to have found a kindred spirit. “Right? I really like this cake too, especially after using the Bloodthirst Needle to analyze and fuse the blood—it’s extra satisfying to eat.

Unfortunately, in 《Potion Witch’s Cooking Recipes》, only the red berry blood-replenishing cake suits my taste. The others all fall a bit short.”

“Lilith, could you let me see that recipe book? I’d like to copy it down and study it. I have a feeling it would be really well-suited for me,” Vasida said.

“Of course!” Lilith tossed her Grimoire right over.

Mo Lan and Sylph were also quite interested in this unusual cookbook and leaned over to read it together with Vasida.

It was a book written by a Potion Witch. Because all the fertile land around her Witch’s home had been converted into herb fields, she had no spare land for growing vegetables and fruits. Unwilling to convert her herb fields into farmland, she had embarked on a culinary journey of using potion ingredients as cooking materials.

The book recorded her entire process of bringing magical plants—originally meant for brewing potions—to the dinner table, which was why it was titled 《Potion Witch’s Cooking Recipes》.

Potions were made by mixing the essences of various magical plants together, and their taste was hard to swallow.

Magical plants themselves weren’t much better—each had its own effects, and each had its own peculiar flavor.

But this Potion Witch, relying on her deep understanding of magical plants and how they interacted with one another, had largely overcome these flavor drawbacks while preserving some of the plants’ magical properties.

All the reasonably successful potion-ingredient recipes she had developed over her lifetime were recorded in this book.

“Dewdrop Flower juice made into candy with honey, Big-Face Flowers brewed into flower tea with milk, Hollow Vine made into straws paired with juice pressed from Sweet Dew Root… I really can’t imagine what all these taste like together,” Sylph said with a peculiar expression.

“They all seem to follow the same cooking philosophy as the red berry blood-replenishing cake! The food energy must be very abundant in all of them,” Vasida said happily. “I still have some blank pages left—perfect for copying it all down.”

Though Mo Lan was also somewhat interested in the book, her Grimoire had no blank pages left.

She had no choice but to set it aside for now. Once she finished reading some books and freed up space, she could ask her senior to let her copy it.

Fortunately, this book was just a rather unusual cookbook—it wasn’t something Mo Lan urgently needed right now.

It would be nice to study it sometime in the future when she had nothing better to do.

After dinner, they left Lilith’s tent and headed toward the large mushroom house on the other side.

“Moira, I don’t think your Fortune-Telling Spell is very accurate! I thought the senior’s cake was absolutely wonderful—it should have come up as ‘minor fortune,'” Vasida said.

“I actually thought the cake was a bit strange—it should have been ‘minor misfortune,'” Sylph said.

Bi’er, perched on her shoulder, scrunched up her face in agreement: “It was terrible! It should have been ‘great misfortune’!”

“Tonight’s Fortune-Telling Spell was cast with myself as the subject of the divination.

For me, Lilith’s red berry blood-replenishing cake wasn’t particularly delicious, nor was it particularly useful—it was just a tiny bit special, neither good nor bad. So a middling result makes perfect sense.”

Mo Lan said, “I suppose this is just a matter of different tastes!”

“…”

Vasida: “How frustrating! It seems I can’t give up on Divination Magic after all! Other people’s divinations don’t necessarily match your own situation.”

Sylph felt like collapsing at the thought: “I haven’t even checked on the mutant plants in my planting pots today! I’m heading back first!”

Mo Lan watched the two of them run back to their tents as if someone were chasing them, and shook her head with a smile.

Thinking of her own Grimoire with not a single page to spare, she didn’t waste any more time either and hurried back to her tent to read.

Next door, Lilith had long since entered the training room and was practicing Magic against the Training Dummy she had made.

All four tents in the mushroom house camp were brightly lit, with no sign of the lights going out.

During the evening hours meant for rest, not a single person was resting—every moment had been turned into time for studying and self-improvement.