Chapter 427 – Mutant Blackdeath Tree

Chapter 427 – Mutant Blackdeath Tree

“I’ve left rest rooms for you on the Second Floor, along with dedicated workrooms. Simple Alchemy, potion-brewing, and Magic practice are all fine there. But if it’s serious Magic practice, you should go to the Alchemy room, potion room, or Magic training room on the Third Floor!”

Mo Lan took them on a tour of the Second and Third Floors, and then everyone went off to do their own things.

Vasida returned to her rest room, closed the door, and took out egg fried rice’s coffin.

She knocked on the coffin lid: “Egg Fried Rice, come out! I need to inspect the condition of your corpse!”

Moments later, Vasida came downstairs with a look of utter disappointment.

In the Living Room, Mo Lan was holding Zhizhi while designing her thirty-square-meter mini tent. Seeing Vasida’s expression, she guessed the outcome right away: “Lady Ginia didn’t make reproductive organs for egg fried rice?”

Vasida nodded. “Looks like I’ll have to study and figure it out myself, and find the materials on my own!”

“Hahahaha!” Zhizhi cackled with malicious glee, clutching her belly in laughter.

She even used the most obnoxiously triumphant onomatopoeia in 《Valen Common Language》, maximizing the mockery.

This instantly made Vasida’s fists clench. She snatched away Zhizhi’s wine in one swift motion: “Zhizhi!”

Zhizhi: “Wine! Wine!”

Vasida: “Not giving it back! Not giving it back!”

A fight was about to break out. Mo Lan dropped a Teleportation spell right beneath their feet: “Go fight in the Magic training room!”

These two had clearly been cooped up on the flying carpet for the past few days without much movement, and now that they had the chance, they were itching to stretch their limbs.

With Vasida’s current physical strength, Zhizhi was about the only one who could go toe-to-toe with her in close combat.

After a good night’s rest in the tent, they packed it up and set out again.

This time they headed straight north, in the direction Mo Lan had divined through prophecy.

Along the way, they saw even more undead creatures than Animated Blackdeath Trees.

Wandering Zombies, skeletons patrolling in formation, Ghosts that appeared suddenly and vanished just as quickly…

However, wild undead creatures were rare, and they were all beast-shaped Ghosts. The moment one appeared, it would be swarmed and killed by Witch death-servant Zombies and death-servant skeletons wearing bright cloth strips, becoming nourishment to sustain them.

The farther north they went, the more roaming Witch death-servant squads they encountered. Few held fixed positions like the red-cloth skeleton death-servant regiment they had encountered before.

They didn’t just attack wild undead creatures—sometimes they even fought each other.

The losing side forfeited their corpses and souls, while the winning side got a complete overhaul of their bodies, with their spiritual essence growing by leaps and bounds.

“No wonder the Witch predecessors left the death-servant armies they couldn’t conveniently bring back to the Wilds here to roam free! This is basically one giant training ground!

The ones that die aren’t wasted either—they all become nourishment for the victors. The ones left standing in the end are the strongest death-servants.

It directly streamlines the death-servant numbers while strengthening their capabilities!” Lilith said.

“So many corpse materials! If Mom hadn’t told us that everyone agreed Witches shouldn’t personally intervene in wars between death-servants, I’d want to go down and test my skills!” Vasida said.

“You going down there would just be bullying them, wouldn’t it?” Lilith shook her head. “These death-servants are Intermediate level at best. Wouldn’t you just be one-punching each of them?”

Vasida was still itching to act: “I won’t go myself, but surely I can toss egg fried rice down there for some combat experience?”

“I’d advise against that,” Mo Lan said.

“Have you prepared enough replacement corpse materials for egg fried rice? Zombies don’t have souls—if the body is completely destroyed and can’t be restored in time, it’s as good as dead. It’s not even good at fighting. If it goes down there and gets swarmed by other death-servants, getting injured is guaranteed.

Besides, looking at the materials on these death-servant Zombies, they’re not even as good as what egg fried rice already has!”

“So we can only just watch?” Vasida said. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have written to ask Mom. Then we wouldn’t know what those cloth strips meant, and we’d have no reservations…”

“Just watching is perfectly fine! Look at that Zombie over there—see how well the neck joint is done! And that skeleton, its skull is actually two halves bonded together. The upper half is a human cranium and the lower half looks like Wolf bone, yet they’re fitted together seamlessly. That skeleton looks especially fierce—I wonder if it has anything to do with the Wolf bone…”

Mo Lan pointed and commented on the Zombies and skeletons battling below. Vasida and Lilith listened in amazement:

“We’re all watching the death-servant battle, and you’re studying their craftsmanship!”

“Isn’t this ready-made teaching material?” Mo Lan said. “It’s so much more intuitive than reading text descriptions and illustrations in books!”

She felt that compared to the corpse materials on these death-servants, their craftsmanship was actually far more valuable.

They already belonged to other Witches’ death-servants and couldn’t be claimed for personal use. The materials harvested from them would be dead and of mediocre quality. It was truly better to study the craftsmanship of these death-servants instead.

After so many years of neglected maintenance, these corpses could still remain mobile! They were incredibly valuable for study.

After she put it that way, when Lilith and Vasida looked down at the skeletons and Zombies again, something felt different. Their eyes kept drifting involuntarily toward the suture lines, trying to figure out where each bone had come from.

While the three of them were absorbed in their study, Sylph suddenly let out a startled cry, instantly putting Mo Lan and the other two on alert: “What happened?”

Sylph reached her hand into the Box of Ten Thousand Seeds: “A new seed just appeared inside the Box of Ten Thousand Seeds!”

She opened her palm, revealing a dark, knobby tree gall.

Mo Lan relaxed and looked at it curiously: “Doesn’t this look exactly like an Animated Blackdeath Tree Seed? Could this be a mutant Animated Blackdeath Tree Seed?”

In the small planting pot beside Sylph, the Animated Blackdeath Tree Seed they had obtained earlier was still growing!

Sylph had been cultivating it this whole time, and it was growing rapidly. It was now a sapling nearly one meter tall—any more growth and it would need a bigger pot.

“It should be! It’s rare for a seed to look identical to its unmutated form! But that makes it very difficult to determine what aspect the mutation affects beforehand,” Sylph said.

“Just plant it and see!” Vasida scooted over, making space. “There’s room here for another planting pot!”

“No need. I’ll just put the blackdeath tree away for now,” Sylph said. “I can alternate between growing the two.”

Space on the flying carpet was already limited. One small planting pot was already encroaching on everyone’s activity space—adding another would be too much.

As long as the mutant blackdeath tree’s growth progress stayed behind the regular blackdeath tree’s, it would be convenient enough for her to study cultivation methods for the mutant variety.

She put away the blackdeath tree planting pot and took out a new, empty spatial planting pot.

She planned to first follow the same method used for the Animated Blackdeath Tree Seed—activate the seed with water, then use a germination spell to stimulate sprouting.

She took out a wide-mouthed Crystal bottle, filled it with spring water using the Spring Water spell, and placed the mutant blackdeath tree seed inside.