Chapter 657 – A Reading Frenzy

It was only then that Mo Lan learned that Mana Crystals also served as a trading currency among Explorers.

Magic Gold Coins could only buy ordinary beverages or food here. Important magical resources were all priced in Mana Crystals.

This made her even more curious about the function of Mana Crystals.

Magic Gold Coins could already be used to restore magical energy — surely Mana Crystals couldn’t just be inert stones with no practical use?

After she finished transcribing every book on the reading list, she started with one about magical crystallization — 《Vessels of Source Energy: Mana Crystals》.

After finishing this book, Mo Lan realized that Mana Crystals were far more useful than she had imagined.

They were vessels for the source magical energy known as Mana.

They came in two varieties: ordinary Mana Crystals and source Mana Crystals.

When a spellcaster absorbed one ordinary Mana Crystal, they gained 1 Mana of temporary Mana.

This temporary Mana was somewhat similar to the disposable Mana that Mo Lan used for card-making and Mana recovery, but also different.

Temporary Mana could be accumulated without limit. However many ordinary Mana Crystals you had, that was how much temporary Mana you could stockpile — unrestricted by your own rank, independent of your innate magical energy, and once consumed, it would never regenerate.

When a spellcaster absorbed one source Mana Crystal, it could permanently convert a certain amount of other magical energy within their body into 1 Mana of permanent Mana.

Permanently converted Mana could then be recovered through one’s own magical system.

For instance, when a mage recovered psychic power through meditation, that psychic power would also convert into Mana to replenish the Mana they had spent on spellcasting.

In plain terms, Mana Crystals were the crucial resource through which Explorers obtained and mastered Mana-based spellcasting.

Mana was the most fundamental magical energy. Only Mana could convert into any type of magical energy, and any type of magical energy could convert into Mana.

It was by relying on Mana that Explorers could transcend the boundaries of race and innate talent to learn and use all forms of otherworldly magic.

Many Explorers, after reaching a bottleneck in their own magical system’s advancement, would explore other worlds to acquire different magical talents, learn the corresponding magic, accumulate the corresponding magical energy, and then use source Mana Crystals to convert that energy into Mana — thereby achieving further advancement in their Mana rank.

However, for Sorceresses who already possessed Mana innately, the usefulness of source Mana Crystals was somewhat diminished.

Apart from Mana, Sorceresses didn’t possess any other type of magical energy, so the source Mana Crystal’s ability to permanently convert other magical energies into Mana was meaningless for them.

Fortunately, the senior Traci had discovered that when a Sorceress used a source Mana Crystal in combination with an ordinary Mana Crystal, she could convert 1 Mana of temporary Mana into 1 Mana of permanent Mana.

For Explorers, Mana Crystals were vital resources for advancing their Mana rank and obtaining more magical energy — far more important than the Magic Gold Coins’ ability to restore magical energy. It was only natural that they would be used as currency for trading important magical resources.

Unfortunately, there was currently only one known source of Mana Crystals — rewards for completing world quests.

Though now there should be two.

Mo Lan’s Book of Cards could also create them.

Using 100 Mana of disposable Mana to make one {Ordinary Mana Crystal Card} and gaining 1 Mana of temporary Mana was still worthwhile. After all, infinitely stackable temporary Mana was more valuable than disposable Mana, which had a recovery cap.

But spending 1 Mana of permanent Mana plus 100 Mana of disposable Mana to make one {Source Mana Crystal Card} just to gain 1 Mana of permanent Mana — that was a losing proposition.

She’d be losing out even using them herself, let alone selling them to others. There was zero market for that.

Still, being able to make one type wasn’t bad. Mo Lan wasn’t greedy.

She added a restriction of “usable only by Well of the Sky Explorers” to the {Ordinary Mana Crystal Card}, then listed it in both the Witch edition Card Shop and the Dawn Society Card Shop at her usual pricing standards.

This was because only Well of the Sky Explorers — whose bodies had been transformed by the world’s power during transport to the Explorer’s Camp — could digest the energy from Mana Crystals.

Finally, she thoughtfully sent a push notification to every Well of the Sky Explorer who had Card Magic, informing them of this good news.

From now on, every time she sold one {Ordinary Mana Crystal Card}, she could earn at least four ordinary Mana Crystals. If the buyer was a race other than Witches, she’d earn even more.

She would never have to worry about running out of ordinary Mana Crystals again!

As for source Mana Crystals, she would just have to earn those the honest way — by completing world quests, or by selling precious magical knowledge from other worlds.

Earning permanent Mana through Card Magic was much easier than obtaining source Mana Crystals.

With Mana Crystals figured out, Mo Lan switched to other reference materials.

After finishing all the recommended books on the 《Well of the Sky Essential Explorer Reading List》, as well as all the materials she’d transcribed from Lan Qiqi about Valen’s Explorer factions and camp conditions, Mo Lan still didn’t feel it was enough.

She went back to the Otherworld Archives and transcribed every piece of non-magic material there was, then began reading through it all.

These materials included exploration journals written by Valen’s Explorers themselves, translated exploration journals from Explorers of other worlds, language guides, common knowledge books, and cultural customs books collected from other worlds, as well as popular science summaries compiled from information about multiple popular otherworlds. They were truly eye-opening for Mo Lan.

“The world is vast and full of wonders” — this saying was demonstrated to its fullest extent in these books.

After reading about so many bizarre worlds and races, Mo Lan felt immensely grateful that when her soul had been drifting through the cosmos, it had been taken in by Valen and she had been reborn as a Witch — rather than becoming something like a Slime or a Green Fur.

A small portion of the materials were written in otherworldly scripts that Mo Lan couldn’t understand, but that didn’t stop her from going through them page by page, committing them all to memory with her powerful psychic power, and creating corresponding Knowledge Cards.

After finishing the non-magic materials, Mo Lan went back and transcribed all the magic-related materials that were free for Witches, turning those into Knowledge Cards as well.

However, she kept this batch of Knowledge Cards solely for her own collection, convenient for pulling out and studying at any time. She didn’t list them for sale.

Finally, Mo Lan also went through the 《Otherworld Archive Collection Catalog》 and read every summary of magic-related materials she hadn’t yet seen.

She couldn’t bring herself to spend source Mana Crystals on these magic books for now, but she needed to know what kinds of magic books were available here, so that when she had source Mana Crystals to spare, or when she urgently needed one, she could come and buy it.

When Mo Lan had first arrived at the Otherworld Archive, her tent door had stood all alone in the corner of Witch Camp. By the time she returned, six more doors had appeared beside hers — the count had reached 339.