Chapter 732 – The Lakeside Cottage

Mo Lan had been loaded up with a huge stack of invitation passes—all of them limited-time close-friend invitations with remarkably long validity periods, starting at a minimum of a hundred years. The longest one could even last three hundred years!

She opened her mouth to politely decline, but the words died on her lips.

These invitation passes were simply too precious to her.

Senior Traci was right—the development of these worlds had already stabilized, and they had essentially stopped issuing task invitations to outsiders.

The most recent task posting could be traced back to over a hundred years ago.

Without these invitation passes, she might never have the chance to set foot in these wondrous otherworlds in her entire lifetime.

And yet the information on these worlds—she had seen it all in the Otherworld Archives. Their magical materials and magic systems were each uniquely distinctive, and she was deeply interested.

“Rest assured, Senior,” Mo Lan said. Unable to refuse even a little, she could only make a solemn promise. “I’ll definitely turn the specialties of all these worlds into cards and bring them back. When the time comes, whatever materials you want, you’ll be able to find them in the Card Shop anytime!”

“That’s more like it!” Traci raised her wine glass with satisfaction. “Then I’ll look forward to new arrivals in your Card Shop!”

The lingering glow of the setting sun refracted through the surface of Spring Sight Lake and into the Second Floor of the tavern, casting shimmering ripples of light across the wooden tabletop.

Mo Lan glanced at the darkening sky outside the window and rose to her feet somewhat reluctantly. “Senior, I’ll be taking my leave now.”

With so many otherworld invitation passes in hand, even though the validity periods were still quite long, she needed to plan carefully to make sure every single one of them was put to good use.

If she let them expire, that would truly be a waste of Senior Traci’s kind intentions.

“Off you go! Before long, I’ll be heading out for a stroll myself…” Traci waved her hand dismissively and returned to the book on the table.

After leaving the tavern, Mo Lan mounted her broomstick and flew up into the sky.

When traveling from Valen to the Explorer’s Camp, you would reappear at the same place you had departed from.

She hadn’t known the situation before and had left from Sylph’s plantation. Doing so again wouldn’t be appropriate—it was Sylph’s territory, after all, and appearing there suddenly would disturb her.

She really needed to find a safe place to serve as her base of operations in Valen.

However, she had no plans to settle in Valen long-term for now, so going through the trouble of building a Witch’s home wasn’t necessary.

After thinking it over, she decided it would be best to find an empty plot near Witch’s Town to place a mobile dwelling as her temporary base in Valen.

Witch’s Town had the highest concentration of Witches in all of the Wilds. There were no magical beasts in the surrounding area either, so safety went without saying—even without setting up a defensive magic formation, no one would come to bother her.

And when she returned from otherworlds in the future and wanted to meet up with friends, being near Witch’s Town would be more convenient too.

She surveyed the entirety of Witch’s Town from above.

“That’s the spot!” Mo Lan tilted her broom into a dive, heading toward the end of the lakeside greenway, where a quiet little oak grove stood.

There were traces of herbivorous wild animals in the grove, but that wasn’t a big deal—as long as there were no magical beasts.

The cobblestone path encircling Spring Sight Lake came to an abrupt end here.

“I’ll need to extend the path to my front door first.”

Mo Lan murmured softly to herself and pulled out several Material Cards marked “cobblestone.”

Countless smooth cobblestones rained down from above, yet the moment they touched the ground, they became docile and obedient, automatically spreading out along the direction guided by her will.

The winding cobblestone path extended all the way to the largest lakeside clearing in the grove. This was the location Mo Lan had chosen—the terrain was slightly elevated, so there was no need to worry about the lake’s water level rising and flooding the house during rainy season, and it offered a beautiful view of Spring Sight Lake.

Mo Lan took out a Mobile Residence Card and materialized it. A charming, fairytale-style two-story peaked wooden cottage appeared on the clearing.

Reddish-brown roof tiles gleamed with a glazed luster under the moonlight, and wooden fences draped in wisteria enclosed a small yard in both the front and back of the house.

The newly laid cobblestone path connected perfectly to the front yard’s gate. Inside the front yard, flower beds and a vegetable garden had already had their soil turned, waiting only to be sown.

In the rear yard’s green-ivy-wrapped pavilion, a set of natural wood table and chairs gave off a faint scent of pine. There was even a small fishing platform by the lake.

All that remained was to plant some pretty flowers and plants along the path and set up some magical street lamps, and the job would be complete.

Mo Lan pushed open the gate and felt like something was missing from the door frame. After a moment’s thought, she carved the words “Moira’s Cottage” into it.

She also took out a piece of oak board, carved “Welcome, come visit~” on the front, and “Away on business, return date uncertain” on the back. She hung it on the gate with the back side facing out, and added a mailbox beside it.

“Now it’s truly complete!” After entering the yard, Mo Lan placed the Burrowing Mushrooms in the flower bed.

She planted some other flowers and herbs in the flower bed as well.

In the vegetable garden, she planted some Lantern Tomatoes, cultivated them briefly with Hybrid Magic, and left them be.

Going inside, she settled onto the sofa and used her Communication Card to send her new home’s address to the Witch friends she was close with. Then Mo Lan began preparing for her upcoming otherworld expedition.

Her next destination was the Three Thousand Mirror Ruins World, where she planned to find a small living space and create a magic study room with a slowed time flow.

Among the worlds that the Well of the Sky currently posted regular tasks for, the Three Thousand Mirror Ruins was nowhere to be found.

The period of frequent tasks for the Three Thousand Mirror Ruins World had been concentrated in a brief window a thousand years ago, lasting roughly a hundred years in total.

Valen’s Explorers didn’t know much about this world. The Otherworld Archives contained only a handful of documents about the Three Thousand Mirror Ruins World, and they had been sitting in a corner, long forgotten.

Had Mo Lan not read every non-magic document in the Archives, she might never have learned of this world’s existence.

Yet even after reading those few documents, her understanding of this world was still limited.

She only knew that spatial power was extraordinarily abundant in the Three Thousand Mirror Ruins World, and that spatial magic had developed extensively as a result.

In this world, every mirror was akin to a “portal”—concealing an entrance to another space.

After chatting with Senior Traci, Mo Lan learned that the Three Thousand Mirror Ruins World had a very unique structure. It was essentially composed of mirrors of all sizes.

Spaces born from the fusion of spatial power and the world’s natural laws manifested in the form of mirrors that could reflect a person’s image.

The mirror’s true body served as the vessel of the space, while the avatars spawned by the mirror’s true body served as entrances into the mirror-space.

Mirror after mirror, mirror-space after mirror-space—all linked together through the portals formed by mirror avatars, creating the vast Three Thousand Mirror Ruins World.

Enter a mirror-space, find the mirror’s true body, and subdue it—and you could become the master of that mirror-space.

In a world teeming with mirror-spaces like this, obtaining a small living space shouldn’t be difficult at all.

After reviewing and organizing all the information about the Three Thousand Mirror Ruins World in her mind, Mo Lan began packing her gear.