Chapter 855 – The Light-Gathering Society

Magic was a profound discipline. Even if these twelve White Crystal People before her successfully mastered the Light spell, trying to shake the Radiant Nobles’ rule in the short term would be like throwing eggs at a rock.

White Crystal Star’s existing emotional energy weapons already possessed destructive power no weaker than low-to-mid-level magic.

Who knew how long it would take for them to become Intermediate-level or higher spellcasters. By then, the White Crystal People might be mostly dead already.

And these were all her potential contractors.

“The gap in military strength still has to be bridged with {Magic Cards} in the short term.”

Mo Lan made more refined classifications and selections among the existing {Magic Cards}, placing them into the “Light-Gathering Society” marketplace.

“Light-Gathering Society” was the name she had given to the White Crystal Star version of the Dawn Society. It cleverly leveraged the White Crystal People’s worship of the Light-Gathering Star, making it easier to spread and gain acceptance later on.

She also designed a card appearance that aligned well with the legend of the Light-Gathering Fairy in White Crystal People culture. All cards purchased from the Light-Gathering Society’s Card Shop would default to this appearance.

With {Magic Cards} available, as long as the White Crystal People stockpiled some cards in advance, they would possess sufficient capability for self-defense and counterattack even if they personally didn’t know a single combat spell.

As for whether they might use cards to become a new privileged class in the future, Mo Lan wasn’t worried.

She only needed to follow the same model used when developing the Dawn Society — making ‘successfully inviting new members and guiding them to complete a contract’ one of the basic conditions for upgrading one’s personal Card Magic permissions.

This way, promoting Card Magic and expanding the contractor community would be directly tied to every Light-Gathering Society member’s core interests.

Once someone signed a contract with Card Magic, how many cards each person could obtain would ultimately depend on how much Heart Light they could contribute.

Card Magic offered all contractors the same possibilities and paths for advancement, and all routes for obtaining cards were completely transparent.

Under these conditions, it was nearly impossible for any individual or small group to monopolize the cards.

Beyond the {Magic Cards} meant to boost immediate combat strength, Mo Lan also carefully selected a batch of cards she felt the White Crystal People could put to use.

These cards primarily consisted of various lighting fixtures, special luminous minerals, and some luminescent plant materials that could serve as stable light sources on their own.

Some could provide lasting, reliable ambient lighting as a supplement to the Light spell, while others suited the White Crystal People’s aesthetic sensibilities and could be used as decorative materials.

She meticulously ranked these cards based on their crafting difficulty, energy intensity, and importance to the White Crystal People, then repriced them — ensuring the prices offered good value for the White Crystal People while maximizing her profit as much as possible.

For Material Cards involving materials that also existed on White Crystal Star, Mo Lan localized the names according to what the White Crystal People called them. For instance, the original {Material Card – Light Element Essence} was directly renamed to {Light Liquid}, and was further divided into different tiers based on quality.

As for {Gourmet Cards} that the White Crystal People couldn’t consume and were completely incompatible with their physiology, as well as {Seed Cards} and {Material Cards} for things that didn’t exist on White Crystal Star, Mo Lan chose not to introduce these into the Light-Gathering Society’s marketplace.

If one’s own magical level hadn’t surpassed the upper limit of this world, and one hadn’t entered the Well of the Sky and come under its oversight, it was best not to come into contact with things that only existed in other worlds.

Especially when White Crystal Star’s world consciousness was already extremely faint — one couldn’t be too careful.

It would be terrible if these otherworldly items caused instability in the world. Later, once the Explorer-tier version of the Light-Gathering Society was established, these restrictions could be lifted.

Beyond all this, Mo Lan poured tremendous effort into constructing {Knowledge Cards}.

She not only personally authored various {Knowledge Cards} tailored to the White Crystal People’s innate aptitudes — covering fields such as magic theory, light-element magic, and Psychic Magic — but also maintained her “Light-Gathering Fairy” appearance to record and produce a {Magic Enlightenment – Teaching Card} along with a complete set of {Teaching Cards} to accompany the Knowledge Cards.

Using the {Magic Enlightenment – Teaching Card} would project a three-dimensional image of the “Light-Gathering Fairy,” personally explaining all the key knowledge for magical enlightenment — including fundamental magic theory, demonstrations of various types of magical energy, techniques for converting Heart Light, and even instructional guidance on casting the Light spell.

It was essentially a complete replica of her personally teaching the twelve White Crystal People at the research base.

The other {Magic Knowledge – Teaching Cards} followed a similar format.

This series of teaching cards was designed to compensate as much as possible for the White Crystal People’s current lack of magical education.

After all, not everyone could precisely grasp the intricacies of magic from written text alone.

These {Teaching Cards}, which could be watched repeatedly and featured the “Fairy” personally demonstrating and explaining, were enough to help the White Crystal People avoid countless detours on their magical journey and vastly improve their learning efficiency.

Mo Lan also put considerable thought into the pricing of the cards.

She not only strictly adhered to the principle of starting at ten times the cost price but added a slight markup on top of that — essentially ensuring that White Crystal People spellcasters of the corresponding level could afford them, though the price was slightly higher than casting the spells themselves.

Of course, the storage cap for Gem Coins could still only be raised by contributing permanent magical energy.

This way, the White Crystal People wouldn’t grow dependent on cards and lose their motivation to study and refine their own magic because cards were too cheap, nor would they be deterred from purchasing by prohibitively high prices.

The healthiest approach was to rely on one’s own spellcasting whenever possible, and when spellcasting wasn’t needed, to convert any remaining single-use magical energy into Gem Coins for saving up to buy cards.

However, {Low-Quality Light Liquid} was an exception. For this card, Mo Lan set the price slightly cheaper on the premise of not taking a loss. It was a basic survival resource for the White Crystal People — wild white crystal trees could naturally condense it under the Light-Gathering Star’s illumination — so the price had to be at least slightly lower than the cost of gathering it in the wild.

By the time Mo Lan had finished designing the complete Card Magic rule system for the “Light-Gathering Society” version, good news arrived from the research base.

The news was brought back by Zhizhi, who had been using {Invisibility Cards} daily to scout the valley on her behalf.

Xinhen had been the first to achieve a decisive breakthrough — it had successfully condensed a stable light sphere the size of an egg and kept it glowing for a full five minutes.

With its unreserved sharing and guidance, the other White Crystal People caught on the same day, one after another mastering the technique and producing stable Light spells of their own.

Mo Lan secretly went to observe in person.

Throughout the valley, many small light spheres of varying sizes and brightness floated among the white crystal trees.

Compared to the enormous light sphere she had conjured above the valley — radiant as a miniature sun — the light they emitted was admittedly faint. But it was tremendous progress nonetheless.