Chapter 50: Space Road Trip

“Your magic power…”

During spring break, even the usually carefree Mortel donned a ladylike outfit—still beautiful, as long as she didn’t show that utterly disdainful expression that completely ruined the lady vibe.

“Have you really been training?”

“What choice do I have!” The girl pouted, a bit pitiful with a hint of complaint.

“I don’t know why, I’ve been triggering mana condensation phenomena twenty-four hours a day, but it just feels like the quality isn’t improving at all!”

Jiang Cha wasn’t lying.

Because the method to train mana intensity… is actually quite straightforward and blunt.

Witches are essentially mana beings; their external bodies and internal souls are just containers for mana. Mana is their true life form.

Under certain circumstances, the “container” grows by itself, which macroscopically shows as the gradual maturation of the body and the increase in mana capacity.

The container’s growth is not unlimited, but the mana being’s instinct to generate mana never stops, so the container is gradually reshaped and expanded to hold more mana.

This is why witches’ mana capacity keeps growing indefinitely.

But the container’s modification speed by mana is very slow—it’s a subtle, almost imperceptible process. Hence, adult witches’ mana growth slows down to maybe a hundred or two hundred points a year.

So how do you hold more mana without expanding the container?

By using the mana condensation effect—when a high-density mana point appears in a unit volume, mana automatically condenses. Increasing the mana density inside the body is what witches call increasing their mana intensity.

“What’s going on?” Mortel raised an eyebrow, suddenly sensing some secret her little apprentice hadn’t told her.

“Don’t resist, let me take a look.”

She placed her right hand on the girl’s shoulder, sending her mana and consciousness into Jiang Cha’s body to scan her flesh and soul.

Only five seconds later, she withdrew her hand.

Her frown softened but her expression was somewhat… amused and helpless?

“All right, you’re not sick. In fact, this is a good thing. Many people envy this but can’t get it.”

“?”

Jiang Cha’s head popped a question mark, but Mortel didn’t directly explain, instead playing dumb:

“What was your mana amount when you last measured?”

“68,000.”

“You now have at least 70,000 mana inside your body.”

“Huh?”

Jiang Cha was even more confused.

“Isn’t it said that mana growth before puberty is very slow…?”

Her voice gradually lowered as she pondered.

“Congratulations, little Jiang Cha. Judging by your age, you’re currently in a development phase—the infancy development phase.”

Mortel blinked, delivering the harsh truth in a kindergarten teacher tone.

Jiang Cha: “…..”

“Simply put, witches…” Mortel pointed to herself with a playful tone, “As containers of mana, the amount of mana they can hold depends jointly on their soul and body.”

“That’s basic knowledge; don’t tell me you didn’t know.”

“So my situation is that my body has reached pre-puberty, but my soul is still at infancy stage!?”

“Exactly~”

Mortel was trying not to laugh. She really hadn’t expected to pull out an SSR card just like that.

“This means you will have three mana growth spurts: the soul’s initial development now, the body’s puberty in two years, and the soul’s maturation ten years later.”

“Tsk tsk, awakened witches really are something else…”

Because awakened witches are so rare, Mortel hadn’t known much about their growth patterns. Mana isn’t like cultivation levels—you can see it instantly if your realm is higher.

So she had been in the dark, thinking Jiang Cha’s mana intensity stagnated because she was too busy developing magic and slacking a bit.

Now looking, all she could do was envy.

No wonder those naturally awakened witches advanced so smoothly on the omniscient path—they were just born with insanely high mana.

“So my training of mana intensity is basically useless, huh?”

Jiang Cha’s expression was a mixture of happiness and bitterness.

Happy because having high mana is obviously a benefit. Though witches’ mana grows forever, later growth can only rely on lucky encounters and time, which is very slow.

Bitterness because she basically wasted the last three months of effort.

“Not entirely. Leaving a trace and then improving is always faster than doing nothing. You think why do the big families’ battle witches have such high mana intensity?”

Mortel used the container and water analogy.

Training mana intensity is like constantly pressing down on water in a sturdy container, increasing its density.

But Jiang Cha’s container is still expanding, and the filling speed isn’t fast. Even pressing down only speeds up the filling a bit, with little effect on density.

However, pressing also strengthens the container itself, so it’s not totally useless—just inefficient.

“What about the world fragments…”

“Don’t worry.”

Mortel knew what Jiang Cha was concerned about and quickly explained:

“A world, even a fragment-level one, isn’t something you can compare to now. That little mana increase is negligible.”

“In essence, using a world fragment to boost mana intensity is just applying external pressure on yourself.”

“And once increased, as long as you keep training, the mana intensity rarely drops…”

Her tone was confident, but then considering Jiang Cha’s insane mana growth speed, she added:

“Unless your mana growth speed is too fast, but fragments about to collapse aren’t expensive, so it’s not a big problem.”

“I see, Master. I’m just a little curious.”

Gathering her thoughts, Jiang Cha looked out the window of the sleek black car into the vast universe.

“Why are we even driving a car here? What’s the principle? And how do you steer with a steering wheel in space? Does it even work?”

Mortel: “….”

Yes, the two of them were currently driving a ‘car’ speeding through outer space.

Not an interdimensional tunnel, not spatial teleportation.

They were literally driving a car in space, the whole vehicle floating mid-air, moving at a decent speed!

Mortel even turned on the right signal and drifted to dodge an asteroid fragment!

Seriously, in a space lane hundreds of light-years wide, there’s no other vehicle or life for miles—who are you signaling to?!

Planets?!