There was nothing she needed to bother her roommate about. Driven by a powerful thirst for knowledge, Jiang Cha would rather spend tonight studying the classes she’d fallen behind on.

After all, she was a whole month late, and she’d already missed a lot of lessons.

Back in her room, the girl snapped her fingers. Dreamlike blue motes drifted from her fingertips, awakening the magical appliances inside.

The chandelier, the air conditioner, and a clock with a distinctly old-fashioned design.

The kind of lavish pendulum clock you’d find hanging in an old castle. It chimed on the hour and doubled as an alarm clock.

A virtual screen lit up and connected to the various pieces of furniture. She used the central control system to set her alarms for the days ahead, then turned off the hourly chimes.

“This place doesn’t feel very lived in.”

Jiang Cha sighed softly.

There was a shopping street on campus, but she didn’t have a single coin to her name right now. She couldn’t afford a thing—not even the Witch robe she was wearing, which she’d gotten from Qu Sinan for free.

It could boost the power of her magic, but only by a little.

The 【Permanent Cleaning Spell】 enchanted into it was more practical. All she had to do was feed it mana, and it’d cast the cleaning spell to keep the robe neat.

“I still need to figure out how to make money.”

After spending the afternoon catching up on the basics, she’d learned quite a lot.

Simply put, because of their species’ innate traits, every Witch can make her own magical items. That’s led to an unusually thriving flea-market scene in Witch society.

And most Witches really did enjoy browsing flea markets. They were fun, and the prices were good.

If you made magical items or potions that had even one of these qualities—good quality, low price, interesting, or convenient—you’d have no trouble selling them.

So even Little Witches who’d just started school could turn their ideas into money.

And if you had no ideas of your own, you could always copy someone else’s items. Witch society had no patent rights—or rather, only theories could be patented. You’d get a patent fee when your theory was cited in a paper, but there were no patents on the production side.

That reflected their belief in the supremacy of knowledge.

The items Little Witches copied were all unbranded products with no quality guarantees. Still, they could make money by building a good reputation or selling in bulk.

Of course, Little Witches with skills in alchemy, potion-making, and the like could also work in their senior classmates’ workshops. But those jobs were usually part-time alongside their studies, so the actual pay was pretty low.

Usually, only Little Witches from poor families with unimpressive mana reserves chose that route. They worked to support themselves while learning as much as they could.

“Startup capital…”

Alchemy, potion-making, magical machinery—all of them required the right tools and materials before you could make anything, even if they weren’t expensive.

Still, Jiang Cha couldn’t afford them right now.

And she didn’t have the skills, either.

But in the books she’d read today, she’d found another path.

Witch clubs.

Unlike the clubs she knew from her past life, the clubs at Aislin Witch Academy were more like companies run by students, with a bit of a playful streak. They were quite professional, and many of the more successful clubs even took on outside work, sometimes doing business with Witches on the front lines.

The Alchemy Club and the Potion Club, for example, sold their own products. The Battle Club even had agreements with the front lines, sending qualified students there for field experience.

Some of the money these products earned went to the people who made them. The rest was used to buy better equipment and train new members.

That was why Jiang Cha had her eye on the clubs. She had no interest in the Battle Club—however she looked at it, she didn’t seem like a Witch who specialized in combat. But the four basic clubs for alchemy, potions, machinery, and magical puppets all had excellent earning potential. They could solve her current lack of startup capital perfectly.

Of course, getting into those clubs required passing an assessment. So while she studied, the girl also had to choose a secondary field to focus on. Even if she couldn’t get any hands-on practice, she couldn’t afford to mess up the theory exam.

“Which one should I pick?”

Jiang Cha tapped her chin, caught in a dilemma.

If she had to say which of the four basic fields was most important—well, they all were.

And they all made good money.

But most truly high-tech products combined several fields. And, well, high tech meant huge profits. That was what she couldn’t decide about.

Should she try to do everything, or focus on one thing for now? It was a serious question.

“Never mind. I’ll read first. Maybe the answer will come to me once I understand mana and magic better.”

Witches might seem carefree on the surface, but they were meticulous when it came to writing textbooks.

Or rather, a species’ general personality didn’t mean every Witch had the same personality. With such a large population, there were bound to be some meticulous individuals to handle this kind of work.

The logic in this book, *A Simple Study of Mana*, was exceptionally clear.

It clearly explained how a form of energy known as miracles worked, as well as where it could go from there.

The very first line of the opening chapter laid out an audacious theory.

‘Mana is omnipotent.’

“It’s a little like the grand unified theory—a fundamental principle that could explain every phenomenon?”

“No, that’s not right. It’s different.”

“Even if the grand unified theory were proven, it could only explain phenomena and help humanity understand the mechanisms behind everything, from the microscopic to the macroscopic. From there, people could develop technology that made use of those principles.”

“Mana works the other way around. It’s omnipotent, so it can even defy the laws of macroscopic physics. Twisting reality to produce completely unreasonable phenomena—that’s what magic is.”

“This is…”

The girl rubbed her temples, her head starting to ache.

The theory didn’t exactly conflict with the ‘common sense’ left in her mind. It completely overturned it.

She flipped back to the textbook’s table of contents.

The first major section, 【Mana】, introduced the nature of mana.

After that came its many applications. Chapter Two, for instance, laid out the pros and cons of mana as an energy source. The downside was that it had practically no downsides.

As the book kept saying, mana was omnipotent.

The rest covered mana’s role in alchemy and potion-making, the changes brought about by combining it with technology and machinery, and so on. Jiang Cha hadn’t finished reading it yet.

She could learn all that gradually from her teachers in later classes. For now, she only needed a general understanding. And just like its title suggested, *A Simple Study of Mana* merely introduced mana’s nature and uses. It was pure theory, with little impact on practical work.

That didn’t align with Jiang Cha’s current top priority, so she put it aside for the time being.

The girl closed her eyes and rested for five minutes, easing the fatigue brought on by all that knowledge and taking the chance to sort through what she’d just learned.

【Information Gathering】

This spell, jokingly called “last-minute cramming,” was incredibly useful for studying. Jiang Cha’s version was an optimized, specialized form of her innate magic, and its mana consumption was almost unbelievable.

This was her innate magic, after all—the one that had scored a mana efficiency of 96.32% in testing.

That meant if anyone other than Jiang Cha used this spell—even another Grand Witch with over sixty thousand mana, more than the girl—

the limit of 50% mana efficiency for non-innate magic meant they’d have to spend almost twice as much mana as Jiang Cha just to keep it going.

Jiang Cha used 214 units of mana per second to maintain the spell. Double that, and you got 428 units of mana per second.

That was even more absurd than a Forbidden-Class fixed spell. It wasn’t something a Grand Witch could use at all; only someone at the Sage Class, like the academy’s headmaster, could supply enough mana.

And even if someone else had enough mana to use it, they couldn’t get the same results as Jiang Cha. Ordinary magic had originally been created by simplifying and imitating Witches’ innate magic. It was only natural that a copy couldn’t match the original.

The absurd mana cost of her innate magic also gave Jiang Cha an effect that was practically a cheat code: incredible learning ability.

Yes, that was all there was to it. But it mattered a lot.

The other effects—like being able to control every muscle in her body perfectly or having absurd martial-arts talent—were just side benefits. Maybe those would be the main effects in a wuxia world. But in Witch society, where mages were everywhere and even a Grand Witch with surface-level combat strength could blow up a star, improved learning ability was what mattered.

Miss Mo’er had been right. Jiang Cha really was a genius.

A genius at learning.

That was what gave her the confidence to consider whether she should specialize in one secondary field or take on all of them.

And once she understood the nature of mana, the girl decisively chose to do it all.

That would let her make the most of her talent and reach a comfortable standard of living as quickly as possible. The school charged tuition, after all!

And the tuition was incredibly expensive.

Jiang Cha’s special circumstances meant she could apply for financial aid, but it would only last until the end of her first academic year. In other words, if she couldn’t earn enough to pay the next year’s tuition within a year, there’d be no reason for Aislin Witch Academy to keep investing in her.

This was one of the top schools in the Witch World. If she lacked the ability and the money, she could always continue her studies at a public academy.

Those were free.

“I shouldn’t waste this ability. I’ll borrow some books from the Great Library tomorrow.”

First-year students only had four required courses. The various secondary fields wouldn’t be offered as electives until their second year, but first-years could still borrow textbooks on them from the Great Library.

At an institution of higher learning like this, most students started studying on their own in their first year. The exceptions were rich second-generation Witches who were just coasting through school to get a diploma.

Oh, no, there were also the Witches who specialized in combat. They didn’t spend any time studying secondary fields. They spent every waking hour at the Battle Club.

“Open the window! Pixie delivery!”

A childish shout interrupted the girl’s thoughts. The thump-thump of someone knocking on the window sounded a little too loud in the quiet night.

Jiang Cha looked up.

To her surprise, the one knocking wasn’t a Witch. It was a little girl with cat ears and a cat tail—just like a normal one, only several times smaller.

She was only about thirty centimeters tall, like a figurine.

She was riding something like a high-tech motorcycle from a sci-fi movie, hovering in midair and giving off a faint magical aura. Of course, it was a tiny, figurine-sized version too.

‘A pixie? Or some kind of magical creature?’

Jiang Cha couldn’t quite figure out what species the little one belonged to, but she opened the window and let her in.

“Here’s your academy delivery slip. Please check it, then sign with your mana information.”

The little one didn’t waste any time. As soon as she came through the window, she tossed a slip of paper to the girl.

Jiang Cha looked it over carefully and saw that it listed some daily necessities provided by the academy. A little dazed, she signed it. Then, as the little one swung back onto her ride, Jiang Cha was quick enough to give her a pet.

But the little one didn’t get angry. She actually seemed rather pleased.

“Company policy says the first pet is free. Touch me again next time, and I’ll have to charge you! Five Witch gold coins.”

“Well then, I hope you have sweet dreams tonight, Miss Witch! I’d better hurry and deliver the next order!”

The magical catgirl struggled to drop a package that appeared out of nowhere, then sped off on her ride.

The girl was left standing there, staring after her in a daze.

Witch society really was going to take some getting used to.

But…

‘She actually charges money? I’m not petting her next time.’

She was really poor, you know.