“Hahahaha! Cha Bao, that was amazing! You even startled Mentor Carol! I’m dying—did you see her face?”

The moment Carol stepped out of the classroom, she heard a certain golden-haired little girl laughing wildly behind her.

Her fists clenched for a moment, but in the end, she pretended not to hear and kept walking.

‘You little brat. You’re dead!’

Meanwhile, the girl only gave Lina’s exaggerated laughter a helpless little smile. “It’s really nothing. Lina can do it too, can’t she?”

“It’s not the same, it’s not the same! I can only do that because the Red Dragon’s heart boosts my fire magic. Cha Bao, you pulled that off with pure technique. It’s completely different!”

Lina waved her hands. Honestly, even she’d been shocked, despite having some idea of what to expect.

Generally speaking, ordinary magic can use no more than fifty percent of its mana, and every spell model has a limit to how much mana it can hold.

The more complex the model, the more mana it can handle. That’s one of the theories behind magic’s different tiers.

So what had Jiang Cha just done?

Just before class ended, when Mentor Carol was checking their progress, Jiang Cha used runes to imitate two enhancement effects—[Empowered Casting] and [Fire Enhancement]. She turned an ordinary Fireball into a gigantic one, four or five meters across, and nearly doubled its temperature.

“Strictly speaking, what Jiang Cha-chan just used can’t even be called a Fireball anymore. Developing a new spell in her first year—that kind of talent is on par with a Sage.”

He Qin covered her mouth and giggled.

Jiang Cha’s talent for learning really was enough to make anyone green with envy. But once the gap grew wide enough, He Qin found herself feeling less discouraged.

Besides, the girl’s incredible talent was essentially a boost from her innate magic. Every Witch’s innate magic was a born-in cheat code. Unlike ordinary magic, innate magic was a miracle born from a Witch’s own mana. It simply didn’t play by the rules.

You could even say it had no limit at all.

There was a Sage on the Sage Council whose innate magic was the first-tier spell [Lightning Bolt]—yes, the same one Cha Bao and Lina had used in their match. But after years of development, that Sage’s Lightning Bolt had become a world-ending thunderbolt capable of blasting through an entire planet. And the terrifying part? For the Sage, the mana cost of that world-ending thunderbolt was about the same as Jiang Cha’s cost to cast Lightning Bolt.

Casting it a few thousand, even tens of thousands of times, would be no problem at all.

If He Qin kept developing her own innate magic, its future potential wouldn’t be any lower than Jiang Cha’s.

“I only made a tiny improvement. It’s not that impressive. What should we do now? The Great Library? There are still so many books I want to read.”

The girl had only been curious about what would happen if she added new runes to an existing spell model. Now, faced with her roommates’ praise, she was a little embarrassed.

The relaxed atmosphere all day had definitely gone to her head a little. In this unfamiliar world, she still needed to be careful.

After all...

She didn’t even know where she came from.

“Huh?! We’re going to read again?”

Lina pouted.

“Lina-chan, you don’t have to come with us if you want to go spar.”

“Mm...” He Qin gently ruffled her hair and spoke softly.

“Fine, fine. Sigh, why don’t I have even one Combat Witch among my roommates? My life is so hard. So, so hard.”

“Whatever. I’m magnanimous, so I won’t hold it against you two.”

The golden-haired little girl planted her hands on her hips and half-closed her eyes, putting on such a smug little expression that Jiang Cha couldn’t hold back a laugh.

“Pfft!”

“Hey! What are you laughing at—hahahaha!”

Lina couldn’t keep a straight face either. Even He Qin shook her head, trying not to laugh.

As expected, things were never boring with these two roommates around.

“I’m off, then! Message me if anything comes up~ Love you both! Mwah~!”

The golden-haired little girl turned with a grin, blowing them kisses before she left.

“Mwah, mwah. Off you go.”

The girl gave her a couple of amused, halfhearted kisses in return, while He Qin fussed over her like a mother. “Don’t forget to come back for dinner.”

“I know!!”

......

Reading time always flew by. In the quiet hours, He Qin gradually grew used to the sound of pages turning beside her.

She glanced up.

The Yamato Nadeshiko girl looked sideways at the one sitting upright in the library. Sunlight warmed the girl’s lovely hair.

She slowly slumped over the desk, her pale forearms slipping from her robe as she reached out to soak up the warmth of the sunlight.

She stretched like a cat and let out a soft little hum.

“Want a cup of coffee?”

The black-haired, red-eyed girl closed her book and half-lidded her eyes. Her tone was playful, yet full of affection, as if she weren’t looking at a classmate a year older than her, but at a little girl next door through an adult’s eyes.

There was something strangely captivating about her.

“I don’t like coffee.”

He Qin didn’t notice the unexpectedly mature expression Jiang Cha had let slip. She stared blankly at the empty seat in front of her, letting her gaze unfocus to ease the fatigue brought on by the knowledge overwhelming her.

She stuck out her tongue, looking more childish than her Yamato Nadeshiko image would suggest.

“It’s too bitter.”

“You don’t like bitter things?”

The girl tilted her head, then copied He Qin and rested her head on the desk. As she stretched, her pale forearm slipped from beneath her robe too, and she deliberately brushed it against the girl beside her.

Warm, yet cool.

The sunlight, the black hair, the presence of a girl, the strange sensation of their skin touching.

All of it made He Qin feel a little shy. She didn’t want to show it, though, so she only glanced at Jiang Cha strangely and muttered to herself.

‘Jiang Cha-chan, aren’t you being a little too...’

On the surface, she still acted as if nothing were amiss.

“I hate anything bitter.”

“Do you like coffee, Jiang Cha-chan? You can get free mana coffee at the front desk of the Great Library. They use mana puppets to grind some pretty good beans, so it’s not bad.”

“That’s what Lina said. She often complains that coffee is the only thing that can keep her in the Great Library for more than ten minutes.”

“Hahahaha! That really does sound like Lina.”

The girl laughed softly, closed her eyes, and rested her head on her arms, touching heads with He Qin.

“Coffee, huh... I don’t know if I’d like it. But if I’m with you, He Qin, milk tea feels like a better fit.”

“Why?”

He Qin looked puzzled.

Milk tea... She did like it a lot, but what she wanted to know was why Jiang Cha had said that.

“Because you remind me of milk tea, He Qin. After spending the day with you, I think you’re warm and sweet. You’re the kind of girl who makes people happy.”

“Makes people happy...”

He Qin’s eyes widened for an instant, then narrowed again. Her body gave a slight tremble before quickly settling. With her gaze lowered, she sat up. “All right, break time’s over. Let’s get back to reading. If there’s anything you don’t understand, Jiang Cha-chan, you can ask me.”

“Okay.”

The girl was still sprawled across the desk like a lazy cat, reluctant to face a harsh life without any dried fish.

But she got up anyway.

Even after she’d relaxed, that catlike air never left her. She was cute and languid.

She’d even grown a little more affectionate in the way she moved.

At first, the two of them had read together without getting in each other’s way. Now, the girl often leaned against He Qin, reading the knowledge in her book slowly and softly.

—The knowledge contamination was too intense. If she didn’t read slowly, the fatigue would be overwhelming.

.....

As her knowledge grew, Jiang Cha gradually began to understand what her innate magic had given her.

First, her brain.

Her innate magic, [Information Gathering], was constantly evolving her brain. When she’d first woken up, it had evolved three times just so she could barely process the information around her. Now, under the pressure of knowledge contamination, it had reached its eighth evolution.

Other Witches’ brains evolved and their mental strength improved as they resisted knowledge contamination while studying, but nowhere near as quickly as Jiang Cha’s. And their evolution only began when they were studying.

It was like a game’s progress bar. Jiang Cha’s was constantly loading at a high speed, while an ordinary Witch’s would only jump forward once or twice when the connection came through—that is, while studying—and even then, it was slow.

Then there was her incredible processing power.

She’d already demonstrated that during her earlier match. The advanced technique of using a weaker spell to cancel out a stronger one was usually something only experienced Combat Witches could pull off, yet even as a complete beginner at dueling, she’d managed it in battle.

Finally, her mental strength.

Strangely, an innate magic called Information Gathering shouldn’t normally have any effect on the soul.

But somehow, it did.

Jiang Cha couldn’t find an explanation in any of the books either. Maybe it was a mutation caused by becoming an innate magic.

Hadn’t researcher Molin said so during the test? Her [Information Gathering] was a permanently fixed, enhanced version.

There were plenty of examples like this in the Witch World. But Witches could now write their own magic, so they no longer cared much about the small additions to the spell library brought by newly discovered innate magic.

If Jiang Cha wanted to, she could analyze her innate magic and upload it to the Magic Net to earn some pocket money.

Teaching at academies, family collections, club rewards, and paid Magic Net downloads: these were the four most important ways Witches obtained magic. Magic Net downloads were becoming the most important of them all.

‘But I don’t have the money to analyze my magic, and no one would download it even if I uploaded it.’

The girl’s innate magic used around five hundred mana per magic ring, and over two hundred per second. Converting it into ordinary magic would double the cost. It was a fixed cost, permanently locked in.

That was like directly tying up her mana regeneration, greatly reducing a Witch’s staying power.

Jiang Cha’s own mana pool was over sixty thousand, and she could barely maintain the innate magic. Her mana regeneration per second had been cut in half, from the more than four hundred units she should have had.

For another Witch... they’d need a mana pool of at least one hundred thousand—a Grand Witch—to support it without strain.

A Witch’s mana pool would grow permanently as long as she was alive. But in practice, once it passed ten thousand and she reached Grand Witch Tier, mana strength mattered more.

If mana were cotton, mana strength would be how tightly packed that cotton was. The more compressed it was, the fewer gaps there were between the mana, and the greater its strength.

—There are also factors like mana traits, which affect mana recovery speed and strength per unit. But Cha Bao only needs to think about those once she starts developing her own traits, so we won’t get into them yet.

Lina’s mana strength was very high. Jiang Cha, on the other hand, had never trained hers at all.

That was why Lina had managed a ten-to-one mana efficiency ratio in their earlier match. If their mana strength had been equal, even three to one would’ve been pretty good.

—Aside from her mana strength, Lina also had the Red Dragon trait to boost her Fireball’s power. That was the biggest factor.