Growing into a Witch is an expensive business.

Besides tuition, buying specialized magic, magical equipment, and magical tools, a Witch still has to spend a lot just to keep up with her studies while she’s growing.

At its core, a Witch’s way of resisting knowledge contamination is to grit her teeth and endure it with mental power. Her mental coefficient determines how many units of mental power she has to resist the contamination.

But your mental coefficient is a matter of innate talent. The amount of magic power you have does affect it, but the differences between individuals can still be huge.

So what’s a Witch with a low mental coefficient supposed to do if she wants to catch up? Or one with a high coefficient who wants to speed up her studies?

Training your mental power is the usual method, but it takes a long time. If you want to speed things up in the short term...

You have to spend money.

The “mental potion” the girl had been dreaming about was one way to do that.

More precisely, anything that could speed up the recovery of mental power would work. Mental potions were just the most commonly used option.

They were also the most heavily consumed potions of all.

Low-tier mental potions were fairly easy to make, and Witches had already industrialized their production. But the raw materials didn’t replenish very quickly, and demand for the potions across Witch society was practically endless. As a result, they were generally quite expensive—about twice the price of other potions of the same tier that were also mass-produced.

Put simply...

Jiang Cha couldn’t afford to spend money on them.

If she couldn’t afford the ones in the store, she’d just have to make her own. The Potion Club supplied the ingredients at a twenty-percent discount, and would buy or sell as much as she needed. The savings from buying and selling through the club would be enough to cover her own needs.

So the girl decisively settled on what she’d study next.

“Jiang Cha-chan, you can’t do anything that dangerous again! Without outside help, there’s a limit to how much contamination your brain can withstand over a short period.”

The girl had been dragged to the academy infirmary by He Qin for a checkup. As she listened to the lecture beside her, she couldn’t help feeling a little helpless.

Calling it a checkup was a bit much. They’d only scanned her with a machine. The results came back quickly, and Jiang Cha’s condition was a textbook case of a common Witch ailment.

“Overexertion.”

In other words, it was still because she couldn’t afford to spend money on potions. One bottle of mental potion would take care of it—and, in return for the ten duels Jiang Cha had promised, her little rich friend Lina had generously provided one.

Without that exceptionally high-quality mental potion, she’d have needed to rest for at least five days before she could study again. If things had been any worse, she might not even have been able to attend class.

“Ahaha... Something went wrong while I was developing my innate magic this time. I’ll be more careful next time, I promise.”

The girl gave an awkward little laugh. She regretted acting on impulse, but even more than that, she didn’t know what to do about He Qin’s nonstop, mother-hen scolding.

All she could do was sneak Lina a look.

She was sincerely sorry, but clearly wasn’t going to change a thing.

“Yeah, yeah! Come on, we’re Witches. Who hasn’t overdone it once or twice? Some of the upperclasswomen in the research labs drop dead every few days!”

The blond-haired little girl caught on and chimed in. She did feel a little guilty, though—as a little rich girl, she could spend whatever she liked on potions, and she’d never once been overexerted in her life.

She actually stayed up studying every night. It was just that she downed a potion before leaving in the morning and was full of energy again.

Then she’d sometimes catch up on sleep during class, like a modern Chinese high school senior who studied late into the night and napped during morning reading.

“Sigh...”

He Qin sighed. How could she not see that these two were working themselves to the bone and had no intention of changing?

Though, truth be told, she was doing the same. How many young Witches these days actually went to bed early?

She couldn’t afford Lina’s high-end potions, but she could manage the cheaper ones. Sleeping two or three hours a night and taking a potion each day was a sustainable way to drain the pond dry.

None of them had any right to criticize the others. They were all workaholics, so she gave up on lecturing them.

“Qin Bao, wanna go to the Battle Club?”

“Mm...”

He Qin hesitated. She really didn’t like dueling, but she also wanted to spend time with her friends. Still, giving up one day every week...

“Come on, let’s go! We’re going to form a team someday, and second-year combat classes include team battles. Getting used to it now won’t be a waste of time!”

He Qin was convinced.

And so the three of them headed to the Battle Club together.

Let’s make this clear once again.

Witches were known for being beautiful, but these girls from Dorm D12 were among the prettiest of them all.

But Lina was already famous at the Battle Club. She was a social butterfly with great connections—and a terrifying family background. Anyone who tried to make a move on her would probably end up hunted by the Nois Family. And I don’t mean the Nois Family in the general sense. I mean Lina’s sisters, whether they’d graduated from Aisilen Academy or not.

“The family elders can’t bully the younger generation and break up a couple. But I’m your upperclasswoman at the Battle Club, so there’s nothing wrong with me teaching you a lesson for hitting on my little sister, you creep who goes after little girls, right?”

He Qin, on the other hand, kept to herself. Other than the classroom, the places she went most often were the market and the Puppet Club. She was a little socially anxious, too, so apart from her roommates, she had almost no friends.

And Jiang Cha was even less known. She’d only just enrolled and hadn’t even learned all her classmates’ names yet.

That was why none of the upperclasswomen had set their sights on them.

Otherwise, that pack of wolves would’ve trampled the threshold of Dorm D12, just like they’d crowded around the three cute girls today.

“Shoo! Stop getting in the way! Go find something else to do!”

In the end, Mentor Carol was the one who stepped in and chased off the shameless upperclasswomen, saving them.

More precisely, she saved He Qin, the socially anxious one.

Lina already knew the upperclasswomen at the Battle Club, and Jiang Cha was pretty good socially, too. The main reason He Qin had kept turning down Lina’s invitations, besides having no interest, was those women who were as eager as wolves on the hunt.

They were seriously terrifying.

“Well, well~ What a nice surprise.”

As a first-year Mentor, Carol knew quite a bit about He Qin.

The Puppet Club’s little darling. A genius who could make fourth-tier puppets before she even enrolled. A mechanical-type Puppet Manipulation Witch with a well-developed combat system.

“That’s great news. I’ll give you a reward later.”

“Hehe~ Then I want to learn your Red Sun, Mentor!”

The blond-haired little girl lit up at once. She didn’t really need material rewards, but Mentor Carol was a top Combat Witch in Evocation, and Lina had been eyeing several of her spells for ages!

“You go straight for a sixth-tier spell? You’ve got quite the appetite, kid.”

Carol scoffed, looking a little exasperated.

“That’s not enough. Unless...”

Lina hadn’t expected much in the first place. It was just a shot in the dark—nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Sixth-tier spells weren’t exactly common. They were important enough to serve as the tactical centerpiece for a Grand Witch, and they cost a fortune. Carol’s Red Sun was a rare environmental spell in Evocation, and the core spell of the tactical system she’d developed herself. It was practically priceless—she wouldn’t sell it for any amount of money.

But that “unless” instantly made Lina’s ears perk up!

“What is it? Tell me, Mentor! If it’s something I can do, I’ll do it!”

The blond-haired little girl was clever, too. She made sure to say she’d only do it if it was something she could manage.

The most valuable things she owned were the two resource worlds her family had given her. Trading one for a rare sixth-tier spell would be a little overpriced, but still worth it.

At least it would keep her mom from turning into a Red Dragon and beating her up.

“It’s not that dramatic. Just lead the team at the Witch Cup and bring me the championship. The Battle Club hasn’t had any promising newcomers these past two years. The first-year team has lost three years in a row, and the last time we won the first-year group was when your sisters led the team.”

Lina: “....”

This nasty woman’s just making things hard for me!

“The Witch Cup?”

Jiang Cha asked softly.

She could tell Lina really wanted Mentor Carol’s spell. And knowing Lina, anything that could make her look troubled had to be pretty interesting.

“It’s just an inter-school league. It’s not that important. I only named that prize because I was annoyed. Damn Limier Academy is way too full of itself.”

Carol waved a hand, as if she’d only brought it up in passing.

“It’s not as easy as you think, Cha Bao.”

Lina sighed and spoke softly. “The Witch Cup is basically a contest between the combat clubs of different magic academies to see whose training is best. Even if I lead the first-years to victory against the other first-year teams, we still won’t take the championship if the other years lose and our total score isn’t high enough.”

“Oh? Little Lina~ So you don’t have faith in me?”

Casey appeared from who knew where, looped an arm around Lina’s neck with a smile, and spoke softly.

“Of course I do!”

Lina hurried to deny it.

Casey’s fifth-year team—fourth-year last year—had indeed lost. But telling the truth now would just get her in trouble!

“Then you don’t have faith in your sister?”

“That’s even less possible!”

“....”

After a little back-and-forth,

everyone tacitly agreed to stop talking about the Witch Cup.

Jiang Cha had only just enrolled and didn’t know much yet. He Qin wasn’t interested in dueling to begin with, so there was no point saying more.

“Looks like your plan failed, Mentor~”

Once the three little ones had walked off, Lina led Jiang Cha over to spar with Casey. Casey nudged Carol with her elbow and teased her with a grin.

“That kid really can resist temptation, huh?”

Carol looked helpless. Her plan had been that if Lina wanted the spell, she’d persuade the other two, then find one more promising student. She’d train all four of them together, and the first-year team’s points would be in the bag.

Who’d have thought the blond-haired little girl would just turn her down?

Carol didn’t believe for a second that the clever little thing had missed her hint.

“Forget it. We’ll see what happens. Limier might not have any promising students willing to compete, either.”

After thinking it over, Carol gave up trying to figure it out and settled in to watch the duel.

“Those three really are promising. Take He Qin, for example. I went to watch a first-year combat class before.”

“Her puppet combat system is already so well developed. I’m curious how a first-year managed that. Is she the disciple of some Puppet Master?”

“You guessed right.”

The dark-skinned Mentor in the revealing outfit grinned mischievously. “Ever heard of the Puppet Workshop?”

“Isn’t that person from the Retro School? But He Qin...”

Casey looked down at He Qin, who had summoned twelve mechanical puppets to both attack and defend while wearing Lina down. For a moment, she was at a loss for words.

“Who knows? But she used to work there. Do you really think she wasn’t a disciple?”

“Of course I don’t!”

What master would take on a low-tier Puppet Mage as an apprentice?

When someone at the master level said they were looking for an assistant, plenty of high-tier Puppet Mages would pay out of pocket just to apply!