“You’re so cute, you don’t dare use Illumination Magic because you’re scared I’ll see you?” Yin Lin teased.
“Yes, that’s right. Why don’t you cast Illumination Magic yourself?” The Contract Goddess shot right back, not yielding an inch.
“Are you going to cast it or not? If not, I’m leaving.” Yin Lin threatened.
“Heh, is that all you’ve got?” The Contract Goddess had her weak spot hit this time.
Light appeared in the tree hollow again, soft and gentle, not harsh on the eyes.
Yin Lin had to keep her eyes closed for a few seconds before she could adapt.
Looking at the silver-haired girl before her, still entwined by tree roots and with an identical face as her own.
Her eyes were still closed. Having adapted to the darkness, she probably didn’t like Illumination Magic, the spell that banished the night.
“Why can you cast spells without a magic wand?” This was one of the main reasons Yin Lin had come here today.
“As long as you’re a Magical Girl, you must cast spells through your wand. There are no exceptions.” The Contract Goddess answered her directly, no beating around the bush.
Yin Lin tried to open her eyes, blinking more than ten times before she finally adjusted to the light.
She looked into the Contract Goddess’s eyes. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, but she couldn’t read anything from the Contract Goddess’s gaze.
“Looking for eye gunk?” The Contract Goddess teased her right back.
Yin Lin pulled the topic back on track: “You can cast spells empty-handed, which means you’re no longer a Magical Girl, right?”
The Contract Goddess didn’t answer, just smiled faintly.
Yin Lin continued, “Then why can Magical Girls call their wands back to them with empty hands? And why can the wand attack others remotely?”
The Contract Goddess answered this time: “It’s not that the Magical Girl calls the wand back, but that the wand senses the Magical Girl’s actions and flies back to her hand on its own.”
Yin Lin pressed further: “What about Lǜ Ye? Her whip moves as she wishes, even if you tie her up, she can break free.”
Her face flushed red—an embarrassing old story, and even if she was talking to her future self, it was still awkward.
The Contract Goddess smiled again. Her smile was beautiful—gentle, like a spring breeze—not as stiff as Yin Lin’s own smile.
She really might’ve gone full girl mode, with such feminine charm.
This is bad.
The Contract Goddess didn’t answer the unspoken question in her heart: “Lǜ Ye’s whip is within the same framework. You can control your staff to spin and tumble in midair; to Lǜ Ye, manipulating her whip to bind things or untie itself is just like you controlling your staff.”
It’s just a matter of proficiency. No need to mention that, since it’d sting a bit.
Lǜ Ye’s constant use of her whip to hunt Magical Girls, her proficiency was like Song Wuli’s daily commute to work.
Yin Lin pulled the topic back again: “So, if I want to cast spells empty-handed, I have to become like you?”
The Contract Goddess replied: “Secret.”
Deliberately hiding some key information.
Yin Lin switched tactics: “Do you have any advice on my combat style? Any tips on how I can get stronger in a short time?”
“Anime, you know about it, right? Ninety-nine percent of protagonists don’t need to train; they get stronger just by eating, drinking, having fun, and chasing girls. You want to be like that too, right?” The Contract Goddess obviously saw right through her.
Any Earthling knows how to get stronger—just buy a yearly gym membership.
But that’s a way most people hate. It’s time-consuming and exhausting. What most people want is to get stronger while eating, drinking, and having fun, like anime protagonists.
Of course, that was exactly what Yin Lin wanted. She knew she was just an ordinary person and wasn’t looking for some grand excuse.
She just wanted to get strong easily—no gym for her.
The Contract Goddess gave professional advice: “Every time you use magic, your proficiency naturally increases. As your skill and understanding improve, the efficiency of your magic attacks will gradually rise. Of course, that’s obvious—you’re not looking for this kind of answer. You don’t want to specialize in whips like Lǜ Ye, and you don’t want to temper your body like Huan Hong…”
The Contract Goddess pondered for a few seconds and continued, “You already know the two basic spells I taught you. Next time you use Magic Construction, don’t build it into the form of the Heaven-Piercing Spear. Picture a sphere instead, and deliberately shape it as a sphere. That will become a spell called Thunder Sphere. Likewise, use fire-element mana, and you get a fireball.”
So simple it sounded like nonsense.
Of course, this was only possible after Yin Lin had thoroughly mastered Mana Attribute Conversion and Magic Construction.
It was like how, when casting fireballs, other Magical Girls using the new-style spellcasting only needed 10 units of mana to shoot a fireball; but Yin Lin, using the old-style spellcasting, needed 20 units to launch the same fireball.
However, she could also compress her mana manually, squeezing two times, five times, even ten times the mana into a fireball of the same size. When it exploded—
—the power was naturally astonishing.
Construction.
Just like a mana cannon.
The Contract Goddess kept explaining the pros and cons of doing this.
As long as Yin Lin did a bit of training, she could use nearly all magic. All the Elemental Magic—wind, thunder, water, fire, earth, light, and darkness—could be achieved with those two basic spells.
If she mastered a light-element Heaven-Piercing Spear, she’d understand the Heaven-Piercing Spears of all the elements.
The Contract Goddess’s point was simple: If you don’t want to spend time and effort perfecting a single magic, then win by the sheer number of spells.
Alright, that did seem convenient. Yin Lin accepted the proposal.
Once the important topics were done, she started talking about things that weren’t so crucial for her.
Like that pearl.
The Contract Goddess answered, “Yes, that’s a Creation Artifact called the Heavy Gravity Pearl. As you saw, it can change gravity in an area. The larger the range, the more mana it takes. That mutant beast you saw had poor magical abilities, so it couldn’t fully control the Heavy Gravity Pearl, and could only unleash one-tenth of its power.”
“Are you hinting at something?” Yin Lin sensed the girl before her was luring her to use the Heavy Gravity Pearl. “You want me to use that thing?”
The Contract Goddess didn’t answer, just continued, “Three days from now is Sunday. Put the Heavy Gravity Pearl in your backpack, and I’ll retrieve it from my end.”
Yin Lin asked warily again, “From my extensive experience watching so many movies, you seem just like a villain. Are you sure you’ll handle the Heavy Gravity Pearl properly? You won’t use it to destroy humanity, will you?”
“Don’t you trust yourself?” The Contract Goddess locked eyes with Yin Lin. Neither looked away.
The girl trapped in the tree hollow still had clear, lucid eyes—not lost or confused.
Yin Lin apologized. “Sorry.”
She understood herself very well. Even if this world was rotten, full of deceit and betrayal, Song Wuli would never destroy humanity. He didn’t like people, but he did like humanity.