Chapter 14

“Wow, it’s huge.”

The moment she stepped inside, this was Dorothy’s first impression of the bookstore.

It was a standard witch shop—externally appearing tiny, but internally vast, thanks to a clever spatial expansion spell that multiplied the interior space nearly a hundredfold; the neatly arranged bookshelves resembled a forest, especially those towering shelves reaching the high ceiling, creating the atmosphere of a library.

No, it was more accurate to say this place was a library called a bookstore—the collection here surpassed the scope of any ordinary bookstore.

Although the space was immense and the number of customers was not small, the overall environment remained quiet; no one shouted, and even when conversing, patrons kept their voices low, leaning close.

This was partly due to witches’ general respect for knowledge, but more likely stemmed from reverence for the reputation of the sage owner.

Dorothy loved this atmosphere; she was naturally a quiet, homebound girl, and as a witch of the Path of Omniscience, being surrounded by oceans of knowledge felt profoundly beautiful.

“Maybe I shouldn’t pursue real estate after all—opening a bookstore doesn’t sound so bad.”

She thought to herself.

“Sister, let’s go over there—the textbooks are all on that side.”

Alice gently tugged her sleeve, pointing toward a direction on the second floor, whispering softly.

As a witch of the Path of All-Around Mastery, she had never been keen on reading or studying; in her view, as long as she could cast the spells she needed, the underlying principles didn’t matter—functionality was all that counted.

Thus, Alice had only mild interest in the bookstore, much like Dorothy’s lack of interest in choosing clothes; the little witch wanted nothing more than to rush straight to her goal, grab the textbooks, and leave.

She was a lively girl who disliked the dull, oppressive atmosphere of a library.

But Dorothy wasn’t in a hurry; while Alice marched straight toward her destination, Dorothy strolled slowly, glancing at the bookshelves on either side, searching for any books that caught her interest.

“Huh...”

As her gaze swept across the nearby shelf, she stopped. A book on that shelf had drawn her attention.

“Detailed Genealogy of Witch Bloodline Talents and Specializations: Evolution.”

Witches gained their current status largely due to their powerful evolutionary abilities—they could continuously adapt themselves according to need; for instance, if burned today, their fire resistance would evolve; if nearly drowned tomorrow, they might soon develop underwater breathing like a fish.

Even if they merely envied birds flying and wished desperately to grow wings themselves, if that desire was strong enough, the witch might eventually sprout actual bird-like wings.

Early witches relied on this evolutionary power to overcome hardships and gradually grow stronger.

Back then, witch evolution was euphemistically called “learning from nature,” but bluntly put, it was random, chaotic evolution—evolving wherever the whim took them, entirely unstructured. Today, however, this ability had been thoroughly studied and brought under conscious control.

This godlike evolutionary power came at a cost: magic power. Or rather, it was simply one manifestation of magic’s omnipotence—but such evolution didn’t consume ordinary magic power; it consumed maximum magic capacity.

In casual gaming terms, this wasn’t draining MP—it was extending the MP bar itself.

Increasing maximum magic capacity was extremely difficult, so a witch’s number of possible evolutions within a given time was inherently limited.

Thus, abilities like underwater breathing—which could be achieved with a simple spell—were utterly unnecessary to evolve; such low-value evolutions were a massive waste.

This was unavoidable: early witches were limited by their narrow horizons, able to learn only from beasts in nature, and their evolved abilities—bear strength, leopard speed, eagle vision—had limited potential.

But modern witches had vastly broader horizons; across the multiverse, every extraordinary race served as a target for imitation, especially the three ancient Catastrophe Races.

Angels, demons, dragons—these Catastrophe Races were the ultimate templates for witch evolution; many witches deliberately evolved toward these three races.

Of course, as near-divine races, the three Catastrophe Races were not easily copied; for a witch to evolve from scratch into one of them required staggering amounts of magic power—only witches of the Path of All-Around Mastery could afford such expenditure, as continuous self-evolution was precisely how they grew stronger.

Fortunately, this evolutionary power was not one-time-only; evolved traits could be inherited through bloodline, so ordinary witches who couldn’t complete their evolution could pass the goal to the next generation, and with generations of effort, the target could eventually be reached.

Many traditional, insular witch families followed this path.

Generally, the evolutionary traits inherited from a witch’s parents were called Talents; every witch inherited at least one Talent from each parent, and those with exceptional bloodlines might inherit multiple Talents from both.

As for abilities a witch developed later in life through evolution, they were called Specializations.

Aside from their names, Talents and Specializations were otherwise identical; if anything, Talents—being innate—were slightly more compatible with the witch’s body, granting marginally stronger effects.

In short, modern witches had thoroughly studied their own race’s evolutionary capacity, even developing specialized Evolutionary Diagrams, meticulously documenting and classifying the extraordinary abilities they’d encountered through centuries of warfare.

They also ranked these abilities by strength into four tiers: N, R, SR, and SSR—from lowest to highest. Higher-tier abilities were naturally more powerful, but required greater consumption of maximum magic capacity to evolve.

And the title of that book was precisely this: “Detailed Genealogy of Witch Bloodline Talents and Specializations: Evolution.”

This was essential knowledge for witches of the Path of All-Around Mastery; witches of the Path of Omniscience like Dorothy didn’t need it.

After all, All-Around Mastery witches grew strong through Talents and Specializations, with magic as mere support; Omniscience witches relied primarily on knowledge and magic, with Talents and Specializations as auxiliary.

She had heard of this book before but had never actually read it; now, encountering it, she felt an inexplicable sense of fate guiding her, her hand reaching out involuntarily.

Then her hand touched another hand—someone else had also set their sights on this book.

Dorothy snapped out of her trance-like state and turned her head.

A pure-white girl stepped abruptly into her view.