Let go of that monster girl!

"Has Your Excellency become obsessed with alchemy lately?"

"That's right. I've been cooking a lot of strange things lately, like mud, sawdust, and that soup from last time that I don't know what it was, it smells similar to this."

"That's terrible too; the Baron has been stirring it up for over two days."

"Do you think the Baron really intends to feed us this potion?"

"Wow, stop talking!"

Bang bang bang.

A series of urgent knocks on the door interrupted the rat girls' chatter.

"Are you done yet! I can't hold it in anymore!"

The mouse girl outside the door was squirming and twisting her legs, sounding like she was about to cry.

"You've only shoveled halfway through, go take care of it somewhere else."

The mouse girl, who was still shoveling dirt, turned around and shouted.

The sound of the mouse girl stomping her feet came from outside the door, and the door panel thumped loudly.

"The Baron says that urinating in public will incur a fine of two copper coins! Open the door! Open the door!"

"Squeak! I really can't hold it in anymore!"

The rat girl shoveling dirt inside reluctantly quickened her pace.

The shoveled white soil was filled into burlap sacks, the sacks were tied tightly, and then carried by pairs of rat girls wearing coarse cloth masks.

To be honest, the masks weren't much of a good way to block out the awful smell. The rat girls carrying the bags kept their heads to one side the whole way, staying as far away from the bags as possible, and breathing entirely through their mouths.

As the rat girls carrying sacks of white clay passed by the workers' kitchen, they happened to run into several other groups of rats coming out of the kitchen, also carrying sacks on their shoulders.

However, those bags looked much lighter and didn't smell terrible.

The mouse girl, who had just come out of the kitchen, glanced at the white clay bag and asked.

"Would you like this cooked, Your Excellency?"

The mouse girl carrying the white clay nodded vigorously.

"Of course, was that also cooked by the Baron?"

"Yes."

"Weren't those sawdust and soil all steamed last time?"

"Ah, this bag contains wood ash from the furnace; the Baron said not to waste it."

The two mouse girls exchanged a knowing glance.

"The Baron has turned into a perverted alchemist!"

On the experimental site at the top of the mountain, the ground still bore the marks of the previous acid fire, the charred stone slabs pitted and uneven.

Amidst these burn marks, a whole bunch of brand-new pots and pans have been erected, resembling an open-air boiler room.

Some of the rat girls squatted around the largest pot, stirring the white clay slurry inside with wooden sticks thicker than their own arms.

Another group of mouse girls stood guard in front of the filter, scooping spoonfuls of the stirred mud liquid into a sieve lined with several layers of cloth, waiting for the turbid liquid to slowly seep down and wash away the grayish-white residue.

Near the most bustling pots, Morren wore a rather frightening bird-beak mask, with some dried herbs stuffed in the beak to barely mask the stench.

He added salt and wood ash to the boiling leachate, then scooped a few spoonfuls of white powder from a small earthenware jar and sprinkled it in. He then picked up a large iron ladle and stirred it again and again. The liquid in the pot kept changing color, but the smell remained extremely terrible.

The surrounding mouse girls couldn't help but pinch their little noses, completely afraid to get close.

"The food the Baron cooks smells awful."

"Help, I can't breathe!"

But Morren, standing by the pot, didn't care at all. He stirred the pot with a large spoon while letting out a strange, low laugh, which, combined with his bird-beak mask, made him look both comical and eerie.

"Hehehe, I, your humble alchemy apprentice Lyme, today I will teach you the secret recipe for refining the potion 'Mother of Peter'."

Lem stood to the side, wearing a witch's hat specially sewn by the cook, looking exceptionally cute. She asked earnestly:

"Master, who is Peter?"

"Cough cough."

Molen coughed twice, choked by the steam rising from the pot, reached up to steady his mask which was sliding down, cleared his throat, and continued:

I'll tell you about that later.

"Many alchemists in the Rat Girl Kingdom believe that many substances in the earth possess the ability to preserve and replicate themselves through the power of the Creator. Just like beekeepers cultivate honey, they don't need to know why bees can collect nectar, they only need to know what honey is."

What is honey?

The slime has an innocent look that suggests she's never seen honey before, having grown up in the sewers.

"Don't interrupt."

Molen tapped the tip of the bird-beak mask, his tone deliberately stern.

"They believed that there was some kind of sacred substance in the air that absorbed the heat emitted by the decaying things in the soil."

“By mixing the soil containing these sacred substances with the ashes of plants, we can extract the ‘pure liquid’ from the chaos, and further extract the sacred solution known as the ‘Mother of Peter’.”

As Morren spoke, he lifted the large iron ladle and pointed towards another pot next to him.

The liquid in that pot had been boiled countless times, and a layer of greasy foam floated on the surface. From its appearance, it had nothing to do with the word "sacred".

He hadn't slept well for two days because of this pot of "Mother of Peter." Morren put down the iron spoon, turned around, and brought his long bird beak close to Lyme's face:

"Apprentice Lym, do you know what the final step is?"

Lem shrank back and shook his head.

Morren let out a wicked laugh, looking every bit the terrifying alchemist; the bird-beak mask made him look extremely sinister and frightening.

"Blood!"

"Alchemists would mix large amounts of blood with it and boil it down. They would use the best, freshest, and purest blood. This is the equivalence principle of alchemy."

"Hehehe, do you understand now, I, your lowly alchemy apprentice, Lym?"

Lem covered his mouth with both hands in horror, then quickly nodded seriously and replied:

"Understood!"

"Ha, so you've fallen for it, you little fool."

Seeing that the stupid slime girl had fallen for the trick so easily, Moren suddenly laughed, his tone instantly becoming relaxed, and his previous sinister look completely disappeared.

"Congratulations, my silly Lem, you have just witnessed how a secret formula was born by sheer luck."

"Huh?"

"This first lesson is called: If you don't do well in math, physics, and chemistry, life is full of magic."

One part saltpeter, two parts sulfur, three parts charcoal, add a little sugar, and you have a big Ivan.

Gunpowder, the first item in the transmigrator's handbook, is listed alongside allicin and soapy water as an essential subject for every transmigrator.

However, saltpeter is not found everywhere, and it is especially rare in the Kingdom of the Rat Girls, and naturally, it does not grow in the Dwarf Mountains.

The most common way to extract high-purity saltpeter without relying on minerals is through saltpeter fields.

Molen truly admired the alchemist who first discovered how to extract saltpeter from saltpeter fields. It was amazing that the process was completely correct even though the theory was entirely wrong. This is something that cannot be achieved by luck alone.

Bacteria found in nature ferment less-than-ideal substrates to obtain nitrate compounds, which are then removed step by step using materials such as wood ash.

The reason why the kingdom's alchemists add a large amount of blood in the final step is because blood itself contains a lot of colloids, which will coagulate when heated and can absorb impurities in the solution.

This method is not uncommon; many mouse girls also add a little egg white when brewing berry wine to remove the floating berry fluff.

But why does it have to be blood?

Molen stirred the "Mother of Peter" in the pot with a large spoon, then slowly scooped up a spoonful, looking at the beautiful white crystalline particles.

Nitrates.

He held the spoon up to Lyme so she could see it, then put it back in the pot, his tone becoming much more serious:

“In essence, the kingdom’s alchemists simply do not want to believe that sacred and noble saltpeter can be extracted from something as filthy, foul, and worthless as dung. So even if they stumble upon the right method by accident, they will always try to make up for it by finding something like sacred substances in the air, the power of the creator, or equivalent exchange.”

"And the final step, this boiled blood, is the bitter fruit of this flawed principle."

This is the key to having the right approach.

Lem looked completely bewildered, clearly not understanding at all, and his witch's hat tilted even further.

Molen seemed to suddenly remember something, put down the large spoon, and turned around.

"Oh, did you just ask why this liquid is called the Mother of Peter?"

Lem nodded.

"That's a misconception. Its original name is actually the Mother of Gunpowder."

"Because it was the Snake Maiden who introduced gunpowder from the East to the kingdom, the pronunciation of gunpowder in the Snake language sounds a lot like 'Speed,' and that's how the misconception has been passed down."

"Those alchemists probably thought Peter was the name of some god."

"gunpowder?"

Lyme's little head was filled with too many big questions, and the tip of the witch's hat tilted even more.

The mouse girl grinding sulfur powder nearby covered her mouth and laughed:

"The Baron is bullying Miss Lyme again."

She put down the mortar and pestle and gestured towards Lem:

"Gunpowder is the kind of stuff that Eastern merchants used to bang at the sky and at people."

"However, they are completely impenetrable to rune plate armor, so they are rarely seen in the kingdom's army."

This world is the same as the world before Morren's transmigration; gunpowder had long since flowed from the East to the West.

However, in history, firearms actually coexisted with full armor for a considerable period of time.

A muzzle-loading gun with a handful of gunpowder, a handful of grass, and a handful of bullets has an extremely slow rate of fire and very limited power, making it less effective than a well-trained crossbowman.

This world also has something as ridiculously tough as rune plate armor; it's probably not just rifled guns that can withstand it, but even modern machine guns would only produce sparks.

Among the powerful monster girls, witches, and knights, there are even monsters capable of catching bullets bare-handed. Not to mention, the rat girls' petite figures are too weak to lift heavy firearms, and the blacksmith rats would have a hard time crafting brass cartridges.

Therefore, Morren was in no hurry to improve the firearms.

Let's fire the cannons!

Caliber is justice, range is truth!

Try blocking this!

-----------------

"Your Excellency, I'm afraid you can't make this."

The blacksmith rats gathered around the large table in the workshop, passing around Morren's "Armstrong breech-loading rifled cannon." Their round ears huddled together, and the expressions on their little faces gradually changed from curiosity to apprehension.

Unlike the meticulous blueprints that Morren usually draws with detailed scales and individual parts, what's drawn on this paper looks like a child's simple sketch.

A simple cross-sectional view of a gun barrel, with rifling marked by neat spiral lines, and several conical projectiles drawn next to it.

At the very edge, there's a stick figure of a mouse girl lighting a fire, with two black circles on its head representing ears.

"why?"

This surprised Morren somewhat.

Several small cannons were previously mounted on the low mountain city wall. Although they had been blown to bits and melted down during the disaster month, the blacksmith rats would definitely be able to forge cannons.

The so-called breech-loading rifled cannon is essentially a traditional cannon with added rifling. The shell is modified to be cone-shaped and loaded from the rear, and then the breech is blocked with an oversized bolt breechblock.

Although both are rifling, the machining tolerances allowed for cannons are much greater than those for guns.

He had assumed this would be a piece of cake for the skilled blacksmith rats, which is why the drawings were so casual.

The blacksmith rats looked at each other, but no one spoke.

One of the blacksmith rats took the blueprints, placed them in front of Morren, and explained helplessly:

“Your Excellency, you should also know that the simplest way to make a cannon is to hammer a few metal plates into a cylindrical shape and then tighten it with iron hoops. But such a crude cannon is very prone to exploding, and its accuracy certainly does not meet the rifling requirements you have drawn up, Your Excellency.”