Let go of that monster girl!

"Call it! Attract it with your voice!"

"Squeak! Big fat bird! Look over here! Look over here!"

"I can't outrun it! I can't outrun something that flies!"

The blind bird stumbled and landed on the flat ground in front of the main mine tunnel.

Having lost a claw, it crashed onto the gravel ground upon landing, kicking up a cloud of dust with its wings.

It struggled for a while, then quickly stood up, shaking its empty eye sockets and letting out a terrifying laugh.

Molen felt a chill run down his spine.

That's too late!

Feeling the hot air and echoes coming from the mine entrance, the blind bird slowly stretched its disproportionately long neck into the tunnel.

At the end of the passage, a small light appeared.

boom!

A cannon shot rang out.

Countless metal fragments, various knives, forks, plates, sickles, and hammers, burst from the cannon barrel, piercing the blind bird's chest cavity with astonishing force and tearing its upper body to shreds.

Minced meat and feathers exploded and flew everywhere. The bird's half-body, having lost its upper body, was sent flying sideways by the enormous impact, spinning half a circle before crashing onto the stone platform.

Only a small portion of the bird's head remained as it flew through the air in a parabolic trajectory.

Finally, with a thud, it crashed into the inner side of the city wall in the distance and bounced back to the ground.

Deep inside the passage, the unfinished bronze cannon barrels, fresh from the workshop, were still emitting white smoke.

Scattered in front of the cannon were tableware and various metal objects used as makeshift cannonballs. A large group of rat girls who came to help were thrown to the ground by the loud noise of the cannon firing in the narrow space.

Teacher Ma stood behind the cannon barrel, her long legs resting on the cannon carriage, and blew out the ignition lever in one breath.

"Hmph, don't even think about touching my students."

Chapter 28 Who is waiting for me?

Scars may heal, walls may be repaired, but the wounds of war left in the hearts of the rats...

It's good that it's not time to sleep yet.

"Squeak! Your Excellency, can we eat this?!"

A female mouse held up a chicken leg taller than herself with both hands, her round ears twitching excitedly, and she tilted her head back and shouted towards the city wall.

"Yes, so we have to move everything we can back."

Moren stood on the city wall, one hand supporting himself on a stone crenellation, the other holding a charcoal pencil, scribbling and drawing in his notebook, estimating the losses and spoils of this battle.

"Long live the Baron!"

Cheers erupted at the foot of the city wall.

The ratwomen, lined up in rows, brandishing axes and daggers, darted among the piles of chimera carcasses.

They picked out the relatively intact corpses, squatted down, and roughly cut off the animal hides.

Because of the lack of lighting outside the city walls, and the fact that there were few skilled leatherworkers among the ratwomen, the cuts were often crooked, leaving the leather covered with uneven cuts.

With small axes and knives, several rat girls worked together to lift large chunks of meat and huff and puff as they piled them onto the cart.

The cart's axles were overburdened, but the mouse girl pulling it was all smiles.

Seeing the lively scene with the mouse girl, Moren couldn't help but smile.

The children of the rats also have a good personality; as long as you mention that their skin can be used to make things and their meat can be eaten.

The rat girls, who were just trembling with fear, immediately rushed out in a hurry, afraid that if they were late, the good meat would rot.

"Master, is it really edible?"

Lem crouched down cautiously beside Moren.

Moren extended his charcoal pencil, pointing with the end to the edge of the breach in the city wall at the giant chimera beast that had been burned to a crisp by Lyme.

This thing is huge, and it looks even more bizarre after being burned beyond recognition, but you can still distinguish the original species origin of the different parts if you look closely.

"This part is from the deer, and deer can eat it."

"This part is fish, and fish is edible."

"This part is bear meat, and bears can eat it too."

Well, although the deer part had a bit too many legs and the bear part had a bit too many eyes, it was still staring at Morren after it was cooked.

Chimera beasts have a harmonious overall body structure, which means they don't need much magic to survive and their flesh won't be overly contaminated.

“Of course, it’s extremely, extremely unpalatable.” Moran put the charcoal pencil back into his notebook.

"It tastes like a bear with the lower body of a deer and gills of a fish. Most people would never eat it unless they are starving."

Lyme looked at the bear in front of him, whose lower body was that of a deer and who also had fish gills, and silently swallowed the words that were about to come out.

The claim that animal meat is edible is mainly used to encourage the rat girls.

These wonderful proteins have other uses even if they aren't eaten.

Molen shouted to the rat girls below the city wall.

"Pile up the internal organs and bury them, but leave the intestines; I have a great use for them."

The rat girls responsible for cleaning the beast's belly let out a series of screams. The chimera's internal organs were slippery, smelly, and had an exceptionally unpleasant odor.

"Squeak, how disgusting!"

On the other side of the city wall, the foreman rats had already begun repairing the breach that had been blasted open by the blind birds.

Large stones were moved from the mine's waste rock dump, and the mouse girls lined up in a long queue to pass them on.

The stonemason mouse stood on the makeshift scaffolding, stuffed stones into the gaps, and applied plaster.

The blacksmith rats pounded and hammered around the two jet trains destroyed by the blind birds and the wrecked cannons, disassembling and sorting all the salvageable parts.

Two small blacksmith mice worked together to pull a bronze cannon barrel out of the ruins.

The cannon barrel was too heavy for them to move, so they simply pushed it on the ground, one on each side, and rolled it down the slope. The two mouse girls had to jog after it.

On the other side, several blacksmith rats opened a large copper liquid storage tank, poured in water to wash it, and then tried to roll the copper tank on the ground. One of them rolled away and disappeared, crashing loudly on the slope.

The shocking bloodstains on the outer wall were being washed away by buckets of water, and the dark red water flowed down the wall, forming a turbid stream at the foot of the city wall.

On the city wall, several female rats, still wrapped in bandages, instead of obediently recuperating, were chasing and playing among the battlements, carrying wrenches and hammers.

A rat girl with her head wrapped up was chasing another rat girl with her arm wrapped up, waving a wrench and shouting, "Give me back my hammer!"

Moren reached out and caught the wounded rat holding the hammer, placing her steadily on the ground.

"From now on you are the safety officer, keep these troublemakers in check."

After being put down, the little mouse girl immediately puffed out her chest, turned around and ran towards the group of chasing mouse girls, waving her hammer and shouting earnestly:

"Stop right there! I'm the safety officer now, don't run!"

"What right do you have to tell us what to do?"

"That's what the Baron said!"

"Squeak, okay."

Molen stopped looking at the group of energetic rats around him, turned around, picked up his binoculars, and pointed the lens at the boundless darkness in the distance.

I still can't see anything clearly.

But at the furthest point of the camera, faintly visible are surging black patches, which should be much smaller swarms of beasts running in the far distance.

This small horde of beasts poses no threat to the low hills surrounded by city walls, but if it were to collide with those small villages that barely survive the month of disaster by hiding in caves, it would probably not be a pleasant story.

It's strange, normally Chimera Beasts only inhabit the depths of the Dark Zone, and large herds only appear frequently during the Calamity Moon.

Chimeras are not fungal corpses; they get hungry. If they don't hunt deep in the dark zone, what do they eat?

Thinking of this, Moren shouted to the rats busy disposing of their entrails below the city wall:

"Is there anything in the beasts' stomachs?"

"No, it's empty. Ugh, it still smells terrible."

Something is attracting these animals.

Or rather, what is the herd afraid of?

Molen opened his notebook, found a blank page, and sketched a simple map of the area near the low hill with a charcoal pencil.

This is a low hill, this is Wolf Castle, this is the ruins of the former Cat Territory.

There are also a few scattered small settlements, which I'll just mark with a cross.

Then, recalling the directions in which the herds of beasts had run as he had observed them on the city walls recently, he drew arrows on the map, one by one.

The arrows seem to point in random directions, with no common starting point or destination.

After observing carefully for a while, and then taking a look through the binoculars, Morren drew a perpendicular line along each arrow.

The charcoal pencils intersect on the paper, and all the perpendicular lines meet at the same point.

New markets.

Molen drew a large circle along the new market, which perfectly covered all the arrows.

His brow furrowed.

The herd of animals was running around the new market, drawn by something but too afraid to approach.

There is something in the camp of those fox-girl slave traders.

This feeling of not knowing the whole picture gave Morren a stomachache.

Tsk, looks like I'll have to find a way to go again soon.

Chapter 29 Preparations for the Trade Route: Land-based Shipping!

In the drawing room of the Baron's castle, a large hand-drawn map, so large it reached the floor, lay on the desk in front of Morren, next to a thick stack of blueprints.

Seven or eight foreman rats stood around the desk, passing around the blueprints one by one.

The round-eared children huddled together and whispered amongst themselves, occasionally one of them holding the blueprint upside down and having it turned over by their companion.

Lyme stood at the back of the rat pile, looking blankly at the busy rat girls around him, completely confused as to why he had been called here.

Molen sat in the chair and tapped the map with the cloth-wrapped end of the charcoal pencil.

"I called you all here to discuss the restoration of the trade route. The Cat and Mouse Caravan is no longer delivering supplies, so we need to think of another way."

For Molen, there were many valid reasons to go to the new market.

Procurement of supplies, sale of the spoils piled up in the warehouse after beating up fungal corpses and chimeras, retrieving the scattered ratgirls captured by slave traders, and learning about new information from other parts of the Dark Zone.

The low mountain is enclosed on all sides; if you stay there for too long, you won't even know what day it is.

Not to mention the recent ominous signs; crouching down to defend oneself or lying flat to take a beating is no different.

But there are even more reasons not to go to new markets.

The slave market was almost ten days away from Aishan, and the round trip would take about a month.

In fact, the straight-line distance on the map is less than 100 kilometers, but this is a dark zone, full of monsters and strange phenomena.

Swamps and wilderness are fraught with threats, and the bandits who can operate in the darkest areas are all formidable.

Those seemingly normal forests and villages are either seedbeds for tentacle monsters or traps for ant girls.

Jimmy's cat, who kept so many caravan guards and a giant unicorn, wasn't just doing that for free.

He tapped the location of the new market on the map and continued:

"Although we have grown a lot of nutritious mushrooms, there are still many things that we cannot produce enough for ourselves. Even if we don't go to the new market, we have to find a way to go to Wolfsburg, which is further away."

"To send out a caravan, we need not only the most capable rat girls, but also sufficient combat power."

Looking across the entire hill, Morren is the only one with any fighting ability.