Let go of that monster girl!

As the leader of more than two thousand underground rats, Molen knew all too well the ins and outs of this place.

"The new market has no pits or lakes, and we haven't seen many caravans transporting building materials along the way."

"Where did the building materials for the new market come from?"

"The only answer is that someone is digging something underground, and the new market was built with the excavated soil and rocks."

He mentally pieced together all the clues like a jigsaw puzzle.

Cheshire, New Market, Fox, White Dragon Girl, Chimera Beast, and those rat girls in the slave market that sell for 6 silver coins.

"Something so enormous that it required a special market to cover it up, something so enormous that it deserved to be guarded by a White Dragon Girl."

"Such a huge project, the Kingdom, the Fox, and that sect are all involved."

Nothing can better conceal an underground structure being excavated than a building under construction on the ground.

There is nothing more suitable to serve as labor for secret projects than a group of slaves.

Those rat girls, cheap consumables who didn't even deserve to have slave brands, would never be asked about their whereabouts once they entered the underground.

It seems that these foxes' ambitions may go far beyond simply controlling the market.

"Master, what should we do?" Lem put down his food and asked softly.

Even if you identify the problem, it doesn't mean you have a solution.

Right now, Moren only has a slime girl and four or five rat girls dragging anchors on the street. Going head-on into a fight with all the foxes in the new market would be suicide.

Why don't you go back first and come back later?

No.

How could Morren possibly sleep if he went straight back like this?

Besides, in the end, all of this was just Moran's suspicion from the very beginning.

It's one thing if they just tease the foxes a bit while selling goods with a few flying mice, but those black foxes don't care about the yellow and brown foxes' lives at all.

But bringing back a large number of rat girls to fight head-on is a different story.

Molen couldn't possibly get the rat girls to fight on the spot with a reason like, "Ah, I suspect those foxes built a terrifying thing underground."

What if the fox girl really just planned to secretly dig a hole underground to boil water and pretend it was a hot spring? Wouldn't that be incredibly embarrassing?

We need to determine exactly what those foxes are doing first.

First, locate the entrance to the underground project, if it exists.

After thinking for a while, a smile suddenly appeared on Morren's face.

“We’ll go back tomorrow, but before that, let’s go to the slave market and find that furious brown fox.”

Chapter 38 I'm Not Good at Intellectual Battles

Scattered across the open ground outside the new market are a dozen or so caravan camps of varying sizes.

The enormous airship was anchored to the ground by rock spikes, and the flying rats, holding free rice balls made by Morren from rice and pickled plums, surrounded the rusty anchor.

Lyme squatted quietly to one side.

Moren picked up the oil paper bag full of rat girl pies and threw it at the snake girl boss in the neighboring camp who was counting copper ingots.

"Then, if you see Jimmy again, tell her to wait for you at Wolfsburg, not at Low Hill."

The snake-woman boss deftly caught the flying paper bag with her tail and gave Moren a flirtatious wink.

Ignoring the snake girl, Moren turned around and sat back down on the rock, placing the fluorite lantern at his feet.

The navigation mouse lay on its side on the ground, its round ears pressed against the rocky surface, and mumbled something with half a rice ball stuffed in its mouth:

“Baron, chew it, it really does make a knocking sound.”

The mouse girls' big round ears weren't grown for the sake of being cute.

They have poor eyesight, but their round ears can detect faint vibrations transmitted through tens of meters of rock layers, and they can even see the outlines of objects blindly in the dark.

Although the interference and noise are much greater on the ground, this talent still works.

Molen took a bite of his rice ball and thought for a moment.

"We can't be completely sure either. There are beasts and people coming and going on the ground, it's too noisy, and it's easy to misunderstand."

"Should we dig a hole down?" a flying mouse asked, tilting its head as it held up a rice ball.

"How long will it take to dig, you idiot!" Another flying mouse grabbed her tail.

"How about we look for the entrance?"

"If we go in through the main gate, we'll definitely get caught by the fox!"

Molen handed the last rice ball in his hand to Lem and asked.

"Lyme, do you know what the structure of an underground facility is?"

Lem held the rice ball and thought for a few seconds.

"Ventilation shaft?"

Lyme remembered that before going to the Mushroom Forest, on the way to find the foreman rat with his master, there was a vertical pipe leading to the surface every so often in the rat girl's residential area.

“Yes.” Morren nodded.

The navigation mouse sat up, shook its head to remove the dirt from its ears, and continued chewing its rice ball.

"But how do we find it? Those foxes certainly won't leave the ventilation shafts exposed. If we keep knocking and banging on things, it'll easily arouse their suspicion."

Molen had, of course, taken this into consideration as well.

A disguised ventilation shaft could be a chimney or a louvered window in a building; he doesn't have time to turn the entire new market upside down.

"Instead of searching blindly on our own, let the fox lead us."

"Take us to find it?" The rat girls all looked over, their round ears perking up.

Molen took a bite of the rice ball, chewed it a couple of times, and felt that his stomach was already full, so he handed it to Lem.

"Rat Girl slaves are skilled at digging and cheap; they can be restocked after use."

“We only need to see where the rat slaves that no one buys in the slave market will be taken; that’s the entrance.”

"There will most likely be ventilation shafts around the entrance."

“Uh, Your Excellency, what if their excavators weren’t rat slaves from the market, or there weren’t ventilation shafts around the entrance, or…”

Before the navigator mouse could finish speaking, it received a flick on the forehead.

"Well, we haven't suffered any losses. We can just think of another way."

Compared to complex and decisive plans, Moran clearly prefers a steady and methodical approach; ideas that allow for a safe retreat at any time are the best.

Ideally, it should be as simple and straightforward as firing cannons and blasting her mother.

When the enemy is strong, firepower can cover the area; when they are weak, tactical maneuvers can be used to penetrate.

Although we are currently in the poor category.

"Once we find the ventilation shaft, let Lyme crawl in along the ventilation duct. See as much as you can, safety first."

Upon hearing that he was the main player, Lem almost dropped the rice ball in his hand in fright.

"Your Excellency, I have another question." The flying mouse held up its tiny hand, covered in rice grains. "Are we just going to watch those mouse girls get taken underground without trying to save them?"

Molen patted the rice grains off his knees and calmly replied:

"Don't worry, I have a way to do that, and it's a very safe way."

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

The sulfur has been kept in a cage for two months and one day.

For the first two months, it was Guan Longniang's big cage.

For the past two days, I've kept the mouse in its small cage, feeding it a gray paste every day, and occasionally I can find an insect egg.

Every now and then, Sulfur would notice that some of the mouse girls' cages were empty.

They were not bought, nor did they ever return.

But the sulfur had already gotten used to it.

After all, they were just like that in the Rune Workshop, packed tightly together, like a cage of rats.

There was once a mouse girl who was sent to the orphanage with her. They played together, rejoiced together over the gold-embossed letter, and licked their wounds together at night.

Until the day the master read out their names...

Sulfur licked its sharp teeth.

She turned her head to look at the center of the cage area, where a nobleman named Moren was talking to the brown-furred fox girl.

She wasn't sure if it was just her imagination, but it seemed like he had been silently observing from behind a window across the street for most of the day, as if waiting for some opportunity.

Molen initially spoke seriously with the fox about business, occasionally pointing to the cage area on this side.

Then suddenly he pulled out a paper flower from his pocket, looking charming, as if he was apologizing to the fox-woman merchant for what happened a few days ago.

I couldn't quite hear what they said.

After a few words, the fox-woman merchant, blushing with embarrassment, slapped a stack of contracts into his arms, and the two walked hand in hand toward the pleasure quarters.

A fox-girl guard in the distance turned around and shouted:

"The Baron is treating us to fried tofu! Let's go!"

The fox-girl guard standing nearby hesitated for a moment, then glanced at the cage area.

"What about these stinky rats?"

"Never mind that! Baron, buy them all!"

"Wait for me!"

The fox-girl guard dropped the spear in her hand, ran a few steps, then turned back, picked it up, leaned it against the wall, and finally chased after it in a flash.

The cage area was quiet for a moment.

Then a faint sound came from one of the cages.

"She bought them all? She said she bought them all?"

"Really? Did that human really buy us all?"

"Where can they go after they're bought? Will they go underground too...?"

"Mommy, Mommy, we won't die, right?"

"Shh, don't cry, don't cry."

The wounded rat girls whispered amongst themselves, but Sulfur did not join their discussion.

Her attention was drawn to the area outside the cage enclosure.

With the guards absent, several female mice dressed as short hills sneaked furtively to the edge of the enclosure.

One of them climbed to the top of the low wall, stretched its neck and looked around, then turned back and gave a thumbs-up to the people below.

"Have those yellow foxes come over?"

"Almost there, almost there, just a little longer!"

Sulfur leaned against the cage bars, watching the jubilant rat slaves around him.

This guy named Morren is really interesting.

Chapter 39 Preparing to Escape

A dozen or so rat-girl slaves lined up in a rather haphazard row, being escorted by a yellow-haired fox girl through the main commercial street of the new market.

The vendors on both sides of the street were still calling out their wares as usual. This scene was commonplace in the new market, and no one would give it a second glance.

The mouse girls walked along the road with their heads down, and a few of them were talking quietly in the middle of the group.

"I heard that Baron Morren is a high-ranking nobleman."