Let go of that monster girl!

This tiny one alone is enough to hire someone to kill Jimmy.

Another loud purr came from the bed next to mine. A cat rolled over and put its paw on its companion's face. After being pushed away, it mumbled something.

Jimmy absentmindedly held the edge of the mithril coin between his middle and index fingers, letting it twirl between his fingertips.

Front, back, front, back.

Although the 1,500 gold coins given to the Baron were still safely hidden in the cargo box, only 10% of them were commission from the Cat and Mouse Caravan.

Half of these 150 gold coins had to be deducted for supply costs, and then the compensation for the injured comrades had to be waived before they could be divided among more than 100 cats and mice.

Jimmy is a very generous boss; he only gets a few gold coins.

That little white dog... Ah meow, Mother Wolf.

They gave her a mithril coin before they had even finished negotiating anything.

The mithril coin tumbled awkwardly between Jimmy's fingers, and before he could catch it, it fell with a thud and hit her right in the face.

"Meow..."

Jimmy rubbed his nose, which had been hit and turned red, and clenched the mithril coin back into his palm.

She rolled over again, lying face down on the bed with her chin resting on the edge of the pillow.

The wolf mother gave a lot, but she wanted to help build caravans for Wolf Castle herself.

But the cat has already agreed to help the Baron establish a caravan.

But if the Baron has an airship, does he still need a cat?

So annoying, meow...

Jimmy buried his face and the mithril coin in the pillow and let out a muffled sigh.

After a while, he muttered to himself in a low voice:

"Reputation is a cat's greatest asset, meow..."

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

Low mountain.

The mouse girls trembled, and Lyme, dressed like a canned food, trembled.

The thick asbestos fireproof suit revealed only Lyme's eyes as he gripped the end of the chain through his gloves.

The spiderweb-like electrical wires were even thicker, one end connected to the already glowing red-hot furnace, and the other end extending deeper underground to the newly built water turbines.

This scene seems familiar, but the power output is completely different from that of the electric arc furnace experiment.

Molen wore a bird-beak mask with blackened lenses, and the metal filter canister on the side of the mask clanged with each breath.

The onlookers, all the rat girls, obediently put on the thin copper goggles they had used before.

Sulfur stood at the front of the line, looking around in confusion. Morren then put the blacked-out glasses he had been wearing on her face.

Obtaining alum from alum stone takes a long time, but the mouse girls of Dessert Hill have already done it for Morren.

The decomposition of alum into aluminum oxide is relatively simple.

Add alum to hot water, and then add caustic soda, a byproduct of the previous electrolysis of chlorine.

Alum dissolves easily, but aluminum hydroxide is difficult to dissolve and will precipitate out.

After further calcination to remove moisture, pure alumina powder can be obtained.

But aluminum oxide is precisely the reason why aluminum is resistant to corrosion and rust; it is extremely stable.

Even if lime were to forcibly devour and decompose it, the electrolytic acid solution would only produce hydrogen gas and not aluminum.

Somewhat strangely, magnesium and other metals, which are more reactive than aluminum, are actually easier to refine because their compounds are less stable.

Therefore, alchemists who are not so skilled in magic sometimes try their best to extract magnesium and sodium, which are as valuable as gold, and then exchange them for aluminum, which is priced far higher than gold.

But what Molen wants is to directly electrolyze aluminum, which requires using:

Molten salt electrolysis!

The temperature inside the furnace had reached its limit.

The cryolite particles melted completely at the bottom of the furnace, forming a pool of bright orange-yellow molten liquid with a rich and clear color.

Its surface is slightly fluid, like glass, radiating intense heat and light.

Molen made a gesture toward Lyme.

Lyme mustered his courage and pulled the chain.

The overhead hopper creaked and turned, pouring a small amount of alumina powder into the furnace.

In an instant, a burst of brilliant white smoke rose from the furnace opening and shot out!

Sparks flew everywhere, and waves of heat rolled in, illuminating the surroundings.

White smoke billowed and spread, carrying a pungent odor that billowed in all directions.

The rat girls all shrank their necks, and several of them were so frightened that they hid behind Morren.

Even through the bird-beak mask, Moren could tell from the wrinkled little faces of the rat girls around him how foul the air smelled.

It not only smells bad, but it's also highly poisonous.

Cryolite itself is a fluoride. Although theoretically it only acts as a solvent in the reaction and is not consumed, the furnace is currently gathering all the electricity of the entire hill.

Even the graphite electrodes hummed and disintegrated under such terrifying high pressure, merging into the wisps of white gas billowing in the molten lava.

The heatwave was intense, the toxic fumes were thick, and the electric currents roared, making it feel like a living hell.

The path of industry is fraught with danger: one step to the left is an explosion, and one step to the right is a deadly poison.

Thanks again to the Goddess of Creation, the rat girls are immune to the poison gas.

"Squeak! Won't it explode?!"

The mice huddled together.

Fortunately, perhaps the equipment was excellent, or perhaps they were just lucky.

The militia rats who had been holding sand buckets all along were ultimately not needed, and the furnace spectacularly swallowed the last bit of material.

The liquid outlet is buried beneath the molten red surface of the liquid, and the silvery-white liquid, as smooth as a mirror, slowly flows into the mold along an invisible, sealed path.

Once again, cool and demold.

Molen, still wearing the bird-beak mask, reached out his slightly trembling hands and accepted the still-warm, silvery-white metal ingot.

It's not heavy.

Light and airy.

A full kilogram of mithril.

Its value is equivalent to six hundred gold coins.

Chapter 59 Unexpected Visitor and Final Preparations Before the Disaster Month

The snowflakes fell thickly, and the fine white snow covered the stone steps and rooftops of the low hill.

The mouse girls lined up one after another, carrying things out of the surface buildings, their arms full of pots, pans, and various odds and ends, a thin layer of snow on their round ears.

The foreman rats divided into several teams, stood at the door, holding charcoal pencils and wooden boards in their hands, and counted and recorded the items that were moved out one by one.

"They're easy to break if left on the ground, so we need to register them all. Otherwise, we won't be able to put them back in their original places when the month of disaster ends."

"Registered, registered, squeak."

The ground was slippery, as the rat mother had already scattered salt, stone chips, and burnt ash on the road.

But the icy stone path still caused several mouse girls to fall to the ground and slide down the slope while holding their belongings.

After making so many sleds, one clever mouse simply nailed together a makeshift ice sled using planks and rope she could find.

By piling the supplies on top and pulling on the rope, a lot of effort was saved.

Soon, some mouse girls sat on ice sleds, cheering as they slid down the mountain road, tumbling down into the snow ditch by the roadside, carrying their goods.

"Squeak! Help!"

A pair of tiny feet struggled desperately in the snowdrift.

On the hilltop, the Rat Girl moving team moved with astonishing efficiency, emptying the entire dilapidated Baron's castle.

The three mouse girls were stacked together. The one on top stood on tiptoe to reach the huge oil painting hanging on the wall, and fell to the ground along with the painting, smashing into a pile.

Fortunately, the carpet was thick, so I didn't get hurt.

"Take the carpet too!"

The mouse girls grabbed the edges of the thick carpet and rolled it up forcefully. The mice that were lying on it and hadn't gotten up were directly rolled in, with only the tip of their tails showing.

All their belongings were moved underground along the newly dug passage.

The new baron's mansion is a four-story rock chamber that the miners have worked hard to carve out, and each floor is spacious enough.

It's a near-perfect replica of the Baron's Castle when it was still in good condition.

The top floor houses the office area and reception room.

The second floor contains bedrooms and living areas.

The third floor contains the kitchen and storage room.

The lowest level houses workshops and warehouses, with ventilation shafts connecting to an exit on the other side of the mountain.

The mouse girls carved square fake window frames into the rock wall. Lyme squatted on the ground mixing paint, and then he and a few other mice lay inside the window frames and used brushes to paint blue sky and white clouds.

Lyme drew gray clouds, the mice drew a sun with four legs, and one mouse drew a giant cheese in the window frame next to it.

They had never seen the real sun.

The miner rat turned on the newly installed faucet in the bathroom, and the spring water in the tank gushed out, so cold that she pulled her hand back and squeaked.

Molen lay on the large bed in his new bedroom, stretching out his limbs and staring at the solid rock ceiling above him.

A strong sense of security.

During the Calamity Month, the Baron's Castle, built on the mountaintop, was a sitting duck; the collapsed half was caused by a winged chimera beast crashing into it.

This deep underground shelter is impenetrable to all monsters, and with plenty of food and drink, one can sleep comfortably for a whole month.

Most monsters from the Calamity Month pose no threat to the underground. For small settlements that are unable to organize a defense or afford to seek shelter, hiding underground is the best way to survive the Calamity Month.

Even though this meant letting everything on the ground be destroyed, Moren was still reluctant to do so.

We still need to defend against what needs to be defended.

Oh dear, only three days left. After I stretch, I need to go to the city wall to check on the war preparedness.

three.

two.

One.

Uh.

Comfortable.

Molen slowly opened his eyes, only to see the rat girl, Tin Foil, burst open the bedroom door like a whirlwind.

"My Lord Baron."

The foil had clearly run all the way here; it was out of breath, and its round ears were twitching incessantly.

"A strange thing has come outside the city walls."

Ok?

Three meals later, Morren stood on the city wall with his binoculars, feeling that the world had gone mad.

He always thought he knew a lot about beast girls and monster girls.

"What is this thing?"

A tall figure, nearly three meters tall, stood on the snow outside the city wall.