Let go of that monster girl!

"What are you looking at? Let's run away quickly!"

On the airship.

Molen held up an unthrown spore jar and examined it carefully in his hand.

The can is a cylinder made of rolled sheet metal, with the inside divided into two chambers by a layer of paper.

One container held dried spore powder, and the other held a small amount of gunpowder for detonation.

As it approached the ground, the gunpowder exploded through the thin walls, spraying spores into the air.

The structure is actually very simple. Molen saw the structural diagram of this thing in a World War II documentary and never thought that one day he would make one himself.

With just a few modifications, this thing could be turned into a lightweight mortar shell.

That's absolutely brilliant.

More reasons have emerged for Morren to go to hell.

The airship slowly hovered in the air, and Morren walked to the side of the ship and looked down.

Along both sides of the mining track, white mycelium is spreading from the dug fungal pits and covering the gravel ground.

In some of the pits, tiny buds of fungi have already sprouted, with tender white stalks about the thickness of a thumb topped with small round caps.

A few small, glowing mushrooms were scattered around, shimmering with a faint fluorescent green light in the darkness.

Unlike the colorful patterns of fungal forests.

This mushroom belt, which stretches northward along the mining track, has a rather limited variety of mushroom species.

There are only five or six types of bacteria that are relatively safe for the average subhuman. They are mainly white and light brown in color and are arranged in an unnaturally neat manner.

By simply spreading parasites targeting Ant Girls and Chimera Beasts, a stable wall that requires minimal maintenance can be formed.

Isolating the required bacterial strain is a challenging task.

There are many fungi that can parasitize corpses, but very few fungi that can parasitize living organisms.

Although people often refer to the powdery substance that causes mushrooms to grow on the face as "parasitic spores".

However, there are actually hundreds of types of parasitic spores.

The parasitic methods, parasitic targets, and infectious abilities of *Bacillus subtilis*, *Beauveria bassiana*, and *Entomopathogenica* are completely different.

Trying to distinguish them from a mixture of spores is simply a pipe dream.

These carnivorous bacteria generally do not grow on the meat jelly cooked by the rat girls.

However...

It doesn't necessarily have to be cultured on meat jelly.

These wonderful flesh-eating bacteria grow extremely fast; all that's needed is to continuously sift them from the corpses of the ant women.

Molen's gaze fell downwards, where the ant girls who had been hit by the spore jars were in various states.

Some of them have already taken root and grown into clusters of grayish-white mushrooms.

Some were still convulsing on the ground, their limbs spasming, as if they were struggling to stand up.

Moren turned his head and waved to the rat girls waiting for instructions on the deck.

"Prioritize recycling the slowest-growing mushrooms from the fungal carcasses."

The rats on the deck nodded in unison, gripped their spears, and stood at attention.

"Yes, Your Excellency!"

What Morren needs is not the poison gas to kill the Ant Girl quickly.

What Morren wanted was a plague, a plague that would wipe out the ant girls and permanently pollute vast swathes of land, making it impossible for the ant eggs to hatch!

Ok.

"Plague" sounds too awful.

Let's call it "biological control".

Chapter 96 Rat Girl Economics

Moren noticed that many of the mouse girls had been looking dejected since the recapture of Flower Town.

They would either squat against a wall, stuffing sugar cubes into their mouths, or sit idly at the entrance of the mine.

Weird.

Molen thought for a long time but couldn't figure out what bad things had happened recently.

If I had to say something, it would be that the number of mushrooms picked in Flower Town was so huge that even the nutrient paste was glowing green.

But this nutritious porridge isn't this bad on the first day.

The flavor of fluorescent mushrooms is slightly better than that of nutritious mushrooms.

At the entrance of the mine, a mine rat squatted on the ground, its two little hands holding a handful of sugar cubes and stuffing them into its mouth.

Its cheeks were bulging out like a hamster's, and its mouth was almost unable to close, yet it was still desperately squeezing a piece of food into it.

She looked up and saw Morren standing not far away, staring at her.

The little girl didn't know whether to cover her mouth with her hands or to bow.

My mouth was stuffed with too many candies, so I couldn't chew them or spit them out.

Her eyes darted around, and her little face turned bright red.

Molen handed her the water bottle next to her, and the mine rat took it, tilted its head back, and gulped down a large mouthful of water, swallowing hard twice.

But there were just too many candies in his mouth, and he couldn't swallow them all. In the end, he had to bend over and spit them all into his hand.

Molen stroked his chin, squatted down, and looked at the disheveled rat girl opposite him.

"How could you eat so much sugar at once?"

The mouse girl wiped her mouth and said, a little aggrieved:

"Since the Baron took back Flower Town, the production of fungi wood has increased dozens of times, and we can't even use it all now."

"and then."

"With the increase in mushroom production, the sugar factory's output has also increased several times over, so the sugar we get as work rewards has also increased several times over recently."

"And then what? Isn't more sugar better?"

Although the sugar cube reward has been doubled, each mouse girl can only get four or five cubes a day at most, which is definitely not enough to overeat.

Molen still couldn't see any connection between the rats' unhappiness and something else.

The miner rat pouted, and its round ears drooped down.

"That's not good at all."

She reached out to unbutton her clothes, and just as Moron thought she was about to see two buttons that were inappropriate for children.

He saw a total of one hundred buttons.

It's all copper.

A hundred small brass buttons were sewn on the neckline all the way down to the waist.

The front of the shirt was pulled down so low that it made a rustling sound when I walked.

Molen reached out and touched one of the buttons.

It features the image of Queen Victoria, the Mouse Girl, printed on it.

They were all copper coins from the Rat Girl Kingdom, each with four holes drilled in it. They were then sewn onto the shirt to become buttons.

hiss……

Molen Picasso pondered.

I think I understand the reasoning behind it.

The economic system of Dwarf Mountain is very closed. Molen gives each mouse girl three copper coins as pocket money every week and the foreman mouse one silver coin as team funds.

But in reality, this money can't be spent at all.

After all, in the low mountains, food, clothing, housing and transportation are all public expenses.

Mouse mice don't have to repay forty years of student loans to go to school, mining mice don't have to pay cave property taxes every year for a cave, and militia mice don't have to pay for their own weapons.

You can eat as much of the nutritious porridge as you want, as long as you can stomach it.

The mice always shared the delicious sweet wine when the barrels were opened.

Dormitory accommodations were assigned, but winter furs were provided on-site.

It used to be a place where you could barely afford to spend money.

The cat-and-mouse caravan used to carry dozens of goods belonging to giant rats, but they no longer come to Dwarf Mountain.

The occasional wandering merchant who comes now only has a cart full of goods, and the types are limited. The rats will at most buy a few rolls of colored thread and that's it.

Over time, copper coins lost their function as a general equivalent in Aishan.

Even if you melt it down, it's not as good as the copper produced in Aishan.

It can be used to make buttons because it is round by nature.

What can be supplied reliably?

However, the supply is not large.

It is convenient to store and convenient to measure.

Most importantly, no mouse girl would refuse to have it, right?

Sugar cubes.

Wow.

A sugar-based economy is still viable.

Molen has certainly broadened his horizons.

The miner rat held up its little finger and gestured to Morren as if calculating the accounts:

"My lord, back when we were making buttons, a sugar cube could be exchanged for nine copper coins from the rats."

"Then we made buttons out of the copper coins, and five buttons could be exchanged for a sugar cube."

"But now there's more sugar. Five buttons can be exchanged for three sugar cubes, and these buttons can be exchanged for sixty sugar cubes."

She looked down at the dense array of brass buttons on her shirt, then at the sugar cube in her hand, her round eyes filled with confusion.

"We can't eat that much, and we've lost all motivation to make buttons."

"And other mice that make things don't accept sugar cubes anymore. There was a mouse girl who was willing to accept ten sugar cubes to help her make a cup. We had agreed on it, but now it's all fallen through."

Wow.

There's also the issue of excessive money printing, leading to hyperinflation.

What an adorable problem.

The mouse girl never even considered using the candy she couldn't finish to hire other mice, so she could live a life where she didn't have to make buttons and could just eat candy.

They also collect the sugar that other mice can't finish eating, give "sugar interest" to depositors, and then collect "sugar loans" from the mice that borrowed sugar to eat.

And Lord Morren, as the tangible force.

A "sugar tax" can be levied on services that were previously free, and public facilities can be opened by charging only "sugar coins".

Then the recycled sugar is pressed into "Baron Morren's Large Sugar Bricks" and stored to adjust the sugar market flow rate.

You can also call on the mouse girls to raise funds for the "brown sugar block project," award a medal to the mouse that donates the most sugar, and then secretly sell the donated sugar.

In the future, there might even be a sugar ration market and Sugar Street rats.

The scene was too sweet for Morren to even imagine.

Molen patted the miner's helmet.

"Don't worry, this problem is expected to be resolved before the shift change."