Chapter 353 – The Magical Belt

And so, relying on wine, Zhizhi fought her way to the very end against the massive horde of Ferocious Rats—one beast against an army.

She stomped atop a mountain of rat corpses and ran to Mo Lan to claim credit. “Squeak!” The red-eyed stinky rats are all dead!

“Zhizhi, you’re amazing!” Mo Lan praised with genuine sincerity. “Great stamina, great endurance, great strength, great recovery, strong spatial defense, and your spatial teleportation speed has improved too. Our Zhizhi has practically no weaknesses now!”

Zhizhi rubbed her belly. “Squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak!” Mistress gave too much wine! As long as there’s wine to drink, I can keep fighting!

All the wine the old monkey king had gifted had been completely consumed during the battle against the rat horde.

For the second half of the fight, she had been drinking the wine Mo Lan provided.

From a single wine card, she had taken out a great deal of wine, and it still wasn’t used up.

“Zhizhi, you’ve sampled quite a few wines from the cards now. Which one do you like best?” Mo Lan asked.

Zhizhi answered without hesitation. “Squeak squeak squeak…” The one that’s like water! But the bottle doesn’t look nice—why is it a cat head and not a monkey head?

Mo Lan recalled a certain wine label she had casually drawn and pulled out a bottle of Cat Carry Wine. “This one?”

Zhizhi nodded eagerly. “Squeak!” Delicious!

Now that Mo Lan understood how important wine was to Zhizhi, she naturally wanted to make sure Zhizhi had plenty stocked up.

She went ahead and designed a new type of wine card.

Each card held one hundred barrels of wine, all large wooden casks similar to the ones the old monkey king had gifted, but with a wooden spigot added to the side for pouring.

This way, when Zhizhi was in her giant form, she could grab a big barrel and drink directly—much faster.

When she was in her small form, she could use the wooden spigot to pour wine out.

The design on the barrel featured Zhizhi’s monkey face, and inside was Cat Carry Wine.

The card was named {Zhizhi’s Favorite Wine}.

Then she handed an entire stack of cards to Zhizhi and taught her how to use the wooden spigot. “These are all filled with the wine you like. You can open the lid and drink, or pour from here. When you’ve used up half the cards, just tell me and I’ll make you more.”

Zhizhi carefully sent the cards into her companion space, keeping only one in hand, and took out a barrel.

When she saw the monkey face design on it, she was so delighted that she hugged the barrel and squealed, “Squeak squeak! Squeak squeak!” Love it! So pretty!

Mo Lan let her enjoy her excitement, not worried at all that she might attract other magical beasts.

Zhizhi was so formidable now that Mo Lan not only didn’t need to worry about her safety—Zhizhi could actually help Mo Lan fight.

Mo Lan’s safety in the outer region had gained yet another layer of protection.

Even if magical beasts were drawn over, with Zhizhi’s help, there was nothing they couldn’t handle.

In fact, it would only give her more materials for card-making.

She used Featherfall to jump down from Zhizhi’s shoulder. She had originally planned to process the pile of Ferocious Rat corpses, but then noticed that the fur on Zhizhi’s legs from the knees down was stained red with the rats’ blood and gore.

She hurriedly used a Cleaning spell to tidy her up.

Zhizhi, experiencing a bath for the first time in her life, shuddered. “Squeak?” Mistress?

By the time she reached down to touch her slightly damp fur from the water elemental force, Mo Lan had already used a drying spell to dry it completely.

“Stop standing around in the rat corpses! It’s too filthy!” Mo Lan said.

Zhizhi touched her clean, fluffy fur and happily hopped to the side, pestering Mo Lan nonstop about what that had been just now.

“That was the Cleaning spell and a drying spell!” Mo Lan said. “Once I’m done extracting the mana crystals from these Ferocious Rats, I’ll use them to make you a multi-function magical belt with cleaning, drying, and other effects.”

Zhizhi didn’t need particularly powerful magical items for amplification.

These Ferocious Rats were only Beginner rank, but there were many of them, and since they were mana crystals from the same type of magical beast, they could be combined to inscribe many runes—perfect for making a multi-function magical belt.

The mana crystal from the Intermediate Ferocious Rat could be processed and used to inscribe an auto-sizing rune combination with a self-adjusting stretch effect. That way, the belt would work whether Zhizhi grew large or small.

This was also a perfect opportunity for Mo Lan to practice her Alchemy Magic—she hadn’t used Alchemy Magic to process mana crystals before!

These Ferocious Rat mana crystals were ideal for practice. Even if she failed, it wouldn’t matter—she had better magical gemstones that could serve as replacements.

“Squeak?” What’s a belt?

“It’s something you wear around your waist that can help you just like the magic I used earlier. You’ll understand once I make it for you.”

The more Mo Lan thought about it, the more she liked this idea.

Zhizhi’s combat ability was outstanding, and while Zhizhi walked, Mo Lan could work on other things.

Back in fourth year, limited by magical materials, her Alchemy Magic progress had fallen behind for quite some time. Now was the perfect chance to catch up.

She would start with Zhizhi’s multi-function belt!

From the Ferocious Rat corpses, Mo Lan selected the one with the most intact body and fed it to the Book of Cards as magical material.

For the rest, she brought out the Butchering Tool Card and let the butchering tools get to work extracting the mana crystals.

Zhizhi watched the butchering tools flying about in every direction and jumped in alarm, nearly reaching out to grab them by reflex.

“Don’t worry! These are my magical helpers!” Mo Lan said.

Only then did Zhizhi restrain her twitching hands, gradually relaxing. She even shrank down temporarily and followed behind Mo Lan.

Mo Lan extracted all the mana crystals from the Ferocious Rat corpses, cleaned and stored them properly, and didn’t forget to toss the carcasses into the {Trash Can Card}.

When everything was done and she turned around to find Zhizhi, she saw a certain little silver monkey holding a dry twig she had picked up from who-knows-where, waving it behind Mo Lan and going “Pew~ pew~ pew~”

It looked like she was imitating Mo Lan casting spells.

Mo Lan had no idea how Zhizhi, who could only say “squeak,” had somehow taught herself to make “pew” sounds.

And besides, the magic Mo Lan had just cast didn’t even make any sound!

When Mo Lan finished casting and lowered her hand, Zhizhi’s gaze followed downward.

Her big, round eyes fixed on Mo Lan’s wand, never looking away for even a moment, and the twig in her hand lowered in imitation.

“Zhizhi? What are you doing?” Mo Lan asked, feigning ignorance.

Zhizhi pointed at Mo Lan’s wand, then waved her own twig. “Pew~ pew~” Magic~ Amazing~

Mo Lan pressed her hand to her forehead in exasperation. “Magic is driven by the mana inside my body. The wand is just a guiding tool. That little stick of yours can’t produce magic!”

“Squeak?” Can’t produce magic?

Zhizhi looked at her “wand,” then tossed it away in disdain.

Mo Lan: “…”

Who knew Zhizhi was such a pragmatist!

Zhizhi shifted back to her giant form and crouched down, letting Mo Lan climb up. “Squeak!” Let’s go fight!

Mo Lan walked onto her hand and was placed in the familiar spot at the base of Zhizhi’s neck, settling in securely.

“Squeak?” Mistress, which way?

“This time, you pick the direction yourself, Zhizhi. Just head roughly south,” Mo Lan said. “I need to start working on the magical belt, so I won’t be able to constantly scout the surroundings for you. Be careful, Zhizhi.”

“Squeak!”