"Meow-ow?" "Squeak!"
One mouse girl after another held up cat lamps two-thirds or half their own size to inspect them, then instinctively placed them atop their heads to use as headlamps.
The giant cat lamps, meanwhile, observed the high-ranking rats, their gazes seeming to linger on the steel plates worn by these rodents.
Jiang Han heard Cat Doyastin mutter softly:
"Meow-ow, so skinny."
The meeting was still held in the subway—a large storage room cleared out by the rats, its walls papered, lanterns lit, and food laid out. It had probably originally been where the Crowfolk stored power supplies, but the rats had taken it over as a place to stock barrels of cheese beer.
Cheese beer, cheese-topped jerky, baked oysters, and crusty bread with minced spinach and cream cheese, baked over high heat, alongside creamy mushroom soup.
It was not exactly exquisite, but it was bursting with flavor, and its texture carried the feeling of the finest cuisine in the Dead Magic Zone.
The rats ate fairly well.
Xu Fangying was, after all, a witch. Even though she had forgotten most of her knowledge, what remained was still learning that countless humans could spend their entire lives without ever obtaining.
From childhood to adulthood, over eighteen years, witches learned nearly every kind of knowledge in the world:
botany.
Eugenics and hybridization.
Cooking and brewing.
Zoology and botany.
Manufacturing—key technological manufacturing from humanity's three thousand years of development.
...It could almost be said that during the eighteen years leading up to applying for A2, the education witches received was the most comprehensive and standardized [Transmigrator Education]. They even studied literary copying, enough at least not to commit such idiotic acts as [using a rebel poem to proclaim one's own ambitions].
Naturally, she was also accomplished in architecture, management, and greenhouse