"Where do you start?"

In the slightly cramped back kitchen, Hercule sat by the cupboard, more reserved than before, after all, now tied to a chair with rope, and Lorenzo opposite him, holding the chinchilla named Poirot, and not far from his hand, several spoons and forks.

"It's all right, I've got time to hear you, Rat King, Hercule...... Forget it, whatever you are. ”

By now, it was clear that nothing would work, and Hercule would not have any chance to play tricks in front of Lorenzo.

The big mouse in his arms lay down comfortably, looking at Hercule who didn't know where to start, Lorenzo asked with some curiosity.

"Why don't you ask why you made it the Rat King?"

Lorenzo said while rubbing the big mouse in his arms, its fur is so soft that it looks like a hairball, according to Lorenzo's known history, this little thing because of its fur, once hunted by people to the frequency of extinction, in England, it is a rare thing, remember that it has some alternative nicknames, remember that it is called Totoro or something.

"Because this big rat saved my life, to be precise, Poirot saved my life. ”

Hercule followed Lorenzo's questioning and slowly recounted his past.

"I'm not from Invig, I'm from Leish, I was a police officer for a while, and then I was shipwrecked and ended up in Invig. ”

"Shipwrecked?"

"Yes, I met those damned Vikings, I took advantage of the chaos and escaped in a small boat, and they didn't chase them, after all, there is no food, no fresh water, and I am dead in this situation. ”

Hercule said and looked at Poirot.

"But they didn't expect that there was not only me on the boat, but also a chinchilla, which was used as a pet in the homes of some rich people, and because it was scarce and expensive, some merchants on board brought several of them to be sold to Invig, probably taking advantage of the chaos when the cage was opened, and it escaped with me into the boat. ”

"You...... Ate it?"

Lorenzo thought about it, maybe he was exposed to some evil and bloody things every day, and the follow-up he thought of was also bloody.

"How is it possible, this little thing is so cute, you are willing to eat it, and it only has a few pieces of meat on it...... The hardest thing was the mind, and in that desperate situation, I spoke to Poirot all day," Hercule raised an eyebrow, "The human will is fragile, and at first I was just talking to myself, but one day Poirot replied. ”

Lorenzo was stunned when he heard this.

"Wait! The rat spoke?"

"That's right! It spoke, and talked to me. ”

To convince Lorenzo, Hercule spoke faster.

"Poirot and I talked...... It was too boring in a desperate situation, so I looked back on my life, and from that time on, I had a wonderful feeling that I could remember everything in my life, and that the vague stories were not clear before I died. ”

Hercule laughed like a psychopath, "Poirot said that he remembered that he had three brothers, and that only one of his unlucky men had been caught by humans, and that the rest of his countrymen were still living happily in the woodlands. ”

"You've got a mental problem. Lorenzo said.

"yes, how can a mouse speak?"

Hercule nodded, looking a little lonely.

"Just when I was dying, I was rescued by another cargo ship, and at that time I said that I was going to take Poirot with me, after all, it was a fateful friendship, but when I looked at Poirot, I realized that the chinchilla had been dead for I don't know how long, and the body was decomposing. ”

Hercule said, "Well, this little thing is so precious that the sun's exposure can easily kill it." ”

"What's next?"

"Then I was sent to Invig by a cargo ship, which was their destination, I had no money, no identification, and I was in a terrible state of mind, and I could hallucinate a big mouse squeaking in my ear all day long, and I ended up in a daze. ”

"So he became the Rat King?"

Lorenzo felt that Hercule's experience, from the perspective of ordinary people, was quite legendary.

"How is that possible, you should know how hard it is for a stranger to mix in Downtown, not to mention that I seem to be mentally ill. ”

"Are you cured?"

"If it weren't good, I wouldn't be here. ”

Hercule looked around, his gaze as if through the walls he was looking at the lower city where he was hiding.

"I became a vagabond, living in a mess, but life was fair, at least for me, I suffered, and I gained strength. I can remember the people and things around me, even the casual conversations they make. ”

He stared at Lorenzo and told little by little how he became the Rat King, or the man behind the Rat King.

"I didn't know how to use this power at first, after all, I was just a person with a good memory, but by coincidence, I used the small talk I heard to integrate the prototype of a story, and even said to see where it went......"

The strange part came, and Lorenzo listened intently, which was his greatest curiosity about Hercule, and in a way, he had reached a kind of limited "omniscience" with the power of mortals.

"I had the mentality of giving it a try, I hid in the shadows and became the biggest winner behind the scenes, and those thugs never imagined that I would interfere with all this. ”

Hercule confessed.

"That was the beginning of my turning point, and I knew how to use this power, and then the Bad Rat appeared. ”

"I have accumulated a huge fortune in a short period of time, and no one knows about it, I am like a shadow, and I thought about leaving here, but soon something changed my mind, and it was the reason why I was looking for 'you'. ”

This is something that Lorenzo has not been able to figure out, and it can be seen that Hercule does not have any ill will towards him, but he has another strange feeling, which is very familiar, Lorenzo had felt it in Merlin, and the mysterious alchemist had asked Lorenzo if he would be interested in donating his body after his death.

Hercule was curious, he was a seeker of knowledge, and he craved the mystical knowledge.

"The Rat King is just a smoke bomb, a gimmick, a chinchilla named Poirot. ”

"You should know the chaos and danger in the lower city, the more the bad rats develop, the more dangerous I am, instead of worrying, it is better to transfer the contradictions. ”

Lorenzo listened to him and lifted Poirot up, "So this Poirot became the Rat King?"

Hercule nodded, smiling.

"Poirot is my lucky mouse, although it died in a shipwreck, but if it weren't for the rat that chattered with me, I would have gone more insane, so after I had accumulated enough capital, I bought it from a merchant, the second generation Poirot. ”

"The mysterious Rat King is in charge of all the bad rats, of course I am the one who actually operates them, but when someone has bad intentions, they will only look for the Rat King, not a small tipster. ”

Hercule continued, "Then it's time to get down to business, right?"

Lorenzo responded.

"You're a dealer of information, you should know the value of information, and now that you've told me these secret and deadly stories, what do you want to get in exchange for it?"

Hercule smiled even more, "You're smart, Mr. Holmes. ”

"It's another story, when I had wealth and wanted to go back to Leish with it, but ...... People are always greedy, right? ”

"Do you crave more riches?"

Hercule shook his head, too excited, his face flushing.

"You are a man like me, Mr. Holmes, and we all think differently than ordinary people, can you be said to be moved by wealth?"

Lorenzo didn't speak, if he really had to make any difficult choices, wealth would obviously not influence his decision, when that kind of thing was really needed, just grab it, Lorenzo didn't think that the security of the bank could stop him now.

"Yes, those are low-hanging fruit, and I was chasing them a long time ago, but that shipwreck changed me completely. He said.

"Man's quest should not be those, but something more mysterious, or essential, and therefore forbidden knowledge? That's what people like us should be crazy about, isn't it?"

Hercule began his seemingly frantic speech, as if something had been touched, and Lorenzo looked at Hercule, who for the first time felt a bit of resemblance from this guy.

"I am the Rat King, who governs all the bad rats, they run around every corner of the city, and I exchange my wealth for what they see and hear, they are my eyes and ears, constantly sending a steady stream of information to my mind...... It's a very deformed desire to be in control. ”

The words became warm, as if a fire had been kindled.

"I could deduce the ups and downs of prices, the gossip of the mobs, from the conversations of the people on the docks, to piece together a smuggling operation, and I even reached for the town hall. ”

"Don't believe it, Mr. Holmes, it's pretty simple, I can't guess what the chef will cook in the evening, but I can tell what he's bought by the amount of goods in the market. ”

"Sounds flawed. Lorenzo pretended to be calm.

"So the stories I deduced will have a certain deviation value to tolerate the story.

It's like you took out those thugs, the truth is, you used a soup spoon to finish them off...... But that's just too unusual, isn't it?, so in order to fix these 'loopholes', I'm going to make some changes to the story, like your water-soaked shotgun fires normally. ”

Lorenzo's expression was serious, he couldn't help but grasp Poirot in his arms, although he was not human, but the big mouse could also feel the heaviness of the atmosphere, it was timid to death, nested in a ball, motionless.

"The more information the bad rats bring, the more timeliness they bring, the more I know, the more I know everything about this city, the clearer it is in front of my eyes, and I can even predict anything that happens in this city by analyzing it!"

Hercule's eyes were fiery.

"Mr. Holmes, sometimes I feel like I'm like Queen Victoria, I have mastered the city, I have mastered it thoroughly. ”

Lorenzo looked at him deeply, and then said with some disdain.

"Impossible, mortals can't do this, compared to what you said, I believe that you are not the Rat King, you are also one of his puppets, there is your archive somewhere under the old Dunling, dozens of people...... Maybe a hundred people, synthesizing the information brought by the bad rats, doing a ridiculous story meeting, and then handing it over to you, so that you can make a magic stick speech in front of my eyes. ”

"You really have the inferiority of a mortal, and I didn't want to believe it at first, after all, it's beyond your imagination, right, it's something that humans can't imagine, haven't seen with their own eyes. ”

Hercule laughed, as if mocking Lorenzo, much to Lorenzo's discomfort.

"Mr. Holmes, let's go back to the reason for my search for 'you', it was an interesting beginning, I had a huge amount of information at that time, and the whole city was so clear before my eyes, but the more I tried to see it, the more I realized that there was a fog in the city that could not be dispelled. ”

"It hides its most secret secrets, and no matter how much the bad rats try to find out, I can't see it, and all I can do now after all these years is to know that it exists, and there is another thing in this city that is absolutely unknown. ”

He spoke faster, as if he would be like this when he was excited, and perhaps the mental illness left by the shipwreck was still there, and Hercule looked a little insane.

"As you said, I am just a mortal, mortals cannot be 'omniscient', I also have limitations, many things that I have not witnessed with my own eyes, I can only rely on the real foundation, to carry out the story calculation, but in this old Dunling, there are too many stories, and their deviations are surprisingly large. ”

You may not understand this definition, but simply put, many events don't follow common sense logic, or ...... There is a supernatural force at work. ”

Lorenzo's pupils constricted when he heard the word transcendental, and this slight change was so clear in Hercule's eyes that he smiled even more happily.

"I began to find out why this was the case, and the more I searched, the more I could find the dark cloud that hung over the old Dunling, and in this city, there was another power, that transcendent power!"

He stared at Lorenzo and questioned loudly.

"Mr. Holmes, you've seen that monster too, right, what do you call them? Demons? You must have killed it, but you didn't think about disposing of its corpse after killing it, it's so weird, it will have a strong impact on the public if it is exposed, right? ”

"But you still left without looking back, do you believe that no one will find out, or do you believe that after you are gone, someone will deal with all this?"

Obviously, Hercule was tied to a chair by Lorenzo, but under that bit of crazy momentum, Lorenzo felt that he was tied to a chair.

At the same time, Lorenzo also felt a bit ridiculous, if what Herculi said was true, then this is a genius or a madman, he relied on the clues revealed in this city, deduced the existence of the purification mechanism, he has even found the inferior secret blood, and set up a bureau to use Lorenzo.

"Actually, those rumors are true. ”

Hercule suddenly said coldly, he broke free from the chair with great force, Lorenzo couldn't help but tense his body, but Hercule didn't do anything superfluous, he still sat honestly in the chair.

"Like the archive, it's real. ”

"Like I said, you're one of the puppets too, and your group did all this?" asked Lorenzo.

"No, what I'm saying is true, I'm the only one in it, and the bad rats who helped me. ”

"Of course that archive does exist, but it's here. ”

Hercule said as he stretched out his index finger, pointing hard at his temple.

"It's here, recording everything I've seen and heard from the shipwreck to the present, all here, the past and future of this city, all of it, here!"

As he spoke, he walked briskly closer to Lorenzo and stretched out his hand, his mustache down, the corners of his mouth furrowed vigorously.

"Reacquaint, Hercule Christie, it's fine if you call me the Rat King, after all, I have to take care of Poirot's three meals a day. ”