Mr. Rat of the Steam World

Chapter 38 Foolish! Killing you wouldn't make it any less mine.

Upon arriving at the stone house, Lu Ran and Detective No. 2 Mouse climbed off Bella's back.

Then he proceeded according to the agreed plan, sending Bella back to deceive Afra first, while he himself took the opportunity to sneak into the stone house to check the situation.

The foodie was still a competent secretary, waiting there early. As soon as Lu Ran entered the stone house through the passage, the foodie rushed up to him with the letter in his arms.

"The eldest brother has two letters."

"Two portions?" Lu Ran took the items.

One letter was specially sealed in pale yellow linen paper, clearly sent by a human. The other was a small notebook, cut to fit the size of a mouse, which seemed to be news from the mouse in Baker City. Lu Ran chose to read the latter first—it was a message from the novel's mouse about the aftermath of Earl Biden leading his men to find Conrad.

It turns out that things didn't go as smoothly as I had imagined.

Lu Ran had assumed it would be a simple rescue operation, a dignified way to free the old man from his captivity.

The target was just an old man who was about to slump in a chair, but the process turned into an armed conflict, and even resulted in casualties.

"So Earl Biden had anticipated this and sent troops directly?"

Lu Ran continued reading.

"At this critical moment, a green figure suddenly rushed out of the villa like lightning! The figure was extremely fast, like a green whirlwind, leaving no time for anyone to react."

Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a monster covered in green scales! Its body was enormous and ferocious, and it looked extremely terrifying.

Faced with such a terrifying monster, the soldier at the front showed no fear. He simply raised his arm and roared, "Fire!"
In an instant, dozens of muskets spewed flames simultaneously, and a dense barrage of bullets rained down on the monster. The bullets struck the monster's scales, making crackling sounds. Although the scales burst open and green blood splattered out, the monster seemed to be largely unaffected and continued to roar as it charged toward the soldiers.

The soldiers quickly adjusted their firing angles and continued to unleash firepower on the monster. Just as the monster was about to charge at the soldiers, the last rank of soldiers suddenly raised their flamethrowers, and a huge column of fire shot out, heading straight for the monster.

The monster was engulfed by the sudden flames and instantly burned to a charred corpse, lying motionless on the ground.

As Lu Ran read on, he felt something was off.

"Did this come directly from Baker City?"

The foodie nodded.

"Hiss." Lu Ran flipped through it in surprise, then realized why something had been off. "This writing style is off... why isn't it about touching butts anymore..."

To be honest, it's not exactly great, but compared to the simple, descriptive narrative style I saw last time, this time the writing has some rhetoric, scene transitions, and detailed descriptions... It's clear that the writing skills have improved significantly in just a few days.

"This shouldn't be the first draft."

Lu Ran carefully reread the details and found that there were no traces of corrections or typos in the text, which did not seem like something that could be hastily recorded on such an intense battlefield.

Instead, it seemed as if they had done a brief self-study afterwards, and after improving their writing skills, they revised and rewrote the previously recorded content before sending it over.

"It's interesting."

Lu Ran was pleasantly surprised.

If all of this was done by that novel rat from last time, then this little guy is truly a talent, a cultural talent that Lu Ran has been searching for.

It is well known that culture is of paramount importance to a race. His territory was never a place where you could simply recruit and mass-produce troops, and suddenly thousands upon thousands of fearless magic rats and warrior rats would appear.

The mice under my care are all individuals with independent personalities. They have their own thoughts and feelings, and as their intelligence increases, they will inevitably begin to think.

In this situation, if a sufficiently unified cultural identity cannot be established, as the number of territorial mice increases, the information they receive from the outside world becomes increasingly diverse—conservative, extreme, crazy, philanthropic…

This is not the contention of a hundred schools of thought in the past. The premise of positive competition among the hundred schools of thought is that they share a cultural foundation originating from ancient times. This ensures that the debates of ideas always take place on the same land. No matter who wins, they will not deviate from the established cultural anchor point, but will continue to accumulate and integrate.

If Lu Ran's newly emerged rat civilization were left unchecked, allowing this kind of insidious ideological competition to fester and clash with each other, who knows what kind of explosive situation Lu Ran might be unable to control, leading to unpredictable consequences.

So, putting aside other cultural aspects, Lu Ran kept thinking that he had to write up the legends and stories of the rats first, so that at least there would be a positive direction to guide them.

But Lu Ran was indeed too busy, and there had always been a lack of rats capable of carrying out the cultural aspects of the territory. Even though he knew the importance of this, so far, apart from organizing a festival, he had hardly had time to make any significant progress.

Lu Ran had kept this matter in mind. He had originally planned to discuss it when he had some free time, but now it seemed that he didn't need to take action himself.

The Chosen Working Mouse has arrived.

After reading the last sentence, Lu Ran looked at the complete story record and became more and more satisfied, but he did not miss some information revealed in the text.

"So this is what Anthony was talking about when the potion went out of control... I just wonder if its combat performance is stronger or weaker than a non-out-of-control supernatural being?"

As Lu Ran scanned the cold words, he couldn't help but feel a little sad.

The life of a steel tycoon ended so abruptly. At the same time, he was glad that he hadn't taken the potion he had obtained so easily, but instead chose to feed it to the system. He guessed that Tamara was keeping it in his possession because he was worried about this matter and wanted to wait until he was fully prepared before taking it.

Having learned what had happened at the scene, Lu Ran finally understood why the butler had been so polite in his thanks. After a brief moment of reflection, Lu Ran turned to the next letter, not recalling anyone else sending him a letter at this time.

"And this is... Zell's letter?"

Lu Ran's eyes widened suddenly.

I glanced at the small note tucked inside the letter, which contained notes from the other mice.

It turned out that the rat he had left at the location where he was keeping watch and contacting the middle-aged man hadn't been removed; it had just been left there. But unexpectedly, after the incident, Zell returned there, took over the middle-aged man's position, and left a specific code and a letter.

Lu Ran opened the letter.

"Detective Sherlock, I hope to receive your investigation results as soon as possible. In order to respect your hard work, I will also increase the reward accordingly. Now it is five hundred gold pounds for one piece of information."

Lu Ran was both amused and exasperated.

"They still haven't given up, but it seems they really have no other choice but to try to find a solution from me."

As someone who was involved in the entire incident from beginning to end, Lu Ran could even sense Ze'er's anxiety between the lines while reading.

The commission fee has increased fivefold.

This wasn't an interest-free loan to be repaid; it was a pure reward, almost equivalent to several decades' income for an ordinary person. Lu Ran had never heard of any detective receiving a commission at this price.

Of course, even if such a thing happened, it certainly wouldn't be announced.

"It seems Zell had quite a bit of money on him when he ran away, but even if it's doubled to five hundred, it won't be easy to get it..."

Lu Ran murmured casually, then suddenly his body jolted as he realized something.

"Wait a minute, he's carrying a lot of money. If I catch this guy first, the money will still be mine."

(End of this chapter)