"Thank you," Cheng Xiu said to them.
"Aren't you supposed to say no thanks?" the Fork said in a surprised tone. "Why are you changing the way that you are supposed to respond?"
"Does that mean that you did not want to help us recover our memories?" Cheng Xiu asked the little boy. "And what is your name?"
"Spike Moon!" the little boy said in a happy tone.
Spike? His name is spike? Wasn't that too literal.
San Zhe and Cheng Xiu exchanged glances. Very creative.
"I am Shield Moon," the elder boy said. "Eldest brother in the Moon Clan of the Vermin Empire."
Shield. Okay. And an introduction into the Rat family. Nice. Cheng Xiu tried to not be too judgmental.
Cheng Xiu guessed that these children were named too literally or they decided to take on Weaponry that suited their name.
"Do you want me to introduce myself too?" The personified girl asked, her eyes looking at Cheng Xiu curiously.
Cheng Xiu nodded.
"I am Fiona Fire," the girl said. "My clan specialised in fire elemental manipulations."
Cheng Xiu nodded in understanding. Finally a normal name. "About helping us…there is no need to. Kids should stay out of such conflicts."
Fiona tilted her head to the side. "In that case, we can only give you clues in exchange for saving our lives."
"Those are enough," Cheng Xiu said with a smile.
The girl looked into the Phoenix eyes that were staring at her with at most sincerity and felt her cheeks burn. Her eyes lowered as she avoided the eye-contact.
"The Queens have put many children of the Empire in the same situation that we were in," Shield said when it saw that Fiona was not in a condition to speak anymore.
Cheng Xiu's heart jumped at his words.
San Zhe gasped in shock.
Yaksha looked towards the young man with a curious glint in his eyes.
"Why children?" Cheng Xiu asked.
"Because they are not strong enough to climb the walls yet," Fiona said in a low voice.
Cheng Xiu frowned as she heard that. "Why is she doing this? What is her story?"
Fiona hesitated. She looked towards the brothers who looked confused at the human cultivator's question.
"Story? What story?" little Spike asked in confusion.
Shield shrugged. He looked at Fiona curiously.
Fiona fidgeted. "It is the reason why I was turned into a Torch. Because I knew something that I was not supposed to know."
Cheng Xiu frowned. Her thoughts went to the siblings Da Hua and Xiao Hua. They seemed to know a lot too.
Cheng Xiu shared her thoughts with the others.
Fiona shook her head. "What they know is only a part of the story…"
"Can you say the complete version?" Cheng Xiu asked her. "You don't have to if it will put you in danger."
Fiona shook her head. "It is fine…even I don't know the full version though."
"That is fine," Cheng Xiu said to her.
Fiona narrated a the tale of the Rat Queens which left the rest of the people who heard it in a sense of shock.
The Rat King, after his wife died due to a Goblin attack was in search of a wife. He searched the entire Kingdom and finally fell for a village girl who was hunting in the forest. The King abducted her and kept her captive.
He forced her to marry him on that same day, using a spell to control her entire person and she was not even able to protest or talk about her opinion No one came to know about the fact that the girl was being forced into the situation at that time. It was only found the next day due to an unforeseen obstacle.
The girl was not a girl.
It was a young boy of 15. He had worn a female clothing due to a bet with a bunch of friends who said that you can not hunt in a female clothing. He was a promising mage of the Vermin Academy and had come back to the village for the vacation.
The King refused to let the boy leave even after knowing the boy's gender, just saying that the Queen is the Queen because the king married her and that there was no escape for the boy.
It a bid to escape the King's persuasion, the young boy used some unknown spell to create a Shadow of himself. A female this time.
The shadow girl was just as intelligent as the original boy and just as skilled. She regarded the boy as her master, her father, and her sibling, wanting to make him happy at all times.
She started to serve the King.
What the boy did not expect was to actually care for this shadow self. He ended up thinking of the Shadow as his sister after some incident that no one really knew about and then he tried to set the shadow girl free.
But she refused and continued to serve the King.
Everything seemed to go well until the boy fell in love with someone outside the Vermin Empire. Who that person was, nobody knew.
The boy wanted to escape and tried to as well. But somehow he couldn't. Though it was not known what happened, but after that both the boy and the shadow girl started to serve the King, and the King's perverted thoughts started to escalate.
Cheng Xiu's face was stiff after hearing the story that Fiona said. She was not supposed to judge, she knew that. Human morals were not something that these rats would care about but…really…a threesome of this kind was just…
She finally realised that hearing the story brought back a few memories that she was sure she could not remember before. Almost like she had met some kind of an invisible condition to get access to them. The memories returned to her as though they were always there, it was her who did not pay attention to it before.
Cheng Xiu compiled the datas she had about the dungeon until now and understood why Xiao Hua said that One of the Queens was a female. She also knew why the first set of twins had scoffed when she asked if the Queens were like them. They were not.
The Queens were not actual twins. They were Literal shadows of one another. And one was a boy and the other was a girl.
It also slightly confirmed her theory that the Queens liked each other unlike the first set of twins who were hated one another.
Cheng Xiu also thought about the reason as to why the Boy in the story did not escape in the end. Her mind went to Xiao Hua and Da Hua. The brother stepped forwards to sacrifice his life for a chance for his sister to live longer.
Cheng Xiu could not help wondering if the Queens also did something of that nature. From the way that Fiona said the story she thought that it had a greater probability…
But would the first pair of twins be only so useful to give out clues?
"I never thought I would say this," San Zhe finally said after a moment of silence, "The Devs of this game are such perverted people."
Cheng Xiu's lips twitched. Wasn't that the truth. Then she thought of the games she had played so far. Capturing the beauties. Pets that turned into scantly clade beauties as they got upgraded…
She came to a conclusion.
"All game developers are perverted."
San Zhe looked at her in surprise. "Huh?"
"And the reason is that those are the kind of people who play their games," Cheng Xiu said to him.
"I am not that kind of a person!"
Cheng Xiu shrugged. She did not know this senior enough to know that. "If you say so."
"I really am not."
"The most important thing right now is to get our memories back," Cheng Xiu said. If her having just these memories have already made her able to guess so much about the plot, then she suspected that if she had her complete memories she would have been able to finish this dungeon even faster.
"Then we have to kill the lady at that counter?" Spike asked her.
Cheng Xiu shook her head. "Not you."
"But-"
"Children should play in the sun and study hard," she said, "let us human cultivators to do our job."
"Fine."
The boy stood behind his brother with a pout on his lips.
"We will see you soon I hope," Shield said to them.
"I hope you all succeed," Fiona said.
She took out a small spell book.
Cheng Xiu's eyes widened. She was about to ask the girl about it when the three disappeared before their eyes.
"What is it?" Yaksha asked her.
Cheng Xiu stared at the place that the three stood in some time ago. "How did the little girl know that story?"
San Zhe frowned. "Um…"
"What have theorized?" Yaksha asked her.
"That girl…she…we might see her again?" Cheng Xiu asked.
Yaksha thought for a moment and then nodded.
"As a friend or a foe?"
"I am unsure myself. This dungeon seems to be a lot more story driven than the others that I have been to."
"I see," Cheng Xiu said as she walked towards the blank wall. "I hope that she knows she was wrong to have done the things that she did before when she was supporting the Queens."
"We still don't know why the Queens want to climb the tower," San Zhe said with a sigh. "I am guessing if we know that, we can, maybe, clear the dungeon."
Cheng Xiu's eyes flashed. She already had a guess in her heart but it was too dramatic and operaish. She hoped it was not that.
***
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