The terrified ratman's incontinence didn't have much of an impact on System.

  He gnced over at the ratman and casually stabbed the two bone daggers into the ground. The ratman would stay paralyzed for a long time, so why not go catch some ordinary rats while he waited? As long as he caught a dozen rats, he'd be able to cover the group's food requirements.

  System spread his wings and flew into the sky to scout. After seeing that there were no gnolls nearby, he told Little Bck and Meatball to have the ant subjects stay where they were. If the ratman acted strange in any way, they should kill it immediately.

  System and Shava headed over to the rat warren. He'd seen about ten rats escape back into the rat hole, and catching a few of them shouldn't be a problem.

  ...

  Because of the ratman's huge size, the rat warren was very spacious.

  However, unlike an ordinary warren, this one was filled with an unimaginable stench. Like goblins, these rats had bad habits in life, and they seemed to have defecated everywhere inside their warren.

  The longer System stayed in the warren, the more unbearable the stench became. He already regretted going inside to catch rats.

  Fortunately, the warren seemed to have other exits, so there was fresh air circuting from time to time. Otherwise, System might really have canceled this operation.

  About fifteen minutes ter, System and Shava successfully caught two rats. Perhaps due to the two rats' screams, System didn't find any other rats after that.

  The yout of the rat warren was fundamentally different from an ant nest. Perhaps to guard against their natural enemies, snakes, the chambers inside the warren were connected in all directions. System found at least seven or eight exits that the other rats had obviously used to run away.

  Although most of the small rats had escaped, the search wasn't entirely fruitless. System found a leather bag in the warren with various items scattered next to it.

  One of the items was a rolled-up sheet of what seemed to be leather, which appeared to be a map. The leather was very sturdy, and the map was intricately crafted. There were words on it, but they weren't the nguage of the elves, nor were they the nguage carved on the ratman's dagger.

  In addition to the map, System also found a white crystal the size of a human fist and three round, golden coins inside the leather bag.

  He guessed that the white crystal was probably coarse salt. When System scraped it hard with his tentacles, some particles fell off.

  Unfortunately, System's sense of taste was completely different now than it had been in his previous life. When this coarse salt melted in his mouth, he could only taste a faint sweetness and smell a strange fragrance.

  The taste of the salt grains had confirmed System's long-standing guess. He found that after he'd arrived in this world, almost all edible food had become sweet, and only some rare foods that contained magical power would have various different fvors.

  System put down the salt block and looked at the three coins. Each coin was about three centimeters in diameter and seemed recently minted. They were etched with beautiful patterns and writing. The nguage on the coins should be the same as the one on the map.

  The color and weight of the coins seemed to be a match for gold, but they could also be made of copper. System fiddled with a coin for a while before losing interest.

  His biggest gain from exploring the rat warren seemed to be the brown leather bag. Although the style was a bit strange, it was well made and durable. It could hold a good amount of food or insect pupae.

  As for the map, gold coins, and salt block, they were completely useless.

  He didn't recognize the words and pces on the map at all, and salt blocks had no value as food for ants or grasshoppers. Also, with his current strange appearance, System believed that even if he had gold coins, he still couldn't buy anything.

  However, compared to System, who was a pragmatist, Shava treasured the gold coins. When System threw them away as garbage, she immediately picked them back up.

  Unfortunately, her twin-bded limbs weren't good at grasping things. She spent a lot of effort just to pick up only two of the three coins.

  System had no choice but to stuff the few gold coins into the small bag that contained the frost flower seeds. In addition to the flower seeds that had lost their effectiveness, the bag also contained the small crystal that System had given Shava long ago.

  After Shava had pyed with it for several months, the irregur edges and corners of the small crystal had been worn off. It was now very smooth.

  While System was packing up the items and tidying up the leather bag, his tentacles suddenly noticed that the weight of the leather bag felt a little off.

  After a quick inspection, he found a hidden pocket inside the leather bag that could be accessed with a hidden zipper. Inside the pocket was a five-centimeter-square, silver, metallic object that looked simir to a lighter. System could feel a faint aura of energy from the metal.

  After using his tentacles to fiddle with the metallic object for a while, he was surprised to discover that it actually was a lighter. If he unscrewed the lid and waited, some kind of burning energy would start to gather, causing a weak fme to eventually form.

  The fme wasn't very big, but this item could still be used as a fire-starting tool in the wild.

  Whether it was the finely crafted leather bag or the fire-starting device, this wasn't a technical level that the ratman could achieve in such a dirty and messy living environment.

  System guessed that the leather bag and its contents had likely been stolen from a passing traveler.

  As for the metal lighter in the leather bag, System guessed that the ratman hadn't found it at all.

  After searching through the rat warren for a while, just as System had guessed, he found half of a human skull in the warren's depths. He specuted that this skull should belong to the former owner of the leather bag.

  The shape of the skull didn't match gnolls or goblins, and had likely belonged to an elf, dwarf, or human.

  System had been a human in his previous life, and he thought that he'd feel a little uneasy or anxious when he saw a human skull. Instead, without thinking, he used his tentacles to wrap around the skull and inspected it for a while.

  By the time System realized what he was doing, he'd already been chewing on a small fragment of the skull for a long time.

  The fvor of the skull was simir to most of the animal bones that system had eaten—kind of like milk chocote.

  But this skull had obviously been sitting here for too long. System estimated that it had been in the warren for at least half a year, so the fvor wasn't very strong.

  He ate another small piece, then threw the skull aside as garbage and prepared to return to the surface.

  Just after System decided to leave, he suddenly noticed that Shava seemed to have found something and was digging in the soil with her twin bdes.

  He stretched out his tentacles and soon found a translucent blue crystal composed of some strange material half-buried in the dirt. He felt a faint energy aura from the crystal.

  The shape and color of this crystal were very simir to a human eyeball. System specuted that it should be a fake eye that had belonged to the dead traveler, but he didn't know what the function of the strange energy aura was.