My Neighbor Hoards Grain, I Hoard Guns

My Neighbor Hoards Grain, I Hoard Guns

Smack!

A black shadow fell from above and crashed heavily into the sewer, which was filled with foul water and sludge. The tremendous noise instantly attracted the attention of the many sewer-dwelling residents. They all turned to look at the figure struggling to crawl out of the muck. Every struggle was accompanied by a painful, suppressed roar, but even so, the figure still managed to stand.

"Cough, cough. I made it out?"

Diri's body was covered in wounds, and even the shape of his arm was visibly twisted and deformed. Enduring the pain, he laboriously raised his head and surveyed his surroundings. His swollen face made it difficult to see clearly, but the stench filling his nostrils and the slippery sludge beneath his feet told him where he was.

"I have to leave quickly, or those monsters will catch up soon!"

At those words, even Diri, who had forced himself to stand with his battered body, unconsciously revealed fear and despair in his eyes. He struggled forward into the pitch-black sewer. He had barely escaped that hell, and even if he died, he absolutely refused to be captured and dragged back.

Or rather, even if he died, he did not want to die in that hell. After all, dying there did not mean losing his value. In fact, those monsters wearing human skin would deliberately kill many beings like him at regular intervals.

Just as Diri was thinking about how to escape as quickly as possible, rustling sounds came from all directions. The sounds were fast and urgent. Diri also noticed ripples constantly spreading across the water beneath him. The state of the water, combined with the sounds coming from every direction...

It was obvious that what was rushing toward him was not just one creature, but a whole group. A very large group.

Upon realizing this, the terrified expression on Diri's face grew even more pronounced. He barely managed to brace his shoulder against the wall for leverage and speed up. Even as the rough, uneven wall scraped the flesh from his shoulder, Diri continued trying to move faster.

However, no matter how hard Diri tried, it still did not help much. Before long, pairs of crimson eyes lit up in the seemingly bottomless darkness ahead. In the blink of an eye, Diri discovered that it was not only the front—behind him, above him, and beneath his feet were all filled with pairs of crimson eyes.

In the darkness, Diri clearly heard his heartbeat speeding up. His breathing grew heavier, while the rustling sounds around him drew closer and closer. Finally, by the faint light of the sewer, Diri could see what had surrounded him.

Giant rats, one of the lowest-level demons. They were only slightly stronger than slimes, and even that was true only in a few cases. But now, Diri saw countless giant rats pouring from the darkness like a tide. In just a few seconds, everything before him had been submerged by giant rats.

The last sight Diri saw was the overwhelming tide of giant rats instantly engulfing him. When everything was over, a thing wrapped in countless giant rats was being carried toward the deeper parts of the sewer.

"Another human, and one seriously wounded at that. And there are also those giant rats behaving strangely."

From the shadows not far away, Lu Minghao's figure slowly emerged. He calmly watched the tide-like swarm of giant rats disappear. Earlier, he had heard the noise of Diri falling into the sewer from several channels away. He had just finished feeding, and a large number of lower demons were currently being digested inside him.

With nothing else to do, Lu Minghao had quietly come over out of curiosity. Fortunately, his cautious nature had always kept him hidden in the shadows, allowing him to safely witness the scene of the giant rats submerging everything like a tide.

In that kind of situation, let alone the already seriously injured human—even if Lu Minghao, who had successfully advanced into a lower demon, were put in his place, he would have no choice but to use poison to delay them before fleeing into the shadows.

"But what are those giant rats planning to do with that human? Are they raising humans for food?"

Looking at the nearly two-meter-tall bundle formed entirely from giant rats in the center of the swarm, Lu Minghao grew increasingly puzzled. Although the giant rats had seemed to overwhelm the human in a tide, they had actually never harmed him. They had merely wrapped around him completely to restrain him, even deliberately leaving space for him to breathe before carrying him away.

But that was precisely what puzzled Lu Minghao most. Because of the hunger brought on by his advancement, Lu Minghao had hunted many demons living in the sewers over the past few days. The ever-present giant rats made up the largest number of them, yet they were at most only somewhat smarter than ordinary rats.

Their intelligence was roughly equivalent to that of an ordinary human child of five or six. Although they displayed a certain degree of intelligence, the demons' instincts to feed and kill still dominated them. There was no way they could have transported that human away without harming him, as those giant rats had done.

Besides, although the sewer environment was indeed suitable for low-level demons like giant rats to live in, there should not have been so many of them, right?

The food consumed by so many giant rats each day alone amounted to a terrifying figure. Combined with the fact that those giant rats had clearly captured the human with some purpose, this was what led Lu Minghao to suspect that they had taken him back to raise him as livestock.

It was just like humans raising animals. Given a human's size, once he grew up, he would be more than enough to provide a full meal for countless giant rats. With proper farming, it might really solve the giant rats' food problem.

"Forget it. Thinking about this is pointless. Raising a human requires so much time and food that the investment would far exceed the return."

The next second, Lu Minghao cast aside the utterly absurd speculation in his mind. After all, he had once been human himself, so he knew at least a little about how long it took a human to grow up and how much food one needed. Compared with giant rats, which had several litters a year with seven or eight pups per litter, humans had absolutely no cost-effectiveness in this regard.

"But the stranger the situation, the more interested I am in those giant rats."

As he spoke, Lu Minghao's body slowly merged into the shadow beneath him. He then began moving in the direction the giant rats had left. His goal this time was to figure out what those giant rats were doing—and to gather some food along the way.

After all, there were so many giant rats. As long as he relied on Shadow Escape to launch surprise attacks and combined it with Gluttony's instant devouring, he could cautiously hunt a large amount of food without making a sound. To Lu Minghao, who had advanced into a lower demon, so many giant rats were practically a giant granary. As their good neighbor, he naturally had to take good care of them.

After all, how did that saying go? My neighbor hoards grain, so I hoard guns. My neighbor is my granary.