Time To Melt!

"I must say, your naming sense is quite unique, Narcissus," Verina pointed out.

"Fortcracker, Hardmelter—I can't wait for the next work that you will name!" Lupina chuckled, still finding entertainment from a short musket-like weapon that shoots out pressurized corrosive slime.

As for Tahlia, he was rather terrified of the Hardmelter. Seeing a fast jet stream of water from a portable device like that gave him an instinctive fear of being caught in the wetness, even though it won't hurt us as much as it corrodes metal and stone.

"It will take time to get used to this, ahaha."

The plan using the Hardmelter against armored enemies aside, we can also use it to efficiently expand this underground base faster than a mole.

With the Hardmelter to remove any kind of metallic armor that a resilient Calamity Object usually possessed, our morale increased as we stayed comfy beneath the surface.

Then again, my ability to open the info screen of any Calamity Objects somewhat trivialized a lot of the dangerous encounters. 

I was also afraid that Verina and Lupina might develop a dependency to my assessment and orders, dulling their instinct and train of thoughts in the process.

After all, I'm a firm believer that a strong collectivity stemmed from strong individuals who possessed the same goal, not mere individuals who only followed order.

It was only that I realized that not a single day had passed, and it should be impossible for the two of them to develop a bad habit in such a short period of time.

The night felt like an eternity, and my mind started to become restless. This was certainly a different kind of stress than the one I had back on Earth.

I didn't even notice that I hadn't blinked for a while.

"Say, the Ordeal of the Midnight tends to be much more dense in terms of enemy waves and threats than the Ordeal of the Dusk." Lupina scratched her head. "Not to mention, with the Hollow Star that was stationed in the sky. So how come we didn't encounter many of them?"

"Firstly, our bastion is supposed to be up there," Verina casually pointed up with her index finger. "What is the easiest starting place to reach there? Definitely not here. As such, most of the Calamity Objects that spawned were mostly on the surface, and not here."

"And they probably die immediately when facing the two Qliphoth Objects," Tahlia snickered. "In many ways, choosing to go underground at that time is such a great decision."

This time, hours had passed without a single Calamity Object spawning inside the cavern. Outside of the roots and some of the meatballs that I carried in my belt pouches, we also attempted to process the edible part of the Crawlers and the Burrowing Terror.

Thankfully, Lupina existed, so I could always use her to test the food I cooked, since she would have a greater chance to survive after being inflicted by all sorts of poisons or food poisoning, thanks to the enhancement procedure that she got.

"Mmm!! This is good!!"

"I have never thought of using Lupina as a food tester," Verina commented. "Thank you for the idea, Narcy."

"My name went from Narcissus to Narc and to Narcy.."

"So, when can we finally eat?" Tahlia drooled.

In conclusion to our meals, the Crawlers tasted like shrimps, while some parts of the Burrowing Terror were straight hazardous to consume.

"Bluergh!!" Lupina puked intensely with an expression of pain. "They taste good, but they are awful. I'm dying, uerghh-"

Seeing her Health section of detail screen, she won't be dying anytime soon.

I was surprised that most of my plans post-midnight went well. 

Too well in fact.

Though, I could still feel the looming dread that was the tempest happening above the ground.

The Wild Hunt and the Headless Horsemen were still fighting, and I possessed not the slightest curiosity to witness their chaos made manifest.

"This feels weird."

I just noticed that the constant notification about the countdown to the ordeal had stopped for a while.

It felt strange not having that annoying, buzzing, and mind-rending pops-up every minute.

Though I did remember that we had already survived at least 6 hours through the Ordeal of the Midnight.

It felt harrowing at first, but hope was right there on the horizon!

We only needed to survive another 6 hours and we should be greeted by the morning sky!

Just need to survive a little bit longer.

"... This presence." Verina caught something within her vicinity. It might be her heightened Consciousness coming into play. "The Sandstalkers, they are here again."

"Urgh, right when we lost access to our Fortcracker," Lupina frowned.

"But this time, we have the Hardmelter!" Tahlia reminded everyone of our newest invention. 

"Let's lure all of them to the designated area," I issued.

The open wide space had already been dug into fruition. As we stationed there, we all waited with caution, trying to sense from which direction the pack of the Sandstalker were coming from.

At this stage of the ordeal, there should be more Sandstalkers than the time we encountered on the surface, especially with their tendency to stick together like a pack, ambushing a lone and most vulnerable target to increase their chance of survival.

As such, like the original plan, I positioned myself far away from the rest, hoping that many if not all of the Sandstalkers were aggroed to me instead of the rest three of my fellow bastioneers.

Lupina's ears twitched, as her eyes flared with beastly instinct "Here they come!" 

Three Sandstalkers emerged at the same time right below me.

Despite my lack of Sanity, I still had enough reflex to timely dodged the cowardly assault of these giant armored monsters.

"Fire your load."

"Attack!!"

The susceptible Sandstalkers were immediately overwhelmed by a flurry of spell-made projectile and jet stream of corrosive slime.

Verina's usual prowess of firepower aside, the corrosive slime worked better than I thought. The Sandstalkers' claws immediately melted and corroded into useless gunk while its hard armored body was blasted open due to the added power of the Hardmelter's pressured thrust.

However, those corrosive slimes weren't enough to immediately kill them. 

The slimes could only stagger and inflict an unimaginable amount of pain to them, exposing them into vulnerabilities. A further offensive action to finish their threatening existence was needed.