Red Hour

With vigor and thunderous intent on my arm, I brandished my obsidian dagger and dealt the killing blow to the vulnerable Sandstalkers.

I tried my best to avoid the latching corrosive slime on the Sandstalker's bodies when aiming my strike. After all, my obsidian knife was also impervious to the effect of the corrosive slime.

"More Sandstalkers incoming!" I shouted as I could feel them traveling in a circle beneath me before lurching out like a hungry shark. 

Both Tahlia and Lupina shaked their Hardmelter to gauge the content of the slime canister. Each of them had five extra canisters at a time, and each of it could also be replenished.

Of course, those two also need to stick together to Verina in case that their pressured gas was empty.

Though Verina was also in the possession of a Hardmelter of her own, she preferred to use her lifeline-infused musket and perform her usual spells.

"One of them is straying, move!"

The battle against the Sandstalkers went for about 20 minutes, with 5 minutes of downtime after the first 10 minutes.

In total, we had already killed 28 Sandstalkers within this underground base.

"Too bad that we sorta melted all of the Sandstalkers' precious metals," Lupina snickered. "I guess having an easy way to deal with them comes with its own demerit as well."

"We won't be crafting any more things from now on." My eyes were on the nasty pile of Sandstalker corpses. "Any forging and blacksmithing beyond this will only needlessly deplete Verina of her lifeline."

We couldn't endlessly donate our blood to be used as a lifeline, it would be better to go full conservative starting from now.

I had some feeling of impending doom crawling viciously up to my spine for a while.

And it wouldn't go no matter what I did.

Because of it, my restlessness ascended into the astral plane, and my paranoia started to push me patrolling the vicinity of the underground tunnels to check for any hidden Calamity Object.

Something felt wrong.

I'm sure of it.

I made sure to open up the info screen if it was possible every five seconds.

"Are you okay, Narcy?" Verina worried.

"... Narcy as a name doesn't sound as bad, now that I think about it."

Lupina tilted her head. "You don't like your original name?"

"I don't like it. I don't hate it either." I smirked, finding myself stumbling into an ease of mind now that I was brought back to cold-harsh reality by these goofy people. "How about you three? What do you all think about the name you're holding?"

"I like it," Verina bluntly replied. "It has a nice chime to it."

"I don't even know what my name means, but it sure is one of the names of all time!" Lupina shrugged with a smile.

"My name isn't the best, but I'm sure that my parents have no ill will in giving me this name." Tahlia nodded with a close-eyed smug. "I'm planning to carry it for the rest of my life, so might as well maintain it like my shrine."

Narcissus, aside from being a straight reference to that one character within the Greek mythology, it was also the source of a term that I didn't really resonate with, especially before I came to this world.

Though it did remind me that I had always been very strict to myself.

Maybe I needed to relax a little, and have some self-love for myself now that it was somewhat possible with this face that I got.

Our little introspective banter aside, I felt that it was about time we got another wave of Calamity Objects within this place.

Without our fate sold to the lottery of the damned, I scurried my eyes left and right to make sure that I didn't miss the spawning Calamity Object.

And then there it was.

—

[The Flesh Mauler]

[Description: A towering, humanoid creature made of stitched-together flesh and bone, the Flesh Mauler moves with a twisted grace through the darkness. It has multiple arms, each ending in sharp, jagged claws, and a face that is a patchwork of different human and animal features. The Flesh Mauler hunts by sound and smell, relentlessly pursuing its prey once it catches their scent]

[Hint: The Flesh Mauler is incredibly strong and agile, capable of tearing through metal and rock. Its howls cause intense fear and disorientation, making it difficult to fight or flee. Defeating it requires precision strikes to its many sewn-together joints, but getting close enough to do so is a challenge in itself]

—

Without any hesitation, Verina blasted the Flesh Mauler with her trusty heat-imploding projectile spell.

But just before the projectile hit its mangled head, the Flesh Mauler grabbed the speeding spell mid-air and proceeded to slam it to the wall beside it, causing a catastrophic tremor to the whole tunnel system.

"Make distance!"

With a mind-numbing howl, the Flesh Mauler lunged forward with its limbs brandished and ready to hurt.

Lupina stepped forward and parried two of the limbs. At the same time, I dashed forward and decapitated the staggered arms.

Verina then followed by a high-speed concentrated heat application spell, hitting the Flesh Mauler on the chest. The heat concentrated and spreaded in a controlled manner, unsewing all of the stitches that were keeping the flesh and bones together.

Despite the successful encounter, our balance and mind were a little bit thrown off by the howl that the Flesh Mauler created.

Just a single one of them was enough to cause this disorientation. I didn't really want to fight multiple of them at once, especially after seeing it capturing Verina's spell midair.

It was also probably more dangerous than ten Crawler Nests combined, since Verina needed to cast a lifeline-intensive spell to finally finish it off.

Not to mention, the Hardmelter was useless against those things since they were primarily made out of organic matter.

"... Let's retreat to the surface," I whispered.

From one of the hallways our tactical cave system, was a whole horde of Flesh Mauler standing still and creepily gazing at us with a ravenous killing intent.

They were there, trying to imprint our smells and noises into their list of prey. 

At least 15 of them were discernible in my eyes.

If we didn't take the first action, they would eventually sprint and lunge at us like an unfed piranhas.

Slowly, I pointed my index finger to the ceiling in front of them.

"... Collapse it."

Hearing the command, Verina immediately pressed the trigger of her musket and launched a combusting spell to seal off this section of the hallway.

At the same time, the horde of Flesh Maulers lurched toward us like a pack of gigantic cockroaches.