Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, depending on your priorities, the two Scorchipedes turned out to be sources of remarkably good resources, meaning we had to take the time to harvest them. Not doing so would have been a complete and utter waste, tough, on the bright side, it also meant I had more than enough time to do some digging nearby. Not directly in the area, just in case the scent of the Scorchipedes’ various bodily fluids attracted scavengers or something like that, but close enough to be heard if I shouted.

Given that we were still in a hostile environment, in more than one sense, Luna stuck with Alex and Lia, who focused on harvesting materials from the Scorchipedes, while Silva remained with me as I was working on the shelter. Hopefully, with two people keeping an eye out, we wouldn’t get caught by surprise by anything.

For our shelter, I had to be somewhat creative. Normally, I would have dug a simple hole and called it good, with a somewhat narrow, and thus easily defendable, entrance and a few reasonably comfortable rooms. Maybe a few openings for extra air or to vent smoke if we made a fire but ultimately a simple construction. Here, I wasn’t willing to make something that basic, as I didn’t want to get caught out if groups of monsters decided to swarm our base, hemming us in until the weight of their numbers crushed us. Sure, we would be able to kill hundreds, maybe thousands of foes with a narrow chokepoint but if we didn’t have a way out, it wouldn’t matter how many we could kill. At some point, the endless numbers of the Charland would grind us down.

So, to make sure we wouldn’t get caught like a rat in our hole, the solution was the most important feature of any property, namely its location. In this case, that meant I made sure to pick one side of a reasonably intact warehouse to dig under, planning to stretch things out so I could easily expand the structure to either open into the warehouse, giving us cover as we made our exit, or to the other side of it, allowing a secondary escape route.

I considered trying to set the shelter up close to one of the ends of the warehouse, where a narrow alley connected the two sides and thus the two potential exits on either side, giving us yet another possible way out but decided against it. Sure, we’d have another exit but it would also give our attackers an easy way to move from one exit to the second, possibly allowing them to cut us off. No, three exits had to be enough and if they weren’t, I might have to keep tunnelling, digging us a hole as we made our escape. Similarly, I tried to see if there were any sewers or large pipes in the area, thinking that we might be able to use something like that to escape, only to get an interesting surprise.

Namely, while there were the usual manhole covers and rainwater grates set into the road, they were only for show, when I checked them directly, I could see that they were only skin deep. Maybe half a metre below the surface, just deep enough that a causal observation wouldn’t show it, the tunnels ended in rocky soil, making me wonder just what their point was. Well, other than to give the area the look of normality, making me wonder just what was going on with it. But given that I had been wondering that for quite some time, it was easy to accept the manhole covers that didn’t actually cover any manholes as just that, another oddity in an odd area. Sadly, that meant there would be no escape tunnel for me to discover but hopefully it also meant there would be no hidden access tunnel for monsters to dig through a thin layer of soil if we were unlucky.

Luckily, my way of tunnelling worked by compressing the earth into the sides of the tunnel I was digging, meaning I didn’t have to worry about removing material as I was working. At least I hadn’t been forced to do so yet, hopefully, that wouldn’t change when I was working with different materials like actual rock instead of the usual mixture of earth, gravel and a few small rocks.

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The instant I started working, I realised that digging into the soil here was more difficult than it normally was. Not only did I have to crack the top layer of asphalt before I could get into softer parts but the entire area wasn’t just normal, boring dirt, infused with a small amount of Earth Astral Power, it was much more than that. Fire and Poison, with some decay and disease mixed in, the mix I could feel everywhere in the air around us was also present in the Earth. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised by that but it was annoying and made working with the dirt here so much harder. It was, in a way, similar to what I had done earlier, when I infused Ice into my Water to make the result more than ‘Cold Water’ but a precursor to Liquid Moonlight. Here, the dirt was still primarily that, Earth, but with the additives mixed in, it was also pricklingly hot.

Still, I could do my thing, it only took more time and a lot more effort. Things got a little easier, or at least faster, when I started to infuse the Earth I was working on with some of my own energy, spraying that same mix of Water and Ice into the ground as I shifted the Earth. It was fascinating to watch, the reaction was almost akin to chemistry when mixing acids with bases, there were some strange, arcane discharges, popping in a myriad of ways that made me smell colours and see sparks but the ground didn’t physically change. It didn’t get wet or muddy, despite the thin, misting spray of water I sent into it, showing me once more that magic could be incredibly weird. But maybe it was for the best that the ground didn’t turn into a muddy mess as I was digging, that would have made things a lot harder.

To my annoyance, even with that trick the work was slow-going and difficult. It took almost three times as long to dig a simple hole, though when it was done the whole felt a lot sturdier than normal, as if the Fire energy in the soil made the whole crystalline compression into a harder substance a lot more effective. Sadly, I also noticed that the soil still gave off the same prickling sensation of Fire and Poison, making it obvious that we wouldn’t really be comfortable in our new abode, simply because none of us was comfortable with those elements. To me, it would be akin to sleeping in a room filled with the scent of raw sewage, unless I used some more of my personal power to fill the area. Not the most economical use of energy but compared to suffering that stench for the entire day, I was very willing to put forth some effort.

By the time Lia, Luna and Alex came over with their loot, I had something somewhat suitable but far from the usual shelter I could dig out. Still, it would get us through the day, which had to be enough and it wasn’t like I couldn’t continue to work on it, even as we were hiding.

But where my efforts had been largely fruitless, their efforts showed some nice results. A few of the chitinous plates on the Scorchipedes’ bodies could be fashioned into armour for Silva, giving her some valuable extra protection while the teeth could be turned into simple knives and there were a lot of teeth. Maybe I would take a stab at using my Crystal Magic on them, trying to shape the hard substance, though I had no idea if it would work.

And then there were the softer materials, multiple skin pouches and glands filled with various bodily fluids that Alex had harvested, all of which gave me some uncomfortable sensations from the powers contained within. Poison, Fire, Acid, the exact mixture of elements varied depending on the substance but all of them were dangerous in some way. Sadly, the same was true for the strange flesh of the beasts, making it largely unpalatable, especially to somebody like me. I didn’t even want to imagine how it would taste and, luckily, I didn’t need to find out, we still had enough supplies to last us a few more weeks, longer if we found or foraged for additional resources.

After checking what they had found, I continued my work on the shelter. The upside of everyone being here was that I could get some support from Luna, as we had additional eyes watching our surroundings. With the blessing of Hecate granting me some extra Astral Power, I could work a little faster and had an easier time pushing the contaminated soil away, allowing me to finish a somewhat comfortable shelter by the time we would normally start our rest.

To my surprise, Silva and Luna worked together once I was done, putting some sort of temporary blessing over the shelter, negating most of the uncomfortable Astral Power leeching from the soil around us. Once again, I could only observe the effect with fascination, wondering just how divine magic worked. Well, other than magically.