Morning came, and I started to prepare for the long day ahead of Garuda, who was still asleep.
Right, we have a lot of things to do today. First, we must set up this entire storage room to prepare for battle. I started looking around. Crates filled the space, making it extremely cramped.
"For that, we need to reduce the items here..."
I nodded to myself before taking the GoBro, which I left charging overnight, and my phone. As soon as I started the stream, many viewers came in and flooded me with curses.
"D*mn! Look at his face! They definitely f*cked!"
"Hvir! Cut feed! Unforgivable!"
"I'll stop following your page if you don't share the deets with us! :angry:"
As soon as I saw them comment livelily, I couldn't help but chuckle. These guys, despite all things, are still watching my boring stream. They really must be no-lifes, having nothing else to do in their lives.
"Right, right. I hear your pleas. However, you all have no proof, so stop with the accusation." I acted high and mighty, lightly stoking their anger. "Garuda's still asleep, so I'll be muting the phone. For now, I'll be moving the crates in this storage outside."
But first, before I could start, I needed to borrow a forklift. It's impossible to lift these crates barehanded, even with my level 2 strength.
After taking a glance at Garuda and checking that she was still asleep, I went out of the storage and went to the nearest elevator. From there, I went to the hardware floor and "borrowed" a forklift.
Although I've not driven one before, apart from using the forklift itself, controlling it should be similar to driving a manual car. That I have experience with.
After a few tries, I managed to drive it around without a problem. Before I headed down, I decided to take a few bags of quick-dry cement with me. These would be useful later on.
After leaving through the backdoor while driving backward down the ramp to avoid the forklift from tipping over, I carefully drove to the basement.
It took me a good few minutes before reaching the 10th floor, but I guess that's fine. After all, we have more than 17 hours remaining.
As soon as I reached the 10th underground floor, I quickly noticed Garuda, who was standing outside. She was carrying out the smaller crates, working ahead of me. Her actions really do seem more manly than mine.
"Good morning!"
I greeted her energetically, even waving my hands, but she just turned to me and muttered "Good morning" flatly before returning to her task.
"..."
That's it? I thought her attitude would change after what happened last night.
I suddenly felt awkward, seeing her act so indifferent. Wait, she's like this from the start, isn't she? So she's just acting as usual? Anyway, I'm afraid of taking a look at my vibrating phone to read the comments. I could already guess that they were all laughing at me like I was a joke.
After that, the two of us continued working nonstop.
As she was the one more used to driving the forklift, Garuda took charge of moving a portion of the crates outside. She also didn't place them randomly but strategically scattered them around, making blindspots for us to escape in case our hiding place was compromised.
I, on the other hand, began using the quick-dry cement, along with some bricks, and created a thick wall extending from the entrance for about five meters. There were gaps where I could swing my sword down and holes where Garuda could blast her flames.
I made sure to keep it about three bricks thick to not let the monsters destroy it easily. I worry about the way I anchored it to the floor, however, so it'll be troublesome if the monsters push against the walls instead.
I didn't build it too high, just enough to not let the giant wolves jump over it. Although I wanted to connect it to the ceiling, the bricks we have wouldn't be enough, so I had to be conservative about it.
"Here's the floodlights!"
After she finished moving the crates, she then began to work on my suggestion. First of all, we set a dozen floodlights on the furthest wall, all facing toward the entrance.
When the monsters come in, they will be blinded by the bright light, making it difficult for them to see us and giving us a free chance to land hits... or so was our plan. Honestly, even if it doesn't work the way we intended it to, having lights behind us makes it easier for us to see the enemies, so it works either way.
The weird thing is that, although I expected others to visit us here, nobody came. Not even Heartu or Charles. Maybe they're busy elsewhere? They weren't even in the stream, so I was beginning to worry.
Soon, all preparations were done. The brick wall was completed and was solid enough that it didn't even shake from my kick. Rather than it being firmly anchored to the floor, it was just plain heavy. Three layers were just a tad too thick, I guess?
Other than the defenses, we also prepared for our offense. Garuda did the same thing as the previous loop, creating a fire source a distance away from the entrance. She just set broken crates, flammable materials, and gasoline into one big mixed pile.
It was just around 8 p.m. when all the setup was over. Four hours remain until the attack starts. Although I woke up early, I wasn't feeling sleepy at all. Was it because of the tension in the air?
Even the chat turned empty after a while. The number of viewers doubled to about 30,000, though. Maybe they're trying to copy our setup here to prepare their place for the monster attack and are thus unable to chat.
Silence spread around. It was so quiet that we could hear the sound of each other's breathing. Then...
*GURURURURU!*
"...!"
A low, growling sound echoed. I quickly tensed, turning to where the sound came from, and saw Garuda holding her stomach with a red face.
"... I got hungry."
"..."
What a way to lessen the tension!