Chapter 47 Succes

The two were waiting it out, recovering some energy or stamina. Robert led Liam to the dead end, "The moment you see Lucas, we need to enter this room.", Robert pointed at a small room that was made with earth magic. "Once Lucas enters it we close the room off and then we're done. The spiders will go in, we break the circles, and boom, we win."

"Do you truly think it will be so easy?"

"No, not in the slightest, but at least the trap should take care of most of them, then we only need to deal with the stragglers.". The room was made by closing off the dead end with a wall made through magic. The wall still had an opening but they would close it when necessary. Liam looked at what Robert created and didn't think it was a bad idea, although there was something bothering him. "Won't we suffocate if we're stuck in there?"

"No, we can create air through magic, and we won't be staying in that room for the entire day. If things go as planned, we'll be done in a few minutes."

"I-I don't know what to say. You've done an excellent job here Robert, your father would be proud to know you've grown so much."

Robert was struck, he had been turning his gears in order to figure out how to impress his rival, but completely forgot about his own father. All the time spent with Lucas made him push all his worries about his own family aside. He felt free, even for just a moment, and a smile crept up on his face.

Liam went back to his post, scouting for any sign of Lucas. Robert on the other hand was done with his work and was questioning what he was doing. He could think of a few more things to do, but he wanted to save his energy from this point on. He started to get nervous, sweat started to collect on his forehead, to his relief, he wasn't the only one. Liam also started to get nervous from waiting for such a long time.

"Robert! He's here!"

With that warning, they saw Lucas running for his life. It looked like he held one of the legs of the steel spiders, yet it was a lot smaller than expected, 'Maybe he killed their child? Are they that attached to their offspring?'

"Run!", Lucas looked very pale, like all the energy he had was depleted, and it didn't take long to understand why. "What in goddess' name is that?"

A bigger spider with deeper blue skin was rushing after Lucas, it was faster than him so he had to occasionally dodge or block one of its attacks, a few attacks even scraping some of his flesh.

"Liam, distract it for a second!", the other spiders were a bit further behind the big one, meaning that if they wanted to kill most of the spiders, they needed to catch up.

Liam took his sword in his hands, waiting for Lucas to pass right beside him before swinging it at full strength at the spider. The monster was hyper-focused on Lucas, so Liam had a free opening. Once the spider made contact with the sword, it didn't split in two but rather got pushed back while one of its legs was damaged. A chip in the leg got removed, but the leg was still operable. Liam stood a second in surprise before someone grabbed the back of his clothes to pull him back. Returning to his senses he ran towards the opening of the wall.

They entered the room and Robert was ready to close the gap, but Lucas held his hand up to signal that he waits. The bigger spider was back on its legs and started to run again, Lucas threw the leg to try to distract it, which did work for a second. The other spiders started to flood the room. "Lucas, we need to close this door now!"

"No, not yet!", the spiders kept coming, filling up the room, crawling on the ceiling since there wasn't enough room on the floor.

"Lucas!"

"Not, yet!", they started to close in on the three, the ginormous spider in front, the flood of arachnids looked terrifying.

"NOW!", both Lucas and Robert started to use their magic to close the gap. Although Lucas used his remaining energy, it was mostly Robert who created the wall. One of the spiders was too close and got a leg through the gap. "Watch out!", Liam warned them before cutting the leg off, letting the others close the final gaps. Robert created light to light up the room.

"Huff, huff, what about the trap?"

"Hahaha, don't you worry, give it five seconds.", Lucas didn't really understand, he thought that the room would simply collapse if they used a bit of magic on the destabilized ceiling.

BOOOOM

A giant tremor spread through the room. "What the hell did you do?"

Robert had a big smile on his face "Are you impressed?"

He was quite proud of what he achieved. Lucas didn't know what he did but thought it had to do something with the strange circles of runes in the room. Robert explained what he created with a smug smile on his face. "Can you teach me these runes and circles?"

Robert would be happy to teach him, but then he got rid of his smile, "Of course, but I don't think we should do that when we're stuck in here.". They were in a small dead end of a cave, with a small light to let them see. Liam was thinking about the bigger spider, 'It was strong enough to not even get hurt by my sword. Will those explosions be enough?'

Lucas saw his pondering face before putting his worries to rest. "The big one isn't rank 1 if you're wondering. We can still kill it, the explosions should have already hurt it pretty bad. If it isn't dead yet, it won't take much to strike a killing blow.", Liam didn't look too certain while Robert wasn't sure as well. "If it is Rank 1 we wouldn't be alive, so I guess that's true."

"So you knew that monsters had different ranks?"

"Of course, you do realize that I have private lessons right?", with that Lucas was a bit downtrodden from all the information that others got handed to them on a platter. While he had to work and figure everything out himself.

"How were you planning on getting out of here by the way? Earth magic?", confirming his thoughts, they didn't immediately go ahead and go back. They waited until Lucas had some energy back, in case of emergencies. They didn't have any trouble getting out of the room as most of the monsters were dead. Clearing a path they found many legs, eyes, and bodies of the spiders. They didn't look all too appealing and left an awful smell.

Even the big blue one wasn't anywhere to be seen, 'Looks like the explosion did it.'

'That, or the tons of rocks'

Liam was right behind Robert while Lucas was covering their back. They made it back out and were back in the normal cave system, there were a few cracks in the walls and it looked a lot more unstable. But they didn't care about that, as long as they could make it out they were happy enough.

"Let's get out of here.", Liam wanted to back home, he had lost his comrades, and his friends, he needed his family to come to terms with reality. Robert was tired and wanted to sleep in a nice bed again. Lucas on the other hand wanted to test something out. He didn't know whether all the spiders were killed, he didn't want to fight again, but wanted to see if something worked.

He still had a dirt ball with him. Right at the entrance of the mine, he placed it down before destroying it. There was nothing but air inside of it, but that was as expected. There were multiple things he wanted to check with this little experiment.

They started to pack their things up, the carriages were made ready and they left immediately. They didn't want to stay any longer, they wanted to rest. Lucas was in the back, with the excuse of covering their back. The mine was quiet, there wasn't any movement.

'It's time.'

'I know, don't worry, I know what to do.'