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.", Robert hadn't thought out the exact details yet, but he believed only a few would be left alive. Just having Liam fend them off while Robert and Lucas fought against them would be enough.
Closing off the dead end with a wall made through magic, Robert hoped to escape the brunt of the explosion from the arrays. The would-be conjured wall would still have 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.", Liam said, but the nervousness in his voice was extremely present. While Robert looked proud, to Liam, this whole idea was flimsily put together.
'Why did I leave my life in the hands of a bunch of kids?', they were smart, Liam wouldn't deny that. Sadly, this plan weighed their lives, if they screwed up that would be the end of the story.
Luckily Robert didn't pick up his uncomfortableness as he was lost in his thought.
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, which Liam didn't like all that much.
Putting confidence in something he had no knowledge off didn't sit well with him. Sadly, this was the plan they were going with. Having no choice, he abided and moved back to the other side of the tunnel to scout for any sign of Lucas.
Robert on the other hand was done with his work and was questioning what else he could do. Yet even if there were some things, he wanted to save his energy from this point on. Waiting in silence, the adrenaline in his veins ran thin.
Staring at the arrays, he started to see that they weren't drawn perfectly. Many runes were a bit off and the lines that were meant to couple them felt crudely drawn. As the time passed slowly, his confidence was starting to fall.
What if they didn't work? What if he failed, and they would be buried inside this place? What if his wall was made too thin and would be blown apart? What if the area he created supports for would cave in as well?
Questions started to haunt his mind as panic slowly started to set in. Sweat started to collect on his forehead, as his hands clammed up. Seeing Liam in the distance, he hoped to get some relief from the man, yet the panicked look on his face told him more than enough.
"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?', was a random thought that rushed through Robert's mind as he was shaken out of his stupor.
This wasn't the time to panic about what he created or be nervous on how this plan would end. All that mattered was that he tried his absolute best, and he needed to believe in himself to make this end the way it should be.
"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's 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!", Lucas yelled out, not for no reason. The other spiders were a bit further behind the big one, meaning that if they wanted to kill most of the spiders, they had to catch up, and they couldn't expect the big one to generously wait.
Liam grabbed the hilt of his artifact with both his hands, resolution engraved on his face, 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 had to wait. The bigger spider was back on its remaining legs and started to rush towards them again, Lucas threw the leg to try to distract it, which did work for a second.
The big form of the spider in front of them was intimidating, but more so what happened behind it. The other spiders started to flood the room. "Lucas, we need to close this door now!", Robert's voice was shaky as it got increasingly loud.
"No, not yet!", the spiders kept coming, filling up the room, crawling on the ceiling since there wasn't enough room on the floor. The tapping of hundreds of legs at the same time afflicted their ears.
"Lucas!", Liam yelled as he saw the mass of legs rapidly approach them.
"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, a small amount of green blood shot out as the wall quickly closed the room off. They could hear the bodies of the monsters behind the wall push against it. They all needed a moment to calm their hearts as their fear was growing. Robert created light to light up the room to at least save them from this darkness and inspect the wall.
"Huff, huff, what about the trap?", Lucas quickly asked as this wall wouldn't be able to withstand the might of all those monsters.
"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. They could hear only for a moment what seemed to be a cave in. Then it turned completely silent. There were no noises from beyond the wall.
Lucas tried his absolute best but couldn't hear anything. The explosion was something far beyond anything he had seen. Even Venion hadn't used such a power.
"What the hell did you do?"
Robert had a big smile on his face that was drenched in sweat. "Are you impressed?", an exhaustive laugh escaped his mouth as Liam couldn't help but smile in relief. A big sigh escaped his mouth as a victorious feeling filled his heart.
They needed a moment to collect themselves. Their plan, while flimsy, worked, and for now, they were safe. Frankly, they were running on fumes, and needed rest soon.
Robert was quite proud of what he achieved, while Liam didn't know what to think. He knew magic was powerful, but to get rid of so many monsters at once, his boundaries were expanded tremendously.
Lucas didn't know what Robert or how he achieved such a show of power, but thought it had to do something with the strange circles of runes in the room he only saw for a few seconds.
"Can you teach me those runes and circles?", Lucas asked as he thought what he would be able to do if he knew how it worked. His thirst for knowledge remained unquenched despite their tired state.
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?', worries still haunted him. If they opened this wall would they be ambushed?
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. But then he realized why Lucas was so certain.
"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.'