“Did I break you?” Asked the evil girl besides me.

  “Did your gaydar break?” She snickered again.

  She was having too much fun lately; maybe I should remind her that we were literally surrounded by spiders…

  “Apparently, I didn’t notice. In any case, do it as a personal favour; tell him that I’m not gay and I’m not interested.”

  She was having trouble containing her laughter. “We did already, you know? But his answer was, and I quote, “I can fix that”.” She stopped as she erupted in a fit of hysterical laughing. I stopped too for not exposing her outside the barrier.

  I wasn’t amused, not at all.

  “I should have let him die…” I murmured.

  She laughed even harder if it was possible; tears were running down her face.

  I decided to focus on killing some more spiders to relieve some stress. This was ridiculous; the only thing that I missed was a gay guy after me in the tutorial, ridiculous. And the worst part was that with all the magic around us, I wasn’t even sure about the “fix” part; you could probably do some nasty shit with the right potion or spell.

  I started killing more and more spiders; they were never-ending, for real. Can’t a man have some peace in life? I never asked for more than having peace… maybe that was the problem; maybe I should have asked for much more. I will.

  As Rhea got back her wits, she stopped, still breathing heavily, and removed the tears from her eyes.

  “Wooo, if I had my makeup on, it would have been ruined. But I needed that, sorry…” She clearly wasn’t sorry.

  I shook my head. “It’s fine; no way in hell that’s going to happen, but that’s that. Now that you got it out of your system, let’s go. I think we are nearly arrived. How are your preparations?”

  “Fine, fine, I have decided already on the ritual to use and modified it accordingly; it will be strong enough, I’m certain. But what was that thing you said about Alya?”

  This was the perfect moment to stop answering questions unrelated to the situation at hand. “Good, then let’s proceed. The spiders are stronger and higher level; it’s a matter of minutes probably. These tunnels can’t be that much deeper.”

  “Hey, what did you mean about Alya?” As I went forward, she was forced to follow. “Elias, answer me!”

  I snickered too. Who was laughing now?

  “Focus; we are deep in enemy territory.”

  She pouted; it was cute but not enough to sway me. “You’re evil…”

  Oh, you have no idea; the thoughts in my head scare even me sometimes.

  “Mmm, maybe, but we are here.”

  The spiders started to retreat into a cavern that the glow of the barrier could not reach, yet we advanced until the opening. Well, now I understood why there were so many spiders.

  “We are dead…” Rhea looked petrified besides me.

  And it was a sensible reaction; the cave was looking like an open-pit mine, just that we were still inside the mountain. Every level was infested with spiders; there were probably thousands of them skittering around, but most were little – well, little in the fact that they were the size of a soccer ball, but nothing compared to the adult versions.

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  There were some bioluminescent crystals scattered around, on the ceiling, in formations and on the walls – not enough to light the place up well, but enough to not go around blindly.

  While I was looking around, Rhea took my arm. “It was a mistake; there are too many. We can’t manage to kill them all; it’s impossible… we need to go back.”

  “I can take them.” She looked at me as if I were crazy.

  “I already killed more than a hundred; the only problem is if the barrier breaks, and I’m positive that I can make it strong enough to keep us safe. I will clear the spiders, then you will prepare the ritual. I bet whatever you want that the Baron is in that giant alcove over there.”

  She didn’t look convinced. “How do you know that the barrier is going to hold? Elias, if they swarm us from all sides, it will crumble anyway…”

  I shook my head. “No, the spiders with the strongest physical attack are big. I will say that a maximum of six or seven could actively attack the barrier at the same time, fewer if I make it smaller. Their ranged attacks are not powerful; they rely on poison and webs to take down their prey, and we are not prey. We came here to hunt that baron; follow me.”

  I marched on; inside the cave, many of the spiders who retreated before stood arrayed in a semicircular formation around the opening, and as soon as we stepped outside, a barrage of ranged attacks pinged off the barrier, but it held remarkably well.

  After gaining those last achievements, I was stronger than ever, and considering that these spiders themselves were kindly providing the fuel for my spells, I wasn’t scared of the numbers; actually, my strategy wouldn’t work well with fewer numbers and stronger enemies, so this was for the better.

  “Prepare yourself” I told Rhea. She wasn’t thrilled about all of this, but I wasn’t going to walk back after I came all the way here; after all, I was doing it for her… more or less.

  I reinforced the barrier; the external layer became way thicker, and I added more darts/blades. It started to look like a golden porcupine, but it was working, and well. All the projectiles were deflected, and spiders were starting to approach and get shredded. The more that died, the more they came; it looked like they were getting into a frenzy with the amount of skittering I was hearing all around us.

  By now we were surrounded, and they were coming from all sides and above. I had to add some blades on the top to kill them.

  Between all the noise and chaos Rhea was shaking like a leaf; she held onto my left arm and avoided looking. Honestly, for someone with arachnophobia, she was doing great, but I had the situation in hand; I was feeling the strain, juggling all the flows of energies, the skills, and the hexes, and keeping the barrier constantly reinforced was starting to get hard.

  The life force I was stealing was like always a fantastic tonic; it was even too good. Maybe it was messing with my head a little; I felt like I could do anything. It was like a drug; I was high on life! I laughed at that, while an uncountable number of spiders crashed onto me and simply got torn apart. The visuals were the thing of nightmares; all kinds of spiders, in various shapes and sizes, were trying to pass through the barrier, only to get violently slashed and see their limbs fly away, then their bulging abdomens were cut open, and their insides spilt outside. All of this was happening in front of our faces, not even three feet away, and after a moment a spider died and another was replaced.

  I started to walk, holding onto Rhea's waist. I reduced the size of the barrier further, speeding up the rotation and allowing fewer monsters to attack at the same time. I didn’t want to get bogged down by the sheer amount of dead bodies around us, so we went forward, and more and more spiders died. I was killing them too fast; I had to constantly reapply the drain to another spider, then another and another. They simply threw themselves at us without end.

  After a bit I reached the edge of the first level of the giant pit in the middle of the cave; now a lot of little spiders were trying to bite the barrier too, only to get splattered away by one of the blades, their bodies too frail to even resist one hit.

  I walked around the edge so that the bodies could fall down, allowing me some more visibility. The amount of spiders was decreasing little by little; they were all dying, coming at me like moths attracted to a flame. As soon as I was starting to think that it would be a walk in the park to clear this place, a shrill call came from the other side of the cavern.

  I could barely see with all the monsters around me, but apparently some other type of spider was approaching. Some space cleared as they retreated, and I managed to see half a dozen giant, heavily armoured, dark grey spiders. The call came from them, and the other listened. These ones weren’t like the fodders; these were the elites. It was like the gorgons, the exact same scenario. Just that this time it was me who had to deal with them, while Rhea will face the boss. Speaking of the boss, where was it? This whole massacre wasn’t enough to draw it out apparently, but maybe it will come after I deal with these ones.

  Let’s see how strong you really are…