I held the man to me as he cried. I was very grateful he was alive, but I felt both guilty and awkward. I kept repeating the same bullshit, not quite willing to lower myself to the point of calling him some sappy name, but close.

Was I even helping?

It sounded like he was crying harder. Jesus.

If there is a God—

“I got it! I found it!” A voice yelled through the cavern, footsteps pattering up to us.

It’s Lawrence. Lawrence is God.

“I found the… Oh.”

It’s quiet, and I shifted back, my visor no longer hidden by the man’s chest and arms as I stared at Lawrence, “Drink it. You need it if you got hit by their claws, they had poison or something.”

In spite of my hopes, the man didn’t let go. Lawrence walked up, looking awkward. After a long moment of staring at him, I reached an arm out.

Lawrence looked even more awkward.

“We survived doing something really stupid to save this guy, come on,” I urged, hoping the group hug would get the man to let go of me sooner.

I didn’t mind comforting him, but I knew first-hand that if you cried too hard you couldn’t let go even if you wanted to. I was obviously making the guy worse, he was clinging to me pretty hard.

Did I say something mean?

Shit, was he crying over the virgin comment?

Come on, Lawrence! My eyes met his chocolate brown ones through the visor. Please, come on, save us both from this.

Lawrence finally relented, and I’d never felt more relieved in my life. Lawrence the God of Saving My Ass From Awkward Situations. The greatest God, in my opinion.

After downing the potion, he looked a lot less tired, and he tightly embraced us. Exactly five seconds later I released Lawrence, Lawrence released me and the guy, and the guy finally-thankfully released me.

I took a step back, nodding at my ingenious plan. A group hug always ended quickly, and no hugs continued after it because group hugs were Too Awkward. Perfect.

Was it too narcissistic to call myself a genius? No, not at all.

I was a genius.

I looked around as I nodded. Were health potions rare? It took him like five to ten minutes—an eternity in hug-time—to get here and save my ass. I would have been long dead by that point, poor guy.

“So, now that we’re all healed up, let’s go rest in the safety of the tunnel we came from. I’m exhausted and I don’t think we got them all,” I decided, walking toward the tunnel after finding the boss room, “Hey, dude, what’s your name?”

The one thing I did not expect was a silken wholly composed and prideful response, his voice giving off aristocratic vibes in spite of his American accent, “I am Vincent.”

I nodded once. Ah, so that was why no one believed him. Understandable, still shitty. Poor guy, “Huh. Okay.”

At least he wasn’t dead weight like Lawrence. Who knows, though? Lawrence had blood on him, he got scratched. Maybe he joined the fight before Vincent and I were out of it.

I doubted it. Did he only save us because he knew he’d not survive without us?

Asshole.

We wandered to our cramped tunnel, relaxing within. I flat-out laid down. The ground was cold and rough and the most comfortable platform I’d ever laid on in my entire life.

“Kay. Lawrence, you keep watch. I’m sleeping. Vincent, try and rest too. If you can’t, keep watch too.”

“W-wait, shouldn’t we, you know, leave?” Lawrence stuttered, “We have torches now! We can get through the spiders!”

“The spiders?” Vincent asked. I found my comfortable resting place invaded as Vincent scrambled over me, “Shit!”

“Calm down,” I muttered tiredly, “And no, we can’t leave until we kill everything except the boss. Remember? Do you really want all of those spiders out in the real world, Lawrence? Do you want them crawling everywhere? They’re babies, too, man, do you want to live life scared on the outside because we allowed these things to live? Do you want to walk to work only to see a giant web covering your building and the thing on the ceiling crawling around eating your coworkers?”

I kept talking until Lawrence looked suitably pale, turning toward the unoccupied web and closing my eyes.

Despite my mental energy being at its lowest, my body was bursting with energy. How frustrating, I couldn’t sleep. With a heavy sigh, I sat up.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Fine, fine. I would explain things to Vincent, I would calm down Lawrence, and we would set up a plan.

“Okay, fine. So I asked what you were doing in here but never told you what we were,” I mentioned as I dragged myself to be against the wall, only a few inches away from the abandoned web.

Looking to the side, I saw Lawrence curled up with his knees up and his arms wrapped around them, his head tucked between his knees. Vincent was next to me, looking as exhausted as I felt and just as energetic.

“We came in here willingly, evidently, because if we don’t, after three months those things will all gear up to leave and probably destroy New York City. Which would suck,” I explained, gesturing at the web and then at the flickering fires along the wall.

To my great relief, the fires didn’t look like they ever planned on going out, which was great.

“If you want, we can escort you to the exit through here,” I gestured at the webs again, feeling my hand bounce off and feeling the small thrum that danced along the silken threads, “Since they’re all afraid of fire.”

Vincent glanced at the webs, then spoke slowly, his voice hesitant, “We can use the torches to keep them away while killing them off one-by-one.”

Looking to the side, I was surprised.

Oh, yeah. We’ll have to kill them all anyway, right? Glancing at Lawrence, I hesitated. His long limbs were wrapped around his form tightly, his knuckles white and his form shaking.

I doubted he’d be of much help.

“Sure, yeah, sounds good.”

I stood up, grabbing two torches and my baseball bat, giving one of the torches to Vincent. In his hands was also a weird club about the size of his torso, the same crystals that the goblins’ dropped in the top. The wood looked like it grew up and around the crystal, which I found interesting.

Vincent and I stood side-by-side. I felt really relaxed even as I stared out at an arachnophobe’s worst nightmare.

Finally. Someone at least somewhat reliable.

My bat swung out, gently collecting the silk of the abandoned web. After, I carefully dropped it in a pile on the ground. It landed with a hissing thud.

The spider resting on the web suddenly shrieked, scrambling back. I jolted, taking a step back. Glancing to the side, I saw Vincent breathing heavily at the sudden scare. I collected the web and put it next to the other.

All of the barriers between us and the tunnel were gone, now, and Vincent and I walked forward. Sometimes, eyes glittering gold, a spider gently set itself on the ground facing us.

Bat swinging out brutally, I smacked the gold out of the spider’s eyes. What, were these magic spiders?

A loud, sickening crunch echoed out as my bat slammed into its face. It scrambled back, but my boot reached out and stomped on its hairy leg, preventing its escape.

Just a magical construct. Just a magical construct.

It took five full-force hits just to destroy a spider, and by the time it died several spiders simply ran, only one or two staying to fight.

Despite me doing most of the work, Vincent occasionally asked for a break, sweat soaking through him and his fingers trembling around the club and torch he held.

How impressive. Even with arachnophobia the man was able to stay by my side.

Glancing behind me, I saw we’d only gone about twenty feet. Shrugging, I nodded, and we walked back to the camp.

We did this several times, and Vincent frequently asked if we could go down other spider-infested tunnels.

As we explored and fought surprisingly easy-to-kill spiders, we found several other giant goblin rooms. There were eight in total, including the one Vincent had been dragged to, and they all connected to the same thing, the Boss Room.

If the boss room was the center-point, that would mean that Lawrence was currently curled up on the right side, three caverns in, and that Vincent and I had explored all the tunnels between there and two of the left-side caverns.

The smaller tunnels seemed infinite, but the spiders within went down easy, dissolving into spider-bits and large things of silk.

The reason it was taking us so long was because I had insisted on carrying all the silk I got to the entrance, stacking up several me-tall piles of silk.

My bed would be the most comfortable bed on the planet, after this, with silk blankets and sheets and even a silk robe and everything. My socks would be made of silk.

I would breathe silk and live a life of luxury after I helped stop the apocalypse.

Hell yeah.

Millions of spiders later, we wandered through empty tunnels without any webs in them.

“How do you think Lawrence is?” I asked Vincent, who looked both invigorated and exhausted, sweat soaking through his long strands of hair.

I’d never seen someone manage to fully soak their hair with sweat when it went to their waist, so seeing drops of sweat dripping off of his hair impressed me.

Vincent wasn’t always idle, sometimes going forward and stabbing the spiders with the part of the club he held, which I found odd. If it was a club why didn’t he swing it crystal-first? Weird.

“I’m sure he’s okay,” Vincent replied easily, dropping his torch for a moment to wring out his hair. The splattering sound of sweat made my nose scrunch, “We got rid of all the spiders, and there weren’t more than ten or twenty goblins left in the cavern.”

Both he and I were exhausted. I glanced at the glowing man. He wasn’t literally glowing, but his skin looked even more smooth than it had before, his hair looked more silken than before even soaked in sweat as it was, and his green eyes looked brighter, almost, seeming less muddy and more clear.

It was an interesting thing to see. Did I just not pay attention earlier? Did he always look like this?

“I guess we’ll see soon anyway,” I agreed.

The walk back was as quiet as the combat had been, and soon we came across a pacing man. Lawrence glanced up, freezing at the sight of us.

“You came back,” He said, sounding very relieved.

What, did he think we’d abandoned him? Or… wait, he didn’t think we died, did he? How little confidence in us did he have?

Well, whatever. Gesturing at the edge of the tunnel with firelight coming from it, I spoke, “There’s seven more of those we have to get through, and we also have to lure the adolescent spiders down somehow. Maybe destroy the five bonfires?”

“Adolescent spiders?” Vincent asked.

I nodded, “Yeah, on the ceilings of the goblin caverns.”

“Oh, I believe I can convince it to come down,” Vincent said with full confidence, striding to the cavern.

There were five goblins. One of their eyes flickered gold, and Lawrence and I, who had followed Vincent, watched as the goblin turned and tore into the others before ripping out its own throat.

Huh. Some kind of magical disease?

Before I could think much of it, a very large spider carefully descended from the ceiling.

Lawrence made a strained whimpering noise in the back of his throat.

For once, I agreed with him.

Ten spiders the size of a bus in body and a building in legs set down, their malicious gazes focused on us three.