They waited until Lucas could move his hands properly, although his plan worked, it was quite shabby and filled with holes. His hands still hurt a lot and a few more light spells were necessary to completely heal them. Still, it did work partially, so Lucas was happy with it. After a bit of physical therapy, Lucas was back in action, even though they had to wait until the sun went down.
"Now, how do you figure we do this? Do we just go back in and hope for the best or do you have a plan?", Robert posed that question to both of his companions, he figured that Liam would be the best when it came to making plans, and Lucas when it came to handling beasts. Letting them think together they could probably form a pretty decent plan, but Liam wasn't in the mood for any hard thinking. "We go in, kill whatever we find, and move on."
"Don't you think that's a bit too on the nose? Don't we have any other options?" Robert really didn't want to just go back in without any kind of strategy.
Lucas hadn't said anything, he was still thinking about something when inspiration struck his mind. "Are any of you good at trapmaking?"
"Are you worried about food? I know how to trap a rabbit, perhaps I can catch a boar so don't worry too much about that. Plus, we still have one of the supply carriages, now that we're the only ones left we've enough for a week."
"That's not what I meant, let's say that I can bring every spider to a certain location, would you be capable of killing them all at once?", the others were skeptical about Lucas' claim, but then started to think if they were capable of that. "Killing them all at once is not going to be easy, one by one is doable but all at once?"
Liam had a few ideas on how he could kill them all one by one, after all, his artifact was strong enough to split a single spider in two. It required a lot of energy, but with enough time, they could kill them all individually. "Making a big pit with spears in them would only kill two max, ambushing them would also only work once."
Lucas could use the trick he used last time to lure the remaining spiders to him, but that would only work if there was only one single female spider in the nest. Otherwise, it wouldn't completely work, but Lucas wanted to give it a try nonetheless. "How much of the cave is used for actual mining?"
Robert didn't really see the purpose of that question, Liam was in the same boat, but didn't think Lucas would say that without any reason. "As far as I know, there are a few shafts that are mainly used for mining, there are a few dead ends that didn't contain that many minerals and were skipped for now. What are you thinking?"
"Does the baron still need those parts of the mine? Eventually, he probably needs them, but for now, the mine must become active again, meaning that the places they don't mine aren't important, right?"
"That's not entirely true, but go ahead."
"If we get every spider in one of those dead ends, couldn't we just collapse that part of the mine?"
"And make the rest of the mine cave in as well? Are you kidding me?", but before Liam could continue with his rant Robert came to the rescue. "We can avoid a further collapse if we reinforce the places around the cave-in with earth magic. If we made them a bit stronger it should hold the rest intact."
"You've got to be joking with me, are you actually considering his idea? You know that you could die as well right? You're not immortal even if you can use magic."
"I know all too well how fragile my life is, don't you worry about that, and if you can't take confidence in me, place it in magic."
Out of helplessness, Liam agreed with the plan to try to collapse a part of the mine to kill the monsters that were left. If the strongest in the party and his own master's son want it, how could he object? It was reckless and unnecessary, they could've just hunted them one by one. Liam didn't want to try something so risky.
"If you think you'll find all of those spiders one by one I'll wish you good luck. For your information, when an animal comes into contact with something life-threatening, they tend to avoid that in the future. If you were to go looking for them, they would simply avoid all contact with you. Don't even bother sneaking up to them because they would hear your clanky armor."
"I already said that I was fine with the plan."
"That may be, but you clearly don't like it as well.", they were a lot more relaxed after some bickering. The last few days were quite stressful, so joking around, teasing each other made them lose some of that pressure. On their way to a dead end that was large enough to hold at least a few monsters, they talked about how they would plan the collapse.
Most dead ends were too small, but they found an empty space somewhere the miners wouldn't go so they used that. Increasing the density of the surrounding walls and tunnels took a lot of time, but they had all the time they needed. After all, most monsters were avoiding them.
Increasing the density of the attaching mine shafts wasn't too difficult, it was the instability that they needed to introduce that was the most troublesome. "Lucas, do you have any ideas on how we can make this place collapse without getting ourselves caught in the debris?"
"Hmm, I was thinking of something else, so I don't have any plans at the moment, maybe we can fire some fire spears the moment they enter?"
"Wouldn't that require us to be in the room while they pour in?"
"Ah.."
While Liam and Lucas were devising some plan on how to collapse the cavern, Robert interrupted them with a smile filled with confidence. "Leave that to me, I'll have it done by the time you return."
'Are you going to trust him?'
'Why wouldn't I, he doesn't have any reason to lie or hold us back. His life is as much on the line as ours.'
"Alright, then I'll leave it to you."
"Yes! I'll take care of it, you'll be impressed even."
"Hahaha, I'm already looking forward to it."
"Lucas, the attaching shafts are reinforced, Robert will create the trap itself, all that's left is the bait. How are you planning to get the spiders to come here?"
"Give me some time, when I return, they'll all be following me, so be ready to act fast."
"You sure I don't need to help?"
"No Liam, it's better for me to do this alone.", they knew about Lucas' spell that could hide his smell and some of his presence. But Lucas convinced them that it was better to make the least amount of sounds as possible, meaning that going alone was the best bet.