"Ethan, what are you doing here?"
"He can't understand you, and if we don't run away soon, he will kill us."
"Yeah, how could I forget that we are spiders? You're right, we should run now!"
The two spiders turned around and fled, while Ethan just looked at the two cowardly spiders in surprise. Until now, he was always attacked by every spider he saw. But he didn't chase after them since his main objective was to find his mother.
As Johanna and the shapeshifter fled from Ethan, Johanna suggested that maybe he should turn himself into a cat or something, and then they could just turn around and greet Ethan normally. The shapeshifter agreed with her and turned back into a cat, while Johanna tried her best to turn back into her original self.
The shapeshifter waited and took a close watch over where Ethan would be coming from while Johanna tried her best to return to normal again. Once Johanna turned into her original self again, she picked up the shapeshifter and walked back towards Ethan.
Ethan was about to turn around until he could hear the clacking of high heels on the stone floor of the cave approaching him. He quickly turned around and hoped that it would be Johanna, and to his luck, his wish was fulfilled, but unexpectedly for him, she wasn't alone. Johanna was holding a small black cat in her arms and approuched him with a wide smile.
"Thank God, Ethan, I would have died if you hadn't come down here."
"Mom, where have you been? What have you been doing? And what is this cat doing here?"
"Don't worry, Ethan, I saw this cat once I fell down here, and since there were all these spiders here, I thought that I should bring it back up too, but that checky little cat decided to run away, so I chased it, but I was slowed down by my leg injury, but now I got it, and we can return to the surface."
Ethan nodded understandingly but was sure that it wouldn't have been worth the risk if it were him, but he also knew that his mother was on a different level and that he probably shouldn't worry about her too much.
Johanna let a few things out of the strory so that Ethan and Noah wouldn't have any bad feelings about themselves. But that didn't matter to her any more since she was just happy to get out of the cave and return to the surface.
"But you know, Ethan, this cave system is huge; if we were able to eliminate the spiders, we could drastically expand our cave."
"You are right, but we aren't sure how many exits there are, how big this whole system is, or how large these spiders get."
"My first idea was to exterminate them manually, but I thought of a way smarter method."
"And what would that be?"
The "cat" also looked up since he was also curious.
"Well, why don't we just throw down a huge amount of wood, light it on fire, and let the smoke suffocate them all? We will feed the fire with oxygen from our cave, and the smoke of the fire has to be blown out somewhere, and that would be at the other exits of the cave, which we would easily be able to spot since there would be giant smoke clouds coming out of the floor, which we simply would have to fill up."
"That idea does sound good, but it could also cause the spider to escape out of the cave through these exits, and since we don't know how many of them there are, we could cause a "natural" disaster for humans."
"Youre right, but we could also cover up the attacks on the mines, and the spiders wouldn't dare attack us since the fire started right beneath the onyl entrance to our base."
"Well, we can discuss this after we get out of this cave, but I think that your idea is pretty good."
After that, the group departed and walked back to the entrance. As they got closer, they came across more and more goblins who were all looking for Johanna. But once Johanna saw the true extent of the rescue mission for her, she was truly shocked, since once they arrived back in the first cave, she saw hundreds of dead spiders and tens of dead and heavily injured golbins.
"Did you fight a war down here, and why did you bring so many people to rescue me? You know I'm strong enough to take care of myself."
Ethan didn't answer, and Johanna was truly shocked and saddened by the fact that so many goblins had to die while she was enjoying her time. Ethan remained silent and just walked over to another goblin and asked him what happened. Johanna thought that Ethan knew what happened down here, but it didn't seem like he had any idea either.
The goblin reported that after the expedition force ventured down there, a huge amount of spiders suddenly attacked their base, and they had to fight them all off. It was a long and fierce battle, but they came out victorious. Johanna felt even worse now, but since they theoretically had their burning material, she knew how she could avenge the fallen goblins.