“The occupancy limit!” Laura yelled. She sprinted back out through the narrow corridor of webs to the front door. Hannah was unsteady on her feet but stubbornly stuck to Laura’s side.

  The front door wouldn’t budge. Laura yelled out to Nate and Brett on the other side. “It’s shut! Can you open it?”

  “It’s just flashing the occupancy limit at us,” Nate yelled back.

  “Maybe if I leave, one of them can come in,” Hannah said to Laura. She tugged on the door handle, but the door stayed firmly closed.

  “I’d like to leave!” Hannah announced, and gave the door another try.

  Error: Door will remain closed so long as party member(s) are actively engaged in fighting the boss.

  Nate and Brett had been the last to come in. Laura remembered that much. Oliver and Agnes were the first. Did that also mean they’d be the last to be kicked out? But who came after that? If she woke up someone else would it be Graham or Caroline that got kicked out?

  Laura pulled her shotgun out of her inventory and shoved it at Hannah along with several boxes of shells. They dashed back into the dining room, and Hannah took position next to Graham. He glanced over at Hannah for just a moment before he started pointing out targets for them to tag team. Hannah was only a Level 5, so it took two shots to one of Graham’s. Laura wasn’t convinced she would be any more effective at this point though.

  Laura ran over to the table, ignoring the cramping in her side. Thank god for the anti-nausea caramel. All this back and forth was really starting to get to her. She heaved herself up onto the table, and dodged another glob of acid to grab Oliver’s arm.

  He was still swinging away at the boss spider. He’d managed to chip away at its health bar, which was now down to 50%. Which meant he still had halfway to go before they could leave. And tendrils were starting to come down around them from the giant spider above them. Oliver continued to swing away with his scythe, either oblivious or uncaring. Agnes was so focused on keeping the table from being overrun with smaller mobs that she hadn’t seemed to have noticed either.

  “We are trapped in here until you stop fighting that thing,” Laura said. She shook Oliver’s arm. “Did you hear me? You need to stop.”

  He shook off her hand and then rounded on her. “This is exactly what I’m talking about,” he hissed at her, as bluish green fluid dripped from his scythe blade. “We’re running out of opportunities for experience here. Do you think a couple more Level 5s are going to help us get through that maze? I need to do this first and then we can get everyone out.”

  Laura dodged the tendrils that were starting to surround Oliver and beelined over to Graham and Caroline. Russell was still making the rounds punching out as many lower level mobs as he could get his hands on.

  “He’s not going to stop,” Laura said, pressing her fingers into her side, trying to get her breath back. “If we unwrap anyone else, one of you is going to get kicked outside.”

  “I guess we need to end this quickly then,” Caroline said.

  And that’s when everything went wrong.

  Agnes ran out of insecticide and was forced to fall back to their small cluster. “Here,” said Hannah, pushing the shotgun at her. “Something tells me you’ll have a better chance with this than I will.”

  Agnes waded back in with the shotgun, helping Russell to keep the area around the table clear. Not just for Oliver, but also for the people they hadn’t saved yet. And mobs kept pouring into the room from god knows where.

  Oliver, who was at a tipping point where he was about to be captured by the tendrils, had finally seemed to notice his predicament and was slicing through them as quickly as he could, but was in imminent danger of being overrun.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Caroline was laser focused on the far wall, where Laura now saw she was sending the marionettes climbing up the walls and towards the giant spider.

  “I thought I told you to take it easy,” Laura said, tracking the marionettes movement.

  “I don’t see you doing anything,” Caroline said, physically preparing herself for the marionettes to ambush the Level 8 boss. Even with the spider at 50% health, it was a big ask. “And we’re still trapped here,” she said through gritted teeth.

  Laura looked everywhere around the room, considering and discarding options as the marionettes got closer. The silverware was fancy but not nearly sharp enough to be a good weapon. Shards of plates were scattered across the rugs, but Laura was as likely to accidentally cut herself as injure one of the spiders, and it certainly couldn’t be better than her sickle. She needed something longer range. Something that could affect multiple spiders at once.

  Metal radiators stood at either end of the room. They were so in keeping with the condition and age of the rest of the house that Laura hadn’t even consciously noticed them until now.

  She ran to the nearest one and pulled out her sickle. Then she beat the sickle against the radiator as hard as she could. The reverberating sound shook her down to her bones. For good measure she scraped the blade of the sickle along the nearest pipe, creating a shrieking metallic sound that set her teeth on edge.

  The smaller spiders were nearly incapacitated by the sound, disoriented and frantically scurrying in circles, gnashing their fangs. The large Level 8 spider twitched violently, and started to pull its legs free one by one from the edges of the ceiling, raining plaster down below. Laura scraped her sickle against the radiator and then banged it as hard as she could, trying to let the reverberation from each strike last as long as possible.

  The giant spider went crashing down onto the table, crushing one half beneath it and sending Oliver flying, and trapping two of the wrapped bodies under it.

  “Mom!” Hannah yelled, running toward the table. Laura realized that the older woman with the short hair must have been her mom. Graham grabbed Hannah’s arm to stop her, keeping her well away from the giant spider.

  The boss spider flipped over, bringing it face to face with Oliver. He now had to scramble back to dodge its wickedly long and sharp fangs to avoid getting anywhere near them. A bite from something that size would be bad news even in the best of circumstances, but if he had a current debuff to spider venom it could easily be fatal.

  Caroline sent the marionettes diving straight towards the giant spider. One of the puppets fell on the spider’s head and then stabbed it in an eye with one of its arms. The other puppet fell in front of the advancing spider. None of it even slowed the spider down. With a vicious movement, the spider sent the puppet in front of it flying at Caroline where a flailing wooden leg hit her in the forehead. The trail of acid that followed it added injury to insult. “Shit!” Caroline stumbled back, tripping and falling to the floor.

  The spider lumbered towards Oliver, a puppet still clinging to its head with its arm buried deep in one of the spider’s eyes. The wood of the destroyed table creaked under its weight. Oliver continued to move backward up the tilted table until he had nearly reached the peak. Then he abruptly dropped and slid down the tilted table, falling underneath the spider to deliver the killing blow to the now exposed underbelly. Blue-green fluid covered him and the tablecloth, dripping down to the floor as he slid down to the bottom. The spider collapsed back down on the broken table and Oliver just barely managed to tumble past where the spider collapsed and landed in a pile of spider fluids and guts.

  Graham finally let go of Hannah, who ran to the last bundle still sitting undisturbed in its chair and looked at the hand that was sticking out and gripping the tablecloth. She sagged with relief. “That’s her ring. That’s my mom. But that means Mitch and Annie were under there.” She points to the two trapped people that the spider had fallen on. One was clearly crushed.

  Agnes and Laura went closer to check on them. Laura’s heart hammered in her chest. I’m the one who made the spider drop. I did this.

  Agnes shook her head, seeing the look on Laura’s face. “Look at the decay,” she said. “They were already dead.” Oddly that only made Laura feel a little better.

  Laura cut open the other much less damaged bundle, to find Mitch. Hannah hovered over him until he finally opened his eyes and took a deep breath, and then a rattling cough. He wriggled out of the wrappings and staggered to his feet. He was favoring one of his legs, but otherwise seemed none the worse for wear. “Itsy bitsy spider, my ass!” he said. From across the room Russell gave him a big smile.

  Laura quickly freed Hannah’s mom, who gave Hannah a big hug as soon as her arms were free.

  “Come on, let’s go!” Agnes said. “No sense keeping this fight going for nothing!”

  Laura looked around for Graham and Caroline, but they were both gone, presumably as soon as Hannah’s mom and Mitch had woken up. Russell hustled over to help Mitch hobble towards the exit. Hannah went to help her mom who didn’t look like she needed any help whatsoever. She even managed to take out a few mobs on her way out the door.

  The group sprinted towards the door. Laura’s heart clenched at seeing it still closed, but when Oliver reached for the handle it turned easily under his hand. He flung the door open and they all sprinted out into the cold night air.

  Brett and Nate stood unscathed on the front steps. Nate stepped forward as soon as they started pouring out the doors. He slammed the doors shut behind them as soon as the last of them made it out. “That was everyone, right?”

  Everyone stood taking stock. Graham and Caroline were outside now, as Laura had suspected. Caroline was still on the ground, but was sitting up now. Laura nodded. “That’s all of us.”

  Laura walked over to Caroline. She was sipping on a refresher soda, and still looked a bit pale. Laura held out a hand, and pulled Caroline to her feet. “Guess I’m not the only one who has to figure some stuff out,” she said to Caroline.

  Caroline smiled back. “Finally, someone’s showing some leadership skills,” she said.

  Mitch sagged back against the wall. “Well that was enough excitement to last a lifetime.”

  Russell slapped him on the shoulder. “And just think, we get to do this all again tomorrow.”