It wasn't technically everything coming for them. The B Grade wasn't moving, and Stanley felt like the more distant Souls weren't approaching either. But everything else nearby was coming their way, including another Soul that felt similar to the one they had just killed.

Eve left a horde of spider bodies in her wake but scrambled through the door right before it arrived.

Stanley watched behind her as more and more spiders appeared from the surrounding buildings. Luckily, they were not a unified force, and Eve was able to escape from the tide during a lull in the rush. That left the latecomers unsure of who or what to attack, and they congregated instead around the body of the fallen giant.

The relatively small spiders were joined only moments later by the new giant. It halted its oncoming rush at the corpse of its fallen kin, and Stanley was grateful that Eve had led the behemoth away from them before killing it, as it seemed these spiders didn't know where to find them.

"Next one's yours," Eve said, "I kinda used up a lot of my ammunition on the first one. Fucker was tough!"

"I don't think that's going to be an option…" The new giant spider was joined by a second one and then a third. Further out, Stanley could sense something else approaching, something big but diffuse… and high up.

Meanwhile, the smaller variants were still spilling out of the buildings. Mostly they came from the building overhead since that was the only one Stanley hadn't heavily depopulated. Otherwise, they crawled in from farther away.

Stanley's spear was still buried in the street where he'd impaled it through the spider, and he left it there for now while the other monstrous spiders sniffed around.

Stanley remembered the earlier spider following Eve's Soul withdrawal and then somehow finding their hiding spot… So he did the only thing he could think of and spread his Soul, and with it, the Soul Shield, to encompass the entire truck. He didn't know if it would help but figured it was worth a shot.

Eve noticed and looked at him. She didn't say anything, though, and Stanley realized that he was muttering his thoughts aloud. He ignored that for now and instead asked quietly, "Eve, do you have any machines out there?"

She pointed up and said, "just one on the roof." Which meant that she was probably seeing some of what was out there.

Despite the spider's focus on the corpse up the street, the sheer size of the creatures meant that they were still far too close. All it would take was a single step to bring them within striking distance, and with how many smaller spiders were running around, it was only a matter of time until one of them tried to climb the illusory rubble hiding them.

They couldn't stay here, and yet they couldn't leave either. Maybe if Daryl was here to hide them under an…

Stanley got an idea.

Daryl's illusions were basically just a trick of the light, at least from a distance. Stanley had made light before, and it was still within the limits of his power now. If he could create light, then could he alter it as well? It should be doable, especially with his Mind Over All Skill. The question was if he could do it without waking the Source.

"I'm going to try something," Stanley said softly, "let me know…"

"We heard you," Eve interrupted, "just get on with it."

"Right." Stanley focused on what he wanted; to hide them from sight.

"You're a blob of darkness," Eve supplied, "not very sneaky in the daylight, but looks fucking creepy." Meanwhile, Caffeine stood up and licked his cheek, apparently not a fan of the darkness either.

Stanley shifted his approach. He couldn't simply block the light but needed it to bend around him without disrupting the path otherwise. He gently applied his Will to the problem… and felt Eve's surprise before she spoke.

"That did it."

Caffeine's nose poked into his face, and a tongue whacked his cheek. Stanley opened his eyes and saw… nothing. "Of course." Fortunately, it wasn't much different from how he usually interacted with the world, and the darkness wouldn't be a problem.

"It looks a bit weird by Caffeine's feet," Eve said.

Stanley pushed the effect out to include the pug while holding Caffeine close. "I'm still here, Caff."

Eve confirmed that Caffeine had vanished, and then Stanley went for the whole truck.

He wasn't trying to affect anything to do with the actual people or the truck itself, only redirecting the light around them, so he hoped it would be doable. Stanley felt the issue before Eve chimed in again.

"That just looks weird."

It wasn't working. Stanley could feel the range at which his ability to fully affect the light ended. It was right at the edge of his new Domain. "Come stand next to me."

Eve grumbled, but they both moved closer.

"Can your camera see us?" Stanley asked after willing the light to bend around them.

"I can't see shit," Eve said, "and no, the camera can't see us."

"That'll work, I hope." Stanley didn't know why it wouldn't work further away. It was just light, supposedly massless particles that should be easy as shit to move slightly aside. Of course, who knew what light actually was anymore… probably some kind of magic bullshit.

"You think we can just hide in here?" Eve questioned.

Stanley shook his head. "No, we have to leave the truck." His statement had the expected result.

"What?!" Eve hissed, thankfully not shouting.

"We need to move, and I can't hide the whole truck. Unless… Walter, can you duplicate what I did, but for the whole truck?" Stanley let his manipulation of the light end and looked at the older man.

Walter shook his head. "I can repeat the effect," he said and vanished briefly before reappearing. "However, I am afraid that I cannot conceal the entire vehicle."

"We can't just fucking run away!" Eve whisper-shouted while looking back and forth at them.

"Either we run away, or I go all out here and now," Stanley told her. "I can kill everything out there, or just go grab Zeke and fly us all over the river without even bothering with the damn spiders!" He would just have to use the Source. It would be so easy. Hell, Stanley had wiped out armies of monsters like this before they had been forced to unlock the Source, and using it now, he could scour this entire Lair clean.

Eve hesitated at his words, clearly afraid, and Stanley didn't blame her. He still remembered those Invaders he'd felt trying to come through, and obviously, she remembered as well. It was a risk that none of them even knew the actual odds of. He'd gotten away with using the Source before, but was that the norm or an anomaly? She definitely wasn't happy about his proposed alternative solution, though.

Stanley grimaced, both at what he felt from Eve and his own dislike of the choices presented. He didn't like this option any more than Eve did. He hated cowering and hiding from these fucking spiders and wanted nothing more than to slaughter them all! The damn monsters should be the ones running and hiding! He could burn this entire city to the ground and see their fucking leader groveling for its life! They should fear…

Stanley blinked at the two people staring back at him with wide eyes. "Ah…" He was still hiding them inside his Soul Shield, which meant that they were also not shielded from his Soul, and by extension, his anger. "My bad…"

Stanley's temper had cooled during the prolonged stasis, and his constant meditation helped as well, but he'd only made so much progress with the self-administered therapy. Now Stanley was feeling the lack of power more keenly than ever, and old habits were coming back. A little rampage wouldn't hurt… would it? It would feel good to cut loose, and yea, he would lose some attributes, but he could make up some of the losses. He would be powerful again…

"Fine," Eve growled quietly, "we'll go!" She moved away and started stuffing equipment into a pack.

Stanley sighed and dismissed his dreams of spider genocide. He didn't question Eve's change of heart and instead looked at Walter. "You can actually leave, right Walter?"

"I can," the butler confirmed, "I will, however, grow weaker over time."

"How much time are we talking?"

"A few days at most, Sir. Less if I am forced to defend myself."

"I'll keep you safe, Walter," Stanley promised and hoped he wasn't lying. As for how long they would be… "Eve, how long until your rocket things are ready?"

"Maybe a day if I can work uninterrupted, and if I have all my supplies…"

"What about your storage, Walter?"

"It will diminish along with my strength."

"Take what we need, and help Eve with her stuff if you can."

"I don't need…"

"Eve," Stanley interrupted her reflexive contrarian response, "you need to pull your Soul out of everything not coming with us."

"I…" Eve stopped moving, her Soul pained. "But… the truck…"

"I think they might leave it alone if they don't sense your Soul," Stanley tried to reassure her, "and I'm hoping that it will be a lot easier for you to reclaim it rather than having to build it the first time?"

Eve finally nodded, albeit reluctantly, and cursed under her breath. Nevertheless, she did as he'd said, and Stanley felt her scattered Soul returning to its origins.

In the meantime, Stanley had been watching the looming threats outside. The ground still vibrated with heavy steps, and the population density of the spiders kept increasing as the milling crowd grew closer.

The approaching large and diffuse Soul finally entered Stanley's range, and he got to feel it out, starting with the ridiculous legs.

At first, Stanley couldn't even see the spider's body, only the legs stretching into the sky. As it walked closer, he also got to see precisely what the diffuse nature of its Soul really was.

It was more spiders, of course! Thousands of tiny spiders.

Well, technically, they were normal-sized, at least from before earth became a Dungeon. They were raining down from the sky, and once the giant spider's body came into range, Stanley could feel them absolutely covering it.

He considered trying to crush some of them and then acted on the impulse. They were all weak enough that he could kill them without much effort. He didn't even need a weapon.

The deaths caused a reaction, as expected, but as Stanley hoped, the response drew attention further away from where he was hiding. He even went so far as to throw the spear at the carrier.

That stirred everything up more, and not in a good way. First, they scrambled after the spear and eventually caught it. Once the metal was trapped in a spider's mandibles, Stanley lost his ability to throw it around. It became nearly as difficult to influence as going directly after their bodies.

It didn't take long after that for the spiders to realize that the spear was not something to kill. Then they fanned out, looking for a real target.

Stanley kept smashing the little bugs, but it was a losing battle. Especially once the second carrier spider arrived and started dropping its payload. The normal-sized spiders fell like raindrops, absolutely blanketing the area. Their Souls were too basic to be capable of much, and Stanley guessed they were only a way for the giant leaders to deal with smaller spaces they couldn't physically enter.

The only good luck they had was that everything was coming from the southwest, presumably from the park, and so it gave them time to evacuate ahead of the swarm.

"Do we have a destination in mind, Sir?" Walter asked, and Stanley saw the sign he was making. It read, 'Adam, we were forced to flee and will be going…'

"Right, Adam." Stanley felt a bit bad for forgetting the kid. "We're going underground," he told Walter, "into the subway tunnels." There was an odd lack of spiders down there, and Stanley was unsure if it was as simple as the space being too small for the big-shot spiders or if it was something else. Walter added mention of the tunnels to his sign before placing it prominently where it couldn't be overlooked, just in case Adam popped back in while they were gone.

"Fuck... I'm ready." Eve stood in her full armor still, and she carried a pack in each hand, both stuffed to the brim. She'd also attached the extra jet engines to her legs, and Stanley realized that she could probably fly with those…

Walter carried nothing, and he relieved Eve of her packs by disappearing them into his storage. Then he picked up the flaming egg that was Adrian. "I am ready as well, Sir."

Stanley felt Walter's Domain vanish, pulling back into the butler and surprisingly making his Soul feel more potent than before.

"If it comes to it, Sir, I would ask that you prioritize Adrian's life over my own." Walter was worried, afraid, and not at all for himself.

Stanley couldn't pick Daryl's Soul out in the dense field of Souls that filled the city and was only growing thicker in the immediate area, but he could spot just a hint of gold in the distance. Zeke's Soul, still unique as far as Stanley had seen, was technically visible, and while Stanley couldn't sense much beyond its continued existence, he hoped that he would pick up if something were truly wrong.

Daryl would stay with Zeke, and together they should not only be able to hide better than Stanley but also be nearly immortal. Plus, most of the monsters were coming this way now.

"It won't come to that, Walter. If it does… I'll save everyone. I haven't really done shit since I woke up, and I don't even know how powerful I truly am anymore. If these fucks force the issue… then I'll burn this shithole to the ground before I let any one of you fucking die!"

Walter nodded. "Very good, Sir."

Stanley took a deep breath and extended his hand to Eve. "We might need to hold hands since it will be dark…" He wouldn't be able to simply carry them as he would have liked, though it felt close to doable when they were inside his Domain. So close that it might just be a matter of willingness, and while it might be a good idea to test if people could make it easier for him to carry them, this wasn't the time or place.

Eve looked suspiciously at his proffered limb before sighing and latching on with her own gauntlet-encased hand. She eyed Walter, who had both arms wrapped protectively around the egg, and then tentatively grasped his elbow when he offered it.

Stanley kept one arm around Caffeine as he floated through the doorway, pausing only to let the others exit the trailer before bending the light away and enshrouding them all in darkness.

The giant spider who had caught his spear finally got tired of chewing on it, at least after breaking it into dozens of fragments, and dropped it. Stanley took the opportunity to throw all the pieces back into the spider's face like a shotgun blast. To his surprise, the attack must have hit its brain because the bastard died. Unfortunately, Stanley couldn't take its Core, not without leaving a trail…

Stanley tried to bend the light around the Core and felt much more resistance than he had while trying to hide the truck. He suspected it had something to do with all the searching eyes in the area, something about attention or opposing Will that acted in some way to impede his own. Or maybe it was just too far…

The death of the spider also helped to distract from the loud noise of Eve's metal-clad feet landing on the concrete when she jumped from the trailer. Only the closest enemies noticed, and Stanley was already leading his people away when they approached. As for the sound of metal on concrete from her continued footsteps, Stanley used the increased control that came with his Domain and muffled the sound waves. The vibrations of all their feet on the ground were a bit harder to deal with, but at the same time, the land was already vibrating with countless sources, so Stanley let it be.

The never-ending flood of normal-sized spiders carpeted everything in their path. They spread through every building, every room in every building, every nook, and cranny in every room. Literally everywhere.

Stanley was convinced that the bigshots would know if the little ones found anything, mainly from the reactions to him killing them earlier. He didn't think they could communicate, but their deaths were detected, at the very least.

It might be possible to avoid killing them, but Stanley wasn't willing to let spiders crawl all over him, especially since he had no idea if they were venomous or not and was pretty sure they were biting at everything they touched.

The first problem in his escape plan came when they reached the manhole that was meant to get them into the subway tunnel. Or rather, as soon as Stanley's domain encompassed it, and he 'knew' that Adrian's egg would not fit through the hole.

"Stupid! I should have noticed that…" Stanley only hesitated momentarily, the spreading carpet of arachnids pressing ever forward and bringing with them pressure against his light-bending effect. It only further confirmed Stanley's theory about how it all worked, but he didn't appreciate the lesson. Not now.

So he kept moving, following the tunnel below and heading further north. There would have to be a more extensive opening eventually, and if all else failed, a subway station. Behind them, he watched the spiders crawl over the metal disc without reaction. Either they didn't know about the space beneath or didn't care to try and get past the metal blocking it off.

Walter and Eve followed without complaint, even when Stanley was forced to weave between the lower numbers coming from the north to join the hunt for them. He even had to kill a few here and there to open a path or draw attention away from them.

Fortunately, it only took a few blocks before a staircase appeared in his range that led into the underground, and Stanley made a beeline for it. Getting down the stairs while blind was slightly more difficult, at least for the others, since Stanley wasn't walking.

The bad news was that the flood behind him did not hesitate to follow them down. Stanley didn't think the spiders knew they were here, rather that they were just doing their best to cover literally everything. Partly as a test and also to buy time, Stanley put up a wall halfway down the stairs, and that was when he learned an additional facet of the little spider's abilities. Their feet could stick to anything.

They crawled up his Psionic wall that should have been entirely frictionless, and with each additional body, Stanley felt the strain grow. It wasn't a lot of weight to hold up, practically nothing, in fact, but as dozens and then hundreds of them climbed up the wall, Stanley felt it start to add up.

In the meantime, Stanley had another new and surprising bit of knowledge to distract him. "There are humans down here!" All he'd needed to finally notice them was the tiny perspective shift from moving below ground. He had also been right about the lack of spiders underground... aside from the ones chasing him.

"Seriously?" Eve whispered, her voice almost inaudible under the noise canceling Stanley was enforcing around them.

"Yea," Stanley said distractedly. One beneficial side effect of muffling Eve's stomping boots was that Stanley didn't have to worry about his own mutterings. "I think Zeke and Daryl are underground too… and near some other people." They weren't even very far, maybe a couple of miles at most. The only issue was whether the subway tunnel they had just entered would lead to the others.

Unfortunately, the cheating little bastards swarming up his barrier became too much effort to keep blocking, and Stanley was forced to let them into the subway station. The stairs were a good choke point, and he could just squash them all as they tried to enter, but he had a bad feeling that doing so would only draw more threats toward them. He still remembered how the big fucker had literally kicked holes in the street to reach Eve's machine, and Stanley didn't want to be in the machine's shoes if that scenario repeated itself.

As the spiders filled out the station, Stanley led the others up the tracks toward the other humans he could sense. This group was much closer than the ones down near Zeke. In fact, Stanley was pretty sure there were a few just around the corner… He was hoping they had a way to keep the spiders out, like a stone wall with a hidden door in it, for example.

There were indeed humans around the corner, and Stanley used the opportunity provided by the curving tunnel to drop his light cloak while out of the direct line of sight with the spiders coming up behind. Light returned to his eyes, mostly coming from the burning egg in Walter's arms, but also a smaller source among the four men ahead. Stanley opened his mouth to say hi right as they all looked over… and then screamed.

There were a few variations of 'run' and 'holy shit run' as they all fled away from Stanley and company.

Two of them were supporting a third, and all three fell when they tripped over something. The one unencumbered man yelled something and threw his hand toward the tunnel wall. There was a flash of light that spread around the circumference of the tunnel… and then the entire thing started to collapse.

"Go!" Stanley said, already rushing forward as he caught just enough of the ceiling to delay the collapse.

The two men who had been nearly dragging the third both abandoned their burden as soon as the tunnel started to fall, sprinting after the other man and leaving their presumably wounded comrade almost directly beneath the crumbling stretch of tunnel.

Stanley didn't have to say anything, and Eve grabbed the poor bastard as she sprinted ahead, Walter hot on her heels. In less than two seconds, they were far enough past, and Stanley stopped his efforts to hold up the ceiling.

The roar of falling dirt and stone was deafening in the tunnel as the path behind was completely buried.

Stanley waited with the others until the rumble finally stopped, then watched the spiders arrive on the far side and proceed to scour every inch of the pile, looking for a way through.

Fortunately, there were no gaps in the rubble, and Stanley let out a relieved breath.

They were safe, for now.