I've searched for how to publish a Laravel project online, but didn't find any that explains how to get the files you need, i don't want to upload 16k+ files to my webserver or whatever.
i saw someone on GitHub uploaded the files he needs here is the link to it :https://github.com/cyavu/AlbionCraftCalculator/tree/main/root
You only need to deploy the application files, not the vendor or node_modules (which is what i assume you are referring to by 16k+ files).
A very common way to approach this is to use your github repo to deploy from ; this way you can use the git_ignore file to restrict uploading of files that aren't supposed to be involved in the deployment pipeline (ie the .env file, node_modules etc).
There are many ways to set this deployment pipeline; Look into Laravel Forge - there's a course here on Laracasts.