by Okina Baba
“…I shall take that to heart.”
Although I was talking only to myself, a voice answers me at the end.
I’ll pretend I didn’t hear anything.
LIQUOR IS THE BEST MEDICINE
One day, Vampy suddenly became super-duper docile.
She woke up and apologized to me out of nowhere, although I wasn’t really sure what she was apologizing for.
But it meant that she stopped being so rebellious about my super-fun training plans, so I was all for it.
I feel like the protagonist of a raising simulation game.
I’m gonna raise this bloodsucker into the finest young lady (LOL) you ever saw!
So, I’ve been improving her skills in training mode every day.
I’m working on my own skills at the same time, of course, but that part isn’t going as well.
Since so many of my skills are really high-level at this point, it makes it a lot harder to get them to go up any further.
Their levels raise on their own once in a while, which I think must be thanks to the Parallel Minds I transferred into their own bodies.
But even if I work as hard as they are, my growth rate is awfully slow.
And that’s with the effects of my cheat skill Pride.
Without it, I probably wouldn’t be growing at all anymore.
But if I just accept that and stop trying, I’ll never catch up to the Demon Lord.
For now, I’ve decided to mostly put the harder-to-raise skills aside for now and focus on the really important ones.
Especially Warped Evil Eye.
As far as I know, that’s the only skill that can deal with Potimas.
Inside that barrier that cancels out stats and skills, my main specialties of thread and magic are practically useless.
Warped Evil Eye is pretty much the only long-distance attack I can still use in there.
I’d prefer never to see that guy again, of course, but it can’t hurt to be prepared.
And judging by what the Demon Lord said, the Potimas we fought was actually just some kind of remote-control puppet, so there might be plenty more where that came from.
If Potimas really is after Vampy, I might end up having to fight him again.
I managed last time because the Demon Lord came crashing in, but who knows what’ll happen next time?
To be honest, if she hadn’t shown up, I think my chances of winning were less than 5 percent.
I don’t know if my Immortality skill would’ve even worked in that barrier or if I could’ve used egg revival.
In the worst-case scenario, I might’ve actually died for good.
Can you really blame me for wanting to be fully prepared in case he shows up again?
That’s why I’ve been training up Warped Evil Eye, but I don’t think that’s enough.
Potimas has seen my Warped Evil Eye once now. For all I know, he’s preparing ways to counter it just like I am for him.
If he finds a way to prevent me from using even Warped Evil Eye, I’ll be totally screwed.
Which means I’d like to find a few more countermeasures besides Warped Evil Eye.
So far, I’ve come up with only one good way to do that.
Namely, leveling up so I can beat him physically.
The Demon Lord defeated Potimas by simply destroying his metal body with sheer brute strength.
That certainly seems like the most practical idea to me.
Potimas’s barrier nullifies any skills and stats that affect things outside the body.
In other words, skills and stats that function inside the body still work, so even if your physical abilities go down a little, you can still move in accordance with your stats.
That means the most effective method is to boost my physical stats so I can beat the crap out of him next time.
Sadly, though, it’s not that simple.
See, my physical stats are already pretty high.
They’re not as impressive as my magic stats, but they’ve gone up so much that I could probably fight Mother without magic at this point.
But when I faced Potimas, it still seemed like my only chance of winning was Warped Evil Eye.
If I want to be truly, devastatingly powerful, then I really need to get stats on par with the Demon Lord’s.
And yet, my growth has slowed down dramatically.
Raising my stats now takes a huge amount of effort, and they’ve only gone up ever so slightly since we first began this journey.
On top of that, my level isn’t going up, either.
It’s been a fairly long time since I evolved into an arachne, and I’ve been hunting a pretty significant amount of monsters along the way, but my level refuses to rise.
The amount of experience it takes to level up at this point is so huge that just killing whatever monsters are around isn’t gonna cut it.
I need to kill either some really strong monsters or some humans.
But it’s not like really strong monsters are that easy to find, and I can’t go around killing humans indiscriminately.
I don’t really mind if they’re robbers or whatever, but since we’re avoiding people by traveling through forests and mountains and stuff, we never run into any humans in the first place.
Even robbers and bandits and the like don’t hang out deep in the forest or on some inaccessible mountain.
We’re never gonna meet anyone if we stick to this path!
Heh, I sound like a loser who can’t get a date.
Anyway, I’d love to just run off somewhere to work on this, but the Demon Lord’s always watching, so I’m better off staying in line for now.
Besides, if I stick by the Demon Lord, she can deal with it if Potimas comes back.
At any rate, I guess my only option right now is the slow and steady route.
Then I remember about the existence of weapon skills.
I got a skill called Shieldsmanship before that came with a title.
The one that was like, “Good things will happen if you’re using a shield!”
I hadn’t evolved into an arachne yet then, so I was just like, “I can’t equip a shield, dumbass!” and dismissed it as useless.
But now that I’m an arachne, with a human-shaped upper body, I can totally equip weapons!
Which means I can use a shield or anything else!
But to be honest, that’s still pretty useless.
I mean, sure, I can hold a shield now, but it’s gonna be softer than my body.
Like I said, my stats are really, really, reeeally high.
To the point where my defense is higher than a metal shield would be.
If the shield is softer than I am, what’s the point in using it at all?
And weapons would be pretty much the same way.
I got the puppet spiders to lend me their equipment, but I couldn’t even put a scratch on myself with it.
When I think about how those same weapons once sliced me up to the verge of death, it makes me realize all over again how strong I’ve gotten.
But forget that for now.
In other words, even the weapons the puppet spiders carry can’t hurt my flesh.
Frankly, hitting someone with my fist would have more impact than any weapon.
You might think that means there’s no point in me having any weapons, but there are exceptions, you know.
For instance, if there was a weapon that was stronger and more destructive than my own body.
But it’s not like I’m gonna stumble across a weapon like that randomly.
I mean, the puppet spiders’ stats average higher than 10,000, which is crazy strong, and their weapons still didn’t work on me.
Unless I happen to get an ultrarare drop of some legendary item or other, weapons are of no use to me.
But wait!
If I don’t have one, why not just make one?
Huh? You don’t think it’s that easy to make a legendary-class weapon?
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Sure it is. It’s actually quite simple.
’Cause I’ve already got the materials.
The materials of my own body, that is!
If most weapons are more fragile than my body, why not just use my body to make a better weapon?
And as it happens, there’s a particular part of my body that just screams “weapon.”
That’s right. The two front legs of my spider body, which are shaped like scythes.
If I cut one off, I can just grow it right back with Healing Magic, so there’s no reason not to use it as a weapon.
With that decided, I lop off one of my front legs at the base, use that to cut off the other one, and then tie it all together with some handy thread.
And just like that, voilà! It’s done.
Da-da-da-daaa!
You’ve got the Giant Spider Scythe!
It looks like a weapon fit for the grim reaper.
Since it’s made from my own body, it’s not gonna be softer than I am, and it’s guaranteed to be destructive.
And perhaps because of that, it fits very nicely in my hands.
It fits so well that taking a light swing with it nets me the Scythesmanship skill.
Now I’ve got one more technique I can use in a physical fight.
So far, my physical stats besides speed have been bonuses that I never had a chance to use, but from now on, things will be different.
If I rely on magic all the time, I’ll be in huge trouble if I can’t use it. Besides, I need to be better at close-quarters combat.
To make that happen, I’ve added practice swings to my daily training with Vampy and Mera.
The baby let out a scream when she first saw it, but that’s not my problem.
Our journey continues as I train myself and Vampy.
It’s been about two months since we left, but we still haven’t reached our destination.
In this world, though, that’s pretty standard for a journey.
Unlike my old world, which was full of planes and cars and stuff, it takes a very long time to get around here.
Since I’ve walked through the Great Elroe Labyrinth, I know that very well.
I never realized how amazing Earth’s technology was before.
I’ve got a way to cheat around travel in the form of Teleport, but that works only for places I’ve been before.
Since I’ve never been to the capital of Sariella, of course I can’t teleport there.
If it takes this long to get from one part of the same country to another, wouldn’t it take years to travel to another part of the world?!
Even the towns we visit once in a while tend to be at least a week’s journey apart.
Aside from those, every day is pretty much the same.
Right now, the rest of my party is in one of those towns.
That’s right—I’ve been leeeft alooone, ooon my oooooown, again.
Although, I’m not as bummed about it as I was the first time.
The Demon Lord must have felt bad about ditching me, because starting the next day, she took over cooking duties.
And her cooking is crazy, crazy good.
How good, you ask? So good that I actually started crying the first time.
So good that it actually made me think, Hey, maybe joining up with the Demon Lord won’t be so bad if it means I get to eat like this.
I guess that’s another benefit of her long life.
She is the grandmother who raised Mother and the rest of the spider army, after all.
Anyway, she picks up fresh ingredients when they go to town, so the food she cooks the next day is always extra good.
That makes being left on my own a little more bearable.
In fact, stopping by towns is becoming one of my favorite little events.
Although it’s always hard waiting for the next day to come.
Also, there are other folks who happen to enjoy these events, too.
Namely, the puppet spiders.
They’re beginning to look more and more human.
In fact, I’m starting to think of them as people myself.
I’m working on my modifications to their doll bodies using Divine Thread Weaving right now.
Technically, the skill itself is already maxed out, but the more I use it, the more ingenious uses I can come up with.
As part of my research, I’ve continued my progress on the puppet spiders’ makeovers, and now they’ve reached the point where you would easily mistake them for humans at a glance.
Although if you look too closely, things are slightly off, so it’s still possible to tell that they’re not genuine.
My end goal is to make it so that even if you examine them closely or even touch them, you won’t be able to tell they’re dolls.
Right now, I’m refining some of the minor details to make the bodies seem more natural, and trying to re-create what goes under the skin so they feel properly squishy to the touch.
The puppet spiders are more than happy to help, so my research is going along quite well.
However they might have looked originally, they’re definitely girls on the inside.
Altering them to be prettier seems to make them happy.
It looks like they’ve taken a liking to fashion, too, as they’re in different outfits each time they’re summoned. I think they’re probably making the clothes themselves.
They have all kinds of styles, too, so I never get tired of looking at them.
Their main task seems to be making their six arms seem more natural, so I’m always impressed with what they’ve come up with.
By the way, there are four puppet spiders in all.
At first, they were being summoned two at a time, but I guess they started squabbling about who should get summoned.
So at some point, all four of them started coming at once.
You guys sure are enjoying this, huh?
I get it; you wanted to see me that badly? Guess I can’t blame you.
Am I some kind of master aesthetician now or what?
Boy, this is tough.
I’m so talented that the girls are all scrambling for my attention.
It ain’t easy being popular, huh?
Yeah, I know, it’s not that they want to see me—they’re just happy I’m helping them be prettier. I get it, all right?
Anyway, they didn’t have names, so I figured it would be easier if I gave them some, but the Demon Lord stopped me.
“I’ll name them, all right! You can’t just name them without asking!” she said.
I guess as a parent, she’s against someone else naming her children?
I dunno why she didn’t just name them to begin with, then.
Anyway, next time they were summoned, I asked about their names.
The response: Ael, Sael, Riel, and Fiel.
That seemed sort of half-assed to me, but I got the feeling I should keep that thought to myself.
The fun thing is that they each have their own distinct personality.
Ael is pretty confident but can also be very shrewd. She’s the one who first took a bite of the meat.
Sael, the other one who was there that first day, is the sort of timid and wimpy type.
Riel is a tomboy and a total airhead.
Fiel is a goofball who tends to get carried away.
In a way, it’s pretty impressive that their personalities come through so clearly even though they don’t talk.
Oh right. Maybe I’ll try to give them vocal chords next.
Things will get awfully noisy around here if they learn how to talk, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, right?
I’m sure it’ll be hard, but I bet I can do it.
With my thread, there’s nothing I can’t accomplish!
…Yeah, thread’s pretty amazing.
Between my quest for self-improvement, raising Vampy, and remodeling the puppet spiders, I’m getting all kinds of things done on this trip.
That being said, it’s not like
all of it is going perfectly according to plan.
In fact, this journey has been full of nothing but problems.
I guess that makes sense, since we started the journey because we had problems in the first place.
Vampy and Mera lost the town where they lived, and they had to go on the run to escape Potimas, too.
And the Demon Lord and I are keeping an eye on each other to make sure neither of us pulls anything funny.
So basically, we’ve all got our share of issues.
When you think about it that way, it’s actually a miracle that we’ve come this far without any major problems.
Really, even if nothing’s going wrong right now, we don’t know what will happen down the road.
No matter how much you try to put it off, there comes a time when you have to face your problems head-on.
In my case, it’s my relationship with the Demon Lord.
Right now, we’re basically in a state of cold war, but eventually I’m going to have to give her some kind of answer.
Will we settle things once and for all, or will we actually join forces for real?
The Demon Lord has the same problem.
But both of us are putting that question on hold for now. It’s not like there’s any rush.
As long as I can keep up my quasi-immortality, I can at least survive any clashes with the Demon Lord.
The Demon Lord is stronger than I am, so she’s better off keeping me around than risking letting me run free.
We both just want to maintain the status quo, so as long as nothing major happens, this relationship can probably stay the same way indefinitely.
So the Demon Lord and I are putting off solving our problems, but not everyone can do that forever.
Especially not Vampy and Mera.
The baby bloodsucker has to choose how she’s going to live from now on.