by Okina Baba
Copyright
So I’m a Spider, So What?, Vol. 1
Okina Baba
Translation by Jenny McKeon
Cover art by Tsukasa Kiryu
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
KUMO DESUGA, NANIKA? Vol. 1
©Okina Baba, Tsukasa Kiryu 2015
First published in Japan in 2015 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo.
English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo through TUTTLE-MORI AGENCY, INC., Tokyo.
English translation © 2017 by Yen Press, LLC
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First Yen On Edition: November 2017
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Baba, Okina, author. | Kiryu, Tsukasa, illustrator. | McKeon, Jenny, translator.
Title: So I’m a spider, so what? / Okina Baba ; illustration by Tsukasa Kiryu ; translation by Jenny McKeon.
Other titles: Kumo desuga nanika. English | So I am a spider, so what?
Description: First Yen On edition. | New York, NY : Yen On, 2017–
Identifiers: LCCN 2017034911 | ISBN 9780316412896 (v. 1 : pbk.)
Subjects: | CYAC: Magic—Fiction. | Spiders—Fiction. | Monsters—Fiction. | Prisons—Fiction. | Escapes—Fiction. | Fantasy.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.O44 So 2017 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017034911
ISBNs: 978-0-316-41289-6 (paperback)
978-0-316-44292-3 (ebook)
E3-20171030-JV-PC
Once, there was a world where the battle between Hero and Demon Lord repeated itself time and time again.
During this battle, an enormous space-time spell was fired and exploded in a certain classroom in a Japanese high school.
The spell hit everyone in the classroom, and all of them lost their lives in an instant.
The souls of these victims were scattered into another world, and each was born again in a new life.
STARTING WITH A BANG
Gwaaaaah!
I tried to scream just now, but I actually can’t even manage a groan.
Is my body messed up that badly?
Okay, calm down.
I don’t feel any pain.
The last thing I remember is the onslaught of sudden, monstrous agony in the middle of Classical Literature class.
I probably fainted because of that, but no part of me feels hurt at the moment.
That said, even when I open my eyes, everything is pitch-black. I have no idea where I am.
In fact, I can barely move at all, like something’s wrapped around my body.
No, not hypothetically. Like, I can literally tell. I really am bound in something, some material that’s hard but has a little give to it.
I can just faintly hear some rustling sounds from outside.
Okay, what’s going on here? Have I been kidnapped?
No, let’s be real.
What would anyone get out of kidnapping a bottom-of-the-barrel girl like me?
Well, regardless of how sketchy this situation is, I only need to escape.
That’s when I hear a loud CRACK.
Oh-ho! When I pushed my weight against the thing covering me, it started to break.
All right, time to finish the job and get out of here!
Putting more power into it, I burst right through, scrabbling out headfirst. Sweet freedom!
The view before my eyes is crawling with spiders.
Wuuuuuh?! Whyyyyyyyy?! Ewww!!
What is with this freaking army of spiders?! Um, excuse me, but why are they all as big as me?! Oh gross, more of them keep popping out of these egg-looking things! Is that what the rustling was coming from?!
Instinctively, I shrink away. My leg bumps into something, and I turn to look.
Hmm?
Is this…it? The thing I crawled out of earlier? Uh…why does it kind of resemble the eggs this spider legion was bursting out of? No, it doesn’t merely look like that—it is one, isn’t it?
I look down at myself more carefully. My neck won’t move. Despite that, at the edge of my peripheral vision, I can see what appear to be my legs.
……Spider legs.
Oooooookay, dooon’t paaaaniiiiiic!!!
Th-this isn’t what I think it is, right?! Is it, though?! The thing that’s super-popular online right now?!
No! Unreal!
This can’t be happening, right? Please, say it’s not happening!
I glance down again. There are thin, wiry legs, just like those of the spiders wriggling around me.
Concentrating, I try moving them. The spider appendages move accordingly.
Yep. I have to face the facts.
Apparently, I’ve been reincarnated as a spider.
Unreal.
But right when I feel ready to break down, I hear some crunching noises. Disturbing ones, actually.
Hmm.
It won’t do me any good to ignore reality. Right in front of me is a humongous army of spiders, probably my brothers and sisters. Whatever those sounds are, they’re probably coming from them.
I slowly bring myself to take in the scene before me. There, one of the spiders is noisily devouring its buddy.
Aaaack! The hell are these guys doing?! Seriously, they’re eating each other? Cannibalism?!
As I look on, my siblings begin a bloodbath in their fierce competition for survival.
No, no, no, no! This is bad, this is baaad!
Why should we have to fight one another like this, my brothers and sisters?! Ah, right—for food. I guess they’re hungry. Speaking of, I could use something to eat myself.
HUH?! That’s a scary train of thought.
Reality got away from me for a moment there. On a battlefield like this, an innocent high school girl like me could fall prey to the wicked ways of men in an instant! Metaphorically and literally!
Times like this call for running like hell.
Fighting? Not happening.
I’m a natural-born homebody. There’s no way I could ever challenge something so gross and violent. Ah. I just remembered that’s what I am now.
Okay.
Instead of wasting time thinking about stupid crap, I figure I’d better get a move on. But apparently it’s a little too late for that. The ground is ominously rumbling beneath my feet. Now what?! The sounds and tremors are coming from behind. Turning around, I find myself looking up at an enormous, giant spider.
Ooh, might you be Mother? Or perhaps Father?
Whatever.
I’m getting all confused again. Seriously, though—why is it so huge?! This massive arachnid has got to be dozens of times larger than me.
Maybe I’m remembering wrong, but I feel pretty confident there weren’t any spiders this big on Earth!
Ah.
With a brisk snap, the titan skewers a smaller one of its kind with a claw and devours it.
Sort of like she’s having a light snack.
Et tu, Mother…?!
Well, I’ll think about all this
later on. For now, my only goal is to get out of here safely and try to survive!
I run away at full speed. Only when I’m so tired I can barely move do I finally calm down. Luckily, when I turn to check, I find that nobody chased after me.
Oof, I thought I was gonna die. It would’ve sucked to get killed after only being alive for a couple minutes.
Anyway…now that I’ve come to my senses a little, I have a lot to think about.
First of all, why did I die?
Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t necessarily know for sure that my life ended at all.
I sort of decided on my own that I died and got reincarnated as a spider, but it’s not like I actually remember kicking the bucket.
Pretty sure my last memory is of the Classical Literature teacher, who we called Ms. Oka, reading aloud from the textbook.
I’d been dozing off a little when suddenly I was overwhelmed by crushing agony, and then I have no memories of what happened after.
If I did die, it was probably because of that mysterious pain, but…
…I have no idea what caused it at all.
At any rate, the most likely conclusion is still that I died at that moment and was reincarnated as a spider.
Other than that, I guess it’s possible that I’m alive, and my spirit is currently possessing a spider, or something similar.
Like, maybe my original body is in a vegetative state, lying on a hospital bed right now.
Or here’s an even crazier idea: Maybe I’m not the real me at all, just some total stranger who happens to have the memories of another person.
Maybe the real me is sitting in class like usual, even now.
Well.
It’s not like there’s any way for me to know for sure. How can I prove I’m not who I think I am, anyway?
I’ll end up spouting incomprehensible nonsense like “I think therefore I am” and stuff.
Besides, the most likely conclusion from the evidence is the ridiculous idea that I’ve been reincarnated, so I may as well throw common sense to the wind.
At any rate, better put all this aside for now.
In the spirit of “I think, therefore I am,” I’m just going to assume that I am in fact myself until proven otherwise.
So apparently, I’m a spider now. There’s definitely no denying that anymore.
While I was running away, I was able to hop and jump in ways a human never could.
So if I’m a spider, what was up with that hulk I saw before?
Hmm.
Given the circumstances, maybe it really was one of my arachnid parents? I don’t know the specifics of spider biology, but I don’t think it’s that unusual in nature for animals to eat their young. The other spiders were clearly cannibalistic right from birth, so the parent eating its children shouldn’t be all that surprising.
If that giant spider was one of my parents, I wonder if that means I’ll be that size, too, someday?
Thinking about it makes me feel a little sick.
Okay, forget that part. Let’s get back on track.
Let’s see. Really, there’s one thing that I’m particularly hung up on.
Specifically, the fact that I’m a monster.
The whole “reincarnation” genre is pretty popular in web novels and stuff right now, so I guess it isn’t that alien an idea.
Getting reincarnated as a monster, I mean.
So the question is: Am I a normal Earth species, or is this not Earth at all but a parallel world, where I’ve been reborn as a beast?
Judging by that huge spider from before, my guess would lean toward the latter, but then the difficulty level of surviving here would probably go way up.
This isn’t getting me anywhere. I don’t have enough information to parse what’s going on.
Is this Earth or not? Am I a monster or just a normal spider? If this is a different world, what kind of world is it?
There’s a mountain of things I want to know, but I have no way of finding out.
Ahh, if only this were a novel or something, I’d probably have an Appraisal skill that would help me figure it out…
Whoa. What? …For real? A mechanical voice completely devoid of emotion suddenly echoed in my mind. That’s surprising in more ways than one.
First, that I’m hearing voices at all.
Secondly, that these “skills” exist here.
Obviously, there’s no such skill system on Earth, and I’ve never heard any voices announcing things in my head before now.
So does that mean this isn’t Earth? Probably, yeah.
I guess that gives my “I’m a monster” theory a lot more weight.
Being a monster in a parallel world seems like a recipe for death, but let’s not think about that. Nope, nope, nope.
More importantly, it’s really real. The Appraisal skill actually does exist! Whoo-hoo! Now we’re talking! Finally this is starting to feel like a proper fantasy reincarnation story! Obviously, my answer is “YES!”
<[Appraisal LV 1] acquired. Remaining skill points: 0.>
Apparently, that used up all my skill points, but I decide not to worry about that for now.
Forget! About! That!
It’s time to use my brand-spanking-new Appraisal skill to examine the crap out of my surroundings!
I pick a nearby rock at random, trying to think [Appraise] as I focus on it.
It worked! Information flows smoothly into my mind.
…Hmm? Wait, what? That’s all?
No, no, no.
That can’t be right, can it? I probably just failed because it’s my first time. Let me try again…
…Huh? Is that seriously it?
No, no, no, no.
It must be that this stone doesn’t have any valuable information because it’s just an ordinary rock! This time, I decide to test my skill on a wall. Maybe that’ll tell me something about the area I’m in. If I could get an area name like “Such-and-Such Cave” and a little description or something similar, I’d definitely feel a lot better.
………I’m not even going to say anything.
I should’ve considered the fact that the skill name, [Appraisal LV 1], went out of its way to mention its level.
For all intents and purposes, this seems to mean a level-1 skill won’t provide me with any useful results.
Maybe raising the level will improve it, but I’ve used up all my skill points.
Argh! I can’t believe I blew everything on a useless ability!
I don’t know what other skills were available, but for all I know there might’ve been some that would’ve actually been useful at level 1!
No, I should look at it the other way. If this is what Appraisal is like at level 1, surely any other level-1 skill would’ve been just as ineffective. Yeah, let’s go with that. Otherwise, I won’t be able to live with myself.
Ugh. Unreal.
At this point, I figure I might as well Appraise myself.
Hmm? I knew it would say “Spider,” of course, but why “Nameless”?
“I am a spider. As yet I have no name.” Is it a Natsume Souseki kinda thing?
I mean, I had a name in my previous life, but I guess I don’t anymore, since I’m a spider now.
I better put aside my useless Appraisal skill for the time being. If anything, it’s only increasing the number of mysteries.
Such as the skill points I used to gain the Appraisal skill. Presumably, I could acquire more skills by saving up more points. I have no idea how to go about acquiring any, though.
Between levels, skills, and skill points, this world feels very video game–esque.
I mean, that could be kinda fun, right?
Although I don’t know if I can afford to have any
fun at the moment.
Whatever. I’m getting hungry.
There’s no point in hanging around the same place forever, so I’ll just have to get a move on and see if I can find something to eat.
I thought I’d just walk around for a while, but this cave is WAY too big!
This is all relative to my size, of course, but the ceiling is so high I can barely make anything out, and the width is just as absurd.
The random scattered rocks help give a little sense of variety, at least, but it still seems pretty darn spacious for a cave. Eventually, I find a path that branches off.
Climbing onto a fairly sizable rock, I try squinting down the path. There’s something there…! From what I can tell, it’s a bunch of monsterish creatures milling around.
Ouch! Was that a migraine?! My stupid Appraisal skill must’ve gone off on its own, because that sudden explosion of information made my head hurt.
I mean, they do seem kinda like deer if I look real hard, but I don’t remember the deer in my world having such shiny, sharp-looking horns. And the “bats” flapping around in the air look more like hideous rodents sprouting devil wings. The wolves, at least, seem normal…except now I see that they have six legs.
Am I supposed to pass through here? Yeah, right. I’m just a tiny newborn spider. The difficulty level is way too high.
I stealthily crawl back down from the rock.
So…there are real monsters. This really isn’t Earth.
Not to mention, if those so-called deer and wolves are the same size as they would be on Earth…
Don’t think about it! Don’t think about it!
Okay, now what?
Ahead of me is a gauntlet of monsters. Behind me is spider hell. Is this for real? Am I in checkmate?
Okay, okay. Calm down, please.
I thought this kind of thing might happen, so I prepared an alternative strategy for just such an occasion.
Well, it actually isn’t anything that fancy. I just happened to find a different path earlier. The smaller side road would have been easy to miss because it was right next to this huge one, an unassuming little hole in the wall. Nevertheless, it’s about ten feet around, so I’ll fit through without a problem.