by Okina Baba
I’d been fighting against that crushing fear ever since I first reincarnated. With no idea what was going on, I suddenly woke up as a baby, so it was only natural that I felt anxious. On top of that, the country of my rebirth wasn’t Japan. In fact, it wasn’t anywhere on Earth. This was a different world entirely.
At first, I didn’t realize.
I couldn’t understand the language, and I rarely got to leave the nursery. So there were a lot of things I didn’t know. At first I thought I was somewhere in Europe.
But the first time I saw magic, I realized that wasn’t the case. This happened when a powerful priest performed a blessing on me. I was enveloped in glittering light, and I felt power flowing into me. That was when I sensed the existence of magic for the first time.
Initially, this was exciting to me.
But then I became anxious again.
Could I actually make my way in a world with magic? I had just been an ordinary guy in my previous life.
Back in Japan, I didn’t really experience any hardships. But in this world, where I was born into an elite family, mediocrity was not an option.
Could I live up to that expectation? I was worried.
And since I was a baby, I couldn’t get my body to move the way I wanted it to, which was scary. Being unable to live without the help of others added to my stress.
What if the people raising me suddenly decided to stop?
I wouldn’t be able to do anything but weaken and die.
On top of that, the people bringing me up were maids, not my real family.
Since they had no blood relation to me, there was no guarantee that they’d continue to care for me.
Plus, since I still remembered my previous life, my real parents in this world seemed like strangers.
So wasn’t it possible that these parents had just as little attachment to me and could potentially discard me at any moment?
My mind was so worn down that I started having those wild delusions.
Meanwhile, I desperately started trying to learn the language.
Not knowing any words was more frightening than I would have ever imagined.
I didn’t understand what anyone was saying. Who knew that would give me such hopelessness?
It made me feel completely alone.
I worried about being reborn in another world. Fretted about not understanding the language. Agonized over whether I’d be able to make it in the future.
What soothed my troubled mind was the presence of my little sister, sleeping peacefully beside me.
This half sister of mine wasn’t concerned about a single thing.
She was totally carefree, as if there were nothing in the world to be anxious about.
Well, I guess that’s natural for a baby.
A weak little creature that leaves its fate in others’ hands and depends on the world for everything…
That’s what a baby is supposed to be like.
The only reason I was so concerned was that I possessed memories of my previous life.
Then I realized something…
Since I had my memories, I should at least be mentally above my sister.
So why was I so full of anxiety when she was right beside me, being happy?
I was her older brother. I shouldn’t act so pathetic in front of her, I realized. An older brother is supposed to be cool.
Maybe that was just pretension.
But after that point, I stopped worrying so much. I hadn’t completely gotten over my fears, but I knew I wanted to at least protect my defenseless little sister.
I gradually learned more words, and slowly but surely I began picking up more information about this world from the bits of conversation I caught.
Wanting to regain the range of motion I was used to as quickly as possible, I whipped my baby body into shape by moving around as much as I could.
Thanks to that, I learned to crawl much sooner than normal.
In this way, my desire to show up my younger sister motivated me.
I wanted to be a big brother she could be proud of.
However, I hadn’t accounted for the possibility that she would turn out to be a ridiculous prodigy who would imitate me and become nearly as strong.
Kanata must have experienced at least as much anxiety as I did.
I mean, it must be jarring to live your whole life as a man and then suddenly be reborn as a woman.
I tried to picture enduring the stress of newly found womanhood on top of all the fears I’d faced.
That must have been harder than I could possibly imagine.
And then I was reunited with my friend, whom I thought I’d never see again.
I couldn’t help being overcome with emotion.
Without thinking, I moved to embrace the weeping Kanata.
At that moment, a thunderous roar came from the door to the private room.
“What was that?!”
Kanata looked flustered.
I panicked for a moment, too, but calmed down once I realized who was standing at the door.
No, actually, I just panicked in a different way.
A second roar blew the door inward.
Standing outside the entrance with a magically fueled fist at the ready was Sue, who’d enhanced her physical strength with magic.
Sue eyed the two of us, then locked on to Kanata.
“Sue, stop!”
If I hadn’t hurriedly thrust myself between them, Sue’s fist would’ve blown Kanata away.
“You can’t have my brother!” Sue muttered, latching on to me instantly.
“Your sister’s scary, dude,” Kanata muttered in Japanese.
That was the day I was reunited with my first classmate.
THE EGG
The egg.
It’s an essential ingredient in cooking, from simple preparations like boiled eggs and fried eggs to more complex dishes like rolled omelets and custard.
They’re excellent on their own, but combined with other ingredients, they open up a world of endless culinary possibility.
Yes, the egg is the king of all foods, so much that every refrigerator has a space designed specifically for storing them.
I used to eat them in cup ramen all the time.
Zzz. Yaaawn… Ahhh, I slept well. Almost too much, enough to make me sluggish.
Being able to sleep safely is a wonderful thing. The lazy life is the best. Thank goodness for my little home.
Since I ate my sibling and that frog earlier, I don’t feel too hungry.
Maybe spiders can store food longer than humans?
As I wake up with an assortment of idle thoughts on my mind, I feel one of my threads vibrating.
I’m not particularly famished, but it’s probably still a good idea to eat whenever I can.
After all, if I miss this opportunity, who knows when I’ll get my next chance.
So, what’ve I got now?
Huh?!
A h-human?!
A man carrying some round object is struggling furiously in my webbing.
He’s wearing the kind of clothes you’d expect on an adventurer in a fantasy world.
Maybe that occupation really exists here.
Wh-what should I do?
Wait, this guy’s all bloody. Is he okay?
Ah, he noticed me. He looks panicked.
Seriously, what am I supposed to do here?
Ah, he took something out.
Wha—?! It’s burning?!
The man throws the item he’d produced to the ground, and it starts spouting a crazy inferno.
Now the man is covered in flames.
What the hell is he doing?!
The fire is spreading to the webbing and burning my net. Did he self-destruct to get rid of my threads or something?
Apparently so. Now he’s rolling on the ground, extinguishing the flames on his body.
But now he’s covered in burns.
He was already bloodied to begin with, and now he’s scorched
, too. It doesn’t take an expert to see that he probably isn’t going to make it.
Nevertheless, the man musters the last of his strength to dash away.
Pretty impressive he’s able to run in that state.
Now it’s just me and the round thing the man was carrying.
What’s this?
I use Appraisal and learn it’s an egg.
It’s about the same size as me, so probably three feet across or so.
Well, this has to be a monster egg. What kind of person leaves a thing like that lying around?
Judging by the guy’s condition, maybe the egg’s parents attacked him?
This thing isn’t going to hatch suddenly, is it?
Or worse, its parents aren’t going to come looking for it, are they?
Yikes, I hope not. Scary.
For the time being, I have to start rebuilding my web, since the adventurer-looking dude burned it down.
I can think about the rest later.
A whole day has passed.
My home is quite peaceful.
Apparently, the egg’s parents aren’t going to show up after all.
Maybe the thief gave them the slip before getting here, or maybe they hadn’t bothered chasing him for the loot to begin with.
I don’t know what happened to the egg thief afterward, but from the look of those injuries, I doubt he survived.
Which means it’s okay for me to eat this, right?
That human risked his life to bring back this egg. It must be a very rare item.
Maybe it’s an extremely delicious one, too.
Since my rebirth, all I’ve eaten is gross stuff like my sibling and a frog, so even a raw egg seems like a much more respectable meal.
I have no reason not to eat it.
So I decide to get down to business.
First, I’ll have to break the shell.
I tap it with my front legs. Nothing.
I hit it again with more strength. Nothing.
Getting desperate, I bang on the shell as hard as I can. Still nothing.
Huff…huff…
Why is this egg so tough?!
At this rate, I can’t eat it even if I want to.
But still… Hrmph. If you think I’m just some ordinary spider, you’re making a big mistake!
Kneel before the glorious wisdom of a former human being!
I adhere a strand of thread to the egg. Then I attach the thread to the ceiling and loop it back down to the ground.
I pull on the cord, raising the egg nearly to the ceiling. It’s pretty heavy.
Finally, I let go, and gravity pulls my meal to the ground.
Splat! …Or not?!
Despite falling from close to the ceiling, the egg is completely unharmed. What is up with this insanely tough shell?
Humph. Clearly, I’ll need to take more drastic measures.
Okay. Next, I’ll drop it on a sharp rock.
Once again, I haul the egg up to the ceiling.
Then I position it above a particularly sharp rock and let it fall.
Now that should definitely be enough to splatter it… Or not?!
In fact, the egg actually chipped the rock. What?
Okay, well, I’m not gonna break this thing open.
All right, how about wrapping a bunch of elastic threads around it?
I vaguely remember an experiment where people wrapped hundreds of rubber balloons around a watermelon until it eventually burst.
Maybe that would break an egg, too?
It’s worth a shot.
And so I set about creating rubbery threads and winding them around the egg, over and over.
Doing repetitive tasks like this makes me sleepy, so I decide to use the time to consider something that has been bothering me.
Namely, skills.
Of course, there’s the question of what exactly these skills are, but that tangent won’t yield an answer, so I’m not going to bother.
More important, I want to think about the abilities I currently have and the ones I might be able to gain in the future.
From what I can tell, I’ve acquired five thus far: [Appraisal LV 1], [Acid Resistance LV 2], [Poison Resistance LV 1], [Taboo LV 1], and [Heretic Magic LV 1].
I also got ahold of Appraisal by spending skill points. Those points are another mystery.
However, I decide not to worry about them for the time being.
Frankly, since I have 0 skill points and no idea how to go about procuring more, there isn’t much point in worrying about that at the moment.
Anyway, unlike Appraisal, I obtained Taboo and Heretic Magic by earning a title.
After that, I tried a bunch of other stuff, but I didn’t end up with any new titles.
Without knowing what titles are available or what I need to do to get them, it’ll probably be tough to gain titles deliberately.
For now, I’ll just count myself lucky when I do get one.
I continue winding the rubber thread. I’ve made a lot at this point, but there’s still no visible change in the egg.
At any rate, although I got some skills through titles or skill points, the way I stumbled upon Acid Resistance was totally different.
I think I got that one because I was hit with an attack and took acid damage.
So as long as I can handle the pain of the process, I bet I can acquire more resistance.
For instance, if a fire attack lands on me, will I obtain Fire Resistance?
In terms of self-defense, the more resistances I have, the better.
So from now on, should I always take the first hit from an enemy as long as it won’t kill me?
Hmm… Nah. I don’t want to get hurt, and there’s no guarantee I’ll even obtain any resistance skills.
There’s no need to put myself in unnecessary danger, at the very least. Yeah, it’s not just because I don’t want to deal with pain for any length of time.
When I got hit with the frog’s attack, I not only received Acid Resistance, my Poison Resistance skill also went up.
So if what the Divine Voice (temporary name) said was correct, that means I had the Poison Resistance skill from the beginning.
Well, I’m a spider, and I use venom, so it’s no big surprise that I would be a little more immune to these things.
Even so, though, what kind of system doesn’t tell you what skills you have in the first place?
If the Divine Voice hadn’t mentioned it, I wouldn’t have realized that I had Poison Resistance.
So wait, doesn’t that mean I have other skills I don’t know about yet?
That would probably make sense, huh? So what kind of skills do I have? Poison attacks?
I wish I could check, but I don’t have a way to do that.
Maybe if my Appraisal skill level goes up, I’ll be able to see it?
Appraisal…level? Proficiency?
Hey, wait, maybe I could raise that skill level, then?
Proficiency basically just means how familiar you are with a thing, right?
So if Appraisal ranks up based on proficiency like the Resistance-type skills, won’t it increase if I just use it a whole bunch?
Since I got it with skill points, I assumed I’d only be able to raise its level with more points, but maybe not.
Still wrapping rubbery thread around the egg, I start Appraising everything in sight.
A ton of useless information, like
Oof, that’s kind of unpleasant. Like getting drunk on too much data.
Worth it! Woooo! It only went up one level, but I feel like I’ve taken a huge step forward! With some anticipation, I try Appraising myself.
Ooh! Now there’s something that looks like a species name, too!
I still didn’t get much information, but compared to level 1, w
hen it only provided
At the same time, though, why “small” and “lesser”? That makes me sound inferior…
Okay, now my excitement about increasing Appraisal’s skill level is dying down a bit. I wasn’t expecting much to begin with, but it didn’t occur to me that I might be such a small-fry… But that’s more or less what I was in my previous life anyway, so I guess it isn’t a big deal.
More important, I have to keep Appraising and raising my skill level!
As I wrap the rubber threads around the egg, I do some level grinding on Appraisal.
…It won’t go up.
I keep Appraising the wall over and over, but my skill level doesn’t rise one bit.
By the way, the result of that analysis was
That isn’t such a big deal, but why isn’t my level going up?
Hmm.
The most likely explanation is probably that your proficiency only increases the first time you Appraise something. Otherwise, it’d be too easy to level it up, huh?
Just to be sure, I Appraise every nook and cranny of my home. But the skill level doesn’t rise.
Looks like I don’t have enough proficiency.
Which means that if I want to cultivate my Appraisal, I’ll have to leave my house and use it on other things. Thinking back, I did Appraise a whole bunch of monsters when the skill was still level 1.
That might be what got me most of the way to level 2.
Outside, though… Ugh. Now that I have this safe, comfortable house, why would I bother going out?
If I want to live in peace, my best bet is to stay a shut-in.
But if I want to raise my skill level, I need to go outside.
There are pros and cons to both sides, but the danger of going outside is a pretty massive downside for sure.
Plus, although this probably isn’t the case, it’s not impossible the egg’s parents are roaming around out there.
Okay. That settles it.
I’m staying inside.
As I continue working on the egg in my home, one of the threads of my web starts vibrating again. It’s a special occasion: my second catch. Perfect timing! I was just getting a bit hungry.
I skip a little as I head toward my prey.
…It’s kind of surreal for a spider to skip, even for me.
Last time, I let down my guard and took a surprise attack to the face, so this time I approach with caution.