by Okina Baba
Now, I wonder what kind of prey I’ve caught this time…?
It’s another frog. You again! Why, dammit?! There are tons of other monsters in this dungeon! What are the odds of catching the same kind of monster twice in a row?!
Ha…ha…
Whoops, I got a little carried away there. Really, though…
Splat! Noooooooo!
While I’m preoccupied with a one-man comedy act in my head, the frog aims a spit attack right at me. Never in both of my lives have I been so shocked! I’m such an idiot!
Ah… Okay.
The pain brings me partially to my senses. This time, my resistance doesn’t level up. Must not have enough proficiency yet. Well, whatever.
I wrap the frog in thread so it can’t fight back. Then I bite down on it from above. Chomp!
The first frog didn’t die after one bite, so this one probably has some resistance, too.
Still, if I immobilize it and bite it once, that should weaken it significantly.
I quickly bring the frog bundle into my house, then go back and immediately rebuild the broken web.
Last time, I left the webbing as it was and ate my prey right on the spot. But thinking about it afterward, I realized I left myself totally defenseless in the meantime.
If other monsters or even humans had arrived right at that moment, I would’ve been under attack without a complete web for defense.
So this time, I’ll restrict the frog’s movement first, repair my web, then finish it off and eat it once I’m fully prepared.
When I return to the frog, I see it wriggling around in an attempt at escape, despite being all wrapped up.
Hmm.
I guess one bite didn’t have that much effect.
Chomp! I bite it again.
The first time, I’d beaten the frog by biting it over and over, but that probably wasn’t necessary. All I need to do is sink my teeth into it and keep injecting poison through my fangs.
Oh! I totally leveled up a skill! This is the first I’ve heard of this one.
At the same moment my skill levels up, the struggling frog gives one last spasm and stops moving. It’s so sudden that I’m a little startled.
Oh, but that probably meant that leveling up my skill increased the potency of my poison. Nice!
Hmm? Hmmm? Ah, my body feels strange!! Huh?! What’s going on?! My skin’s peeling off?!
Molting? Am I molting?!
Wh-whaat?! W-wait a second!!
Did I just get a whole bunch of important information at once?!
Say it again! One more time, please!
The Divine Voice (temp.) remains silent, ignoring my wishes.
Oh man. Seriously…?
No, no.
I have to calm down and remember. Did it say I leveled up? It did, didn’t it?
Argh, I was so distracted by the sudden molting that I didn’t catch everything!
No, wait, there’s no way I’d just randomly start molting for no reason, right?
Maybe my body renewed itself because I leveled up?
At any rate, the old skin is still stuck to me, so I peel it off. Wow, a few areas, like on my back, are pretty messed up. That was where the frog’s acid got me. I wasn’t able to see it until now, but it looks like a pretty bad wound.
Hmm?
Speaking of which, the part of my vision that was busted is all back to normal!
Ooh! So if you level up, you make a full physical recovery and everything? Very fancy!
Okay.
So this is definitely a level-up. My body feels kind of light and refreshed, too.
It probably happened because I beat that frog and gained experience points, right? I decide to start eating the frog while I process what happened.
Now, let’s see if I can remember it one at a time.
I think the first thing it said was that my level went up. The molting started right after that, and while I was freaking out, I think the Divine Voice (temp.) spouted off a whole bunch of other stuff.
Let me see… Skills? That’s right—wasn’t there something about skill levels going up?
And it was more than one, right? Did two go up at the same time? Why?
Right, I think there was something else before the bit about skills.
Uh… “Skill proficiency level-up bonus,” maybe? That’s it! It did say that!
In other words, when I leveled up just now, bonus points were added to my skill proficiencies!
So that’s why multiple skill levels went up at once.
The skills affected were Poison Resistance and…Spider Thread, right?
Huh, so thread handling is a skill, too. I didn’t catch what level it is, though.
But if I keep making spider thread, the skill should improve easily enough, right?
Well, that’s handy information.
And at the end, wasn’t there something about skill points?
So I guess you get more of those by leveling up, then.
In summary, when I level up, I completely recover health. I think my stats go up, too. Plus, I get skill points.
I can probably test out how much I earned later.
And the most important part is that I received a skill proficiency bonus.
I don’t know exactly how many points that entails, but since it raised two skills at once, I bet it was a ton.
So leveling up might be a good way to enhance skills effectively.
Levels, huh…
Since skills and titles exist, I kinda figured levels would, too, but still.
I’ve been trying not to think about it too much, but boy, this world sure is gamelike.
I was afraid that if I took that view, I might start acting as if I’m just playing a game, but I guess it’s too late for that. I have to admit, though—I’m already getting a little excited.
I can’t help it if I have the soul of a gamer, all right?
For now, my current goal is to break that egg. It seems impossible at the moment. The shell’s just too tough.
Wrapping the rubber threads around it didn’t do a thing, it seems.
But if I keep raising my level and improving my stats, I should be able to crack it eventually.
Heh-heh-heh. Just you wait, egg!
I’m gonna break you open and eat you if it’s the last thing I do!
LEAVING THE NEST
If I want to break the egg, and if I want to survive, I’m gonna have to become stronger.
I don’t want to get killed by a monster, human, or whatever else.
And since that egg thief showed up at my doorstep, it seems that humans do come this far out from time to time.
There’s no guarantee that the egg’s parents aren’t lurking around somewhere, either.
Now my spider body is decently agile.
I can jump almost seven feet in the air, and I can climb walls, too.
Before I made my house, I encountered other monsters while I was wandering around outside, but I was speedy enough to avoid them without a problem.
Well, doesn’t that mean you’re actually a pretty powerful monster, you ask? That’s what I thought, too.
But clearly, I was wrong.
How can I be strong when I can’t even break an egg?
My best weapons are my thread and poison fangs. I can bind enemies in my web and finish them off with my poison.
&nbs
p; This golden combo is my key to victory, so in other words, any situation where it doesn’t work will spell my defeat.
My webbing and fangs are essential to me—no, to all spider monsters.
Once I arrived at this conclusion, I stuck with the pattern of rendering my opponents helpless with my thread before finishing them off.
Using this strategy, I took out my third frog unharmed, and when I finished eating, the Divine Voice (temp.) rang out again.
Hey, I got a new title.
So I can’t get one on purpose by doing all those other things, but then one gets dropped on me when I’m not even trying?
Hey, I can’t help it if my food is foul!
There’s nothing here for me to eat but monsters!
Well, I guess complaining to the Divine Voice (temp.) won’t do me any good.
So the skills I got were Poison Resistance and…Rot Resistance?
What does that mean? Can I eat rotten things now, maybe?
That doesn’t seem particularly useful, but I guess it’s better than nothing.
And I already have the Poison Resistance skill, but judging from what the Divine Voice (temp.) said, it must’ve added a level-1 skill’s worth of proficiency to what I already have.
Well, if my skills get stronger, then so will I, probably.
Although ramping up my resistance isn’t going to help me break that egg.
After a while of playing with thr…ahem, I mean, practicing with my threads very studiously, my skill level rose.
Since I now know that my spider thread is a skill, I‘ve been trying all kinds of things with it to earn more proficiency.
Raising the skill level might improve things like the elasticity of the rubber thread, in which case the egg might just break.
Man, sure took a while to level it up, though.
As a result, the inside of my house is now entirely white.
Compared to when I first made it, my home has changed a lot over the course of a few days.
For one thing, I’ve got more webs.
For a while, I just put one web over each of the three passages of the intersection, but now I have several more set up along the passageways.
My thinking was that a single trap might be easy to break through.
With this many spiderwebs, it’ll take some time for anything to get to the center.
Now my home is even safer than before.
That alone wasn’t enough to raise my skill level, so I decided to decorate the walls next.
I applied my silk all over the wall, coating it in white.
Of course, these weren’t just ordinary decorations.
These wallpaper threads were linked to my webs so that when prey got caught, the fibers would automatically pull away from the wall and wrap around the unlucky victim.
I was extremely proud of this trap, which took a good deal of trial and error to complete.
Around the time I started putting up the wallpaper threads, my skill level rose by one.
After those were all finished, my last project was to string up some invisible strands inside my house.
This thread doesn’t have any stickiness, and it snaps with a single touch. If I leave it alone long enough, the natural flow of air eventually breaks it before it’s absorbed by the wallpaper threads.
I think I was able to make such fine filaments now because my skill level had reached 5.
These are for enemy detection. The ends of the invisible threads are connected to me, so if something touches them, I’ll know what it is.
I developed this detection fiber to counter the inconvenient fact that I can’t see behind me.
Since I don’t have to worry about my back while I’m at home, I decided to put up a few around my house instead.
My hope is to eventually be able to remotely control these when I explore outside my house.
After all this, I was pretty much out of things to do, so I just started pointlessly stockpiling more thread until I finally reached skill level 6.
Thanks to this, I gained the ability to make high-quality, silklike threads, so I produced a few balls of that and left them lying around wherever.
Of course, naturally producing all this webbing ended up making me hungry.
Which was why I wasted no time devouring the next victim of my web.
All the monsters in this area seem to be venomous, so my poison fangs can’t kill them very quickly.
Well, once it’s trapped in my web, I have as long as I like to do it in.
As a result, my Poison Fang skill went up to level 4, and my Poison Resistance skill rose to level 5.
So far, I’ve defeated three Elroe randanels, one Elroe peckatot, one Elroe basilisk, and one finjicote.
In addition, there were two more of the now-familiar frogs.
Is this dungeon a frog-breeding ground?
I’ve defeated quite a few monsters now, but I still have yet to see any other humans.
Elroe randanels are small dinosaur-like monsters. Three of them attacked me at once, which totally freaked me out.
But all three of them got trapped in my net perfectly, so it was no sweat.
The Elroe peckatot is a bizarre monster resembling a cross between a penguin and a pelican with monkey arms.
The finjicote is a freakishly huge, beelike creature, so large that it took up almost the entire ten-foot width of the passage. Because of that, though, my web ensnared it without a hitch.
The biggest pain in the butt was the Elroe basilisk.
It looked just like a giant lizard, but true to its name, it had some kind of petrification attack. I think it had the same kind of petrifying glare you see in games and fantasy stories—it turned one of my front legs into stone. What a terrifying enemy.
I was so scared that I resorted to a strategic withdrawal, aka hiding behind the egg.
Just then, the rubber threads around the egg all turned to stone and shattered.
Maybe that’d work on the egg, too? Tentatively optimistic, I let it keep using its petrification attack, but the egg was unaffected.
In fact, the lizard wore itself out attacking my shield, so I was able to slip in and finish it off without any issue. What the hell is up with the egg, anyway?!
After that encounter, I had to suffer with a petrified leg until I leveled up and molted again.
Since I got the Petrification Resistance skill in the process, it was an overall benefit, but it was still at least as dangerous as my first meeting with a frog.
Oh, right, like I was saying: I leveled up. Three times, to be exact. Now I’m level 5.
As far as I know, I have the following skills: [Poison Fang LV 4] [Spider Thread LV 6] [Appraisal LV 2] [Taboo LV 1] [Heretic Magic LV 1] [Poison Resistance LV 5] [Acid Resistance LV 2] [Rot Resistance LV 1] [Petrification Resistance LV 1].
I’ve gone up three whole levels, but my skills haven’t changed all that much.
Guess the level-up proficiency bonus isn’t as big as I thought.
It doesn’t seem like I gained too many skill points with each level, either.
I got all excited when the Divine Voice (temp.) said I had more skill points, but I can’t figure out how to obtain any new skills with them.
I try imagining all manner of skills that might exist, but I can’t do anything.
When the skill I thought of doesn’t exist, the Divine Voice (temp.) won’t say a damn thing, and when it does…
…is all it’ll say.
The rules for skills are more complicated than I first assumed.
Another day lazily spent
. Ah, I love my little home…
What? What egg?
I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have zero recollection of any big white bundle of rubber threads.
My meals deliver themselves to me without any effort on my part, and the house is totally secure, so I can snooze to my heart’s content despite being in the middle of a dangerous dungeon. I’ve carpeted the hard floor with plenty of soft silk, so it’s nice and comfortable, too.
I’m taking it easy as I go about my daily thread-making routine. Ah, this is the life.
Thinking about it now, my days were pretty busy back in my former life.
I didn’t pay any attention to it back then, but in retrospect, how did I ever live on four hours of sleep a day?
Before, my life consisted of waking up early to go to school, then coming home and playing video games until I succumbed to the drowsiness.
Yeah, that’s just how I lived.
Playing games was fun and all, but looking back on it, I don’t know why I went to all that trouble when I was under no obligation to do so. Between my pride in being among the top free-to-players and caving to the expectations of my peers, I think I was starting to push myself past my limits.
Me, worrying about other people’s expectations? What a joke!
I’m totally self-sufficient. Who cares what other people think?
At least, that’s what I’ve been telling myself… But since starting this new life, I’ve realized that I might have been giving in to that human impulse at least a little. So now that I’m living a life truly without responsibilities, I feel liberated at leaving everything else behind.
In the beginning, I was concerned that I might be unbearably bored with so little to do, but clearly I worried for nothing. I certainly have a lot of free time without the Internet or games, but it isn’t so bad.
Perhaps my standards for happiness are just lower than the norm. To be honest, as long as I get to live, that’s good enough for me. This present life, with guaranteed food and shelter, is enough to make me content.
So much so that I figure I could probably just spend the rest of my life right here like this.
Although I don’t know how long spider monsters live.
And while that sounds nice in theory, I know a time will probably come someday when I’ll have to leave this home.