So I’m a Spider, So What?, Vol. 1

by Okina Baba

  In which case, I’m a little worried about fitting through these small passageways.

  If possible, I at least want to move into a bigger area. So the best thing would probably be to get outside. For one thing, if I stupidly make myself enormous inside this dungeon and the exit turns out to be tiny, I may not be able to leave at all.

  The only problem is that if I reach the exit, there’s a good chance that I’ll run into humans passing through it.

  But in the end, I don’t really want to spend my whole life in this dungeon.

  That gigantic spider I saw when I was born was probably around a hundred feet tall, estimating based on my own size, so it could probably barely go anywhere in this dungeon, let alone outside.

  If I keep evolving from one form to the next, I’ll probably wind up like that eventually, so I really have to get out of here before then.

  That being said, the gigantic spider seemed like a boss monster. Will I really reach the same size someday? I wonder how many evolutions that would take. By that point, I could probably defeat humans without breaking a sweat, huh?

  But if I do that now, I won’t be able to get outside!

  Part of me is excited at the idea of becoming so enormous, and part of me is deeply alarmed by it. This is a complicated feeling.

  AN ADVENTURER’S SOLILOQUY

  I was hunting in the labyrinth with my team of adventurers.

  Most adventurers go into these mazes to raise their levels. There are monsters outside, but not nearly as many as you can find inside.

  In particular, this dungeon had a lot of indigenous monster species, so materials from them could fetch a high price.

  Leveling up and collecting resources. That’s why adventurers brave the labyrinth.

  “Hey, look at this. It’s a web.”

  I looked to where one of my companions was pointing.

  There, glowing faintly in the reflected light, was a web of evenly spaced geometric patterns.

  A spiderweb—the nest of a spider-type monster called the taratect that’s often found living in the Great Elroe Labyrinth.

  “Is there a spider in there?”

  “Must be. I’m gonna burn it down.”

  Taratects are fundamentally weak monsters.

  As long as you’re careful of their poisonous bite, they’re just small-fry.

  But occasionally, some of them make webs like this.

  These snares are extremely dangerous.

  The sticky and durable fibers are very difficult to escape on your own if you’re caught. Apparently, it’s possible if you have high enough strength, but most usually consider escape as impossible.

  The easiest way to extract yourself is by burning the web away.

  The threads are hard to break with brute force, but they’re extremely susceptible to fire.

  My comrade used the end of his torch to set the web aflame.

  It blazed up easily and continued to burn for a while.

  “Whoa, hey. It’s burning farther into the passage!”

  “This is a big nest. You don’t think it’s evolved, do you?”

  My friend’s words sent shivers down my spine.

  Monsters can sometimes evolve. When they do, they become much stronger than before. The unevolved members of the taratect species are very weak, but when they do mutate, they can become almost impossible to deal with. And that goes double for the ones that make webs.

  Once the fire went out, we explored the burned area where the nest had been.

  “Hey, look…”

  “No way.”

  My comrade groaned, and I looked up at the heavens as if for answers. Although, all I could see was the ceiling, of course.

  Before our eyes, the bones and scales of an enormous snake were scattered on the ground. Along with the skeletons of several other monsters.

  If one creature took all of these down, it would be truly terrifying.

  The giant snake skeleton probably belonged to a monster called the Elroe baladorado.

  It was a high-ranking monster on the power scale.

  “Where’s the corpse of the thing that was living here?”

  “It’s…not here.”

  “There’s a thread trailing out of the nest over here. It must have gotten away.”

  I took a look at the thread my friend had found. It was the kind of fiber that spider monsters constantly produce.

  If we followed this, we would find whatever built this nest.

  “What should we do?”

  “Let’s go after it.”

  It would be dangerous to let this thing roam around unchecked.

  If it was evolved, we might not be able to beat it, but in that case we’d just run for our lives and report this information to the outside world.

  THE FALL

  I check how much HP I have left.

  The green bar is getting desperately low.

  I’m just barely alive. Hanging on by a thread.

  How am I going to survive?

  I have no idea.

  How did it come to this?

  Even after evolving, I was still depending on surprise attacks to fight, as usual.

  I rose from level 1 to level 2 in a flash.

  Apparently, the amount of experience needed for leveling up wasn’t cumulative.

  Since I had evolved and gained a level, I thought this might be a good time to develop new tactics and get new skills with my skill points.

  It turned out that I’d accumulated a decent number of points, so I was able to get two skills.

  The first was Thread Control.

  Just as its name suggests, it allowed me to manipulate my thread.

  By consuming MP to invoke it, I could move my thread however I wanted. It was a wonderful ability that was perfect for me, since my spider thread is my chief weapon.

  However, at level 1, the thread hardly twitched.

  Dammit!

  Well, it was still better than magic skills that I didn’t know how to use at all, and it should come in handy once the skill level went up.

  The second skill…well, that one was a huge mistake.

  For someone like me who relies on surprise attacks, enemy detection is of the utmost importance.

  Not only for letting me get the jump on other monsters but for making sure I don’t fall victim to a surprise attack myself.

  That’s why I acquired a skill called Detection.

  Since I got a huge headache whenever I used it, I decided to semipermanently deactivate it for the time being.

  And so, I continued my exploration.

 

  Appraisal! Finally! Now I was getting somewhere!

  Assuming that the maximum level really was 10, it should be ready to actually help now! Probably!

  I held my breath as I checked my self-Appraisal results.

 
  LV 2

  Nameless

  Status:

  HP: 36/36 (green)

  MP: 36/36 (blue)

  SP: 36/36 (yellow)

  : 34/36 (red)

  Average Offensive Ability: 19

  Average Defensive Ability: 19

  Average Magical Ability: 18

  Average Resistance Ability: 18

  Average Speed Ability: 348

  >

  …What…was…that…?!

  What? Whaaat? Whaaaaat?!

  Who are you?! You’re not the Appraisal I know! My Appraisal was always more of a useless child who was always disappointing me! It wasn’t a cool, capable beauty like whoever did this!

  Where did my real Appraisal go?!

  And what was I supposed to do with the Useless! complaint I secretly prepared?!

  I was supposed to get my hopes up, find that all I got was a super-pointless new feature, and grumble about it!

  Why would you betray me like this?!

  Tell me, damn you!

  Huff…huff
…huff…!

  Whoops—got a little worked up there.

  I took a deep breath to calm down. Huh…haah…huff. Okay, all better!

  Ahh…

  Wasn’t this a bit too much of an evolution for my Appraisal skill? The difference was way too extreme…

  But this was what I wanted Appraisal to do in the first place.

  I wasn’t expecting such a sudden about-face, though.

  It was like if a fellow nerd from middle school had the nerve to suddenly revamp their image in high school.

  And yes, I’m aware that that’s a really weird comparison.

  Anyway, this new and improved Appraisal was actually amazing. I could now read my stats, once a total mystery, at a simple glance. There were even hard numbers, which was sure to come in handy from here on out.

  But there was one little problem. Was it just me, or were my stats super-low?

  I didn’t have anything to compare them to, so I wasn’t sure how bad they were, but they sure didn’t seem as high as they should for someone who’d reached level 10 and evolved once already.

  And then there was the matter of that speed stat.

  My speed was ten times higher than my other skills. Weird, right? I know I tend to spec speed, but this is ridiculous.

  Well, well, well.

  Now I just wanted to compare my stats with those of other monsters.

  Although, based on my results so far, the probability that I’d succeed in Appraising their stats wasn’t very high.

  In fact, I had yet to succeed at Appraising anything beyond another monster’s level even once.

  But since my skill level had risen, it was possible that my success rate went up, too. It was worth a try, at least.

  I went on the prowl for monsters and finally found one that looked sort of like a mouse. All right, Appraisal time!

 

  Ah… Just as I’d suspected, Appraising other creatures’ stats was still too hard. Oh well.

  Swish, swish, swish… Fwump! Spin, spin, spin. Chomp!

 

  Ooooh. Poison Fang for the win!

  Now that I knew how weak my stats were, it was no exaggeration to say that I had no way of attacking without my bite.

  So the level of my first and only attack, Poison Fang, was really important.

  Anyway, that was just about enough searching for the day.

  I fashioned a simple little web on the spot.

  Now that my safety was secured, I could eat the mouse…or not. I wasn’t actually very hungry. It wasn’t that I couldn’t eat, but I figured it was better to save it for the morning, when I would probably be hungrier.

  So all that was left was to sleep. Oh, and one more thing.

  Nyoooom. Tug, tug. Bloop.

  No, I wasn’t doing anything obscene. I was practicing my Thread Control.

  As a result of my training, I had discovered that I could only control one thread at a time. It moved at about the speed of a snail, too. As long as the thread was touching my body, though, the range in which I could control it was actually pretty large. And the MP consumption was fairly insignificant. The more you know!

  For the time being, though, it didn’t have much potential to be helpful in battle.

  So, before bed, I figured I’d use up some MP to practice more and see if I could raise the skill level. If I did that, the limitations should improve, too.

  Since Appraisal turned out to be a late bloomer, Thread Control could probably become useful by level 6 or so, too.

  Although it might take a while to get there.

  Anyway, once its level was a little higher, there were some things I wanted to try.

  For one thing, I was hoping to bring back my abandoned project of enemy detection thread, since my Detection skill turned out to be useless. Dreaming big, I know.

 

  And they say a watched pot never boils!

  Nyoooom. Tug, tug, tug. Blooooop.

  With the increased level, the thread’s range of motion improved a little.

  It still wasn’t enough to be useful in a pinch, but it was visible progress, so maybe it’d reach the point of practicality earlier than I expected.

  I still had plenty of MP, so I decided to keep pushing for more proficiency.

  Yaaawn… Ahhh, that was a good night’s sleep.

  In the end, I had stuck with my practice until I was almost entirely out of MP, and I’d managed to raise my Thread Control skill to level 3.

  I had actually planned to keep grinding proficiency until my MP was completely gone, but as I started running low, I got a bad feeling about that.

  I couldn’t tell you why, exactly, but my instincts told me it would be dangerous to have no MP, so I decided to stop before I hit that point.

  After one night’s sleep, my MP fully recovered.

  Great. In that case, it should be fine to practice Thread Control before bed every night.

  Hey, wait a minute. Since I was already fully recovered, couldn’t I do it in the morning, too?

  I didn’t normally use my MP anyway, so if it was going to recover over time, why not let it accumulate while I hunted?

  Yeah. That seemed more efficient to me.

  If anything went wrong, I could just switch to once a day starting tomorrow, but I figured I might as well try.

  And so, I practiced Thread Control. When my MP was just about depleted…

 

  …there was a message from the Divine Voice (temp.).

  Nice, nice. Easy enough.

  Since my MP was getting low, I couldn’t check how much the range of movement had improved, but I figured level 4 should make for decent growth.

  It probably still wouldn’t be any use in combat, but maybe I could at least experiment with making protective clothes with it in my temporary home or something. I was starting to look forward to the evening.

  Anyway, it was breakfast time. Luckily, I still had that mouse monster from the day before, so my main course was good to go.

  Hmm. Crap.

  Eating didn’t recover my MP at all. I kind of figured as much, but still.

  However, ever since my evolution, I’d been in good shape.

  This was a sign of good things to come. It was like the universe was telling me that it was my time to shine.

  Heh-heh-heh. Nothing can stop me now! Hee-hee.

  All I had to do was keep getting stronger and making my way through the labyrinth.

  I knew this dungeon was unnecessarily huge, so finding the exit was more of a long-term goal.

  Anyway, it was time for another day of being my best self! Ha-ha.

  Doot-dee-doo… I explored the maze in a great mood.

  I mean, with the great shape I was in, none of the monsters in the area could hold a candle to me.

  As long as I noticed them before they noticed me, I could beat just about anyone with a surprise attack!

  And if not, well, at this point, I might be strong enough to win a fair fight, right?

  My evolution probably made me a lot stronger, and my skill levels were getting pretty high, so I probably wouldn’t embarrass myself like that time with the frog.

  I mean, I wouldn’t say I was certain I would win, but my confidence was building that I could hold my own, at least.

  The thing with the Detection skill was kind of a shame, but still, I was feeling a little chipper thanks to evolving, so…

  Come at me, bro! Just kidding.

  Huh?

  Why did I have such an ominous feeling all of a sudden?

  It was like my instincts were screaming at me to get out of there immediately.

  I turned around slowly.

  Not far
down the long, straight path I’d been following, a group of men dressed like adventurers were chasing me.

  Oh crap. Humans!

  And they were unmistakably locked on to me!

  But it was probably nothing my newly evolved self couldn’t handle, right?

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Yeah right, idiot!

  What do you mean, level 29?!

  Even if you count me as being level 12 total, that’s still more than double!!

  And six humans around that level?! I didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell!

  Run!

  Ah, a fork in the road.

  Right or left? Let’s go with…right… Wait, hmm?

  I glanced down the path on the left.

 

  Are you for real?!

  It was a lower level than the snake I fought before, but still, how was I supposed to beat one of those if it wasn’t wrapped in webs?!

  Oh god, a snake in front of me and humans behind me?!

  And both parties were totally staring right at me!!

  Run away! Down the passage on the right! No way was I taking on a deadly human-monster combo!

  What idiot was all, “Come at me, bro”?! Me, that’s who!

  Nope! No way!

  That snake was more like a boss battle than an ordinary mob!

  Are you telling me those guys spawned just as often as normal monsters?!

  And why were humans choosing now to chase me?!

  Waaaaah!

  What were all those noises behind meee?! Too fast! How were they able to keep up with me?! My speed was 348, you know!

  I thought that was the one area where I was better than other monsters! Who the hell did they think they were, keeping up with me like that?!

  Geh?! More monsters in front of me?!