by Okina Baba
As I hunt yet another vagrant bee (I’ve lost count at this point), I hear the voice I’ve been waiting for.
The moment of my long-awaited level-up has arrived.
My skin promptly peels away from my body.
Though I can’t see it, I can feel the large hole on my back closing itself up.
Huh? For real?
Ooooh. Now this is unexpected.
Wait, so does the full recovery with each level-up count as auto-recovery?
I’m totally thrilled, but if I could offer one comment of constructive criticism, I’d rather I’d gotten that skill a little sooner…
Then I wouldn’t have had to suffer so much this whole time. But you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. The only proper reaction is to celebrate finally leveling up and clearing away so many of my worries.
Honestly, that was a close call. Just as I’d originally feared, my HP had started to go down.
When it first dropped from 6 to 5, I felt the certainty of death looming over me.
After that, it continued to slowly ebb, and by the time I leveled up, it had whittled itself down to 3.
That was seriously close.
Thank goodness I suppressed my anxiety long enough to focus on shooting down those bees.
The hunt is going smoothly. Surprisingly, my long-distance attacks with the Morning Spider hit the mark every time.
I can’t get over it. Is this another benefit of my spider body?
Probably thanks to that, I gained two new level-1 skills: Throw and Hit. Both of them would probably make my Morning Spider attacks even better.
And with this latest level-up, three of my skills powered up, too.
I don’t really know what any of them did, but if they leveled up, I must be earning proficiency for them somehow, so it’s possible that I’m benefiting from them without even realizing it.
Well, it certainly can’t hurt to level them up, I guess. Although the Overeating one does get on my nerves…
As I work on my webs and hunt more bees, I make enough use of my Spider Thread and Thread Control that they rank up as well.
The Spider Thread skill now stands at level 8, and Thread Control at level 5.
The latter is definitely more useful than I originally thought.
At level 5, I can manipulate threads with vastly superior speed and precision.
Picking up that skill was a great decision.
Pain Mitigation is level 5 now, too, which makes life even easier.
The good thing about this skill, besides the obvious benefit of less pain, is that even if I don’t feel the discomfort, I can still tell when I’m in a dangerous situation.
Pain has a function, after all, as a signal alerting you to threats or poor conditions. So if you can’t feel it, you won’t know when your body is in danger, but with this skill, I can still tell how deep or severe a wound is even if I’m immune to any of the sensations it would normally cause.
It’s hard to put an intuitive impression like that into words, but if anything, I’d say it’s like I have an awareness of unease or aggravation or something from the wound.
Anyway, thanks to that, there’s no disadvantage to the dulled pain.
That being said, the skill is still only level 5, so it’s not like pain is completely absent.
Now that I’ve leveled up, I figure I might as well see how much my stats have changed.
LV 3
Nameless
Status:
HP: 38/38 (green)
MP: 38/38 (blue)
SP: 38/38 (yellow)
: 38/38 (red)
Average Offensive Ability: 21
Average Defensive Ability: 21
Average Magical Ability: 19
Average Resistance Ability: 19
Average Speed Ability: 369
>
Oh-ho-ho.
My HP, MP, and SP went up 2 points each, as did my attack and defense, and my magic and resistance went up 1 point each.
And then there’s my speed. What’s up with you, Speed? I think it was 348 before. So it went up 21 points?
That’s a little weird, no?
Kind of a big leap compared to my other stat increases, if you ask me…
I mean, my speed bonus for a single level-up is the same as my total for attack and defense? Is this for real?
Never mind that it’s greater than my magic and resistance… What the hell?
Oh well. I decide to turn a blind eye to the ridiculously lopsided nature of my stats. It’s a little too late for that now, anyway. I finally got my wish of leveling up and fully recovering, so now it’s time to focus all my efforts on escaping.
While I was injured, I obviously worked more slowly, and I had to be extra-cautious as well.
So from now on, I’ll hunt stray bees whenever the opportunity presents itself, maintaining a steady supply of stamina as I expand my nest.
Right now, my webs span about a quarter of the distance to my goal. There’s still a long way to go.
The bees still haven’t made any efforts to wage war on me, but I don’t know how long that will last. With this in mind, I have to make sure to maintain enough strength to fend off possible bee incursions while I carry on construction.
Still, it’s proving fairly difficult.
Just as I guessed, building up a wall is a lot harder than doing it along the ground, so the higher I build my webs, the harder the work becomes.
I have to stretch thick strands from the foundation rock to serve as a base, then secure those with more threads all over the place.
And this is what it’s like just a quarter of the way up; it’s only going to get harder from here on out.
Nevertheless, I have to do it. I don’t know when the earth dragon might pop up again. I need to get out of here before that happens.
In the worst-case scenario, I may have to abandon the nest partway up and hope that my speed will be enough to push through.
It doesn’t seem like a great option, but if it comes down to a life-or-death situation, I won’t have much of a choice.
In the hopes of avoiding that particular scenario, I do my best to keep building.
I think the time has finally come.
One of the bee squads is flying right toward me.
This wasn’t the attitude of the teams that would periodically buzz by to keep an eye on me. Without a doubt, these guys are coming to fight an enemy.
At this point, my nest is about halfway up to my target position.
When I initially got this far, the behavior of the bees started shifting gradually, but apparently they’ve finally decided they can’t leave me be any longer.
But it was still only one squad.
I’m not sure whether the bees are underestimating me or if this squad is just a scouting party while the rest hang back to see what’ll happen.
At any rate, they’re sorely mistaken if they think a single squad can beat me now that I have a nest.
I ready my Morning Spider.
; The nest is made up of standard mesh-shaped webs, but I’ve left gaps large enough to throw a Morning Spider through.
The gaps aren’t nearly large enough for the six-foot-long bees to enter, though.
My opponents can’t get past my web, but I can attack them from inside as much as I please. Though they could also just fly away whenever they want, so we’ll call it even.
The two level-5 squad members fly toward me.
Hmph. As if two at once would be enough for my defenses.
My Spider Thread skill is level 8. Even at a low level, my thread was already impressively sturdy, and it’s only gotten stronger with every level since then.
Sure enough, the two bees contact the surface of my nest and are promptly tangled up in the unbroken thread. Despite their mass and speed charging in, my nest didn’t take a single bit of damage. It’s totally unshaken, literally and metaphorically.
The threads I used to make it are highly durable, with rubberlike elasticity for shock absorption. When a certain amount of weight is applied, the threads flex and soften the impact.
The two bees’ bodies weren’t enough to trigger that. In other words, my web withstood the full power of their attack on the basis of its durability alone.
It’s not that the bees’ attack was particularly weak.
As far as I could tell from my observations, these bees are actually rather strong.
I’ve even seen a squad haul back a snake as one of their victims.
They have plenty of advantages: unilateral attacks from the air, venomous needles, and powerful physiques.
Under normal circumstances, they’d be a considerable threat.
Because they stay airborne, most attacks can’t reach them, and they can easily make a preemptive strike.
But that’s exactly why they’re weak to anti-aircraft-style attacks. If you ask me, the success of my Morning Spider attacks has as much to do with their lack of vigilance as it does with my good aim.
Still, in a normal fight, a bee is a formidable enemy. But only normal fights.
My trump card—my home—is not normal.
It has abnormal defensive power, adhesiveness, and my extraordinarily good strategies.
I’m sure these insects have never seen combat tactics like this.
After all, I’m combining all the strengths of a spider with the intellect of a human.
For the time being, I ignore the two bees that rammed into my web and are now stuck. I toss my Morning Spider toward the other three, who still haven’t fully processed the situation.
The leader bee, unable to dodge in time, receives the attack straight to the face. After all, it’s always best to aim for the head first.
Letting the centrifugal force and gravity do most of the work, I swing the leader bee down toward the bottom of my nest.
And just like that, I’ve eliminated their captain.
Without their team leader, the two remaining bees of the squad hang frozen in the air with no idea what to do.
Works for me.
I swat down the higher-level one first with my trusty Morning Spider. As it watches, the last bee finally comes to its senses, but its next tactic is very poorly thought out.
I don’t know what it hopes to accomplish, but it simply launches its whole body right at me.
Did you not see what happened to the first two guys, pal?
At any rate, the desperate attack obviously doesn’t reach me, and the final bee crashes tragically into my web and stops moving.
Well, that’s almost disappointing.
When I first fell down here, those enemies were terrifying, but now that I have my nest, they can’t even touch me.
Considering that three body slams haven’t been enough to even shake the surface of my web, I doubt they’ll be able to reach me no matter how many come at me.
I’ve just proven how strong my webs are.
Compared to the defensive capabilities of my silk, the attack power of the bees wasn’t nearly high enough for a breach.
Honestly, I imagined my home would at least take enough damage to require repairs, even if they didn’t break completely through.
There are still hundreds of bees flying around above me.
At first, the number horrified me, but now that I know they can’t tear through my webs, it’s another story.
Whether there are a hundred or a thousand, if they can’t pierce my nest, their stingers will never reach me.
Finally, the chances of my escape are starting to improve.
Feeling exultant, I set about finishing off the bees I caught.
After I repelled the first squad with ease, the other bees started coming at me constantly. I dispatched the second wave as easily as the first, but after that it became a bit of a problem. That was when several squads started attacking at once.
This is unreal.
Well, actually, I guess it’s a good idea from the bees’ perspective, but still.
As the target, I would prefer it if they didn’t come at me in such large numbers, is what I’m saying. Sure, I’m safe and sound in my nest, but it’s still an oppressive sight.
Who would want to spend their days constantly surrounded by giant drones buzzing around?
I heave a sigh as I take a look. Bees, bees, bees, as far as the eye can see.
Seriously, what the hell?
With this many of them in one place, the buzzing is getting really loud. It’s super-annoying. How am I supposed to sleep?
Besides, if I keep on diligently taking them out, there’ll be too many for me to eat.
Sure, I feel like I could eat a lot more than normal because of that Overeating skill, but even that has its limits.
Considering how big one of these buzzers is, acquiring them in bunches of five at a time could be overwhelming.
I mean, my Overeating skill even increased to level 3 because of them. Thanks a lot, bees.
The most annoying thing of all is that dealing with them is totally preventing me from working on my nest.
My primary objective is escaping from this place. Not fighting a bunch of stupid monsters.
And yet, their attacks are so constant that I’m completely unable to continue construction at all.
I have more than enough food by now, so I’d be more than happy to leave them alone, if they would just stop attacking me!
I have no way of getting them to understand that, though.
At any rate, it looks like I have no choice but to use the brief lulls between the bee raids to make progress on my nest project.
At this point, they’re so focused on me that leaving the nest at all would be suicide.
Clearly, my previous backup plan of speeding past them isn’t viable.
No matter how fast I am normally, I wouldn’t be able to use my full speed running vertically, so I can only see that strategy ending in me getting caught and stabbed mid-climb.
Aw, dammit.
Getting delayed like this is the last thing I wanted… I still don’t know when that earth dragon might show up again.
Wait… Earth dragon?
Suddenly, I feel a terrible chill run through my body.
What was that…?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, nooo!!!
I can’t bear to look.
I can’t bear to, but I have to anyway.
My worst fear has come true. And worse yet, it’s definitely eyeing my nest.
What am I gonna do?!
No, there’s nothing I can do.
Nothing at all, and I know it.
I sure can’t fight that thing.
The only option I have is to pray that it’ll leave me alone.
But that option gets pulverized in an instant, along with my hopes of survival.
The earth dragon opens its mouth.
Right. A dragon’s strongest weapon is usually some kind of breath-based attack.
A thunderous
roar booms out.
The blast whips through the air. A whirlwind of destruction explodes all around me.
I don’t really know what’s happening.
But this much is clear.
My nest has disappeared, along with its rock foundation. For that matter, the wall behind the foundation has a huge hole blown through it, too.
Even the wall opposite is full of cracks.
As the fissures spread, rocks begin crumbling away from the wall.
It’s collapsing.
The single attack has decimated over half my nest. Even the remnants higher up start falling apart along with the wall.
I’m somewhere in that upper part.
It doesn’t seem like the breath attack hit me directly. Still, I’m tumbling down with the webs around me.
Without a spare second to react, I slam into the ground.
Ouch.
My HP is utterly devastated. But somehow, I’m still alive.
I’m not dead yet, but I don’t know for how much longer things will stay that way.
The rest is all up to the whims of the earth dragon.
One of my webs lands on top of me.
But that may actually be a good thing.
My body is totally covered by thread now, hidden from view. And none of the falling rocks hit me directly. If I keep hiding here, it’s possible the dragon might not notice me.
With the faintest of hopes, I hold my breath and do my best to stop my body from trembling in terror.
My shaking abates somewhat.
I’m still terrified, though.
My body hasn’t stopped trembling.
Help me, help me, help me, help me, help me, help me, help me!