Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? Volume Chapter 18

I survived.

I bask in the joy of this fact for a moment. I’m alive. What a wonderful thing.

At the same time, though, panic slowly overwhelms my heart.

What am I gonna do now?

My nest is ruined, completely beyond repair. I look at the site where the breath attack had hit.

There’s a huge crater in the wall there.

Ha-ha.

How strange.

Is it even possible to cave in a wall like that?

I thought craters were formed when meteorites or whatever crash into the ground.

So how am I looking at one on a vertical surface? It seems fairly deep, too.

How very strange.

Despite the fact that I’m standing around in a defenseless daze, the bees aren’t attacking me. Maybe the earth dragon freaked them out, too. I can’t blame them. That thing is a terror. I’m still scared, myself.

Really, what am I going to do now?

I could still try to break through the bees’ territory and return to the original passage.

As long as the earth dragon doesn’t come back, of course.

I was lucky to have survived this time. But if the same thing happens again, I doubt I’ll have the same fortune.

It’s like the dragon saw my nest as an annoyance and deliberately destroyed it.

In other words, if I make another one, it’ll probably just aggravate the monster even more.

In which case, that option is out of the question. I’m a little too afraid to do it, anyway.

My nerves are totally shot at this point.

The last thing I want to do is provoke the wrath of the earth dragon.

Of course, it’s possible that I’m misunderstanding and there’s no particular motivation behind the destruction of my nest.

Considering how powerful it is, though, it’s entirely possible that it was a calculated move.

But from the perspective of a weakling like me, the result was the same either way. If I run into the earth dragon, I’ll die. Simple as that.

I’ve successfully avoided death twice now.

Both times, I was extremely lucky. However, I don’t think luck was the only factor.

Is it possible that despite its overwhelming power, the dragon didn’t notice me hiding?

I think so. I want to think so, at least. Otherwise, I have nothing left to cling to.

My one and only means of survival.

Hiding, and somehow staying out of the way of the dragon and far from its territory. That’s the only way.

I can only rely on my Stealth skill.

When I got it, I didn’t think it’d be particularly useful, but now it’s my lifeline.

Its skill level is 5. To be honest, that makes me a little nervous, but I have no choice but to rely on it.

My mind is made up.

I look at the ground. The earth dragon left some magnificent footprints behind. My gaze follows them toward where the dragon was headed.

There’s a single large passage. So it’s somewhere down that way. Just thinking about it makes me nervous.

I head in the opposite direction.

Obviously. Who would go after a dragon by choice?

I don’t know where this path leads.

To be honest, it would probably be better to ignore my feelings and climb out of the hole, but that just isn’t possible.

All logic aside, my heart is completely against this course.

I proceed with caution, hiding myself as I go. If only I had a cardboard box, the ultimate stealth device.

Whew. Am I a little calmer now, maybe?

Come to think of it, my HP took a serious hit when I fell before, but now it’s completely recovered.

HP Auto-Recovery is awesome.

If only I’d used skill points for this instead of Detection.

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But I managed to learn it of my own accord, so it worked out.

I was too frazzled to pay attention to it earlier, but I wonder how quickly it recovered.

Since my skill level is relatively low, it probably wasn’t all that fast, but it seems like it’d be able to take care of small injuries without a problem.

Other than that, I also notice that my red total stamina bar is still full.

Why is that?

This has never happened before, so I wonder if maybe something happened to make it stop decreasing, but I have no idea what that might be.

There isn’t a bug where it’s actually going down but isn’t displaying properly or something, is there?

It sure would suck to suddenly run out of stamina and be paralyzed or something.

But I believe in you, Appraisal! I know I can count on you to always have my back now! I believe in you, although when I think about your track record so far… No, I still totally believe in you! I think.

My Appraisal skill may be due for an upgrade, too.

It’s been a while since it last leveled up, after all, and I’ve been Appraising nonstop this whole time. Considering the giant leap forward when it hit level 6, I have high hopes for the next level-up, too.

Hopefully it will start displaying skills and stuff soon…

Not knowing the effects of some of my abilities is a little inconvenient. And one of the skills I don’t understand may be able to help me out of this current situation.

That’s probably too much to hope for, but it’s a slight chance to improve things a little.

I’m willing to take any help I can get during these desperate times.

Maybe there’s a skill that can inform me about enemy locations or something?

If that’s possible, I could keep constant tabs on the dragon’s location while I traveled.

It’d be nice if I could use Detection, but that’s useless.

A map would be nice, too.

I have no idea whether this path will actually lead somewhere safe. I mean, it’s just as likely that it’ll take me somewhere even more dangerous.

In that case, well, I’ll probably die.

Anyway, for now, I have to trust in my luck, bad or otherwise.

Please, I’m begging you, let this path lead somewhere safe.

The path I’m traveling along is pretty big.

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Big enough for the six-foot-long bees to fly around unhindered, as well as a fifteen-foot, giant praying mantis–like creature.

The giant mantis creature uses its sicklelike claws to intercept a swarm of bees. Unlike a normal praying mantis, this thing has six arms. It looks like an Asura demon.

The bees are trying to attack from the air, but they can’t get too close for fear of entering the range of the sickles, so the battle is at a bit of a stalemate.

I hide in the shadows of some rocks, observing the situation. Neither side has noticed my presence.

My Stealth is still working even better than I thought.

As I peek at them cautiously, I Appraise the species.

Oh, one of the bees got sliced in half.

Those things must be really sharp to bisect something with a single swipe like that. If they’re that strong, they may even be able to cut through my thread.

Well, it doesn’t seem to have noticed me, so I figure I’ll just scurry on by.

Wait, though.

There are some words in those Appraisal results I haven’t seen before.

Wow, really? So this place is named the Lower Stratum? Wait, so there’s a layer even lower than this?

So there are lots of strong monsters here, too… I almost wish it didn’t tell me that. Still, I’m surprised to learn there’s a lower level than this.

All I can picture is a hellish place crawling with super-powerful monsters.

I mean, it’s the lowest level of the biggest labyrinth in the world!

Monsters always get stronger the farther down you go in a dungeon, and if this Lower Stratum has reasonably strong monsters already, the Bottom Stratum can only be worse.

A whole bunch of enemies in the same league as that earth dragon… Just imagining it is horrifying.

Although I do have one more thought.

Most likely, the area I was in before was the Upper Stratum. There were humans exploring up there, after all, so it’s probably connected to the outside world.

In which case, I might’ve been closer to the exit than I thought.

But I guess that doesn’t matter now.

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At any rate, I have to escape from this stratum.

And once I get out of here, there’s still the Middle Stratum, too. Hopefully, this path is connected to the next floor up. I sure don’t want to go down to the Bottom Stratum.

Oh, another bee bit the dust. They’re probably gonna lose, then. This praying mantis thing sure is strong. Probably even stronger than the snake.

Which is strange, considering that the snake seemed like a boss monster to me before…

It obviously doesn’t compare to the dragon by any stretch of the imagination, but this mantis monster still seems intense.

The snake is rapidly dropping in my mental rankings. What if it’s a relative weakling by the standards of the Lower Stratum?

Well, it may be too early to judge something like that. It’s possible that the mantis is just exceptionally strong, after all. At least, that’s what I think at the moment.

Just as the praying mantis cuts down the third bee, a totally unexpected fate befalls it.

More specifically, a giant spider appears out of nowhere and crushes it in its jaws.

Huh? Wait…what?

Oh, wow. It’s my super-evolved form.

Seriously?

Oooh. So if I keep evolving, I’ll end up like that?

It’s still small compared to the giant mama spider I saw before, but it does look to be around thirty feet long. It dwarfs the praying mantis.

Wait, it bit that thing and killed it without even whipping out any thread, didn’t it?

Does that mean it has crazy-high strength? My strength stat is still only 21… How many times do I have to evolve before I get to that?

Well, at any rate, it’s time to take my leave before it finds me. This is one battle I won’t win.

Yes, one thing is abundantly clear:

The Lower Stratum is insane.

What about it, you ask? Exactly what you just saw!

My life depends on my Stealth skill even more now.

Maybe I was too hasty with my decision? Should I have tried breaking through the bees’ territory after all?

But at least I don’t feel the same sense of impending doom that I did around that dragon.

Besides, even the bees could beat some of the monsters here, so it’s not entirely unbelievable for me to survive.

Sure, the mantis and that big ol’ spider seem strong, but other than them, maybe I can handle the rest? Well, if I see monsters I think I can take, I’ll go ahead and eat them. Otherwise I’ll proceed in stealth mode.

As of now, my red stamina gauge still hasn’t decreased.

If I can trust that display, then there’s no need to panic. I can just take my time until I’m sure I’ve found prey I can handle.

Plus, I want to avoid messing up and drawing attention from any dragon-class beasts.

I scuttle along sneakily.

Occasionally, I stop to watch some other monsters duke it out, but I don’t want to get involved, so I always hurry on before long.

Man, the Lower Stratum is wild. I thought that praying mantis seemed strong, but turns out that’s about middling at best down here.

Besides the big spider that devoured the mantis, there’s a big lion-looking thing with wings, a giant snake that looks like the evolution of the species I encountered before, and all kinds of other crazy monsters.

Unreal.

To avoid getting involved with any of that, I’ve been sneaking along as stealthily as possible, which is working for me so far.

I mean, if I get caught even once, it’s probably game over.

So I try to keep pushing ahead without stopping for sleep, but that catches up with me eventually, and my unyielding red stamina bar finally starts decreasing again.

I still haven’t figured out why it wasn’t going down, but in any case, now I’m on a time limit again. I have to eat before this number goes from 38 to 0, or else.

I say that, but I haven’t encountered anything I think I could beat, so I decide to go to bed for the day.

I’ll be honest—I can barely sleep at all.

Up until now, I’ve always slept in at least a simple home, but I don’t want to risk standing out more, so I go to sleep without cover for the first time in my spider life.

I’m nervous the entire time, so I don’t get a very deep rest.

It’s not too terrible, but if I continue without a good night’s sleep like this, I know it’ll eventually come back to haunt me.

Then again, in my previous life, my average night’s sleep was about four hours, so I’ll probably be okay for a while.

So sleep is more or less all right for the time being, but food is becoming a real problem.

I have to find a meal in this monster madhouse somehow.

That worries me, but it turns out to be pretty easy to get ahold of some food.

Suspiciously easy, in fact.

It’s weird, honestly. The monsters here are freakishly strong. But among them are still some weaker guys like the kind I’ve seen in the Upper Stratum.

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The snakes are one example. Man, I never thought the day would come when I’d refer to those snakes as weak.

The point is, I’m very curious as to what these puny monsters are eating.

I mean, if you’re too weak to eat, you’re just gonna become the main course yourself, right? That’s what “survival of the fittest” is all about, really.

And that’s certainly how my time in this dungeon has been so far. But some of these guys are even on the chubbier side. The bees must have targeted them as their main source of food.

So, after observing the various weak monsters for a while, I’ve come to the conclusion that they all have one thing in common.

They’re all poisonous.

It’s like a revelation. I have natural Poison Resistance, so I eat that kind of thing without a problem, but most normal creatures won’t eat something poisonous.

These guys are weak, but since they’re toxic, other monsters won’t eat them unless they have Poison Resistance themselves.

By that logic, even if a monster does find me, I might be spared for the same reason.

Still, there’s no point in risking it as long as I can just keep sneaking along covertly.

Anyway, I’ve discovered that these weak monsters have two main sources of food.

One is other small-fry. That seems to be the most common method: fighting and eating one another.

So I figured I’d just wait for a moment when there aren’t any badasses around and take out a weakling with a surprise attack myself.

Then there’s the other thing, the food source they resort to only when they’re truly desperate.

This creature is shaped sort of like a flat black insect.

Actually, it resembles an insect, but it kind of acts like a snail. These things stick to the walls of the labyrinth and crawl along slowly in a very snail-like movement. I decide to call them snail-bugs.

There are tons of these snail-bugs in the Lower Stratum.

Anytime I look at the wall, I always spot at least one. That’s how many there are.

Why don’t the other monsters eat them? There are so many of them! That’s what I thought, foolishly, before I ate one myself.

Oh, yes, I was foolish.

I should’ve at least prepared myself a little more before attempting to eat one. But there’s no use wallowing in regret now.

Only after eating one did I truly understand why they are a last resort.

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That’s right, I did it. I ate one.

I used a thread to pull it off the wall, and I finished it off with my poison bite, never realizing how truly horrific the creature was.

If only there exists a skill that would let me go back in time and stop myself before I ever tried.

It was unbelievably disgusting.

The taste was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in either world.

Since my rebirth as an arachnid, I’ve eaten all kinds of revolting meals, but this took the grossest, most disgusting cake.

It was so nasty that I actually lost some HP from eating it.

You definitely can’t call that thing food.

Eating it even made my Rot Resistance skill go up, so that should clue you in as to how unfit it is for consumption.

If I didn’t firmly believe in not leaving waste behind, I wouldn’t have even tried to finish it.

Anyway, that’s how I discovered that technically, I can get food whenever I want. It just happens to involve a lot of suffering.

But I mean, if it comes down to eating something so disgusting it makes me want to die or actually, literally dying of starvation, I would have to choose the former.

So if things get truly desperate, I will eat a snail-bug again.

…I fervently hope that it never comes to that, though.

At any rate, I’m doing my best to forget the whole thing and move on.

The mazelike zone in the upper area was full of branching paths, but this one is just one long passageway.

It’s nice that I didn’t risk getting lost, but if this path connects to the Bottom Stratum, how am I ever going to get back?

Well, there’s no point in thinking about that.

I’m sure it’s connected to the Middle Stratum! At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.

Now my red stamina gauge is starting to get a little low.

Although I survived eating the snail-bug last time, I really want to leave that as an absolute last resort.

Even now, I can see a few of them creeping along the walls, but that’s not whetting my appetite.

I mean, those things are so gross that even other monsters don’t want to eat them.

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Which is why I want to find a more normal meal while I still have some stamina to spare.

As far as a poisonous monster can be considered normal, anyway.

I mean, I’ve been eating poisonous stuff for a while now, so it’s a little late to get hung up on that. It’s not like I don’t want to eat something tastier—it just isn’t an option… I miss cup ramen.

Okay, front check, all clear! Back check, all clear! No dangerous species in sight! Nice, nice.

In front of me is one of those close-knit monster trios. These guys really do travel in threes no matter what.

However, as I probably should’ve expected for the Lower Stratum, their levels are pretty high. If this species also evolves at level 10, then they’re getting close. Not that they’ll ever live to see that future.

I sneak around behind them to catch them unawares. Then, it’s time to debut my new weapon: the casting net!

What, is that name too straightforward?

Whatever! Even I can’t come up with a clever name for every single thing, okay?

I was rather pleased with myself when I thought of the name for the Morning Spider, though.

But just because I did it once doesn’t mean you should expect me to bust out high-quality puns every single time!

Anyway, casting net, go!

Now, don’t go thinking this is some ordinary old net. This new equipment…hmm, it really does need a better name, doesn’t it…? Oh, right, the explanation.

Yeah, yeah. So when I first throw this thing, it’s just a clump of thread, but as soon as it reaches its target— Bam! It opens up into a spiderweb and wraps up the victim!

This weapon is a dream team of delicate web-spinning work and careful manipulation with Thread Control!

All three monsters get tangled in the net in no time.

Ha-ha-ha! Now, that’s a catch!

As usual, I finish them off with my Poison Fang skill. Chomp!

Oh? Ooh? Here come some new titles! Poison, poison, and more poison!

So, Poison Synthesis and Poison Magic, huh?

As usual, I have no idea how to use magic-related skills, so I’ll ignore that for now.

More magic manure for me, I guess.

As for Poison Synthesis, I don’t really know what that does, either.

Does that mean poison making? But I’m a spider, so I already create that on my own, right?

Okay, enough about that. I can spend more time investigating my skills later.

I have to finish off the other two monsters and dispose of the trio.

And so: Chomp, chomp.

Oh? Ooh? Ooooh? Did the forecast today call for a downpour of poison? Well, you won’t catch me complaining.

If 10 is the highest level, then 8 must be pretty darn toxic, right?

It sure works well, even on other poison users.

This is even better than the new title.

All right. Now that I’ve finished off the three monsters, I carry them into the shadows of a nearby rock.

Oof, with my crappy stats, it’s tough to carry three monsters like this. Maybe I should’ve carried them one by one.

Wait, huh? Didn’t I do something like this before?

And didn’t I regret not carrying them one at a time back then, too?

Hmm? Don’t ask me! That doesn’t ring a bell at all! I have a great memory, okay? That never happened—that’s all! Got it?! Good.

Anyway, I decide to test out my new Poison Synthesis skill a bit while I eat.

Except I can’t figure out how to use it, so all I can do is experiment at random.

And so: Poison Synthesis! I think, pray—and would’ve whispered if I had a mouth that could form words.

Somehow, this actually does something.

Like with Appraisal, it’s as though text is displayed in my head.

What’s this, now?

Oh, hey. If this is being displayed in my mind, then Appraisal ought to work on it.

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Hmm. So Spider Poison is just my original poison?

So doesn’t that mean that by acquiring Poison Synthesis level 1, I just gained the ability to make Weak Poison?

I select Weak Poison to test it out.

A ball of liquid appears in the air in front of me, then drops to the ground and forms a puddle.

Aw, man. Do I need to have a container for this or something? Just for kicks, I Appraise the puddle.

Yep. It really is Weak Poison. All righty then.

In other words, Poison Synthesis is a skill that can produce poison without needing any materials or anything, then?

This might’ve been useful if I were still a human, but I’m a spider, sooo…

Well, depending on how I use it, it could still come in handy.

Hmm. I guess producing poison at no cost is a neat trick.

No, wait, what?

My MP has gone down. So it wasn’t at no cost, after all.

Ah, that just makes things even more questionable.

As the skill level goes up, the kinds of poison I can make may increase or something, but since I can already make my super-strength Spider Poison, well… I’m not really feeling this ability.

But I’ll probably find a use for it eventually. If nothing else, it’s still better than those unusable magic skills, right?