Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? Volume Chapter 19

…Not long ago, I would’ve thought these were crazy good.

Well, to be honest, I still think that, but it doesn’t feel like something to celebrate.

Ugh. Uugh. Uuugh. Aaargh!!

Enough already! I don’t wanna think about it! What’s the point of getting hung up on it anyway?

Even if these administrators or whatever do exist, what am I supposed to do about it?

I’m just a spider.

What can one spider do against a bunch of godlike freaks?

Nothing, of course.

So why shouldn’t I just keep living my life as I please?

Stalkers? Peeping toms? Do your worst.

I don’t care if you’re an administrator or a god or what. Go ahead and watch. I’ll show you a life you won’t soon forget!

I’ll shine like a comet until I burn into nothing!

Feast your eyes on my glorious life!

Information braiiin!

What is it, body brain?

We’re on fire!

I know—I’m totally fired up right now!

No! I mean we’re physically on fire!

Huh?

The thread, the thread!

Wh-whaaa…?!

You were spacing out, so we forgot to cut it off, and now we’re on fire!

What’s wrong with you?! Don’t just report to me about it—put it out!

Hot! Hot! Synthesize some poison! Hurry!

All right, Weak Poison comin’ up!

Geh?! Now I feel numb!

Oh nooo! I forgot Weak Poison still had paralysis attached!

Seriously, what’s WRONG with you?!

So hot! So numb!

I-I-I-I’ve become so numb!! I can’t f… Aaaah! Our HP!

No more jokes! We’re gonna die!

Oh, our HP reached 0.

Wha—?!

Activate Perseverance! As long as we have MP to sacrifice, we’ll be revived with 1 HP!

Ooh!

But if we don’t put the fire out, it’s gonna run out again! Are we still paralyzed?!

Almost… There, it wore off!

Okay, this time I’m synthesizing Weak Poison sans Paralysis! And we’ll set it to the max amount, while we’re at it!

Whoa?! That’s a huge glob of poison!

Ouch. It crushed us. Our HP’s down again.

Ugh. But at least it put the fire out.

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Oh, you’re right. Well, now we know Perseverance works, so I guess it worked out all right?

How is any of this remotely all right?

Look, just don’t worry about it.

I mean, what kind of first KO is this?

Don’t worry about it.

Right…

Our MP’s down to about half now.

If we didn’t have Wisdom, that would’ve meant death.

Good thing we got Wisdom, then.

But it was because of Wisdom that this happened in the first place…

Don’t worry about it.

Skills really are handy, aren’t they?

They sure are.

I don’t know why someone would make skills and distribute them, but I guess since they’re there, we might as well use ’em, right?

Guess so. Yeah. Let’s go with that.

So Wisdom functions sort of like a somewhat powered-up combination of Appraisal and Detection.

I might as well just start calling it Professor Wisdom at this point.

For one thing, it’s added details to status Appraisal results for powered-up items.

If I double-Appraise these details, I can access even more information about them. It’s wonderful.

Attack and defense, for instance, give detailed numerical values for each part of the body.

Thanks to that, I learned that my scythes are the strongest attack area on my body, and my defense is pretty much even throughout.

The defense power of the main trunk of my body is a little low, but since I specialize in evasion anyway, I just have to make sure I don’t mess up and get hit there.

My speed is also broken down into reflex speed, instantaneous speed, persistent speed, and so on.

They’re mostly around consistent, but instantaneous speed is a little higher than the others.

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And then there’s magic. Where do I even begin?

There are a lot of different entries—magic attack power, rune speed, rune stability, rune strength, and so on—but every one of them aside from attack power is maxed out.

99,999, apparently. That’s not average at all!!

I suppose this must be thanks to the Height of Occultism skill.

It did say something about maximizing rune stats, so this must be what it meant.

So. This must mean that I can use magic now, right?

Fwa-ha-ha. Finally! Finally, I’ll get to use magic!

Oh man. I’m so hyped for this.

But first, I’d better finish going over the results of Professor Wisdom’s assessment.

No need to get ahead of myself.

Last but definitely not least, resistance contained the most important revelation of all.

It shows all of my attribute resistance stats. Now I know what my weaknesses are.

My biggest weakness, of course, is fire.

Even with the Fire Resistance skill, it’s still the lowest number.

Oh, by the way, turns out that having a resistance skill raises your resistance stat for the corresponding attribute.

Aside from fire, I’m also pretty weak to water, ice, and light.

Ice, especially, is almost as low as fire.

I doubt I’m gonna run into any ice attacks while I’m in the Middle Stratum, but it’s still good info to tuck away in the back of my mind.

My highest resistance, on the other hand, is heresy. I do have Heresy Nullification, after all.

My heresy resistance stat is 99,999.

The next highest is my poison resistance.

And surprisingly, the one after that is dark.

So now I know my strengths and weaknesses as far as resistance goes, but you know, I think this may actually apply to my attack capabilities, too.

For instance, if I use fire magic when it’s my weakest attribute, the effect probably wouldn’t be very strong.

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On the other hand, the high ones like heresy and dark would probably be really powerful.

I mean, this is still just speculation, but I’m pretty sure I’m onto something.

Moving on, I can see more details about my skills now, too.

Specifically, I can see the proficiency values of all my skills.

It shows how much proficiency I need to get to the next level, too, which will help me level up skills even more efficiently from now on.

I can even see the proficiency amounts for skills I haven’t acquired yet.

Guess what: Now I can look at the skill list even if I don’t have any skill points.

That really caught me by surprise. And all the skills are unlocked, too.

I could definitely waste a whole day just looking at this list.

For one thing, there are some skills that require such a stupidly high amount of points that there’s no way I’m ever gonna get them.

In exchange, of course, they’re incredibly powerful, but I don’t think it’s gonna happen.

Hmm. I wonder if I should stop jokingly calling it the Divine Voice (temp.).

Nah, might as well stick with that.

Oh, right… Where was I?

Yeah, so it turns out there really is an Immortality skill, you know? So I asked the Divine Voice (temp.) how much it costs as a joke, and the answer was…1,000,000 points.

Unreal. I’m never getting that.

But unattainable skills aside, there were some good ones that actually seem achievable if I try hard enough, so I think I’ll save up and get them.

I’ll be using points for Evil Eye skills for a while, but once I’m finished with that and have some to spare, I think I’ll expand my repertoire.

As for the new and improved Detection, turns out that now I can Appraise information I sense with Detection.

However, because the information provided by Mr. Detection is already pretty detailed, there’s usually no need to Appraise it further.

So while it doesn’t seem particularly useful at the moment, there’s certainly no harm having it, and it might still come in handy someday.

Finally, and most important of all, an auto-mapping function was added!

OMG.

And I can even view maps of everywhere I’ve been since I was born, even before I had Professor Wisdom!

This is amazing. Seriously.

The parts of the Great Elroe Labyrinth where I’ve just been wandering around randomly all this time are now totally clear to me on this map!

This labyrinth is way too big…

There’s a partial map of the Upper Stratum where I started, the Lower Stratum where I fell, and the Middle Stratum where I’m currently traveling.

When I tried putting them all together to get an idea of the scale, that alone was easily the size of Hokkaido. And that’s just a fraction of this place?

Anyway, based on my estimation of the distance from the Middle to the Upper Stratum, I think I still have a long way to go.

It’s only an estimate—and maybe I’ll get lucky and find a shaft leading upward or something—but I think I’m better off assuming this is gonna be a long trip.

Oh, and that mysterious garbled skill is still impossible to Appraise.

Man, though, I thought I was gonna die back there. In fact, speaking in terms of HP, I’m pretty sure I actually did.

Without Perseverance, I would’ve died for real. Imagine actually suffering such a stupid death. So much for a glorious life.

Mr. Administrator, if you saw all that, could you please delete it from your log? Thanks a lot.

Anyway, I did unintentionally confirm the effects of Perseverance, at least.

Rather than being resurrected if my HP runs out, it’s more like once my HP hits 0, my MP starts getting used up instead.

Judging by how much my MP went down when I was on fire earlier, I think that basically my MP temporarily serves as my HP.

So whatever damage that would have affected my HP gets subtracted from my MP instead.

It’s sorta like my HP and MP are stuck together.

So if I get hit with a really big overkill attack, my MP could all get drained at once, too.

But thanks to Celestial Power, my MP is crazy high now, so I guess I’ve actually become pretty tough.

However, since I also have to use MP for its original purpose, it’s probably better to only think of that as emergency insurance.

So. Thanks to Celestial Power, my magic stats are all crazy high now. It’d be a waste not to use it, right?

That’s where Height of Occultism comes in! Oh yes.

This skill is like the ultimate version of Magic Power Operation, the skill I’ve wanted for so long—the last piece of the puzzle that is using magic!

Wonderful!

On top of that, it’s a package deal that includes all kinds of convenient MP-related skills!

What a bargain!

If you act now, thanks to our friend Professor Wisdom, you can even get it absolutely free!

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H-how can that be?!

Don’t worry, we’ve already put it in your cart and purchased it for you!

Congratulations to me!

So yeah, Height of Occultism. This skill is seriously crazy.

It’s like I got maxed-out versions of [Magic Power Operation], [MP Recovery Speed], and [MP Reduced Consumption] all at once.

My MP, which was down to half after I effectively died a little while ago, is already fully recovered.

It recovers at a rate of two or three points per second, so it only took about ten minutes.

Can you believe that? It’s like an all-you-can-use MP buffet.

And since I have MP Lessened Consumption, it should go down way more slowly when it’s not being used for Perseverance.

As long as I don’t mess anything up majorly, I can pretty much use it as often as I want.

Like, I can keep Evil Eye activated all the time, and it recovers so fast, it’s like it doesn’t use any MP at all.

That being the case, I might as well leave it on nonstop.

So, now that the stage is set, I definitely want to use magic for real.

But I still don’t know how.

At least, I didn’t until now! Yes, I’ve finally learned how to use magic!

Once again, this discovery was made possible by Professor Wisdom, which came with a new search feature.

It’s no Spoogle, mind you, but if you look up a word related to the skill system, it’ll display an explanation.

Yes, I finally have a user manual, kinda. Better late than never, right?

And so I research how to use magic.

According to the search, there are several steps you have to complete in order to use magic.

First, you have to recognize magic power. This corresponds to the so-called Magic Power Perception skill.

If you can’t sense the existence of magic power, you can’t use it as fuel to activate any magic spells. So it’s a major building block in the whole process.

Thanks to Professor Wisdom, I’ve got Magic Power Perception on lock.

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Next, you have to manipulate that magic power.

You picture the magic power inside as a dense liquid. Then you will that liquid to move as you desire.

In essence, this is Magic Power Operation. It’s even better if you can move it quickly or in complicated patterns.

Usually, you’d go through lots of training and gradually learn how to manage it, but thanks to Height of Occultism, I can manipulate mine however I want.

Then comes constructing the rune.

Each variety of magic has its own set, so you choose the corresponding rune, which is then automatically formed for you.

Once it’s constructed, you picture it sort of like a pipe, I guess?

The construction speed also varies based on your stats.

Again, since all my rune stats are maxed out, the rune gets generated the instant I select it. Seriously, it’s like I’m using a cheat code.

Finally, you pour some magic power into the completed rune, and the magic is complete.

It sort of feels like liquid flowing through a pipe.

When the liquid reaches the end, it finally becomes a phenomenon that affects the physical world.

At that point, if you increase the amount of liquid flowing into the pipe, the attack power of the magic increases, and if you increase the speed, it shortens the amount of time it takes to activate.

However, that also applies an extra load to the pipe.

Depending on its thickness, there’s a limit to the amount of liquid the pipe can hold at a given moment. Therefore, it has to be made sturdily, or it can burst under the pressure.

If that happens, the rune can’t bear the load, so the spell might misfire or even backfire.

More advanced magic has longer and more complicated runes, so the chances of accidents become higher.

To stabilize the rune, you have to build a bigger, stouter pipe.

This is no problem for me, either, thanks to Height of Occultism.

You have to go through this whole process just to activate a single spell.

But here’s the thing! Since I have Height of Occultism, I don’t have to bother worrying about any of that junk!

I can operate my magic power as easily as I move my body, and as soon as I select a spell, an optimal rune is forged instantly.

I can activate magic as easily as pouring water into a glass!

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Since there aren’t any monsters handy at the moment, let’s try out a spell with easy-to-test results.

Guess I’ll start with the level-2 Poison Magic spell, Poison Shot.

Heretic Magic is no good without a target, and frankly, Shadow Magic doesn’t seem like it’d be that impressive.

As for Abyss Magic… Yeah, I feel like that’s a tad too advanced for my first try.

All right, here goes! Construct rune! Fill it with magic power! Poison Shot, activate!

Almost instantaneously, something black and round appears before my eyes and streaks forward.

Oh, whoa!

It was so easy it was almost anticlimactic, but still. I used magic.

Awesome. I’m kinda moved.

Poison Shot doesn’t seem very powerful, though.

It doesn’t utilize my Deadly Spider Poison after all.

Apparently, instead of using my poison, this Poison Magic spell generates and fires its own.

As opposed to my Deadly Spider Poison, it employs a blend developed exclusively for this spell.

Yet even with my crazy magic attack power, it still isn’t as strong as my Deadly Spider Poison.

If I use more magic power, I could make it stronger, but in that case, I’m better off just using Poison Synthesis.

So even though I have this magic, it might not come in handy very often…

Well, next up, I’ll test out the level-1 Poison Magic spell, Poison Touch.

It’s supposed to be a spell that causes poison damage to anything you touch, but I should’ve known there’d be a catch.

At first, I thought it was pretty strong for a level-1 spell, but go figure—it also hurts me.

It’s another suicide-bomber technique. Is it just me, or do I have way too many of those?

It might be handy for deliberately raising my own resistance, but otherwise, I’m not gonna use it.

Oh, but what if I combine it with the level-3 spell, Poison Resist?

Poison Resist is a spell that temporarily increases your poison resistance, so if I use them both at once, I might be able to use Poison Touch.

Still, since I have Poison Synthesis, there’s no real reason to do that.

Why would I go out of my way to activate this sad, weak, self-destructive power?

Since it’s so ineffective, it wouldn’t even help much with proficiency.

I can probably still find a use for Poison Shot, but Poison Touch seems totally worthless.

Next, I’ll try out Shadow Magic.

It’s, well…yeah. Pretty unimpressive. I could probably make some great shadow puppets now, but that’s about it.

I can’t test Heretic Magic without a target, so I’ll have to try it next time I run into a monster.

Although, since it’s a kind of mental attack, I don’t know if I’ll be able to tell whether it’s working just by looking.

Lastly, there’s the final boss lurking in the back. Abyss Magic.

The thought of trying this makes my heart pound. For various reasons.

I mean, it’s gotta be pretty crazy, right?

When I got Professor Wisdom, I tried Appraising it one more time, but the description was unchanged.

I still have no idea what the spells actually do.

Obviously, it’s some kind of advanced Dark Magic, but that’s pretty much all I know.

It could be a really powerful asset if I learn how to use it, but not knowing what it might pop out is pretty disturbing.

Thanks to Height of Occultism, I’m not too worried about failing, but it still scares me.

However, out of all the magic skills I have, this is the most magical-seeming magic of all.

I mean, it’s got that sinister, “dark arts” kinda ring to it.

How could I not get excited?!

All right, let’s start by trying the level-1 spell, Hell Gate.

Here goes! Construct rune!

…Huh?

W-wait a second! Even with Height of Occultism, I still can’t control it?!

Why is this construction so ridiculously difficult?! Ugh. I can’t do it.

The stupid rune slipped out of my control and fell apart while it was still being formed.

Like, how could that happen?

Height of Occultism is supposed to be the best magic skill there is, just like the name implies.

And even with that skill, I still can’t do it?

If it won’t work for me, then how could anyone in the world use Abyss Magic?

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And if it’s this hard to construct, what kind of crazy effects does it have?

What’s the point if even the level-1 spell is too hard for anyone to do?

So if you used the level-10 spell, Hell of Treachery, would it end the world or what?

Ha-ha, I’m sure that’s not the case. Right? It can’t be…right?

Well, if the level-1 spell is this hard, I guess I’d never be able to use the higher ones anyway.

No, wait. I can’t give up so easily.

Sure, it was hard. But I only just started using magic. I’m still a beginner.

Other magic users probably work really hard, practicing and raising their skill levels and stuff, but I skipped all that by getting these cheat skills.

In other words, I’m not used to it yet.

That’s why I can use simple magic thanks to my skills, but I’m too inexperienced to use the really advanced stuff yet. I bet that’s all it is.

In which case, the answer is simple. Practice makes perfect!

So hey. Body brain.

Hey, information brain. I know what you’re getting at, but…

Oh good, you already know?

Mm-hmm. What are we gonna do about information if you do that, though?

I dunno, can’t you pick up my slack a little?

In theory, sure, but if I’m doing twice the work, I probably won’t be as efficient…

Hmm.

Wow, perfect timing!

Hello, me number three.

Hellooo. Don’t worry—I heard everything. Now that I’m here, it’ll be fine!

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Great! All right, number three. You’re gonna be magic brain!

Okay, I’m on it.

So, with Parallel Minds leveled up, I can have three different minds going at once.

The body brain and information brain will stay the same.

And the new magic brain will practice magic, focusing on Abyss Magic, as we go.

Thanks to the Ruler of Wisdom title, my magic proficiency should improve easily, meaning that if I level up Poison Magic and Shadow Magic, too, they should be useful eventually.

On top of that, if we’re in battle, the magic brain can independently assist with magic.

Poison Shot doesn’t have much going for it on its own, but if used in cooperation with the body brain, its utility value would skyrocket big-time.

It could be used for all sorts of things, like diversions or sudden attacks.

And information brain’s role in assessing the situation is important, too.

We’re like the Holy Trinity here.

Man, I’m impressed with myself all over again.

My stats have gotten way higher, and now I can move around and shoot magic at the same time.

I know I wouldn’t wanna fight me, would you?

Wow. Am I super-strong or what?

All things considered, my Middle Stratum campaign is going pretty well.

I’ve defeated a ton of monsters, leveled up a bunch, and my skills are growing, too.

In the meantime, Overeating finally reached level 10.

I braced myself, wondering if Gluttony would be next, but instead I got:

Well, it’s not Gluttony, but it’s still pretty amazing.

Basically, instead of just being stocked as SP like with Overeating, it’ll also be applied to HP and MP.

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The amount that can be stored for those is lower than for SP, but that doesn’t make it any less impressive.

Really, any increase to my low HP is enough to make me happy.

And with the effect of Perseverance, when my HP and MP improve, so do my chances for survival.

I already have an excessive amount of MP, but if I can stock on top of that now, so much the better.

I don’t really benefit from the not-gaining-weight part, though.

I mean, I didn’t gain weight before, either. I wonder why?

The description of Overeating said the user gains weight in proportion to how much they stock, but even when I stuffed myself as much as I could, I never gained any weight.

I don’t know if it’s some special predisposition because I’m a spider or something, but since now it’s more certain that I won’t gain weight, I guess there’s no reason to worry about it.

That’s right. Before the skill leveled up, I had reached the max amount of possible Overeating stock.

The max increased by 100 with each level, stopping at 900.

Now that it’s evolved into Gorge, the upper limit’s risen a bit more, but I’m guessing it’ll stop again at 1,000.

It’s probably my anti-wasteful nature as a Japanese person to feel like I need to use my SP once I can’t stock any more.

Which is why I’ve been trying to consume as much SP as possible with my normal movements.

Specifically, by jumping or running as I move forward.

By doing this, I also earn proficiency for skills like Skanda.

As a result, both that skill and some others have leveled up.

Instantaneous and Persistent advanced that way, too, and finally maxed out.

They evolved into Acceleration and Durability, respectively, adding a multiplier to the growth rate of the corresponding stats.

With that, I now have plus corrections on all my stats whenever I level up.

Although my magic-related ones already progressed insanely quickly thanks to Wisdom, and I’m already plenty fast thanks to Skanda.

Hmm. I’m supposed to be a high-speed physical type, but looking at my stats, I seem more like a high-speed magic type.

Professor Wisdom is the main reason for that, but I can’t say for sure whether I’ve actually become a magic specialist now.

I mean, even though my magic-related skills have all gotten better…

…they’re still not as strong as Deadly Spider Poison.

So when I’m in a serious scrap, Deadly Spider Poison is my main trump card while magic is more like a support skill.

There really isn’t much I can do about that.

My Spider Poison and Spider Thread are the two main reasons I’ve come this far in the first place, after all.

If magic appeared out of nowhere and surpassed them just like that, it’d feel like all that hard work had been for nothing.

Ugh, I wanna use my threads agaaain. Get me out of here alreadyyy.

When I reach the Upper Stratum, I’m gonna build a home right away and spend some time doing skill research there for a while.

After that, I’m honestly not sure what’s next.

I know I’m not supposed to worry about it, but I can’t quite put it out of my mind.

Administrators. Skills.

If I want to know more about all that, I’d have to ask someone with more information.

But what do the people in this world think of the administrators anyway? I have no idea.

Really, if you think about it, I can’t communicate with anyone here, huh?

You’ve got me!

And me!

Yeah, but you guys are just me! I’m talking about other people, like actual OTHER people!

Whew. Man, now that there’re enough idiots on board, it’s extra-hard for me as the information brain, aka the only smart one.

Anyway, yeah, communication.

I didn’t do a lot of communicating in my past life, either, but I was able to get data just fine thanks to the Internet.

But not anymore. I have Professor Wisdom, but I can really only look up information about skills.

Besides, even if I could check it, I wouldn’t be able to get to the bottom of things.

Any information that might be connected to the administrators can’t be Appraised.

Really, from a global perspective, I’m just some homebody who’s never once been outside.

I’ve been in the Great Elroe Labyrinth all my life.

Can you blame me for not knowing anything about the state of the world when I’ve been trapped inside without any input?

If I want to know more about the administrators, I need to get out of this labyrinth and interact with the various people who live in this world.

But I’m a monster, and I can’t talk. How am I supposed to carry on a normal conversation?

Well…I can’t do anything about being a monster, but maybe I can find a way to talk after all.

One option is to gain the Telepathy skill.

The other is to evolve into a certain monster.

See? There’s another new tool Professor Wisdom gave me: an evolution tree.

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Studying it, I can see at a glimpse what kind of monsters I can evolve into in the future.

Whenever I evolved up until now, I just picked mostly going by my gut, but apparently, I had the right idea.

Looking at my evolution tree now, I can see that I’ve been choosing poison types and relatively rare species. Including my current species, Zoa Ele.

But that’s not the point right now.

The real matter at hand is the intel I found about a certain monster that appears further down the line of my evolutionary tree.

Arachne. A monster with the lower body of a spider and the upper body of a human.

As a concept, it’s pretty well known even back in Japan.

If I want to evolve into that form, it’ll be a bit of a long haul, but I can do it.

And if I have a human upper body, I’ll probably be able to talk.

The problem is I’ll still be a monster, so I don’t know if humans will be willing to talk to me.

Either way, though, being able to have a human body—even just half of one—would be huge.

Sure, I’ve gotten used to my spider body and all, but what kind of healthy former human girl would want to spend the rest of her life this way?

You wouldn’t, would you?

If I have the opportunity to become even partially human, of course I’m gonna go for it.

But there’s no point dwelling on that now.

It’ll be a long time before I have to decide whether to go that route.

I have to get out of the Middle Stratum before I can even consider leaving the labyrinth in the first place.

I’ll worry about the rest later.