Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? Volume Chapter 19

“You really are quite entertaining.”

I hear a beautiful yet deeply unsettling voice from somewhere very close to me.

“Who would have guessed you would eat the thing? That surpassed even my expectations.”

It’s a very level voice with no hint of emotion.

Potimas’s voice is fairly emotionless-sounding, too, but you can still pick up on what he’s feeling a little bit.

This voice, though, is so devoid of feeling that it’s like you’re either talking to a machine or some superpowered being beyond human imagination. In this case, it’s probably the latter.

But what is that being doing here?

And where is “here” anyway?

“There was a possibility that the bomb would explode, so I temporarily evacuated you to my location. However, it seems you have absorbed its power safely, so perhaps that was an unnecessary precaution.”

Explode…?

Oh yeah! I ate the bomb, and then I was in a ton of pain.

What happened after that?

“Do not worry—your little world is safe. Please rest here a while so that you can adjust to your power a bit more. Now that your power has temporarily left you, we must return it from the egg to your body.”

Egg?

“One of the spare vessels you used for what you call egg revival. You subconsciously let your power flow into it, like a source of external electricity. I am in the middle of returning that to your real body now.”

I’m not sure what’s going on exactly, but it sounds like the eggs I left lying around came in handy.

“The scythe, on the other hand, is probably better this way. I am sure it will continue to be of use to you in the future.”

The scythe?

Now that you mention it, my scythe’s not in my hands anymore.

In fact, I can’t really tell what’s going on with my body right now.

It’s like I’m in a dream or something.

But one thing is clear: A certain someone is right behind me.

The being I’ve only ever spoken to through a smartphone is now right under my nose.

But I can’t turn around.

If I turn and see that face, I… I…!

“Welcome to the domain of the gods. I have awaited you, O nameless spider.”

For some reason, my heart pounds upon being called a “nameless spider.”

Even I don’t know why it agitates me so much.

Or maybe I don’t want to know.

“It is hardly convenient for you to remain nameless forever, so perhaps I shall give you a name now. Consider it a modest gift from yours truly to congratulate you on becoming a god.”

Alarm bells go off in my mind.

If I pass this point, I’ll never be able to go back.

But there’s nothing I can do about it.

I have no choice.

“Shiraori. The White Weaver. That shall be your name. A fitting moniker, if I do say so myself.”

With that, D snickers.

There’s still no emotion in that voice, but it definitely sounded like a snicker to me.

Wanting to confirm D’s expression, I turn around.

And then I see it.

That face.

The face I was never supposed to see.

Ugghoargh.

As I open my eyes, my vision is filled with white walls.

No, not walls. Something…silkier?

It looks like I’m wrapped in a cocoon, and an extremely tight one at that.

I try to rip through it with my hands, but it’s way too sturdy.

As I struggle and flail inside the cocoon, it abruptly rips from the outside.

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My eyes meet with the person who tore open the cocoon.

“White?”

Why’d she phrase it like a question?

The Demon Lord stands before me, looking bewildered.

I don’t know what she’s so confused about, but first, I just need to get out of this cocoon.

Why am I even in this thing anyway?

This is all very strange.

But when I try to stand up and get out of the cocoon, I fall into an even stranger situation.

Literally. I fall right on my face.

My upper body is outside the cocoon now, but my lower body got stuck on the cocoon, so I just tipped forward.

Face, meet floor!

Ow! Owww! My nose hurts!

…It hurts?

But what about my Suffering Nullification skill?

In that moment, my memory of everything that happened before I passed out comes flooding back.

I swallowed the bomb inside the UFO.

My whole body was subjected to excruciating pain.

And then I met D…

As it all comes back to me, my consciousness is suddenly sharp and clear.

Like when you wake up from being half-asleep.

And that’s when I notice.

My lower body feels strange.

Turning to look at my lower half, still stuck in the cocoon, I get a major shock.

Instead of the spider body I’m used to seeing, my eyes fall on two human legs.

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Where did my spider body go?!

No wonder my vision feels so weird!

Normally I see through both my spider and human eyes, but now I’ve got only the human view!

Wait, why didn’t I notice this as soon as I woke up?!

I should’ve picked up on a huge change like this right away!

And as a little extra bonus change, I’m totally naked right now!

“So you’re awake?”

And now this guy just strolls on over?!

“Gülie! Not right now! Face the other way!”

The Demon Lord hurriedly turns Güli-güli around.

“But I do not feel anything when I see a woman’s body…”

“You might be fine, but we’re not! Really, you’re so indelicate! No wonder you could never get Lady Sariel to look your way!”

Her harsh words do some serious damage to Güli-güli; even from behind, I can tell he’s down in the dumps now.

“Let’s get some clothes on you, okay?”

Obediently, I pull myself out of the cocoon.

Oh, my scythe is in there, too.

Once my legs are freed, I stand up.

But then I lose my balance and fall.

Again? Really?!

How many times are we gonna have to do this, body?

I try to stand up again but lose my balance a third time and fall back on my butt.

“…White?”

Oh geez.

How do you walk on two legs again?

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After many more attempts to stand up that end in my falling over, I finally manage to shakily stay on two feet.

Hrm. This isn’t as easy as I remember.

Seriously, why do humans have only two legs?

It’s so unstable and stupidly inconvenient!

Obviously, having eight legs is way better!

“Are you all right? Think you can stand now?”

The Demon Lord looks concerned, so I nod, then promptly fall over again.

Arrrgh!

“All right, no need to push yourself. Let’s just get you dressed for now, okay?”

Nodding in agreement, I try to pull some clothes out from Spatial Storage, but I can’t.

Huh? How do you use Spatial Storage again?

Normally I can just manipulate space without even thinking about it and pull out whatever I need, but now I have no idea how to do it.

Then I figure I’ll just make some clothes out of thread, but I can’t figure out how to make thread, either.

The blood drains from my face as understanding hits me.

“White? What’s wrong?”

The Demon Lord’s concerned voice goes in one ear and out the other.

I can’t use my skills.

Not this one, or this one, or that one!

I can’t use a single one of my skills!

Feeling lost, I look up at the Demon Lord’s face.

She’s tilting her head, looking at me in uncertainty.

Normally, High-Speed Processing would make everything look like slow motion, but now it’s all happening at normal speed.

My vision’s not enhanced anymore, either, so I can’t see into the distance very clearly.

And I can’t use Detection to grasp what’s going on around me.

It’s like I’m in Potimas’s barrier… No, I’m even more powerless than that now.

“Can you not use your skills?”

Still looking the other way, Güli-güli poses the question.

I’m so dumbfounded, I can’t even respond.

After that, I stay in a stupor for a while, so the Demon Lord, Vampy, and the puppet spiders bring me into a tent and play dress-up using my body for a while.

Taking advantage of the fact that I’m not resisting, they put me into outfit after outfit, mess with my hair, and even put makeup on me.

Somewhere along the way, the Demon Lord catches me up on the situation. Turns out the UFO’s been brought down successfully.

In fact, since all of its energy was absorbed into that bomb, it just fell on its own.

While that was happening, I was apparently teleported somewhere else.

I was in too much pain to do that myself, so I think D probably teleported me instead.

Actually, that shouldn’t have even been possible because of the barrier around the UFO, but leave it to D to go ahead and do it anyway.

The Demon Lord then made a daring escape from the falling UFO, which she described to me in dramatic detail, but the reality is that she just booked it out of there.

I mean, running was probably the only way to escape that UFO.

She did bring Potimas’s head out with her, but by that time his consciousness had already gone back to his main body anyway.

That guy sure is quick to make his escape.

“If he was still conscious, I would’ve beaten the crap out of him.”

You and me both.

Potimas is the biggest piece of shit I’ve ever met.

“He’s such a child. No matter how long he lives, he never grows up. That’s why he can’t even cooperate with people properly. You have to scold a child so they grow up, right? But that bastard never learns, so there’s no point in even trying. The only way to stop that guy is to kill him.”

For some reason, the Demon Lord’s words make all too much sense.

Potimas really is a child.

He’s always chasing an unattainable dream, only ever caring about himself.

“Good kids have to learn what’s right and wrong so they grow up, okay? Otherwise, you’ll end up just like Potimas.”

This particular threat seems to be pretty effective.

Vampy and the puppet spiders all nod emphatically.

As for the rest of the battle, it sounds like the ground forces eked out a narrow victory.

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All of Potimas’s machine soldiers were destroyed.

The pontiff’s Word of God army suffered a lot of losses and injuries, too.

The Demon Lord didn’t know the exact number, but it sounds like it’ll definitely be a huge blow to the Word of God’s future prospects.

As evidence of this, the pontiff rushed back to his home nation as soon as the situation was resolved. I’m sure he’ll have his work cut out for him for a while.

The pontiff requested that the Demon Lord pass along his regards to me.

He praised my success in dealing with the bomb and said he regretted he wasn’t able to thank me directly before leaving.

As for Hyuvan and the other dragons, they’ve scattered across the wasteland.

Basically, a bunch of humans have been coming to get a closer look at the UFO they saw in the distance, so the dragons are on patrol chasing them away.

The crashed UFO is too big to dismantle right away.

They can’t let it fall into the hands of oblivious humans, so the dragons are going to get rid of it and the rest of the underground ruins little by little.

Until that’s done, humans are still banned from the area, which is why the dragons are extra eager to keep them out right now.

Man, these poor chumps just wrapped a difficult battle, and now they’re being put to work again already.

Sucks to be them.

I’ll never forget you, though, Hyuvan.

(Yeah, I know, the guy’s not dead.)

Anyway, the only side that made it out without any losses whatsoever is Team Spider over here.

The puppet spiders and the queens all made it through alive.

Sounds like they were both pretty instrumental in the ground battle, too.

Ael came up to me, obviously looking for praise, so I patted her on the head.

Then Fiel joined in on the bandwagon, then Riel, then the hesitant Sael, and finally even Vampy for some reason, which means I somehow wound up patting every one of the little tykes on the head.

Oh, that’s right. Güli-güli went and picked up Vampy and Mera.

I was unconscious, so I couldn’t Teleport there to get them myself.

I’m glad Güli-güli was kind enough to take care of them for me.

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Otherwise, they would’ve been stuck in the Great Elroe Labyrinth this whole time.

By the way, turns out it’s been forty-seven days since the whole UFO incident.

I still can’t believe I slept that long.

And did these guys just stay in the wasteland with me the whole time?

“Yeah, it was pretty rough. You suddenly came back in that cocoon thing, and we didn’t want to risk moving you, sooo…we’ve been camping out in this empty freaking wasteland for ages.”

Geez, sorry about that.

“We were all really worried, you know? Especially little Sophia here. When Gülie came to get them instead of you, she thought something had happened to you and was totally freaking out—”

“Waaah! Stooop!”

Vampy rushes to cover the Demon Lord’s mouth, but it’s a little late for that.

Awww. So Vampy was worried about me, huh?

“I was worried, too, of course.”

Yeah, yeah.

“Seriously. You just teleported away before my eyes, so I thought maybe you’d gone into another dimension to sacrifice yourself by blowing up there. I was freaking out, too.”

Her unexpectedly serious voice catches me by surprise.

“I’m glad you’re all right. Really.”

…What’s going on here?!

Is it just me, or is this, like, super-embarrassing?!

Come on—I’m blushing over here!

Speaking of which, the makeover’s done now.

Ael grins triumphantly as she shows me the mirror.

Looking into it, I see… What the hell?!

On the whole, my face hasn’t changed.

But one part is definitely pretty weird.

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My eyes.

I have waaay too many pupils.

Each of my two human eyes contains four small arachnoid pupils, which is pretty damn freaky.

Overall, it makes it look like I have five eyes on each side, making ten altogether.

That’s the number of a spider’s eyes plus a human’s.

Also, it’s creepy.

Like, super-creepy.

No wonder the Demon Lord looked so confused when she first saw me.

I thought she was just startled that I have human legs now, but it must’ve been these weird eyes that surprised her so much.

So now I’ve got normal human legs, my eyes are super-creepy, and I can’t use my skills anymore.

What the hell happened to me, exactly?

“Are you almost ready?” Güli-güli’s voice comes from outside the tent.

The Demon Lord opens the tent’s front flap, allowing Güli-güli and Mera to come inside.

And then Güli-güli gives me the biggest shock of all.

“She turned into a god?”

“That’s right.”

Güli-güli nods at the Demon Lord’s incredulous question.

“This said… Allow me to call you White. During the incident, White took the GMA bomb into her body, absorbed its energy, and evolved as a result. Evolution that turns one into a god: deification.”

Turns out I unconsciously absorbed the energy from the bomb and used it to forcibly evolve.

“As a result, White has surpassed the limitations of a living being and become a god like myself. However, this means she is now outside the scope of the system, so she can no longer use skills. In fact, the system will no longer affect her in any way.”

Come to think of it, before I passed out, I did hear some kind of announcement to that effect.

No waaay. So I’ve finally become a god?!

Wait, but that means my skills and stats are gone?

No wonder I can’t use any of them and my body feels so heavy.

Without stats, my body’s even weaker than that of a normal human.

Huh? If I’m a god now, why does it seem like I’ve gotten a major downgrade?

“What does that mean?”

“White is now just an ordinary person with a great deal of energy.”

Whaaaat?!

“So what do we do?”

“Well, skills and stats are essentially a simplified method to expend energy and create magical effects using the support of the system. If she can learn to use magic without that support, she will be able to manifest power just as strong—no, judging by the amount of energy, even stronger than before.”

Excuse me, Professor! I’m almost certain I can’t do that!

“A god is essentially a being who has full control over magic. Since White has used the power of the system to become a god through irregular means, it will likely take considerable time for her to learn to use magic effectively on her own.”

Yeah, I figured.

It doesn’t exactly sound like the kinda thing I can pick up overnight.

Basically, I’ve been zipping around on a bike with training wheels this whole time.

But now, it’s like I’ve suddenly been plopped onto an oversize motorcycle.

That’s a really basic analogy, but you get the idea. No way I can start riding that easily.

I didn’t even get to take the training wheels off the bike first. I just jumped up several degrees of difficulty.

The specs of my vehicle have greatly improved, but if the rider doesn’t know how to ride it properly, she’s not gonna be able to get around.

In the same way, my specs are now higher than ever, but I have no way of putting them to use.

“I see…”

Crap. Am I basically just a burden now or what?

In fact, if I’m the same as an ordinary person without stats, that means I’ve got no Immortality and no egg revival, so I’m basically just an NPC who can get killed with a single blow!

If the Demon Lord feels like it, she could kill me whenever she wants!

“Well, it’s not like she can change back now. We’ll just have to look out for White until she gets her strength back.”

The Demon Lord doesn’t even consider killing or abandoning me. Not even for a second.

Seriously, are you a demon lord or a saint?

Ughhh, fine.

If you’re gonna be this nice to me, I have no choice but to give in already!

No matter how hard I try, I just can’t think of this person as an enemy anymore.

But I guess I already knew that.

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It hit me the moment she protected me in the UFO.

I tried making excuses to myself about why I protected her in return, like how I was paying her back or whatever, but really there was only one thought in my head at the time.

I don’t want the Demon Lord to die. That’s it.

I guess somewhere along the line, the Demon Lord won me over with her kindness.

And it looks like she isn’t even thinking about trying to kill me anymore, either.

In that case, there’s no point being stubborn about it at this point.

So, on that note, please look after me until I learn to do magic on my own!

Thus, having received a power-up that instead made me super-weak, I resolve to leech off the Demon Lord for a while.