So I'm a Spider, So What?, Vol. 2

by Okina Baba

  But it’s still more than enough to knock me off my perch.

  Will I make it back down to the floor, or will it nail me first?

  This is no time to be stingy with my skills.

  Mental Warfare, activate!

  Mental Warfare is a skill that consumes red SP to temporarily increase physical stats.

  Red stamina is my lifeline, so I’ve never activated this before. But in this situation, I can’t be reluctant about spending SP.

  I set off right away, aiming for the nearest wall.

  But apparently, the eel anticipated this.

  It launches a fireball as if to hedge me in, seemingly knowing exactly where I wanted to go.

  This would be tough to dodge while clinging to the ceiling.

  I’ll have to stop worrying about my red stamina bar for now.

  I avoid the approaching fireball with the highest speed I can muster.

  My best option is to push through Mental Warfare and hope that SP Reduced Consumption and SP Recovery Speed will offset the loss.

  I have to get to the wall before my yellow gauge runs out.

  It keeps firing, and I keep dodging.

  However, this is making it difficult to get close enough to the wall.

  While I’m busy with acrobatics, my yellow stamina bar keeps dwindling.

  Crap. If I run out, it’ll be even harder to stick to the ceiling.

  I have to avoid that outcome at all costs.

  But it’s no use. The eel’s flawless aim prevents me from getting anywhere.

  Finally, the yellow gauge runs out.

  Fatigue immediately assails my body. Before I can think, another fireball homes in on me relentlessly.

  Damn! I can tell that I won’t be able to dodge it, so I deliberately release by grip, leaping into empty space.

  The fireball explodes in my immediate vicinity, the blast brushing against my body.

  I manage to prevent myself from going into a tailspin, drawing on Energy Conferment again.

  The reinforced thread shoots out, adhering to the wall, and I instantly scuttle along it.

  Another shot passes through the space I’d just evacuated.

  Swinging through the air like a pendulum, I narrowly avoid falling in the magma and manage to land on the ground.

  Without so much as a beat, another fireball flies at me.

  I use the momentum of my landing to roll out of its way.

  This is rough. As punishment for continuing to move even after my yellow gauge expired, my breath is ragged and my exhausted body aches.

  I force myself to ignore it with the powers of Pain Nullification and Pain Mitigation…

  …because I can see the eel is about to unleash another Flame Breath.

  Whipping my spent body into action, I take off at maximum velocity.

  The edges of my vision fill with red flames. The heat approaching from behind is palpable.

  I keep running, trying to shake it off.

  Somehow, I’ve avoided the Flame Breath.

 

  I let out the air I was unconsciously holding in my lungs.

  My yellow stamina gauge starts to recover.

  There’ll be no more fireballs now.

  The eel is finally out of MP.

  With no more means of attacking from a distance, the eel slithers onto land.

  As it turns out, its head is the only eel-like thing about it.

  The rest of its body bears an uncanny resemblance to a Chinese dragon.

  Even with its MP gone, its eyes are still fixed on me.

  This thing has definitely decided I’m its enemy.

  At first, it felt like it might’ve just decided to crush me because I was a bit of an eyesore, but somewhere along the way, its fireballs took on a more serious tone.

  By the time it started using Flame Breath, it was definitely coming at me for all it was worth.

  Seems it didn’t care for having its attacks continuously dodged.

  Even if I ran away now, I doubt it’d let me go.

  Its MP might be gone, but its SP is still going strong.

  My stamina, on the other hand, has been whittled down considerably.

  Since I kept moving after my yellow bar ran out, my red stamina bar has gone down too much for comfort, too.

  I still have my surplus from Overeating, so it’s not like I’m completely immobile or anything, but if it comes down to a battle of stamina between us, the eel will definitely be the winner.

  I can’t run.

  That leaves me with one choice. I have to fight and win.

  Based solely on the numerical values of our stats, I don’t stand a chance.

  But numbers aren’t everything.

  If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my battles here, it’s that skills are the biggest deciding factor, for better or for worse.

  I mean, considering the huge difference in our stats, it’s a miracle I’ve survived at all.

  And the source of that “miracle” has to be my set of skills.

  It’s only because I’ve been exploiting them to their fullest that I’ve been able to compensate for the inherent difference in our strength and even forced the eel onto land.

  The gap in our stats is definitely huge, but it’s not enough to decide the battle.

  If I play my cards right, I can still traverse the gulf.

  Not to mention, I can see all of the eel’s skills, too.

  Since it’s out of MP now, the only ones I have to worry about are the combination of Hit, Evasion, and Probability Correction.

  That, and the defensive power granted by Dragon Scales, the last level-3 ability granted by Fire Wyrm.

  The final threat is the sheer physical size of the eel’s massive body.

  That alone is enough to make it a formidable enemy.

  But I still have a few tricks up my sleeve. Namely, my strongest means of attack: Deadly Poison.

  The target’s defense means precious little in the face of my powerful venom.

  It can erode even Dragon Scales, eating away at the flesh beneath.

  In the end, my skills are all I can rely on.

  That’s the only area where I outperform the eel.

  Although, even that’s debatable depending on how well I use them.

  Both of us are lacking in the defense department.

  This’ll be a sudden-death match, where whoever lands an attack first wins.

  Which means my winning move would be…

  The ground-based second round begins without a bell.

  The eel’s long body coils back and forth.

  After our exchanges thus far, it seems quite wary of me.

  This eel is pretty smart compared with most other monsters, though not as smart as those monkeys.

  Which only makes my job harder.

 

 

  The eel moves as if in time with the Divine Voice (temp.).

  Body unfurling, it lashes at me with its tail.

  I dodge it, of course, but the beast’s attack doesn’t end there.

  The tail sweeps sideways, zeroing in on me again.

  I edge farther back to avoid it.

  This time, the eel’s head comes at me instead, swapping places with the tail.

  That’s exactly what I was waiting for.

  As the world moves around me somewhat slowly thanks to Thought Acceleration, I fix my eyes on the eel’s approaching mouth.

  Just as I judge that it’s about to get too close for me to dodge, I activate Poison Synthesis.

  Then I immediately evacuate.

  It’s the same strategy I used against the catfish. However, it has a huge effect.

  The poison goes down the eel’s throat, just a
s I planned.

  Its HP rapidly decreases.

  In agony, the eel’s body whips around violently.

  I retreat beyond the reach of its writhing.

  In the end, if both sides are strong enough to kill the other with a single blow, the winner will be whoever lands an attack first.

  Which means the one who comes up with the better strategy to land that blow wins.

  That, and my evasive ability surpasses the eel’s accuracy.

  Even with level-10 Hit and Probability Correction, it couldn’t outdo my combination of Evasion, Thought Acceleration, and Foresight.

  So as soon as the eel was lured ashore, my odds of winning skyrocketed.

  Still, it’s not over yet.

  Despite all my talk about a single deathblow, that one attack probably won’t be enough to kill it.

  Even the catfish didn’t die after one attack, so there’s no way that would work on an even stronger species.

  Besides, the eel still has another skill on its side.

  Its HP is rapidly recovering right before my eyes.

 

  It’s a level-3 ability from the Fire Wyrm skill.

  It consumes SP, and HP is recovered by a corresponding amount.

  Although it can’t recover fully because of the amount of SP it has, it’s still enough to resist my Deadly Poison.

  On top of that, as I evaluate the eel’s Appraisal results, it gains Poison Resistance level 1 and HP Auto-Recovery level 1.

  The poison in its body is still eating away its HP little by little, but the peak of the damage has passed already.

  Still, it’s not like I’m just gonna stand here and watch the thing revive itself.

  I make the sturdiest thread I can and wrap it around the eel’s body.

  It’ll burn up right away, but that doesn’t matter.

  All I need is to immobilize it for even a moment.

  Luckily, I manage to do exactly that.

  In that instant, I target the eel’s face and activate Poison Synthesis in rapid succession.

  Globs of poison strike liberally.

  The eel tears through the restraints and thrashes wildly.

  But the poison has already seeped into its eyes and mouth, draining its HP mercilessly.

  The rate of damage is far too high for its new Auto-Recovery skill to counteract.

  And it’s far too powerful for its new Poison Resistance skill to combat, either.

  A shield whipped up on a moment’s notice can hardly withstand weaponry I’ve been perfecting my entire life as a spider.

  Without enough SP left to spend on recovery, the attack proves too much for the eel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
  • Poison taratect

  • Zoa Ele

  >

  Ooh, evolution.

  Wait, evolution?! Already?! Isn’t this a little soon?! Last time with the monkeys seemed really fast, too!

  Well, I can worry about that later.

  For the moment, I want to savor my victory.

  I wooon!

  Whoo-hoooo! I won, I won! That eel was super-strong, and I beat it!

  Amazing, right?! Am I hella strong or what?!

  Heh. Heh-heh.

  I fought head-on, barely even used my thread, but I still won.

  That means I’m not weak anymore, right? I’m sooo strong!

  Yahoooo!

  That eel was a formidable enemy. It was no joke. A real fight to the death.

  But in the end, victory is mine!

  I’m number one! Heh-heh-heh-heh.

  I did it! The winner is me! Ha-ha-ha!

  FEI’S TRAINING DIARY

  We have to raise Fei’s level soon. Because she’s a fledgling earth dragon.

  Since she’s a kind of monster, if she doesn’t evolve by leveling up, she’ll die before reaching adulthood.

  In order to grow, she has to defeat monsters and level up.

  She’s reached the point where her life is in jeopardy if she doesn’t evolve soon.

  Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to leave the academy.

  So instead, I talked to my maid, Anna, and asked her to help raise Fei’s level.

  “Very well. We shall return.”

  Anna leaves the school grounds with Fei in her arms.

  There are several men accompanying her who seem to be soldiers, but since Anna is a half elf, she’s not as young as she looks.

  She’s among the most talented magic users in the entire kingdom.

  I’m sure she’ll be able to help Fei grow and come back safely.

  By the way, Anna doesn’t know Fei is a reincarnation.

  As far as I know, she just thinks of her as a somewhat clever baby earth dragon.

  The only people who know the truth are me and the other reincarnations.

  I haven’t even told Sue about it.

  I always thought she was pretty close to Hugo in the past, but when I asked her, she just said, “Natsume? Did anybody actually like him?”

  So I guess I was wrong about their relationship.

  Hugo burst out laughing when he saw what Fei looked like, too, so they might’ve actually been pretty incompatible from the start.

  Within a few days, Fei evolved without a problem and returned.

  Leveling up means fighting monsters.

  Considering this, I had been a little worried since it seems dangerous, but apparently, my concern was unfounded.

  Which is good and all, but the real problem is how Fei looked when she got back.

  “You got a lot bigger, huh?”

  “It’s called a growth spurt, duh.”

  Fei’s body has gotten quite a bit larger.

  Initially, she’d been about the size of a chameleon, able to ride on my head or shoulder without a problem, but now her body is about three feet long.

  If you include the length of her tail, she might even be almost as long as I am tall.

  She went from being the size of my hand to the size of a large dog.

  “This is still small for a dragon, you know. Once I evolve again, I’ll get even larger.”

  “You probably won’t be able to go indoors anymore when that happens, then.”

  She’s able to live in my dorm room with
me for now, but if she gets any bigger, she may not fit.

  “That is a bit of an issue…”

  She might’ve been reincarnated as a monster, but she was still originally a high school girl from Japan.

  It’s no surprise that she wouldn’t want to sleep outside like other monsters.

  “Well, now that I’ve evolved once, my life expectancy should be significantly longer. No need to worry just yet.”

  If she says so, I guess that’s fine.

  Hopefully, she’s not just saying it to avoid getting kicked out of my room.

  I also got her permission to Appraise her and see how her stats have grown after evolving.

  Turns out she’s stronger than me now.

  “Well, monsters’ stats grow a lot more rapidly than humans’ do.”

  I mean, sure, but still—isn’t this an awfully drastic departure from her stats prior to evolving?

  “What’s the big deal? Your stats are pretty broken for a human as it is. I risked my life for this, you know! I don’t see why I shouldn’t be allowed to get a little stronger as a reward. Not that it feels like much of a prize for me anyway.”

  “Oh, right. Girls don’t care about being strong anyway, huh?”

  “This one certainly doesn’t. I don’t have much of a choice but to get stronger, but don’t think for a second that I enjoy fighting for my life. Besides, you saw my skills, didn’t you? Overeating…”

  I know all about it. Overeating is a skill that saves extra SP based on how much you eat.

  If a human being gets the Overeating skill, they’ll still gain weight for the extra food they consume, but for whatever reason, this doesn’t apply to monsters.

  “Since I have that stupid skill, that Anna keeps feeding me monster meat. She has some ridiculous idea that eating the flesh of strong monsters will make your stats go up more easily. Isn’t that just awful?”

  Yikes. I’ll pass on that, thanks.

  Monster meat… I guess it depends on what kind, but on the whole, I wouldn’t want to eat it at all.

  “I’ll definitely make that maid pay for this someday! She shoved that monster meat down my throat even though I clearly didn’t want it! Disgusting!”

  I, uh…my condolences.

  Still, when I think about it, monsters have awfully high stats.

  Mine were higher than hers before she evolved, but Fei’s have definitely surpassed mine now.

  She’s averaging around 700 in each stat at the moment.