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

by Okina Baba

  “What the hell are you saying? This world doesn’t belong to anyone. Come back to your senses already.”

  “My senses, huh? But you can do anything in this world if you have the right skills. It’s like a dream! Obviously, it exists only for me. But a world like that doesn’t need losers like you in it. So die.”

  Hugo draws his sword. I have no choice but to do the same.

  I don’t believe this. Is he insane?

  I knew he hated me, so I thought something might happen during this trip, but I never would have guessed he’d try to kill me, especially for such a ridiculous reason.

  He’s serious, isn’t he?

  I mean, I know this isn’t a joke, but…

  It still doesn’t seem real.

  And yet, I can hear my heart pounding like a drum in my ears clearly, and my hands tremble as I clutch my sword.

  I try to swallow the confusion and panic and check Hugo’s status.

 
  Status: HP: 628/628 (green) MP: 566/566 (blue)

  SP: 609/609 (yellow) : 502/611 (red)

  Average Offensive Ability: 608 Average Defensive Ability: 599

  Average Magical Ability: 546 Average Resistance Ability: 522

  Average Speed Ability: 583

  Skills:

  [HP Auto-Recovery LV 4] [MP Recovery Speed LV 4] [MP Lessened Consumption LV 4] [SP Recovery Speed LV 8]

  [SP Lessened Consumption LV 8] [Destruction Enhancement LV 7] [Cutting Enhancement LV 7] [Impact Enhancement LV 4]

  [Flame Enhancement LV 4] [Magic Power Perception LV 8] [Magic Power Operation LV 5] [Magic Warfare LV 5]

  [Magic Power Conferment LV 4] [Magic Power Attack LV 2] [Mental Warfare LV 7] [Energy Conferment LV 7]

  [Energy Attack LV 7] [Flame Attack LV 3] [Paralysis Attack LV 2] [Swordsmanship LV 6]

  [Throw LV 5] [Spatial Maneuvering LV 6] [Hit LV 8] [Evasion LV 8]

  [Stealth LV 3] [Silence LV 1] [Emperor] [Concentration LV 9]

  [Prediction LV 3] [Arithmetic Processing LV 3] [Fire Magic LV 5] [Destruction Resistance LV 2]

  [Impact Resistance LV 2] [Cutting Resistance LV 3] [Fire Resistance LV 3] [Poison Resistance LV 2]

  [Paralysis Resistance LV 1] [Pain Resistance LV 1] [Vision Enhancement 10] [Telescopic Sight LV 1]

  [Auditory Enhancement LV 10] [Auditory Expansion LV 1] [Olfactory Enhancement LV 8] [Taste Enhancement LV 7]

  [Tactile Enhancement LV 8] [Longevity LV 5] [Magic Hoard LV 4] [Instant Body LV 5]

  [Endurance LV 5] [Herculean Strength LV 5] [Sturdy LV 5] [Monk LV 4]

  [Talisman LV 3] [Acceleration LV 5] [n% I = W]

  Skill Points: 350

  Titles:

  [Monster Slayer]

  >

  He’s strong. Unlike mine, his stats lean a little heavily toward the physical side.

  And unlike me, he’s been actively acquiring skills with his skill points.

  The most concerning is the Emperor skill.

 

  I can resist the Fear effect.

  But increasing the effect of all his other skills is a big problem.

  Hugo swings his sword at me.

  I meet his blade with my own.

  Oof, so heavy!

  “Hey, guess what? I know you haven’t used your skill points at all. You haven’t even leveled up. Points exist to be used, you know! Just like this!”

  Hugo’s sword starts gushing flames.

  I just barely manage to avoid it.

  “Make it quick and die, will ya? If this gets too out of hand, the other groups might notice.”

  “You really think you can get away with doing something like this?”

  “Sure, why not? I’m the future ruler of this world. Obviously, I can do whatever I want! Besides, I’ve got it all planned out. My lackeys should’ve made short work of the others by now. Once I finish you off, we’ll just release the monsters we brought along. Strong ones that wouldn’t normally show up around here. Then we’ll just say they suddenly appeared and devoured a bunch of poor students and teachers, get it? And that I defeated them and survived.”

  “You don’t think anyone will suspect you with a half-baked plan like that?”

  “Who will? What’re they gonna say? This ain’t Japan, you know. I’m the future sword-king! Who would dare speak against me just ’cause something’s a little fishy? You think they wanna start an international incident? Yeah, right. That’s how things work here. There’s no goody-goody justice system to stop me!”

  His words shock me. He doesn’t think like a Japanese person at all anymore.

  And he’s accepted that like it’s totally natural.

  “See ya. Don’t worry. I’ll remember you in some tiny fraction of my memories.”

  His sword gathers huge flames as it swings downward.

  However, it doesn’t reach me.

  Hugo’s body is suddenly blown backward.

  “Natsume. You’ve gone way too far.”

  A cold, intimidating tone with no trace of the usual drawl.

  An overwhelming presence unsuited to such a tiny elf.

  Ms. Oka.

  “Your plan’s failed, Natsume. All of your subordinates have been arrested. And I took the liberty of disposing of the monsters you brought.”

  “Wh-what?!”

  “It seems you were so preoccupied with Shun that you wrote me off far too lightly. I’m sorry, but I can’t let your little rampage go unchecked anymore.”

  Our teacher walks over to the fallen Hugo.

  He tries launching a surprise attack at her, but—

  “Guh?!”

  —something invisible knocks him back down to the ground.

  It must be the same force that blew him away a minute ago.

  I’m guessing it’s some kind of wind magic.

  Ms. Oka’s hand grasps the top of Hugo’s head. Then, I sense the flow of magic power.

  She seems to have cast some kind of spell on him.

  “Activate ruler’s authority. Activating ruler-exclusive skill at the ruler’s request. Consent to activation?”

  “Consent granted.”

  A flat voice emerges from Hugo’s mouth. It doesn’t sound like him.

  Is she hypnotizing him using forbidden Heretic Magic?!

  My surprise doesn’t end there. In fact, that’s only the beginning.

  Before my eyes, Appraisal shows Hugo’s stats rapidly decreasing.

  On top of that, his skills are disappearing.

  In a matter of seconds, all of Hugo’s skills are gone except for the mysterious one with the garbled letters.

  “What?! What did you do to me?!”

  Hugo bellows as soon as he returns to his senses.

  “I lowered your stats and revoked your skills.”

  “Huh?! That’s impossible!”

  “Shun, what does Appraisal say?”

  “…Just as you said, ma’am. All his stats have dropped to thirty. Plus, his skills are gone.”

  “Wh…? How…?”

  “This world does not belong to you. I would strongly advise you to reflect on your actions and start trying to live a normal life. Nothing good will come of you acquiring skills and getting stronger anyway…”

  Hugo is absolutely dumbfounded. I’m confused, too.

  After that, the exploration class is suspended.

  Parton, Professor Oriza, and the others are all safe.

  It seems to have been a close call, but thanks to Ms. Oka’s intervention, no one was seriously injured.

  All of Hugo’s minions who’d attempted to attack people were captured.

  However, none of them would admit to their connection with Hugo, and he cut ties with them as well.

  Apparently, a more detailed inquisition will be initiated at the academy, but judging by how it’s gone so far, I doubt much will happen.


  Hugo is confident he can talk his way out of it, so he may already have some sort of contingency plan.

  Everyone, including me, is completely focused on Hugo right now.

  So no one notices the monster, released surreptitiously, quietly following us back.

  WISDOM

 

 

 

 

  …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.

  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.

  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.

  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.