Chapter 1
In another world, the battle between Hero and Demon Lord repeated itself time and time again. During one of those battles, an enormous space-time spell was fired, and it exploded within a certain classroom in Japan.
The spell hit everyone in the room, ending their lives in an instant. The souls of these victims were reincarnated into this other world and scattered throughout, allowing each of them to be born into a new life.
~*~
Gwaaaaah!
I’d tried to scream just now, but I actually couldn’t even manage a groan.
Is my body messed up that badly? Okay, let’s calm down first.
I don’t feel any pain. The last thing I remember was the onslaught of a sudden, monstrous agony in the middle of class. I’d probably fainted because of that, but no part of me felt hurt at the moment.
That said, even when I opened my eyes, everything was pitch-black. I have no idea where I am. In fact, I could barely move at all, as if something was wrapped around my body. No, not hypothetically. Like, I can literally tell. I really am bound in something; some material that’s hard, but has a little give to it. I could also just faintly hear some rustling sounds from outside.
Okay, what’s going on here? Have I been kidnapped? No, let’s be real. What would anyone get out of kidnapping a low tier girl like me? Well, regardless of how sketchy this situation is, I only need to escape.
That’s when I heard a loud crack.
Oh-ho!
When I pushed my weight against the thing covering me, it started to break.
Alright, time to finish the job and get out of here!
Putting more power into it, I bursted right through, scrabbling out headfirst.
Sweet freedom!
Except… The view before my eyes was crawling with spiders.
Wuuuuuh?! Whyyyyyyyy?! Ewww!! What is with this freaking army of spiders?! Um, excuse me, but why are they all as big as me?! Oh gross, more of them keep popping out of these egg-looking things! Is that what the rustling was coming from?!
Instinctively, I shrank away. My leg bumped into something, and I turned to look.
Hmm? Is this…it? The thing I crawled out of earlier? Uh… Why does it kind of resemble the eggs this spider legion was bursting out of? No, it doesn’t merely look like that—it is that, isn’t it?
I looked down at myself more carefully. My neck wouldn’t move. Despite that, at the edge of my peripheral vision, I could see what appeared to be my legs.
…Spider legs.
Oooooookay, dooon’t paaaaniiiiiic!!! Th-This isn’t what I think it is, right?! Is it, though?! The Isekai thing that’s super-popular online right now?! No! Unreal! This can’t be happening, right? Please, say it’s not happening!
I glanced down again. There were thin, wiry legs, just like those of the spiders wriggling around me. Concentrating, I tried moving them. The spider appendages moved accordingly.
Yep. I have to face the facts. Apparently, I’ve been reincarnated as a spider. Unreal.
But right when I feel ready to break down, I heard some crunching noises. Disturbing ones, actually.
Hmm. It won’t do me any good to ignore reality. Right in front of me is a humongous army of spiders, probably my brothers and sisters. Whatever those sounds are, they’re probably coming from them.
I slowly brought myself to take in the scene before me. There, one of the spiders was noisily devouring its buddy.
Aaaack! The hell are these guys doing?! Seriously, they’re eating each other? Cannibalism?!
As I looked on, my siblings began a bloodbath in their fierce competition for survival.
No, no, no, no! This is bad, this is baaad! Why should we have to fight one another like this, my brothers and sisters?! Ah, right—for food. I guess they’re hungry. Speaking of, I could use something to eat myself. HUH?! That’s a scary train of thought. Reality got away from me for a moment there.
On a battlefield like this, an innocent high school girl like me could fall prey to the wicked ways of men in an instant! Metaphorically and literally! Times like this call for running like hell. Fighting? Not happening. I’m a natural-born homebody. There’s no way I could ever challenge something so gross and violent. Ah. I just remembered that’s what I am now.
Instead of wasting time thinking about stupid crap, I figured I’d better get a move on. But apparently it was a little too late for that. The ground was ominously rumbling beneath my feet.
Now what?!
The sounds and tremors were coming from behind. Turning around, I found myself looking up at an enormous, giant spider.
Ooh, might you be Mother? Or perhaps Father? Whatever. I’m getting all confused again. Seriously, though—why is it so huge?!
The massive arachnid had to be dozens of times larger than me. Maybe I was remembering wrong, but I felt pretty confident there weren’t any spiders that big on Earth.
Ah-
With a brisk snap, the titan skewered a smaller one of its kind with a claw and devoured it. Sort of like she was having a light snack.
Et tu, Mother…?! Well, I’ll think about all this later on. For now, my only goal is to get out of here safely and try to survive!
I ran away at full speed. Only when I was so tired I could barely move did I finally calm down. Luckily, when I turned to check, I found that nobody chased after me.
Oof, I thought I was gonna die. It would’ve sucked to get killed after only being alive for a couple minutes. Anyway… Now that I’ve come to my senses a little, I have a lot to think about. First of all, why did I die?
Actually, now that I thought about it, I didn’t necessarily know for sure that my life ended at all. I sort of decided on my own that I died and got reincarnated as a spider, but it wasn’t like I actually remembered kicking the bucket.
Pretty sure my last memory was of the teacher, who we called Miss Oka, reading aloud from the textbook. I’d been dozing off a little when suddenly I was overwhelmed by crushing agony, and then I have no memories of what happened after.
If I did die, it was probably because of that mysterious pain, but… I had no idea what caused it. At any rate, the most likely conclusion was still that I died at that moment and was reincarnated as a spider.
Other than that, I guess it’s possible that I’m still alive, and my spirit is currently possessing a spider, or something similar. Like, maybe my original body is in a vegetative state, lying on a hospital bed.
Or here’s an even crazier idea: Maybe I’m not the real me at all, just some total stranger who happens to have the memories of another person. Maybe the real me is sitting in class like usual, even now.
Well. It’s not like there was any way for me to know for sure. How could I prove I wasn’t who I thought I was, anyway? I’d end up spouting incomprehensible nonsense like “I think therefore I am” and stuff. Besides, the most likely conclusion from the evidence was the ridiculous idea that I’d been reincarnated, so I may as well throw common sense to the wind.
At any rate, better put all this aside for now. In the spirit of “I think, therefore I am,” I’m just going to assume that I am in fact myself until proven otherwise.
So, anyway, I was a spider now. There was definitely no denying that anymore. While I was running away, I was able to hop and jump in ways a human never could.
So if I’m a spider, what was up with that hulk I saw before? Hmm. Given the circumstances, maybe it really was one of my arachnid parents?
I didn’t know the specifics of spider biology, but I didn’t think it was that unusual in nature for animals to eat their young. The other spiders were clearly cannibalistic right from birth, so the parent eating its children shouldn’t be all that surprising.
If that giant spider was one of my parents, I wonder if that means I’ll be that size, too, someday?
Thinking about it made me feel a little sick.
Okay, forget that part. Let’s get back on track. Let’s see…
Really, there was only one thing that I was particularly hung up on. Specifically, the fact that I was a monster. The whole Isekai “reincarnation” genre was pretty popular in webnovels and stuff, so it wasn’t that alien of an idea. Getting reincarnated as a monster, I mean.
So the question is: Am I a normal Earth species, or is this not Earth at all, but a parallel world, where I’ve been reborn as a beast?
Judging by that huge spider from before, my guess would lean toward the latter, but then the difficulty level of surviving here would probably go way up.
This isn’t getting me anywhere. I don’t have enough information to parse what’s going on. Is this Earth or not? Am I a monster, or just a normal spider? If this is a different world, what kind of world is it?
There was a mountain of things I wanted to know, but I had no way of finding out.
Ahh, if only this were a novel or something, I’d probably have an appraisal skill that would help me figure it out…
≪ Number of skill points currently in possession: 100 ≫
≪ Number of skill points required to acquire skill〔Appraisal • Lv 1〕: 100 ≫
≪ Acquire skill? ≫
Whoa. What? …For real?
A mechanical voice completely devoid of emotion suddenly echoed in my mind. It was surprising in more ways than one. Firstly, that I was hearing voices at all. Secondly, that ‘skills’ existed here. Obviously, there was no such skill system on Earth, and I’d never heard any voices announcing things in my head before then.
So does that mean this isn’t Earth? Probably, yeah. I guess that gives my ‘I‘m a monster’ theory a lot more weight. Being a monster in a parallel world seems like a recipe for death, but let’s not think about that. Nope, nope, nope.
More importantly, it’s really real. An appraisal skill actually exists! Whoo-hoo! Now we’re talking! Finally this is starting to feel like a proper fantasy reincarnation story! Obviously, my answer is “YES!”
≪〔Appraisal • Lv 1〕acquired. Remaining skill points: 0 ≫
Apparently, that used up all my skill points, but I decided not to worry about that for now.
Forget! About! That! It’s time to use my brand-spanking-new Appraisal skill to examine the crap out of my surroundings!
I picked a nearby rock at random, trying to think ‘Appraise’ as I focused on it. Information flowed smoothly into my mind.
It worked!
△ Stone ▽
…Hmm? Wait, what? That’s all? No, no, no. That can’t be right, can it? I probably just failed because it’s my first time. Let me try again…
△ Stone ▽
…Huh? Is that seriously it? No, no, no, no. It must be that this stone doesn’t have any valuable information because it’s just an ordinary rock!
This time, I decided to test my skill on a wall. Maybe that would tell me something about the area I was in.
If I could get an area name like ‘Such-and-Such Cave’ and a little description or something similar, I’d definitely feel a lot better.
△ Wall ▽
…I’m not even going to say anything.
I should’ve considered the fact that the skill name went out of its way to mention its level. For all intents and purposes, this seemed to mean a level 1 skill wouldn’t provide me with any useful results. Maybe raising the level would improve it, but I’d used up all my skill points.
Argh! I can’t believe I blew everything on a useless ability! I don’t know what other skills were available, but for all I know there might’ve been some that would’ve actually been useful at level 1!
No, I should look at it the other way. If this is what Appraisal is like at level 1, surely any other level 1 skill would’ve been just as ineffective. Yeah, let’s go with that. Otherwise, I won’t be able to live with myself. Ugh. Unreal.
At this point, I figured I might as well appraise myself.
△ Spider: Nameless ▽
Hmm? I knew it would say ‘Spider’, of course, but why ‘Nameless’? “I am a spider. As yet I have no name.” Is it a Natsume Souseki kinda thing? I mean, I had a name in my previous life, but I guess I don’t anymore, since I’m a spider now.
I decided to put aside my useless Appraisal skill for the time being. If anything, it was only increasing the number of mysteries. Such as the skill points I used to gain the Appraisal skill. Presumably, I could acquire more skills by saving up more points. However, I had no idea how to go about acquiring any.
Between levels, skills, and skill points, this world feels very video game–esque. I mean, that could be kinda fun, right?
Although I didn’t know if I could afford to have any fun at the moment.
Whatever. I’m getting hungry. There’s no point in hanging around the same place forever, so I’ll just have to get a move on and see if I can find something to eat.
~*~
I thought I’d just walk around for a while, but this cave is WAY too big!
That’s all relative to my size, of course, but the ceiling was so high I could barely make anything out, and the width was just as absurd. The random scattered rocks helped give a little sense of variety, at least, but it still seemed pretty darn spacious for a cave.
Eventually, I found a path that branched off. Climbing onto a fairly sizable rock, I tried squinting down the path.
There’s something there…!
From what I could tell, it was a bunch of monster-ish creatures milling around.
△ Deer ▽ △ Deer ▽ △ Deer ▽ △ Deer ▽ △ Deer ▽ △ Deer ▽ △ Deer ▽
△ Deer ▽ △ Deer ▽ △ Deer ▽ △ Deer ▽ △ Deer ▽ △ Deer ▽ △ Deer ▽
△ Deer ▽ △ Deer ▽ △ Deer ▽ △ Deer ▽ △ Deer ▽ △ Deer ▽ △ Bat ▽
△ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽
△ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽
△ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽
△ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽
△ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Bat ▽ △ Wolf ▽ △ Wolf ▽ △ Wolf ▽
△ Wolf ▽ △ Wolf ▽ △ Wolf ▽…
Ouch! Was that a migraine?!
My stupid Appraisal skill must’ve gone off on its own, because that sudden explosion of information made my head hurt. I mean, they did seem kinda like deer if I looked real hard, but I didn’t remember the deer in my world having such shiny, sharp-looking horns. And the ‘bats’ flapping around in the air looked more like hideous rodents sprouting devil wings. The wolves, at least, seemed normal…except now I saw that they had six legs.
Am I supposed to pass through here? Yeah, right. I’m just a tiny newborn spider. The difficulty level is way too high.
I stealthily crawled back down from the rock.
So… There are real monsters. This really isn’t Earth. Not to mention, if those so-called deer and wolves are the same size as they would be on Earth… Don’t think about it! Don’t think about it!
Okay, now what? Ahead of me is a gauntlet of monsters. Behind me is Spider Hell. Is this for real? Am I in a checkmate? Okay, okay. Calm down, please.
I thought that kind of thing might happen, so I prepared an alternative strategy for just such an occasion. Well, it actually wasn’t anything that fancy. I just happened to find a different path earlier. The smaller side road would have been easy to miss because it was right next to this huge one, an unassuming little hole in the wall. Nevertheless, it’s about ten feet around, so I’d fit through without a problem.
On that note, I still need to look for food. Hopefully I’ll find a way out of this cave, too. With that decided, time to head out!
~*~
The triumphant departure on the next leg of my journey was going great, except that I immediately got lost.
Hoo, boy. Can I say it again? This cave is way too big! Seriously, what’s with this huge labyrinth? Why are there so many freaking paths branching off everywhere? How many, you ask? I gave up counting after it went past ten.
I was encountering more than my fair share of monsters, too. And since I immediately ran away each time, I’d completely lost track of where I came from.
Ugh… Unreal. If I want to get anywhere in this labyrinth, I’ll seriously need a map. No way am I going to find an exit at this rate.
And then I discovered something totally crazy. There were footprints on the ground. Human footprints. I could distinctly make out a couple sets of footprints. Which meant people had passed through here. In fact, this was proof that humans existed in this world at all. The big revelation was making me a little emotional.
But now I’m noticing something a little bit… No, more like reeeally alarming. My body is so much larger than these footprints. Judging by the size of whoever made these tracks, my own body must be at least three feet tall…
Nah, I’m sure it’s just dwarf footprints. That’s got to be it! Ah-ha-ha! …Can’t believe this. Nope, nope. Well… Then again…
I’d started to suspect it when I saw that giant spider before, to be honest. No matter how I looked at it, I was unquestionably a monster.
Thanks a lot! Ugh, I’ve been trying to avoid it, but I finally have to face all the facts. Being reborn as a spider is shocking enough in itself, but I’m a monster spider, too.
This is messed up. So messed up that some people might despair and even end it all. I’m definitely not considering death myself, but this is still kind of a bummer.
Well, no use sitting around and sulking, though.
Since this world was clearly different from my own, I didn’t know what kinds of dangers to expect. For one thing, there was no guarantee that there wouldn’t be more gigantic monsters like that spider.
And going by my own size, that thing must’ve been a hundred feet long… Are humans even able to take down a creature like that? Probably not, right? If there are any boss monsters here, the giant spider is definitely one of them.
So that makes me the offspring of a boss monster, then. Sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it? Actually, doesn’t that mean that if I run into people, they’ll try to kill me? It’s to-o-o-tally possible. Actually, chances are good that’s exactly what’ll happen.
Suddenly, I noticed something lying on the ground near the footprints.
What’s that?
After a closer look, I recognized it as the dismembered remains of a spider.
Yep, the same species as me. Wow, what skillful dissection. This was probably the work of humans, huh? I don’t like where this is going! If any humans find me, they’re definitely gonna murder me!
Thank you so much for reading! Please let me know if there’s anything I need to fix, and feel free to join my Discord for chapter updates!
Scarlett Shoujo 