Chapter 18
For the moment, I’ve secured some food. Given the size of the bee’s body, I can stave off hunger for at least a few days with this. Now I don’t need to worry about stamina for a while.
Which means I have more options.
And my choice is to expand my nest further. In an upward direction.
I really don’t want to explore down here. It isn’t a matter of whether I can or can’t. I just don’t want to. Nope. I’m scared of the dragon, so that’s a hard pass.
Which is why I’ve decided that I’m going to somehow climb back up to the passage I fell down from.
To that end, I have to find a way around those bees. If I try to just climb the wall normally, the fliers will get me right away, so I need some kind of plan.
My strategy is to simply keep extending my webs upward. Well, I don’t know if it’s a strategy so much as an ill-defined attempt to bulldoze my way through the problem.
I mean, I am a crafty sort, if I do say so myself. But I can’t think of any other way to get back up there.
Of course, there are a lot of disadvantages to this plan, too.
For one thing, making more webs will exhaust my stamina. And unlike normal, I have to build up along a cliff face this time. Since the circumstances are different, I don’t know how much extra stamina it’ll take.
This is probably going to end up being a pretty big nest, so the lone bee I currently have on hand won’t provide enough energy for the whole project. So I have to find a way to boost my supplies.
On top of that, I might end up having to fight bees for reasons other than dwindling food stores.
They’re ignoring me for the moment, but if I keep expanding my nest upward, I’ll eventually encroach on their main territory. It’d be an airspace violation. There’s no way of knowing whether they’ll let that slide.
Worst-case scenario, it’s entirely possible that hundreds or even thousands of bees will attack me all at once.
What a nightmare.
Obviously, no volume of webbing would be enough to protect me against numbers like that. And the bees aren’t the only thing I have to worry about.
For the moment, no other monsters have been showing up at the bottom of this pit. Just that first snake and the earth dragon.
But if that dragon happens to wander by again…
Last time, I was able to wait it out by hiding under rocks. But if I’m expanding my nest, I’m going to draw attention whether I like it or not.
And if I catch that thing’s eye, it’s all over.
Even now, I’m afraid the behemoth might show up at any moment. In other words, while success would mean escape from this dangerous hellhole, it’s still an extremely risky strategy.
But it doesn’t look like I have any other choice. Even if I do, nothing’s coming to me right now.
And so, I made up my mind.
Time to expand my nest!
First, the foundation. You can’t make a house without a solid base. It’s even fair to say the foundation is what makes or breaks a home.
And what better rock to use for construction than… This one! My first refuge down here.
The stone rests right up against the wall and is pretty hefty: about twenty feet tall and fifteen feet wide. I’ve decided to use this as the support for my extension. So far, my webs take up the space between this rock and the wall and a little ways beyond.
First, I seal up the space between the rock and the opposite wall with more thread. Then, I add another strand diagonally from the top of the rock to the wall. Next, I connect the wall and the rock with more webbing, using that diagonal as a guideline.
Now my foundation is complete. All I have to do now is build upward from there, one step at a time.
I proceed with my work little by little, pausing to snack on the bee for stamina on occasion. Along the way, I sometimes notice one bee squad or another watching me, but they still don’t conduct any assaults. Apparently I’m not in their attack range just yet.
Once I finish eating the bee, I decide to call it a day and get some rest.
~*~
It’s now day five.
The pain seems to have let up considerably. My HP is still 6. Since it hasn’t recovered at all, my Pain Mitigation skill must have risen while I was sleeping.
Not being in agony is a nice change.
I’ve been able to work this whole time thanks to my Pain Nullification skill, but the weakening of the pain still makes a huge difference. Of course, the sensation hasn’t gone away completely, and the injury hasn’t healed, but still. It’s definitely easier.
I never suffered an injury this severe when I was a human.
Up until my reincarnation, the most painful experience I’d ever had was when I stubbed my little toe on the corner of a door. Man, that hurt. But it was nothing compared to a gaping hole in my back.
Since I’m starting to feel a bit better, work is progressing smoothly. Along the way, another outcast bee comes along. But one of the squads is pretty close by, too.
Hmm.
As an experiment, I decided to take a swipe at it. I want to know whether the nearby group will react if a stray gets attacked. If they do, I’ll immediately retreat deep into my nest. And if they don’t react, I’m good to go.
I took a swing with the Morning Spider.
Take aim, aaaand… Now!
Oh, I got it.
Wow. Am I amazing or what?
I hadn’t expected to hit anything at all with this, but now I’m two for two.
Me, the one who came in dead last in my grade for the softball toss during our physical fitness test…
I was so surprised that I forgot to watch the main bee group’s reaction.
Oops.
The bee squad is…over there.
Hmm. No reaction.
So if I savagely kill an outcast bee, the others won’t come after me.
Is it just me, or is that a little heartless?
I guess you have to be a little cold-hearted to survive in the wild…
Well, if they aren’t going to attack, that’s a win in my book. Now I can pick off the stragglers to my heart’s content. I practically cackle to myself as I collect my prize and finish it off with my venomous bite.
As I hunt yet another vagrant bee (I’ve lost count at this point), I hear the voice I’ve been waiting for.
≪ Experience has reached the required level. Individual Small Taratect has increased from Lv 2 to Lv 3 ≫
≪ All basic attributes have increased. ≫
≪ Skill proficiency level-up bonus acquired. ≫
≪ Proficiency has reached the required level. Skill〔Strength • Lv 1〕has become〔Strength • Lv 2〕≫
≪ Proficiency has reached the required level. Skill〔Solidity • Lv 1〕has become〔Solidity • Lv 2〕≫
≪ Proficiency has reached the required level. Skill〔Overeating • Lv 1〕has become〔Overeating • Lv 2〕≫
≪ Skill points acquired. ≫
The moment of my long-awaited level-up has arrived.
My skin promptly peels away from my body. Though I can’t see it, I can feel the large hole on my back closing itself up.
≪ Proficiency has reached the required level. Acquired skill
〔HP Auto-Recovery • Lv 1〕≫
Huh? For real?
Ooooh. Now this is unexpected.
Wait, so does the full recovery with each level-up count as auto-recovery?
I’m totally thrilled, but if I could offer one comment of constructive criticism, I’d rather I’d have gotten that skill a little sooner…
Then I wouldn’t have had to suffer so much this whole time. But you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. The only proper reaction is to celebrate finally leveling up and clearing away so many of my worries.
Honestly, that was a close call.
Just as I’d originally feared, my HP had started to go down. When it first dropped from 6 to 5, I felt the certainty of death looming over me. After that, it continued to slowly ebb, and by the time I leveled up, it had whittled itself down to 3.
That was seriously close.
Thank goodness I suppressed my anxiety long enough to focus on shooting down those bees.
~*~
The hunt is going smoothly. Surprisingly, my long-distance attacks with the Morning Spider hit the mark every time. I can’t get over it. Is it another benefit of my spider body?
Probably thanks to that, I gained two new level-1 skills: Throw and Hit. Both of them would probably make my Morning Spider attacks even better. And with this latest level-up, three of my skills powered up, too.
I don’t really know what any of them did, but if they leveled up, I must be earning proficiency for them somehow, so it’s possible that I’m benefiting from them without even realizing it.
Well, it certainly can’t hurt to level them up, I guess. Although the Overeating one does get on my nerves…
As I work on my webs and hunt more bees, I make enough use of my Spider Thread and Thread Control that they rank up as well. The Spider Thread skill now stands at level 8, and Thread Control at level 5.
The latter is definitely more useful than I originally thought. At level 5, I can manipulate threads with vastly superior speed and precision. Picking up that skill was a great decision.
Pain Mitigation is level 5 now, too, which makes life even easier. The good thing about this skill, besides the obvious benefit of less pain, is that even if I don’t feel the discomfort, I can still tell when I’m in a dangerous situation.
Pain has a function, after all, as a signal alerting you to threats or poor conditions. So if you can’t feel it, you won’t know when your body is in danger, but with this skill, I can still tell how deep or severe a wound is even if I’m immune to any of the sensations it would normally cause.
It’s hard to put an intuitive impression like that into words, but if anything, I’d say it’s like I have an awareness of unease or aggravation or something from the wound.
Anyway, thanks to that, there’s no disadvantage to the dulled pain. That being said, the skill is still only level 5, so it’s not like pain is completely absent.
Now that I’ve leveled up, I figure I might as well see how much my stats have changed.
△
Nameless
Small Taratect • Lv 3
✧Offense: 21
✧Defense: 21
✧Magic: 19
✧Resistance: 19
✧Speed: 369
▽
Oh-ho-ho.
My HP, MP, and SP went up 2 points each, as did my attack and defense, and my magic and resistance went up 1 point each. And then there’s my speed.
What’s up with you, Speed?
I think it was 348 before. So it went up 21 points? That’s a little weird, no?
Kind of a big leap compared to my other stat increases, if you ask me…
I mean, my speed bonus for a single level-up is the same as my total for attack and defense? Is this for real? Never mind that it’s greater than my magic and resistance…
What the hell?
Oh well.
I decided to turn a blind eye to the ridiculously lopsided nature of my stats. It’s a little too late for that now, anyway.
I finally got my wish of leveling up and fully recovering, so now it’s time to focus all my efforts on escaping.
While I was injured, I obviously worked more slowly, and I had to be extra-cautious as well. So from now on, I’ll hunt stray bees whenever the opportunity presents itself, maintaining a steady supply of stamina as I expand my nest.
Right now, my webs span about a quarter of the distance to my goal. There’s still a long way to go.
The bees still haven’t made any efforts to wage war on me, but I don’t know how long that will last. With this in mind, I have to make sure to maintain enough strength to fend off possible bee incursions while I carry on construction.
Still, it’s proving fairly difficult.
Just as I guessed, building up a wall is a lot harder than doing it along the ground, so the higher I build my webs, the harder the work becomes. I have to stretch thick strands from the foundation rock to serve as a base, then secure those with more threads all over the place.
And this is what it’s like just a quarter of the way up; it’s only going to get harder from here on out. Nevertheless, I have to do it.
I don’t know when the earth dragon might pop up again. I need to get out of here before that happens. In the worst-case scenario, I may have to abandon the nest partway up and hope that my speed will be enough to push through.
It doesn’t seem like a great option, but if it comes down to a life-or-death situation, I won’t have much of a choice.
In the hopes of avoiding that particular scenario, I do my best to keep building.
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 