Chapter Text
Well, this is inconvenient
That was my first thought looking at the burning rubble that, just a few moments ago, was a classroom. I was really starting to enjoy my little stint as a high school student, but that stupid hero and demon lord had to go and mess it up. I should take their souls and teach them a lesson. Ugh, no, that muscle head may not be bright but even she wouldn’t miss something that blatant. You two live another day. Well, they both definitely died from that stupid stunt, but you get the idea.
Now I need to clean up this mess. I look around at all the souls floating about the room. I could just leave them alone and let them pass on and be reincarnated, but that seems like such a waste. I can’t just bring them back to life either, that’d get me caught for sure. What to do, what to do?
Hmmm…
Ah. I know what I could do. I doubt I’d get caught doing it either. Muscle Head already knows about my little ‘hobby’ and she and the others have probably been betting on when something like this would happen. With a bunch of mortals messing around with spacial magic it wouldn’t be surprising if one of them blew open a hole between worlds and sucked a bunch of souls through. Nobody would look too deep into it as long as I did a decent job covering my tracks. They get a second chance at life, that world gets one last chance to save itself, and I get away scott-free. It’s a win-win-win. Plus it will be funny to watch.
There is one last problem. A problem by the name of Hiiro Wakaba. It was just an alias I made for myself, but the fact remains that she has an entry in the soul registry. If everyone in the class died but her soul is unaccounted for, someone is going to look into that.
Well, if Hiiro Wakaba doesn’t exist, then I’ll just have to make one. As I’m gathering all of the dead students’ souls, I also scoop up the soul of the ‘class pet’ as Miss Oka insisted on calling it, and don’t think I forgot about you, my dear teacher. It’s just a normal house spider, but all I need to do is expand its soul, throw in some fake memories, and I should probably put a small piece of my own soul just to really sell it(I did base Hiiro Wakaba’s entry off my own soul, after all) and it will be impossible to tell it’s not human(as long as you don’t look at it too hard).
As I’m about to do just that, I feel a strange presence. The presence of another god. Did someone else get a timeshare on this planet? I hope not. I don’t like the idea of sharing my little home away from home.
Oh, it’s just him. Probably just here to grab another tormented soul for his side project. I can’t really judge him considering my own hobbies. Heck, sometimes I even tune in to his planet just to watch the ones he reincarnates, that ‘Janice’ girl was especially entertaining.
Suddenly, another idea occurs to me involving that world and the little spider in my hands. No matter which world I send it to, odds are good it will die within a week so it doesn’t really matter where it goes, and I’m sure he wouldn’t even care as long as I didn’t interfere with anything personally. Yes, I think I’ll give him this little gift as a thank you for making such excellent entertainment.
Try to die spectacularly, little spider.
Ooouuugh, my head.
What happened? Last thing I remember was sitting in English literature class and playing the video games I hid under my desk, then there was a bright flash of light and I felt the worst pain I’d ever experienced, and now I’m… wherever I am. Was there some kind of explosion at school? Where the heck am I anyways? The walls are all gray and bumpy like a cave. And what’s with my vision? Everything is so fuzzy and out of focus, trying to focus on anything just aggravates my headache. Everything is also really dark but also not? Like I can tell it’s dark but I can still see…kind of. Nothing hurts-well, nothing but my head-so I can’t be that hurt, and I can’t feel any weight on me so I’m not buried or anything, so I guess that’s good news.
Okay, If I’m not injured then the best thing I can do right now is try and find some help and figure out what the heck that explosion was. First things first, I need to get my feet under me…and keep getting my feet under me… still getting my feet under me… it’s about the time I get my sixth foot under me that I realize something is horribly wrong.
In my peripheral vision(which really feels a lot bigger than I remember it being) I can see legs, a lot of long, black, spindly legs. I try to move my legs, and the spider legs move. I try to turn my head to look at myself, but I can’t move my neck at all. Wait, do I even have a neck? Okay, stay calm, I’m sure there’s a totally logical explanation for this. I have no idea what that logical explanation could be, but I’m sure there is one.
While I’m trying to look at myself, I notice something else in the room, something terrifying. Sat in the middle of the large cave-like room I’m in is a pulsating ball of darkness. The ball is pitch black, so perfectly black that even the purest ink looks bleached white by comparison. It’s constantly shifting and changing into shapes and patterns I’ve never seen before and don’t even know how to describe. What the heck is this thing!?
I start slowly edging away from the ball of darkness and, thanks to my enormous range of vision, I can start taking in the room I’m in while keeping my eyes on the shadow ball. It looks like a large, oval-shaped cave. If I was my normal height then the cave would be about 5 meters tall and 6-ish meters wide and maybe twice as long. As I shift close to the wall of the room, I realize there are these weird glowing(but with darkness so, like, anti-glowing?) black lines snaking along the walls, floor, and ceiling. The lines split and merge at random and I swear I can see some of them pulsing. It’s as if the walls have veins. Where the heck am I!?
I can almost cry when I see a passage that leads out of this place not too far away from me. No offense Mr. Ball of Eternal Darkness, but I really can’t express how much I don’t want to be near whatever it is you’re doing. I keep my eyes glued on the ball of darkness as I sidle my way towards the opening. The second I reach the exit, I turn tail and book it. The tunnel I ran into is big enough for me to comfortably fit through and the walls are lined with the same weird, shadowy veins as the room I woke up in, though they’re smaller and not glowing-or I guess anti-glowing as… darkly? Ugh this is confusing, the air also has that same dark-not-dark look. The tunnel itself is angled upwards and, after walking up it for a few minutes, takes a sharp turn. Peeking past the turn I can finally see outside this dumb cave and, seriously, WHERE THE HECK AM I!?!
Looking out of my little hole, which I now realize is in the side of a cliff face, the first thing I see is a giant piece of bleach white coral. It’s so huge that it reaches up into the sky, with huge branches that stretch out and weave together with the branches of its equally massive neighbors. It looks like I’m in the middle of an enormous forest, but made of coral instead of trees. Straining my eyes, I can see vague shapes drifting about in the air above the coral, flitting around in strange patterns like they’re alive. I’m broken out of my stupor by a strange sound. It’s kind of like wind, but kind of muffled, like it’s underwater. Then my view was blocked by something massive flying above me. It looked like a moray eel, swimming through the sky like it’s water, and it’s big. Like, really big. Big enough to fit ten of me in its mouth with space to spare. I suddenly decided that I may have judged Mr. Ball of Eternal Darkness too quickly, and start walking backwards into the cave I’d come out of.
Once I’m back inside the big cave with the ball of darkness, I collapse into a heap. Ok, feeling really overwhelmed here. Let’s just try to slow down a bit and get my thoughts in order.
First: my body. I’m clearly no longer a human. I’m pretty sure I’m a spider on account of the spider legs and the big spider butt I can barely see in the corner of my vision, but when I try to count the legs I realize I have twelve legs. Even by spider standards that’s way too many. Actually, am I even a spider? I’m pretty sure to be a spider you need to have eight legs, no points for being an overachiever. I’m just gonna say I’m a spider for simplicity’s sake.
Back on topic, why am I a spider? When I woke up this morning, I was a normal teenager and then there was a bright flash, a lot of pain, and then I was suddenly a spider. When I say it like that, it seems pretty obvious what happened; I died and reincarnated as a spider! Why? How? No idea! I’m just going off what I have and what I have is not much.
Second: I have no idea where I am. I can tell I’m stuck somewhere really dark but also not dark. Outside of my little cave there’s some massive coral and a bunch of fish flying through the sky. Maybe I’m not actually in a cave. Maybe I’m some species of deep sea spider and all this dark-not-dark stuff is just how my spider brain sees water. People always talk about how crazy stuff is deep in the ocean so a deep sea spider doesn’t sound that far fetched.
There’s one big hole in that theory, and it’s sitting in the middle of the room. I’m no marine biologist but I’m pretty sure shadowy holes in reality aren’t a big part of the deep sea ecosystem. That strikes me as distinctly magical, as does me being reincarnated in the first place. So until further notice, I’ll just have to assume I’ve been reincarnated as(technically not) a spider in a fantasy world, possibly at the bottom of the ocean.
Ugh, I just wish I had a way to get some more info! If this was a light novel I’d have some kind of appraisal skill or ability to view my status-
Name: Nameless
Level: 1
Might: 11
Toughness: 6
Cunning: 31
Will: 34
HP: 8/8
MP: 0/0
Skills: Threadwork (I) level 3, Grip (I) Level 3, Stealth (I) Level 3, Bite (I) Level 2, Mana Sense (I) Level 2, Mana manipulation (I) Level 1, Shadow Magic Affinity (I) Level 1
Mutations: Eyes(Evergloom) +0, Carapace(Shadow Flesh) +0, Fangs(Shadow Flesh) +0, Legs(Shadow Flesh) +0, Webbing(Shadow Infused) +0, Shadow Magic Gland +0
Species: Juvenile Spiderling(Aranea Plurimorum)
Skill Points: 1
Biomass: 1
Huh? The second I thought the word ‘status’ a bunch of text just appeared in my vision. Are these my stats? Do I really have those now? Well, if anything this pretty firmly cements my ‘fantasy world’ theory. Plus, if I can appraise stuff, then I have an easy way to get access to more info.
Alright shadow ball, time to spill the beans. STATUS!
Name: Nameless
Level: 1
Um, okay, those are my stats. Not what I wanted but I appreciate the effort, now let’s try again. STATUS!
Name: Nameless
Level: 1
I feel like there’s been a miscommunication between us. I know my stats. Thanks to your efforts I am intimately familiar with them. I want to know that things stats now. So let’s try this one more time. STATUS!
Name: Nameless
Level: 1
How do I drive this thing!?
Name: Nameless
Level: 1
Name: Nameless
Level: 1
Name: Nameless
Level: 1
*sigh* Ok, so it seems like I can’t appraise anything other than myself. The ominous shadow ball can keep its secrets, I don’t even care about them any more. There is some stuff in my own status I’d like some more info on, like what does ‘Aranea Plurimorum’ mean?
Aranea Plurimorum - many hands spider: This monster uses its stealth and webs formed of shadow mana to entrap its prey. An ambush hunter by nature, direct confrontation is not this creature's greatest strength.
Ah, so that’s like the name of my species and the ‘juvenile’ part just means I’m a baby of that species. So does this mean I can get details for stuff in my status? Now that I can work with.
Evergloom Eyes: Eyes infused with a large amount of shadow mana that suffer no ill effects from light level.
Is that what’s causing me to see this dark-not-dark stuff? It’s supposed to be pitch black but my eyes can’t be blinded by darkness? Handy.
Shadow Flesh: A significant amount of this flesh is made from highly condensed shadow mana, making it more malleable and giving it minor shock absorption. Shadow flesh will also heal faster as long as it’s supplied with a steady supply of shadow mana.
I hold one of my legs in front of my face and shake it back and forth. It leaves a few small wisps of darkness behind. Kind of Creepy to think my skin is made of darkness, but at least it sounds pretty strong.
Shadow infused webbing: Webbing that has been enhanced with shadow mana to increase its strength and flexibility
I guess that makes sense. If I'm a magic spider, I'm gonna have magic webs.
Shadow Magic Gland: A gland in the monster’s body capable of storing a single type of mana.
This seems really important. My webs, my venom, and even my skin all need shadow magic to work at their best so this gland seems like my life line.
Biomass: Gained when consuming the flesh of another monster. Can be spent to mutate body parts.
Oh, right. I guess as a monster I would probably have to eat other monsters. Not sure how comfortable I am with that thought. Let’s just cross that bridge when we come to it… and try to ignore that empty feeling in my stomach.
Juvenile Spiderling - A newly spawned spider monster. Lacking in physical strength and yet to develop the intelligence its species is known for, these infant monsters rarely make it to adulthood.
I…I think that’s… enough looking at stats for now. Thankfully, I’m distracted from that info by my roommate, the floating ball of endless nothingness, actually doing something. Less thankfully, the floating ball of endless nothingness is doing something! I run to the part of the room furthest from the shadow ball and cower in fear as the sphere of perfect darkness somehow grows even darker. Its constant twisting and shifting gets faster and faster and it starts growing in size. The shifting of the air around it sounds almost like whispering as the sphere itself starts making a nasty bubbling, gurgling noise. What is it doing? WHAT IS IT DOING!? The sphere, which by now had more than doubled in size, seems to open up and spits out… a spider.
Whaaaaaat?
The spider it spit out is covered in a shiny black exoskeleton with no markings. Its face has eight small eyes with the two in front being slightly larger with two large fangs right underneath them. It has 12 legs, not counting 2 smaller legs on the sides of its head, which a quick wiggle confirms I also have because 12 wasn’t enough, I guess. It’s got a small, fat main body with 12 long legs and a large back segment. From what little of my own body I can see, we’re basically identical.
I woke up in a room with nothing but a sphere of darkness which just spit out a spider that looks identical to me. Is this ball of darkness my mother!? And does that make this spider my sibling? My spider brother gets up, stretches out their legs, and then turns to stare at me. I stare back.
We both just stare at each other awkwardly for a moment before my sibling just turns away and starts walking out of the cave. Are you really just gonna gawk at me and then walk away without saying anything? Are you really that socially clueless?
We really are family!
Having found my kin, I follow them out of the cave. I may be a human stuck in a spider body, but this guy is a spider in a spider body with all the built in spider survival instincts. If there’s any one who can show me what I have to do to survive in my new life, it’s this guy. Actually, I have no way of knowing whether or not they really are a spider or another human stuck in a spider body, but that’s just another reason for me to stick to them. Imagine I met the only other intelligent spider and I lost them because I was too scared to leave my cave. Either way, they seem pretty confident, so they probably know what they’re doing.
Lead the way Spider-Senpai! Actually, I’m pretty sure I’m older than you, so would it be Spider-Kohai? But, I’m definitely treating you like a senpai. I’m just gonna call you Spider-Senpai.
We leave the cave we were both born in and as soon as we do Spider-Senpai jumps down and ducks underneath the smallest pieces of coral. Ooooh, I see. Stay at the bottom level where the coral reef is too thick for bigger monsters. That giant eel I saw earlier would never be able to fit down there. Spider-Senpai is already teaching me so much.
As I follow Spider-Senpai, watching them duck and weave through the maze of stone columns and strange plants, it really sinks in to me how huge this place is. From the stone floor, I can see the base of the coral and it has to be at least 30 meters in diameter, probably a lot more, and these things are much taller than they are wide, towering high into the sky, and even above that there were all those dots that I’m sure were more of those giant fish. These pieces of coral look like skyscrapers to me, but it’s such a small part of this place. It’s almost beautiful just because of its sheer scale.
We spend a few hours walking through the reef and we pass giant sea urchins, fields of enormous seaweed, I even saw a piece of bubble coral that must’ve been the size of a stadium, all in colors ranging from bleach white to inky black. The whole place also had this air of danger that makes it so I can never feel safe. I occasionally notice other monsters wandering around but we’ve avoided trouble up until now. The monsters aren’t the only danger, I remember when I stepped a bit too close to a patch of algae and it LUNGED at me! A lump of algae reached out and tried to grab me! I backed away before it could and it just went back to lying on the ground. I don’t want to know what would’ve happened if it got me. I also can’t help but notice that I still occasionally see those black veins from before over the walls and floor. Something about those veins gives me a really ominous feeling.
Right when I start to think Spider-Senpai doesn’t know where they’re going, they stop for a moment before they start climbing up the base of a nearby coral tree so I start climbing up after them. Climbing up a wall is a strange, new feeling. It’s definitely harder than walking on the ground, but I somehow instinctively know where to put my feet to best support my weight. I guess that’s what the grip skill does.
When Spider-Senpai reaches one of the branches, they start walking down it towards a nearby cliff. Spider-Senpai jumps down off the branch onto the cliff and makes their way over to a strange cavern I would’ve never found on my own. Now you’ve got me really curious, where exactly are we going? As we walk through the tunnel, I can’t help but notice the veins getting bigger and more common.
We enter into a large open cavern and I’m suddenly a lot less sure about Spider-Senpai’s judgment. Inside the cavern is a large body of inky black liquid, all of the veins seemingly feeding into it. The pool of black liquid is surrounded by monsters, all of them drinking from the pool. There are giant centipedes, wolves with snake tails instead of back legs, rats with porcupine spines, and even something that looks like a human but skeleton thin with bleach white skin and massive claws. Every once and a while, another monster will come in or leave through the tunnels dotting the underground reservoir.
Despite this being the single most obvious death trap I’ve ever seen in both of my lives, Spider-Senpai just strolls on over. After much deliberation, I decide to trust Spider-Senpai’s instincts and follow… about 20 steps behind but following nonetheless. Once Spider-Senpai reaches the edge of the pool the other monster, one of the snake wolves, gives them the side eye and growls to which Spider-Senpai just stares at them and then the snake wolf just moves to the side, making space for Spider-Senpai. What the heck!? Have I totally misjudged this place? Are all the monsters in this place this polite?
I slowly walk up to the edge of the pool, trying to stay as close to Spider-Senpai as possible. Once I get close, the monster to my other side, one of the human-like monsters, stares at me and starts chattering its teeth while glaring at me. *Shiver* That has to be the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen. Even so, I do my best to stay still and just stare at him just like Spider-Senpai did. Eventually, Creepy takes a few steps to the side to make room for me to squeeze in. I finally reach the edge while keeping an eye on Creepy and being ready to run at a moment’s notice. Looking into the pool, all I can see is black, I can’t even see my reflection in the…whatever this stuff is, should I really be drinking this? All around the pool, there are monsters lapping it up, even Spider-Senpai is getting their fill, so I know it’s safe for my species to drink…probably. Spider-Senpai has never led me astray so I lean in, take a sip, and-
WOAH!
The second I take a sip, it feels like a cold breeze is blowing through me, but in a good way. It was like walking through one of those mist machines on a hot day, but the feeling went all the way down to the bone. I dip my mouth back into the pool and take a few more big gulps. Aaah, that feels good, like an ice cold lemonade for my soul. I really need to stop doubting Spider-Senpai.
Eventually, it seemed like Spider-Senpai had their fill and they started to leave. Aww, do we have to? I’m okay to stay here a little longer. No? Well, I’m not about to lose Spider-Senpai after all they’ve done for me, so I regretfully leave the pool of magical water to follow them. I follow Spider-Senpai back out of the cavern and we walk back along the branch.
FWOOOOOOSH
One moment I was in the middle of the branch with Spider-Senpai, then I saw a flash of black, then I was standing in the branch alone. It was so fast I couldn’t even tell what it was. In shock, I turn the way the sound went and I see what looks like a giant barracuda with jet black scales and a few spindly spider legs stuck between its razor sharp teeth.
The barracuda turns around, it still looks hungry.