Chapter 6: Chapter 6 – I Am Grinding

A bead of sweat rolled down my left cheek. I ignored it.

At this moment, there was nothing more important than ensuring my survival.

I admit it. I made a slight miscalculation.

...Alright. Maybe it was a major miscalculation.

Right now, I was surrounded by exactly four spiders. Now, I’m no arachnophobe, but these were massive fuckers.

Like, I’m talkin’ HUGE. They were at least the size of two dogs stacked on top of one another. The big dogs. Not chihuahuas or whatever, though their temperament certainly matched. They also had the same number of legs as two stacked dogs. Eight.

And y’know what? This is the first I’ve ever heard of spiders having actual teeth. I sure as hell don’t recall spiders having pointed incisors back on Earth, because that would’ve been fucking terrifying.

They knew that they could end me at any time. How did I know?

They were advancing toward me slowly from all angles. Front, back, left, right. Simple as.

All I had on me was my jacket, my shirt, and my skirt. I had my fists too, but I’d probably get my ass beat by the other three if I tried to square up with one.

Even [Rulebook] and [Complete Analysis] were useless here. I’d already analyzed them earlier and learned that they were Crest Spiders.

Crest Spiders were only found in dungeons and possessed a tough exoskeleton which protected their soft flesh underneath. Their name came from the crests that their exoskeletons possessed. Apparently, the more elaborate the crest, the more attractive the spider was to the opposite sex.

There was a little more information on that subject, but I had no interest in learning about spider reproduction in the middle of a dungeon.

The spider in front of me raised one of its legs toward me as if probing the air. It was a thick, cylindrical limb which tapered into an incredibly sharp point not unlike a talon. If it skewered me on that, I was probably a goner.

Honestly, I didn’t have many options here. Every moment I hesitated, they were slowly closing in.

Earlier, I had gained a grand total of five levels after three hours of grinding. I was quickly learning that the experience to level ratio was absolutely abysmal if you weren’t killing things far stronger than you.

I’d dumped four levels into raising my strength by one point for each level, and then grabbed the basic magic skill [Pyromancy].

There were a few other skills I could’ve grabbed, but I noticed that there were “static skills” like [Fireball] which produced an identical effect each time they were used and “fluid skills” like my [Pyromancy] which could produce a varying effect each time it was activated, but depended on the imagination of the user.

Magic was undoubtedly the largest difference between this world and my previous world. However, even a miraculous power which transcended the laws of physics was limited by one thing.

Mana.

It was an energy that existed inside of all living creatures. However, everyone had varying quantities of mana at birth, and as a Transmigrator, I was stuck with the bare ass minimum.

The most I could do right now with my fire magic was cause a single explosion. It would be enough to kill one of the Crest Spiders, but I’d be out of mana and facing three more of the fuckers.

Despite that, it wasn’t all too bad. Being a Transmigrator meant that I could raise my mana capacity faster than all other races including the elves who boasted the largest mana capacities at birth which only continued to grow larger as they aged.

But in order to do that, I first needed to survive this encounter.

Fuck, fuck, fuck! Think, you dumb bitch! Are you really going to prove that stupid ass system right, you 14 intelligence fuck!? I parried one of the spiders’ probing legs with my fist, causing it to skitter backward, if only slightly.

Hurts, doesn’t it, asshole? Taste my 16 strength backfist!

Unfortunately for me, this only caused the other three to advance even closer to me. It wouldn’t be long before I was about to be sandwiched between four very angry and very bitey critters.

In desperation, I looked upward at the stone ceiling. There was a large mass of stalactites which lined the roof of the passageway that I was in.

I frowned, the beginnings of an idea forming in my mind.

If [Complete Analysis] worked on the screen of the rulebook, then it should work on other inanimate objects too, right...?

The moment I activated [Complete Analysis], I was bombarded with a massive influx of information about the dungeon. How old it was, how many stalactites and stalagmites there were, the mineral composition of the walls, and other useless shit.

None of it mattered. I purged this information from my mind and focused on what I needed: the structural weak points.

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It didn’t take too long to find one. There was a large area in the passageway that had grown brittle over the years and sufficient force would cause it to collapse, bringing down a large section of the ceiling along with the stalactites.

There was only one problem.

The weak point was located deeper down the passage and behind one of the spiders. Even so, I didn’t have much of a choice.

In just a few seconds, they would be upon me.

It was do or die.

“Alright, come on, you fuckers...” I muttered under my breath.

The spiders recognized the hostility in my voice. They could feel the preparatory bunching of my muscles through the vibrations in the air.

I exhaled once and cleared my mind.

Now!

My feet pushed off the cold stone tiles of the dungeon floor, shooting me straight toward the spider that barred my path.

It screeched in surprise before quickly recovering, baring its teeth and sharp legs toward me as I approached.

“Outta the way!” I shouted. I pressed hard against the ground with my latest step and thrust myself into the air, soaring above the spider.

It raised its bulbous ass toward me and fired a thread of silver web from its spinneret.

Too slow.

The web shot through the air where I had once been and stuck to the ceiling, immediately hardened, taking on a metallic sheen as it reflected the light of my fire.

The spider hissed in rage as it attempted to turn around while the other three spiders were still in hot pursuit. In fact, they moved so fast that I wasn’t entirely confident in my ability to reach the weak point before I was pounced upon.

I guess the one silver lining was that they couldn’t fire those webs from the front, which was probably why they took the time to surround me first.

Just a few more—

Shit!

A lance of searing hot pain shot through my right leg. I turned to look, only to be met with the sight of my leg being completely impaled by one of the spiders’ legs. Its beady red eyes looked at me with a mixture of rage and triumph.

Rage induced by the effort that it took to capture a weak human like me, and triumph induced by the fact that it was about to fucking feast on this bodacious body of mine.

Yeah. Fuckin’. Right.

I wasn’t about to let my goddamn journey end after a single day, and to a bunch of measly spiders too!

The other three spiders were now closing in, including the one that took more than a few seconds to turn its fat body around. It was clearly eating well, but today would be the end of it.

With supreme effort, I wrenched my leg free from the spider. My vision flashed with dots of black and red. I probably fucked up the tendons in my leg, too. But neither of that mattered right now.

I leapt upwards with all the strength that I had left and raised my hand upward, palm facing the ceiling.

EXPLODE, DAMMIT!

In response to my desires, the tiny flame in the palm of my hand burst into a dazzling conflagration like a blossoming flower. It was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen.

The ceiling shook violently with the force of the explosion that I generated, and a moment later, the stalactites rained down upon the passageway, spearing the spiders in more places than I could count.

I felt all the mana drain from my body as I fell to the ground, rolling away from the spiders and covering my head as I tried to avoid succumbing to the same fate as my would-be predators.

And then, the passageway collapsed.

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