Chapter 36: Interlude – A Spider’s Pride

Hellooo everyone! It’s your friendly neighborhood Kumoko-chan V!

Well, that’s what I call myself now anyways, my name was actually Hiiro Wakaba until about a month ago.

 

One day, I was sitting in class listening to my teacher, Ms Oka’s lecture when incredibly agonizing pain hit every part of my body all of a sudden, promptly causing me to faint!

When I woke up, I found myself inside a dark and cramped place. Instinctively trying to get out, I found myself free with unexpected ease.

But oh, how I wish it was hard. Imagine my astonishment and absolute horror when hundreds of spiders skedaddling around came into my field of view!

However, without giving me any rest, an even more horrifying fact than being surrounded by hundreds of dog-sized spiders soon made itself known to me.

I seem to... have transformed into a spider? What the heck?! This definitely isn’t normal! A high school student doesn’t just faint out of nowhere and then turn into a spider, y’know?!!

A lot of questions kept popping up in my mind, and my confusion seemed to be endlessly escalating until I was violently pulled out of my daze.

Apparently, my spider brothers thought that it was rude for me to ignore them and started their first birthday banquet without waiting for me.

There’s a teeny tiny problem though... The menu seems to only include raw brothers and sisters?! One of them is looking at me!!

Nope, I’m leaving, thank you, no way.

I started running away from this scary place with all my strength, but a HUGE spider suddenly appeared when I was halfway through. The intense pressure radiating off of its body had me instinctively freezing in my tracks.

Ah... Hello, mother or father. You should probably stop these guys, they’re siblings and all, yet they are engaging in a heinous activity like cannibalism! Beat some sense into them, ey!

My parent heard and answered my prayers without any delay. Her answer, however, wasn’t something I would have ever expected.

Without any prior warning and at a speed that my now multiple eyes couldn’t even capture, tens of my siblings were caught by Mother and swallowed whole. She pierced their bodies with her front legs as if adding meat to a kebab skewer, then started eating them like I would enjoy a snack.

OOOHHH, is this the legendary perpetual motion machine that never runs out of energy—NOT. Why are you eating your own children instead of stopping them?!!

My eight legs which were previously frozen due to fear broke free from their shackles, letting me cover the remaining distance for my escape in one large sprint.

Pheww, that was scary... How was I moved here in the first place?

Sigh... I guess there’s no running away from the truth, it seems that I’ve died and was reincarnated as a monster.

No wayyy.

 

Everything was blurry after that... I thought of those recently popular mangas and novels about reincarnation in another world, then I jokingly tried to use the Appraisal skill.

Imagine my surprise when a voice suddenly popped up in my head asking me if I wanted to acquire the Appraisal skill!

This was the last piece of the puzzle; It was certain that I’m not on Earth anymore... and that I was human no more.

A little spider with the soul of a teenage girl was thrown into another world in a dangerous cave all by herself without any directions.

I didn’t have the leisure to stop and figure it out though. Survival is the first priority, and everything else comes later.

The Appraisal skill was my only way to get any information, but unfortunately, it turned out to be pretty useless. It practically gave no information.

I mean, I already know that this is a freakin’ stone! Tell me what type it is or where it comes from!! Give me anything useful, goddammit!

Later on, I accidentally appraised a high number of monsters at the same time which led to me getting an intense migraine from information overflow.

So, Appraisal isn’t really useless, it’s a nice tool if you’re a fan of self-destruction, the type without any damage anyways!

To think my only 100 skill points were wasted on this...

Anyways, after that, I discovered that I could use threads (duh) and made myself a nice and cozy home as any normal spider does. That went well for me as some frogs and other monsters were caught up in my webs every once in a while, solving my food problems.

I was ready to stay here for a long time, to be honest, but everything all my plans were burned down to the ground (Literally!).

One morning, my beauty sleep was cut short by the vibration of my threads. Since I’m already awake and all, I followed the thread to the source of the disturbance.

And Lo and behold, I found a human male stuck in my web! My joyful surprise didn’t last long though, the man panicked as soon as he saw me and took out something like a torch.

I didn’t have time to let out a sound before my entire home was engulfed in flames, leaving only me and an egg that the human left behind in the cave in his panicked escape.

The egg turned out to be special though, it was too freaking hard! I tried everything I could to break it, even letting a basilisk petrify it, but nothing worked!

During this time, I got my first level up after killing a monster, the first joyful event in this world.

My days went great after that, with me sleeping in my webby home and waiting for prey to deliver itself, I made no effort at all. This went on until some humans suddenly broke into my rebuilt house and burned it all down again...

Not only that, but they even chased after me for a while and tried to kill me, reminding me of my sibling’s corpse that I saw a while ago. It was dismembered and there were obvious human footsteps around it.

It was a hard reality check for me, I truly was a human no more. Even if I try to leave this place, humans will probably do their best to hunt me down.

I felt absolutely powerless at that moment. My home was abandoned for the sake of survival, but I felt that it was actually my Pride that was abandoned. My pride was trampled on by those humans and I had to swallow down the humiliation to live through the ordeal.

My rage was vented in the form of battles with monsters as I explored the labyrinth.

This went on until I got my first evolution, I had to settle down somewhere safe and start evolving, so I built myself a new home and hid inside.

After the evolution was completed, I calmed down a bit, then some bits and pieces of memory came to my mind.

Memories of someone whom I’d never forget even if I tried my best to do so.

That person was my only friend in high school, or rather my only friend back on Earth, to be honest.

You are reading story So I’m a Fish, So What? at novel35.com

 

The memory of our first meeting is still as clear as day in my mind, that girl who goes by the name Tomoko Ito Grant. Both her Japanese and foreign last names are clear indicators of her foreign ancestry.

My first time seeing her was the day when she entered through our class’s door after we got the news of a new transfer student. As soon as she stepped in and scanned us with her eyes, I could instantly tell that she was different.

She had that... aura radiating off of her body, it felt as if she was in a plane while the entire world was in a whole other plane. It felt... lonely, yet it seemed as if there were still some ropes tying her to the world.

I don’t really remember why, but as soon as my eyes met hers, I smiled. I think I found a kindred spirit!

My connections with people back on Earth were almost non-existent, even my interactions with my parents were all about getting money. Come to think of it, I don’t even remember what they look like...

Anyways, it wasn’t that I was introverted or arrogant, I was just antisocial. Human relationships just didn’t have that much appeal to me, I felt perfectly fine living on my own.

My daily routine consisted of going to school in the morning, returning home right after my classes end, then I’d stay locked up in my room playing video games and reading manga until I felt sleepy.

Apparently, I was considered the school’s icy queen or something due to my beauty and coldness when speaking to others, but it was actually me not wanting to speak to others rather than being cold.

Ah, I was sidetracked again. Back to the main topic, Tomoko’s seat was coincidentally set to be the one right behind me, allowing me to often interact with her and curiously observe her. I really wanted to know what’s drawing me to her.

At first, she seemed to be uneasy when speaking to me, she’d even go as far as to send books or notebooks that were supposed to be given to me through other people.

I could feel no malice from her though, so I didn’t care about such actions. This went on for a while until she was finally able to get over whatever was bugging her. She then apparently decided to become my friend one-sidedly and forcedly.

That had me... dumbfounded for a while. It was a really special way of making friends.

It was also something that she wouldn’t normally do judging by how her relationships with the rest of our classmates went.

First off, she had no interest in any student outside of our class. In fact, she seemed to not have much interest in our classmates as well.

The only exceptions were three people: Aiko Iijima, Touko Segawa, and Ooshima Kanata. I later found out that the four of them were childhood friends, and she cared about them due to some unknown events that happened to them in the past.

As for the other classmates, it seemed as if she had a good relationship with them, but if you look closer, you’d find that she’s mostly perfunctory when dealing with them. Her emotions only seemed real when dealing with the previously mentioned three.

What she normally acts like, coupled with how real her one-sided friendship felt to me had me stunned for some time before I was able to accept her as a friend.

I didn’t show any difference in dealing with her though... My antisocial personality made any interactions extremely awkward, teehee.

My memories seem kinda fuzzy sometimes, I don’t really understand why I was this awkward when I could’ve just dealt with my one true friend normally, I really hope she didn’t take that to heart...

The most vivid memory of her was actually quite recent, it was during the week that I reincarnated in.

I remember being suddenly pulled by a group of girls during physical education class, only to recover from my stupor a few minutes later and find myself in a clearing surrounded by trees.

Trying to identify the people who took me here, I surprisingly find a few familiar faces.

Mirei Shinohara, Aiko Iijima, and Kumiko Tonooka. The members of one of the more “popular” girl cliques in our class.

Their leader, Mirei seemed to be angry about something while Aiko was apprehensive about what her friend was doing, she even tried to stop her a couple of times but to no avail. Lastly, Kumiko just seemed to be uncomfortable about being here and looked like she wished she was air.

Then everything escalated quickly. Mirei started screaming at me about a boy apparently...? and saying stuff like it’s all my fault and cursing at me.

I just stood there staring at her without any reaction, I really didn’t understand nor care what she was going on about, I just wanted her to get it over with quickly...

Seemingly becoming even madder about my silence, she subconsciously vented her anger by pushing me down. Everything around me went silent until I heard some footsteps and a voice filled with anger demanding an explanation.

I was still in a daze while looking at my hands though, so I don’t remember much of what happened after that. What I can recall is that I was pulled up by a petite but surprisingly strong hand, then a handkerchief landed on my face, cleaning the dust from the fall.

Suddenly, Mirei bowed to me and seriously apologized without any resentment in her eyes, it was a genuine apology, after which she spoke about the details of this incident with the owner of the hand, Tomoko-san.

After a lengthy explanation, the three girls went back to the playground, leaving me alone with Tomoko-san.

It was then that I was finally pulled out of my stupor by her serious voice calling out my name. Our conversation afterwards seems to be the most vivid memory I had throughout my entire life.

“Wakaba-san.”

“Hmm?”

“You should not let anyone degrade you like this even if you think they’re not worthy, y’know? You’re a very strong person, I can tell due to my experience, so don’t insult this strength by letting yourself be pushed around. I’m not telling you to fight with them, but at least protect yourself, please do it for me if not for yourself.”

 

I still don’t understand what she saw in me until this very day, I was nothing but a frail otaku high school girl. Her words sounded like thunder in both my ears and heart back then though. They still echo in my ears from time to time.

Recalling those memories seems to have untied some invisible knot in my heart, and all my pent-up anger turned into motivation.

Although I still don’t understand what you meant, Tomoko, since you think that I’m strong then I’ll do my best to become the person you thought I was.

I will strive to become stronger, no... I will strive to be the strongest.

I won’t let anyone insult you by proving you wrong, just as I won’t allow anyone to trample on my pride ever again!! I will prove that your words were correct, even if I lose myself in the process.

This is the only goal I could possibly pursue in my current situation, the best way to keep my sanity intact; This is also the first goal I ever had in my two lifetimes.

Well, I’m gonna do my best anyways, teehee.

Now, where did I put that damn magical girl transformation wand again...? I should also find some tasty food, hmm hmm!