I STILL DON’T KNOW THE STUPID NICKNAME OF “NIGHTMARE OF THE LABYRINTH” THAT I GOT THAT DAY

I’m currently conspiring to defeat Araba to rave reviews.

Today, I’ve returned to the place where I first encountered Araba, the bottom of the huge pit with bees buzzing around.

To do what, you ask? Why, to exterminate the bees, of course.

See, I’ve been thinking. If I set foot on the ground to fight Araba, I don’t stand a chance.

This isn’t a complicated metaphor or anything. I literally mean that if I touch the ground while fighting Araba, I’m going to lose.

Because the ground is one of Araba’s weapons.

Can you imagine earth spears and junk suddenly popping out of the ground underneath you?

Not only that, but it can also block attacks using walls of earth and stuff like that.

So I decided I wouldn’t feel safe unless I stay off the ground.

I know, I know, what are you gonna do then? Well, I’ll just stay in the air! Duh.

Lucky for me, I have the Dimensional Maneuvering skill, which lets me run around freely in the air.

With this skill, I can hold up a respectable air battle even without wings.

And what better place to engage in that sort of battle than in the center of a spacious area where I can keep my distance from the walls?

This pit is wide enough that I can keep a decent amount of space between the walls and me, effectively negating the threat of Araba’s Earth Magic.

It’s the perfect place for our fated battle.

However, there’s just one little problem.

Yep, you guessed it: those stupid buzzing bees.

The last thing I need is for these idiots to try to interfere while I’m focused on my battle with Araba.

So, with the double purpose of eliminating a nuisance and earning EXP, let’s start exterminating some bees!

JAB!

Uh, ow?!

I’ve been stabbed?!

In the back, I’ve been stabbed in the back?!

Excuse me, the starting bell didn’t ring yet, asshole!

Ow, ow! Thanks to Pain Mitigation, it actually doesn’t hurt that much, but it’s bringing back some real traumatic memories of the time I got stabbed like this before and almost died!

I tie up the bee on my back with thread and yank it off.

Ugh. What a pain.

Now you’ve gone and done it, pal.

Who would’ve thought a stupid bee would pull off a surprise attack on me, even with my Detection skill?

Although that being said, my HP barely went down, and it’s already healed back up with Auto-Recovery.

Pretty crazy that this almost killed me before, huh?

It opened up a nice big air hole in my back, and since I didn’t have HP Auto-Recovery back then, my only chance at survival was leveling up and molting. That brings me back…

JAB!

Again? Seriously?!

Since I have Pain Super-Mitigation, too, now, it hardly hurts at all, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying!

It’s a pain to keep throwing them around, so I just use Thread Control to slice it up this time.

Man, but if it happened twice, it’s totally gonna happen a third time, huh?

How are they even getting to my back without setting off my Danger Perception anyway?

Oh, maybe because they’re not actually registering as dangerous?

I guess it’s not technically doing any real damage, so I’d be hard-pressed to call it “danger.”

Ah, in that case, maybe the bees aren’t even registering as enemies to me anymore?

I mean, they really are just fodder to me now, so I guess that’s not wrong…

JAB!

Cut it out already!

Seriously, this is kinda weird, right?

How can they sneak up on me so easily without even having Stealth or anything?

Sure, I might be kind of an idiot, but this is still weird.

Come to think of it, aren’t bees the natural enemies of spiders or whatever?

Is there some kind of hidden advantage outside of the regular system at work here?

No, that can’t be… Right?

Anyway, damage or no, it’s still pissing me off.

Sure, I’ll admit it takes some guts to come at me like that in the face of my Intimidation-plus-Fearbringer combo, but still, this is on them.

So let’s get on with the extermination!

I hop through the air with Dimensional Maneuvering.

I fire magic at every bee in sight and use my scythes to slice up any that get too close.

Wow. I used to need a whole web setup to take these guys on, but now I’m taking them down like nothing.

Bwa-ha-ha-ha! Behold! These bees are like garbage before me!

Oh? I haven’t seen this kind of bee before.

According to Appraisal, it’s called a general finjicote.

Oh-ho-ho. This must be the next rank above the captain bees.

Looks about as strong as a snake, maybe?

Well, it’s no match for me as I am now.

Thinking back, when I first fell into this hole, most of my stats were barely halfway into the double digits.

If this guy had shown up back then, I might’ve been in trouble, even with a home base set up.

But tough luck for you, pal! I’ve advanced light-years beyond the weakling I was before!

Specifically, my stats are about a hundred times stronger!

Seriously, just looking at my stats alone, it’s crazy how much stronger I’ve gotten.

If you take my skills into account, too, it might even be more than a hundred times.

Pretty impressive growth rate, if I do say so myself!

So, I’m sorry to ruin your dramatic entrance and all, but I’m gonna have to shut you down right there, Mr. General.

Oh, wait, here’s another one.

I guess I must be getting close to the hive now, huh?

I do see some kinda object up above me.

Actually, it’s more of a building than an object, huh?

I guess that makes sense, since the bees that live in it are almost ten feet long.

It’s waaay huge.

I wonder if there’s a queen bee–type of figure in there…

Well, I’m gonna knock down the whole damn nest anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.

Do your thing, Black Magic!

The beehive collapses, taking the surrounding bees with it.

As it goes down, I mercilessly rain more magic on it for good measure.

Boy, am I good or what?!

Now, all this destruction might draw Araba’s attention, so I better get outta here.

I’m not ready to fight it just yet.

I return home from the pit with Teleport.

And when I arrive, I find a bunch of humans milling around.

Excuse me?

Uh, where did all these guys come from?

Don’t tell me they knew I was going to teleport here and were lying in wait?!

No, apparently not.

They’re all totally freaking out now, after all.

Man, what’s the deal here?

Oh, they’re dressed sorta like those knight dudes I saw before, so these must be their friends or something.

Are they all knights from a certain country or something?

Huh?

Wait, how did they even get all the way here?

Didn’t I set things up so they’d have to get through my webs to reach this point?

When I dealt with the spider army, I took down my thread to lure them inside, but I know I put them back up after that.

Wait a sec.

I’m getting a bad feeling about this.

Activate Clairvoyance.

My home is… Aaaaah?!

It…it…it’s BURNED?!

Oh boy. Ohhhh boy.

It’s gone.

The home I worked so hard to build.

It’s been reduced to ashes.

I don’t believe it.

Even with Flame Resistance added to the thread, I guess it’s still weak to fire.

Damn it! These guys have a lot of nerve to do this to me!

I flash back to when I was still weak, when my home was burned down for the first time.

All the frustration comes rushing back.

At the time, I was weak.

My beloved home was taken from me, and I could only run away.

But things are different now.

I’ve gained enough strength to protect my pride.

And while I was out, these guys trampled all over it.

It’d be harder NOT to get angry in this situation, right?

Plus, after burning down my home and trespassing inside, now these guys are trying to oppose me.

The knights have drawn their swords, holding them out toward me.

Back in Japan, this would definitely constitute legitimate self-defense, right?

I could totally say these guys tried to attack me, and I just did what I had to do, right?

There is a total of thirty-four of them.

Their stats are higher than the knights I saw before, too.

On average, they’re around 400.

Some of the higher ones even go past 500.

And there are two individuals who are way stronger.

At a glance, I’d say one’s a warrior type and one’s a mage type.

Oh, but the warrior guy has the Summoning skill, huh?

It’s an advanced form of the Creature Training skill that makes monsters obey you.

The user can summon trained monsters from a long distance and even use Teleport to a limited extent.

He’s got Cooperation and Command and stuff, too, so he might be more of a monster tamer or a summoner than a warrior.

The mage-type guy is definitely a mage, though.

His skills and stats both totally scream, “I’m a wizard!”

However, his stats are much higher than the other humans’, and he’s got a pretty expansive skill set.

He kinda looks like he’s teetering on the verge between middle and old age, but I guess he might actually be pretty strong after all…

Hmm? What’s this unpleasant feeling?

Just as a strange sensation washes over me, I notice something in my status.

“Appraisal in Progress”?

The message suddenly appears above my stats.

Looking at it, even my skills are flashing red.

Ah, does this mean they’re being Appraised?

So the strange feeling I’ve been getting is what being Appraised feels like?

Wow, gross.

Quit peeping, you perv.

If the flashing red text indicates what’s being Appraised, the perpetrator must be pretty high level.

Hmph. Activate ruler’s authority. Appraisal rejected.

I didn’t expect to have to use my ruler’s authority like this.

Since it uses my divinity field, I prefer to avoid it as much as possible, but I don’t like the idea of someone else looking at my status.

Destruction of property, trespassing, and now peeping, too.

How much more do you have to keep rubbing me the wrong way before you’re satisfied?

For now, I’m gonna lock and load Cursed Evil Eye in all eight eyes.

And activate it starting…now.

As soon as I turn it on, people start dying.

…I know that sounds hard to believe, but trust me, I don’t know what happened, either.

They weren’t just a little bit weak or fragile.

All it took was a single glance.

I mean, hang on a sec. How are you guys this weak?

Huh? For real?

I, uh… Hmm.

It’s just, you know, um.

I didn’t actually mean to kill anyone, okay?

Even I have a little scrap of a conscience, you know.

Huh? Wait, or do I?

Hmm. Come to think of it, I do understand morals and all, but even in my old life, I obeyed the law only because it seemed like breaking it would be a pain.

I knew the rules, and I followed them because it didn’t seem worth the trouble to do otherwise, but I guess it’s not like I was doing it because of my own conscience or anything.

Oh, also, it looks like I leveled up from that. Twice, in fact.

Really? These weaklings give out that much experience?

I accidentally killed eight people just now, but each one of them gave out more experience than a greater taratect.

Um, wow.

They do have a stupid number of skills, so I figured they’d maybe give more EXP than their weak stats might indicate, but I didn’t think it’d be THIS much.

Oh man. Humans’ experience value is way too tempting.

And since I already killed a few, I’m kinda starting to feel like a few more wouldn’t be that big of a deal.

They attacked me first…and it’s not like I was really that worried about it in the first place…and I am a monster, after all.

What’s the big deal if I murder them?

Look, my biggest goal in life is to live with pride.

Anyone who stomps all over that pride and tries to threaten my life is an enemy who needs to be soundly defeated.

In this world, even my own parents and siblings are my enemies, so it doesn’t make any practical sense to hold off on killing humans simply because I used to be one.

Plus, the humans are the ones who started being hostile in the first place.

I’m just trying to live my life, and they come in here and burn my home.

If they’re going to threaten my life and step on my pride, then human beings are my enemy.

So I might as well just throw away any stupid sense of morality from my old life.

First, let’s get out of the skin I just molted.

If you think about it, doesn’t that make this kind of like a strip show?

Yeah, right.

Ah, while I was distracted by that stupid thought, another idiot came charging toward me.

I could just finish ’em off in the usual way, but maybe I’ll use these guys as guinea pigs for a little experiment instead.

I start constructing magic.

The magic I saw when Araba fought the giant snake a while back.

I rely on my memory to re-create the spell.

Then I activate the completed magic.

The Terrain Magic spell Terrain Wall.

Even without the skill, I can still invoke the spell if I know how, huh?

It’s just that having the skill means the system will assist you, so it’s a lot harder without it.

If I had to compare it to something, I’d say it’s like walking instead of taking a train.

If you’re walking, you reach your destination of your own accord by checking the way as you go, while taking a train gets you there automatically.

Obviously, if you had to say which one’s easier, it’d be the train.

But it’s not impossible to get there by walking.

Getting a magic skill means automatically attaining the ability to construct that magic.

Then you just have to create the construction you’ve already got.

In other words, if you know the construction, you can do the same thing by hand.

At least, that was my thought process. Turns out it really works.

Maybe this is thanks to Height of Occultism?

Mr. Knight gets carried into the air by the wall that appears below his feet.

Wow. He ended up in the kinda state you can’t really describe out loud. Rest in pieces, buddy.

Now that I’ve crossed the line once, I don’t really think anything of killing people, huh?

Kinda makes me the worst type of person, if I’m being honest.

But I’m not a person anymore, so it doesn’t really matter.

The summoner guy is shouting now.

Oh? Looks like he’s summoning something.

A bird, a turtle, a tiger, and a dragon?

Whoa. It’s probably just a coincidence, but this is a really Four Gods–esque lineup.

Though I gotta say, if that is the intention, it’s pretty far off base.

The bird’s black, for one thing, and the turtle kinda just looks like a big rock. Plus, the tiger is highlighter pink for some weird reason, and the “dragon” is just a water wyrm that looks more like a puffer fish than anything.

Talk about a bunch of knockoffs.

I guess they are kinda strong, though.

Based on stats alone, they’re stronger than the guy who summoned them, even.

The higher stats among them are over 800.

They have way less skills than the humans, though.

The bird starts using Wind Magic.

Whoa, it can use magic?

Maybe being tamed by a human means it gets a little smarter?

I don’t have the resistance skill for wind, and it probably won’t do much damage, so maybe I should let it hit me so I can pick up the resistance…

Ouchie. That hurt a little.

I guess just one hit isn’t enough to get a resistance skill, huh?

Now Wind and Water attacks are flying at me at the same time.

I don’t have Water Resistance, either, so I’ll let that hit me, too.

Oh, here comes the tiger.

Letting this guy hit me won’t give me any skills, so he’s useless to me.

I use the Terrain Spear spell I saw Araba use.

Huh? What?

I’m using Terrain Magic, but the skill I got is its lesser form, Earth Magic.

Oh, so I guess using Terrain Magic still just accumulates Earth Magic proficiency?

Hmm. The fact that re-creating magic I haven’t acquired from scratch earns proficiency is a useful discovery, but I guess the skill you get from it is the lowest magic from that system.

Well, whatever.

Being able to get a magic skill without using skill points is still a big plus.

Having the skill certainly makes construction easier, and it’ll be stronger and more precise too.

Ooh, in that case, I should copy the bird’s Wind Magic, too.

I’ve seen it a few times now, so I get the basic idea.

If I learn to use Wind Magic, I don’t need to bother with getting the resistance right now.

Which means you’ve outlived your usefulness, my feathered friend.

I knock it down with Repellent Evil Eye.

Then I test out the Wind Magic on the puffer fish.

Ooh, it worked.

If I keep using it, I can probably get the skill in no time.

So the rock turtle there is all that’s left, right?

Its defense power certainly is high, but compared with the earth dragon’s…

It has stupidly high SP, too, so I start stealing it away with Jinx Evil Eye.

Thanks for the snack, guy.

While I was busy with the four gods (LOL), the knights have started trying to escape.

I’m not letting you get away, my precious EXP.

I use mostly Earth and Wind Magic to take them down, earning proficiency while I’m at it.

At the same time, I use my Evil Eyes to reduce their numbers.

Hmm? Is the mage trying to teleport or what?

And isn’t that the advanced spell Large-Scale Teleport?

Trying to escape with the whole group, huh?

Out of range of my Evil Eyes, huh?

Guess I’ll snipe ya with magic, then, huh?

Oh, the summoner’s blocking my shots.

Well, aren’t you special?

The summoner desperately summons one monster after another to block my magic.

Then he drinks something, and his MP starts slowly recovering.

Is that an MP recovery potion, then?

I didn’t know such a handy item existed.

Boy, human beings sure play dirty.

I finished off all the knights, but these two might actually escape.

Maybe instead of wasting my time with sniping, I should take ’em out with one big shot.

I break into a run. At this distance, a quick dash is faster than teleporting.

I stop right in front of the summoner and the mage.

Activate Black Spear.

This isn’t just proficiency grinding like I was doing before.

I’m using the highest-level magic available to me right now.

First, I’ll finish off the mage with this.

Then I can take care of the summoner at my leisure.

Oh wait, the summoner’s using his own body to protect the mage.

The black spear pierces through the summoner and injures the mage, but they barely manage to escape with Teleport.

Aw, man.

They got away.

Well, no big deal.

I marked them already, so I can take care of them whenever I feel like it.

Plus, aside from the two who escaped with Teleport, it looks like four people managed to escape on foot.

If they’re running away, that must mean they’re heading for the exit.

If I let these guys go, they’ll head straight to the labyrinth’s exit, won’t they?

Well then, I’ll just let them lead me right to freedom.

It’ll probably take a few days to get there, but it’s still faster than just wandering around at random on my own.

It’s been a long time coming, but now I know where the exit of the labyrinth is.

Which means I can finally get out.

Though honestly, after this little encounter, I think it might be impossible for me to have peaceful contact with humans after all.

Still, this time was only because these guys rubbed me the wrong way. It’s not like I’m gonna go around killing people indiscriminately.

Even if they do give me lots of delicious EXP.

If they don’t start anything with me, I won’t do anything to them.

If you attack me, I’ll attack back, but if you treat me with respect, I’ll do the same for you.

I don’t know how likely I am to get any respect from humans, but let’s not worry about that.

Either way, nothing’s gonna happen if I don’t at least try going outside.

But before I go out, there’s something I have to do.

Now that I’ve leveled up a bunch, it’s the perfect time to take on the challenge.

To challenge my trauma, earth dragon Araba.