Side Story – A Certain Spider's Observations

Yeah, I should have known D wouldn't leave me alone for long.

She got dragged away to work by Meido-san, but she got a break after a few years. Or maybe she just ran away again.

Maou pushed some kind of button, and we all got forcibly teleported away. According to the rules of the system, teleportation was limited to only working on the user and allies, meaning this is magic from outside the system.

Gyuri-Gyuri was probably capable of it, but he wouldn't do anything as silly as making a button. Yeah, it's D's work.

To my credit: I was able to resist the forced teleportation!

For a second!

Yes, one whole second!

It doesn't sound like much when you put it that way, but the caster is THAT D. The ultimate evil god who could vaporize me with thought alone.

My years of practice paid off, I must really be a natural at Dimensional Magic.

Well, that bit of delay and altering the destination location was the limit. We were originally set to arrive outside some classroom, but I dropped us off outside, then dragged everybody into My Home for a while.

School? There's no way I'm dealing with that again… Ok, those memories aren't mine, but close enough.

Nai Wa~.

Not long after that, everybody started getting sent back, so I tagged along with the strongest-looking group, the Undead and company, plus the demonized girl they picked up.

I missed most of the backstory, but she seems to have gone along with them willingly.

A monster? Is she a monster?

Who becomes a demon by choice?

Give me back my suffering from when I woke up as a spider!

Well, whatever. Pretty much as soon as we arrived in their world, Maou pushed all the actual work on me and went off to take a vacation with Oni-kun and Kyuuketsuko.

It's okay, I wasn't expecting her to help at all.

No, really, go ahead. Enjoy your vacation.

I came here looking for worlds where I might be able to hide from D, but that plan went out the windows as soon as I got here.

This world's system, it's definitely something D made.

A prototype? A playground? It's different from our world's system, but I can already see enough similarities to guess that this was something she came up with.

I suppose it'd still be useful to dig around and look for anything useful around here, so the first target is of course Undead's home base.

Go, my spiders! Infiltrate their base and bring back their secrets!

… One of them got caught right away.

But it's fine! Why? Because she's a spider as well!

The spider maid who found my spy spider took it in as a pet, and started carrying it around.

It's like that, when you break into a building and they give you a tour? No?

Yeah, that doesn't normally happen, does it? Lucky!

Getting through after that was easy.

They're totally planning to take over the whole world, but it looks like Undead himself is just getting dragged along.

Both Undead and Demon Girl seem to be reincarnators, and originally adult men? They're handling it surprisingly well, then.

Suddenly becoming an undead monster, or a baby girl in the middle of a war? Yeah, that must suck. Ok, they had it pretty bad too.

No, Undead started out one step away from being a god, so he doesn't get off that easily.

Demon Girl, though? Sure, that's almost as bad as mine. Almost.

Rather, isn't she pretty scary, all things considered?

Starting out like that, without any sort of starting bonus or system support, and she comes out on top?

Potimas could learn a thing or two from her about plotting. Seriously scary.

The strangest thing is that unlike Undead and his minions, she's not using the system's magic at all. She's drawing some energy from it, but the magic itself is entirely her own.

Really?

She's not at the level of creating and modifying magic like I can, but aside from that, she's using sorcery just like mine. Is she trying to become a god?

She's definitely the one to watch.

Ah, they have a vampire girl of their own. Theirs seems to be stuck as a little girl and isn't growing though. Weird.

The two of them could keep up with Maou's drinking habits… May they never meet.

Why does that feel like I'm foreshadowing something?

Another god jumped into the world. Kind of just tore his way through dimensions, leaving a huge mess behind him.

He seems like the annoying type, so I'll ignore him. Yep, he's after Demon Girl, not my problem.

Or so I thought, but is she seriously trying to kill him? Wow, talk about planning big.

She's even talking Undead into helping out.

It seems interesting, so I'll sneak in and watch a little. If that crude dimension hopping is anything to go by, he won't be hard to hide from.

… Huh.

They actually did it.

Well, I'll be taking that corpse…

Stealing? I don't know what you're talking about, I found a dead god by the side of the road. Happens all the time.

The system spread a bit of energy to each of them, but most of it got left behind. It's all MA Energy that they can't use anyway, they won't miss it.

Ittadakimasu.

After that, D dragged me and Demon Girl away. She's the one who got the phone, but D seems intent on letting me listen in, so I'll go along with it.

… Oi, D. Don't go spreading my personal information so casually.

Don't gods get any kind of privacy rights?

Oh. Demon Girl got my [Wisdom].

… I'm not jealous. It's not like I'm disappointed that Wisdom-sensei is cheating on me. I didn't think that at all.

I said I didn't, so I didn't.

But still, will that work? [Wisdom] means [Detection] and [Appraisal], right? How is she going to handle those?

Ah, she passed out.

Well, yeah, of course that'd happen…

Hm… What now? Demon Girl is just sleeping.

I took a peek at her soul, and there's nothing too broken about it.

Okay, that's not entirely true. It's got a mess of other small pieces stuck to it, but the core soul is still stable.

Some kind of mental corruption? Is that something that 'Being X' did to her? Well, she got me a god's body, so I'll do her a favor and clean it up… Though she's still covered with a bundle of curses I can't begin to unravel, that sort of thing isn't my specialty.

I'll leave a spider to watch her while I go check in on Maou and the others.

Ah, she woke up. Now she's trying to force her way through [Detection]'s effects. It looks like D just integrated [Wisdom] directly into her soul instead of through this world's system, so she can't turn it off…

I'm amazed she even survived that. Those headaches were awful, but she's using magic despite that? Is she some kind of masochist?

… She actually did it. Is this the rebirth of the Magical Demon Girl?

I got around it with the system's skills, but could I have done it with brute force like that? Honestly, I don't think I could. Scary.

Well, I say that, but I can't see her ever being a real threat to me. It's not as though her attacks couldn't hurt me, but I can always just teleport away or in the worst case, discard the body and switch to a new one.

On the other hand, she's too fragile and reliant on magic barriers. No matter how strong those are, there's no point if you have eyes like mine, which can just ignore the barrier and attack the body.

It's just too bad a matchup for her to be a threat, no matter how powerful she gets.

I don't really see any reason to fight her, though. If anything, the fact that D is interested in her makes her a perfect distraction.

If Demon Girl becomes D's toy and draws her attention away from me, it'll make getting out of her sight much easier for me.

Is distracting D even possible? For all I know, she might just be able to watch any number of worlds at once, so this may all be pointless.

Well, even D couldn't interfere when Meido-san dragged her off to work last time, so I have to guess that there are limits. Even if she kept observing us after that.

It's worth trying.

She noticed the spider I left to watch her, and spoke to me through it…

Crap, what do I do now? I hadn't expected her to make contact so soon.

For now, make something up!

I teleported into their base. They have some defenses up, but those are all meant to block teleportation magic from the world's system, so bypassing it isn't hard. Potimas's barrier was much more of a pain to get around.

Yeah, Demon Girl definitely noticed me. Even though I was supposed to be invisible, she's staring right at me. No more point in hiding.

"You actually came." (Tanya)

Why do I feel like I got tricked? Even before that, she called me the "First Generation," but how did she get that just from a spider? Did D give her some other information I didn't hear, or was that just a bluff to lure me here? Ugh.

Actually, why is she still staring at me with such confusion…? I don't look that unusual, do I? With my camouflage, she shouldn't even be able to recognize me as anything except…

Wait, camouflage?

Ah. I was too busy playing around with copying their invisibility magic that I forgot to turn my camouflage magic back on. As expected of a copy of D's ideals, it's pointlessly conspicuous no matter the world.

I just kept looking at her. Hurry up and say something. Starting the conversation is too much of a hurdle for me.

"You're the first generation owner of this… gift, right? Can I take that to mean that you know how to deal with the drawbacks?" (Tanya)

As I thought, that's what she was after. I nodded.

She's still waiting for me to speak… Fine, I'll explain a bit.

"[Parallel Minds], [Thought Acceleration], [High-Speed Processing], [Heresy Nullification]."

Okay, it's more of a list than an explanation, but it'll have to do.

"Heresy Nullification?" (Tanya)

"… Mental attack nullification."

At least she understood the rest… That last one confused me as well, so I'll let that slide.

"What do you want in exchange?" (Tanya)

Ah… It comes to this after all. Recreating skills from the system isn't that hard for me.

D basically left slots for them when she put in [Wisdom]. This was probably something she was planning for since the beginning, given how easy she made it for me.

That part is fine, but… How do I explain this using as few words as possible? Should I call that spider maid here to interpret? No, that'd still mean explaining why I'm here… Okay, here goes…

"… Distract D. Be entertaining."

If she doesn't get it with that, I'll give up!

"If it's just that, I'll accept. Sounds like that self-proclaimed evil god has been playing around with you for a while now…" (Tanya)

She understands. Alright, I like her. Now go be D's toy in my place.

I nodded and got to work, putting her to sleep with magic. She'll figure the rest out herself once she wakes up.

I'll call in the favor once something comes up. I'm sure I'll be able to find some work to throw her way before long.

I wonder what she'll get up to next…

Oh. This must be why D enjoys spectating so much…

Don't tell me I'm becoming like that too…