Well then, I'll reluctantly admit that I've been reincarnated as a spider.
I've admitted it, but what do I do now?
Chomp chomp!
That's an unsettling sound.
Yeah.
I can't afford to look away from reality.
In front of me is what appears to be a horde of spiders — my brothers and sisters, presumably.
If anyone's making that noise, it's gotta be them.
I slowly shift my gaze back to the front.
Chomp chomp!
Gyaaaaah?!
What the hell are these guys staring at!?
Wait — they're eating?!
Cannibalism!?
What my eyes beheld was a survival-of-the-fittest bloodbath between my own siblings — blood washing in blood.
No no no no no!
This is bad, this is bad!
Why do brothers and sisters who share the same blood have to fight each other?!
Oh, right — food.
They're hungry.
I'm actually pretty hungry too.
Huh!?
No no no.
I was escaping from reality again.
If I stay on this battlefield, an innocent little girl like me will fall prey to those men's Poison Fang in the blink of an eye!
And I mean that literally, not metaphorically!
Fight Run ← Tools Times like these call for the thirty-sixth stratagem — run away.
Fight?
No way, no way.
I'm the quintessential "go straight home after school" type.
There's no way I can fight those violent creeps.
Oh wait, my current form is the same as theirs.
Yeah.
Instead of wasting time with useless thoughts, I'd better run.
THOOM!
What was that now?!
The sound and vibration came from behind.
When I turned around, there was an enormous spider there — so huge I had to crane my neck to see the top.
Oh, Mother?
Or Father?
No no no.
I was getting flustered again.
Also, holy — that thing is WAY too big!
It's gotta be several dozen times my size.
If my memory serves, there was no spider that huge on Earth, was there?
Chomp. Nom.
Oh.
The giant spider stabbed a little spider with the tip of its claw and ate it.
Like snacking on a morsel.
Mother… you too, huh…!
Thinking can wait.
Right now, the goal is to escape from here alive!
I sprinted with everything I had.
By the time I was so exhausted I couldn't move another inch, I finally stopped to catch my breath.
Looking back, none of the spider army were chasing me.
Aaah, I thought I was gonna die.
Dying right after being born is no joke.
Okay, I've calmed down a bit — time to think things through.
Right now, I am a spider.
I can no longer deny that.
I mean, obviously humans don't have the leg strength to casually leap over their own height, or the technique to sprint vertically up walls.
What am I talking about?
My escape, obviously.
In a place swarming with spiders like that, there's no way you can get away by just running in a straight line.
It's like trying to push your way through a crowd of bargain-hunting grandmothers at a clearance sale.
What recklessness!
Well, I've never actually charged into a clearance sale before…
Anyway, when I fled, I pulled off ninja-level jumps and wall-runs to break out of that spider encirclement.
While running, it felt a little odd having so many legs, but they didn't get tangled up and I was able to move them all properly.
Instinct from birth, I guess?
Yeah, well, being able to move all five limbs — or however many — freely and without issue is a good thing.
Now then, if I'm a spider, what was that mega-giant spider I just saw?
Hmm.
Thinking about the circumstances, it really might have been my mother or father.
I don't know much about spider biology, but I'm pretty sure there are parents in nature that eat their own young.
Those guys started cannibalizing from the moment they were born, so a parent eating a child doesn't seem that out of place.
If that giant spider really is my parent, does that mean I'll eventually grow to that size?
Just thinking about it gives me the creeps.
Well, spiders are beneficial insects — they help people out, so in that sense, I'm arguably doing better than my previous life, right?
Hey, why am I getting sad all of a sudden…
Aaah, focus, focus.
Let me get my train of thought back on track.
That giant spider — compared to my body, the size difference is absurd.
I don't know exactly how big I am, so I can't figure out the precise dimensions.
If I'm fingertip-sized — a truly tiny little spider — then that giant spider's size is actually somewhat reasonable.
Even so, it'd be tarantula-class.
But if I'm bigger than that, then the giant spider is a species at least undiscovered on Earth.
An undiscovered new species — okay, that's fine, but after an experience as fantastical as Reincarnation, it's probably not wise to be optimistic.
To check, I need to figure out my own size first.
Is there anything around here I can use for a size comparison?
I look around.
It seems like I'm inside a large cavern.
There's no light, but my vision is decent enough in the gloom.
I peer about here and there.
Oh — wh-what is this!
On the ground — human footprints!
Wow!
Clear footprints from multiple people!
That means people have been here.
More importantly, it means people are alive and well.
I'm moved by the fact that humans exist.
But on the other hand, I've just realized something pretty — no, EXTREMELY — alarming.
My body is far larger than those human footprints.
Yeah.
If those footprint-holders are around 170 centimeters tall, then my body length is roughly… one meter, I think…
Oh. Yeah.
I had a feeling about this from the moment I saw that giant spider.
There's no way I'm a spider that lives on Earth.
Which means this isn't Earth — it's Another world. And as for me?
Well, no matter how generously you look at it, I am, without question, a monster!