When I'd slain yet another straggler, that voice rang out in my head.
《Experience Points have reached a required threshold. Small Taratekt has leveled up from LV2 to LV3》 《All base stats have increased》 《Skill Proficiency Level-Up Bonus acquired》 《Proficiency has reached a required threshold. Skill 'Strength LV1' has become 'Strength LV2'》 《Proficiency has reached a required threshold. Skill 'Durability LV1' has become 'Durability LV2'》 《Proficiency has reached a required threshold. Skill 'Overeating LV1' has become 'Overeating LV2'》 《Skill Points have been awarded》 The moment I'd been waiting for had finally arrived — a level-up.
Skin sloughed off my body with a rustling sound.
I could feel the gaping hole in my back filling in, one that defied description.
《Proficiency has reached a required threshold. Skill 'HP Auto-Regen LV1' has been acquired》 Huh?
Seriously?
Oh wow.
This was completely unexpected.
Wait, does the full recovery from leveling up count as Auto-Regen?
I mean, I'm thrilled, but if I'm being greedy, I kind of wished I'd gotten it sooner…
Then I wouldn't have had to suffer so much up to now.
No, no — that's being far too demanding.
Right now, I should just be happy that I've leveled up and my worries are over.
It really was getting dicey.
My HP had actually started dropping.
When it went from 6 to 5, I felt like I was going to die for real.
After that, it kept slowly ticking down, and by just before the level-up, it had fallen all the way to 3.
That was way too close for comfort.
All that effort of suppressing my panic and focusing on hunting stragglers had paid off.
The straggler hunts had gone smoothly.
Unlike what I'd initially expected, the Spider Morningstar's ranged attacks were hitting every single time.
That was a pleasant surprise.
Could this be some kind of spider body thing?
And whether it was related to that or not, I also picked up the skills 'Throwing' and 'Accuracy' both at Level 1.
Both of them should be useful for boosting my effectiveness.
On top of that, three skills had leveled up from this level-up.
I still have no idea what most of them actually do, but if they've been leveling up, that means I've been earning proficiency for them somehow — and I've possibly been benefiting from their effects without even realizing it.
There's no downside to leveling up, and it should be nothing but good.
Overeating is the only one that makes me a little nervous, though…
Spider Silk and Thread Manipulation, which I'd been using constantly for making my nest and hunting stragglers, had also gone up in level.
Spider Silk was at Level 8, and Thread Manipulation at Level 5.
Thread Manipulation had been far more useful than I'd expected.
At Level 5, the speed and precision I could achieve with it had improved considerably.
Choosing this skill had been absolutely the right call.
Pain Reduction had also climbed to Level 5.
Thanks to that, things had been considerably easier from a certain point onward.
The great thing about this skill wasn't just that it eliminated the sensation of pain — it was that even without feeling pain, I could still properly recognize when I was in a dangerous state.
Pain is a signal that warns of danger, and it serves a real purpose.
Losing that signal would normally mean losing the ability to sense danger. But with this skill, I didn't feel the pain, yet I could still perceive how deep a wound was and how dangerous it was.
It's hard to put into words since it's a matter of sensation, but rather than pain, I could sense something like urgency emanating from a wound — some different kind of awareness that let me know.
So there was no downside to the absence of pain.
Well, it was only Level 5, so the pain wasn't completely gone yet.
Now then, since I'd finally leveled up, let me see how much my stats had changed.
『Small Taratect LV3 Name: None Status HP: 38/38 (Green) MP: 38/38 (Blue) SP: 38/38 (Yellow) : 38/38 (Red) Average Attack: 21 Average Defense: 21 Average Magic: 19 Average Resistance: 19 Average Speed: 369』
Interesting, interesting.
HP, MP, and SP had each gone up by 2, attack and defense both up by 2, and magic and resistance up by 1 each.
But then there was Speed. What even are you?
It was 348 before, so it went up by 21?!
Is that not ridiculous?
The modest increases in all my other stats make the gap absurdly disproportionate, don't they?
How does a single level-up give me exactly 1 point of attack and defense per level?
And magic and resistance get lapped by one level's worth of speed gains…
No way.
Well, I'll just have to overlook this terrible stat imbalance.
It is what it is at this point.
Thanks to my long-awaited level-up, I've been fully restored, and now I can go all-out toward my escape.
Having been injured definitely slowed down my work, and it forced me to act cautiously.
From here on, I'd casually hunt stragglers to keep my stamina up while steadily extending my nest.
Right now, the nest had extended to about a quarter of the way to my target destination.
Still a long way to go.
The bees still didn't seem to be gearing up for another assault, but there was no telling how long that would last.
When I thought about it that way, I needed to keep building my nest while maintaining enough strength to withstand a bee attack.
That was easier said than done.
Building a nest that stretched upward was fundamentally different from spreading it across the ground — the higher it went, the harder construction became.
I had to extend thick support threads from the rock that served as my foundation, then bind those supports further with more thread to lock everything firmly in place.
At a quarter of the way, it was already this difficult. The higher I built from here, the exponentially harder the work would get.
But I had to do it.
There was no telling when the Earth Dragon might casually drop by again.
Before that happened, I absolutely had to escape from here.
In the worst case, I might have to abandon the nest midway and rely on my speed to make a desperate break for it.
It was a terrible hand to play, but when the alternative was certain death, there were times when you just had to take it.
To avoid that, I'd push myself to keep building the nest.