I kept digging holes.
Because of that drinking party with Gyurigyuri, I'd wasted an entire day.
When I came to after drinking myself into a stupor, the fight between the Demon King and the Earth Dragon had already ended.
After lingering around the lowest layer for a while, the Demon King had since started moving upward.
Based on the route, it looked like they might run right into the Queen candidate.
I'd already warned her about that, so hopefully she'd manage to slip away without trouble.
She should have recovered enough to use Teleportation by now, too.
So while keeping an eye on the Demon King's movements, I resumed making preserved food — something Gyurigyuri had interrupted.
Fishing in the sea.
After that incident, Gyurigyuri must have done something to warn them off, because no more Water Dragons got caught.
Well, Water Dragons still got caught in large numbers, of course.
Oh right.
Up until now, I'd only ever caught Water Dragons and small Water Dragons, but when I hauled up a big batch this time, there were some genuine sea creatures mixed in that weren't Water Dragons at all.
It turned out Water Dragons were just carnivores that aggressively went after the bait, but there were regular fish in there too, minding their own business.
The hit rate was pretty low, though.
Anyway, I took all that caught bait and smoked it using fire magic.
It was a pretty half-assed attempt at smoking, honestly — just dousing things in saltwater and smoking them over a fire.
I'd never done proper smoking before, and I didn't know the technique either.
So I just winged it to make things look roughly like smoked food.
Good enough.
Preservation mattered more than taste anyway.
And with a decent shelf life, plus the Evil Eater Title's effect, I wouldn't get sick from eating it.
If something started going bad, I'd just swap it out.
With that settled, I distributed the finished pseudo-smoked goods across my bases.
I already had more than ten bases.
There were seven I'd made by randomly digging holes in various spots.
One was under the town.
Three were inside the Great Ello Dungeon.
As for the Great Ello Dungeon, that was a case of not being able to see what was right under your own nose.
The town location was chosen deliberately for its reasons, but everything else was truly random.
I'd basically gone, "Eh, good enough," and dug a hole to serve as a base.
And now, in order to increase my base count even further, I was digging yet another hole.
However, this time there was something that caught my interest, so I wasn't just digging randomly.
Where I was now, I'd headed straight out from the Great Ello Dungeon and kept going in one direction.
I'd ventured into territory I'd never explored, with the goal of establishing new bases and expanding my operational range.
I'd been scouting for a good spot when my Detection caught something strange.
There was a hollow space underground beneath my feet.
It was quite deep, and apparently quite long as well.
Since it was all dirt, even my Detection couldn't pick up detailed information.
Curious, I was now tunneling my way toward that cavern.
But you know, Detection really is handy, isn't it?
This time I'm heading toward a cavern, but depending on how you use it, couldn't you find hot springs or something?
Oh, that's actually a great idea.
When I was purely in spider form, it never bothered me, but now that I had a human form too, I'd been struck by the urge to take a bath.
The reason? Because I smell.
My spider form doesn't give off any particular odor, but my human form does.
I figured the metabolism must work differently between the two forms.
Up until now it hadn't bothered me, but lately I'd been feeling like a nice bath would be lovely.
Who knew Smell Enhancement would come in handy for something like this?
My spider form does have its own smell, but it was different from the human form's.
A normal person's nose probably wouldn't notice anything, but someone with dog-level sense of smell might be able to tell the difference.
Well, that's assuming I even found a hot spring.
Ha — like hot springs would just be sitting around conveniently.
For now, it was a mystery cavern. Let's go.
Though I was practically there already.
The hole I'd been punching through with a thunk finally broke through, connecting into the cavern.
Inside was a circular tunnel about three meters high.
And from the ceiling where I'd emerged, countless gazes pierced into me.
Ants.
Well, I already knew that.
While digging, my Detection had told me there was something inside.
This appeared to be a nest of ant-type Monsters.
Ants roughly two meters long were all staring up at me.
According to Appraisal, these things were a species called Efegigoat.
The name reminded me of the bees in the Great Ello Dungeon.
The bees had been called Finjigoat, right?
Their Status looked similar, too.
The difference was that these ones had neither poisonous stingers nor flight.
Instead, they had a Skill called Acid Attack.
To top it off, they could apparently use earth magic as well, the little rascals.
But so what?
No matter how many there were in their home turf of a nest, the gap in our power was too vast.
If a swarm like this showed up on the surface, humans would be in a real pinch, but still.
I wiped them out in short order and secured the nest.
In the back, there were some Evolution-type individuals that looked like an elite guard, and a Queen Ant, but I tidied them all up in one go.
I snacked on a few here and there, and since I'd acquired a large haul of food, I decided to use this place as one of my bases.
I shoved the ant corpses into the spacious chamber where the Queen Ant had been, and laid eggs there.
Now the food supply here was taken care of.
No need to painstakingly build a base of my own, and I'd get food and Experience Points to boot.
Talk about killing three birds with one stone.
If I spotted another ant nest like this one, I'd make a point of raiding it.