Dungeon exploration was going smoothly.
It was going so smoothly I nearly burst out laughing.
This area must be Geji territory, because there are tons of them around.
And those Geji make for fantastic experience point fodder.
Their senses are dull or something, because they can't do a thing against my ambushes.
If I get behind them or above them, the fight is basically over.
Thanks to that, they go down easy.
After taking out a ton of Geji, I hit Level 7.
Unfortunately, I didn't get a Skill level-up from a bonus, but since I kept eating the Geji, my Paralysis Resistance climbed to Skill Level 2.
Experience points piled up with zero effort, and a useful Skill like Paralysis Resistance leveled up too.
As a hunting ground, this place was perfect.
Of course, I wasn't just slacking off the whole time.
In line with my goal of gaining real combat experience, I experimented with new ambush variations.
One of the weaknesses of my silk is that I can only shoot it from my rear end.
So whenever I spray silk at a target, I have no choice but to point my butt at them.
To do that, I'd either have to stand on my two back legs and thrust my rear forward, or completely turn around.
Both of those leave me way too wide open, so what I'd been doing was either pressing up close against the enemy before spraying, or jumping into the air for a silk bombing run from above.
But those methods were pretty risky too.
Given the nature of silk, if it lands, my victory is basically guaranteed.
The problem is the backlash when it doesn't.
Being pressed up close means if the enemy counterattacks, dodging is nearly impossible.
Being airborne means there's a risk of getting shot down — just like I once did to my siblings.
High risk, high reward? Not quite the right expression for it.
Anyway, that's why I tried to figure out a safer way to stick silk onto enemies.
And that's how the new weapon was born: the Portable Net!
It's basically just a small net that I hold with my front legs.
The advantage is that it leaves virtually no openings.
I just charge in with the net in hand, and that's that.
Compared to spraying silk from those awkward poses I used to do, this is a massive improvement.
The downside is that while the net is in standby mode, my two front legs are occupied.
But I've still got six other legs, so it's only a minor inconvenience.
The only other thing is having to prepare the net in advance.
But honestly, for someone like me who already self-proclaims as a professional web-crafter, making one is a snap.
A wonderful weapon with low risk and high reward — completed.
I tried plenty of other things too, but they all ended in failure.
As someone conducting ambushes, I wanted safeguards to avoid being ambushed in return.
So I went ahead with something I'd been thinking about for a while — developing a Detection Thread.
The idea is to disperse ultra-thin threads, invisible to the naked eye, from my rear end directly into the air, then use the information those threads pick up to detect approaching enemies.
Back when I lived in My Home, I used to spread them all over the place, but there's a big difference between actively placing threads and just letting them drift — one I hadn't expected.
If left alone, the threads would tangle with each other, get snagged on walls, and generally cause a mess.
Worse, the sheer volume of information they picked up was incredibly distracting.
But if I tried to focus hard enough to block that out, my concentration shifted entirely to the threads and I neglected my surroundings instead.
A completely counterproductive result.
At that point, I gave up on making Detection Threads practical.
Next, I tried to shore up my flimsy defenses by seeing if I could make some kind of silk armor.
Well, to cut to the chase — that didn't work either.
Making the garment itself wasn't impossible, but actually putting it on was a nightmare.
I'm a spider, you know?
I don't have dexterous hands like humans, and my body structure is complicated, so no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't manage to dress myself.
Okay, so what about simply wrapping silk around my body?
Also rejected.
Wrapping silk around myself was doable, but if I didn't wrap it just right, it could restrict my movement.
There was no way I could afford to sacrifice one of my greatest assets — my speed.
So I needed to wrap it perfectly and snugly, but for the same reasons as before, I couldn't get it to wind on in a way that satisfied me.
And even if I could put it on, it would be pointless if I couldn't take it off.
Every time I eat, my body shape changes dramatically.
If I ballooned into a perfect ball while wearing the outfit, I'd be lucky if I could still breathe.
If I had someone else's hands to help, maybe there were other approaches, but with my legs, I can't even reach my own back.
So that got scrapped too.
Hmm.
Thinking about it, the spider body really has its ups and downs.
I'm great at jumping, bouncing, and clinging to things, but the lack of hands is a real bottleneck.
I really came to appreciate just how convenient human hands are.
Incidentally, even after all this experimenting, my Spider Silk Skill level didn't go up.
As I expected, Skill levels must require more Proficiency to advance as the levels get higher.
Well, another factor is that unlike back when I was holed up in My Home, I'm trying my best not to waste silk these days.
Unlike the safety of My Home, you never know what might happen out here, so I wanted to stay at peak readiness as much as possible.
The reason I could finally do a big silk experiment this time was that I had Geji for target practice.
This round of experiments had a lot of dead ends, but I did get something out of it.
I'll keep experimenting and refining whenever I get the chance.