Sneaking along.
I watched other Monsters brawling in the distance, and since getting caught up in that mess would be a death sentence, I scurried away at full speed.
Man, the Lower Layer is no joke.
I used to think the Mantis was terrifying, but out here it's barely mid-tier.
A Giant Spider that devoured a Mantis, a winged lion, a massive serpent that looks like some kind of Evolution of a snake — this place is an absolute treasure trove of ridiculous Monsters.
It's insane.
I've been creeping along, staying hidden so none of those things spot me, and so far I've managed to slip through undetected.
Of course, if I do get spotted, I'm done for.
So I pushed on without sleeping, but after all that nonstop moving, my red stamina bar — the total gauge that hadn't budged at all until now — finally started to drop.
I still don't know why it stopped regenerating in the first place, but either way, a countdown timer had finally appeared.
That number — 38. I had to eat before it hit zero.
Problem was, there wasn't a single target I thought I could take down, so I decided to just call it a night.
I'll be honest.
I barely slept at all.
Well, duh.
Every time I'd slept before, I'd built a makeshift shelter and bedded down inside for safety. But sleeping out here in this Monster house, a flimsy little shelter wouldn't cut it.
I'd need to build something substantial — a proper den. But if I did that, I'd stand out, and the last thing I wanted was to stand out.
What I'm getting at is: I'm terrified of the Earth Dragon.
Build a proper den, and one might come chasing after me, right?
What, paranoid? You think?
I don't care. I'm scared of the Earth Dragon. Legitimately, deathly scared.
Nope, nope, nope.
So for the first time in my life, I slept without building a shelter.
I was a nervous wreck.
I had no idea sleeping outside a shelter could feel this terrifying until I actually tried it.
I'd doze off, jolt awake at the slightest sound, doze off again.
Zero quality sleep the entire night.
Next time, maybe I should at least throw together something minimal — just for peace of mind.
I can still tolerate it, but if the sleep deprivation keeps up, I feel like I'm going to snap eventually.
Then again, in my previous life I averaged about four hours of sleep a night, so it should be manageable.
Anyway, that was my sleeping situation. The real problem was food.
I needed to find something to eat in this Monster house.
I was fired up and ready to hunt, but it turned out food was actually surprisingly obtainable.
Because there are certain food sources that are fairly easy to get my hands on.
I'd been puzzled by it, actually.
The Monsters here are absurdly strong.
But mixed in among those overpowered creatures, there are also relatively weak ones — the same kind you'd see in the Upper Layer.
Snakes are one such species.
I never thought I'd live to call a snake "weak."
So anyway, I got curious about what those weaker Monsters were eating.
Because if you're weak, all you can do is get eaten. You're not doing any eating yourself.
That's just how a dog-eat-dog world works.
And up until now, that was exactly the rule of this Dungeon.
Yet here these little guys are, scurrying about everywhere.
The Bees had been targeting these weaker Monsters as their main prey, apparently.
After observing them closely, I noticed something they all had in common.
They were all poisonous.
And *that* was the real eye-opener.
I'd been born with Poison Resistance, so I never worried about that kind of thing and just ate whatever. But normally, nobody eats poisonous creatures.
These guys are weak, but they're venomous — so nothing without Poison Resistance would willingly go after them for food.
Which meant that even if I got spotted, I might get ignored for the same reason.
That said, I'd still rather not be found, so I kept sneaking around as before.
Now, as for what those weaker Monsters actually ate — I figured out they relied on two main food sources.
The first was other weak Monsters.
That was the big one.
The weak gang prey on each other.
I didn't have any strong Monsters nearby either, so I figured I might try my luck with an ambush if the opportunity arose.
The second source — and this was truly the last resort food that weaker Monsters were forced to fall back on when nothing else was available— 『Elrogaleishu LV3 — Failed to Appraise Status』
It was a flat, black bug.
More like a bug in concept, but in practice it looked a lot like a snail.
They clung to the walls of the labyrinth, inching along at a leisurely pace.
They looked incredibly snail-like.
I'll call them Snail-Bugs.
Those Snail-Bugs were *everywhere* in the Lower Layer.
Look at any wall, and you'd spot at least one in your field of view.
That's how many there were.
With this many lying around, why doesn't anyone eat them? I'd wondered that, having never tried one myself. Naïve. Completely naïve.
I should have braced myself properly before confronting one.
It's a regret I can never fully atonement for.
I should have realized: eating one of these is truly a last resort — and I only figured that out *after* swallowing one.
Yes. I ate one.
I *actually* ate one.
I'd spotted it on the wall, dragged it down with a silk thread, and dispatched it with a casual bite from my Poison Fang — and because of how easily I'd killed it, I had no idea what I was in for.
"I'll dig in," I'd chirped. I'd like to go back and smack my past self for that.
It was *unbelievably* awful.
I mean, that was not of this world.
Since being reborn as a spider, I've eaten all manner of revolting things, but *that* — no.
It was so foul that my HP actually decreased.
There is absolutely no way that counts as food.
Somehow, my Corrosion Resistance even went up, which should tell you everything about how far outside normal that experience was.
If it hadn't been for my ironclad "never leave food unfinished" creed, I would never have forced myself to eat the whole thing.
So anyway — food can be obtained quickly if you're willing.
The catch is the excruciating pain that comes with it.
But if I had to choose between starving to death and eating something so disgusting it nearly kills me, I'd pick the latter every time.
If it truly comes down to it, I'll eat another Snail-Bug.
…I just really, really hope it doesn't come to that.