MIDDLE STRATUM PLAY-THROUGH, START!
I’m here in the Middle Stratum! Yay!
Today I’m gonna start exploring it! Yay!
I haven’t perfected my long-range attack or my anti-heat measures yet, but here I go anyway! Yay!
Ugh… No way can I do this unless I hype myself up about it somehow.
It’s been several days since I first discovered the Middle Stratum.
In the meantime, I’ve been training my skills, and I’ve gotten pretty strong.
This is what my status looks like now.
<Small poison taratect
LV 5
Nameless
Status:
HP: 57/83 (green)
MP: 181/181 (blue)
SP: 51/82 (yellow) 2UP
: 82/82 (red) 2UP
Average Offensive Ability: 92
Average Defensive Ability: 92
Average Magical Ability: 135
Average Resistance Ability: 168
Average Speed Ability: 830 1UP
Skills:
[HP Auto-Recovery LV 5]
[MP Recovery Speed LV 3]
[MP Lessened Consumption LV 2]
[SP Recovery Speed LV 2]
[SP Lessened Consumption LV 3 1UP]
[Destruction Enhancement LV 1]
[Cutting Enhancement LV 1]
[Poison Enhancement LV 1]
[Mental Warfare LV 1]
[Energy Conferment LV 2]
[Deadly Poison Attack LV 3]
[Poison Synthesis LV 7]
[Threadsmanship LV 3]
[Spider Thread LV 9]
[Cutting Thread LV 6]
[Thread Control LV 8]
[Throw LV 6]
[Hit LV 7]
[Evasion LV 3]
[Spatial Maneuvering LV 3]
[Stealth LV 7]
[Concentration LV 9]
[Prediction LV 8]
[Parallel Thinking LV 4]
[Arithmetic Processing LV 6]
[Appraisal LV 8]
[Detection LV 6]
[Heretic Magic LV 3]
[Shadow Magic LV 2]
[Poison Magic LV 2]
[Abyss Magic LV 10]
[Destruction Resistance LV 1]
[Impact Resistance LV 2]
[Cutting Resistance LV 3]
[Fire Resistance LV 1]
[Dark Resistance LV 1]
[Deadly Poison Resistance LV 2]
[Paralysis Resistance LV 3]
[Petrification Resistance LV 3]
[Acid Resistance LV 4]
[Rot Resistance LV 3]
[Faint Resistance LV 2]
[Fear Resistance LV 7 1UP]
[Heresy Resistance LV 3]
[Pain Nullification]
[Pain Mitigation LV 7]
[Vision Enhancement LV 8]
[Night Vision LV 10]
[Vision Expansion LV 2]
[Auditory Enhancement LV 8]
[Olfactory Enhancement LV 7]
[Taste Enhancement LV 4]
[Tactile Enhancement LV 6]
[Life LV 7]
[Magic Mass LV 8]
[Instantaneous LV 8 1UP]
[Persistent LV 8 1UP]
[Herculean Strength LV 3]
[Sturdy LV 3]
[Protection LV 3]
[Skanda LV 3]
[Pride]
[Overeating LV 7]
[Hades]
[Taboo LV 4]
[n% I = W]
Skill Points: 180
>
Man, I really have gotten pretty strong.
I’ve got quite a few new skills, too.
Since my beloved Appraisal has started displaying a list of skills I haven’t acquired yet, I’ve been setting my sights on anything that seems decent, then doing things related to that skill to earn proficiency and acquire it naturally.
So now my repertoire has increased considerably, including some additions I’ve had my eye on for a long time.
Though this is all probably thanks to the huge effect of Pride.
I collected all the MP- and SP-related skills.
Namely, Recovery Speed and Lessened Consumption.
Recovery Speed, of course, quickens natural recovery, and Lessened Consumption reduces the amount used.
SP Lessened Consumption seems to work on both red and yellow stamina, too.
Specifically, my red total stamina has gotten harder to reduce, and my yellow stamina decreases less when I’m running.
I also randomly got a new skill called Spatial Maneuvering.
I think because I built a home near the ceiling, I got the skill climbing up and down the wall.
As a result, I can jump around and stuff now.
I don’t need that, though. I was already able to do those things…
I guess I’ll explain the rest of the skills as they come.
Anyway, the little UP markers seem to indicate skills that have changed since the last time I looked at my Appraisal results.
This time, SP Lessened Consumption, Fear Resistance, Instantaneous, and Persistent all improved.
Instantaneous and Persistent are the SP version of Strength and that type of skill, with the former working on yellow SP and the latter on red SP.
Looks like my speed and SP stats rose, too.
In the past few days, I’ve figured out that, like skills, stats can actually increase outside of leveling up if I focus on training them.
This discovery came to me when I was running around to increase my Skanda skill and saw that my speed stat had also gotten better.
Why didn’t my stats make any progress before when I was being chased around by monsters and stuff? I probably didn’t run enough, or my growth rate has increased because of Pride.
It’s too hard to tell which is responsible, but one thing I can say for sure is that Pride is definitely working.
Since I constantly have Appraisal active, the display of an UP symbol must mean that the skill or stat in question increased very recently.
The UP display automatically disappears a little while after I’ve seen it, which means the skills and stats that rose this time must be due to whatever decisive action I just took.
Heh-heh-heh. It’s pretty amazing how much my skills and stats grew in one go, right?
Well, yeah.
That’s ’cause I was running at top speed. For my life.
<Earth dragon Kagna
LV 26
Status:
HP: 4,198/4,198 (green)
MP: 3,339/3,654 (blue)
SP: 2,798/2,798 (yellow)
: 2,995/3,112 (red)
Status Appraisal Failed
>
It’s a dragon.
Compared with the one I saw before, earth dragon Araba, this one comes off as a bit short and stout. And apparently, it’s more powerful to match.
Its wings are different from Araba’s.
The guy totally appeared out of nowhere.
Just as I was getting ready to go hunting like usual, my home was suddenly blown away behind me.
The aftershock alone was enough to send me tumbling, and then I caught sight of the earth dragon on the edge of my vision.
After that, I ran away at top speed, fleeing into the Middle Stratum, which is the real reason I’m here now.
Ha-ha-ha. Yeah, I desperately ran for my life, all right.
But at least that desperation was enough to raise my skills and stats!
Anyway, damn, what is it with dragons and destroying my spiderwebs on sight?
That’s so scary.
Was the Lower Stratum actually an earth dragon den all along and I just never noticed?
That’s even scarier.
No, no, no. There’s no way there can be that many of those awful things just hanging around.
Now I’m remembering the glimpse I got of the beast’s status Appraisal.
It was all four-digit numbers. That’s just ridiculous. There’s no way I can beat that.
On top of that, even after it used a powerful attack that destroyed my entire home, its MP and SP were barely even diminished.
In other words, it could attack like that endlessly if it wanted to.
I can’t deal with that. What a horrifying monster. Earth dragons are scary.
Still, though, that one was different from the earth dragon Araba that I saw before.
While this one’s level was lower, I wasn’t able to Appraise Araba, so I don’t know which is stronger.
But regardless, it’s not like I’d stand a chance against either of them, so I guess it doesn’t matter.
I wonder if there’s some kind of connection between them, since they’re both called earth dragons?
Maybe they started out as the same species and evolved apart or something?
Ooh, that could be it.
Dragons are like the definition of a superior race, so it wouldn’t be surprising if they had a wide variety of evolutionary options.
Otherwise, maybe each earth dragon is its own unique species? That could be it, too.
Like, there are only a few because of how elite they are, but each individual is hyper-strong? That kind of thing.
I mean, “hyper-strong” doesn’t even begin to cover it.
If that’s the case, then it’s likely my odds of running into more are pretty low, at least…
No, wait a second.
That would mean that I’ve now been attacked twice by creatures I should have an extremely low chance of ever meeting.
Does that mean I just have ridiculously bad luck?
Th…th-th-th-that can’t be it, r-r-r-right…?
I’ve had plenty of near-death encounters before, but I always survive in the end, so that means I’m lucky, probably.
Hold on a second. Wouldn’t someone lucky avoid flirting with death so many times in the first place?
Hmm?
…Forget it. I shouldn’t think about this anymore.
Really, I escaped by the skin of my fangs that time. It’s a good thing I’d already been about to leave.
I haven’t quite shaken this streak of bad luck yet.
Yeah, let’s go with that.
Please, someone tell me I’m right.
<Proficiency has reached the required level. Skill [Prediction LV 8] has become [Prediction LV 9].>
Hey, nobody asked you!!
What’s with the too-perfect timing?!
Were you waiting for your chance to jump on me like that?!
You think you’re some kind of comedian, do you, Divine Voice (temp.)?!
Whew. Okay, I got a little worked up over nothing there.
Yeah. I’m just gonna ignore the absurdly ominous beginning and start slowly working my way through the Middle Stratum.
I definitely want to put as much distance between me and that earth dragon as possible.
Anyway, let’s check in on the current situation.
I’m surrounded on either side by boiling hot magma. The ratio of land to magma is more or less the same.
Still, I kinda just charged ahead in a panic. I wonder if I’m going the right way?
Well, I have no way of knowing, so I may as well just carry on like this.
So thanks to the aftershock from the earth dragon’s attack and the fact that I kept running far past my limits, my HP’s been reduced a bit.
Not by very much, but because the heat around here’s constantly causing enough damage to cancel out my HP recovery, I don’t think I can expect to rebound anytime soon.
I was able to acquire Fire Resistance by traveling back and forth between the Middle and Lower Stratum, at least, but it’s still only level 1.
As of now, with Fire Resistance at level 1 and HP Auto-Recovery at level 5, I can break even with the heat’s drain on my HP.
Which is great, but it also means that if I incur any additional injuries, it’ll be hard to patch myself up.
My only options are either making a full recovery by leveling up or raising one of these skill levels so my healing outpaces the rate of damage I receive from environmental hazards.
But since the magma is so close by now, there’s also the dreaded possibility that the heat damage may get a leg up, instead.
I’d like to avoid such hot places if possible, but what can I do?
Judging by the stratums I’ve visited so far, it’s probably best to assume the Middle Stratum is also pretty massive.
This is the biggest labyrinth in the world, after all.
It connects two continents and everything, so it could easily take days to traverse the Middle Stratum.
I’ve got a long ways ahead of me, but I was forced to start this journey in quite a rush. Not a good sign.
Oh well, guess I better keep going.
Whew. Sure is hot, though.
Ever since I was reborn as a spider, I’ve lived in a pretty comfortable temperature. It was never too hot or too cold, y’know?
Having the environment suddenly change on me like this is a huge downer.
It’s not so bad that I can’t bear it, since I practiced coming here to get the Fire Resistance skill and all, but still…
I can barely even stand the thought that the entire Middle Stratum is probably gonna be like this. Ugh.
Especially for my poor feet.
I mean, magma’s flowing right there!
Of course the ground’s blazing hot.
Asphalt heated by the summer sun doesn’t even compare.
Forget frying an egg on the ground. In this place, it’d burn right up.
And I’m walking barefoot out here!
It’s so hot, it’s actually quite painful.
I wouldn’t be able to do this without Pain Mitigation and HP Auto-Recovery.
Oh, hey, a monster.
<Elroe gunerush
LV 5
Status:
HP: 159/159 (green)
MP: 145/148 (blue)
SP: 145/145 (yellow)
: 116/145 (red)
Average Offensive Ability: 83
Average Defensive Ability: 81
Average Magical Ability: 79
Average Resistance Ability: 77
Average Speed Ability: 88
Status Appraisal Failed
>
Heh-heh-heh. Now that Appraisal’s leveled up more, I can even see the enemy’s attack power and stuff!
Ahhh, this rules!
Although, the success rate still isn’t very high…
That’s the same kind of monster I saw when I first arrived in the Middle Stratum.
The sea-horse-looking thing.
Just like the one I spotted on the first day, my quarry is swimming in magma. Unreal.
It doesn’t seem to have noticed me yet, so I’m kinda tempted to just ignore it, but I have to pass right by it.
What should I do? Hmm…
Oh. While I was busy worrying about it, I guess it noticed me.
Like last time, a fireball launches from the magma.
Yaaah! I dodged it.
Hmph. That isn’t fast enough to hit me.
There was a time when I couldn’t even dodge those frogs’ spit attacks, but I’m way stronger now—my speed’s gotten much higher, and I have the Evasion skill and everything.
Now I have godlike agility that would be the envy of any game character!
Even if a single hit would reduce me to cinders with my paper-thin defense, that doesn’t matter if I never get hit!
Still, though…
Neither of us has the upper hand at this rate.
I mean, those fireballs aren’t gonna hit me.
But since I can’t use my threads here, I have no way of attacking him.
It’s a stalemate.
Oh, wait. The other guy’s about to run out of MP. Those fireballs apparently use a lot of it.
So once its MP is exhausted, it won’t be able to shoot any more fireballs.
Appraisal really is like cheating. I mean, I know all my opponent’s info while we’re fighting.
All right, avoided the last fireball. With that, he’s out of MP.
The sea horse’s next move will change the course of this battle, but how?
Oh, it crawled out of the magma.
And it’s charging me.
What an idiot. If I ran out of MP, I’d be making a strategic retreat right away.
From my point of view, the rush is suuuper slow, so I slip by it easily.
Then I attach myself to the sea horse’s back, piercing it with a poisoned claw.
Now that I mention it, this thing’s body is crazy hot! My HP’s even gone down a little! My precious HP!
Well at any rate, the deadly poison killed the sea horse in no time flat.
Phew. I managed to win my first match.
Fireballs streak past me, tracing arcs through the air.
Two at once. But even then, dodging them is simple.
Glancing ahead, I see two sea horses.
Apparently, this place is just crawling with them.
They don’t flock together—they just wander around individually doing as they please. Still, once in a while, they happen to end up close to one another and attack me simultaneously.
Well, as long as they’re not gonna swarm me like those monkeys, it’s no problem.
I evade another pair of flying fireballs.
They don’t cooperate very well, probably because they’re normally pretty solitary. It’s like they’re launching fireballs at random.
If they weren’t, this might actually be a hard fight.
All I have to do is avoid getting hit, but on the flipside, if I do get tagged…
I’m vulnerable to fire, so if one of those attacks lands, I doubt I’ll get off with minor scrapes and bruises.
On top of that, shuffling around the missiles is simple on its own, but I’m doing it in the middle of a magma field.
If I accidentally fall in, I’m sure my body wouldn’t even catch fire. It’d just melt.
So even as I avoid the fireballs, I have to keep a close eye on the ground beneath my feet.
It feels like I’m down to my last heart in a bullet hell game.
Except this is my real life on the line.
It really sucks that I don’t have a way to fight back right now.
As soon as I produce thread, it just burns up and disappears, especially now that I’m so close to the magma.
So while they can attack me as much as they like, all I can do is dodge. Like a fish in a barrel.
But that’s just until they run out of MP.
Once that happens, the sea horses climb ashore.
That’s right. They opt to abandon their advantageous position and put themselves on my level voluntarily.
What gentlemen. What idiots. What meatheads.
Even now, the first sea horse has run out of MP and is ambling toward me.
I quickly pack a claw with poison and finish it off.
It helps that I gained the new skills Destruction Enhancement and Cutting Enhancement in my earlier quest for knowledge.
Destruction Enhancement, as the name implies, increases my destructive power. The meaning is a bit vague, but I’m assuming it’s a skill that generally increases my attack power.
Cutting Enhancement is the same sort of thing, just limited to slashing attacks.
The second sea horse crawls out of the magma with perfect timing, so I finish it off the same way.
<Experience has reached the required level. Individual small poison taratect has increased from LV 5 to LV 6.>
<All basic attributes have increased.>
<Skill proficiency level-up bonus acquired.>
<Proficiency has reached the required level. Skill [Poison Enhancement LV 2] has become [Poison Enhancement LV 3].>
<Proficiency has reached the required level. Skill [Evasion LV 3] has become [Evasion LV 4].>
<Skill points acquired.>
Ooh! I leveled up!
I’m extra-grateful for this, since my HP has gotten a bit low. After I finish molting, my HP is fully recovered.
I can beat those sea horses pretty easily, but if I make contact with their bodies, I take damage.
It’s not a big deal with one or two, but after I fight a bunch of them, it starts adding up dangerously.
Since leveling up is my only way of healing right now, I’d rather not incur any other injuries, no matter how small.
By the way, they cool down after a little while, so I wait for that to happen before eating them.
It’d be great if my Fire Resistance or HP Auto-Recovery advanced with that last level-up, but of course, the world’s not so kind.
Fire Resistance is still level 1, and HP Auto-Recovery hasn’t improved, either.
Well, it’s no surprise that Fire Resistance isn’t making any progress. It seems like my species is naturally vulnerable to fire, so there’s no chance I overcome that in a single day.
And HP Auto-Recovery is such a handy skill, it naturally takes a long time to grow.
I mean, automatic recovery is an ability you wouldn’t normally have until near the end of a game anyway.
I’m lucky I was able to get it without spending any skill points. It’s probably too much to ask for it to level up quickly, too.
I have to remember that just having it at all is a godsend.
In fact, without HP Auto-Recovery, I couldn’t have even considered a trip through the Middle Stratum.
I mean, how could I?
Entering an area where you constantly take damage without an auto-recovery skill would be a suicide mission.
I’m not interested in committing suicide, so without HP Auto-Recovery, I’d probably still be puttering around in the Lower Stratum looking for another shaft to climb up.
In the Lower Stratum with those dragons? No waaay. I’d be dead in no time.
I’m actually making fairly smooth progress in clearing the Middle Stratum.
I’ve run into a few other kinds of monsters besides those sea horses, but none of them were a big deal.
If I wasn’t at a disadvantage in this terrain, I could beat all of them easily.
However, the handicap I have here is pretty inconvenient.
First of all, the magma. What a pain.
If I’m facing a monster that’s immersed in the magma, all I can do is throw rocks.
Since I have the Throw skill and all, I thought I’d try imitating those monkeys, but it doesn’t do much damage at all.
Ultimately, unless the enemy comes ashore, I basically can’t do a thing.
It’d be fine if every monster acted like the sea horses and made landfall as soon as they ran out of MP, but some simply stay in the magma or run away.
The worst are the ones that start out on land but duck into the magma when I have them where I want them.
And not being able to use my silk is rather stressful.
This is right after I got the Threadsmanship skill, too, which increases the power of any thread-related moves…
I can at least pick up rocks and toss them with my silk, but if it’s out for too long, it catches fire even on relatively safe ground.
The real problem’s the thread that I often produce unconsciously.
Whenever I move, I automatically spin silk, but in the Middle Stratum, it ignites.
The lit thread acts like a fuse, until even my backside starts getting hot.
It definitely freaked me out the first time. There was literally a fire lit under my butt.
My HP went down quite a few points from that, and using Poison Synthesis to put it out lowered my HP even more.
I mean, that was the only thing I could think of to put out a fire.
In the end, my only choice is to keep severing the thread as I produce it.
I have to do something, or it’ll turn into a real pain in the ass. Literally.
Bedding is a problem, too.
If I try to build a web here, it’ll undoubtedly go up in flames and take me with it.
So I decide to make do and sleep in the shadows of some rocks.
Not that I can really sleep anyway.
Not in this hellscape, where I’m always passively taking damage and have to stay on the alert for monsters.
I may be bold, but even I have my limits.
Even so, I still have to sleep.
I’m not sleeping very often, as you might imagine, but I’ve been trying to rest whenever I find an appropriate hiding place.
But even though this area is worse than the Lower Stratum in a lot of ways, the one silver lining is that the monsters are much weaker.
In terms of threat, they’re not far removed from those found in the Upper Stratum.
There are probably some relatively strong monsters here, like the snakes that live in the regions above, but so far, all the creatures I’ve encountered have been no big deal.
The largest difference between the threats here and in the Upper Stratum is the way they use their environment.
That’s what makes these normally weak monsters dangerous.
Since I don’t have much in the way of recovery options, just getting grazed by an attack could put me in serious trouble.
Besides, they’ve all been rather manageable so far because they’re so puny, but it’s still possible that there could be some Lower Stratum–class big game here, too.
The terrain alone is a challenge for me, so if that sort of opponent appears…
Well, I just have to hope there aren’t any.
Man, if only I could use magic, it’d turn this whole thing around.
But to use magic, I have to quell Detection, which might be an even more formidable enemy than this god-awful terrain.
In any event, I’m not likely to solve either problem anytime soon.
Aaargh, I really wanna use magic!
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