Skill Acquisition: I Feel Like I'm Going to Die

"I feel like I'm going to die."

It had been thirty minutes since I boldly set out on the hunt. The problem gripping me now was nothing like clicking a mouse and keyboard. My strength, endurance, and agility were all stuck at 1. When the average adult male sat around 5 in those stats, it was obvious I had the physical ability of wet tissue paper. A few steps and my lungs were already burning. I really did feel like I was going to die.

"Just push a little longer."

Even so, I stubbornly kept my body moving. Dying wasn't an option. With that single-minded willpower I whipped myself forward and forced my feet to keep going.

Using the perfectly safe route I'd designed so the monsters could never detect me, I reached the hidden dungeon without incident. Soon I stood before a massive boulder in the middle of the Thorn Forest. It looked completely ordinary, but...

"This guy really picked the most ridiculous spot for a nest, didn't he?"

I pressed hard against one side of the boulder. It spun aside far too easily, revealing a secret passage leading underground. After carefully sealing the entrance behind me, I stepped inside.

A thick wave of rotting corpse stench rolled over me. Swarms of glowing insects covered every surface, bathing the dungeon in a faint blue light.

"Let's do this."

This wasn't an exaggeration. I'd run this dungeon so many times it was practically ten thousand repetitions. To teach the strategy to others, I first had to become the ultimate expert.

With practiced movements that felt like breathing, I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠pulled a chunk of fresh, blood-scented meat from my bag. The real hunt was starting.

Queen Arachne had been sleeping peacefully alongside hundreds of her spiderlings. The night before she'd been lucky enough to catch four large wolves ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and feast, so this was a very satisfied rest. That peaceful slumber didn't last long.

The constant crunching sounds irritated her enough to wake her. She realized several of her precious children had left the nest and were devouring something that had fallen to the floor. The strong smell of fresh blood told her it was recently killed prey. The moment she wondered why meat would be lying inside her nest, she felt danger and shot upright.

Her massive body rising woke every single one of the hundreds of spiderlings clustered beneath her. Kiiik!

Queen Arachne shrieked at the children currently eating the meat, ordering them to pull back. There was no such thing as a free meal. That was a truth she had learned through long years of survival. Any meal given without cost always carried something unpleasant.

Her prediction was dead on.

"Eat this instead!!"

With a sharp fwip, something flew into the middle of the spiderlings tearing at the meat. The next instant, a deafening BOOM turned her children into scattered chunks of flesh.

The acrid smell of gunpowder. It was the humans' magic explosive.

She whipped her gaze toward the far side of the nest and spotted a frail-looking human holding a crossbow. That detestable creature must have used the meat to lure her babies out and then blown them apart.

Kiiiieeeeeeek!!!

Her scream shook the walls. At the same time she charged forward. She would rip that enemy to pieces, turn him into meat, and feed him to her children. It was the smallest possible revenge for her dead offspring.

Hundreds of spiderlings swarmed after her. The human took one look and bolted. He was ridiculously slow, staggering along with a heavy bag on his back. A pathetic excuse for a human.

She couldn't understand why something so weak would dare enter her nest and slaughter her children right in front of her. Queen Arachne poured on more speed, rapidly closing the distance. She could crush him with her front legs at any moment. The human was slow. She was fast.

The moment the gap had narrowed enough, the human suddenly cut ninety degrees and sprinted along the wall. With unbelievable speed and perfect timing he ran straight up the sheer surface and vanished overhead.

Queen Arachne's eyes widened in shock.

"Wall-run success on the first try! Come on, come and get me!"

The human stood on a cliff too high for her to reach and shouted down. Queen Arachne roared with pure fury. The wall's surface was far too slippery for even her and her children's sticky feet to cling to. If they couldn't do it, how had that human climbed it? He seemed to have used the tiny concave handholds with ridiculous precision. That wasn't something you could do after practicing for just a day or two.

After raging beneath the cliff for a while, she changed tactics. There was another way up. If they followed the sloped path of the ninety-degree bend in the cave, there was a section where the cliff grew low enough to climb. They could reach the human from there.

She let out a monstrous screech and began racing up the cave path. She took the lead, her children pouring after her in a writhing wave. But the human looked strangely relaxed.

"That's right. That's right. You have to come get me, don't you? That's right?"

He pulled out a second crossbow from his bag and leisurely loaded a bolt tipped with magic explosive. Did he actually believe one shot could wipe out both her and all her children?

Queen Arachne snorted and accelerated. The higher they climbed the slippery slope, the lower the cliff the human had scaled became. Just a little farther and she could send her children up to swarm him.

The human slowly followed along the cliff line.

"Not yet. Not yet."

He muttered quietly while holding the crossbow, licking his lips again and again as he measured the timing. Queen Arachne couldn't understand what timing he was waiting for. She only knew one thing for certain. The moment her children started climbing the cliff face, that human was as good as dead.

Finally, the low section where they could reach the cliff came into view. She let out a triumphant cry of vengeance and charged.

Now all she had to do was place her long legs on that low ledge to create a living bridge. Her children would climb over her and swarm the hated human. Then they would tear him apart. Her revenge plan was perfect.

"Not yet... after that concave section... three seconds... now!!"

But that was her mistake.

The human fired the crossbow. The bolt flew uselessly into empty air. Had he panicked now that death was close? No. It wasn't a mistake.

BOOM!!!

A massive stalactite on the ceiling snapped from the explosive force and began plummeting downward. The razor-sharp point fell with perfect accuracy straight toward Queen Arachne's torso. The passage was too narrow to dodge. Her body was too large. The timing was flawless, measured to the millimeter.

Kkyaaaack!!!

With a sickening thunk the stalactite drove deep into her body. She let out one last agonized scream, shuddered violently, and died. The stalactite had pierced directly through her heart.

Had he aimed for that exact spot from the beginning? The already-dead Queen Arachne would never know.

"Success!!"

All that practice hadn't betrayed me. Wall-running and the perfect timing to drop the stalactite. Even after being transported into this world, I'd executed both incredibly difficult techniques flawlessly. Thanks to that, I'd taken down the Queen Arachne mother without breaking a sweat.

Now all that remained were the hundreds of spiderlings. How should I deal with them? I'd used up both the explosives I'd brought. Still, I was completely relaxed. With the mother dead, I didn't need to lift a finger against the children.

The cave path they'd been climbing was narrow, slippery, and most importantly... a steep slope.

The dead Queen Arachne's body wobbled for a moment, then gravity took over and it began rolling down the incline. The spiderlings behind her screamed, but there was nowhere to run. One after another they were crushed beneath their mother's corpse. The wet sounds of hundreds of bodies bursting echoed through the cave like popping popcorn.

"Now that's what I call sweet experience points!"

I chuckled as I looked down, watching until the queen's corpse reached the bottom of the slope and slammed into the far wall with a thunderous crash. The floor was carpeted with the corpses of dead baby arachne. The queen herself lay motionless, stone dead.

"All experience points into the mana stat."

"Apply it."

The higher the stat level rose, the more experience it demanded for the next increase. Unfortunately that meant I couldn't just hunt her once more and be done. The boss here only respawned once every ten days, so I could hunt her six times across two months. I needed to succeed all six hunts without a single mistake to push my mana stat past 1,000.

And I was the one person who could do it.

"I'll head back, restock my weapons, and return in ten days."

I muttered those words while looking at the string of exploded Queen Arachne and her children, then walked out of the dungeon.

Two months passed.

The day before the entrance exam announced by the duke, I completed my final sixth hunt perfectly and annihilated Queen Arachne and every last one of her spiderlings once again.

"All experience points into mana!"

"Bingo!"

The skill considered the most broken among all the skills in Karnadan had finally fallen into my hands after two months of grinding.