How did this happen?
A bunch of people are prostrating themselves in front of the forest.
The offerings are piling up, too.
And all of this is for…me.
I'm being worshipped for some reason.
Sort of like I'm a local god or something.
Seriously, how did this happen? I guess the only explanation is that a whole bunch of different factors created a chemical reaction that resulted in this bizarre situation.
First of all, I shouldn't have wiped out all those robbers.
If whole hordes of robbers suddenly disappear, of course, people are going to be suspicious.
Once the lord of the county started investigating the cause, it was only a matter of time before they found out about me.
If it had ended there, that wouldn't have been so bad.
Mr. Lord, who also happens to be the baby bloodsucker's father, seems to regard me as dangerous, so he's been proceeding with extreme caution. I wasn't planning on doing anything unless they really provoked me, so I didn't mind them keeping an eye on me if they kept being polite about it. But then I had to go and get discovered by a group of adventurers.
It would've been one thing if they came from the town, but I wasn't expecting them to come up behind me. Turns out, they came from a neighboring country on a mission to figure out the source of an unusual outbreak of monsters.
Or I guess it would be more accurate to say the source of an unusual migration of monsters.
Yep.
That's my fault. My Intimidation scared a bunch of monsters so badly, they fled all the way into the next country.
If anything, it's only natural the adventurers investigating that phenomenon would end up here, since the source is none other than yours truly.
I should've used Teleport to temporarily hide from them.
In fact, I was away in the Great Elroe Labyrinth on some business when they arrived in the forest, so when I teleported back, I ran right into them. Felt like I'd gotten into a traffic accident.
That's how the adventurers found me, but what really surprised me was that the newbies who I rescued before in the Great Elroe Labyrinth were among them.
You know, the ones who I found being corned by a snake in the Upper Stratum that one time?
I've evolved since then, so I look a little different, but they still clearly recognized me right away as their spider savior.
So they stopped their adventurer buddies from trying to attack me.
Then, for some reason, they offered me fruit.
I figured I might as well take it, 'cause why not? But in retrospect, maybe I should've thought it through a little more.
Because now they all seem to think that I'll play nice if they give me fruit or something. From there, well, one thing led to another, and next thing you know, here we are.
You don't get it?
Yeah, I'm not really clear on the details myself.
Some adventurers walk into a town.
They tell everyone there's a spider monster in the forest, aka me.
Somehow, rumors spread that this same monster is the one who dealt with all those robbers. And now they think I'm the second coming of some Goddess's Divine Beast or something?
Leading to me being worshipped at the moment.
Yep.
Still doesn't really make a lot of sense.
From what I gather, the Goddess religion that folks in this town practice have something about spiders being holy creatures, and this so-called Goddess once had a servant called a Divine Beast.
…I seem to remember a certain demon lord having the title Ancient Divine Beast, but I'm sure I'm just imagining it.
Yeah, I must be! Let's go with that.
But forget about our friend the spider demon lord for now.
The reason they started worshipping me in the first place is they figured out I'm the one who killed the robbers.
I can gather why, though. It must've been the lord's wife, the baby bloodsucker's mother.
Yep.
She totally ignored her husband's request to keep things quiet and went all around town telling anyone who'd listen about that attack. Like,
"The Divine Beast saved me from bandits!"
And she must've found out from her husband that I killed all those skulking robbers, 'cause she told everyone about that, too.
If the most powerful lady in town started referring to me as the Divine Beast, well, you can see how things went from there. On top of that, those adventurers I rescued have been telling everyone in town about their own little encounter with me, too. You wouldn't believe how fast everyone started believing I'm the Divine Beast after that.
Maybe it's just because they were all Goddess zealots, to begin with, but I gotta say, I'm a little worried they were all so willing to trust a monster just like that.
I feel bad for the poor lord who has to wrap his head around this situation. He's the one who's right for wanting to be cautious of a monster if you ask me.
Man, the power of religion is scary.
Still, when this whole situation first began, they were merely worshipping me from a distance.
Praying in front of the forest, occasionally putting out fruit as an offering, that's about it.
There weren't too many people, either.
Just particularly devout followers of the Goddess, adventurers praying for safety, and stuff like that.
How in the world did that turn into a huge crowd of people milling around the forest?
Well, no good deed goes unpunished.
The adventurers must have spread the word that I can use Healing Magic, and next thing you know, a mother's bringing her sick child to me.
Crying, holding the kid up, the whole shebang.
I ignored her for a while, but she kept crying out some words that definitely had a pleading tone, so eventually, I had to give in.
I Appraised the kid and found that she was suffering from a pretty serious illness.
The kind of thing that wouldn't go away from normal healing.
I doubt there's any technology to cure cancer in this fantasy world.
Yeah.
The kid had liver cancer. How does a child get liver cancer, you ask?
That's what I wondered at first, but I kinda figured it out by looking at her status.
She had the Foul Feeder title, just like me. I guess they must be a poor family.
They've probably eaten a lot of crummy food due to poverty, including poisonous stuff.
I'm assuming the effects of the title protected her digestive organs, but her liver couldn't hold up to all the toxins.
The same goes for her mother, whose organs were in a similarly sorry state. It's not like I had any real obligation to help them, but I didn't have anything better to do, so I decided to heal both of 'em.
Simply using Healing Magic like normal wouldn't have done the trick, so I had to use some pretty high-handed methods.
Basically, I put them to sleep, hollowed out their organs, and used Healing Magic to make them generate new ones. If a doctor from Earth saw that, they'd probably pass out. But I guess that's a fantasy world for you.
Still, that move ended up biting me in the butt a little bit.
'Cause starting the next day, a ton of sick and injured people started coming to me for healing. At this point, I figured there wasn't much else I could do, so I went ahead and healed every single one of 'em.
And that's why I'm being worshipped now. Hrmm. When I put it that way, this is half my own fault, half the fault of the Goddess religion's teachings.
But it's not doing any harm at the moment, so I guess it's no big deal. The Demon Lord, who might very well be the real Divine Beast, is still in the Bottom Stratum of the Great Elroe Labyrinth for some reason.
Are you becoming a shut-in?
Feel free to just stay there forever, 'kay?
All things considered, it seems like I can relax for a little while at least.
Otherwise, I would've hightailed it outta here the second all this craziness started going down.
In fact, as long as the threat of the Demon Lord isn't hanging over me, this whole being worshipped thing actually isn't half-bad. I get a lot of food as offerings, for one thing. I've barely had anything good to eat till now, so to be honest, I'm pretty moved by all this offering business. Most of it is fruit, but there's enough variety that I don't get tired of it. When I lived in the labyrinth, I never could've imagined getting to eat such sweet stuff every day.
This rules!
If possible, I wouldn't mind eating other dishes besides just fruit, but you won't catch me looking a gift horse in the mouth. So the new richness of my diet is definitely the biggest plus, but there've been other benefits, too. Since I've been healing all the sick and wounded people who have been throwing themselves at me nonstop, I've gotten some titles.
Five, to be exact. [Rescuer], [Medicine Alchemist], [Saint], [Savior], and [Guardian].
I got Medicine Alchemist by using Medicine Synthesis in conjunction with Healing Magic. Although by the time I got it, my Medicine Synthesis and Healing Magic skills were both maxed out already, so I didn't exactly gain much. I don't really understand why I got Guardian, to be honest.
Maybe it's because I protected the town from the robbers, or I protected the people from illness or something like that.
Iron Defense increases my defense ability, so that's pretty handy. And Shieldsmanship increases the strength of my shield and my ability to use it when I have a shield equipped.
But, uh…y'know?
Me, equip a shield?
Is it even possible for me to equip weapons and armor?
Okay, this skill is useless.
Cool.
Anyway, so Rescuer, Saint, and Savior are all acquired by getting something called purification points. Basically, you build them up by doing good deeds or whatever.
I've been doing a whole lot of healing for super-sick and injured people, mostly by using my crazy-high magic stats to brute-force everything.
That explains how I got all these points. Each of these titles also increases the effectiveness of my healing, making me even better at it, so that's nice.
Heal people, get a title, improve my healing, and heal some more. I basically got caught up in a nice endless healing cycle.
The new skills I got from these titles are Light Magic, Miracle Magic, Holy Light Magic, Hero, and Charity.
As the name suggests, Light Magic manipulates light.
Holy Light Magic is an advanced form of Light Magic.
Miracle Magic is a fancier version of Recovery Magic, so I don't know why I didn't get it when I maxed out Healing Magic.
It lives up to its name with crazy-powerful healing that lets me heal pretty much anything that isn't dead.
Then there's the Hero skill. It seems to form a pair with the Demon Lord skill. Just like that skill, it multiplies all my stats by one hundred times its skill level, as well as increasing my resistances.
Um, am I really allowed to have the Hero skill when I already have the Demon Lord skill?
They're not going to repel each other and make me explode from the inside or anything, are they?
Or is it the kind of thing where the hero and demon lord are strongest when they combine their strength or whatever?
In that case, might as well go for it. But nothing has happened so far, so it's probably fine.
Light Magic, Holy Light Magic, Miracle Magic, and Hero.
That's a lot of goody-goody-sounding skills for a spider.
Pretty surreal, huh?
And the Charity skill is the straw that breaks the spider's back. It's another super-broken skill like Perseverance. Why would a title give me such a crazy-broken skill?
Doesn't that seem weird to you?
And naturally, I acquired the Ruler of Charity title, too.
That makes six ruler titles altogether. At this point, I kinda just have to laugh.
Are you serious?! Miracle Magic got maxed out in one go. And the effect of Charity is pretty wild, too. It doesn't do me much good, since I'm a total loner, but if the general of an army got this or something, presto! You'd have an invulnerable army on your hands. Unfortunately, since I'm an outcast, it's pretty much wasted on me. Although I guess I might be able to use it if those eggs I laid in the Great Elroe Labyrinth the other day hatch successfully.
My newfound life as an object of worship continues, but it's becoming a bit of a problem. Making contact with people is scary. I did mention I was a loner, remember?
I was an outcast in my previous life, and all the more so in this one so far! That's just how I am! Seriously, though, I've never been very good at communicating with others. I spent most of my time alone, and when people did try to talk to me, I ended up not responding because I didn't know what to say.
I got bullied, too, probably for that same reason.
One particular girl who always stood out in class would hide my stuff and say mean things to me and so on.
It was rather a mild bullying, so it didn't really bother me that much anyway.
Most of the time, it consisted of her coming up to me, saying something mean, and walking away.
Can you even really call that bullying?
I'm not sure, but I know I was pretty alienated in class.
I hardly ever held a conversation with anyone else.
So I don't know how to deal with these hordes of people aggressively coming at me all of a sudden.
I have more or less learned the language here now, though. While I've been staying near this town, I set up some invisible thread that I've basically been using like a tin-can telephone to eavesdrop on people. I've had my Parallel Minds working hard on deciphering it to figure out the language.
Thanks to that, I'm getting to the point where I can more or less understand basic conversations. That's how I know about the lord's wife spreading her rumors and stuff.
I understand the language now.
That's the first step to being able to hold a conversation.
Now all I have to do is get Telepathy, and I can use it to send my thoughts and statements to people.
Then I can hopefully gain some recognition as an intelligent creature, not just a monster to be fought.
If we can hold a conversation, I might be able to find new ways of getting along with people. Aside from the major problem that is the Demon Lord, I might even be able to live side by side with human society.
Yet I can't quite take the plunge, because I'm too afraid of interacting with others. How do you hold a conversation, anyway?!
Do you just start with talking about the weather?!
What comes next?!
I can easily imagine myself saying,
"Nice weather we're having, huh?"
and then drowning in a pool of my own sweat because I can't think of anything else to say, y'know?!
What are people gonna think if a spider starts talking to them about the weather and then freezes up?!
I'm pretty sure that would scare anybody! I know I wouldn't wanna be near someone like that! Even now, when I don't have to say anything, it still scares me if people come anywhere near me!
Outcasts get scared when there are lots of people around, you know!
As it is, with people coming up to plead for healing and stuff, I probably would've left this place immediately if the lord guy hadn't forbidden people from entering the forest! He probably wanted to forbid people from coming anywhere near me, but since the whole town's crazy about their "local god" right now, he must've given up on that.
Still, I gotta thank you, Mr. Mayor. At least I can flee into the woods if I need to get away from people.
They don't know how crazy it is that they're able to make someone like me run away.
But that does leave me with a problem.
Am I gonna have to start socializing with humans even more than this?
Nope, not happening, thank you very much!
No, for now, I'll just keep things the way things are. It's hard to get people to understand each other, after all.