CHAPTER 36: Arachnophobia, the Picnic and a Small, Pissed-off Encyclopedia

I opened my eyes slowly. The morning sun forced its way through the cracks in the heavy oak shutters of the Golden Griffin, casting bright, geometric streaks of light onto the scratched floorboards. Dust motes danced lazily in the warm air. Inside my chest, my sapphire reactor purred with a silent, rhythmic, and incredibly stable power. After yesterday's closure of half the city's dungeon levels and resetting the merchant calculator in Silas's head, my Vessel felt perfectly stabilized and regenerated. I felt a cold, stable hardness in my muscles.

I tensed my body, preparing to stretch, but my movement immediately met a double physical resistance. I caught a massive lag, analyzing the distribution of forces on my own mattress. I was literally immobilized.

There was no cheap romance in this setup. It was just pathetic, drunk navigation. I shooed away a fly buzzing brazenly over my face and yawned briefly, cracking my stiff neck with a loud pop. I had to get up. In about an hour, the alcohol would stop anesthetizing their nervous systems and strike with a doubled force. Since they had flooded their engines to the absolute limit with Silas's dwarven moonshine, a gargantuan hangover awaited them today. I had to whip up a concrete, thick high-protein broth for them.

Delicately, with centimeter precision, I started peeling Shnee's slender fingers off my chest. The white-haired elf muttered quietly in her sleep, tightening her grip on my shirt. She frowned, clearly dissatisfied with the loss of her hard, warm support, and then curled into a ball, seeking the remnants of my warmth on the crumpled sheet. It was much easier with Elena—I simply moved her limp, heavy arm onto the pillow. The barmanka smacked her lips loudly, turning onto her other side and burying her face in the wool blanket.

When the bottoms of the clay bowls finally appeared to their eyes, Luthia breathed heavily, wiping her mouth. She looked at me with an analytical gaze, ready for me to issue the order for a brutal march and assign roles for the next floors of the Necropolis, just like every other morning.

"Alright, listen up," I started coldly, crossing my arms over my chest. "You are physically and mentally ruined after yesterday's drop to the fiftieth floor. Your Vessels demand a hard, biological detox. Therefore, today we skip the slaughter. We are going out of town for an idyllic picnic."

A dead silence fell in the main room of the Griffin. The operating system of my entire crew caught a massive, simultaneous lag. Their brains simply could not process this message. Luthia blinked, as if she didn't understand the words in the common language of Midgard. Silas choked on the rest of his broth, coughing loudly, and Shnee's diamond eyes widened with complete, absurd disorientation. The assassin had no idea what that word even meant.

"P-picnic...?" Elena stammered weakly, her hand frozen over a wet mug.

I ignored this massive bluescreen. Instead of getting into unnecessary explanations, I turned on my heel and went outside. I focused my raw will in space. The invisible, hard pincers of my telekinesis grabbed the light wooden wagon parked behind the tavern, pulled it to the doors, and then loaded it with blankets, freshly cooked food, and essential gear with machine-like precision, saving my muscles. Pure logistics optimization.

"Get your asses on the wagon!" I called out with my usual brazen coolness from the yard. "We are going to air out your heads and clear those lingering promiles."

The girls finally threw off their combat tension and the remnants of yesterday's hangover. Luthia walked with a calmer posture, Elena smiled at the bright sun, and Mina and Ria chatted animatedly. Even Shnee hid her deterrent, freezing aura. She walked a step behind me with relaxed shoulders, completely trusting my guidance. The idyll lasted until we entered beneath the thick crowns of the ancient oaks.

Suddenly, a tiny, white, hairy ball slid down a thread from a low-hanging branch. It froze in the air, dangling literally a centimeter from the tip of my nose. I saw moving, fuzzy legs and black, beady eyes staring directly at me.

A spider.

The truth was, I had a slight, deeply rooted phobia of these eight-legged fuckers. On a daily basis, under the full control of my sploty, I could easily keep it in check and maintain a stoic, detached front. But this hairy bastard had appeared strictly in front of my face, so absurdly sudden that my analytical brain did not manage to process it on pure common sense. My subconscious simply ignored all safety protocols and triggered a loud, red alarm.

"FUCK!" I roared, violently jumping back a meter out of pure surprise.

Before I could apply the mental blocks, my defensive instinct spat out a reflex pulse of raw kinetic energy from my fingertips.

The air cracked with the deafening roar of an artillery shot. The sudden kinetic pressure swept the spider off its thread. The momentum of the shockwave tore smaller bushes out by the roots and completely blew away the forest undergrowth within a dozen meters, laying the surrounding ferns and grass flat.

A dead silence fell in the forest. My crew froze in mid-step. They were completely shocked by this brutal display of raw destruction. Shnee instantly grabbed her rapier hilt, certain we had fallen into an ambush of some hidden boss. Luthia squeaked quietly, and Mina reflexively popped her sharp cat claws.

And then, from the depths of the demolished thicket, a squeaky, irritated scream reached us in an entirely familiar tongue:

"Kuuuurwa, ja laaaatam!"

I froze in place. My heart rate instantly dropped back to normal, and in my head, I caught a massive lag. I knew that word too well. It was flawless Polish.

Before I could fully reorganize my thoughts, an irritated voice drifted from the depths of the broken bushes a dozen meters away.

"Well fuck, I know I'm not a beauty, but without exaggeration! Holy shit, I've seen a lot in my life, but shooting at me with heavy artillery right away?! I land on the ground, fall into a tick nest, and some typical Seba from the block fires hard kinetics at me!"

My crew immediately fell silent. The girls stared at the bushes in profound shock. Their minds caught a massive lag because no local translation system could process the dialect. They heard only an aggressive, harsh, and growling language.

I, however, smiled with a sudden, positive surprise. I released a precise telekinetic thread, carefully plucked the white ball from the fern leaves, and smoothly suspended it in the air a few centimeters in front of my face. The previous fear had completely evaporated, replaced by pure curiosity.

"Put me down, you sick freak!" the spider squeaked, thrashing her legs in the empty air.

"English, motherfucker, do you speak it?" I threw out calmly with a classic quote from Earth, putting my hands back into the pockets of my black coat with full brazen coolness.

The spider froze. In one second, all eight legs dropped from the sheer impression. She raised her tiny head, staring at me with absolute stupor.

"What the fuck...?" she answered in English, and then flinched as her black eyes widened. "O żesz ty w mordę jeża... A compatriot? Kaska from Poland. Radom specifically."

"Alright, chill out. Sorry for that outburst and the flight into the bushes," I spoke fluently in Polish with a relaxed smile.

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The girls behind my back drew in a sharp breath, hearing me join this incomprehensible madness and talk with complete calm to a bug suspended in the air.

"My instinct caught me on pure logic," I continued in Polish, scratching the back of my neck. "I used to be an Earthling. It dragged me here, I lost some memories, but I am slowly grasping the physical laws of this place. And you?"

"I died and landed in this shitty body," Kaska sighed, hanging helplessly in my telekinesis. "But it would be useful to change my name, because 'Kaska' won't pass here in this fantasy climate. Any ideas?"

I pondered for a fraction of a second. "Kaede," I threw out in Polish with easygoing chill. "Sounds like it's from a good isekai. Fits perfectly. Since you've only been in this body recently and have weak energy weaves, on pure common sense, you won't last long in this forest. Some armored bird will eventually make a free lunch out of you."

Instead of using the local, primitive binding seals that brutally crushed a beast's will and choked their mana conduits, I applied the simplest logic of resource sharing. I extended my index finger. A thin, sapphire thread of energy flowed from my core, penetrating her white abdomen and linking our systems into a single obieg. I simply opened the dam, connecting her empty reservoir directly to my titanic sapphire reactor.

Kaede's body shuddered, and her black eyes briefly flashed with a bright, sapphire light.

"O kurwa..." she squeaked in Polish with absolute delight, moving her legs frantically. "I feel like you plugged me into a rushing river! My small pathways are literally heating up from this excess!"

"You have full power. Draw as much as you want; my engine won't even register the loss," I summarized, after which I turned my head toward my crew.

I switched back to the common language, sliding my hands deep into my coat pockets. Kaede landed softly on my shoulder.

"Forgive the interruption. This is Kaede, our new scout from my old world," I said calmly. "And what you heard a moment ago is our native language from Earth. Polish."

Luthia slowly picked up her journal from the grass. There was no trace of shock in her yellow eyes. She was an excellent analyst.

"Isekai arrivals are nothing new in our history, Dave," she stated coldly, narrowing her gaze. "This world is thousands of years old. We have seen many summoned heroes and organic newcomers. But this dialect... It sounded hard. Like growling. None of my translation spells could decode even a single syllable."

"Because apparently no Pole has ever landed here before. And that's excellent," I smiled brazenly, shrugging my shoulders. "It is a clean, logical advantage. No aristocrat, inquisitor, or mage on this planet will ever understand it. In our free time, I will start teaching it to you. We will make it our private operational cipher."

Shnee smiled predatorily, immediately appreciating the lethal potential of such private knowledge. Elena breathed a sigh of relief, glad that all this forest destruction was not the work of some new dungeon boss.

"End of the stop. I'm hungry," I threw out loosely.

We moved down the trail. Ten minutes of marching later, the thick oaks gave way, and a wide clearing appeared before our eyes. A clean pond and a humming waterfall guaranteed idyllic conditions. We had reached our destination. It was time to fire up my culinary hyperfixation in the field.

The clearing we finally reached was perfect. The roar of the crystal waterfall pleasantly drowned out the silence of the woods, and the water in the pond shone in the full sun. The girls let out a collective sigh of relief. Mina and Ria threw a blanket onto the soft grass, and Elena carefully placed a wicker basket with knives and a heavy cast-iron pan. Shnee finally hid her freezing, deterrent aura, fully trusting my guidance as she sat on the grass. Luthia dropped onto the blanket, arranging her notes.

The spider on my shoulder almost jumped, frantically moving her legs with pure delight.

"Fuck! What awesome telekinesis!" Kaede squeaked in Polish, staring at the dry wood I had stacked without touching it. "Man, don't scare me like that. With this kind of power, you can move mountains!"

I smiled with brazen chill, turning to the crew settled on the blanket. "Rest and prepare the hearth," I threw out coldly, keeping my hands deep in my pockets. "Kaede and I are going deeper into the forest. There are those armored birds roaming the area, so we will be right back with some fresh meat for steaks."

I left the hubbub of the clearing behind and, along with my new ally, moved toward the thickets for a quick hunt.

We walked unhurriedly, with my hands pushed deep in my pockets, radiating complete, swobodny calm. Kaede, safely seated on my shoulder, looked around with fascination, moving her tiny legs. Since we were alone in the forest, I decided to use this moment for a loose conversation in our native cipher.

"So, how do you like your new spider life, Kaska?" I asked in Polish, parting the thick ferns with my hand.

Kaede sighed heavily, and her small abdomen rose comically. "A tragedy, stary, simply a tragedy," she replied, waving her front paw. "I thought reincarnation was a free ticket to being overpowered. I was counting on hidden skills, and meanwhile, hunting a common fly is a fight for survival for me. If you hadn't picked me up, some sparrow would have made a free lunch out of me."

I laughed quietly under my breath. "This world works on completely different rules than those Chinese cartoons of yours," I explained with pure, common-sense logic. "This is not a computer game with status windows. There are no facilitations here. You have raw physics and mana. What matters is how dense your Vessel is and how well you can manage your sploty. Pure force of pressure and momentum. Either you break bones, or someone breaks yours. Hard rules of survival."

Before she could answer, she suddenly tensed, entering her tactical radar mode. "Man, at twelve o'clock, behind those thick trunks," she whispered straight into my ear.

I stopped in my tracks. Between the oaks, I spotted three massive birds. They were huge, and their feathers resembled horny, hard scales. Armored poultry, constituting perfect, high-protein meat for today's dinner.

I didn't take my hands out of my pockets, nor did I cast any fire spells. Instead, I focused my raw will and used volitional telekinesis. The crushing force tightened with monstrous pressure exactly on their necks. Ordinary, ruthless cause and effect.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

Three hollow smacks of cervical vertebrae echoed, and the massive birds fell into the grass in the exact same second, without managing to make a sound. I had applied the ruthless physics of joint breaking, without an ounce of wasted energy.

Kaede fell silent for a long moment, staring at the dead game with wide-open eyes. "O kurwa... now this is an OP main character," she commented finally with pure admiration.

"I told you. Pure cause and effect," I summarized loosely, approaching the prey. I grabbed all three birds with a bundle of telekinesis, allowing them to soundlessly levitate behind my back. "Alright, protein secured. We return to the clearing to fire up the slaughterhouse on this trunk."

I walked out of the thickets back onto the sun-drenched clearing, and behind my back, maintained in the air by a bundle of raw telekinesis, the three massive, hunted birds floated smoothly. The girls immediately became active at this sight, seeing that dinner was secured. I dropped the heavy carcasses directly onto the carved oak table and fired up my culinary hyperfixation on full obroty.

Before little Kaede, I placed a steak of bird breast on a piece of bark, which was at least three times her size. Ria giggled quietly, stating with disbelief that this little ball wouldn't be able to eat it because she was smaller than her thumb.

"Don't you dare underestimate me, kid," Kaede growled in our ciphered Polish language.

Without any ceremonies, she threw herself at the hot meat. Using her spider jaws and an unnatural metabolism, she devoured the entire piece in just two minutes. When the last bite disappeared from the bark, the white spider patted her swollen abdomen with her front paw and let out a squeaky, loud burp.

Mina slapped her thigh with an open hand, executing a massive facepalm. Luthia, completely shocked by this display of absurd gluttony from a millimeter-sized creature, unconsciously relaxed her fingers. She dropped her metal fork. I didn't even have to look there. My passive telekinesis intercepted the cutlery halfway down. With a quiet, clean clink, it placed it right back on her plate.

I laughed loudly, feeling an absolute, brazen chill in my chest. Our idyllic picnic continued. Around us hummed only the crystal waterfall and the calm wind. It was a perfect, necessary reset.

Kaede, sitting comfortably on my shoulder with her swollen abdomen, moved her front paws.

"No proszę, z robienia staków prosto do korpo-monopolu," she threw out in our Polish operational cipher, giggling quietly under her breath. "I like your style, compatriot. Zero pity for the competition. A capitalist slaughterhouse."

"Hard rules of the market, kid," I answered her fluently in Polish with a brazen smile.

It caused another confused lag among the girls. They heard only our hard, growling dialect of Earthlings, which they still could not decode.

I yawned prolongedly and stood up from the grass. I had no intention of wasting my time on manual cleaning and dirtying my hands with ash from our field hearth. I focused my raw will and released a wide telekinetic net.

The space around us came alive. The invisible pincers of my power with machine precision grabbed Elena's cast-iron pan, the dirty knives, and the spread blankets. The items rose into the air. They folded smoothly and land in the wicker basket with a hollow thump. A second later, the entire luggage autonomously soared towards our wagon, dropping softly onto the boards. Pure physics and motion optimization in the service of comfort.

We climbed onto the wagon, and the horses pulled our carriage back toward the Lower City, leaving the sun-drenched clearing behind. Our economic and physical blitzkrieg was operating exactly on my own hard terms, and Oakhaven was slowly becoming nothing but our private backyard.