Kumoko

"Kumoko" is the nameless main protagonist of So I'm a Spider, So What? She is reincarnated in another world in the body of a Small Lesser Taratect, the weakest monster, in the largest, most dangerous dungeon known to man: the Great Elroe Labyrinth.

Her life in the labyrinth is fraught with danger, forcing her to fight and become stronger to survive. She fights, eats, levels up, and evolves continuously over two years until she becomes an Arachne and meets Ariel.

Although enemies at first, they are forced into a cease-fire when both realize that neither one can kill the other. Afterwards, Kumoko journeys with Ariel, Sophia, Merazophis, and the Puppet Taratect sisters to the Demon Realm, picking up Wrath along the way. She is given the name White by Ariel.

Appearance
As an individual of the spider-type monster Small Lesser Taratect species, she has a white body with black splotches on her cephalothorax and abdomen, with eight red spider eyes. Additionally, her two forefeet have sharp claws. When she evolves into the Zoa Ele, she has a pitch-black body, and her two front claws turn into thin scythes. When she evolves into the unique monster Zana Horowa she becomes snow-white while maintaining her scythe claws.

Her final form is the Arachne evolution. Her main body is that of a young girl with bleach-white skin, white hair, and red eyes from the bottom of the waist up. From the waist down, the body is connected to a large spider by the head.

The spider body is entirely white like the Zana Horowa. The original mouth and eyes are also maintained on the spider, hinting that the entire form has two brains. She can keep functioning as long as one of the heads is intact She also maintains her scythe-like front claws and even uses one of those claws to make a scythe weapon for herself, which she uses to channel Rot Attack.

Personality
"Nai Wa"

- Kumoko's catchphase

Kumoko's personality goes through several developments during her time as a spider. In the beginning, she is overwhelmed and stressed by her situation upon realizing that she reincarnated as a large spider monster but remains hopeful. She even sets up some long-term goals for herself, such as learning how to talk to communicate with humans and other such details. She likes to relax in homes of her own making and is easily scared if approached. She cries when she needs to eat the disgusting monsters of the Upper Stratum and is traumatized by some of the early events, but steels her mind with the goal set: get stronger so she can leave the Great Elroe Labyrinth.

As a coping mechanism, Kumoko tends to act and think in a happy-go-lucky or sarcastic manner. It distracts her from the situations she finds herself in a while in the Great Elroe Labyrinth because often she is fighting against the odds and facing death every day. As she experiences more and more hardship, her mind does start to wear down, little by little. Some examples of her difficulties are: losing half of her body, eating rot-infested bugs and poisonous monsters to avoid starvation, and losing her home. Those among many other situations that no teenager should ever find themselves having to experience - cause her to lose hope and empathy, which she had during the beginning of her rebirth as a spider. However, it can be challenging to see this due to her mannerisms.

Not to mention, the titles and skills she learns throughout her journey interfere with her mind and soul. She talks with herself when using the Parallel Minds skill and earns several mind-altering titles such as Merciless, Ruler of Pride, Sloth, and more. She eventually gets the title Ruler of Perseverence, which prevents the System from tampering with her soul further due to earning Heresy Nullification. Still, accruing these titles and skills alters her mind irreversibly. By the time she leaves the Great Elroe Labyrinth, she barely considers interacting with humans beyond what will benefit herself.

Some of her conscience remains, as is shown by the way she will save people under attack by bandits - though it is alluded to that she ends up eating the bandits due to the influence of her Parallel Minds. Kumoko doesn't consider this normal since she still finds herself mostly human and is freaked out by their behavior, which eating of the soul of the Queen Taratect altered. She also doesn't seem significantly invested in being friendly for the sake of it, as Kumoko will always attempt to justify a selfish reason for helping people, such as raising a skill, trying to earn a title, among various other excuses.

It is plain to see after she begins her journey with Ariel that she is still capable of caring about others even after her traumatizing experiences in the Great Elroe Labyrinth. However, she always tends to think of herself first. She's also utterly tongue-tied because of her two years of solitude, though she can still think of responses. As the group journeys together and Kumoko begins to care about them, her selfish justifications become more strained, as she seems to find herself unable to believe she can genuinely care about others anymore. Eventually, when Ariel selflessly throws herself between Potimas and Kumoko to save her, she discards her selfish reasonings for helping and realizes that she cares about Ariel and the rest of their group, even if she still has issues talking to them.

Background
Throughout the story, Kumoko was heavily implied to be the reincarnation of Wakaba Hiiro, a social outcast who's family had broken up and was bullied in class.

However, this was actually a huge misdirection. In reality, Wakaba Hiiro was an alternate identity assumed by D to escape her duties as the manager of the Underworld and play at being a normal high-school student. She was actually an outcast by choice and her family that had "broken up" didn't really exist. Also, despite her anti-social tendencies, her classmates actually revered as the "Queen of the Class" and her would-be bullies were merely jealous.

Kumoko's actual true identity was a normal spider that happened to be in the classroom at the time everyone got reincarnated. Upon being spotted, one of the students, Natsume Tengo, wanted squash her but was stopped by the teacher, Ms. Oka, who allowed to the spider to stay as a sort of class-pet. However, the students were disgusted by it and Kumoko spend her days in the classroom desperately clinging on to life.

One day during class, a mysterious explosion occured and killed everyone in the classroom, including Kumoko. In reality, the explosion was the result of a previous Hero and Demon Lord's attempt to assassinate D. Feeling responsible and thinking it would be fun, D reincarnated the students. However, such an act would definitely attract the attention of the underworld staff. Thus, to distract them, she took Kumoko's soul and overwrote it with a piece of her own, effectively overwriting her existance, before reincarnating her as well.

From the Upper Stratum to the Lower Stratum
Kumoko's odyssey begins peacefully enough. Most of her memories are intact, but she's unaware of where she is because she's surrounded by an eggshell. It doesn't really take her long to break out, though, and chaos ensues; things go from peaceful enough to extremely violent. It takes her a second to realize that the spiders around her are her brothers and sisters and that she is a spider herself! Her Mother is indiscriminately stomping on her young and her siblings are even feeding on each other. Kumoko quickly runs away from the carnage and gains her very first Skill: Appraisal via Skill Points (which is useless at its first level) between the carnage that ensued. Kumoko is determined to not die from the very outset of her new life.

She comes across the body of one of her siblings in the caves. In the same area, she also discovers a human footprint and the first reference to her size and Mother is made: she is about a meter long and mother is about 30 meters long. Kumoko carries her siblings to a location that has no human footprints and decides to create her home there in the form of a spider's nest. She experiments with spider thread and becomes hungry. She's so famished that she eats it on the spot after a tiny amount of hesitation. And so Kumoko gains her very first title! Turns out it's [Kin Eater], much to her chagrin. In the nest, she catches, kills and consumes her first monster: an Elroe Frog and gains Poison and Acid Resistance

Kumoko encounters a badly injured human that ran away shortly and left an egg. She is unable to break the egg after much experimentation. Kumoko captures and kills another Elroe Frog in the nest and gains her first level up! And so, she lazes about here in her daily routine; creating traps, balls of thread. In the meantime, Kumoko captures monsters such as the Elroe basilisk, Finjicote, Elroe peckatot and Elroe randanels.Human comes across it and she lets the human who got caught in her trap get away, and the returning force promptly burns her nest, causing her to run.

After the humans burn her nest, she sets off with determination to not get too caught up in relaxation. And so she explores; leading her to her fighting face to face with an Elroe Frog. Due to the fight, she becomes injured and sets up a nest to recover. She encounters, kills and eats an Elroe Basilisk and levels up. Kumoko decides to leave her nest and wander around again. After fighting many Elroe Ferects, she finds a cliff full of them and successfully runs away. As Kumoko was exhausted, she decides to create a nest and sleeps.

At this point she has gained levels and skills. Kumoko encounters and kills an Elroe Baladorado after waking up in her nest, getting her close enough to level 10 that a group of Randanels allows her to evolve into a Small Taratect and decides to wander around again. Even so, it doesn't take long for humans to find her again. This time, they give chase and she ends up jumping into a pit that leads to the Lower Stratum of the Great Elroe Labyrinth. There she first comes into contact with a Finjicote]] Hive, gets stabbed by a Finjicote, kills it, gets badly injured and hides. She then encounters Earth Dragon Araba after hiding. .

Araba's latent power drives a sense of despair into Kumoko. She's unable to do anything but cower in fear as Araba stomps around. Kumoko barely escapes death, and he eventually leaves. After that event, Kumoko starts climbing up the pit via building the nest vertically over several days. Eventually, she fights numerous Finjicotes when trying to climb upwards via the nest but gets interrupted by the sudden appearance of Araba. Araba destroys the nest Kumoko was using to climb up. So, instead of building it again and risking Araba finding her, she sets off to explore. She moves to explore the vast cavern in the opposite direction Araba went, of course. Still, she encounters many strong creatures, such as the Elroe Greshigard, Greater Taratect, and Elroe Daznatch, but decides to avoid them due to the comparison in strength.

Due to lack of strength, Kumoko is unable to find any food. She soon finds herself rather hungry and ends up eating the absolutely disgusting Elroe Gastruch, which grants her Rot Resistance. Another food-source for her in the Lower Stratum is the Elroe Kohokoro, and Elroe Randanels are also present.

Her travels eventually put her in a gigantic chamber in front of Bagragratches, while avoiding them she realizes that her Appraisal skill can now give her full details of her own stats, skills, and titles. She eventually encounters an Anogratch and it spots her, forcing her to fight and kill it. Little did she know this would lead her to one of her most intense battles yet.

Kumoko later begins to set up a nest on the ceiling of the wide cavern, like she has been while traversing the Lower Stratum. It doesn't take her long before a bunch of Anogratches start attacking her. Relentlessly. Anogratches have a unique skill called Vengeance and Wrath, which causes the entire troupe of monkeys to fly into a rage until they kill the one that harmed their own. Kumoko now has to deal with this onslaught. By using her thread and the cave structure (and the fact that she's on the ceiling) in a clever manner, she manages to fend off the hoard of monkeys. Eventually the three Bagragratches that she saw earlier join the fight, causing her to almost taste defeat. Finally, after a ridiculous battle on the ceiling, Kumoko manages to ensnare or kill every last monkey. She easily hits level 10 for her next evolution into Small Poison Taratect and has plenty of food to last a while.

Middle Stratum Playthrough!
There's very little time for Kumoko to take a break. Right after dealing with the Anogratch army, she realizes that the air is a bit hot. Upon further investigation, she finds a slope going upwards into the Middle Stratum of Great Elroe Labyrinth. Unfortunately for her, Taratects are weak to fire, and the Middle Stratum is filled with pools of magma. Even the air lowers her HP. Even with the Fire Resistance skill, it still takes multiple levels to remove the damage the air and ground does to her. She also meets an Elroe Gunerush, a kind of sea-horse monster that spits fire. It's impossible for her to fight it as Kumoko cannot retaliate as her signature move, Spider Thread burns mid-air. It is also completely immune to fire which allows it to swim around in the magma that covers most of the Middle Stratum.

After lamenting at the serious disadvantage she has fighting in the Middle Stratum, Kumoko decides go back to the gigantic chamber and evolve into the Small Poison Taratect after a dilemma. The main advantage is the ability to add her poison damage attribute to all her attacks, instead of just her bite, through the skill [Poison Attack]. After checking and testing skills, Kumoko is determined to push into the Middle Stratum and find long range attacks.

In the next chapter, Kumoko whines about her inability to use magic. She's missing the Magic Power Operation and Magical Power Perception Skills. She already has Magical Power Perception in the form of Detection, though. Unfortunately, Detection is too powerful to use and ends up giving her a massive headache every time she uses it, and she can't use Magic Power Perception on its own since it's tied to Detection. While deliberating about where to use her 200 Skill Points, Kumoko comes across the skill called Pride via viewing the skill catalogue through appraisal. It has mysterious properties that, upon double appraising certain terms in the skill description, bring up the notification "cannot be appraised." Although she has her suspicions due to it's correlation with the Seven Deadly Sins, she picks it up anyway.

She almost feels like she has to take this skill. Upon acquisition, Taboo levels up twice and she acquires Abyss Magic Level 10. After this she starts thinking about her senses and focuses on them. She gains a bunch of Skills in the Enhancement category, such as Vision, Auditory, and Olfactory Enhancement. She also gains Prediction and Parallel Thinking. Continuing along this process, she also works on Arithmetic Processing by multiplying by powers of 2 for a while. Some of these added Skills tend to level up when using Detection, but this gives Kumoko a huge headache. She also realizes that Heresy Resistance increases when using Detection. This is all mostly happening while she waits for her HP Auto-Recovery to finish so she can work on Fire Resistance in the Middle Stratum again.

Kumoko gains a lot of skills when training her skills and going in-and-out of the Middle Stratum. She also acquires Fire Resistance Level 1 by slowly taking damage from the Middle Stratum and returning to the Lower Stratum to heal, allowing her to finally explore the Middle Stratum. Earth Dragon Kagna finds her, so she's forced into the Middle Stratum before she's fully ready.

In the Middle Stratum, Kumoko is able to break even on healing with Fire Resistance Level 1 and HP Auto-Recovery Level 5, so she can explore the magma-filled Middle Stratum without dying just by breathing. Anyway, she fights an Elroe Gunerush and levels up, all while lamenting about wanting to use magic. Kumoko also fights two more Elroe Gunerush and also encounters and kills other monsters. Kumoko now yearns to use magic.

She also fights a couple of Elroe Guneseven, a particularly tasty catfish, and explores some new Skills she earned like Thought Acceleration and Foresight. In addition, Appraisal leveled up and she is able to explore her earned Titles and her opponents' Skills. After exploring her new titles, she goes on a catfish (Guneseven) hunting spree, because they are ridiculously tasty.

The Middle Stratum always seems fraught with danger. The next battle is a Elroe Gunerave not that long after Kumo finishes feasting on Gunesevens. It's a tough fight with many dodges and closecalls, causing several of Kumoko's abilities to level. Defeating the Gunerave also gives her enough experience points to unlock her next evolution: Zoa Ele or Poison Taratect. She chooses Zoa Ele, of course, due to its increased requirements and the fact that it does not grow in size like the Poison Taratect evolution. She uses the corpse of the Gunerave to create a safety cocoon for her evolution.

Upon evolution, Kumoko checks her status and realizes that all of her abilities went up by a huge amount. Most of them more than double. She also gained a few new assassin-like Skills, to fit the theme of the Zoa Ele: Stealth, Silence, Rot Attack, and Utility Thread. Her body also changed a little bit, such as gaining a pitch-black carapace and scythe-like front claws, indicating that she is no longer of the Taratect species line. After analyzing her stats and appearance, she binges on the Guneseven, which is delicious, apparently. After gathering herself, Kumoko explores more of the Middle Sanctum. She also picks up an extremely powerful skill for all of her skill points: Perseverance. This skill allows her to use MP in place of HP when her HP reaches 1. It also grants the Skills Heresy Nullification and Conviction as well as the title Ruler of Perseverance.

Heresy Nullification turns out to be pretty important. Kumoko can now use Detection without feeling like her skull is splitting open. Upon it's use, several passive thinking-related Skills level up. She also gains Divinity Expansion. Turning Detection on and sustaining it's use quickly levels up these Skills due to it's intense usage requirements and the Pride skill; Detection also quickly reaches level 10. Upon reaching level 10, Kumoko sees some kind of static, but it quickly goes away.

With Detection now usable, Kumoko begins to explore magic, since Detection has Magic Power Perception bundled into it, still she saves it for later. Instead, she establishes her new skill that evolved from Parallel Thinking: Parallel Minds. She puts her new parallel in charge of body functions while the original handles other processes like System analysis and exploring magic. While continuing to explore, Kumoko regrets using Rot Attack as monsteres turn to dust which leads to no edible food left. She levels up after killing a monster randomly and checks out the Evil Eye spell list that she got from Perseverance. There are several Evil Eyes, but she ends up picking Cursed Evil Eye. Kumoko then encounters an Elroe Geafrog - an frog that is adapted to the environment of the Middle Stratum - and kills it via Cursed Evil Eye. She then tries to combine Telescopic Sight and Evil Eye but ultimately fails.

While continuing to explore the Middle Stratum, Appraisal eventually reaches level 10! Much to Kumoko's dismay, nothing happens, but that static from before becomes noticeable. Someone tries to reject the request, but D accepts it, creating the ruler skill Wisdom for Kumoko. This interruption and introduction by administrators gives Kumoko a feeling that there is "something wrong with this world." She appraises Wisdom and it's contents, and discovers the function of Wisdom, Height of Occultism and Celestial Power. Kumoko also successfully activates different magic spells. She also plans to get out of the Middle Stratum in the meantime.

Kumoko continues to explore, encounters a large magma lake only containing several small islands ;and finds an Elroe Gunesohka and many Elroe Gunesevens and Elroe Gunerushes in the magma. She uses Poison Magic to deflect fireballs and dodges them as well. After some time in the defending stance, she uses various Poison Magic and her scythes to kill Elroe Gunerushes and Elroe Gunesevens. Eventually only a few Guneraves and an Elroe Gunesohka are left. She uses Paralyzing Evil Eye and Paralysis shot to immobilize them and kills them. Due to the fight she gains the title, [Fearbringer] which gives [Intimidation LV 1] [Heretic Attack LV 1]. She appraises [Fearbringer] which shows that it's effect is to scare enemies away using Fear. Kumoko is unable to turn it off. She looks through the skill catalogue, comes across Spatial Magic and decides to purchase it but it turns out that at it's current level, it is useless; showing a resizable metaphysical cube with green lines. Kumoko descales the monsters and basks in victory.

Abilities & Equipment

 * Morning Spider (KuMorning Star): Kumoko uses her thread as a makeshift flail weapon.
 * Multiple Evil Eyes: Due to having ten eyes, Kumoko is capable of using multiple Evil Eyes at the same time or amplifying the power of a single Evil Eye skill by using it in various eyes at once.
 * Multitasking: By giving specific tasks to her parallel minds, Kumoko can conduct magic, doing complex movements, and coming up with strategies all at the same time without any drawbacks.
 * Respawn: By utilizing the Immortality skill and Kin Control, upon dying, Kumoko moves her soul and main body into an egg of her spawn made by using the Egg Laying skill.
 * White's Scythe: A weapon built from one of Kumoko's forward limbs when she turned into an Arachne. This weapon has been modified by D with automatic growth properties, and within the confines of the System, it is indestructible. It can cut through anti-magic constructs and emits an eerie aura of darkness. A piece of Kumoko's soul is inside it.

Appraisals
Correction: in 2-6: Zoa Ele, Auditory Enhancement is mistranslated as Poison Resistance. This has been corrected above

Correction: in 4-5: Evolution, Thought Super-Acceleration was incorrectly translated as Thought Acceleration, Night Vision was incorrectly translated as Vision Enhancement, and Anger was incorrectly translated as Wrath. This has been updated to reflect the correct skills.

Correction: In 4-11: Matricide, Black Resistance LV5 is incorrectly translated as Dark Resistance LV6. This has been corrected above. When the Parallel Minds return to the main body after consuming most of the Queen Taratect's]] soul, the power is directly added to Kumoko's soul; this is why there is such a large jump in power from 4-5: Evolution and 4-11: Matricide.

Trivia

 * Her catchphrase isn't really a catchphrase. The majority of speech from Kumoko is an internal monologue, including this phrase. The phrase is just one of Kumoko's more common thoughts. The English translations of Light Novels completely removed it.
 * The English version has translated this to "Unreal" or "No way."
 * Kumoko doesn't have a name. The term "Kumo" means spider, and the suffix "-ko" feminizes a word. For ease of access, the general public refers to the protagonist as "Kumoko."
 * This is the only unofficial name on this wiki.
 * This name has been adopted by Okina Baba and has been used by the protagonist during some instances of self-introduction in the Web Novel and Light Novels.
 * Also, that name is used in the Anime by the Ending.
 * Kumoko's original color seems to differ in the different media she's in:
 * In the original Web Novel, she is blackish and no different from her siblings.
 * In the Light Novel and Anime she is white with pink spots and accents.
 * In the Manga, she is pink.
 * Kumoko's best magical affinity due to her nature as a spider monster are poison and dark, while her weakest is fire.
 * The Skill [Skanda] is the nickname's origin for the video-game character Baldie that Shun and co. Talk about before their untimely deaths.
 * [Skanda] is a direct reference to the Buddhist Skanda.
 * Kumoko's threads were stated to have been used by Julius and Schlain's mother to create Julius's signature white scarf after some of her threads were collected during her early days within the Great Elroe Labyrinth after a raid occured in the Labyrinth.
 * Kumoko was also stated to indirectly contacted one of her fellow Reincarnations during this time. With her having come into the possession of Fei's egg while prior to her hatching. After her nest was plundered the Egg along with her threads were taken.

Gallery
Kumoko