A single black spider, no bigger than a fist, lived in the forest.
That spider was nothing more than a lowly little creature, and it did not yet possess even a self; it merely wandered about on instinct, searching for a place to make its hiding spot.
So it passed over rotting fallen leaves, and when it had crossed a broad, moss-covered rock, it happened upon a suitably large tree.
It spun a web on that tree as suited it, then lived off the small winged insects and the like that got caught in it.
Most of its prey was bland in taste, but on rare occasions prey of a particularly rich flavor would be caught as well.
The seven seven-colored butterflies that traveled together in a flock tasted fragrant beyond compare.
A single red mantis with its head severed off was spicy.
A single exhausted honeybee that shone with golden light was rich and sweet.
Whenever it ate such special prey, the spider would feel its whole body swelling full.
Then, one day, as it was passing the years peacefully catching and eating its prey.
The spider was caught and eaten by a passing mountain bird with three eyeballs.
The spider had grown a fair bit itself by then, until it was nearly the size of a human palm, but the size of the mountain bird with its wings spread was well over three times that.
In the end, the spider resisted desperately, but it could not overcome the difference in size.
***
And now, a spider the size of a human palm opened its eyes in the forest.
That spider still had no self.
Searching for a hiding spot on instinct, it passed the rotting fallen leaves and the flat, moss-covered rock, found a suitably large tree, and spun its web there.
And it lived by catching and eating the insects that got caught in the web.
So it caught and ate the seven seven-colored butterflies.
It caught and ate the red mantis with the severed head as well.
And it caught and ate the honeybee that shone with golden light too.
For some reason, the richness of their flavor seemed to have fallen off compared to before.
And after devouring it all, it also felt as though something was lacking compared to before.
But that was all; the spider, still wholly without self or consciousness, could not feel or understand anything beyond that.
Then one day again, it caught the eye of a passing mountain bird with three eyes.
And at the end of a bloody fight with that mountain bird, the spider ended up with its head badly pecked.
Bodily fluid streamed from the wound, and the spider's life force slowly began to run dry.
This time, however, the mountain bird did not come away unscathed either.
The spider had grown by leaps and bounds until it was nearly the size of a small puppy, and it was no longer an easy opponent even for the mountain bird.
And so, in the midst of the struggle, the tough, sticky spider silk clung all over the mountain bird's body until it could not budge, and on top of that it had taken the spider's venom, so in truth it was dying with its eyes wide open.
Thus the spider and the mountain bird perished together, side by side, in mutual destruction.
***
After that.
In the forest, a large spider opened its eyes once more. Its bulk was now nearly that of a puppy.
Following instinct, the spider spun a web on a nearby tree and ate the winged insects that got caught, the seven seven-colored butterflies, the red mantis with the severed head, and the golden honeybee.
And then, one day, it discovered a mountain bird with three eyes thrashing about, caught in the web it had spun.
The net the enormous spider had spun was now as tough as rope, and the mountain bird, no more than the lowest grade of cursed beast, had no way to escape.
The spider crept up to the mountain bird bit by bit and wrapped its body in silk.
Then, when the creature was completely bound and could resist no longer, it sank in its fangs and sucked out its fluids.
The taste of the mountain bird it savored then was finer than any prey it had eaten until then. The seven-colored butterflies, the red mantis with the severed head, even the honeybee that had shone golden — before this mountain bird, their flavor paled.
After finishing that meal, somehow the spider felt something writhing and pulsing inside itself.
The spider did not understand what it was, but it did know, on instinct, what it had to do.
The spider climbed to the top of the tree to avoid attack from other beasts. Then it wrapped its body in silk to make a cocoon, and some time later it shed its husk and grew into a body larger and stronger than before.
***
After passing through the molt, a small change came over the spider.
Until then it had merely repeated mechanical responses according to the instinct it was born with, and there had been nothing that could be called a self.
But now, faint though it was, cognition had formed.
This cognition had not yet reached the realm of consciousness, but even so, it had met the minimum conditions for a self to form.
The only pity was that, before the spider could feel this change for itself.
A huge jade-hued hawk passing nearby spotted the spider hanging at the top of the tree.
With a cry of SCREEEE, the jade hawk swooped in in an instant and snatched the spider up, killing it on the spot.
It happened so fast that the spider died before it could properly cognize the situation. The last things the spider cognized were the hawk's cry of SCREEEE and the ghastly terror of death drawing near.
And so, the next moment, the spider 'cognized' that it had once again opened its eyes in the forest.
It was the moment the spider first cognized its own regression.
***
Of course, regression was far too lofty a concept, and for a mere spider that had only just barely acquired faint cognition, it was still an area it could never understand.
The spider only cognized that, somehow, the situation it now found itself in was tremendously familiar.
So, familiarly, it passes the rotted fallen leaves; familiarly, it crosses the moss-covered rock; and it finds the great tree that is now past familiar and has even become dear.
Familiarly it climbs the tree and spins its web, and though it somehow feels the space is more cramped 'than before,' it does not mind.
The reason was simple. It was because an instinctive certainty had come to it that if it built its home here and waited, it would get to eat delicious prey. Of course, there was also an unease it could not explain, but in any case, the spider decided to hunt for food here.
So it spun its web and ate the seven-colored butterflies, the red mantis, and the golden honeybee, and finally even the mountain bird with three eyeballs.
But for some reason it felt that the taste of this prey was not as enrapturing as before. On top of that, even after devouring all of it, somehow its hunger would not be filled at all.
In fact, the reason itself was extremely simple.
It was because the spider's own bulk had become far larger than before.
In its first life, the spider had been no more than fist-sized.
In its second life, the spider had been palm-sized.
In its third life it had grown to the size of a small puppy, and had eaten a mountain bird for the first time and even passed through a molt.
Having gone through that molt, it was now nearly at the level of a decent wild dog, and a few insects and one small mountain bird were no longer enough to fill its belly.
In a word, the spider could no longer obtain enough food by endlessly spinning webs in one single place.
To eat its fill, it had to roam here and there and scout out new prey.
And so, just as it came down from the tree it had grown fond of and was about to begin exploring for a new hiding place.
Suddenly, from somewhere far off, a high-pitched cry of SCREEEE came to it.
And the instant it heard that sound, the spider tensed on instinct and its whole body went rigid.
It did not know the reason. The spider did not know why it was so afraid.
In truth, the cause was hardly important. The spider simply pulled itself together as fast as it could and tried to get as far as it could from where the hawk's cry had come.
So, wandering the forest this way and that in search of prey, the spider caught and ate many beasts and insects.
Though its life on the safe, comfortable web was over, it was rather within this discomfort that the spider's cognition began to grow clearer, little by little yet steadily.
At times it met a small beast and ate it.
And at other times it sensed the presence of a monster so enormous it could not be approached, and hid.
Living in that fashion, whenever the hawk's cry of SCREEEE suddenly rang out from the sky it would tremble and hide itself away in a dark corner, and so it passed the years.
Then, at some point, the spider once again felt something pulsing inside it.
And this time, the opposite of the last molt, it hid itself not at the top of a tree but in a hollow beneath a large rock, and wrapped its body in silk.
Then, when several days had passed and the spider shed its husk and molted again, it did not grow in bulk as it had before. If anything, in terms of size alone, it even felt slightly smaller than before.
Instead, its black body darkened further to an ink-black hue, growing better suited to hiding in the dark, and the silver thread it spewed grew finer yet tougher and firmer.
Even so, whenever the hawk's cry was heard it still only scrambled about desperately for a place to hide, so perhaps this change in the spider had come about precisely to make it better suited to hiding from the hawk's eyes.
***
In any case, having passed through two molts, the spider's powers of cognition had also grown stronger.
Perhaps that was why?
Unlike before, the spider now seemed able, little by little, to tell delicious prey from prey that was not.
Prey was not delicious simply because it was large of bulk, strong in life force, and mighty in strength.
Even if it was no more than a tiny insect, if it harbored 'something' within its body, there was a deep flavor to it.
The seven-colored butterflies from before, the red mantis with its head severed off, the utterly exhausted golden honeybee, and the mountain bird with three eyeballs were all like that.
And it had the hunch that the same was probably true of the spider itself.
A special energy—cursed energy—a beast that harbored it within its body—that is, a cursed beast: at last the spider had understood the concept on its own.
Of course, it could fill its belly well enough by eating ordinary beasts that harbored no cursed energy, and on the basis of the fundamental life force dwelling in their bodies it could even grow, however faintly.
But by that route, proper growth was impossible even if it devoted its whole life to it; it amounted to nothing more than meaninglessly prolonging its existence by not starving to death.
And the spider knew that. So now, rather than indiscriminately devouring whatever beasts came into sight, the spider decided to hunt in a more efficient manner.
Cursed beasts are, by nature, rarer to see than ordinary beasts.
Unlike the common beasts, which do not even possess reason, cursed beasts possess a cognition of their own, and so they know how to be cautious.
If they sense an opponent whose cursed energy is stronger than their own, they hide their presence and flee.
Conversely, if they find a cursed beast weaker than themselves, they pounce on it — such was the behavioral pattern of cursed beasts.
Even the red mantis with its head severed off and the utterly exhausted golden honeybee that the spider had eaten long ago, back when its bulk was no more than fist-sized, would have eaten the spider instead, far from being eaten by it, had they been in sound condition. It was only that coincidence upon coincidence had brought such a lucky chance to the spider.
In any case, the core of it was simple.
Cursed beasts can sense cursed energy by instinct. In fact, that was also the reason the spider felt a deep flavor when it ate the flesh of a cursed beast.
In that case.
Might it not be possible to deliberately scatter thin cursed energy into its surroundings and lure other cursed beasts out?
Intuition flashes through the spider's head. Though no one had taught it, the spider began to draw thread from its rear, bit by bit.
Thread that shimmered silver with faint cursed energy dwelling in it.
It lays that thread loosely here and there around the area.
And the spider itself falls silent, hiding its own presence as much as it can. It hides in the darkness and waits for prey to appear. Its ink-black body melts into the shadows.
A short while later, a red mouse the size of a small puppy shows itself, its nostrils twitching. Squeaking, whiskers trembling, it finds the spider's thread draped over a nearby blade of grass and begins to gnaw at it.
That was the moment.
The spider, crouched in the dark shadows, sprang up in an instant and pounced on the red mouse.
Startled, the mouse squeaked frantically and soon kindled a small flame at the tip of its tail, but before that flame could swell large enough, the spider's venom-fangs sank into the nape of its neck.
SQUEEEK! SQUEAK! SQUEAK...!
The mouse's thrashing gradually weakens, then ceases. Once the mouse's movement had stopped completely, the spider drew out thread and wound it round and round the mouse's body.
A rich flavor could be felt from the mouse's body. Its bulk was not so great, but in terms of cursed energy alone, it was in no way inferior even compared to the spider itself.
In effect, it had been a cursed beast on par with itself. Had the ambush not succeeded, the spider would have had to wage a desperate, bloody fight.
But what of it? In the end, the mouse had taken the paralytic venom and lay rolled up in silk, with nothing left but to have its fluids sucked dry.
In the end, the spider's intuition had been proven right.