The Dark Rebirth of Pandora: Revenge of the Abyss

Chapter 488: Successful Chaotic and Cute Escape

I dart skillfully through the tunnels as I feel all the hundreds of copies causing chaos. My copies arenʼt very smart; they have a mind, but their focus is solely on causing mayhem and not exactly on escaping.

And that helps, because the more chaotic they are, the easier it is to distract the enemy from me. As Iʼm running around searching for the exit, I remember most of the tunnels from the spider girlsʼ conversations and the vibrations of the webs I was trapped in.

ʼFound it.ʼ I see an exit that ArakʼTess doesnʼt know exists. This is an exit her younger daughters used to sneak out of home and return in secret. They stopped doing it but forgot to seal it again.

”Stack!” I give the order as eight little Pandorins climb on top of one another. I climb onto them and slip into the exit tunnel. I also turn small when I use this ability, so Iʼm forced to just flee.

ʼThis ability is pretty bad in a fight...ʼ I lose my general magical capacity, which gets pretty bad. It means attacking with this current body is much more difficult, although all the other bodies have the Devourer passive, so their bites are insanely strong like mine.

”Got you!” A spider girl suddenly grabs me from outside. All the other little ones who escaped with me through the hole stare at her while I stare too. She doesnʼt know Iʼm the real one.

”Iʼll take you all to...” Before she can finish speaking, all the Pandorins jump on her and start tearing her apart, killing her before she can even scream in pain.

ʼYes, this ability is definitely convenient.ʼ I keep running while seven Pandorins follow me, but one of them stays behind eating the body.

ʼTsk, they donʼt obey properly... at least theyʼre cute so they donʼt seem dangerous.ʼ Thatʼs a downside. Theyʼre so chaotic they donʼt obey my orders 100%. Well, at least they donʼt attack me, and theyʼre good at escaping, so they serve their purpose well.

ʼI wanted to have killed ArakʼTess... but itʼs not worth wasting time.ʼ In these past years, ArakʼTess managed to reach level 15 million, and with her over 97,000 ”helpers,” fighting her would be impossible.

I am stronger, but itʼs impossible to kill 97,000 enemies with levels varying from 150,000 to 15 million.

So I just cowardly run away. Thatʼs what I have to do—flee to live another day away from a place that treats me like an incubator and a milk cow.

ʼDamn, itʼs so humiliating to have to run... how many times have I run away in my life?ʼ It was few, very few, and usually it was a flight done alone by my body, like the first time I met Mikael and my body ran away from him on its own.

But now itʼs a fully rational choice of my own, and thatʼs more humiliating, because I myself decided that I have to run. Besides, no Pandora answered me in these 400 years of waiting.

ʼHaa...ʼ I run through the forest, seeing that things have changed quite a bit around here, but I shouldnʼt stay near this place. So I keep running as fast as I can. Iʼll get as far away as possible from this spider girl colony and then undo the ability for these copies.

For now, Iʼll let the rest of the copies cause chaos in the colony and distract my enemies. Besides, I doubt ArakʼTess will come after me. Itʼs true that I am the most useful resource of all, but now ArakʼTess is not alone.

She has already completed her ”goal,” which was to have children who survive, and not just that, she even built an underground city. In other words, she has no room to leave there. She needs to stay there and take care of the place and her children, even without me.

Just like an animal, she canʼt expend effort and resources looking for a lost resource, so as long as I leave her area of reach, sheʼll be forced to give up on me.

Thatʼs why I run as fast as I can, determined to ignore the city, the area, and even food. ArakʼTessʼs poison hasnʼt worked on me for a long time. It took a while, but I now have complete adaptation to any poison she could make, so I just waited for this chance to escape.

And as I run, I think about what happened. It was humiliating, but from the humiliation I gained some useful knowledge, and the most useful of all was: I donʼt need to kill beings to increase my level.

Just as Shogo can increase his level through girlsʼ bodily fluids, I can increase my level without doing anything as long as my body is in a situation where itʼs forced to adapt and grow stronger.

And the process of gaining levels this way seems to depend on the risk Iʼm in at the moment, and the reason I need that strength. If I were on the verge of death and needed strength to kill something,

my level would probably explode all at once to something high in exchange for extreme exhaustion. However, if the situation is one where I wonʼt die and I need to escape, the gain is smaller.

And this explains why 10,000 years with Delphina only gave me an extra 650,000 levels, while 400 years with the spider girl gave me over 10 million extra levels.

Along with the interesting discovery of skill awakening, gaining skills and passives isnʼt easy. Unlike magic, which you can easily gain new ones by learning, skills and passives take longer.

I myself only have 16 active skills and 20 passive skills, while in magic I already have over 50 of them, showing the huge difference. Besides, strangely, this chaotic copies ability is a passive, not an active one.

ʼKind of weird, but okay...ʼ I really try to weigh if itʼs worth spending so many years to gain some skill/passive along with levels. Iʼm not sure, because I donʼt know how much time has passed outside the abyss.

”Wait... each copy has exactly 100% of my strength... even though they lose size, and lose the ability to use large magics or complex spells, they still carry exactly the same amount of magic and even the passives I have...” I murmur with a racing heart.

Isnʼt this stronger than Sakuraʼs unique clone creation skill? Sakuraʼs clones had much less of the originalʼs strength, and although she could create infinite copies, the copies were generally just meat shields instead of being really useful for fighting.

ʼThis Passive Skill rivals a unique skill granted by a goddess...ʼ Itʼs a pretty big difference, and itʼs MUCH stronger than I initially expected.

Even though I canʼt create infinite copies, each copy alone with its bites can devour anything because of the Devourer passive, and the Devourer passive is what matters most since it ignores beingsʼ resistance.

ʼHmmm, itʼs a high-risk, high-reward gamble...ʼ Itʼs not worth letting myself get captured, but if I am captured and the specific being decides itʼs worth keeping me alive, then maybe it would be good to wait until a new skill appears.

”Great, then Iʼll do it like this...” Iʼll fight tooth and nail to survive and avoid being captured, but if some monster stronger than me captures me, Iʼll just wait to escape when a new strong skill appears.

...

...

...

”Damn it!! Where is she?” I ask while my daughters have gathered several of these copies. Iʼve already sealed all the exits, and now theyʼre trying to gather all these copies while we struggle to tie them up.

ʼHow did she get so strong?ʼ I look at the many tiny Pandoraʼs. Theyʼd be cute if they werenʼt destroying everything in their path. They laugh while talking among themselves as if itʼs something fun and not me capturing them.

”Mommy ArakʼTess, what do we do with them?” one of the daughters asks while I watch them try to figure out which one is Pandora, but they all look the same and act the same.

ʼCanʼt use her like this...ʼ Sheʼs too small to carry eggs at this size, and I donʼt even know if milk can be taken from this tiny thing. Besides, I canʼt kill these little things trying to find the real Pandora, or I might end up killing the wrong Pandora.

”Hey, you little pest, whereʼs your leader?” my daughter asked, poking one of the tiny Pandoraʼs cheek. She looks at my daughter and bites her finger off.

”K-Kyaa!! M-Mom, she attacked me!!” she says to me while I smack my hand to my forehead.

ʼIdiot... this is what happens from having so much food without effort...ʼ They ate Pandoraʼs milk until they were old enough to go hunting, so they didnʼt learn well how to deal with danger. And since there are many of them and theyʼre always helping each other, their sense of danger dropped even more.

”...” I look at my legs. The leg I lost is a problem. I donʼt have great regenerative power like other beings have; I rely more on the defense of my natural armor.

ʼI need to molt my carapace...ʼ My carapace is already old, and with this lost limb, the only solution is to molt my carapace to recover and get a more resistant one.

ʼIf Pandora managed to escape... I wonʼt be able to recover her.ʼ I crouch down, looking at these useless little things in front of me. Having these cute but useless things wonʼt help at all.

”Kill them, and give the bodies to the younger hatchlings to eat. Only stop if you find the real Pandora.” I give the order I didnʼt want to give. If one of them is the original Pandora, sheʼll try to revert to her true form, and if none is Pandora, then it means weʼve lost our source of hatchlings.

ʼWell... I guess it was good while it lasted...ʼ I was lucky to have caught her and used her as much as I did. I think I have about 300 more years of life before I reach my limit and self-destruct.

”...” I start to leave while my daughters begin killing these little pests that caused so much damage. I put my hand on my neck, feeling the piece I lost to a bite.

ʼI need to start molting soon or I might really have problems...ʼ I look for my ”room,” which is the second safest place in this colony, so I can molt my carapace.

”I hope to see Pandora again someday so I can capture her...” It was good while it lasted.