The creature didn’t thirst for blood. It was completely harmless and actually quite cute. It must have registered him as his parent and now was following him everywhere; a welcome company.

It wasn’t too intelligent. He tried a few things with it but it didn’t want to play fetch or tug of war or anything. The tricks? What tricks can you teach a spider? Well, it knew how to ask for food then it was hungry. All in all, It seemed to be content at watching him doing his chores.

It was refreshing. The blue tomato-jelly-grape plant definitely was a life changer but the spider thing was even more so. “And, I am not alone anymore.” The days were ever so brighter.

He knew the importance of remaining positive, or else The Dreaded Place will get to you!

…

Okay, the creature was more useful than he thought. It could learn things!

One day out of the blue, it began harvesting the fruit and bringing it to storage on its own. He didn’t tell him to do that, it just did. It even stuffed it in the sacks.

“What a good helper you are!” He patted the creature but it didn’t really respond to the praise. It was very emotionless, very much like an insect would be.

He sighed at the lack of response. “Ahh. Well, at least you are intelligent. Teaching a dog this would take a while.” The best part was that the little helper didn’t tire or get bored doing this dull task.

…

Okay, the shed was full of fruit. More fruit than one man and a hatchling would need. It was a waste to throw them away, so he built another building to store them.

The best part was that the hatchling was managing fine on its own. Actually, he didn’t need to harvest the fruit anymore, the creature had it sorted. With more time on his hands, he dedicated himself to building and sprucing up the place.

He ran out of sacks to store the fruit. Did he even need to store them in the sacks? Not really, but it was neater this way. He used his time to process plant fibre. He kinda wanted something better than leaf gear. It made him look like … he dreaded it – like an elf. “I rather look like a peasant than an elf!”

So he did something that he should have done from the start. He used the cloth for his next project.

[You have crafted cloth pants of poor quality. Crafting +1exp.]

[You have crafted cloth shirt of poor quality. Crafting +1exp.]

“Yes! A new fashion range. Woo-hoo, yipy-ka-ya-yo!”

He inspected the rough creations.

[Cloth Shirt: -2 fashion.]

Somehow the fashion penalty got worse, but at least the Elf rep boost was gone.

“An improvement!”

A sudden message appeared.

[Farming +120exp].

“What? But I didn’t do anything.”

The message was mysterious. He went to check on the garden. It was in the usual pristine condition. The creature tended to it like an expert gardener. Harvesting the fruit, pruning the vines and all that. Nothing was out of the ordinary.

“Maybe I’ve got the reward for maintaining it for so long?” But then there was the fact that it wasn’t him; the hatchling was doing all the work. “Speaking of which…” His pet was missing so he went to investigate.

He found the hatchling in the new storehouse. “Oh, noes!” It didn’t look too good. The creature was on its back with its legs all curled up. A telltale sign of death. Beside it was a clutch of a dozen of eggs. He didn’t know if to cry or celebrate.

Evidently, his beloved pet perished all too early. He was already quite attached to the little helper. But the good news was there will be more of it.

“An asexual reproduction. Are they clones then?” He speculated. It was truly a magical creature.

…

This time the eggs hatched much more quickly and the whole shebang went the same. The hatchlings followed him like ducklings would their mother, observing every task. Having helpers was welcome, but he didn’t need all twelve of them in the garden.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

On a side note, he had some bad thoughts. Sinful ideas. Wonders and musings. “Should I eat one?” He hadn’t eaten meat for… ever since he was reborn. It was tempting. But in the end, he resisted. The constant staring by the hatchlings didn’t play in making the decision; the four big eyes and cute incomprehensible chirps didn’t affect him. Not at all.

This decision not to was the right one. Unbeknownst to himself, while doing his chores he came to a revelation - harvesting the magical plant wasn’t the only trick the hatchlings were capable of.

One day some of them began gathering the plants for fibre, and then even extracting the strands of said fibre. Actually, they divided the labour. Some were doing this while others were doing that. It seemed that they liked to specialise and then stick to the task.

Then he reached another realisation. “Is this automation!” Well, not really, but close. “I am a king of spiders!” Technically no, those weren’t spiders, but that didn’t stop for the delusion to take place.

He imagined himself as the hive queen, ups, a king. His little helpers did his bidding and his kingdom prospered.

…

It was boring again. He had nothing to do. The hatchlings did all the work.

“First-world problems, eh?”

He used the time to chart the territory around. In the end, he managed about ten thousand steps in each direction. Unfortunately, the map was a failure. There were just no discernable features. No hills, no rivers. Nothing. Just an endless eerily silent jungle. That didn’t stop him from creating landmarks of his own. A few marks here and there, just in case he loses his way.

After getting a rough feeling of his immediate surroundings he took a following important task. Anyone living on the land had to get accustomed to the local plants so he began documenting them in his head.

There were odd trees. There was a kind he could chop and the kind his stone axe couldn’t even chip. The former was more common. One particular tree looked just like a tree would but was hollow from the inside, almost like bamboo, but it wasn’t bamboo. It was soft and easy to cut, in other words, an ideal building material with limited tools.

The most numerous were various vines, bushed and leafy plants. At first glance, they had no useful properties. A few notables were a pinnable-agave-looking plant and then a huge stem with an equally huge leaf growing from it. Both had useful plant fibre.

The first one, seemingly looking out of place in this jungle earned the name of BanditAgave. Its fibres were thick and sturdy making it good for ropes and twines.

The second one was just named as StemLeaf. The stem had fine fibre strands which were suitable for making cloth for clothing. The big leaves were ideal for roofing.

He harvested the two kinds wherever he found them. It didn’t take long to harvest all of them in the area.

“I have to go further and further for them.” He made a reflection.

Then he had an idea. Instead of harvesting them like a primitive person he could attempt to farm it.

He cleared a large area by the vine patch and planted a few samplings of each in separate fields. While being planted each seedling glowed in a mysterious light for a short second giving him +2 exp each. Obviously, something was going and [Unnatural Selection] was a prime suspect.

…

The hollow tree, he named it the Impostor Tree, was put to good use as well. He used the unique feature to redirect some of the stream flow towards his shed. There he already had a hole waiting for the water. It was a small pool of sorts, well he called it a pool but it was just a hole lined with rocks and clay-like dirt.

The water was awfully cold. It didn’t make a pleasant bathing experience. However, the cold bath was allegedly healthy for your body and soul.

The spider creatures, which he still hadn’t officially named yet, had confused the pool with the watering hole. Ever so often they would come and drink from it. It was fine, but on more than one occasion it got him worried. He didn’t like them drinking from there then he was bathing. He worried that they might develop a taste for human-flavoured water.

Incidentally, even if it rained less than it should in the jungle, all of the plants didn’t need much watering. Which was odd, but welcome. It made sense since while digging the ‘pool’ he noticed that the ground was wet and muddy, retaining the water well. Almost like a swamp would be. Which made no sense. This was a jungle!

“Or was it?”

…

His magic tomato-jelly-grape plant was named as TomGrape. Yes, a truly original name. He was proud of it.

The new harvest was done. Which was the good news. The bad news was that after almost a month of hard work, all of the hatchlings had died. The good news- they all laid eggs. The bad news - there would be too many hatchlings. The good - he could finally embrace his delusions and become The Spider King.

Becoming the hatchling rancher sounded all good and such, but there was a problem – he found them quite scary. Who wouldn’t? They were cat-sized insects. Even now, he just couldn’t get comfortable with the way the creatures looked.

Oh also, if all the eggs hatch, there would be over a hundred of hatchlings to take care of.

“They kinda take care of themselves tho.” But still. A scary thought.

…

He had to look after TomGrape vines in the absence of hatchlings. The plant had naturally expanded and there was a lot of work to do. He came to realise how much the hatchlings were useful.

[Farming +1200exp]. A message told him he just earned a staggering amount of experience. This could mean only one thing. He ran to the building where he had relocated the eggs.

“Yes!” he celebrated. They all had hatched. Hundred of eyes were staring at him.

“Oh… No.” he celebrated too early.

A hundred of hatchlings followed his every move. Always watching. Always observing. Yellow eyes unblinking. Unnerving was an understatement. He made sure to feed them well. He couldn’t let them get hungry and get funny ideas.

“No animal would bite a feeding hand.” He reassured himself providing the slices of TomGrape. “Unless the hand is fed itself…”

In no time at all, some of the hatchlings took the job of caring for the TomGrape vines. But others refused to even touch the vines. The reason is quite obvious, they wanted something else to do. And they picked on other daily tasks he was otherwise busing himself as of yet.

Now, he had plenty of helpers to extract the fibre and put it to dry. The hatchlings pulped the soft parts of plants with their mandibles pulling the fibre in expert motion. Others even learned how to weave it into rope and cloth. Having no real thumbs or even fingers made the task awkward, yet still, they had found a way with other appendages.

It was astonishing to see how quickly were they able to adapt.

And once again he had nothing to do; It was becoming a pattern. Weeds of worry found a way into his mind. Even with full storage of TomGrape fruit, he worried about running out and not being able to feed his pets.

He also worried about the next generation. That would mean there would be a thousand of them in less than two months. A scary thought. He would either need to cull them or smash some of the eggs.

The yellow eyes were always watching. He brushed such unforgivable thoughts away before they can suspect him. He rather just expand the fields.