The book covers about 2 months in-world, as the group travel towards the capital of Sariera. Events follow on pretty much directly from the end of LN5: Ariel will go on towards the Demon territories afterwards and had told Sophia that she should decide what she wants to do by then (or at least, whether to follow Ariel or not). Kumoko and Ariel have come to a temporary truce but it’s closer to being a cold war where they both don’t exactly trust each other and would attack if it was worthwhile. In the Labyrinth, Kumoko’s 9 Parallel Wills are overseeing the “babies”, but Kumoko doesn’t trust them anymore (they were mentally influenced by eating “Mother”).

In a way, Kumoko is mostly playing around in this volume. She’s still working on her skills and levels but it’s hard for her to level outside the Labyrinth. The Parallel Wills have also spent some of her skill points (eg 10,000 on LV1 fire magic). Kumoko is also reflecting on her battle with Potimas and how Ariel beat him and is considering how she can do the same. The main idea she comes up with is to use weapons - specifically she rips off her own scythe-like forearms (then regenerates them back of course) and uses the now separate scythes as weapons.

Early on, Ariel started calling Kumoko “Shiro” and Kumoko doesn’t object so they all call her Shiro. The naming scene was very casual and Sophia thinks it was almost like naming a pet (eg a white cat could be called Shiro).

Vampire girl training has started and it’s specifically referred to as being “spartan”. If anything it’s worse than in the WN since Kumoko is using Appraisal-sama to push Sophia to the limit (ie stops just before Sophia’s HP runs out!). She’s also manipulating Sophia’s body with her threads to force her to do things - she hopes to get the puppeteer title. Although she does want Sophia to become stronger her attitude is more like that of someone playing a “rearing” game. Sophia and Mera aren’t happy about the rough treatment of course and since Kumoko still struggles massively to speak at all (referencing Kumoko’s first words with Ronant in the WN) it’s up to Ariel to explain things, generally.

Each time they get to a town, Kumoko has to stay outside (Ariel teases her about this) with just some Puppet Taratekts for company. Kumoko is quite lonely but has a meat feast party with the Puppet Taratekts anyway. Kumoko then starts having fun creating clothes for the Puppet Taratekts. Then more advanced clothes (and upgrades her own clothes a bit). Then fake skin, hair etc so that they almost look human - there’s some pics of them and they’re really cute. She considers if it’s possible to make vocal chords for them as well so that they could speak. Later on, she was about to give them names too when Ariel jumps in to name them herself.

Initially when Ariel came back from a town she would bring back food. It was so good that Kumoko cried. Eventually Ariel brings back a load of wine / alcohol. Ariel, Kumoko and Mera drink it while Sophia is asleep. No live baby eating here (there was no stir fried elves either). One thing that had been going on in the background is that Mera hadn’t really accepted being a vampire etc. After getting a bit drunk he starts complaining about losing everything but gets shot down hard by Kumoko (who can now speak properly due to being drunk). She points out how both she and Sophia has had it much worse than him. She also offers to give him a painless death if he can’t bear to live. He decides to live. (It doesn’t work so well in a summary but this was quite a nice scene). Afterwards Mera accepts what he is and has re-dedicated himself to Sophia. Ariel was surprised at Kumoko being able to talk properly, at being observant enough to have spotted what was going on with Mera and with being able to solve his problems.

There’s several chapters from Sophia’s POV (start of the Blood series) but they don’t start from her reincarnation but within LN6, though the important things about her life on Earth and some of her situation here are still recounted. Naturally her jealousy towards Kumoko is still here, but not as strong. She does feel somewhat pleased (as a sort of revenge) that Kumoko is stuck with being half-spider but isn’t able to enjoy it as she’s being abused by Kumoko so much, and is also jealous because Kumoko is so strong and has so many skills etc. Because Kumoko almost never explains anything, Sophia’s very frustrated by the situation.

Things somewhat come to a head when Kumoko tries to make Sophia shoot attack magic at herself, even demonstrating on herself. Kumoko looks completely relaxed while doing this, to the extent that Sophia unintentionally touches the attacks going on around Kumoko’s body and her arm is blown off (regenerated by magic of course). Later when the others are asleep Sophia talks to Ariel. Sophia eventually confesses to her jealousy towards Kumoko (mostly from her past life but also here) and Ariel responds by saying that Sophia is being foolish - she’s only thinking about herself and not considering the situation others are in. Also that she’s not even showing any gratitude towards the person who saved her life purely out of goodwill. Ariel paints a rough picture of just how bad a situation Kumoko was in - ie it was bad enough that shooting yourself with attack magic was a means to help you survive. Again it doesn’t work so nicely in summary form but Sophia basically realises the error of her ways and resolves to be better in future (and generally accepts Kumoko’s training).

While all this is going on, our “heroine” Ronant has taken one apprentice (Aurel, who we see in the great war in the WN) and eventually goes back into the Labyrinth by himself. Where all of Kumoko’s babies are and the Parallel Wills. Ronant can tell from the 9 Parallel Will spiders that they’re related to Kumoko and asks to be an apprentice. Essentially he gets ignored as in the WN because he’s too freaky. He ends up burning off his own clothes when trying to imitate the hellish magic practice the spiders are doing. So yeah, he’s running around naked with spiders for most of the book. At some point the spiders do a group transfer to the lower level to start proper hunting and later on kill the 3 Earth Dragons that Kumoko used for Arachne testing in the WN (Ronant gets dragon slayer title because he helped a bit but is depressed because the spiders showed such great skill). There’s a clutch of dragon eggs nearby but Gyurie steps in to protect them. Ronant and Gyurie talk for a bit but even Gyurie is a bit freaked out by this magic obsessed naked old man. Because of Gyurie turning up the Parallel Will spider group decides to leave the Labyrinth and carry out their plan to wipe out humanity. Ronant had been left behind and leaves the Labyrinth separately. When he sees what the spiders are up to he resolves to face them and ends up saving the young Hero (Julius) who becomes his apprentice. I don’t think he’s seen Kumoko is Arachne form at all. On a side note, Ronant’s original reason for becoming strong (which he eventually remembered) is that he was friends with the now ex emperor of the Empire (the sword god guy that Wrath kills) and had wanted to fight together.

The spider situation is mostly resolved by Kumoko though - Gyurie comes to demand that she fix the situation. Kumoko doesn’t want to be killed by Gyurie and Gyurie doesn’t want to be killed by D for interfering with Kumoko. So Kumoko vs her 9 Parallel Wills is the main fight of the book. There’s not much negotiation between these two groups - they want to kill the humans because they absorbed Ariel’s hatred towards them during their attacks on Mother’s soul. Despite Kumoko taking them by surprise and using her new weapons, Kumoko is struggling until she realises she can simply turn off her skills (like Alaba did) and that stops the skills working for all the Parallel Wills (they can’t override it, though Kumoko also can’t turn of the Parallel Will skill itself). So long story short she kills the bodies the Parallel Wills were in and they mentally return to her (complaining a lot).

In the end, Kumoko, Gyurie and Ariel have a drinking party (Mera was accidentally knocked out by a drunk Kumoko early on). Gyurie starts to understand Kumoko better and actually starts comparing her personality to D, when suddenly a smartphone turns up, warns Gyurie not to say more then disappears as soon as it appeared. While drunk, Kumoko thinks about how Ariel and Gyurie seem to have pride while working for others and wonders if she can learn from them - only to forget about everything the next day.

One major sub-story is that Ariel, Mera and Sophia meet Dustin in a town and they have a long conversation. Dustin wants to be sure that Ariel doesn’t intend to side with the country of Sariera (because he wants to crush their religion), wants Ariel to hand over her “subordinate” Nightmare of the Labyrinth for the damage she caused and wants to exchange info. Ariel makes it clear she’s not staying and is returning to the demon territories and even tells Dustin that she’s the Demon King now. She won’t hand over Kumoko because she’s not Ariel’s subordinate. They discuss Potimas, the reincarnators (Dustin used Sophia to confirm that they have their past life memories and wonders if it’s a “bug” in the System) and the System in general. It’s also confirmed that Dustin can keep his memories when he dies due to the Diligence skill. Later on Ariel thinks about how Dustin is sort-of immortal in one way, Potimas is sort-of immortal in another way and realises how Kumoko has achieved her real immortality. But this just makes Ariel depressed since she now knows it’s impossible for her to kill Kumoko and decides that true reconciliation with Kumoko is the best solution, even though that means she won’t be able to get revenge for the Queen Taratekt etc. During this time it also comes out why Ariel had pushed a name (“Shiro”) onto Kumoko - because if you name someone within the System you get a mental advantage over them (a bit like Kin Domination) but it didn’t affect Kumoko at all. This is also why Ariel jumped in to stop Kumoko from naming the Puppet Tarateks. (Btw, I’ve been using “Kumoko” here despite nearly everyone calling her Shiro because she’s still within the System)

In the end, they reach the capital but Sophia has already decided to stay with Ariel. She also somewhat forcibly orders Mera to follow (which he is happy to do) and Ariel wonders if Sophia has yandere tendencies.

So there’s lots of things that have echos to the WN but aren’t quite the same. The overall storytelling is more progressive as well - Sophia and Mera are developed more smoothly than in the WN and a number of decisions that they make are covered properly instead of being glossed over. For Kumoko and Ariel, there’s no “big” scenes between them but basically Kumoko is happy to get food and drink and Ariel gives up on thinking about fighting Kumoko. Dustin also got a lot development that we didn’t get until the secret conference arcs late in the WN. And wow is Ronant crazy :p