@criver
These are major spoilers and part of what made the novel interesting were the revelations of what happened in the past, so read at your own risk. The plot is also way too long and complicated to explain in a concise way, and I read this a while ago, so my memories may be rusty. These are also mostly background information, with basically none of the plot so don't read this thinking this is what's going to happen later on.
In my mind, I split the story into 3 acts. Kumo will become an administrator/god at the end of the first act. In the second, she helps the demon lord wage a war, but we only have some vague reasons for why she is doing this, and in the third act, we learn what happened in the past and exactly how fucked up the world is. I believe there was an earlier chapter that was a war council for said war in the manga.
The following is what we will learn in act 3:
I believe in one of the earlier chapters, Kumo achieved taboo lv10 but the readers were never shown what happened until much later on. Achieving taboo lv10 will reveal all that's happened in the past and what you learned is that the world didn't have these game-like system nor these so called demons in the past. It was like a more advanced version of our world, except the big bad, who hasn't been shown yet, learned how to harness "life energy" (I forget the term but it's basically that) of the planet as a fuel source and published how to do so. Eventually the planet became unable to sustain life due to everyone using said energy, so concerned individuals, whom I won't spoil, asked D, who is a god of a higher order, for help. I don't know if she was the one responsible for civilization crashing down to the current level or something else caused it, but she is responsible for the game-like system as a means to regulated energy consumption and as a way to restore the planet. By the time Kumo got there, the restoration part is not going well so it became her job to fix the problem in exchange for leaving the world after it's done. Saving the world actually isn't the main problem, the main problem is that the system is sustained by another goddess who is too benevolent for her own well-being and is wasting away trying to keep things together, and Kumo hopes to save her at the behest of Kuro. The goddess isn't having any of it though, since saving her means sacrificing a lot of people, so she acts as an "antagonist" in that she tries to foil Kumo's attempts.
With all that said, I still don't know what D's motivations are for helping the world since she always brushes it off as her having fun. All we really know is that she made Kumo a god and offered to let Kumo leave the world if she resolves the issue of the world dying. Could there be more? Considering how detailed the world building is, it's possible, but even there aren't any reasons, she isn't really a protagonist in the story. The later acts focuses more on the demon lord and the other reincarnators who definitely has more depth to them (to varying degrees, but I think the demon lord and Shun are both quite well done).
This novel is like Frog Fractions. You go in think this will be some shitty isekai novel, but then the novel
starts throwing literal genocides and questions about morality at you like it's nothing.
if anyone wants to see the stories of her class-mates in manga form , you can only hope that the publisher youngaceup will ask some other artist to draw their stories as a spin-off manga
At the end of each manga volume there's Shun short stories. If you don't want or can't buy eng license, you can easily find torrents. Same for light novel, which is this manga based on and is quite different from it's web version. You need vol. 4.
for those so focused on the issue of D doing this purely for entertainment, I wont spoil but as someone said earlier, the entertainment is simply a bonus.
About 5 users said the same thing to me until now - then when I ask for details, it turns out everybody is just assuming there is a different motivation, but there's no such presented in the text. I'll ask anyways - is this an assumption of yours, or is this bonus motivation actually a plot point in the LN/WN?
The souls of the dead students and teacher were going to end up in isekai because of the crack in space. All D did was allow them to retain their memories.
@Huichelaar close, but that's not right. The reason why she is called an administrater is not because the world is a game, but because she manages the system which governs the souls of people living in that world. Which literally means she is a goddess. The reason why she calles herself an evil god is because she focuses on her interests first above all else, but Let me warn you, D is an incredibly hard to define being. She's both evil and good, and at the same time she is neither. Many readers think she is evil because she calls herself that. Try to judge her based on her future actions. By the way this is no spoiler, most of this info can be easily inferred from this chapter itself.
Last but not least:
"Supposedly this is something D can't do normally, sooo, why could D do this now? I've no hopes of that being clarified."
This is what makes this story so good, everything WILL be clarified, every info the story adds serves a purpose and to be developed when the need arises, that's how the author writes their story. If you read Bakuman, Okina Baba is the planner kind of author, the one who has most of the story already planned and only has to write the events that will lead to that story, which is kind of like how one of the MCs main rivals work. As opposed to the MCs who only knows how the current story will play out and always have to develop new stories that will guide to an ending they don't currently know
@BloodySorcerer I mean, sure if it does get clarified that's nice, it's just so oft that I have seen some small setup like this be left completely unexplained.
Also, isn't basically every person neither good nor bad/both good and bad?
Also, I really hope not every single skill that's been thrown at us will be important later, because who in their right mind would actually keep track of these?
@criver
Yeah, I realized I didn't actually know after thinking about it. I did find this one passage though.
Excerpt from Gyurie's reflection on the past:
I don’t know what D’s objective might be either. According to her it was because it seems interesting, and I am sure she truly feels that way, but I think that she might have other objectives apart from that. One of them, is probably some sort of experiment. I have heard about a thing called “kodoku” on Earth. This is the same. The System is an enormous “kodoku”. It is a device to make all living beings kill each other, in order to create even stronger beings. The final target would be, to create a god. Since the skills of the Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Virtues have “reaching the gods” in the explanatory note, that point is obvious. The System is probably an experimental device designed to artificially create a god.
I think we just don't know enough about her since she doesn't really interact with the story much, not even as a Deus Ex Machina. She's more a meta narrator/plot device to act as a motivator for Kumo's later actions.
@VermillionOcean
Fair enough. I would have enjoyed the story developing faster though (not only in terms of how many skills were acquired), and characters getting more fleshed out. Nevertheless, I should not forget that this is a wish fulfillment manga, so I should probably consider it accordingly.
@criver I didn't tag you in my last reply, so I'm not sure if you actually saw it but that's pretty much what I said about D's probable goal. On another note, you're right in the fact that D is a one-dimensional character, but that is not necessarily the bad thing you're making it out to be. Sometimes a simple but chaotic character is capable of causing sweeping changes and plot movements.
Keep in mind that D has only done one thing for Kumoko up to this point besides talking to her occasionally, and that is the creation of Wisdom, the rest of it was already in the System long before Kumoko joined it, so she's not necessarily giving her all these skills, Kumoko has 99% earned them all through her struggle with little intervention from D.
That being said, here's some background information on D.
D is the "God of the End" and she is also one of the oldest Gods. I know the manga has described her as rather whimsical, but her character is explicitly described as emotionless in the LN and WN. Her goal probably is the boring entertainment she says it is, but the results of that goal are the entire story, which is far from boring.
On a side note, more than 90% of the cast hasn't even been introduced yet, and D, while being a major antagonist, is still a minor character in the grand scheme. I can understand being disappointed with a one-dimensional character like D, but none of the rest of the cast are. I hope you'll be pleasantly surprised by the time we get to that point. The main cast are especially a treat.
@Huichelaar
Who would keep track of all these skills.... Other than me LOL. I'm the one who documented, organized, and put them into tables on the KumoDesu wiki. The entire System is made to look like a mess in purpose, but is entirely complete. I also take care of most of the Appraisal blocks for the characters and made the templates for them that you see on the character pages.
Most skills aren't on a need-to-know basis, but you can get a good idea of how strong something is or what kind of struggles they went through by the skills and titles they have.
@pska@Evilmambapower It's about halfway through Volume 4 of the LN, but I'd recommend starting from the beginning since there's a LOT that this manga skipped (those classmates that have only been brought up in this chapter have been doing things since Volume 1, and while they don't interact directly with the spider for a good while, it plays a role in the over-arching narrative) so you'll just be confused as to what's going on if you start at Vol 4.
@Huichelaar I suppose you coud see it that way. But personally, I do believe that people, while they can have both aspects to them, they are still inclined to one way or another. Some people does good things but they have clearly malicious intentions behind their actions, while others may do bad things but that's because they are realists that know that being "good" doesn't always solve the problem. So they commit dubious actions yes, but only because these actions are necessary to do proper good. I believe good end evil definitely exist, it's just that that's not all, people have way more things to them than just that. On D's case, I cannot see her actions as evil at all, she's definitely egocentric and is counter productive sometimes when she play pranks to have fun, but she always does the right thing as her actions are 100% functional and will solve the problems they were made to deal with. Were just just an egocentric evil goddess, she would interfere wit things on purpose to cause problems, but even her pranks have a purpose other than just having fun. You'll see that pretty soon.