Past Arc ①
A man shakes a test tube.
Inside, red liquid fills the tube, creating gentle waves within.
He draws up the liquid inside the test tube using a micropipette.
With practiced movements, he transfers small amounts of the liquid into another test tube.
Red liquid is added incrementally to test tubes containing reagent, each showing a reaction.
Watching the reactions, the man begins the next procedure.
His hands do not stop.
The place where the man is located resembles a laboratory or a sickroom.
Both functions are present, so either label is correct. But if one must define the room exclusively, it is a laboratory.
Because the one lying there is not a patient, but the man’s experimental subject, an experimental organism.
Male, Potimas Haifenas, directs a cold gaze toward the girl lying in bed.
What lies there is directed toward experimental subjects—no sentiment exists at all.
Even if she is his own daughter.
The reaction in the lined test tubes indicated no change from the previous day, despite the addition of the red liquid.
However, this does not indicate that the anomaly had ceased.
A small amount of toxin was detected in the red liquid.
From the blood of the girl lying in bed.
Potimas is not poisoning the girl.
The girl’s body is generating poison.
However, this function does not belong to the human body by nature. The poison generated for this purpose mixes into the bloodstream, resulting in self-erosion.
From birth, the girl has been afflicted by this poison, leaving her unable to rise from her bed except with difficulty.
Yet even if she were in perfect health, the answer to whether she could live a life like any other girl remains no.
Her father is Potimas. At the moment she is not a proper human, so living an ordinary life is impossible.
She is an experimental subject.
Even if genetically she is Potimas’s daughter, she was brought into existence through improper means and can only exist as an experimental subject.
Whether her body, eroded by poison, can endure indefinitely is uncertain.
She is a chimera.
A mad product of human and animal genes merged.
One of the few successful instances.
Born from an experiment that modified a fertilized egg to graft animal traits onto a human.
Externally, she appears human. Internally, she is distorted.
She has no name.
Only a designation, derived from the name of a blended spider species—called Taratekt.
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Potimas Hayfenas has always been different from the people around her.
She could not understand.
Why did people live so slowly?
People die.
It is an unavoidable fate. It comes equally to great men and wicked ones.
Potimas found it terrifying beyond measure.
She was constantly afraid of death. She thought of death constantly.
That was why it was incomprehensible—and unbelievable—that ordinary people never considered death.
Why were they not afraid?
Why did they not resist?
Potimas did not wish to die.
Since childhood, she had feared the moment that would come.
How could one avoid that inevitability?
She had pondered it since early on.
She explored every field of study.
To find a way out.
In conclusion, no scholarly discipline offered a method to avoid death.
As expected.
If such a method existed, people would not remain unaware.
Immortality was a dream shared by all, and because it was a dream, it remained unrealized.
Moreover, this dream belonged to the realm of fable.
It was impossible to achieve, and thus held the credibility of legend or myth—rarely taken seriously by those who sought it earnestly.
Yet Potimas did not abandon hope.
To give up meant waiting passively for death’s arrival.
That was unacceptable.
Thus, Potimas pursued the completion of immortality—seriously.
A scientific method grounded in cellular theory was developed.
At under ten years old, skipped grades to enter university.
By under twenty, published numerous discoveries, making their name known across the world.
Yet the core research yielded no results.
Potimas, feeling the limits of science, finally turned to forbidden studies.
Research into magic—into a field beyond human control.
There exist strange creatures in the world.
Their ecology remains largely mysterious. Human intellect has not yet fully deciphered them.
Among these beings, one stands apart—veiled in utter unknown. That creature is the dragon.
Dragons dwell only in remote, inaccessible mountains. They avoid contact with humanity.
To attempt contact recklessly is to touch their wrath.
Those who sought to unravel the dragon’s mysteries in the past all suffered severe consequences.
Thus, knowledge about dragons remains limited.
One thing is certain: they possess the ability to cause phenomena inexplicable by science.
People refer to this as magic.
Potimas focused on this fact.
Because dragons are long-lived.
According to legend, dragons live so long they are said to be immortal.
The study of their long-lived bodies.
And the unknown field of magic.
With such knowledge, the pursuit of eternal life could be completed.
Convinced of this, Potimas began research on dragons.
And this was precisely the prelude to ruin.