Past Arc XVI
From the moment she became aware, she had spent her entire life in the same room.
Anyone who entered that room might have seen it as a sickbay or a laboratory—or both.
Indeed, the room was both.
A laboratory for the handling of a test subject known as a girl, and a sickbay for a patient known as a girl.
She was managed as test subject, cared for because her death would be inconvenient.
This treatment, to her who had never known anything else, was ordinary. It was all she knew.
Each day, simply lying on the bed.
Days spent being experimented upon, treated.
The only fortune in misfortune was that she was cared for by the world’s greatest intellect, and received appropriate treatment.
Additionally, because the owner's experimental objective focused on whether the girl could grow healthily and without issue, she received proper education tailored to monitor her intellectual development.
A television was installed in the room, and the environment was equipped for remote instruction.
The girl received age-appropriate education consistently, despite never leaving the room.
Yet, even so, whether her mind had developed properly within this distorted environment remained uncertain.
The girl lacked anything resembling emotion.
She passed each day without feeling anything—merely existing in idle motion.
Simply alive.
Living only to die someday.
It was no different from being dead while still alive.
And her death was merely a matter of time.
Her body was not ordinary.
She had been artificially created through modified sperm and oocytes.
Chimera, born from human DNA augmented with genetic material from other species.
That was the girl’s true nature. Her body, forged in defiance of divine order, bore flaws as if punishment made flesh.
Her form inherited traits from the animal integrated within—spider-like characteristics—and gained the ability to produce venom.
Yet this function was not meant for human biology. Naturally, her body lacked resistance to its own toxin.
The poison consumed her from within.
Worse, the issue extended beyond mere toxicity.
The generation of poison, an unnatural process for a human, drained her body of vast amounts of energy.
Not merely that—her body, under assault by poison, required additional energy to resist the damage.
Furthermore, her internal organs weakened from the toxin, and digestion and absorption became impaired.
Thus, she required several times the food intake of a healthy adult.
Even so, her body continued to waste away.
Food consumed, again and again, accumulated no nutrition in the girl’s body. Instead, it turned toxic, eating away at her frame.
Yet without food, she could not survive.
The girl had been flawed from birth.
Death at any moment was not improbable. That was her reality.
Life confined to the bed.
A world complete within that space.
A being existing only to live, only to remain, until death.
A laboratory subject. Nothing more. A minor research result left behind for her biological father, Potimas.
A life known only to Potimas. A life lost without trace.
That fate changed when Potimas was placed on an international wanted list.
For Potimas, being wanted was entirely unforeseen.
Yet the possibility had always lingered.
Potimas was aware of how their research was perceived by the general public.
Awareness did not imply cessation.
They had also vaguely recognized that their research had surpassed the point at which concealment was possible.
Potimas acknowledged their own competence, but also recognized it was not absolute.
If it were absolute, the objective would have been achieved long ago.
Since it was not, even with competence, certain tasks remained unattainable.
Awareness of this ensured they expected deviations from the planned trajectory.
Thus, despite the unexpected nature of being placed on the wanted list, no urgency was felt.
First, Potimas gathered all necessary research materials and disappeared.
Documents that should not fall into human hands are retained or destroyed. Documents that may safely be handled by humans are left untouched.
Among them were people treated as experimental subjects.
Potimas had established hidden research facilities across the region, conducting cruel human experiments within them, but abandoned all of them— facilities and all.
Anticipating that law enforcement would soon enter the premises, following Potimas’s trail.
And the girl was protected.
A few days after Potimas vanished.
The girl, nearly unable to move from her bed, could not eat or drink naturally. The intravenous nutrient drip she was connected to ran dry. She wandered near death.
Had the police arrived even slightly later, the girl would have died.
Yet, by fortune, her life was preserved. She was urgently transported to a hospital.
She underwent treatment again, received nutrients via intravenous drip, and managed to stabilize.
“Did you wake up?”
When the girl opened her eyes, a single woman stood before her.
An unfamiliar figure, seen only through a screen until now—other than Potimas.
And since Potimas had never attempted direct communication with the girl, this was, for the first time, a situation in which dialogue was being initiated.
“Hello. I am Ariel. What is your name?”
“…Ariel?”
“Ariel? How curious. Such a similar name to mine.”
The girl merely whispered the name she had been told.
But the words, strained from a weakened throat, deviated from their original pronunciation—and were interpreted differently by the listener.
All of it was coincidence.
Yet the girl, who had never had a name, received one at that moment.
A girl destined only to live and then die—she met a goddess, thus.