Kumo desu ga, Nani ka? Past Arc ⑯

A destined meeting.

Past Arc ⑯

For as long as the girl could remember, she had spent the whole time in the same room. A person seeing that room would probably think that it was a hospital room or a laboratory, or perhaps even both. In truth, that room was a hospital room while also being a laboratory. It was a room used as a laboratory to treat the girl who was an experimental subject, while also being a hospital room to nurse the girl as a patient. Managed as an experimental subject, and nursed because it would be bothersome if she died. Being treated that way, and having nothing done to her apart from that, was both normal for the girl and also the entirety of her existence.

She spent all of her days simply lying on the bed. Days of being experimented on, and being treated. Perhaps one small mercy was that the greatest mind in the world was raising her, and he had appropriate treatment applied to her. In addition, possibly out of consideration for her healthy development for use in experiments, he had prepared proper educational tools for her to look at and so on in order to foster her mental development. The room was equipped with a TV, prepared so that she could undertake remote learning. The girl who had lived her entire life without taking a step out of that room, was at least able to receive proper education for her age.

However, while that might be true, given her distorted environment, it’s a different matter as to whether her personality had developed properly. The girl generally lacked what were called emotions. Feeling nothing day in day out, simply passing the time in idleness. Simply being alive and nothing more. Thus, the girl was alive simply so that she could die someday. Although she was alive, being dead wouldn’t be any different.

And her death was only a matter of time. Her body was not normal. She was born from an artificially produced sperm and egg. She was created as a chimera, using human genes with genes from other lifeforms inserted. That was her true form and that body that was contrary to god’s providence suffered from defects, as if receiving divine punishment. The girl’s body possessed the ability to create poison, a characteristic trait of the creature whose genes were included – that creature being a spider. However, as she had an ability that humans did not have originally, naturally her body had no tolerance to poison. Her own body that was creating the poison was also being ruined because of it.

But that was not the only problem. The poison that the girl’s body was creating consumed an enormous amount of energy in the process, as it was not something that a human body could do originally. Not only that, but additional energy was required in order to resist the poison afflicting her body. Furthermore, her internal organs were weakened by the poison, and her ability to digest and absorb energy were also weakened. Hence, her body required several times more energy than that of a healthy adult. Despite consuming so much, the girl had a slim body. Despite all she consumed, that didn’t become nourishment for the girl’s body, but rather it became poison that continued to ruin her body instead. However, she wouldn’t be able to live at all without consuming so much. She was ruined from the moment she was born. It was a hard fact that she could die at any time.

Her daily existence was spent on a bed, unable to move about. That was the entirety of her world. An existence that was simply living until death arrived. An experimental subject that would merely leave behind some meagre results for her biological parent, Potimas. Until her life ended, her fate was to be one of never knowing any existence other than Potimas.

That destiny was overturned when Potimas joined the internationally wanted list.

For Potimas, joining the wanted list itself was a completely unforeseen event. However, he had been worried that maybe someday something like that could occur. Potimas was aware just how the world in general would respond to the research that he was conducting after all. He was aware, yet never once considered stopping. In addition, he was also vaguely aware that as he continued his research without stopping, that it had already gone beyond the point where it was possible to sweep it under the carpet. While Potimas was aware that he was superior to others, he was also aware that it wasn’t absolute. If it had been absolute, he would have achieved his objective long ago. Since he hadn’t done so, he knew that there were things he couldn’t do despite his superiority. Precisely because he was aware of that, he knew that it was impossible for everything to proceed according to plan. For that very reason, while it was unexpected, he didn’t become flustered due to joining the wanted list.

Potimas first gathered together all his essential research material, before going into hiding. He disposed of the available documents that would be unwise to let fall into the hands of others, leaving aside the documents that would be okay to fall into the hands of others. Included amongst the later were the people who had been treated like laboratory animals. Potimas had built hidden research laboratories all over the place, repeating cruel experiments on humans, but abandoned the subjects along with the facilities. Potimas anticipated that the police forces that were hunting him down could enter those places.

In the end, the girl was taken into protection. It had been several days since Potimas had disappeared. Since the girl practically couldn’t move from the bed, it was naturally impossible for her to drink and eat, and the intravenous drip that was providing her nutrients had been used up, so she was on the edge of the abyss between life and death. If the police had arrived only a little later, the girl would have lost her life. However, fortune favoured the girl, and she was transferred to a hospital. Her treatment was restarted there, drip-fed with nutrients, and somehow managed to pull through.

「Are you awake?」

When the girl opened her eyes, a woman was there. Apart from Potimas, she had only ever seen another person via the TV screen. In addition, because Potimas had never properly communicated with her, it was almost the first time in her life that anyone had begun a conversation with her.

「Nice to meet you. I am Sariel. What is your name?」
「Ah……riel?」
「Ariel? What a coincidence. That is just like my name.」

The girl had simply tried to murmur the woman’s name. However, with her weakened mouth, her pronunciation slipped, and the listener misunderstood. Everything was the result of chance. However, the girl who had never had a name, then gained a name at that moment. That girl whose fate had been only to live until she died thus encountered the Goddess.