Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? (LN) - Volume 14 - Chapter 2.1

L2 The Lord Who Was Once a Lab Rat

Infuriatingly enough, the man called Potimas Harrifenas has played an inextricable part in a large portion of my life.

From the moment of my birth to the present day, I’ve always been haunted by that man’s shadow.

The reason is simple, though I am especially loath to acknowledge it: He is my father, if only by blood.

Certainly he has never once treated me as a daughter.

It doesn’t matter now, and I have no way of confirming this anyway, but I suspect he never even recorded my birth in his family register or anything of the sort.

In other words, he refused to acknowledge me.

That goes without saying, since to him I was nothing more than a lab rat for his experiments.

My earliest memory is of lying in a bed in a laboratory, or something of the sort.

Obviously, I don’t remember the details at this point, but I know I was lying in that place for a very long time.

Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I had no other choice but to lie there.

I was bedridden day and night, without the ability to even sit up.

By the time I had any self-awareness, I was already in that condition.

Fortunately, I naturally picked up the ability to understand language, probably because the television was always on in that room.

Since Potimas generally chose educational programs for me to watch, I picked up a decent amount of knowledge without ever leaving my bed, too.

Although I’m sure that was just part of his experiment, to see if I would develop intelligence at a normal human rate.

Yes, it was all an experiment.

That is the reason I was born.

I never knew my mother.

In fact, I don’t know if I even had one.

Because I am not just an ordinary human.

I am a chimera, the subject Potimas was studying at the time.

A chimera is made when factors from different creatures are combined to create a new species. I am the result of one such experiment.

When I say Potimas is my father, I don’t mean that he impregnated my hypothetical mother, and she later gave birth to me.

I only mean that I am a chimera that was based on Potimas’s genes.

I still don’t know if I was born in a test tube, or if I really did have a mother. At this point, I have no way of finding out.

Though I suspect it is closer to the former. I assume my creation did not involve a mother’s womb.

Based on my physical makeup, I doubt any mother of mine would have survived carrying me to term.

It’s the same reason that I was forcibly confined to a bedridden lifestyle.

Namely: I am venomous.

I was evidently created using DNA from various creatures, with Potimas’s genes as a base, but it seems that the strongest influence of all came from the DNA of a spider.

My body has the ability to produce poison.

There was no way of knowing at the time that this came from the spider; my appearance was completely human, and I didn’t have any other spiderlike traits.

I only learned this much later, when the system was put into place, and many of my skills and titles were spider-related.

In those days, all I knew was that the poison was eating away at my body.

Yes, while my body produced poison, it unfortunately did not have the ability to process that poison.

Thus, my body was constantly being corroded by my own poison, making it impossible for me to live a normal life.

The only way my body could survive at all was to lie in bed and receive nutrients and poison-neutralizing medicine through a constant IV drip.

I wasn’t truly living. I was merely being kept alive.

And I was treated as nothing but a lab rat all the while, occasionally having blood samples taken and such.

Potimas doesn’t have a shred of emotion or empathy. Perhaps he would have eventually euthanized me once he finished collecting data from my body.

Fortunately, I was rescued by Lady Sariel before that happened.

In a rare moment for Potimas, he apparently made some kind of major blunder not long before I was rescued, and the resulting investigation spread worldwide.

Then other chimera children like me who were being used as lab rats were found all over the world, and Lady Sariel led the Sariella Foundation in taking them in.

Because many of the other chimera children had unusual circumstances like me, normal orphanages couldn’t take them in, and medical institutions had to be involved.

At first, society itself was also unsure how to handle chimeras like us, and so there were often fights over citizenship and such, too.

And some of the children had unique traits that could be dangerous, useful, or both, making the handling of chimeras a delicate matter.

Thus, out of all the interested parties, it was the Sariella Foundation that was chosen to handle the affair: a charitable organization that didn’t belong to any particular nation.

The Sariella Foundation had ties both to health care and orphanage administration, and because they had no regional affiliation, they could be completely neutral.

They certainly wouldn’t use the chimeras as living weapons.

It was the perfect organization to entrust with their care.

Some nations tried to keep useful-seeming chimeras for themselves, but since the president of the Foundation, Lady Sariel herself, always showed up on the scene in person, there were few instances of this succeeding.

Of course, it was only after the system was put in place that we discovered that there had been a few exceptions after all.

Even Lady Sariel and the Sariella Foundation couldn’t save all of them.

But even so, Lady Sariel gave it her all to save as many of us as she could, to take us all in.

Even chimeras like me, who were likely on the verge of death.

Both physically and mentally.

It may have ended in tragedy, but the fact remains that Lady Sariel gathered us up and saved us.

The chimera children lived together in a nameless orphanage.

They were my brothers and sisters.

And those days in the orphanage with them were by far the happiest times of my life.

Which is exactly why I can’t let Potimas get away with stealing that precious happiness.

I will destroy him with my own hands.

…No matter the cost.

“How pathetic.”

A deeply unpleasant voice echoes from some hidden speaker.

“Of course that was the best you could do. The only one I need to be cautious of is Güliedistodiez. Did you really think you could defeat me, when I have prepared myself for battle against nothing short of a god? That is why you will never be anything more than a pathetic little girl.”

Is it my imagination, or is he talking more than usual?

Perhaps I should be happy about that, at least.

“Still, we have known each other for so many years now. It would be rude to hold back against you in your final hour. I believe you have earned the right to be defeated by the full extent of my power. So I have deemed you worthy of using this Gloria Type Ω, which I created to fight Güliedistodiez.”

The voice over the speaker coolly gives an assessment I didn’t ask for.

Before my eyes, looking down upon me, is a mechanical weapon.

“What an emotional moment. Our long years together will finally come to an end, here and now. I can finally wipe the slate clean without a trace. Farewell to you, my greatest failure.”

Then the machine swings its sword down at me.