A long, truly long acquaintance she'd been.
In all my long years, she ranked alongside Guliedistodiez and
And yet, even such a long acquaintance could end in the blink of an eye.
Ariel probably didn't even know why she'd collapsed.
No — she'd likely already lost consciousness altogether.
If that was the case, then dying in her sleep was, in a sense, an ideal way to go.
Just as I'd declared beforehand, I could kill her without causing any suffering.
That was my way of showing respect to a long-standing nemesis.
Hmm, that won't do.
Here I was, getting sentimental like never before.
That only went to show how large an existence Ariel had grown to be in my heart.
You never could tell.
A being I'd once considered a worthless failed experiment — who could have guessed she'd grow to the point of opposing me?
Thinking about it that way, among all the discarded junk I'd cast aside over the years, perhaps there had been a diamond in the rough or two hidden in the lot.
Of course, that would be nothing short of a miracle — like panning for gold dust among mountains of garbage.
If I had that kind of time to spare, it would be far more productive to dig for a gold mine somewhere else entirely.
Ariel was that miracle — a piece of trash that had transmuted into a gold nugget. One of a kind.
That was precisely why she was both endearing and irksome.
If even one thing had been different — just one — she might have remained at my side.
She might never have taken up with that absurd goddess, and instead served as my right hand, wielding her considerable talents on my behalf.
If that were the case, I wouldn't have called her a failed experiment or some little girl. I'd have treated her like a real daughter.
The thought made my blood boil for no good reason.
I understood that entertaining hypotheticals was meaningless, and yet I still felt that way. That was how much of a waste I believed it to be.
But in reality, we were enemies, and there she lay, crumpled on the ground.
The reason Ariel had collapsed was a coma induced by poison.
Not one of the System's counterfeit toxins — a chemical poison.
If the poison came from the System, it could be counteracted by the System's resistances.
But that only applied to toxins the System itself had generated. It did nothing to grant actual resistance to genuine poisons.
What an absurd self-serving racket that was.
Attack with magic under the guise of poison, then have them endure it under the guise of Poison Resistance.
And in doing so, generate the energy known as Skills.
Ariel had lived within the System for years.
Because of that, she'd come to believe that poison simply didn't work on her.
Natural poisons were stripped away by the System, and all that remained were the counterfeit toxins it had manufactured.
It was hardly surprising she'd come to believe such a thing.
Really, the System was the height of injustice.
It twisted every natural law, altered the very nature of the world, and then forced the creatures living in it to supply it with energy.
Time and again, I'd tried to create a poison the System couldn't erase, and time and again, I'd failed.
The fact that it felt as though I'd been defeated by the System gnawed at me — a nostalgic grievance now.
Such was the System, an embodiment of pure irrationality — and yet it was not without its flaws.
Ariel, poisoned and unconscious, was proof of that.
The name of the toxin driving Ariel to the brink of death: carbon dioxide.
When you thought about it, it was obvious. The word "poison" covered a vast array of substances.
Among them, some were poisonous and yet indispensable to the world.
The foremost example was carbon dioxide.
Not just humans — most living organisms absorbed oxygen and exhaled carbon dioxide.
And carbon dioxide was absorbed by plants, which in turn released oxygen.
Not even the System could overturn this cycle.
Therefore, carbon dioxide could never vanish from the world.
And carbon dioxide, in sufficient concentrations, made for a perfectly effective poison.
The rest was simple.
Flood an enclosed space with massive quantities of carbon dioxide.
As the concentration rose, respiratory failure would set in, consciousness would cloud, and death would follow.
Even with the System's blessings granting power beyond the natural order, the body remained a living organism.
And as long as one was an organism, one could not escape nature's laws.
The System and similar divine powers appeared to disregard those laws, but in truth, they were never entirely outside them.
They only seemed to exist beyond the rules — in reality, certain constraints still applied.
They appeared to be able to do anything, but that was merely the embodiment of miracles achieved through equivalent exchange, consuming enormous amounts of energy. Without sufficient energy to execute, manifestation was impossible.
Moreover, even with energy available, one had to understand the process required to carry it out.
Magic was not the art of creating something from nothing.
It was only a hypothesis, but I believed that what I called energy was likely a stage preceding atoms.
Matter changed states — solid, liquid, gas — so it was hardly surprising that a stage preceding atoms, and by extension matter, might exist.
That was energy.
Magic was the art of manipulating that energy, converting it into matter through interference.
If that was the case, then converting energy into oxygen — or conversely, reducing carbon dioxide back into energy — was theoretically possible.
So the fact that Ariel had dodged Gloria's attack by a hair's breadth and risen despite the carbon dioxide she should have been contaminated with was not at all strange.
I see.
It seemed she actually knew the process required to overcome this situation.
Even with energy at her disposal, without the knowledge to manipulate it, the miracle of magic could not be performed.
If Ariel drew on her internal energy, it was not impossible for her to treat carbon dioxide poisoning on her own and continue fighting.
If she knew how.
And Ariel did know.
That was why she'd been able to stand.
What a tremendous, utter waste.
To have that much power, to have that much knowledge, and yet to have to crush it all — how regrettable.
I'd give her credit for standing up.
However, the magic-disruption barrier hadn't vanished, nor had the indoor carbon dioxide concentration dropped.
Ariel had to fight Gloria within that environment.
The miracles wrought by magic required energy.
Without sufficient energy, they could not be executed.
In that case, how long could Ariel hold out?
She'd have to activate body reinforcement internally to counter the magic-disruption barrier, continuously treat the carbon dioxide poisoning, and fight Gloria on top of all that.
This was the answer I'd arrived at when designing my countermeasure against Guliedistodiez.
A god was simply a living being with energy reserves on a completely different scale.
And as long as one was a living being, one could not escape nature's laws.
Not even if one housed an enormous quantity of energy within their body.
Even if they wielded miracle-like techniques — as long as those techniques were backed by energy, all one had to do was exhaust that energy.
The stage was set.
The Gloria Type Ω was ready.
The Gloria Type Ω — specialized for prolonged combat.
An indestructible machine capable of fighting for an entire day, an entire week, or an entire month without stopping.
Once I'd dealt with the outside, I'd keep her company for as long as it took.
Ariel — until the day you die.