There were two major factors that doomed Jerry Keller from the very beginning.
No matter how hard he struggled, and no matter what sort of brilliant plan he had… he was always fated to fail.
One of the said factors was the constant and overwhelming expenditure of his Aether.
As someone with a limited pool of energy, it was in Jerry's best interest to minimize its use as much as possible. However, in such an extreme situation where he would lose if he didn't go all out, he had no choice but to constantly burn through his reserves.
The constant use of Aether was still bearable to an extent since he was using it to fuel his Spells which in turn defeated his opponents. It was an unavoidable cost if he wanted to make progress.
However, what made this a problem was the excess Aether he had to constantly burn in order to protect himself from Nether Poisoning and also prevent himself from being sucked into the Hive.
That was the problem!