"Long time no see."
When Asakura leisurely returned to the Service Club activity room, the four Yanami shouted in 400% synchronization, "You're too slow—!"
"If you had delayed any longer, the first class would have already started."
Yukinoshita Yukino rested her cheek on one hand, flipping through the paperback book on the table, not even looking at Asakura. She spoke with an air of detachment, "Although the teachers usually don't say anything if I don't go to class, it might be a problem if Yuigahama Yui and Yanami skip class."
"Even though Yukino is criticizing Takkun, why do I feel like I've been hit…"
Yuigahama Yui muttered softly.
"What a coincidence—" Yanami Anna α showed a cheerful smile and gave her a thumbs-up, "I feel that way too!"
"No, you're just being passive-aggressively mocked, often."
Yanami Anna β said.
"Unintentional showing off can be even more damaging in some ways."
Yanami Anna γ agreed.
"Since it's come to this, why don't we have some snacks first?"
Yanami Anna Neo4Spro+ said.
"I say, isn't the last Yanami's codename a bit strange?"
Asakura complained, then looked at the pouting pink-haired girl huddled in the corner, "Anon, what's wrong with you? Why do you have that 'after experiencing a story that could almost fill a thirteen-episode TV anime, finally managing to pull a band on the brink of collapse back together, only to inexplicably have your spot stolen in the second season by some character who appeared out of nowhere with a 'I'm their original partner' look, almost losing the band' kind of defeated expression?"
"What kind of strange expression is that?! The modifier is too long, it's completely incomprehensible!"
Chihaya Anon shouted loudly, "Anon is just angry! I thought I was already a member of the Magic Club, but everyone made a group chat without me!"
"Huh, didn't I add you? I clearly remember adding Chihaya…"
Asakura took out his phone, looked at it, and then realized, "Ah, Asagumo was added twice, and there's also one of her alt accounts…"
"…"
Chihaya Anon said nothing, her cheeks puffed out with anger, displaying a small expression that screamed, 'I'm very unhappy, comfort me quickly.'
If she were a dog, she would probably be the type lying on the ground, ears drooping, looking dispirited, but with her tail still wagging incessantly.
"Amazing, amazing~"
So Asakura patted the girl's head.
"Don't just casually pat people's heads!"
"Huh, why did the favorability decrease? If this were a Gal game, shouldn't favorability increase at a time like this?"
"Don't use that kind of thing as a basis for judging a girl's mood, hey!"
After a few casual jokes, Asakura became serious. In fact, he didn't have much time to chat with the girls.
After instantly returning to Soubu High School via Great Blessing and arriving at the activity room door, before entering, he had already drunk the reward magic potion, the Felix Felicis, obtained from the previous mission.
Actually, before asking Aragaki Ayase for a kiss, Asakura had considered whether to drink the Felix Felicis first, as that would significantly increase the success rate.
However, considering the extremely small amount of the magic potion, he had little confidence in its duration.
After all, the part with the lowest success rate and requiring the most luck was still to come. In comparison, simply asking Aragaki Ayase for intimate contact, with some effort, there would always be a way.
And indeed, Asakura hadn't even reached the point of putting in effort when Aragaki Ayase directly gave in.
Although this made Asakura feel a subtle pressure, now was not the time to worry about such things.
"Don't worry, if I'm lucky… No, I will definitely get you to class meeting on time."
Asakura declared confidently, also cheering himself on.
"What do you want us to do?"
Yanami α, as the representative of the Yanamis, asked Asakura.
"Just sit nicely in a row."
Asakura said.
The Yanamis also seemed to become a little more serious, their expressions sobered, and they all sat down as instructed, looking somewhat aloof.
However, their seating arrangement gave Asakura a strange sense of déjà vu.
He felt as if he were to bring out a plate of snacks right now, the four of them would suddenly get excited, like foreigners seeing Link.
"You don't need to sit so formally; it's better to relax a bit."
Asakura said.
Upon hearing this, the Yanamis relaxed slightly, and their expressions were no longer as tense as before.
Asakura felt the girls' gazes, but at this moment, he had no leisure to pay attention to them.
"First, [Scale]."
Based on previous attempts to use [Candle] on Yanami, Asakura could clearly conclude that no 'supernatural power' existed in any of the Yanamis.
In other words, the girl's existence was 'normal.'
She was not duplicated by magic or similar supernatural entities, nor could it truly be mitosis or anything like that…
A natural supernatural phenomenon—this statement clearly contained a contradiction.
So, if every Yanami was normal, a Yanami who genuinely existed from the beginning, not a clone or an anomaly, then there could only be one answer.
They came here from 'different places.' In this way, all the Yanamis are normal girls, without any supernatural elements; what is supernatural is the reason they 'came here.'
Regarding this speculation, Asakura leaned towards the idea that the extra Yanamis came from parallel worlds or similar places.
However, such things didn't matter, because even knowing the girls' origins wouldn't help solve the current situation.
So what Asakura had to do was solve this problem from another angle.
And that was magic.
But existing magic spells could not directly eradicate the problem.
The only one that was somewhat related, [Mirror], also didn't have much effect.
For this, Asakura had been troubled and pondered for a long time, because he couldn't really turn all the extra Yanamis into Snakes, and given Yanami's proliferation speed, even if they did turn into Snakes, the Earth would probably be flooded with Snakes very quickly.
After much deliberation, Asakura suddenly had a flash of inspiration.
If existing magic spells were useless, then why not create a new magic spell from scratch specifically to solve this problem?
This idea was simply too absurd. After all, with Asakura's magic expertise, which was barely enough to fuse two existing magic spells into a composite magic, it was impossible to create magic from nothing.
Moreover, if this magic spell was imprinted on himself, Yanami would still proliferate, and the problem would not be solved at all. Therefore, Yanami should be the container for the magic, making the suppression of their proliferation a passive skill, similar to Asakura's own infrared vision and superhuman reflexes.
But Yanami herself had almost no magic power and could not become a Witch.
Problems piled up, and this method ultimately became an unsolvable deadlock, which should have been discarded in the trash.
However, the existence of the Felix Felicis provided a glimmer of hope for this impossible method.
Although he didn't know the principle, after using the Felix Felicis, it could indeed instantly boost previously elusive luck to its maximum value.
This even gave Asakura the illusion that 'I can do anything.'
Of course, he didn't get too carried away. After all, luck was just luck. The Felix Felicis could only turn something with a 0.6% success rate into a 99.4% success rate. If the original success rate was 0, then no matter how good the luck, it would still remain 0.
The success rate of creating a magic spell from scratch was 0.
After all, there are billions of people in the world, and counting all living people from ancient times to the present, there are hundreds of billions in total. Even if there were many zeros after the decimal point, theoretically someone should have created magic spells.
But the reality is that so far, only Asakura and the Witches he has discovered can use magic spells. Magic spells either come from the Nameless Magic Book or are inherent to the girls themselves, clearly having nothing to do with creation.
So, even with the help of the Felix Felicis, Asakura couldn't truly create a new magic spell out of thin air.
So, what if it wasn't 'out of thin air'?
To make an inappropriate analogy, it's like in the game "Minecraft." If the game world is completely empty and nothing exists, even if the player has all the blocks in their inventory, they can't conjure blocks out of thin air, because without blocks, new blocks can't be placed. But in such a situation, as long as there is an initial block as a base point, the player can use it as a starting point to continuously fill in new blocks, making the empty world rich and colorful. At that point, crafting wonders by hand wouldn't be difficult.
Similarly, the first thing Asakura needed to do was obtain a catalyst for creating magic, that is, the initial block.
There were no 'supernatural elements' in the Yanamis, which Asakura had already confirmed with [Candle], but this didn't mean they were truly identical.
From the fact that the girls' rock-paper-scissors games had varying winners, and sometimes a certain Yanami would say something shocking to the other Yanamis, it was clear that they were indeed different individuals.
And this was what Asakura wanted to obtain.
The 'differences' between the Yanamis.
He couldn't use the magic [Candle] because it might burn them away; he couldn't use the magic [Snake] because it lacked the ability to separate concepts from individuals.
Only the magic [Scale], which needed to attach to things, could easily target and itself possessed the characteristic of separation, capable of extracting the target from within a human body.
Asakura carefully controlled the magic.
The reaction of [Scale] was extremely faint; if one didn't sense it carefully, it would seem as if it hadn't activated successfully at all.
Under normal circumstances, Asakura would probably have found it difficult to detect this faint reaction, but now, under the enhancement of the Felix Felicis, he easily found the almost imperceptible 'differences' within the girls' bodies!
As the 'differences' were materialized by [Scale] into semi-transparent, scale-like particles even smaller than grains of rice, precipitating from the girls' bodies, Asakura finally breathed a sigh of relief.
—The first key to solving the problem, obtained!
☰