Chapter 1: The Soul Multiplicity
The sharp scent of disinfectant filled his nose.
Kanzaki Ren slowly opened his eyes, greeted by a cold-toned ceiling and a blue-and-white striped hospital blanket draped over his body. He raised his hand. A needle was embedded in the back of it, a transparent IV tube stretching toward a drip stand beside the bed. Inside the bottle, liquid fell drop by drop in absolute silence.
…Where am I?
"Idle Transfiguration!"
"Soul Multiplicity!"
"Hehehehehe…"
Fragments of memory surfaced.
The sewer.
The blue-haired, stitched-faced monster's unrestrained, grotesque laughter.
A pair of enormous hands expanded endlessly before his eyes, wrapping around him and kneading him at will. Bones shattered throughout his body, flesh twisted and deformed. An indescribable agony tore straight through his soul.
Pressed tightly against him were more than a dozen others, all subjected to the same irresistible force. Their bodies collided and compressed together, flesh and bone crushed as though they were being ground down, blended into a single mass. Piercing, hysterical screams rang in his ears—so entangled with pain and blood that he could no longer tell which cries were his, and which belonged to others.
Kanzaki Ren shuddered violently.
"You're awake?"
A young, childish female voice drifted in from nearby.
Following the sound, Kanzaki Ren instinctively turned his gaze toward the window.
Yes—outside the window.
The next instant, his eyes nearly fell out of their sockets.
A blonde girl with twin buns tied skyward was hovering in midair—riding a broom.
Casually astride it, the girl flew in through the open window. Her black dress fluttered gently in the breeze.
Kanzaki Ren froze, utterly dumbfounded.
After living in this world for over a decade, he realized for the first time—
This world was… a supernatural one?
Which meant that the blue-haired, stitched-faced monster—and the agony so intense it had made him question his very existence—had not been an illusion. Not a nightmare.
It had all truly happened.
More memories flooded in.
A street ravaged by monsters.
Crowds screaming and scattering in panic.
A woman clutching a child, knocked to the ground.
The monster advanced relentlessly. The woman couldn't get back up—yet with everything she had left, she shoved the child away from herself, desperate to push him as far from danger as possible.
Kanzaki Ren tried to stop it. He swung his fist with all his strength.
Then he looked at his hand.
A massive, ferocious fist. Veins bulging. A thick, earth-brown arm.
It was identical to the monster he had just sent flying.
Kanzaki Ren jolted upright and raised his arm again.
Normal size. Normal skin tone.
He exhaled shakily.
"Thank you for saving me," the blonde girl said as she floated closer. Her deep blue eyes sparkled, and a clear, innocent smile bloomed across her youthful face.
Kanzaki Ren hesitated, confused—until more memories surfaced.
A girl struck by falling debris, plummeting helplessly from the sky.
He hadn't even had time to be shocked by the grotesque transformation of his own body before lunging forward instinctively. The girl's terrified expression rushed toward him, her features contorting, tears bursting from the corners of her eyes—
That was almost the very last scene he could remember.
The girl in his memories did bear a resemblance to the one before him now—and more importantly, those unmistakable broom-like twin buns tied straight upward made it nearly impossible to mistake her identity.
"My name is Momo Nishimiya," the girl said brightly. "And you are—?"
"Kanzaki Ren," he replied casually. "May I ask where this is?"
"Hold on a second, I need to make a call first."
She pulled out her phone and began tapping away with quick beep-beep sounds.
"Hello? Ms. Utahime? He's awake. Yes, the survivor from that previous attack—the kid who turned into a monster and then changed back."
"Kid?" Kanzaki Ren shot her a strange look.
The girl before him was riding a broom, sure—but she had a childish face, a petite figure, and beneath the hem of her skirt, a pair of pale little feet swinging back and forth.
…So exactly who was the kid here?
Moments later, hurried footsteps approached. The door opened, and a woman dressed in red-and-white shrine maiden robes stepped inside. Her black hair was smooth and glossy, her features gentle and elegant.
"I'm Utahime Iori," she said, suppressing her anxiety as she inclined her head slightly and offered a composed smile.
"A teacher at Kyoto Jujutsu High. Semi–Grade 1 sorcerer."
"Kyoto Jujutsu High? Semi–Grade 1?"
The unfamiliar terminology left Kanzaki Ren momentarily at a loss.
"Putting that aside for now," Utahime continued, her tone turning serious, "we need to know how you survived that cursed spirit's attack. Please tell us—this is extremely important. It might help save more victims."
"Cursed spirit?"
Another completely new term.
At the same time she asked, a surge of unfamiliar yet instinctive knowledge flooded Kanzaki Ren's mind.
It took him a long while to process it all. When he finally spoke, even he sounded uncertain of his own words.
"This is my innate technique—Limitless Probability Technique."
"It allows me to manipulate probability, converting unfavorable outcomes into favorable ones to the greatest possible extent."
"That's how I barely survived back then."
"The ability that guy had… it seemed to fuse human souls together—kneading, deforming, and remodeling them."
"'Soul Multiplicity.'"
Kanzaki Ren recalled how the blue-haired, stitched-faced monster had shouted the term repeatedly, manic with excitement.
"That's the name of his ability—and Polymorphic Soul Isomers, the name given to monsters like us, born from it."
"He could fuse more than a dozen souls together, granting the modified body strength dozens of times greater than a normal human's. But because of rejection between the souls, the aberration would inevitably collapse not long after…"
"It was during that modification process that I awakened my technique. Using it, I managed—with a probability of less than one in a million—to preserve my soul core and basic consciousness."
"And when the aberration burned out its life and collapsed, all the soul particles automatically reassembled themselves around me as the core."
"That… works?"
Momo, still hovering on her broom, stared blankly, utterly bewildered.
Utahime was also astonished—but her expression carried more understanding than disbelief.
"The birth of the universe itself was the result of random particle collisions," she said thoughtfully, nodding.
"Everything around us—life, matter, even this planet—is essentially the manifestation of extremely low-probability events."
And this boy's technique… seemed capable of artificially controlling that probability?
Utahime felt a chill run through her heart.
Wasn't this power bordering on that of a creator?
Such an overwhelming innate technique.
Such staggering potential.
A brilliant light bloomed in her beautiful eyes.
No—Kyoto Jujutsu High absolutely had to have him.
"Cough…"
Kanzaki Ren cleared his throat. Having lain in bed for so long, his entire body felt stiff. And for some reason, the gentle black-haired woman's gaze suddenly made his spine prickle with unease.
He braced his hands against the bed, instinctively trying to sit up.
The next instant—
BANG!
His vision plunged downward as the bed collapsed beneath him. His back slammed against the floor with a heavy crash.
Amid the shattered bed frame, Kanzaki Ren looked up at the two women—who now seemed noticeably taller—and then hastily averted his eyes from beneath the fluttering hem of Momo's skirt.
What the hell?
This kind of shoddy construction? Is this hospital built out of tofu or something?
Before he could complain, confusion took over. He planted his hands on the floor, instinctively trying to stand again.
Then—
Crack.
Crunch.
A rapid series of sharp sounds erupted. Centered on his palms, the tiles fractured violently, spiderweb-like cracks racing across the floor.
He jerked his hands up in shock.
Two clear handprints were embedded in the shattered tiles.
…No matter how bad the construction is, it can't be this bad, right?
You call it a tofu project and it actually turns into tofu?!
Heart pounding, Kanzaki Ren stared at his dust-covered hands.
No—something was wrong.
With this level of material strength, he shouldn't even be able to stand on the floor. He should have sunk straight through it.
"Th-this is…?"
The two women spoke in unison.
And in the midst of their stunned voices, realization finally struck him.
Maybe the problem wasn't the building—
Maybe it was him.
"I think… I kept that monster's strength," Kanzaki Ren said slowly, sensing the sudden surge of power within his body as he organized his thoughts.
"What?" both of them exclaimed.
"During the soul reconstruction, I absorbed the soul particles that were about to dissipate."
The soul defines the body—that was the blue-haired monster's theory.
The combined strength of multiple souls was precisely the source of Soul Multiplicity's power.
"In other words…"
Kanzaki Ren lifted his head, his voice steady but heavy.
"The power of Soul Multiplicity—
I think I still possess it."