"How nice! Potato beef stew! I want to eat it! Potato beef stew!" On the second floor of the Rabbit House, inside the Occult Research Club's temporary meeting room (Asakura's own small room), Yanami leaned her face close to Asakura's with an envious expression, clamoring loudly.
"Is that the main point?" After resting for a full day, Asakura, whose body had entirely recovered, pushed away her face—which was on the verge of drooling—with an expression of mock disgust, and said clearly: "Speaking of which, if it's just potato beef stew, your family can completely make it yourselves, right?"
"...My dad's salary last month consisted only of somen noodles, and though this month is slightly better, the quantity of somen noodles has increased again." The young girl's eyes looked completely lifeless as she stared blankly out the window, speaking expressionlessly: "I feel like we might end up eating it until July... Even if I tell my mom I want to eat potato beef stew, what the family ends up serving will just be potatoes stewed with potatoes."
"Uh..." Asakura was temporarily left speechless. He could only pat the girl's shoulder comfortingly: "It's alright, somen noodles are very delicious too."
"Eating somen noodles for more than a month straight, I'm already completely sick of it! Dammit, I really want to be a child of the club president's family!" Yanami lay flat on her back on the tatami mat, kicking up a huge fuss like a small child.
"Although I have indeed been eating properly on schedule lately, actually up until two months ago, I was still relying on tap water and salt to maintain my vital signs, you know."
"A single-celled organism?!"
"At that time, what I envied most were plants; it felt like one could survive just by relying on photosynthesis..."
"Asakura-kun has lived through hard times too, then." Yanami sat back up, casting a pitiful gaze toward Asakura.
"Alright, stop talking about such miserable things already, I'm going to cry if I keep listening to this." Yui puckered up her small face, speaking in a sympathetic tone: "Neither Takuma-tan nor Yanana has it easy."
"Why do you have to use a nickname that sounds like you're calling me a banana..." Yanami retorted with a grimacing face.
"So, what Asakura-kun means by contacting everyone to hold an emergency temporary meeting this time is that if we notice anything strange recently, we should contact you immediately?" Anon picked up a french fry, nibbling on it in small bites like a hamster while tilting her head to ask Asakura.
"Yeah, the situation lately is a bit subtle. Even if you discover the slightest thing amiss, notify me as much as possible." Asakura said seriously.
His encounter with that previous evil god had already made him realize that the remaining nine evil gods whose seals were marked on the nameless grimoire would likely appear in this world one after another.
Even if they didn't descend in their true bodies, just a clone or a strand of consciousness sweeping across this world could still bring about a considerable impact.
Granted, in terms of probability, the chances of the place they happen to appear being right next to him were so small it was practically negligible—after all, let alone the observable universe, even looking at the entire Milky Way galaxy, the Earth is just an insignificant, tiny speck. Calling it a drop in the ocean would be an overstatement. To accurately find a single grain of sand in an entire desert, the probability of being selected is just too small.
Yet up to now, three evil gods have already continuously appeared. No matter how much Asakura tried to deceive himself into thinking it was just a coincidence, the moment that God of Agriculture communicated with him directly, he could no longer pretend not to see it.
Just as Stand users naturally attract one another, the mysterious will also be attracted by the mysterious.
The fact that he himself existed while possessing a portion of an evil god's authority was the very reason those evil gods would inexplicably come looking for him.
Therefore, as long as they appeared in this world, they would definitely not be too far away from him—at the very least, they wouldn't leave Japan. On the scale of the Earth, this indeed wasn't considered too far.
"...It seems I can't just casually go abroad anymore."
"Why did Asakura-kun suddenly arrive at this conclusion?" A certain London deserter shrank her neck, asking with a somewhat guilty conscience.
"It's just a matter of responsibility... or rather, where my duty lies. Don't worry about it." Asakura replied casually.
Under circumstances where damage could not be completely controlled, minimizing the destruction as much as possible was the best choice. Compared to a vast continent where things could easily hide, a supernatural anomaly would obviously be much easier to notice and capture in a tiny place like this island nation.
"Did something really happen after all?" Asagumo looked at Asakura with concern. When her gaze fell upon Asakura's right eye, her expression grew even more solemn. The girl's lips pressed together slightly, appearing sad and filled with regret over her complete inability to help.
"It's fine, I can handle it." Asakura shook his head.
If the girl's Curse could function normally, it could be considered a safety net, but it was highly debatable how effective a timeline manipulation would be against an evil god that crossed dimensional tiers—just the second evil god Asakura encountered, the one that granted him his future vision, already possessed the power to disrupt timelines. Thus, Asakura didn't intend to become a source of immense pressure and force the girl to repay her mana quickly just to try and reawaken her Curse.
"If it's only that, Asakura-senpai wouldn't have gone out of his way to call everyone out, right?" The youngest, Kaju, dutifully played the role of the junior in the club. While brewing tea for the other members, she asked curiously: "After all, senpai even called me over... yet on the other hand, Gokou-san isn't here."
"Yeah, it's mainly to check whether everyone's mana reserves are stable, to prevent any potential Curse backfires." Asakura nodded: "After all, we haven't seen each other for a while, so it's better to confirm the situation a bit. As for Ruri, I met up with her at Comiket a couple of days ago and have already confirmed her condition."
This was a lie.
In reality, while confirming the mana status of the Occult Research Club members was indeed one of the reasons, besides that, Asakura also intended to replenish his own mana slightly.
After all, the mana squeezed out from Hitori had been pretty much depleted after continuously facing an evil god and the alleyway Mirror Realm. Yesterday, after burning away his cold symptoms, it was practically completely exhausted, leaving only the not-very-long mana bar from 'Limited Infinity' available for use.
Considering that a new evil god could appear at any time in the future, Asakura felt that replenishing his mana was the most pressing matter at present.
"I see, no wonder Takuma-tan didn't even call Yukinon over." Yui nodded in realization—after all, Yukino's mana, much like her chest size, was in an awkward state of being practically non-existent, which could be confirmed without needing any hands-on inspection.
"Um," Kaju seemed to recall something, her pretty face flushing slightly as she raised her hand to ask Asakura: "What exactly do you need to do to confirm our mana reserves? If it requires some... extreme methods... please allow me to refuse."