Chapter 14: Exploration
Compared to explaining things with words alone, Ren believed that letting someone experience it firsthand was far more intuitive.
"My technique is called the Limitless Probability Technique" he added calmly.
"Its effect is the manipulation of probability—altering the likelihood of events, rewriting what reality allows, removing all factors that are disadvantageous to me and converting them into favorable ones."
"…Isn't that an insanely powerful technique?" Mai murmured.
Manipulating probability. Altering reality itself.
Just hearing it made it sound leagues above her own utterly useless Construction Technique.
It was practically a universal ability. If that was the case, why was he still so obsessed with studying other techniques?
Mai looked up at the boy.
"It is powerful," Ren nodded. "But it's not without flaws."
"Altering probability requires an extremely high level of cursed energy control, and the consumption is massive."
"For an average sorcerer, it could be used at most three times a day."
"In other words, it's a trump card—something you keep at the bottom of the deck and only use when it really matters. If you throw it out casually, you risk running out of cursed energy when you truly need it."
"Take what just happened as an example," he continued.
"The cursed energy cost of using the Limitless Probability Technique to deflect your attack was more than a hundred times greater than simply reinforcing my body at full output and dodging it myself."
"In short, under normal circumstances, resolving danger through one's own actions is far more cost-effective than relying on a technique."
"A technique should only be used when the situation exceeds the limits of what your actions alone can handle."
"And even then," he added thoughtfully,
"if you can first create an advantage through action—lowering the difficulty of probability manipulation—you can drastically reduce the cost of activating the technique."
"I see~."
A sweet, gentle voice suddenly spoke up from the side.
"So in the end, you need both effort and luck, right?"
Mai nearly jumped out of her skin.
"T—Miwa?!" She twisted around, staring at the blue-haired girl who had appeared out of nowhere—along with the brass-headed figure beside her, two bright green bulb-like eyes glowing steadily.
"When did you get here?!"
"We've been here for a while," Miwa Kasumi replied, resting her chin on her hands and leaning forward slightly, her expression earnest—as though she was waiting for Ren to continue.
What she didn't quite have the nerve to admit was that she and Mechamaru hadn't originally come over because of Ren's explanation of his technique at all.
Because they were standing so far away, the two of them couldn't hear a single word of the conversation.
What truly caught their attention wasn't the dialogue—it was the body language.
In the middle of sparring with Mechamaru's steel body, Miwa Kasumi happened to glance back—and was instantly struck dumb. There, off to the side, Mai and Ren were practically wrapped around each other.
And not only that.
After separating briefly, Mai—apparently unsatisfied—had suddenly thrown herself straight back into Ren's arms.
"…Th-this fast?"
Miwa froze mid-draw, staring wide-eyed at Mechamaru, who had noticed it at the exact same time.
Ren had only been here a few days, and things had already escalated to this level?
And this was the training field—the training field!
In just a handful of days, they'd gone from "inseparable" to "acting like no one else existed"?
Unable to suppress the blazing fire of gossip igniting in her heart, Miwa immediately rushed over—dragging Mechamaru along with her.
Of course, once they arrived, they realized reality was very different from what they'd imagined.
What the two were engaged in wasn't syrupy flirting at all, but a perfectly serious discussion about jujutsu.
Only then did Miwa suddenly understand—those strangely intimate-looking "embraces" earlier weren't hugs at all, but some kind of unusual demonstration.
That misunderstanding?
She would take it to the grave.
Miwa cautiously exchanged a glance with Mechamaru. In that single moment, mutual understanding was achieved.
"So that's why you want to research other techniques?" Mai said, pulling the conversation back on track.
"To increase your baseline combat power?"
Ren nodded.
That flame-based cursed spirit had spat fire over and over again. The efficiency of that technique was clearly far higher than his Limitless Probability Technique—it could be used continuously as a standard combat method. If he could master something like that, his everyday combat strength would skyrocket.
"I'd advise you to give up," Mai sighed, adopting a tone that practically screamed hopeless student.
"Innate techniques are innate techniques. They can't be learned after the fact."
"If you want to strengthen your normal combat ability, you'd be better off training your close-combat skills more—or finding a cursed tool that suits you."
"So you're trying to learn an innate technique?"
Mechamaru's metal jaw hung open for a moment before his stiff, mechanical voice resumed.
"That won't be easy. Historically speaking, no sorcerer has ever succeeded."
His phrasing was polite—but the meaning was unmistakable.
Only Miwa remained silent, watching Ren carefully, clearly wanting to say something but stopping herself.
Before long, the three returned to the center of the field to continue training.
Ren, meanwhile, remained seated on the stone steps at the edge of the training ground, chin propped in his hand, deep in thought.
In his mind, the image replayed again and again—
The fire cursed spirit's gaping maw.
The glow inside it growing hotter, redder.
The flames erupting outward.
And the strange hand signs formed by its almost-human claws.
He hadn't ignored what Mai said. On the contrary—every word she spoke was a fundamental truth, one that made the difficulty of reproducing an innate technique through cursed energy manipulation painfully clear.
And yet, he still couldn't let the idea go.
Mai had called it foolish fantasy. But it wasn't groundless delusion.
She had her reasons.
And Ren had his.
Because he wasn't like ordinary sorcerers.
With twelve times the cursed energy perception, he could observe details others couldn't. When he watched those flames, he didn't just see fire—he saw the cursed energy within them.
Its density.
Its flow direction.
Its level of activity.
Its changing patterns.
And with twelve times the cognitive processing ability, he could extract governing principles from chaotic surface phenomena.
Every time he replayed the moment that flame technique was unleashed, he felt as though he was brushing against something—
the essence of that fire,
the method by which cursed energy was transformed into flame—
what people called an innate technique.
Unfortunately, the sensation remained vague, like gazing at flowers through fog. He could see the outline, but not grasp the soul.
If only he hadn't killed that cursed spirit so quickly.
If only he'd watched it cast the technique a few more times—
…No. That was wishful thinking.
In truth, he'd already observed enough. Without further improvement in cursed energy perception, watching it again wouldn't help.
What mattered now was analysis—
inferring the principles behind the observed phenomena, and validating them through experimentation.
Ren raised his hands, mimicking the exact gesture the flame cursed spirit had formed, combining it with his internal deductions, and once more circulated his cursed energy.
Pop!
A sharp crack rang through the air from the turbulence of cursed energy.
But that was all.
No flames.
Not even a spark.
He'd repeated this process hundreds—no, thousands—of times.
Each failure represented a flawed hypothesis.
And yet, Ren felt little frustration.
Failure was expected.
Deriving a complete technique from partial observations produced countless possible "insights." Most of them were wrong. In fact, only one—perhaps not even one—would come close to the truth.
This was simply how research worked.
Scientific inquiry was never instantaneous. To uncover the single correct possibility, one had to wade through endless error, confusion, and false paths.
Ren had no doubt that, with his intelligence and perseverance, he could succeed—
that he could eventually unravel the mystery of this flame technique.
The only thing that worried him was time.
This kind of research could take an unimaginable amount of effort. It might take a lifetime.
Finding one correct answer among hundreds of thousands—or millions—of wrong possibilities was like searching for a needle in the ocean.
By the time he succeeded, he might already be old, long removed from the front lines of battle. In that case, the very purpose of developing this technique—enhancing his baseline combat strength—would be meaningless.
But—
Wait.
"Possibility?"
Possibility?!
Ren snapped his head up, dark eyes igniting with brilliant light, sharp as stars.
He had finally found it.
The correct way to use the Limitless Probability Technique.