The aftermath of his duel with Ayaka had left Nero restless.
Yet, it wasn't the fight itself that gnawed at him.
It was sothing deeper, an idea, a concept lingering on the edge of his consciousness, just out of reach.
Sitting alone in his quarters at Zen and Mu's house, he stared at the dim glow of a paper lantern, his fingers idly tracing patterns on the wooden floor.
His mind replayed Ayaka's words: "I'd need to be able to look left and right at the sa ti." It had been a simple observation, yet it refused to leave his thoughts.
That phrase had given him the spark, but now he needed to define his research path.
He had to know: had this ever been attempted before?
Had anyone ever truly succeeded in making such a construct, akin to an extension of oneself, not just in movent but in thought?
He had no interest in following a dood experint.
He needed to see the full scope of what had been done before.
His research took him back to Mu and Zen's stories, about how they had to push beyond traditional spellcasting to survive.
They had found a way to separate a soul, personality traits, and have distinct bodies, but at great cost, and without being able to share their mories and knowledge.
Even if they had succeeded in pioneering their way, Nero wanted more than settling for that.
His goal had never changed, he wished to reach the apex of magic, and to do that, he would only aim for the very best.
His mind then turned to Gojo-sensei's demonstration, the perfect rging of Western control and Eastern flow, where the elents ceased to feel external at all.
That was the ideal state of elental magic. Instinct. Like breathing.
rging two impossible notions:
Control and Flow.
Western and Eastern.
Muga and Muso.
Void and Cosmos.
That's where Ayaka's words ca in.
He needed to create entities that could learn contradictory notions, experience what he had yet to understand, and return that knowledge to him.
This was his path to the apex of magic.
The path of Nero Ravenclaw.
The mory of an ani from his past life surfaced.
A protagonist who had used clones to compensate for his own lack of comprehension.
Each clone would train independently, experience things from different angles, and then return that knowledge, allowing the original to grasp what had once been beyond him.
That was the core principle he wanted to build on.
His first small step had already been achieved.
He had created a Shikigami that mimicked his magical signature.
But now, he needed sothing more.
A Shikigami paper clone of himself that could learn, one that could retain information and, more importantly, return those experiences to him without distortion.
If he could achieve that, he wouldn't just be training himself.
He would be multiplying his capacity for growth.
He could experint in multiple directions simultaneously, test theories, and return knowledge in a way no magician ever had before.
And with that realization, Nero's research frenzy began.
Nero was not the first to have such an idea.
As he delved deeper into Mu, Zen, his and the Mahoutokoro archives, he found records of previous attempts at creating mory-absorbing constructs.
Each one had failed, abandoned for various reasons.
If he wanted to succeed, he needed to understand why.
The earliest recorded attempt in Japan, ca from a renowned Onmyōji of the Heian period, who sought to create paper effigies capable of independent learning.
The theory was simple: a fragnt of the user's soul would be transferred into a Shikigami, allowing it to act autonomously.
However, when the Shikigami was dispelled, the knowledge it gained could not be reintegrated into the caster's mind.
He discovered the hard way that separation of the soul was irreversible.
Practitioners who attempted this thod found themselves losing pieces of their own consciousness, weakening with each iteration.
So went mad.
Others beca weaker, incomplete versions of themselves, their original mories fragnted.
Another attempt discovered by Nero described how a 17th-century Western mage attempted sothing similar, using homunculi as learning vessels.
His experint was partially successful.
His creations could retain knowledge and return it to him.
However, the problem lay in processing the flood of information.
When he attempted to absorb too much knowledge from the homunculi, their knowledge overwheld his mind, leading to a rapid deterioration of his cognitive functions.
The sudden influx of information was too much, causing seizures, hallucinations, and eventually permanent brain damage.
Without a structured thod to filter or organize the returning knowledge, the overload of mories would destroy the user's mind.
A more recent attempt by a Mahoutokoro researcher focused on stabilizing clones through barrier reinforcent.
The technique was promising, Shikigami avatars that could last longer, sustain damage, and return their experiences.
However, it was discovered that the mories the clones returned were distorted.
The clones experienced the world differently than the original caster, leading to inconsistencies in perception.
The more clones created, the less reliable the knowledge beca.
Details blurred, sensory input beca contradictory, and in extre cases, the caster suffered from severe dissociation.
The clones' mories could not be trusted.
Their experiences warped reality, making them unreliable for learning.
One of the most infamous and terrifying cases ca from ancient Greece, where a philosopher-mage sought to perfect his craft by creating an eidolon, a duplicate imbued with a fragnt of his soul.
Unlike prior attempts, these constructs were not passive, they were given autonomy to grow and refine their knowledge.
At first, the experint seed to be a success.
The clones studied, trained, and adapted.
But the more they learned, the more they questioned their existence.
Were they rely extensions of their creator, or were they their own beings?
The instability of having partial souls fractured their minds, leading to paranoia, jealousy, and ultimately rebellion.
The clones turned on their creator, believing that the only way to achieve true individuality was to eliminate their origin.
The result was massacre and self-destruction.
The clones slaughtered their original and, unable to reconcile their own fragnted existence, took their own lives in an act of final defiance.
The emotional instability of soul-imbued clones led to existential collapse.
The concept was deed too dangerous in Western wizardry society ever to attempt again.
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