"This... how am I supposed to answer that? Answer, 'Do you'...?"
"..."
"Ha, just kidding. Anyway, that's how it is. Look!" Jiu Ming displayed the book page whose blackness had already faded before Evangeline. The moment she saw her own lifelike image on it, the corners of Evangeline's eyes shot up!
"What the hell are you trying to do!?"
Her tone brimmed with deep distrust and intense suspicion.
"Let me put it this way." Jiu Ming explained his idea. Since skills like clone techniques could not help her share the curse, then he would try using an original item from this world instead! "If this thing can recreate another 'you,' then maybe we can find a new way through."
"Is that so? But what was that just now?" Evangeline asked doubtfully.
"Well, I originally wanted to record you at the height of your power. The result was that the consumption was a little too great—it seems it needs an extra amount of energy to make it work." Jiu Ming explained. One-to-one consumption at equal proportions would have been manageable, but once it involved the scale of one-to-many consumption, the difficulty rose sharply. "It seems a bit like the juice isn't worth the squeeze, so I settled for the next best thing and chose another option."
"Me in my suppressed state? True, at this time I'm more or less like an ordinary little girl... but why does it still feel a little irritating?"
"It's normal to be irritated."
Jiu Ming smiled. No matter what, having something like a "copy" of yourself appear in someone else's hands would make anyone uncomfortable, wouldn't it? Even if it came from him, no one in their right mind would casually make a duplicate of themselves. It was not rejection of one's own copy, but an