Thanks to AQS for the scans.

Volume 18 Chapter 160

Negi has defeated Chao, who’s free-falling but is caught by Negi. Despite this, the magic started by Hakase and apparently still needs to be stopped. The magic from the World Tree erupts and while Negi ponders what to in the few minutes he has left to stop things, but he’s run out of magical power and now falls with Chao off the airship. As they fall, Chao cannot do anything to slow them down or stop their fall and reflects on the good job someone so young had done even if it weren’t enough.

Hakase notices them falling and activates her tech to apparently fly out to get them, but notices something wrong with the activation magic she’d done via computer.

Meanwhile, Ayaka Makie are doing their mahou shoujo routine to aid Chisame-chan and her hacker skills to counter everything being done to reveal the existence of magic to the world. Chisame has no interest in merging a “dream world” with a normal world . She finds herself up against Chachamaru, who recalls Chao thinking that this normal world that Chisame wants is like a dream to her considering the harshness of the future. Chisame asks Chachamaru what he thinks about what Chao said and decides she wants to protect her reality and not allow Chao have her way.

Elsewhere, Chao comes to with several girls from the class looking at her as they are on the roof of the streetcar cafe stand, being flown by Satsuki. Negi is being attended by Asuna and is OK, to the relief of other magic battle folks like Setsuna. Below them, the giant robot vanishes and things appear to be returning to normal. Hakase, flying near the streetcar, wants to know how Chachamaru could allow Chisame to win. Chachamaru believes that when Chao lost, it meant that she would also lose automatically to Chisame due to how Chao set thing up. Chao set it up so that if she lost and admitted defeat, she’d withdraw cleanly, meaning that Chisame’s work may have been for naught. This dismays Chisame a bit, but Chachamaru disagrees.

Back on the streetcar, Negi comes to and Chao tells Negi that he has good friends and that she cannot win against Class 3-A.

Thoughts

Well, this had the final battle conclude between Chisame and Chachamaru and the end of the Mahoro School Festival Arc coming very soon. Looks like Satsuki was in on Chao’s secret since she could fly the streetcar. How deeply she knows about magic remains to be seen, but it is starting to look like Akamatsu-sensei will have all the girls know in one way or the other before all is said and done. I suppose that’s not completely unexpected at this point, but it does mean less of an excuse to “dump” non-magic students, resulting in the scrambled mess that sometimes the School Festival Arc became at times.