I was actually wondering what ever happened to Yotsuba or Hakase (I know, I like her nickname lol). It was nice to see both appear in this chapter. Yotsuba made a lot of sense. It is wrong to try and force something like that out and it needed to be heard. For the past coupe of chapters, I'm glad that both Yue and Nodoka did the right thing by getting Negi away from the others and I love Akira! She has to be the most logical person in this series (along with those like Chisame, Ako,Yotsuba, etc.) I like the fact that she didn't want to do the pactio and was more unwilling to.
Now, onto the artifact...how cool is that! Very convenient and very handy. Too bad Eva caught them.
As for the ending, I found it to be very crafty of Akamatsu. I guess he really is going to leave us in suspense over who it is Negi may actually romantically like (or who he may end up with in the future). Oh, and to be honest, I'd forgotten all about Chao's book until it was shown, and I was like, "Wait, wasn't it destroyed?" lol So, I guess this would mean that Chao technically doesn't exist for the current timeline since Negi's future is going to be changed due to all that happened in the magical world. I guess it'd be like a parallel dimension. One dimension, Chao exists and the other, she doesn't.
Back to who Negi may like...I'm still hoping for Nodoka, even if it is highly unlikely that he "romantically" likes any of the girls at this point in time.