"I always feel that woman is hiding some secret," Shinomiya Kaguya pondered, resting her chin on her hand as she watched Sudou Ayami and Kisugi Ai agree on the "online time" for tomorrow and bid farewell.
At first glance, the other party's statement seemed fine.
Receiving a reward, entering the Metaverse to awaken a Persona, spending a night changing her parents' hearts, and after discovering that the APP could be spread, uploading it to the group and informing them how to awaken and use Personas.
But thinking carefully now, something was indeed amiss.
The other party's efficiency seemed a bit too high.
After all, according to the other party's own words, the first floor of the Metaverse alone was about dozens of square kilometers in size, which was considered upper-middle size even in the twenty-three wards of Tokyo.
More importantly, this space wasn't an open one, but a complex railway network composed of countless tracks, making the environment of the Metaverse even more complicated.
They had spent nearly two hours in the Metaverse tonight. Although about half the time was spent testing their respective abilities, counting it up, they had walked in the Metaverse for nearly an hour, taking several wrong turns before reaching the first station, the so-called save point.
Under such circumstances, how did the other party manage to find the locations of her parents' Shadows alone in such an environment last night, successfully send a Calling Card, and change their hearts?
Even if the other party stated that she consumed a lot of precious Reading Value in the process, Shinomiya Kaguya always felt an inexplicable sense of incongruity somewhere.
It was just that her thoughts hadn't turned around to associate it with the Mysterious Person for the time being.
After Sudou Ayami exposed herself in the group and quickly uploaded four download slots, because everything happened too suddenly, her first thought was how to reasonably make the other girls who obtained slots transfer them to her, so as to gain more say in the group.
So much so that she didn't realize why the Mysterious Person mentioned Personas in passing while explaining Stands tonight.
Nor did she realize that while everyone in the group was discussing how to name their Stands, it was Shiina Mashiro who spoke up and turned the topic to Personas.
Therefore, what Shinomiya Kaguya could think of now was only that the other party might be hiding something about this APP and Personas, and decided to hurry up and collect Sudou Ayami's information after returning.
"Chizuru and Mashiro, do you have any thoughts?" She asked the two girls who hadn't left yet.
Ichinose Chizuru hurriedly waved her hand.
Although she was the only college student in the group, she knew her level. Tonight, she had been thinking about her Shadow and how to awaken a Persona. If Shinomiya Kaguya hadn't brought it up, she wouldn't have thought about these things at all.
"I think Ayami has a relatively mature personality, the kind who would silently finish everything behind the scenes without taking the initiative to speak," Ichinose Chizuru guessed, thinking of Sudou Ayami's family situation.
Shinomiya Kaguya nodded slightly, then turned to look at Shiina Mashiro.
Shiina Mashiro pulled her collar on her own, inadvertently revealing the inner lining woven from Black Rope under her Pictomancer robe.
"A bit tired, and it's so stuffy here... let Hikage come in next time."
Although she knew Shiina Mashiro stayed with Miyauchi Hikage every day, giving her a string of hand rope while giving Shiina Mashiro a full outfit still made Shinomiya Kaguya feel a little stifled in her chest.
Although, she didn't have much of a chest anyway.
Hearing Shiina Mashiro felt the Metaverse was boring and wanted to give this slot to Miyauchi Hikage, Ichinose Chizuru beside her couldn't help but gasp in a low voice, feeling if this was a bit inappropriate.
She certainly knew Miyauchi Hikage. After all, they, the first batch of diary holders, had watched Miyauchi Hikage grow from an ordinary person to this step with their own eyes, and knew that Shiina Mashiro and Miyauchi Hikage talked about almost everything.
It could be said that except for the shielding of the diary, Miyauchi Hikage knew about their affairs from Shiina Mashiro.
But would letting a boy join their team make both sides feel uncomfortable?
Regarding this, Shinomiya Kaguya felt it didn't matter.
After obtaining Psychokinesis, she was now more confident than before, and just wanted to fight Miyauchi Hikage with full strength in the Metaverse to test the gap in strength between the two sides.
And if Miyauchi Hikage was really the Mysterious Person, there would always be times when his disguise slipped while exploring the Metaverse.
Maybe she could rely on this to get more good things from him then.
So after chatting for a while, Shinomiya Kaguya patted her chest and said that if Shiina Mashiro really didn't like the Metaverse, and Miyauchi Hikage had ideas about the Metaverse, she would help persuade the other two team members.
And when Shiina Mashiro and the others also left the Metaverse, what welcomed her first was Miyauchi Hikage's unreasonable head pat.
"You guy, why drag me into this? If you don't like going to the Metaverse with them, it doesn't matter if you give up this slot."
Shiina Mashiro reached out and grabbed Miyauchi Hikage's hand, not letting him leave her head.
Then she raised her head slightly and asked Miyauchi Hikage with curious eyes.
"Does Hikage not want to team up with them? Didn't you want them to get stronger quickly?"
"Wanting them to get stronger doesn't mean I have to be their nanny," Miyauchi Hikage sighed helplessly. "Do you want to push me out so much?"
Shiina Mashiro rubbed against Miyauchi Hikage's palm obediently.
"Because Hikage is very powerful, so it's no problem."
Miyauchi Hikage gently tapped her head, and then listened to Shiina Mashiro's detailed account of their Metaverse exploration journey tonight.
"Proposing to meet her own Shadow proactively? It seems Ichinose Chizuru in this world is braver than I thought," Miyauchi Hikage complained.
Although he had only played P5R before transmigrating, he had briefly checked the settings and anime of the first two parts and knew that the way to awaken a Persona was different in each part.
In P3, people with the aptitude to enter the Dark Hour used a gun-shaped Evoker to shoot themselves to summon Personas. It seemed that there was some special material in the Evoker that allowed people to truly feel the threat of death when the muzzle was aimed at themselves. Only by overcoming this fear could a Persona be summoned.
In P4, they entered the TV World and fought against their own Shadows. Only those who acknowledged the desires in their hearts could awaken a Persona, otherwise they would be killed by their own Shadows.
Theoretically, P4's awakening method should also be achievable in P5's Metaverse. However, ordinary people naturally couldn't defeat their own Shadows. In the original work, except for the protagonist who was granted power, the protagonist team all awakened after risking danger to defeat the Shadows as a group and then reconciling with their desires.
Since Ichinose Chizuru had such an idea, she could indeed be allowed to try. With the power of two Personas plus Shinomiya Kaguya's Psychokinesis, it wouldn't be a bad novice level for them.
Miyauchi Hikage shrugged at Shiina Mashiro: "But forget about teaming up with them. At most, I'll give them some life-saving BUFFs from behind; I won't take action personally."
"And after the midterm exam, when the second designated lottery is completed, my main body will also go out for a trip. I don't have time to play house with them in the low-level Metaverse."
The Otherworld Navigation APP was given to Sudou Ayami by Miyauchi Hikage. In the future, when these girls refreshed commissions related to the Metaverse and completed them, they would more or less increase his progress bar. It was precisely for this reason that Miyauchi Hikage didn't have the idea of going to the Metaverse to be a nanny.
Now the progress bar was almost full.
For the second designated lottery, Miyauchi Hikage currently had two ideas.
One was the "transformation type" ability mentioned before, but thinking carefully, the upper and lower limits of this thing were a bit too large.
High ones like Super Saiyan and Ultraman transformation devices meant stability once obtained.
It would also be acceptable to draw Super Sentai or Kamen Rider transformations, but there were also a bunch of mediocre transformation abilities making up the numbers at the lower end.
Transformation Jutsu from Naruto, mass-produced Riders from Kamen Rider, Transformers, a bunch of useless Zoan fruits from One Piece, and a bunch of magical girl transformation devices that he couldn't possibly consider...
After careful consideration, Miyauchi Hikage decided to be more prudent.
He drew the Domain-type ability before to obtain the mechanism to deal with Domains.
And drawing transformation-type abilities was for the strength amplification after transformation, to further enhance his stats.
Thinking differently, just directly acquire the key point restricting his stat improvement now.
And what restricted him the most now?
It was the upper limit of supernatural energy, or rather, energy endurance.
Just like the Elf Affinity obtained by Hoshino Ai, which provided her with quite massive magic power.
In terms of the amount of magic power in the body alone, the current Hoshino Ai could even be considered special-grade, and even among special-grades, she belonged to the quite exaggerated kind.
Placed in Naruto, she could more or less count as a Tailed Beast.
Miyauchi Hikage had observed. The supernatural power in his body now was converted from the vitality of the Pure Yang Body.
And Hoshino Ai was equivalent to being able to easily manipulate the magic power in the atmosphere, which was the Greater Source or Mana in the Type-Moon universe.
Even Tohru, although she could draw external magic power for her own use, still had to go through a process of magic power conversion before using it. In terms of energy efficiency, she really wasn't as good as the current Hoshino Ai.
It was just that the original owner of this ability, Emilia, belonged to the level where she held quite high settings, but her performance in the actual story was quite worrying. Now placed on Hoshino Ai who didn't have much brains, the effect was about the same.
Having magic power but not knowing how to use it, and having no way to use it—she and Gokou Ruri, who obtained Elemental Conversion Magic but had little magic power in her body and could only squeeze it out, were two extremes.
However, although Hoshino Ai didn't play it well, Miyauchi Hikage was still a little jealous.
If he could obtain Hoshino Ai's amount of magic power, his single teleportation distance could extend to at least a hundred kilometers away. It could be said that he could easily use his ability to travel across the entire East Asia region.
This also included Unlimited Blade Works.
Although the magic power consumed by Unlimited Blade Works after deployment wasn't much, this was only the lower limit of Unlimited Blade Works.
To increase the maximum output power of Unlimited Blade Works, it consumed a lot of magic power.
The current Miyauchi Hikage had only obtained the Pure Yang Body for less than two months after all, and the magic power accumulated in his body was barely enough for him to fight with full strength for about ten minutes.
Even when projecting items related to rules, it cost more than half of his magic power at every turn, so much so that he always had a love-hate emotion when facing these good rule-type items.
His sparring with Tohru these days followed a similar process. When magic power was sufficient, he could even suppress normal Tohru with the output of Blade Works, but when magic power endurance couldn't keep up, he could only be toyed with by her.
If the problems of magic power cap and magic power endurance were solved, Miyauchi Hikage's stats could at least be multiplied several times.
Therefore, after careful consideration, Miyauchi Hikage planned to solve his endurance problem first before considering the power of transformation he expected.
Hearing that Miyauchi Hikage intended to leave, a trace of reluctance flashed in Shiina Mashiro's eyes.
After all, she and Miyauchi Hikage had been together day and night for more than a month. Although her emotions were relatively indifferent, she also knew how important Miyauchi Hikage was to her current self.
Therefore, the strength with which she held Miyauchi Hikage's hand subconsciously became heavier.
"Where are you going?"
"I should go to Fuyuki City for a trip," Miyauchi Hikage said, and then briefly explained the situation in Fuyuki City and the simple Type-Moon worldview to Shiina Mashiro.
"Although Fuyuki City in this world hasn't had accidents like 'gas leaks' in the past, I recently took time to investigate in the library of Jujutsu High and found that Fuyuki City in this world is not as simple as imagined."
"Just like during Golden Week, didn't the strange spatial fluctuation appear in the mountain range between our Asahigaoka and Chichibu caused by the collision between Tohru's world and our world?"
"Then according to the relevant records of Jujutsu High, similar spatial tremors also occurred in Fuyuki City in April. Although there are no detailed records, the situation is somewhat similar to a certain work in my impression, so I have to go over and observe to see if there is a chance to pick up scraps."
"Because parallel worlds might be involved, the power of 'Wonder of U' may not necessarily be effective. To maximize benefits in this event, naturally, I can only go there personally."