As Ichinose Chizuru's words denying her Shadow fell, the mirrors throughout the theater seemed to tremble with Shadow Chizuru's berserk state.
The spotlight on the stage flickered violently and projected onto Shadow Chizuru, intensifying the twisted feeling on her body.
Ichinose Chizuru stared blankly at the huge change in the "self" in front of her.
Although she didn't know the current situation clearly, she could feel that the words she just said seemed to have had some impact on her Shadow in front of her.
Or rather, the other party had been waiting for this moment from the beginning.
"What is... going on? What did you do?" She wanted to get an answer from the other party.
"It's not what I did, but you gave an answer that 'satisfied' me. So from now on, I am the real 'me', and no longer your shadow!"
Shadow Chizuru said this, while her figure began to change, revealing her brand new appearance.
It was no longer Ichinose Chizuru from middle school, but in a very short time, she transformed into a mysterious person with a dark figure, wearing a skull mask that obscured her face.
And those Shadows just created by Shadow Chizuru on the stage also seemed to be controlled by Shadow Chizuru at this moment, transforming into black figures similar to the current Shadow Chizuru but with different body shapes and attire, revealing dangerous looks to the people below the stage.
Feeling these figures wearing skull masks and holding different weapons, several girls instinctively felt a strong killing intent from these "monsters."
Now was not the time for them to think about what was going on. After all, for them now, the more important thing was to survive under the encirclement of these skull masks before talking about anything else.
The first to activate was Sudou Ayami.
Compared to Shinomiya Kaguya, she was indeed more talented in combat. Tomoe Gozen, wearing armor and a grimace mask, appeared from behind her immediately and shot an arrow towards Shadow Chizuru.
Unlike when she first awakened, Tomoe Gozen only carried a naginata. After leveling up in the Metaverse for a period of time, the Tomoe Gozen summoned by Sudou Ayami now carried many more weapons.
Naginata, bow and arrow, and tachi. And it seemed that different weapons came with different attributes.
For example, the arrow just shot obviously carried fire attribute damage.
It was a pity that Shadow Chizuru was prepared. With Agility being the highest among all her attributes, she wouldn't be hit easily.
Easily dodging Tomoe Gozen's arrow, she threw out several smoke bombs at the same time and disappeared into the smoke.
And Miyauchi Hikage was also looking at these familiar guys with interest.
These girls might not recognize them, but with this iconic black skin and skull mask, when they appeared, Miyauchi Hikage had already thought of the Hassan of the Hundred Faces who appeared in the Fourth Holy Grail War.
Hassan-i-Sabbah, one of the Old Men of the Mountain across generations, and the 19th leader of the Assassins.
In the setting, Hassan of the Hundred Faces had hundreds of independent personalities in his body, and after becoming a Heroic Spirit, he gained the ability to manifest these personalities separately.
Although his combat ability was not outstanding, having hundreds of personalities, he could easily change his identity in various situations and obtain the intelligence he needed.
Did Ichinose Chizuru, who wanted to become an actress, have her Shadow turn into the current Hassan of the Hundred Faces?
Although it felt a bit weird, it seemed quite reasonable.
After all, the characteristic of Hassan of the Hundred Faces was the ability to switch personalities at will to play corresponding characters.
Just the fact that this ability could be sublimated into a Noble Phantasm after he became a Heroic Spirit showed that there were no flaws in the identities and roles he disguised during his lifetime.
No wonder the other party behaved so normally when mentioning multiple personalities just now. It turned out that the other party was originally a "monster" with nearly a hundred personalities.
It was just that Hassan of the Hundred Faces in the original work was instantly killed by Gilgamesh as soon as he appeared, and then exited as a sacrifice for Iskandar's Reality Marble, showing no combat power, looking like a "passerby villain" with no style.
Even the presence of Hassan of the Hundred Faces might not be as high as Hassan of the Cursed Arm who appeared in the HF route in the Fifth Holy Grail War.
But now, in the Theater Palace filled with countless mirrors, Hassan of the Hundred Faces showed great suppressive power in front of the girls.
Miyauchi Hikage thought about it. After all, he lost to top-level Heroic Spirits like Gilgamesh and Alexander the Great.
Even if Hassan of the Hundred Faces indeed didn't have high combat power in the setting, as a Heroic Spirit facing ordinary people, even if he needed to share strength with all his clones, he wasn't an existence that just anyone could mess with, not to mention that the other party hadn't split into too many clones yet.
"Although Hassan of the Hundred Faces is definitely just a third-rate Servant in terms of combat power, even a third-rate Servant, in the current berserk state, can probably exert strength close to special-grade, right?" Miyauchi Hikage pondered Shadow Chizuru's current strength in his heart.
If it were Hassan of the Cursed Arm, based on his performance in the HF route, although he defeated Cú Chulainn with the help of Dark Sakura, he definitely had special-grade level.
However, as Hassan of the Hundred Faces with the weakest actual combat ability, skills all pointed to intelligence, and even a Noble Phantasm without much lethality, it was indeed a bit reluctant to say he had special-grade strength.
He looked at the girls around him.
Although Sudou Ayami's initial attack failed, she was now controlling Tomoe Gozen to repel those Hassans who wanted to attack them taking advantage of the smoke.
And Shinomiya Kaguya and Kasumigaoka Utaha also used their own supernatural abilities.
Shinomiya Kaguya lifted her body several meters high directly, manipulating Psychokinesis above the smoke to form a hurricane to blow away the smoke.
Kasumigaoka Utaha condensed a water wall around herself as their defensive measure.
If the three of them could fully exert their power, they still had a chance to defeat Hassan of the Hundred Faces and make him obediently become Ichinose Chizuru's Persona.
"Hikage-kun, what do we do now?" Shinomiya Kaguya asked for Miyauchi Hikage's attitude.
They still couldn't figure out the strength of this mysterious skull-masked person, so they naturally had to consult Miyauchi Hikage.
Regarding this, Miyauchi Hikage nodded gently to the girls.
"No big problem. You go up and fight these guys to test them first. If there are any problems, I will take action."
Getting such a reply from Miyauchi Hikage, Shinomiya Kaguya's expression obviously relaxed a lot.
It seemed that the strength of this skull-masked person shouldn't have reached the level they completely couldn't handle. As long as Miyauchi Hikage could use his power of fate to restrict this guy like before, they shouldn't have much problem dealing with it.
She quickly exchanged opinions with Kasumigaoka Utaha and Sudou Ayami.
With Miyauchi Hikage, a special-grade combat power, as backing, the girls were quite decisive. They started to attack those clones heavily directly, and also wanted to dig out the location of Shadow Chizuru's main body.
It was just obvious that these girls wanted to fight the other party head-on, but Hassan of the Hundred Faces knew that his ability was not in frontal combat. So as dozens of clones on the stage launched attacks on them, her figure had already quietly hidden in the theater.
The Mirror Theater venue indeed fit Hassan of the Hundred Faces' stealth ability quite well.
Even if Miyauchi Hikage used the Card Master's Destiny skill to open the full map, he could only see the surface information of the Palace, unable to see through the world in the mirror, let alone detect where the other party was hiding.
Only when the other party actively showed her head could he capture the other party's movement trajectory.
Of course, directly opening Unlimited Blade Works to erode this world, or using some large-scale destruction skills to destroy those mirrors in the theater should also be possible.
But it hadn't reached that step yet.
Therefore, after those girls spent some effort using their abilities to deal with those Hassan clones, they discovered that Shadow Chizuru had disappeared.
"Where is she? Where did that guy run to?" Shinomiya Kaguya wiped her forehead and returned to the ground.
She was already familiar with the offensive means of Psychokinesis, but it was still the first time she fought against more than double-digit enemies.
Even with several teammates, Miyauchi Hikage didn't take action, and Ichinose Chizuru had no combat power.
Kasumigaoka Utaha's development of her ability was completely insufficient, only able to be used for passive defense and simple offense. It was Sudou Ayami's Persona that acted as the main force.
After such a battle, she really broke a lot of sweat.
"From the beginning, the other party disappeared. She should be hiding in a certain mirror in this theater," Miyauchi Hikage stated his analysis logically.
"I observed the other party's ability carefully. Judging from the information revealed by the other party before, Shadow Chizuru, huh? She should have the ability to create clones, and the strength of these clones looks quite average in my eyes."
"Using the standard of the Inner World, they are about between Grade 2 and Grade 1 strength. Although your fight with those clones was quite difficult, that's only because you have no combat experience, so those clones could persist in your hands for so long."
"And judging from the style the other party fought with you, the other party seems to follow the assassination genre, not the style of frontal combat with people. So the current Shadow Chizuru should be hiding somewhere waiting for us to reveal flaws, so she can launch a sneak attack on us in the dark."
Hearing Miyauchi Hikage's analysis, several girls couldn't help looking at the surrounding mirrors, feeling that that guy might pop up suddenly anytime to stab them in the back.
Even Miyauchi Hikage raised his vigilance, keeping the Eye of Destiny open throughout.
Although he could indeed crush the other party in terms of paper strength, the other party had been playing the assassination game since birth. To become a Hassan, the other party must have assassinated many enemies stronger than himself during his lifetime.
In fact, according to some works, in those small sub-species Holy Grail Wars, Hassan and the Assassin class hid aside many times to watch others fight each other, until the last moment to come out and steal the kill.
Miyauchi Hikage didn't want to have his heart dug out from behind confusedly. As the origin of the word ASSASSIN, basic respect should be given to a professional assassin like Hassan.
And at this time, several girls finally had the energy to think about the change just now.
"So, why did that Shadow suddenly become abnormal after Chizuru said that sentence?" Kasumigaoka Utaha also continued to manipulate the water wall to surround them while reviewing the situation just now.
Clearly, the two of them seemed to be chatting quite well before.
Although Shadow Chizuru's ideas and means were somewhat extreme, both of them were indeed on the path to becoming an actress.
They originally thought that as long as they could take Shadow Chizuru out of this theater, all this would be over.
Who would have thought that the situation would suddenly take a sharp turn for the worse and become like this now?
"I remember Shadow Chizuru said just now that the sentence you said at the end, Chizuru, gave her an answer, making her no longer your shadow. So is she angry because you denied the desires in your own heart?" Kasumigaoka Utaha reasoned.
Sudou Ayami also frowned.
She remembered that the Mysterious Person once mentioned to her that something interesting might happen if they met their own Shadows in the Metaverse.
It was just that the Mysterious Person didn't mention the specific situation to her.
Could the change in Shadow Chizuru now be the interesting thing mentioned by the Mysterious Person?
"It shouldn't be that simple. If she was just unhappy, the change in the other party wouldn't be so obvious. That sentence must be critical," Sudou Ayami shook her head, mentioning the sentence "I am thou, thou art I" that rang in her and Kisugi Ai's ears when they awakened their Personas.
It was precisely because they recognized the desires in their hearts that the Persona appeared.
Now Ichinose Chizuru denied this and didn't consider Shadow Chizuru as part of herself. There should be a certain connection here.
"I feel like that Shadow Chizuru wants to replace the Chizuru in reality. It's just that before, as the desire deep in Chizuru's heart, she was one with Chizuru, so she didn't have such ability. Until now that she has become an independent individual, perhaps she can achieve this step."
"Of course, this is just my guess."