A dreamless night.
When Ren Amamiya opened his eyes on the spacious and comfortable high-end bed in the guest room, he couldn't help but frown slightly.
Ren Amamiya hadn't entered the Velvet Room in dream form last night, and he had no idea what the evil god was thinking.
He had originally planned to fuse some Personas in the Velvet Room, but it came to nothing because he couldn't enter the Velvet Room in his dreams.
Although according to Siegfried's intelligence, it wouldn't be difficult for Ren Amamiya to pass through the Herrscher of the Void's Palace with his current strength.
But Ren Amamiya still habitually wanted to fuse his Personas before exploring a Palace.
"He didn't pull me into the Velvet Room. Is it because he thinks I don't need help now, or because he saw I have the [Key] and intends for me to visit the Velvet Room on my own initiative?"
After getting up from the guest room and washing up, Ren Amamiya kept pondering the reason why the evil god hadn't pulled him into the Velvet Room last night.
Although he couldn't guess the evil god's thoughts, Ren Amamiya had made a decision in his own heart.
Simply lying in bed waiting for the evil god to pull him into the Velvet Room was too passive. It was best to keep the initiative in his own hands.
After breakfast, Ren Amamiya planned to try using the key Kaslana had given him to enter the Velvet Room in the real world.
"Good morning, Ren! Breakfast is ready. Just wait a little longer, we can eat soon!"
In the kitchen, Raiden Mei, wearing a white apron, was busy preparing breakfast.
Upon seeing Ren Amamiya emerge from the guest room, Raiden Mei's eyes instantly lit up, and a radiant smile naturally appeared on her delicate, pretty face.
The enticing aroma of food wafted out from the kitchen, pulling Ren Amamiya's thoughts, which had been immersed in matters of the Velvet Room, back to reality.
"Good morning, Mei. Thank you for making breakfast."
A gentle curve appeared on Ren Amamiya's lips. He nodded lightly to Raiden Mei in the kitchen as a greeting.
Staying in Raiden Mei's room and eating food personally made by Raiden Mei, the owner.
Even though the relationship between Ren Amamiya and Raiden Mei had entered a tacitly understood ambiguous phase, Ren Amamiya still felt a bit embarrassed about it, thinking about when he could also cook a meal for Raiden Mei.
However, Raiden Mei didn't mind this at all. In fact, she was very happy to cook for Ren Amamiya and had no intention of ceding the kitchen, her exclusive battlefield, to anyone else.
.
After greeting Raiden Mei, Ren Amamiya turned his gaze to the silver-gray-haired, twin-tailed loli sitting at the dining table in the living room. He asked Bronya with some puzzle look.
"Good morning to you too, Bronya... Didn't you rest well last night? You look very listless."
A laptop was placed in front of Bronya. Her silver-gray pupils appeared quite vacant, and her slender, fair fingers were continuously tapping on the laptop keyboard.
However, Ren Amamiya somehow felt that Bronya had a sense of déjà vu, like she was mechanically working with her brain on autopilot.
Almost like a miserable corporate slave being exploited by an unscrupulous boss.
"Is there a problem with creating the Phantom Aficionado Website? I thought with your hacking skills, creating a website should have been easy for you."
As early as last night when they returned to the Raiden residence, Ren Amamiya had entrusted Bronya with the task of creating the Phantom Aficionado Website.
However, the Phantom Aficionado Website Ren Amamiya wanted Bronya to create wasn't a website for the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, but a phantom thief website exclusively for Joker.
The one who could gather the people's wishes and condense them along with the deadly sins into [Deadly Sin Piercing Ammo] to pass judgment and verdict on the evil god Yaldabaoth, was only Ren Amamiya, the [Trickster].
Instead of promoting the Phantom Thieves of Hearts to the world, it was better to hide the team's strength behind the scenes and only declare the existence of [Phantom Thief Joker] to the world, letting Ren Amamiya himself leave a strong cognitive impression in people's hearts.
When the time came for the duel with the evil god, the people's wishes wouldn't be scattered but would all converge on Ren Amamiya himself, condensing an even more powerful [Deadly Sin Piercing Ammo] for him.
Aside from the insignificant change of turning the Phantom Thieves of Hearts into the Phantom Thief, Ren Amamiya hadn't made any other requests to Bronya.
Even Mishima Yuki, an amateur computer enthusiast who was still a student, could create and maintain the Phantom Aficionado Website. There was no reason why Bronya, a semi-cyborg girl, couldn't do the same...
"...No problem, Bronya can do anything!"
After being spoken to by Ren Amamiya, Bronya, who seemed absent-minded and distracted, suddenly trembled. Her slightly slouched waist instantly straightened, and a spark returned to her previously listless pupils.
"Bronya's hacking skills are world-class. It's just creating a mission website. Bronya finished it long ago and has already promoted it online. Now, Phantom Thief Joker, who can steal the evil thoughts from people's hearts, has become an urban legend that people talk about with relish!"
Bronya turned the laptop screen in front of her towards Ren Amamiya, showing him the fruits of her labor.
A familiar art style website, composed of red and black, came into Ren Amamiya's view.
Bronya had even thoughtfully created a silhouette of [Phantom Thief Joker] on the website. It was immediately clear to viewers that the Phantom Thief wore a wing-like trench coat, and the pure white spirit bird mask, contrasting sharply with the black silhouette of the body, instantly captured the viewers' visual focus.
Just as Bronya herself said, her hacking skills were world-class. Under the effect of her viral promotion, the number of visitors to the Phantom Aficionado Website had already reached tens of thousands.
If she hadn't been worried that overly aggressive methods would attract users with even more malicious and negative personalities, and to consider the feelings of her client, Ren Amamiya, Bronya had adopted relatively gentle promotional methods.
If Bronya were allowed to go all out without any scruples, she was confident she could increase the website's traffic tenfold, but unfortunately, she couldn't.
Even with gentle promotional methods, many of the visitors attracted to the Phantom Aficionado Website still left frowning, negative, and skeptical comments.
Bronya had been continuously deleting and managing those negative comments that popped up, even using hacking methods to eliminate slanderous statements online, striving to control the public opinion direction of the newly born Phantom Aficionado Website in the online world.
With Project Bunny, who could be considered a quantum computer in a sense, assisting her, Bronya could actually accomplish this much more easily.
However, because she missed Seele too much, Bronya wanted to find something to help her pass the time first, so she had been doing everything herself.
Moreover, regardless of whether she had used her full strength or not, letting her superior see that she had already used her full strength to satisfy his request was also a corporate slave argument Bronya had seen while surfing the internet.
Bronya, who wanted to quickly curry favor with Ren Amamiya, deeply agreed with this.
"Although most people who visit the Phantom Aficionado Website treat it as mere entertainment, some people have already started leaving mission requests on it. As long as you pick a few mission targets and make them [Repent], I believe this website will be taken seriously by people, and the existence of Phantom Thief Joker will also be believed by them."
After introducing her work to Ren Amamiya, Bronya picked up a glass of hot milk placed on the dining table in front of her and gulped it down. She felt much of the fatigue from staying up all night dissipate.
Placing the empty milk glass on the table, Bronya's silver-gray eyes flickered as she looked at Ren Amamiya, as if expecting a reward after completing a mission. Her entire being exuded an atmosphere of anticipation and entreaty.
"...You did a good job, Bronya. Even better than I expected."
Ren Amamiya carefully reviewed the Phantom Aficionado Website that Bronya had stayed up all night to create and maintain. Looking at the discussion posts constantly refreshing in the website's forum, he couldn't help but nod in satisfaction and praise Bronya.
"I know, I'll give you a reward----Persona! Come forth, Seele!!"
Jizo Mitama fell from the void into Ren Amamiya's palm. He didn't put on his phantom thief attire but directly activated Jizo Mitama's materialization power, summoning the Persona into the real world.
Under Bronya's flickering gaze, a crimson butterfly mask quietly appeared in mid-air in the living room, then transformed into a shower of scarlet light particles.
Those colorful scarlet light particles slowly gathered together, converging into a familiar figure that made Bronya's breath catch and her eyes unwilling to blink even once.
"...Seele!"
Under Bronya's soft call, the Persona figure summoned by Ren Amamiya finally fully materialized.
Blue-black shoulder-length short hair, wearing a white top and a dark blue short skirt, with a pair of dark blue thigh-high socks on her slender, well-proportioned fair legs.
Different from the flamboyant image summoned by Ren Amamiya last night—wearing a crimson formal dress with eerie chain-claws floating around her.
The Seele who now appeared before Bronya undoubtedly more closely matched the image of the figure who had accompanied her day and night in the orphanage.
"Tsk, what a pain... Sister Bronya, could you please not disturb Seele all the time? Seele also wants to have her own time and life~~~"
Seele, who had kept her eyes gently closed since appearing, slowly opened them, revealing those blood-red, deep pupils.
Her red pupils unabashedly radiated malice, while her tone deliberately feigned coyness and weakness as she spoke softly to the stiff-faced Bronya.
"N-No! Sister Bronya, Seele, Seele didn't mean that! Seele meant..."
Just as those hurtful words had fallen, Seele suddenly blinked again. With the blink of her eyelids, the crimson color in her eyes completely faded, turning into an ocean-like, clear azure.
As if waking from a dream, realizing what her other self had just said to Sister Bronya, Seele instantly showed a flustered expression. She hurriedly waved her hands at Bronya, racking her brains to explain.
"Hmm? What's going on? Seele, you and Shadow Seele can fuse again? You can fuse again without being sent to the guillotine?"
Gazing at Seele's flustered and nervous expression, Ren Amamiya couldn't help but frown slightly, asking Seele with surprise.
Seele's weak, lamb-like demeanor was something Veliona could never imitate. Even if Veliona deliberately pretended to be Seele, it would only make people feel she was being sarcastic.
What Ren Amamiya had summoned was clearly Veliona. And when Veliona first appeared, she indeed couldn't wait to verbally attack Bronya, whom she disliked.
However, this time, the one who responded to the summons and appeared in the real world was not Veliona alone; even Seele herself had been summoned along.
This made Ren Amamiya inevitably think of Lavenza, who had also been torn into two entities.
After Lavenza was torn into Caroline and Justine by the evil god, she relied on accepting execution by guillotine to become one again, reverting to her complete form... although Lavenza's personality didn't perfectly blend together, and she could even proactively split herself back into her twin forms.
But to re-fuse a split self, it should only be possible through execution by guillotine in the Velvet Room.
For Seele and Veliona to have silently become one person again was far too strange.
"What? G-Guillotine?! Are you kidding me? You actually want to send Seele to the guillotine?!"
Hearing Ren Amamiya's words, which seemed to imply he wanted to send Seele to the guillotine, Seele, who was blushing and trying to explain to Bronya, saw her eyes instantly turn crimson.
After Veliona took over Seele's "account," she instantly distanced herself from Ren Amamiya, her eyes wide with vigilance as she looked at him.
Veliona's hair stood on end like a startled kitten. Her fair, slender fingertips unconsciously toyed with her delicate, smooth neck, feeling a bit chilly around her neck.
"I didn't expect you to have such a perverted hobby... I won't let you lay a hand on Seele! If you really can't help it, then come at me instead. I won't die anyway!"
Recalling that the real Seele wasn't here, and this body was merely a projection created for her by Ren Amamiya, Veliona slowly relaxed her tense body.
Under Bronya's dumbfounded gaze.
Veliona put on an expression of facing death with equanimity and proactively exposed her smooth, white, tender neck—a human weak point—to Ren Amamiya.