Persona: Devil Summoner

"One, two, three, you don't need to know this, because you are still young and you don't understand..."

Jiang Tianwei thought that Dongxiang Yiersan would continue to quarrel with her mother, but unexpectedly, she completely ignored her mother's response and turned to him: "You too, Mr. Kaito! Why don't you tell me what's going on?! Why has my family become like this! Why does my mother look so strange! You must know!"

"Um... Wh, what... what do you want me to talk about?"

"It's this weird place! Why is the light red? Why is it so dark outside? Why does my house look like my home but it's not my home? And why did my mom suddenly start saying these things? Why are you in my house?"

"Forehead……"

Dongxiang's rapid-fire words left Jiang Tianwei speechless for a moment. He could only make a pitiful expression: "Isn't it because it's not time to explain yet..."

"Why is everyone like this? It's clearly [my] business, but they want to bypass [me] to execute it? I am the one who should decide all this!"

Dongxiang Yiersan was really confused now. He mustered up the courage to break the glass window of his house. When he woke up, he found himself in a strange fantasy place. Then the thief argued with his mother about his own affairs, and then one after another, things he had never heard of were thrown out...

You know, as a chess player, one of her most important abilities is [control]. She needs to control the direction of the entire chessboard and the coordination of each chess piece. Just as she imagines herself as the king of the shogi kingdom, she is unwilling to be a chess piece manipulated by others at will. She - Togo Ichiraku - is the one who controls her own destiny.

laugh……

The blue flame burned silently on Dongxiang Yiersan's face. Jiang Tianwei could not appreciate this scene any more.

However, unlike other people, when other people awaken, they can often hear their suppressed true selves expressing their unwillingness in the space. But Dongxiang Yiersan did not.

Perhaps, this is because chess players will not reveal their inner thoughts easily?

Togo Mitsuyo was terrified. She hurriedly took two steps towards her daughter, but her toes stepped on the place that Jiang Tianwei had just broken. Some broken structures fell down, making a slight sound, which made her stop: "One, two, three! Are you okay? One, two, three! If your face is burned by the fire, it will be over! In the entertainment industry now, appearance is the most important thing!"

"Mom... in the end, you only cared about my 'commodity value'."

Togo Ichimi-san, who was burned by the flames, spoke in a weak voice.

Although the flames would not burn the body, it was a manifestation of the pain in the heart, and it was impossible not to feel pain. Togo Ichi-San held her face with both hands, and like a proud and noble queen, she quickly and gracefully took off her mask. Under the mask was a bloody smile that looked as if the skin had been peeled off.

"Sister Dongxiang..."

Niijima had just done something similar recently, and she knew too well the pain she would have to endure to peel the flame of resistance from her body. Her nonchalant attitude was just a show of bravery.

"It's okay, Miss Phantom Thief."

Dongxiang Yiersan bowed to her politely. Her casual clothes were also covered with a layer of black gauze as she made this British-style movement, forming a lotus skirt with the flavor of a European noblewoman.

However, this black evening dress had just taken shape when it was suddenly split into seven or eight pieces, as if someone had cut her skirt with a knife. Some of it went around her waist and around her neck, some of it was tied up on her white arms, and some of it wrapped around her slender legs, and combined with the black stockings that tightly bound her slender lines, it looked like trousers.

The dress that originally looked like that of a noble lady was transformed into a gauze dress with a strong sense of design and fashion value because of this move.

"My destiny is my own. I am the king of the Dongxiang Empire - I cannot be controlled by others for long."

Togo Ichiraku's mask appeared on her face. It was a very common ball mask with gorgeous patterns decorated on the edges. There was a very long feather inserted on the right side and a stick extending downward on the left side. This was a structure that required people to hold the stick and actively put the mask on their face.

This kind of mask has only been seen in TV dramas, but I didn’t expect to see it in real life... Well, the palace is not real either.

"Persona——[Moriarty], I want to take control of everything myself."

As Togo Ichi-san straightened up, a metal man wearing a black top hat appeared behind her. He looked very much like the image of a phantom thief that appeared in works of art.

"One, two, three... You, you're going to resist me?!"

Mitsuyo Togo looked at her daughter in disbelief.

Dongxiang Yiersan nodded and said, "Yes, mother, you have been ruling the country from behind the scenes for so long, it is time to return the royal power to the throne. From now on, I will be the master of my own life."

(End of this chapter)

Chapter 405 Is it true that the advantage lies with me?

Parents always feel that their children are too young to rely on them and make decisions on everything for various reasons, such as watching their children grow up. In extreme cases, some parents will still tell their children to turn on the faucet when washing their hands even though they are already 30 years old.

This kind of meaningless concern often only makes the child feel extremely irritated. And he can't say it. Once he says it, the topic will always turn into "I'm doing this for your own good! Am I wrong?" and finally turn into a quarrel.

In the Togo family, this kind of kinship conflict has developed to the extreme. It is now like this. Yi Er San cannot accept that her mother has to bypass her and make decisions on her behalf in everything, which is why she chooses to accept the help of the thief.

When children grow up, they always have to leave their parents and live on their own... But it is obvious that Dongxiang Yiersan's mother is not the kind of person who can reason, otherwise she would not have such twisted desires.

Dongxiang Yiersan is not only her daughter, but also her revenge for her unsuccessful life and her own projection. She wants to project all her failures, reluctance and regrets in her life onto Yiersan, and finally win back her life.

Although it sounds a bit inspiring, it is a disaster for Dongxiang Yiersan herself. If the mother and daughter have completely consistent goals, it will be a different story, especially now, there is an irreconcilable gap between Yiersan and her mother, and there is only pain.

"One, two, three... When did you become a bad boy... Oh! I understand! This is the so-called [adolescence, rebellious period]! For a bad boy like you, your mother must pull you back on the right track!"

As Togo Mitsuyo spoke, her blue clothes suddenly burst apart - but not in the way that everyone liked to see. As the clothes burst apart, her body also changed. It became swollen and huge, and the color of her skin turned into a bright blue... It became somewhat transparent, like the sea water reflecting the bright stars in the sky under the dark night sky.

This body, which seems to have a flowing texture, puts the torn pieces of clothes back on her body, turning them into the shapes of hearts, clubs, diamonds, and spades on playing cards, flowing with the body fluids. Her body can only be barely seen in human form, and the details such as facial features are all blurred. Her left eye is the sun and her right eye is the moon, but they are not the shapes in our reality, but the anthropomorphic celestial bodies commonly seen in fairy tale picture books.

Where the head should be, a tree-like structure emerged from the water and extended upward. Brown branches mixed with green leaves weaved into a beautiful crown.

She waved her left hand and a magic wand appeared. She waved her right hand and a huge book appeared. Between the unfolded pages, a mysterious magic circle floated in the air, forming a three-dimensional magic circle similar to a cake.

Fairy tale writers are, of course, the gods of the literary medium of "fairy tales". They are the creators of fairy tales and represent the absolute control over fairy tales. Writers can arrange the characters in the story however they want. The little mermaid will not jump out of the book to scold Andersen, and Alibaba will not crawl out of the book to ask Scheherazade where to feed the donkey.

This absolute desire for domination is completely contrary to Togo Ichi-san's desire for freedom. This mother and daughter will one day become enemies. It is better to solve this problem as soon as possible. It is like a disease. The sooner you receive treatment, the higher the chance of recovery.

"One, two, three. I will seriously write about you as the best princess. I wanted you to enjoy everything without knowing anything. Since you don't want to, then I can only let you suffer a little bit - it doesn't matter, fairy tales are like this. Princesses who suffer a little bit will be happy in the end. As for you..."

Togo Mitsuyo glanced at the Phantom Thieves and said in a cold voice: "You are guilty of instigating my only princess. You deserve to die. I will give you the most severe torture. First of all——"

She raised her cane and slammed it hard on the ground. With a thud, a blue-white glow bloomed from under her feet, expanding to the entire space in an instant! The red and black eyes even turned into blue and white. The real family turned into a fairy-tale castle, with thick ice on the blue-white bricks...

This palace looks very much like the Frost Castle in Frozen.

But it's more deadly than that.

"Tsk..."

Jiang Tianwei couldn't help but be shocked and began to tremble all over.

Not because of fear, but because - it's cold!

It goes without saying that to freeze the entire castle in ice, the amount of cold air required is no joke!

Jiang Tianwei, as a demon, felt stiff all over, let alone others.

He looked out of the corner of his eye and saw that whether it was Shinjima Makoto, Yoshizawa Sumire, or Kitagawa Yusuke, they all grabbed their shoulders involuntarily, trying to maintain their body temperature. Jiang Tianwei looked at Togo Ichiraku again. This girl had just awakened her persona and was already in a fragile period with great mental exhaustion. Also, her phantom thief costume was not even made of leather, so this tulle dress looked beautiful, but it was really not cold-resistant.

I've never heard of anyone wearing a gauze coat going out in the middle of winter!

He instinctively wanted to reach out and push Dongxiang Yiersan away. But he didn't expect that just by raising his arm, he could hear his body making strange crackling sounds. It turned out that at the moment when he turned his head left and right, ice and snow had already covered his clothes. Layers of snow and frost formed ice flakes, and the dense ice flakes combined into ice armor, which was rapidly thickening!

Jiang Tianwei noticed this, and quickly shook his body vigorously, and then opened the demon summoning program...

At this point, he didn't even have time to confirm what kind of mid-demon he could summon! I guess people who have to go to school or get off work in winter should have a deep understanding of this, right? Your body may be able to resist the cold by wearing more clothes, but the phone in your pocket will often become unusable due to low temperatures - especially cheap devices.

By the way, the phone in Jiang Tianwei's hand happened to be a cheap one. In the past, he couldn't change it because he had no money. Now, he couldn't change it because it had a demon summoning program and an alien world navigation app installed in it.

It can be seen that he is a consistent person.

In order to summon the demon before his phone was damaged by the air conditioner, Jiang Tianwei could only take a quick glance and quickly summon a high-level demon...

However, the cold air had a much greater impact than he thought. His thumb had started to become a little out of control, like Parkinson's disease. His companions were in a much worse condition than him. Almost all of them were shivering with cold, and they didn't even have a chance to break free from the ice armor!

However, he was already anxious, and his fingers were not obeying him, so what he finally summoned was...

Cuchulainn, Landa, and Set.

Among these three, one is the great Irish hero—he has no resistance to freezing.

One is the ghost girl from the Balinese legend—she has no resistance to freezing.

One is an evil god in Egyptian mythology—with no resistance to freezing.

(Tsk… isn’t this the end?)

The extreme cold made Jiang Tianwei feel the chill from the bottom of his heart.

(Or else, I can just summon a fire motorcycle and set myself on fire... With my self-healing ability, I should be able to withstand the burns for a while.)

While Jiang Tianwei was thinking, she heard Dongxiang Mitsuyo's arrogant and crazy declaration like a queen: "You have no way to retreat. If you rely on me now and change the hearts of those Internet trolls who slandered her and smeared her image, I can let you go."

The tone of this person made people angry. Jiang Tianwei wanted to yell at her: "But, I refuse!" But the cold air made him unable to even open his mouth to speak.

"The leader of the Phantom Thieves."

At this critical moment, surprisingly, Togo Ichiraku was still able to speak?!

This is not difficult to understand. After all, for Mitsuyo Togo, Ichi-San is not only her precious daughter, but also her cash cow and a substitute who is being trained as "her own clone". Mitsuyo Togo will never kill her no matter what.

Therefore, this cold air has a fairy-tale flavor, which only hurts the Phantom Thieves but not One, Two, or Three.

"Do you—need to join forces with me?"

Dongxiang Yiersan asked. I don't know if it's an illusion, but Jiang Tianwei always feels that after she takes off the mask, her personality is a little weird.

"Join forces?"

Jiang Tianwei chewed on the meaning of this word, and finally nodded heavily: "Then I'll leave it to you, Ms. Dongxiang!"

(End of this chapter)

Chapter 406: Evolution? No! This is a transformation!

Regarding the current predicament, Togo Ichiro's word is not "help" but "join forces."

The wording can really show the speaker's delicate feelings.

To Togo Ichiraku, she is neither a strong person who has the ability to help others nor a "weak woman who needs to be protected and saved."

Because she longed for independence and autonomy, she chose to rebel against her mother... If she simply obeyed the orders of the Phantom Thieves unilaterally, then it would be nothing more than replacing the "mother" that was difficult for One or Two to accept in the above-mentioned sentence with the "Phantom Thieves Group."

Therefore, she put herself on an equal footing with the Phantom Thieves: You, the Phantom Thieves, are not here to save me. I, Togo Ichi-ni-san, am not here to save you. You need me to accomplish your goal, and I just happen to need you to accomplish mine, so we are equal.

Reading this hidden self-esteem, Jiang Tianwei would certainly not reject this suggestion.

Although I don’t know what abilities Togo Ichiraku’s persona has now, it’s always a good idea to accept it first.

"Is that so... Then - I will grant you the qualification to be temporarily incorporated into my Togo army and allow you to be my vanguard!"

"Huh? So your personality is starting to get weird, isn't it?"

If you think about it carefully, Togo Kazumi does have a bit of a split personality. Before playing chess, Togo Kazumi was definitely a literal, traditional, beautiful girl with long black hair and a quiet demeanor. If you open Japanese romance animation from the 1980s, 1990s, more than 90% of them will contain a similar character.

But once you start playing chess... to put it bluntly, it's being a middle school student, or to put it nicely, it's being loyal to the fantasies deep in your heart.

The so-called personality mask, in essence, can be understood as one's own inner thoughts. Whether it is the "suppressed will to resist" common to the Phantom Thieves, or the "truthfulness of recognizing one's own shame" of the self-proclaimed Special Investigation Team, or even earlier, the "courage to face death" of Mitsuru Kirijo and others, persona can be understood as a manifestation of one's own will.

Naturally, when Togo Ichiro unfolds his persona, the personality he uses when playing chess will be integrated with his original personality...neither a complete separation nor a complete integration.

But, no matter whether she is being a chuunibana now or not, just look at Togo Ichiraku, who seems to be the 99th emperor of Britannia who came from somewhere, standing with an exaggerated body, with her arms in an exaggerated Z shape to protect her front, and her beautiful eyes can be seen between her open middle and ring fingers.

"The game begins. Moriarty!"

Following Togo Ichi-san's powerful shout, the dark shadow behind her suddenly opened its arms. At first, it was just like a vampire in a movie, tightly wrapped in a black cloak, with only a face and a big hat visible. Now, as it opened its arms, the cloak on its body spread out, and everyone realized that this persona had no lower body at all! It was like a bust!

His upper body was like a metal puppet, with a rough stick-like structure and joints that seemed to have no mobility. The lower body was a pattern printed directly on the cloak. Starting from about the waist, the painting on the cloak began to become three-dimensional and separated directly from the cloak... It was just like the classic three-dimensional painting in art class.

The strange persona opened his arms wide, and several things resembling spider silk instantly spurted out from the white gloves and stuck to the demon that Jiang Tianwei had just summoned.

"What the hell... are you trying to spray me with spider silk in such a cold place?"

Cu Chulainn turned the spear in his hand and looked at the spider silk stuck to his body in confusion, unable to understand what was happening.

Of course, Randa and Seth beside him were also confused.

"Since this is the enemy camp, and the enemy's king is right before us, then this is the perfect time for you loyal and unrivaled soldiers to [upgrade]! Go! Abandon your meaningless weakness, and upgrade to your strongest self in my hands!"

Dongxiang Yiersan said this and waved his hand. Although no one gave her a dubbing effect, Jiang Tianwei felt that she seemed to vaguely see a handsome special effect exploding from behind her.

Promotion is a very common way of playing chess games. In international chess, when a pawn reaches the end line, it can become a queen (I don’t know what the people who set the rules are thinking…) In Chinese chess, there is also a setting that pawns can move left or right after crossing the river, which can be regarded as a disguised promotion.

In Japanese shogi, there are rules for promotion as a matter of course, and most pieces have the possibility of promotion.

The three mid-level demons that were hit by the silk threads cast by Dongxiang Yiersan all began to emit strange white light...

Boom!

This time, Jiang Tianwei was very sure that this was not an auditory hallucination!

That was the real sound of an explosion!

The demon who was the ghost girl Landa just now has become extremely tall!

This ice palace was originally a fantasy, so it was built to be particularly tall. Even so, after the transformation, Landa could not stand up freely in this castle... It was just that huge!

On the pitch-black body, dark red patterns surged like magma. The black giant remained in a kneeling position and slowly raised his head. On his volcanic crater-like round cone-shaped head was a face that seemed to be carved and would not change. In his right hand was a sword, and from the hilt upwards, a blazing flame was burning!

This is a very common concept in the gaming world—Sword of Flame!