Deafening explosions roared one after another as the massive barrage fired by Project Bunny caused the entire street to tremble violently.
Thick smoke from the exploding shells shrouded the battlefield, temporarily obscuring Bronya's view of Ren Amamiya.
'Did I get him...?'
While her naked eyes couldn't pierce the dense smoke, Project Bunny's advanced reconnaissance systems weren't hindered by mere smog.
Bronya warily shifted her gaze to the virtual screen projected before her by Project Bunny.
However, no sooner had her eyes landed on the screen than she saw the red dot representing Ren Amamiya break through all obstructions at incredible speed, charging towards her unstoppably.
"—What?!"
A fierce wind burst outwards, blowing the smoke away completely. Ren Amamiya, surrounded by swirling emerald gales, moved as if he was the wind itself, dashing towards Bronya at blinding speed.
There was no time for any other reaction. Project Bunny, hovering behind Bronya, swiftly aimed its massive cannon towards Ren. The fully charged, orange-yellow Collapse Cannon fired, guided by the quantum computer to precisely target Ren's rapidly advancing figure.
"Arsene, use Mabufudyne!"
Boosted by the wind-elemental currents Arsene bestowed upon him, Ren's agility had increased exponentially.
Facing Project Bunny's long-charged, devastating orange-yellow Collapse Cannon beam, Ren merely shifted his body slightly, nimbly flipping over the incoming high-energy blast.
Before Project Bunny could even adjust its aim to track Ren's movement, Arsene, receiving Ren's new command, suddenly spread its pitch-black wings.
As Arsene gestured with its hand, Bronya abruptly felt an intense, bone-chilling cold creep into her heart. Lowering her head, she saw incredibly thick ice rapidly erupting from the ground beneath her feet, instantly encasing her legs completely.
The solid, hard ice immobilized Bronya entirely, forcibly stripping away her ability to move.
Simultaneously, an arctic wind laced with ice shards howled past her, freezing Project Bunny's mechanical arms solid within thick blocks of ice.
With the muzzles of both giant mechanical hands frozen shut, Project Bunny's full-power orange-yellow Collapse Cannon was forced to cease fire. The abrupt freezing even caused the cannon muzzles to visibly distort and deform.
Crimson-black cursed flames, like a tangible manifestation of a curse, suddenly surged violently, clinging to Project Bunny's massive silver frame like bone-eating acid. The terrifyingly potent dark flames incapacitated Project Bunny in mere moments, leaving it critically damaged and unable to reactivate.
"This is the end, Miss Robot."
The cold edge of the crimson-black katana pressed against her fair, slender neck.
Project Bunny had just crashed heavily to the ground. The damage was too severe, forcing it back into a quantum state, vanishing from the real world in a flash of ethereal blue light.
Just as that happened, Bronya, her legs still trapped in the thick ice, heard Ren Amamiya's voice declaring victory beside her ear. An unnerving, lethal chill prickled the delicate skin of her neck.
"...Your power has increased significantly since the start of the battle. Is this your true strength?"
Her legs were sealed in ice, the pistol she held had been casually disarmed by Ren, and the sharp, cold edge of Jizo Mitama was pressed against her vulnerable, undefended neck.
Even her most powerful trump card, Project Bunny 19C, had been defeated head-on by Ren, rendered inoperable for the time being.
Defeat was certain. Bronya fully recognized her failure now.
Though her face remained impassive, like an emotionless robot, inwardly, Bronya was already fervently cursing the Anti-Entropy intelligence officers.
Bronya had previously hacked into Schicksal's database and knew the combat capabilities associated with each Valkyrie rank.
According to Schicksal's rating system, factoring in Project Bunny's power, Bronya estimated her own comprehensive combat strength reached the standard of an A-rank Valkyrie.
But this Ren Amamiya—described as unremarkable in the intel Cocolia provided, supposedly just an ordinary person untouched by the Honkai—
The true combat prowess he had just displayed was clearly that of an elite among elites within the A-rank, the type who could serve as a squad leader even in the Immortal Blades!
How was Bronya supposed to fight that?!
"True strength? Nah, I don't need to use my true strength to deal with you."
Although Bronya was captured, Ren didn't let his guard down.
After all, the pale-grey-haired twin-tailed girl before him was a robot. Who knew what kind of deadly weapon might be hidden in some part of her body? It wasn't entirely impossible she could suddenly turn her head, give him an electric-eyed glare, and perform a "true hero kills with their eyes" routine.
Ren wouldn't try to choke out a robot, but he figured holding Jizo Mitama to her neck—ready to lop off her head at the slightest wrong move—should be enough to keep this robot girl subdued.
"I've answered your question. Now it's my turn to ask you... Who sent you to kill me, and why?"
Realizing the assassin girl before him was just a robot following orders, the anger Ren initially felt towards her shifted entirely to the mastermind who had ordered the hit.
"Bronya doesn't understand what you're talking about. Bronya attacked you of her own free will. No one ordered Bronya."
Hearing Ren's utterly convincing denial, Bronya's eyes flickered momentarily.
Her pale grey eyes stared intently at Ren for a moment. After confirming there wasn't the slightest hint of deception or guilt on his face, Bronya silently lowered her gaze, looking away.
If the power he'd shown—already top-tier even among A-rank Valkyries—wasn't his limit, did that mean this Ren Amamiya had already reached the realm of S-rank Valkyries, a level attained by only three individuals in the entire Schicksal organization?!
Beneath her expressionless, impassive exterior, Bronya once again began fervently, madly cursing the Anti-Entropy intel team in her mind.
Ren hadn't lied to Bronya. When he said he wasn't using his full strength, it wasn't just because he hadn't cycled through all his Personas in the fight.
It was because, in the real world, the power Ren could draw from his Personas was indeed significantly weaker than when he was inside Mementos.
However, according to Hare, this was actually normal.
Through continuous training and practice, by mastering the abilities of Jizo Mitama more proficiently, Ren could steadily increase the power his Personas could exert in the real world.
When he first started yesterday, Arsene, summoned via Jizo Mitama into reality, could only manifest about thirty percent of its Mementos strength.
But after a night of training...
Now, Persona Arsene in the real world could already exert fifty percent of its full power.
Furthermore, as the battle duration increased, Jizo Mitama seemed to guide the cognitive world's intrusion into reality, continuously constructing an environment more suitable for Persona combat. This allowed the Personas' strength to gradually increase during the fight.
If faced with a powerful enemy requiring an all-out effort, Ren could also use Jizo Mitama's special ability to forcibly push a Persona's power to one hundred percent.
He could even apply a buff similar to how Goro Akechi induced Berserk states in Shadows, granting his own Persona an enhanced state, allowing it to exert two hundred percent of its power in the real world.
This Berserk enhancement had no harmful effects or drawbacks for the Persona or Ren himself. The only consequence was that Jizo Mitama would temporarily be unable to activate its abilities, and even its sharpness would decrease.
Jizo Mitama would need at least two hours of autonomous recovery time after activating the Berserk enhancement ability to return to its normal state.
"Impressive for a robot that awakened the power of Persona. Gaining a heart allows you to lie to humans now, huh? But lying to me is useless..."
{Joker-sama, please be careful! Enemies are approaching!}
Just as Ren was interrogating the uncooperative Bronya, Yae Sakura, residing within his heart, suddenly issued a warning.
The instant after Sakura's warning, Ren noticed the air directly in front of him suddenly distort.
Several massive, deep-blue robot figures, forged entirely of steel, materialized before Ren, swinging heavy mechanical fists at him.
Ren nimbly leaped away, his agile form dodging the attack. The blade of Jizo Mitama, glowing with a faint crimson light, lightly grazed Bronya's fair neck as he moved.
As the katana left a shallow cut on Bronya's neck, an incredibly insidious, corrosive crimson-black energy subtly entered her body through the wound. Her pupils flashed with a scarlet glint, unnoticed by anyone.
The mechanical fists struck the ground with tremendous force, pushing Ren back from Bronya while simultaneously shattering the thick layer of frost completely, breaking the connection between the ice encasing Bronya's legs and the ground.
"More robots, huh? Quite a few this time. Too bad they're not the cute girl model anymore; these look like mass-produced grunt types at first glance."
The giant deep-blue robot closest to Bronya quickly scooped her up—legs still partially frozen—into its hand and immediately turned to flee without any intention of fighting.
It left behind over thirty identical robots, which quickly surrounded Ren Amamiya and Persona Arsene in a tight circle.
Ren paid no attention to Bronya being rescued by the blue robot; he had already planted his contingency within her.
The Jizo Mitama katana possessed an effect similar to Goro Akechi's Wild Card power, capable of inducing Berserk and Mental Shutdown states, and even issuing commands to those affected by its power.
Although Bronya was a robot girl who had awakened the power of Persona, she could, at best, offer slight resistance to Jizo Mitama's influence; she couldn't completely negate its control.
Forcibly keeping the stubborn Bronya by his side was less effective than letting her go naturally. Letting her return would yield the greatest results, delivering the most severe counter-blow to the mastermind who wanted him dead.
"Alright, now it's time to send all you scrap metal heaps to the junkyard. Prepare yourselves!"
As the battle dragged on, Jizo Mitama had already pushed the cognitive world's encroachment on reality to a significant degree. The Personas' power was enhanced once more by the altered environment.
After a brief probing attack using Arsene, Ren gauged the power level of these large, deep-blue robots.
If Ren got serious, he could scrap all of them completely in moments.
However, to make the act convincing, to make Bronya's rescue seem more legitimate, Ren and Arsene held back considerably, putting on a performance for these large robots called Titans.
Golden lightning swept across the battlefield, emerald tempests became cutting blades slicing through steel armor, searing explosions and freezing ice spikes flew in alternating volleys. The tough outer shells of the blue robots quickly showed visible deformation, revealing sparking, shattered components underneath.
Ren, consistently holding back, deliberately dragged out the fight until Bronya was completely gone before finally demolishing the remaining blue Titan robots into scattered piles of smoking scrap metal, utterly beyond any hope of recycling.
"My place isn't safe anymore. Until I deal with that unknown mastermind, I need to find a temporary hideout..."
After eliminating all enemies present, Ren lowered the Jizo Mitama katana in his hand and murmured softly to himself.