The Music of Freedom

by DemonSessama

Chiba Natsumi is trapped in a living hell and isolated from the rest of the world, though the latter is a choice of her own making, but a stumble into a bizarre world too strange to be real unlocks a power within that sings for her freedom. With this power Natsumi finds she can no longer be silent over cruelties committed and finds she might not be as alone as she believes she is.

69. Chapter 69

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi's immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I've altered Cerberus' appearance slightly because the mythical version had three heads! It felt really daft for the Persona version not to have three heads, yes I know about Koromaru's Persona Cerberus having three heads, but my point still stands.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy

Chapter 69: Depths of the Bank

"Good morning!" Makoto's voice cheerfully greeted us. Me and Ren turned to see our newly appointed advisor approaching us. "I've been thinking a lot about our abilities and the challenges since yesterday," Makoto admitted. Ren seemed rather interested in hearing what she had to say and so was I to be honest. "The… height of the current challenge really reflects our target's personality. He's flying around so no one can trace his steps, he doesn't trust anyone. I bet the extra obstacles will be difficult to overcome too," Makoto commented. She was right, which was good since she was already settling quite readily into her role. "That's why we need to be careful when we head in," Makoto insisted.

"Very sharp advisor," Ren complimented. Makoto had adjusted to her role and our purpose so swiftly and I was pleased to see that she was catching onto the way that Palaces worked already; I figured she'd be able to adjust to the unique attributes but I hadn't expected it to happen this fast, plus she quickly picked up on our manner of talking to cover up the oddity of our actions.

"And nice work on the codewords," I added on. Makoto smiled in response to me words, but the train pulled into the station which stopped our conversation from continuing as we stepped on board and needed to focus on school before we could focus upon the heist we needed to finish up.

*Persona 5 Royal*

I was able to focus so much better on our lessons today since we had made decent progress into the Palace and would likely successfully find the Treasure today if we were lucky. My phone proceeded to go off which I had actually expected to happen, I quickly fished it out and proceeded to look at the Chat to find out what was been talked about.

Ryūji: Makoto, you okay? Has Kaneshiro threatened you or anything?

Makoto: He's been demanding money, but I choose to ignore those messages.

Ann: Is that okay? Have any scary men shown up at your home?

Makoto: No.

Yusuke: Kaneshiro still has the photographs in his possession, remember?

Yusuke: Perhaps that advantage is why he doesn't feel any urgency to act.

Ryūji: So, do you think we're safe for now then?

Natsumi: I'd say so.

Natsumi: But the closer we get to that deadline without changing his heart, the more the risk for us on this side rises.

Ren: Which is exactly why I want to get this done ASAP.

Ann: Yeah, just like Yusuke said, those pictures are bad news for us.

Yusuke: A speedy change benefits us.

Makoto: Agreed, I will do everything I can to help.

I quickly slipped my phone away and refocused myself on the lesson, the Palace could wait until we got in there.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Once we got into the Palace, we quickly returned to the last Safe Room we had reached and made for the elevator. All of us piled in and Joker activated the device to start taking us down, Mona had pulled out the map and was looking through it with a concerned look on his face, the lighting changed from dark to almost painfully bright light which caused Mona to look up.

"Hey look!" Mona exclaimed. I had had my back to the window so didn't see what Mona was talking about, I turned around to have a look and my eyes widened so much that I'm amazed they weren't rolling around on the floor like some macabre horror scene. Down below and stretching across nearly the entire floor were large rings of metal that had small gaps in them at random intervals which didn't line up at all.

"Wh-What the hell?!" Skull exclaimed. As the lift got lower, I was able to see that each of the metal rings were actually made up of smaller drawers stacked atop one of each other. "Are these all vaults!? How messed up is this guy?!" Skull wondered. It was quite a shock to see something like this even when I thought about everything the Metaverse had already displayed to me in my time interacting with it.

"Well, he does have a Palace, so that should say something," I commented. Despite my words, I was still struggling to comprehend what was going on with all these vaults, also the shape of them was very weird too; the rings all had the same sized gap randomly cut into them somewhere, it seemed like an odd design to have since none of these gaps actually matched up to let anyone traverse the path between the vault sections.

"We're supposed to check all these for the Treasure!?" Panther worried. That was unlikely, not only because of the fact that we couldn't even move from one area easily enough, but because I doubt the Treasure would be randomly hidden within one of these vaults just lying about; Kaneshiro was likely to have it kept in a highly secure area just like the last three Rulers had done with their Treasures.

"Hold on, this distinct shape… could it be…," Queen muttered. I looked over at my friend who was scrutinising the shape of the rings, it seemed that she had noticed something about the rings that stood out beyond their extremely odd shape, hopefully that meant she had some kind of idea about what was going on in this particular section of the Palace.

"What's the matter?" Fox asked. I was curious to know what she could have seen to make her so intrigued, hopefully whatever this was would lead us to the Treasure much quicker; interestingly thought, Queen didn't immediately answer and instead seemed to be mulling over something as she kept looking at the rings before proceeding to actually face the rest of us.

"If my prediction is correct, we won't need to check every single one of these small vaults," Queen announced. Anyone who wasn't paying attention to Queen before most certainly were now given how fast all of their heads moved over to look at her with Panther's eyes practically sparkling with joy at hearing this news.

"For real?" Panther questioned. Despite her words showing Queen wasn't one hundred percent assured of this claim, it was probably such a relief to know that we weren't going to have to go routing through each of these vaults because there were a lot of them; easily breaching the thousands range just from the large size of the rings and how small the drawers were in comparison. Searching all of them would have taken a very long time, perhaps too long in truth.

"That is, I hope. I'll explain why once I've confirmed my theory," Queen answered. It made sense that she'd want to ensure that we weren't going to be following a wild theory that turned out to hold very little water; I was curious to know what it was but decided to respect Queen's wishes for her to think it over and wait for confirmation before actually explaining what was going through her head.

"I seriously hope so too," Mona commented. He seemed a little grim, not that I could blame him given the scenery, but hopefully that would all change once we reached the bottom of the elevator shaft, which we did moments later and the doors immediately pinged open which allowed us to step into one of the vault area, which I noticed was cut off from all of the other area completely.

The wall directly in front of us was filled with even more vaults than I had anticipated, so I really hope that Queen's theory turned out to be true, we walked around a little but Mona found us a Safe Room, so we popped inside for a brief moment before stepping back out. That was when Joker seemed to notice something that caught his attention as he proceeded to drift towards a post near the centre.

"Look, a keypad," Joker called. We all quickly drifted over and found that there was a keypad just as Joker had said, it was a bit odd for us to suddenly come across the keypad after the obstacles we had previously faced, hopefully the presence of this would be something that could allow us to move forward then that would be a relief for all of us.

"The lock is currently engaged. Please enter the requisite PIN," A mechanical voice chirped. We looked at each other, surprised by the words that had suddenly been emitted from the device; it was also curious that it required something to be unlocked for us to access it since there didn't appear to be anything that was closed off by something.

"PIN? So is this gonna open one of the vaults?" Skull wondered. That did seem most likely, but we weren't really interested in the vaults since the Treasure was unlikely to be in them which meant that if it did open the vaults then we might as well ignore it in order to find out some way to progress; of course, that would mean we'd have to figure out what the code was in the first place.

"Hm, there's something written above the number pad on here. R-I-C-H… this is disgusting. How obsessed can one man be with his money?" Queen questioned. I spotted the little plaque that she was referring to and the letters were indeed on the shiny plate of metal; but there was something odd about the way it was just there.

"We're kind of seeing the evidence all around us, Queen," I pointed out. The fact that he had a section of his Palace devoted solely to massive rings of vaults showed that money was the sole focus of his mind, which made sense given his distortion being born of Gluttony, the sheer amount of money he had obviously already accumulated still wasn't enough for this monster.

"Wait, there might be something more than that! Do you think this is connected to that journal?" Panther asked. That must have been what was irritating at my mind when seeing the way, the hint was put on display to the people who would look at the PIN device; but if that was the case then why had Shadow Kaneshiro not taken the first page? Glad as I was that we had the code to get through, it just seemed stupid to have ripped out all the pages except the one that would have let us get passed the first step.

"Panther's right!" Joker exclaimed. He pulled the notebook out and flipped it open, he quickly put the numbers in as 0-1-0-2; an odd sound soon emanated and then an entire shelf of the vaults moved right, causing a gap to appear which would allow us to move deep in. Actually, it was more like the entire ring of the vaults had moved since the gap had come from the left as the shelf moved right.

"What the?" Skull exclaimed. It had been quite shocking and I saw that beside us there was a glass panel in the floor which revealed, that beneath us there happened to be a thin looking silver line that connected the two ends of the section, actually one end almost looked like it was something similar to a keyhole which would imply the thin rod was acting in the manner of a key.

"So, my deduction may be correct," Queen commented. Well, that was a relief to hear, but it seemed that Queen wasn't wholly confident in her assumption just yet, but she was clearly leaning closer to being sure of it; although something about this action with the key like apparatus beneath was tugging at a section of my mind about what was going on.

"Money… I need more money… I must grow richer! As long as I'm rich, anything will be possible," Shadow Kaneshiro's voice echoed. I jumped into the air before swiftly dropping into a stance and proceeding to look around for the Shadow, I hadn't expected to hear his voice suddenly echo like that and given the way the others had dropped into their fighting stances, neither had any of them.

"That voice… it's Kaneshiro! Is he watching us!?" Panther wondered. As I kept looking around, I was starting to think that wasn't the case; in fact, from the way that voice had sounded, it was more like something that we had come across before, with that I actually managed to relax ever so slightly even if it was uncomfortable to hear even more of this deranged man's inner thoughts.

"No, he didn't react to our presence at all. I'd say it might be similar to the mutterings we hear from the Will Seed doors," I theorised. That comment caused the others to relax as they realised that we weren't in any danger of being suddenly attacks by the Ruler or whatever Shadows he decided to sic on us this time around.

"It certainly sounds more like the voice of his heart… I guess all he really thinks about is money, after all," Mona agreed. However, he didn't seem to be relaxing much if the heavy puffiness of his tail was anything to go by; a sharp smack suddenly rang out and we all snapped our heads over to look at the source which was Skull who was grimacing heavily as he rubbed at his fist which had clearly punched something with a great deal of frustration.

"So, he blackmails people outta their savings and that's still not enough? What a douche," Skull spat. It was understandable that Skull would be so aggravated to hear that this disgusting worm actually thought he was entitled to take any more money from other people when he had practically crushed lives into dust beneath his feet all because he hungered for the money that they had worked hard to earn.

"That's why his distortion is Gluttony. It's all focused on excess, making it distinct to Greed," I admitted. My words were quiet and sad, because I was horrified by the pain that was being forced upon the people all because of one man's obsession with gathering as much money as he could all for his own reasons which were like a selfish Western dragon, hoarding whatever he got his hands on for the simple sake of possessing it.

"More importantly, the message in the journal was the PIN code!" Panther reminded. That was something positive for us to focus on and perhaps the clue that we could need in order to move forward; Joker hadn't put the book away and instead he was running his finger along the torn edges of the pages that had vanished thanks to Shadow Kaneshiro's machinations to stop us from reaching his Treasure.

"Yes, it seems so… but I doubt it will be that easy from this point forward," Fox warned. That was true, we only had the first page which gave us the answer for the first PIN code alone, if we wanted to find the answers then we needed to move deeper into this strange vault like room which was likely where the rest of those pages were missing.

"The other PINs are likely to be connected to the missing pages, which means we should try to find them," Joker decided. We absolutely needed to find those pages, Joker clapped the book closed and put it back in his pocket then turned to the newly opened entrance; we split into our groups with Joker, Skull and myself at the front while the rest of our group formed the rear-guard.

We moved into the newly opened area but found that it was identical to the area we had just been in, except for a set of stairs that led down to a different area, Joker led the charge to the steps and we quickly descended to the next level. Descending a set of stairs immediately brought us to a pair of corridors one going straight and the other darting to the right, but of course there were cameras waiting for us.

I moved in front at Joker's motion and found that there were no cameras down the right-hand path. Joker started to move in that direction, but we came across a Savage Shadow. A quick ambush brought us into battle with Take-Minakata which definitely wouldn't be that easy to deal with since it was pretty resilient and only had one weakness. I quickly used Samanda on it as the first step.

Luckily it seems that Joker had done some cultivation and gained some new Personas, one of them being Shiki-Ouji. And Shiki-Ouji came with a powerful Psychokinetic Spell known as Psio which dealt a significant amount of damage to Take-Minakata. We focused on weakening the enemy as Joker and Panther primarily used their Spells to deal attack damage or capitalise on some Ailment that had been forced upon it thanks to the others. Soon enough Take-Minakata was defeated.

Pushing further down the hallway, we came across a camera box which Joker promptly smashed into pieces, we kept moving passed a duo of silver vault looking doors until we came to a path going left which caused us to loop back on ourselves. There was a shutter present which meant we had to start looking for a way forward; lucky for us, there was a room behind those vault looking doors, unfortunately once we opened one up, we found a Shadow alongside a control board.

We proceeded to pounce upon the Shadow and the mask was torn off, revealing three individuals, they immediately caught my attention due to the resonance I felt with her, since it was all the same Shadow. She was extremely pale with long white hair falling down her back, a ring of flowers and snowflakes were ringing her head, an icy blue dress to match her eyes covered her form but it seemed to be dropping small white pieces onto the ground. I took a look at her and found out the reasoning behind her appearance and a few more concerning things.

"Watch out for Poli'ahu! She Drains Ice and Nullifies Fire! She's only Weak to Earth!" I warned. Which presented us with a significant problem since I was the only one who had that particular Magic affinity, well as far as I knew; a small curse escaped someone as I felt a familiar strengthening energy twist around me, I looked at Joker and found that he was giving me an encouraging look.

Knowing what needed to be done, I pulled my mask off and used Matera to knock down all three of the snow… entity. We darted in and proceeded to attack them but couldn't stop them from getting up. We pulled back and Joker pulled off his mask, revealing Setanta who proceeded to use a weakening aura that hit all of them, but it was for physical damage instead magical. Fox quickly used one of his Skills to attack. Skull followed up with a similar attack to deal as much damage.

Queen and Mona used their Elemental Spells to attack Poli'ahu to try and deal more damage. Panther chose to use a new Spell which allowed black flames to burn across one of the Poli'ahu which seemed to, for lack of a better word, break something. One of the snow beings proceeded to allow a deeply cold energy that spread across all of us, I quickly moved back in order to dodge out of the way. But Panther got caught by it and went down to the ground.

The enemy took a second move causing a magical power I was familiar with to twist around all of us, it was a multi-target version of Samanda. The other two snow entities took their turns to attack, one used an attack that was similar to Panther's move, but with black ice upon Fox. The other launched another Mabufula wave at us; we all managed to dodge with Joker pulling me and Panther behind him. Once the attack was over, I proceeded to use Matera once more. I quickly moved over to Panther, hoping she had a plan in place, and Baton Passed to her. However, to my shock she brought our Carmen's flames.

Yet instead of the fire just harmlessly falling to the floor like I had expected, when the fire struck the Poli'ahu who had previously been surrounded by black flames, it actually hit and finished her off. And the snow being took damage. I was quite surprised by the event, but so were the others since they froze long enough for a Poli'ahu attacked. It was only a single target ice attack that Queen was able to pirouette around and she swiftly retaliated with her Mafrei, which annihilated the two remaining women.

"We may have found the controls we've been looking for. Anything we can do here?" Queen wondered. Joker walked up to the controls and started to tap away at them, hopefully we'd be able to find a way forward, Joker eventually pressed something which proceeded to cause the shutter we'd run across to finally be removed from our path.

"Oh look, the shutter's gone! We can keep going now!" Panther cheered. Unfortunately, right at that moment, a warning came over the PA System, it was from Shadow Kaneshiro and the message was about our presence, mainly being how they had to 'protect the golden pig'… which just so happened to be right by the controls.

"Man, he seems really worked up," Mona commented. That was quite true, which meant that whatever this pig was then it was something rather important to Shadow Kaneshiro, perhaps it was some way to access the Treasure, whether that be the PIN codes that we were hoping to find or some other manner that we didn't know of yet.

"He must truly not want us to get a hold of this golden pig," Fox stated. That was fairly obvious but that just made it all the more hilarious that he had made that announcement right when we were standing in the same room as the pig; I proceeded to clear my throat which drew everyone's attention to me for a second before they followed the line of direction my thumb was making to the very object of the conversation.

"Too little too late," I spoke. I even rapped my hand on the metal boar to make my point, but that caused it to rise up slightly which I blinked at. "I swear I didn't know that would happen," I admitted. I held my hands up in surrender as Joker moved over and proceeded to look into the contents of the object which had turned out to be hollow.

"But it's a good thing since you just found a piece of the journal," Joker revealed. He grabbed the page and proceeded to turn back to us who had moved in closer to him. "It says P equals I," Joker revealed. We looked at each other, that was a little concerning since the first page had contained three numbers, yet not only did this one have a third of that information but it wasn't exactly clear as to what number was meant to be used in P's place.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Skull asked. After a bit of thinking, I'm fairly certain that meant the letter P was corresponding to the number one just like letter I did, which indicated there was likely to be a PIN somewhere that contained this particularly letter; not that I could think of many four letter words that were made up of an R, I, C, H, or P beyond Chip and the already used Rich which could be connected to money.

"Apart from the code, I can't say for certain since it doesn't give us much information," Queen explained. She seemed worried by the fact that we had come across this rather difficult issue; I still think Shadow Kaneshiro was a moron for not taking the first page, but it was clear that he had scattered the rest of the pages and wasn't being so obvious in his code anymore which made our job harder.

"Since it continues the code, it's good that we found it. Let's keep going!" Mona encouraged. We split back up into our groups and I follow Joker out the room, we passed through the previously closed shutter arch, there was a vault door with a series of bars running across it, indicating it couldn't be opened from this side and right across from it just so happened to be another PIN machine.

"Hm… this is a PIN input device. R-E-A-P is written on this one," Fox read. Well, that presented the first issue we had, the code was begun by zero and finished by one, but that meant there could be any number of combinations in between those two numbers which could take a long time to figure out… the worst option was that random tries could either alert security or end up with us being locked out completely.

"Reap? Isn't that like to harvest? Why would that be on the pin?" Panther asked. It made sense, since that was typically the way people would think about that word; but there were other contexts in which it could be used and I'm sure an utterly twisted a depraved mind such as Kaneshiro's would definitely have those thoughts.

"That man sees people as walking ATMs… he must think of collecting money from them as a harvest," Mona theorised. That actually caused me to shiver in dismay at hearing that theory, even though it was probably the most accurate way that Kaneshiro thought, it was still deeply unsettling to know how low this man's mind ended up sinking.

"Kaneshiro is truly rotten to the core," Fox spat. None of us would argue with him there, it was the same kind of monstrosity we just kept running into; the only thing different between this Ruler and the others was simply the scope of how many people were affected by his depravity, which was much larger than we had seen before.

"If this is the same kind of thing as before, the hints should help us find the passcode, right?" Panther suggested. It seemed that Panther hadn't realised the one problem with actually being able to use the codes we'd got, Joker obviously realised the issue if his quick pivot around to face us and deep frown were any sort of indication.

"Except we can't open it, since we're missing two letters," Joker pointed out. The others who hadn't realised this proceeded to frown. "Let's see if we can find more pages," Joker ordered. He started a quick march away from the machine and we started to head down the pathway which led to a set of stairs; this was followed by two quick turns and that was when we started to run into the Shadows again.

A swift ambushed revealed to our group, a pair of Shadows that either had skin or carapace but either way it was red in colour, there was long black hair with red cloths wrapping around its' legs that were curled up tightly into the chest, black fabric was around the torso but with the legs curled as they were, it prevented me from seeing much, in its' hands were two swords.

"Rakshasa is resistant to Physical, Curse and Fire, it also Blocks Gun! It's weak to Bless, Wind and Gravity!" I informed. With that information, I quickly cast Magry on the duo which immediately sent them to the ground. With that we dove in to strike them down with as much power as we could manage until the two started to move once again. Quickly falling back, we waited as the Shadows got to their feet.

One immediately boosted its' damage capability, while the other proceeded to unleash an attack. It seemed to be a powerful sword attack that drove Fox backwards. Luckily the painter recovered thanks to a swift heal from Panther. Mona quickly used Magaru on the two Shadows to send them down once more. We dove in and cut as quickly as we could, but they still managed to rise up, although they seemed to be flagging quite a bit now that we were here.

Joker took charge and immediately used a large blue creature that looked like something between a bird and a cat with a ruffled mane of red that hovered in the air, to send them down a second time. Instead of taking us in for a third All-Out Attack, Joker instead passed to Queen. Our advisor quickly unleashed her Mafrei Spell. The two Shadows clearly didn't like the attack they had been dealt, as when Skull followed it up with Mazio, they were instantly eliminated. We kept moving onwards to the next section.

The room we found ourselves in seemed very similar to the rings of vaults that we were trying to get through which was very unnerving, though what was extremely unnerving was during our search or the other pages, some of these vaults popped out which allowed Joker to jump on them. This might have allowed Joker to reach a chest, but the mere fact that Kaneshiro's Palace contained vaults that could be stepped on was… very disturbing to my mind.

I was very relieved when we found another golden pig with the code – was he seriously hiding all of the pages in these things? – nearby, it also happened to be the codes we needed since E equals nine and A equals three was scrawled on the surface. There also happened to be a set of stairs right by this piggybank that brought us to the vault door right across from the PIN machine; Joker opened it up and then jabbed in the code for the machine. A rumbling sound echoed down which was likely from the rings of vaults.

"That sound… it seems like the vault has moved again," Queen suspected. I nodded my head in agreement, but I was curious to see what was going to come from these rotations, there had been something Queen saw in the layout that seemed familiar and I couldn't help but feel that something was rather familiar about these events that were occurring, but I couldn't pin down what it reminded me off.

"Alright, it worked!" Skull cheered. I was also glad that we had made it one step closer to the goal, hopefully things would proceed equally as smoothly for us, but I wasn't about to hold my breath given the fact that Kaneshiro's security system was even present down here which made getting passed obstacles more annoying, I'd rather deal with Shadows than any of these cameras we had to sneak around.

"Tch… this isn't anywhere near your quota for this month. Don't gimme your excuses. Just go reap every last penny!" Shadow Kaneshiro bellowed. I flinched upon hearing that, and I wasn't the only one since Panther had leapt at Joker in shock while Mona was currently clinging to Fox's false tail; Fox was warily staring at the ceiling as Skull used Queen like a human shield, Queen was snarling at the ceiling while Joker gently soothed Panther from her startled state.

"That voice again," Fox spoke. If we were going to keep hearing these things every time a code was passed, I'm not sure how settled we'd be by reaching the Treasure Vault, after all the words that were spewing out of this 'voice of the heart' were utterly sickening to listen to and I'm certain that someone was going to end up being significantly enraged if we had to hear any more of this nonsense; thank goodness for Shadows.

"I'll make you understand if you don't get it. People who can't earn money are worthless to me!" Shadow Kaneshiro ranted. My eyes widened in horror at those words as I realised that must have been what happened to those poor damaged ATMs down at street level; they hadn't just been unable to pay the ridiculous fees that Kaneshiro demanded, he had gone as far as to physically harm them or have someone do it just to ensure they'd try and earn more money.

"It looks like he really believes money is more important than human life… what a pitiful man," Queen sneered. I actually felt like I was going to be sick upon realising the level of suffering that these people were going through, it was almost as if the horrendous treatment of the last three Rulers were being gathered here in this Palace and its' twisted Ruler.

"Yeah… let's finish this quick. The door's prolly opened up, so we should head back and check it out," Skull suggested. We quickly made our way back to the vault area and found that just like before, the vault had moved so that there was now a gap we could move through; in fact, that very gap lined up perfectly with the previous gap that we had come through.

"This is the second one, I wonder how many more there are," Queen admitted. There had been several rings from what I had managed to see up in the elevator which meant there must be a few more keypads for us to locate which meant more piggybanks to find if we wanted to get through the rings to the centre of this bizarre puzzle.

"I'm sure we'll find out as we go. Let's keep moving to our next one!" Mona insisted. We stepped into the next section and found another pathway down to a different level, more stairs took us down to a vault door that opened up into a large room, inside was a structure like one would expect to find in a storage warehouse of some kind with large piles of money filling each opening to bursting, to the right and left were barriers of electricity cutting off a vault door and a chest to the right, but their purpose seemed superfluous to the left.

We moved in and quickly ambushed a Shadow when its' mask was torn off this revealed the purple Persona from yesterday that had unleashed Ice Magic, it was known as Yakshini. Joker reacted swiftly by touching his mask clearly moving to whatever Persona would fit the bill for defeating this Shadow. Moving before he could, I used Makakaja upon him. Joker pulled his mask off and Feng Huang manifested to allow Joker to utilise Mafrei.

As soon as the Yakshini were knocked down, Joker moved over to Fox to Baton Pass. Fox used Goemon's Vicious Strike to attack all of them at once. With that done, I quickly used Matera to knock them all back down thanks to the Dizzy effect. I leapt forward as we moved to conduct an All-Out Attack, but only one of them was dissolved. Fox used a second Vicious Strike to eliminate another one.

The final Yakshini attempted to attack all of us with a wide Physical attack that shredded over my body despite my best efforts. But Joker easily finished it off with one last Nuke Spell that vaporised it. I still didn't feel so comfortable being near anything that used Nuclear Magic, but at least the Personas were more bearable than the Shadows were when using that type of Magic.

There was a low enough shelving unit nearby that made it easy to jump up to the top, we did this again to the next level but had to jump across since the level above – which had a locked chest – was too high for us to jump and there wasn't anything high enough to attach the grapple to. Once over we climbed up to the top of this particular shelving unit and then jumped across to where we found the power supply which Joker decided to deal with in the way he had been doing so far.

"This door seems different from the others. It's all gold and shiny," Panther commented. I turned to look at the thing Panther was referring and found that it was indeed exactly as she described, a vault door that was gold and shiny which was starting to hurt my eyes a little; there was also a bunch of bars crossing in front of it which made sure that no one could get in from this side.

"Hmm… and there's also this weird pig. Maybe we should do some reconnaissance first," Mona suggested. There was a pig statue beside it, but unlike the large gold ones this was unlikely to contain hidden codes given its' smaller size and the fact that a portion of the top was missing, it was also set on a weird pedestal like thing, weird because of the way it was designed like a spiral.

"Good morning," A mechanical voice chirped. All of us took a small step back at that while staring at the flashy door since that was where the voice had originated from. "This entrance is strictly for Kaneshiro Bank employees. For entry, please display your key card and pay ten thousand yen," The voice requested. My mouth dropped open at the sheer absurdity that had just come out of whatever was producing the words.

"I get that employees would have to show their key cards, but…," Queen lamented. I could understand her confusion, the key card was definitely something sensible, but to think that Shadow Kaneshiro expected his security guards to just hand over such a large sum of money just to gain access to some area.

"They gotta pay too!? And that definitely ain't cheap!" Skull exclaimed. All of us nodded in agreement with the blonde punk, I don't know whether I was horrified or just plain tired by all the revelations in how Kaneshiro saw people solely for the money that they could have in their possession; we needed to put an end to him sooner rather than later because everyone would be better off without this fiend looming over Shibuya.

"So, Kaneshiro even views his own employees as exploitable resources," Fox sneered. I don't know if this was an accurate depiction of how Kaneshiro acted in the physical world, or if it was just how he thought of his own goons; but it probably was true and that didn't even surprise me in the least, except for the fact that he still had people working for him after charging such a ridiculous sum of money for something like this.

"I'm sure it'll make him a little money, but I doubt it'll amount to anything substantial," Queen theorised. That was probably true, he likely had to offset the extreme charge with an extreme wage so that people would be more willing to stick around; however, I was more concerned by the fact that he saw the people who worked for him as sources of money as well as the people he was already exploiting through them.

"What should we do? I don't think we should have to pay Kaneshiro," Mona asked. We definitely shouldn't have to fork over a single lousy yen to someone like Kaneshiro; I know our most likely source that was high enough to take the hit was Shadow money which made it very easy for us to make back, especially with some of the negotiation skills Joker had picked up somewhere along the way which caused the Shadows to give up more if he pushed them just right, it still didn't make me want to hand any of it over to Kaneshiro's grubby little mitts.

"Which we're not. I don't care that it's Shadow money, I'm not giving that scum a single yen," Joker decided. He seemed quite resolute in this statement which was something that gave me a bit of comfort, though from looking at him it almost seemed like he wanted to smash something over there as much as he did the power supply boxes… I truly can't blame him for feeling that way.

"Yeah, I think we'd be better off looking for some other solution here," Panther agreed. We went back to the shelving units as Joker retrieved some armour which stuck to Queen, then we dropped back to the ground and made for the previously blocked door and chest. We opened both but I quickly had to warn the others back as there was a security camera cutting right across our path with a Shadow beyond it.

I watched the Shadow for a little before slinking around the edge, I kept low to the ground with a tight grip on my skirt as I shuffled my way through the thin gap between the wall and the camera's range. Once safely passed, I quickly lunged at the Shadow to unveil its' identity, hopefully the others would be able to catch up to me before the fight actually put me in some kind of danger.

When the mask came off, I turned to look and found two Shadows, both the same type though. There were similarities to Pygmalion given the tanned skin and similar sharp features, but that was where it ended; unlike Pygmalion, this individual was much more muscular though in a lean manner with wild red hair and warm blue eyes dressed within a typical Greek toga. The others rushed over to flank me on all sides.

"Hyacinthus Nullifies both Fire and Earth. He's also resistant to all Skills. Luckily, he's weak to Wind!" I passed on. Joker responded by moving forward and pulling his mask off, Anzu manifested in its' place which was the best move. A burst of wind shot forward and tore through the two men which dropped them down. Joker darted in and the rest of us followed after him to commence our All-Out Attack on the Shadows.

We fell back as the Shadows got up; one used a strengthening Support Spell that affected both of the Shadows. As for the other Hyacinthus, it unleashed a power multi-target fire Spell, which unfortunately caught me unaware this time. I was sent sprawling to the ground in a heap which caused a groan of pain to escape from me… especially since this Shadow was a Voyage-type Persona, it almost seemed to hurt worse taking those hits.

A wave of healing magic spread over me, which allowed me to get back up in time to see Mona unleash a Wind Spell upon the duo. We darted in and started our All-Out Attack before needing to pull back to avoid any retaliation. Deciding to take some pay back, I used Magry on the two of them to deal some more damage. Lucky for us, all it took was Skull and Fox using their own multi-target Spells to bring the Shadows down permanently.

Luckily there was a camera that turned on and off up ahead, so it was as simple as waiting for it to turn off before darting passed so Joker could break the power box. We headed up a set of stairs and came across a dog shaped Shadow which meant more Orthrus were to be faced, it was a little weird that all the dog shaped Shadows produced dog shaped enemies to face. Either way, they were very easy to deal with, especially with Joker's new Sui-Ki.

We kept going, avoiding the cameras whenever we came across them or waiting for them to turn off if that was possible, if a power box was located that someone quickly broke it simply to make the trek backwards slightly less irritating. We ascended some stairs and found a short hallway with another hallway beyond that, a Shadow walked through which forced us all to hide, but some quick recon from Mona brought us some surprising news, there was a piggyback behind some permanent cameras. We needed to deal with the Shadow first.

What came out were three women, all of them rather beautiful, all of them hovered in the air and seemed to be almost reclined, each was clad in a purple dress, with long blonde hair held back by a purple hairband, two twisted bits of metal were in the hands and locked together. That was a little unusual, but they were fairies, so I suppose they were meant to be abnormal in some manner.

"Leanan Sidhe are resistant to Wind, Psy and Earth! Weak to Fire!" I advised. It left me out of one of my magical attacks, so I instead cast Makakaja on Panther. Joker proceeded to summon out Orthrus as a Persona to smash the women with flames. Instead of guiding us in for an All-Out Attack, Joker instead moved to Skull and Baton Passed. Our Electricity wielder used Captain Kidd to strike against one of the women which weakened her considerably.

One of the women recovered and suddenly a familiar pulse of energy resonated from one. I quickly darted in front of the focused attack and allowed it to strike me, since it was Gravity, I was barely tickled by the pressure. Another woman tried the same attack, but Joker's mask glowed and he easily took the attack. Panther quickly unleashed her own flames and sent the two women back down, allowing us to dive in and attack them. Upon falling back, Queen used Mafrei to finish them off.

Knowing we needed to find the power box to get through; we made our way back to the area that connected to the two small hallways and kept going passed more permanent cameras. In fact, there were two with the rings being so close together we had to shuffle passed them in single file with me using mine and Fox's Rebel Weapons to simulate the passage that each person needed to walk down in order to avoid detection.

Thankfully we found the power box to turn it off, so Panther darted back to get the contents of that piggybank while the rest of us moved over to what was likely the other side of the gold door that Panther had noticed earlier. It was the exact same set up, except for the fact that on this pig statue, there happened to be a blue screen on this one which was my only hint as to it being the opposite side.

"Good morning. This entrance is strictly for Kaneshiro Bank employees. At this terminal, you may set the price for entry," The machine voice informed. Well now, that was an interesting bit of information, if we could set the money limit from this side, would that transfer to the rest of the doors like this? If it did then we could potentially access areas that would be off limits to all but Kaneshiro, which was probably the Treasure if the Ruler was able to do such a thing.

"Maybe we won't have to pay if we just bust it up?" Skull suggested. I snapped my head over to look at him, which allowed me to see the gaping expression on Panther as she had returned, likely very confused by what was going on here. "Breakin' shit's always worked for us before! Let's give it a shot!" Skull enthusiastically encouraged. I looked over at Joker, hoping to talk him out of this and it seemed Queen agreed; but we were too late, Joker casually stamped on the pig… which caused the door to spring open.

"It actually worked?!" Mona questioned. I was just as baffled as our navigator, I felt like I was seeing something that shouldn't have been possible even for the Metaverse, before deciding to just move on as I turned to see Joker raiding the other piggybank; he looked at the paper that he had found and the one Panther had brought before heading over to the other thing we had found; our third PIN machine.

"Hey, it's another one of them input things. This time the word's, uh… H-U-G-S?" Skull commented. I looked at Skull in confusion, because despite the blocky-ness of the way the letters were stylised, it was fairly obvious that the S was actually and E since the line to make it an S was in the wrong place for it to become that letter, also what did hugs have to do with money?

"It says H-U-G-E you moron! Can you even read?" Panther snapped. Panther was rightly annoyed, but Queen still calmly reached over and gently patted the girl on the shoulder, I was still baffled as to how huge related to money, but I suppose that could be Kaneshiro wanting to have a huge amount of money for him to simply sit upon and continue collecting without ever putting it to any use.

"Good thing we found those pages already," Mona commented. The pages had contained the information for U and G which at least meant we could figure out the pin from that; Joker quickly identified the numbers and proceeded to stab them into the keypad, we waited for the rumbling sound to echo down to us allowing a satisfied smile to curl across my lips.

"Great, it looks like the vault opened up even more now," Panther cheered. That meant three rings had been opened up, hopefully it wouldn't take too much longer for us to reach the centre of this convoluted set-up; of course, I was still waiting for the little dose of madness that seemed to have been haunting each of these PINs so far, while praying we didn't end up with it happening.

"This isn't enough… I need to have a huge presence!" Shadow Kaneshiro claimed. Well, there it was, that probably meant we'd have to keep suffering through his nonsense with every codebreaking that we performed; though his words were rather confusing, instead of an obscene amount of money he seemed to be desiring something like a large reputation which was very concerning in all honesty.

"What now?" Skull questioned. I very much wished we didn't have to go through with hearing this man's madness, but there didn't seem to be any options to conveniently turn the words off; I was still confused as to what he could be talking about with that huge presence – beyond him wanting to extend the reach of his criminal actions – but there was unlikely to be any understandable answer.

"I'm done having other people walk all over me… it's my turn now," Shadow Kaneshiro spoke. I think I felt a spark of fire burn into existence at those words if the ferocious snarl of Panther's lips were anything to go by, I was sickened to hear that he actually thought he had the right to trample other people simply because some others had done that to him in the past; an eye or an eye might be a saying but I'm fairly there had to be a limit to the kind of people you use that saying against, like not targeting unconnected innocent people who never even knew you.

"He is beyond redemption… it seems he cares not for those he tramples upon himself," Fox hissed. I nodded my head while attempting to keep myself from being sick at the knowledge that this whole phishing scam was solely being pulled so that this man could obtain something like revenge; yet that was unlikely to be against the actual people that had done him any kind of harm.

"Every step we take is strengthening my resolve. Let's push onward," Queen admitted. We agreed and proceeded to make our way back, with the gold door opened, it drastically cut down on the return journey time we would have had to take; once we returned, I noticed that once more the cut open section was perfectly aligned to the previous two.

"Check it out! This one opened for us too!" Skull declared. We had stopped moving at that and I took the opportunity to look at the three openings, it seemed odd that they would always align exactly one after the other and from what I could tell when thinking back to the scene from the elevator, each of these sections had travelled a different distance to reach this point which meant that each ring was spinning a different amount for them to line up.

"This movement… there can be no doubt," Queen stated. Queen had apparently confirmed the theory she'd been holding while I checked the glass partitions that had the silver rod apparatus that had opened each ring, opened… and each of the apparatus had a hole that was almost like a keyhole. I looked at the rings once more as I finally realised why the view from above had seemed so familiar, not because I had seen it, but because I had felt it.

"Hm? Did you notice something?" Fox asked. The rest of the group were all gathered around Queen as they seemed hopeful at hearing an explanation as to what these rings really were, since I already knew I proceeded to walk over to my childhood friend who seemed to notice my approach before the others and she waited for me to get near her.

"They're tumblers, aren't they?" I questioned. Queen's eyes widened at my words, perhaps surprised that I had figured it out, I never would have if not for the lock picking lessons that Mona had given me; the layout of these rings of vaults were similar enough to what I had pictured the insides actually looked like even if it had taken me some time to figure out exactly what was going on here.

"Yes. This entire floor is the cylinder of a lock," Queen revealed. I breathed a sigh of relief that I hadn't been seeing things, of course I doubted the others had managed to figure it out; well, a quick check proved that while Panther, Skull and Fox all seemed confused by the discussion me and Queen were having, Joker and Mona had seemed to figure it out, I couldn't tell when but the unsurprised looks on their faces confirmed they had known before I said anything at least.

"Wh-What do you mean? Can you explain a little more?" Panther requested. She seemed a little flustered by the confusion she was feeling, she was looking between me and Queen, so I nudged my friend in order to get her explaining since it had initially been her theory that had caused her to come to this realisation.

"The cylinder is the mechanism that judges if a key is the proper shape. If you use the correct key and all the tumblers align, the lock opens," Queen explained. Fox's eyes widened behind his mask and he moved back slightly so that he was in line with the openings, he looked back at the ones we'd passed through and the one that had just been newly opened.

"Now that you mention it, while the walls rotate, the path forward has remained facing the same way," Fox admitted. That had been the biggest clue, it all seemed rather odd that each point lined up so perfectly, it was a bit like those dials on safes in that case, no matter down much the dial was turned the position of the lock inside was always in the same location.

"In other words, the entire floor is one giant lock," Mona clarified. It was almost insane to imagine that someone's distorted cognition had actually caused an entire floor of the Palace to end up becoming a security measure; but if that was the case then we were likely heading in the right direction to be moving towards the goal that we had to reach.

"That's right. All the smaller vaults in here aren't important," Queen added on. It did certainly explain why the smaller vaults were unimportant in Queen's view, in a way they were not only decoration but also distraction; likely an attempt to keep would-be thieves from bothering to reach the centre since anyone who wasn't us – if this was an easily accessed bank – would be too focused on getting the easy stuff than scouring for hidden clues.

"The Treasure's likely to be at the centre of all this then, locked away by the very room surrounding it," Joker claimed. We darted through the opening but quickly came upon something we should have expected given how deep we were in the Palace; yet it probably wasn't the third Will Seed that was beyond the powerful Shadow we found staring right at us, since Mona gave no reaction. We looked at each other and nodded our heads in agreement, we had to fight this Shadow for there was no other way forward.

"Hmph, you guys must have been the rats we've been hearing about. Well, Kaneshiro-san ordered me to absolutely not let anyone pass this point," The Shadow revealed. It seemed that the Shadow had been prepared for us to approach it, which meant this was definitely not the Will Seed. "Accept your deaths!" The Shadow ordered. It then proceeded to transform into a Kumbhandra, a towering horse skeleton stood on its' hind legs with a red cape draped around its' form, a matching hat with dangling threads was perched on its' head and an extremely sharp looking blade was held at its' side.

"Kumbhandra is Resistant to Curse, Nullifies Fire but Weak to Psy!" I informed. Joker quickly boosted Panther's offensive magic and I felt Phantom's Trait activate which ensured that it would last much longer. I quickly stacked everything in our favour by decreasing its' defence against Magic. Unfortunately, it was able to retaliate much faster than Panther could attack it.

A wide physical attack came rushing towards us at high speed, I barely manage to block the attack in time to prevent it from doing some serious damage to me. Others weren't so lucky, no one had been knocked down fortunately, unfortunately there had been something in there. Like some kind of malignant energy, that attempted to pull at some kind of primordial part of me. I managed to force it back, but Panther and Queen were on their knees trembling in fear.

Joker allowed a sharp curse to escape him as he and Mona ran for our other two healers. Skull unleashed as strong a Skill as he could with Fox doing the same thing. I didn't know what had happened to cause the two to be struck with an Ailment, but I couldn't focus on it. Trusting in our leader and main healer, I instead retaliated by using Terazi to pierce into Kumbhandra. A small scream came from behind me which caused me to look back.

Panther was thankfully back on her feet and looked incredibly angry, she proceeded to use her Psi Ring to finally knock Kumbhandra down to the ground. We darted in to do as much damage as possible, allowing me to know that Queen was back in battle readiness. We quickly fell back when it started to get up and it quickly retaliated with a powerful burst of wind that surged at incredible speed towards us.

Skull ended up getting hit with the wave of wind which caused a burst of worry in me and the others. But due to that distraction, Kumbhandra was able to attack once again. This time by causing a strange energy to reach out and twist around me, I tried to escape it, but I couldn't. In response, I felt something being leeched away from me and I ended up kneeling down given it almost felt like my life had been drained away from me.

I squinted up to see what was happening in the fight, Joker used Shiki-Ouji to knock Kumbhandra down. Everyone moved in to attack, except for Mona who came over to quickly heal me which thankfully made me feel much better as my breathing eased. Unfortunately, I could not get in on the All-Out Attack as Kumbhandra rose up, everyone moved back as Skull and Fox proceeded to deal out their own Skills while Queen used Freila.

With my strength restored, I quickly attacked once more with Gryva to deal some more damage. Our leader proceeded to unleash another Psio attack in order to send it back down once more and allow us to attack as heavily as possible once more. Panther didn't let it recover much as she immediately sent it back down once more which allowed us to strike once more.

Once we fell back, Kumbhandra proceeded to unleash that massive Physical attack with the ominous energy. Luckily no one was rendered petrified with fear this time around and some of us managed to avoid it this time around as well. Skull chose to use his Zio Spell to attack this time, which actually managed to render the Shadow shocked. Queen quickly capitalised on its' Ailment by using her Skill in order to render it knocked down once more. It was thanks to this All-Out Attack that we were finally able to get rid of it and see the device it had been guarding.

"Huh… this one doesn't have a passcode or anything," Skull commented. It was rather odd that we had suddenly come across a device that did not require a code in order to activate it, instead there were simply a couple of buttons upon the device which caused me to wonder what the purpose for guarding this device had been.

"I guess that's why the Shadow was protecting it?" Panther suggested. That seemed reasonable, if it was such an easily operated device then there likely was a need to ensure that it was protect from the people like us who were trying to head deeper into this lock room, though the buttons on the device were rather curious.

"Hm, it doesn't seem to require any keys, but there are buttons on the left and right of the box," Queen admitted. The fact that it was directions might at least imply that it actually managed to turn one of these rings, hopefully the one right in front of us, which would easily enable us to press deeper without needing to hunt down more of those ridiculous codes that Shadow Kaneshiro seemed to favour.

"There must be a reason that thing was guarding it. Let's try and figure out why," Mona insisted. Joker did so by electing to push the right button, the ring right in front of us did thankfully rotate which brought the opening to be in line with the other opening, but all that did was lead us to a dead end but the left brought the opening to be in line with the machine which luckily opened a new path that lead to a PIN machine as Mona detected the final Will Seed nearby

"Hm, this seems to be the same device as before," Queen stated. Joker pressed the right button which did seem to move the ring right in front of us yet there didn't seem to be any change and it wasn't like we could see if it did thanks to the closed off area of the ring right before this one; Joker proceeded to press the left button and the opening appeared, having swung in from the right.

"That likely means the opening was in that dead end room. We'll investigate here then see about lining the openings up properly," Joker decided. We darted through the opening and found a rather long section of hallway, but Mona's senses were right as we were now nearing the third Will Seed, as evidence by the powerful Shadow we ended up coming across.

"There are Shadows here as well… perhaps they are protecting something," Fox suggested. That was quite likely given how Mona was reacting to what was behind it, if we got a hold of the Ring of Gluttony then it would likely give us quite the impressive ability just like the last three Rings had been able to do, at least once we got it to Jose that is.

"That one seems pretty tough, we'll have to make sure we're good and ready," Panther advised. With that decision, Joker proceeded to bring out some stuff for us to eat and drink in order to replenish the energy that we had lost to the other Shadows before reaching this point, especially with us just having fought that Kumbhandra; with that done, we ran towards the Shadow.

"What're you doing here!" The Shadow exclaimed. It should have been fairly obvious as to why we were here given that this Shadow was guarding something rather special. "But since you're here… it'll be the last of you!" The Shadow declared. Without waiting for a response, the Shadow transformed into Cerberus. It was a white dog shaped beast with three heads, despite being a creature that served to guard the gates of the Grecian underworld, its' eyes were a soft and gentle green and I could almost swear that there were spots decorating its' brilliant coat despite how faint they were.

"Cerberus Drains Fire, Resists Nuke but Weak to Ice!" I warned. Figuring we'd need to do something similar to the Kumbhandra fight, I quickly used Samanda while Joker utilised Makakaja upon Fox. Unfortunately, Cerberus was just as swift as Kumbhandra and proceeded to unleash its' attack. This attack took the form of a powerful, multi-target Fire Spell which washed over us in a ferocious wave.

I barely managed to dodge the attack; Fox was not so lucky as he got knocked down. Which wasn't the only bad thing to happen as Skull ended up getting struck with a burn. Cerberus used that opportunity to charge with a powerful attack that drove the breath from Joker. He remained standing but it was quite obvious that he was in considerable pain from the attack. Skull retaliated with a much stronger single target attack Skill he'd got thanks to the previous fight.

Sadly, this caused the burn he was enduring to flare up and cause him to yelp in pain. Panther attempted to help put out the fire but that only worked when Mona got involved with Patra. Queen quickly used Media to heal up our wounds and allow Joker to actually properly breath, but that Skill Cerberus' used seemed incredibly dangerous which was rather worrying. We'd need to be careful if we wanted to win this fight.

Fox climbed to his feet and quickly used his Ice Spell on Cerberus, but I didn't feel like it was able to do much damage. We darted in for an All-Out Attack since we needed to do more damage than Fox had been able to do. Once it got up, we fell back and Joker quickly made the first move. He brought out Sui-Ki that was in possession of a much stronger Ice Spell than Goemon was since it was able to deal some serious damage. Joker chose to Baton Pass to Panther who quickly cast Dormina upon Cerberus.

It took effect which sent it into a deep sleep and prevented it from retaliating against us. Queen proceeded to use her Skill on Cerberus which severely disorientated the entity. This would be our best opportunity to deal out the required damage. I quickly used Gryva to deal some more damage. Mona and Skull used their own abilities to deal some more damage with whatever they were more proficient in.

With Cerberus still unable to move, Joker took the opportunity to drop its' physical defence via Leanan Sidhe. Panther opted to lower its' physical attack. Since it was in possession of powerful magical abilities, using Makanda on it to drop its' offensive magic was the best bet to keep us safe. Cerberus seemed to twitch briefly, but whatever state it was in clearly couldn't be recovered from that easily.

Fox took advantage by using his Ice Spell, but nothing really seemed to change. Queen, Mona and Skull quickly used their own abilities to strike at Cerberus. Joker swiftly used Sui-Ki to attack, but that was when Cerberus got back to its' feet. It apparently was not happy about us having done as much damage as possible to it, since it retaliated with a fire spell of the same calibre as the first one it used, but this time, it was a single target, on Fox.

Fox was sent rolling to the ground, clearly wounded heavily from the attack. I immediately unleashed Terazi merely to keep Cerberus distracted while Mona focused on Fox's wounds. Unfortunately, when Skull went to attack with his Assault Drive, the attack was sent flying back at him which caused him to be sent stumbling backwards slightly. Panther darted to our Electricity wielder and used her healing spell on him. I looked over at Queen and saw that she looked worried, not that I could blame her given her only truly impactful attack now had a chance of being sent flying back at her.

Luckily, Queen decided to be cautious and used her Ailment Spell which thankfully hit. I wasn't exactly sure what it did, but Cerberus appeared rather befuddled, as if it couldn't figure out where it was or perhaps even what it was. Joker looked up and quickly swapped his Persona to bring out Shiki-Ouji which used Psio and successfully achieved a Technical Damage. Fox had clambered to his feet and used Bufu to knock Cerberus down, allowing us to end the fight with one last All-Out Attack.

With Cerberus defeated and our way to the last Will Seed clear, we descended down the stairs as Queen seemed eager to steal something from Kaneshiro after all he had taken from the others, upon claiming the Will Seed, it proceeded to fuse with the others, giving us the Crystal. It actually seemed to give a multi-target defence boost which would be handy in later battles, so Joker handed it to Queen, who seemed a little reluctant but accepted.

Retracting our steps, Joker pressed each right arrow button, in order to align the opens and allow us two rings closer to the centre, but we weren't there yet. Instead, we had to descend another set of stairs which brought us right behind another Shadow; our leader quickly sprang over to attack it immediately.

More enemies that we had faced before manifested in the form of two Rakshasa and two Poli'ahu. At Joker's orders we quickly split into the two groups with Joker using his Leanan Sidhe to unleash Gravity attacks on Rakshasa which allowed me to focus on primarily damaging the Poli'ahu with my Earth Magic.

We kept going down more stairs, coming upon another large room filled with shelving units containing more organised piles of money, I'm not sure which is worse, the piles of money heedlessly scattered on the floor as they were in the upper levels or the piles of money carefully organised here. Either way it disgusted me, we moved further in but had to freeze when we saw that at the centre of the was an electrified fence surrounding a gold pig; worse was the presence of more cameras.

"Security appears much tighter here," Fox commented. That was quite the understatement, because I was actually wrong as there wasn't an electrified fence, but two of them instead; clearly whatever was in that particular piggybank was something that Kaneshiro really didn't want us to reach. Not that I was sure what it could be apart from the codes that we were likely in need of.

"Not to worry. We just need to deal with the power to the bars like we did before," Queen reassured. True, but given the set-up of the design then there was likely to be at least two power boxes that we were going to need to have to be dealing with if we wanted to reach the pig, but with the cameras and Shadows hovering in the area, that made searching for the power boxes more difficult.

"Based on how this looks, we're going to have to find a bunch of power boxes," Mona complained. I nodded my head in agreement to those words, instead of heading closer to the centre where the pig, cameras and Shadows were, Joker instead headed over to an opening underneath one of the units that ended up leading us right to a grapple hook attachment which was quite handy.

As Mona reassured Queen, the rest of us proceeded to swing up to the top with those two eventually joining us on top of the shelving units with Queen needing a bit of steadying from Skull upon landing due to the way that she had accidentally landed one of her feet. Hopefully, we'd be able to find the answers that we needed up here as to where those power boxes were located.

Insanely enough, there was actually a power box up here, though technically over on another shelving unit, so while Joker moved towards the power box, I head to the edge and looked over it to see what was happening below. Queen and Skull had elected to join me and from the anxious energy coming off the both of them, it seemed they were concerned about me potentially falling given my need to lean over the edge slightly.

"Two cameras down," I passed on. It hadn't solved the major issue, but it at least removed one of the problems that we had to deal with, we hopped over to another shelving unit's roof which held a chest that Joker quickly unlocked gaining a rather useful item. We leapt over to the shelving unit on the other side of the chest one and then dropped down, which brought us to the roof of a unit right across from another power box, dealing with that shut down the outer most field of electricity.

"Hmm. It appears we're not yet finish with the power hunt," Fox stated. Which was annoying to be frank, those boxes could be anywhere in the room, but it was most likely at ground level since we had cleared the top of every shelving unit; hopefully they were in the room otherwise we were going to be in for quite the extensive search.

We dropped back to the ground and immediately ducked into the shadows to avoid detection before splitting up, we moved along the back wall and that was when Joker gestured towards me and Skull. We followed his directions and saw there was a power box pinned against the wall but there was a dog Shadow patrolling near it; so, we quickly sprung out in order to attack the Shadow.

Which was several Orthrus once again, therefore making it much easier to defeat them… again… I'm starting to lose count of how many times we've face that specific Shadow. Once the Shadows were defeated, Joker walked over to the power box and stomped on it which drew the attention of the other team who had cleared out the other Shadows that had been wandering about the area.

"Looks like we've finally deactivated the bars," Queen informed. She was right since the inner most electrical field was now gone, we quickly made our way towards the shelving unit the piggybank had been situated on and quickly jumped up to it; when Joker retrieved the note inside, he stared at it for two second before turning it around to show us, explaining his shock because it read O plus H equals ten.

"So, we're getting into calculations now. Good grief," Mona complained. I did not blame him, although at least it was easy to work out that O corresponding to the number eight since H was already known to be two; Joker slipped the note away and proceeded to guide us through the opening that had been at the back of the room. But this just brought us into a room filled with more vaults, except that these ones were plated in gold and towered above us more than I think the rings of vaults did.

"Daaamn! This is nuts!" Skull breathed. He was quite right, the massive quantity of vaults was one thing but to find such a large source of them and have them be coloured in the way that they were, I wondered what made these vaults so significantly different, was the cognitive connection to those who Kaneshiro considered more valuable, or was there something else going on here?

"Safes everywhere… Kaneshiro must have gained an obscene amount of money," Fox admitted. He was staring at the objects in dismay as if having trouble comprehending the things that he was seeing about how this man thought. "Though, walking around the Palace, I don't see anything that he seems to have spent it on," Fox added on. He was frowning heavily as he said those words.

"That's the point of Gluttony, Fox, it's not about the spending. It's about the having," I explained. Fox looked at me and seemed visibly sick, but that had been what my research last night explained, Gluttony was different to Greed despite how similar they seemed at first glance, but Gluttony can never truly be satisfied no matter how much effort you end up putting in the effort to claim what you want.

"Now's not the time for this discussion, though. Let's keep going," Queen encouraged. I nodded my head in understanding and we proceeded to keep going; not that we got very far other than a few steps before we were stopped once again, though at least this time it was because of a reason that was connected to our explorations.

"Hey, look at that!" Panther exclaimed. We proceeded to look in the direction that she was pointing and I felt a small groan of annoyance escape from me at the sight that we were greeted with; there was an electric fence that separated us from a gold pig and right beside said pig was a power source which was likely to be the one that directly connected to the bars that were blocking our path. We needed to locate a different path in order to get closer, so we proceeded to head further into the vault laden room hoping for some sign to reach the room.

"Good morning. This entrance is strictly for Kaneshiro Bank employees. For entry, please display your key card and pay twenty thousand yen," The machine requested. All of us turned to glare at the door, given its' proximity, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a way for us to get into that room for the power bars but the fact that an even higher amount was being demanded was just annoying.

"No," Joker calmly stated. Although if I looked at him, his hand was twitching slightly as if he wanted to hit the golden door, but there wasn't exactly anything around for him to break, so we kept moving; we darted down the corridor and ambushed the Shadow that had been right in front of us. Another previously faced opponent lead to a very easy plan that Joker directed us to use to defeat them.

We kept moving, ducked into corners until we came across a timed camera lens, I darted passed once it was safe and guided the others through, but we quickly found another one. I made my way safely passed it and spotted the power box, deciding to take a risk, I prepped an arrow and loosed it. The metal head sunk into the power box and I looked back, smiling when I saw that the camera had been disabled. Continuing down the corridor, we easily dispatched the Shadows that attempted to intercept our path.

More timed cameras awaited us around the corner, forcing us to wait until we could dash pass them unseen, primarily thanks to a trolley that was blocking our ability to just walk pass the camera without waiting. We ducked into a corner when a dog shaped Shadow appeared near the turn, we found a small alcove with a power box there as well, but this did lead us to vaults that moved out and a grapple hook, Joker shot up then came back with what I think was incense from the looks of it.

Once the Orthrus spawning Shadow had been taken care of, we turned to look at our next obstacle. There was a long line of permanent cameras stretching ahead of us, all I could be thankful for was that the rest of the corridor was pretty much clear for us to freely move pass them. All that was required, was to alter our position depending upon the cameras' angle and range, but eventually we reached the end of the finding a pathway shooting off to the left along with a small room; inside this room, there was a vent, a power box and another PIN machine. Joker promptly broke the second which cleared up the hallway before checking out the vent which led back up to the shelving unit room, so we turned back and approached the machine.

"This is our fourth PIN device. The code this time is G-O-L-D… that's pretty straightforward," Panther commented. Perhaps in how Kaneshiro was thinking, but the code was probably not as easy as Panther might have been thinking it was due to the fact that calculations were now involved in protecting the code; I did not need to hear anymore of Kaneshiro's disgusting perspective but that was something I'd just have to choke down at this rate.

"I'd expect it's the same pattern we've followed so far. We'll need to decode that word into numbers," Queen reminded. That was pretty obvious, Joker was already flipping through the pages that we had collected and seemed to be noting something but with his back to us, it wasn't like I could read whatever facial expressions he had.

"I believe you're correct. I only hope we can do so with the hints we currently have on us," Fox admitted. Unfortunately, I was starting to think that wasn't the case as Joker flipped through the last of the pages before moving it back to the beginning and looking once more, but when he reached the end again, he snapped the notebook closed and turned to look at the rest of us with a grim expression.

"We can't. We're missing some pieces," Joker revealed. I'm betting the missing information was contained in that blocked off pig, with this in mind, Joker took us back out and down the hallway we had previously ignored. We turned into a small alcove shortly after and found the vaults suddenly extend, but these ones were a fair distance above our heads and nothing to latch onto.

Moving deeper into the room, a section of vaults to our left popped out which finally created the necessary pathway, Joker jumped up and the rest of us followed after him. We jumped across and down into the room that had been cut off by the electric fence, Joker quickly smashed the box which would allow us to leave the room while the rest of us opened up the pig and Queen pulled out the page.

"This note is a new one. It says L equals U plus G. D equals G," Queen read. Okay, this was just getting ridiculous, it wasn't really that complicated given the information we already had, but I was a little annoyed that this Ruler seemed to be enjoying forcing us to engage in these kinds of ridiculous run arounds to figure out his insane codes.

"Ugh, it's like, algebra or something! I'm getting confused!" Panther complained. I couldn't blame her for being angry at the confusion that was being caused by have to deal with something like this; it wasn't difficult for me once I focused on the information we had, but I still felt like my brain was starting to go a little bit gooey from all the nonsense we were doing to figure out these codes.

"Panther… this is really simple addition," Mona pointed out. Except she wasn't wrong since algebra did involve the substation of numbers for letters which is what we were dealing with here, even if this was most definitely much simpler than algebra tended to be. Joker opened a vault door that would allow us to easily back track, though he did shoot off to get another chest that had been hidden by a grapple ring and an electrified fence… that's far too cautious for some Soul Power replenishment.

We returned to the PIN machine and Joker figured out the code which he promptly put in, the rumbling sound we'd already experienced proceeded to echo down to us, all I could hope for was that this was the last of the PIN machines. Even if it wasn't, it was unlikely that we'd need to find anymore codes since the number of missing pages was now down to zero.

"This gold sheen," Shadow Kaneshiro laughed. Oh dear gods, I really wasn't looking forward to this, especially since he seemed to be enjoying himself far too much from the way laughter was mixed into those thoughts. "This… this is the fruits of all my hand labour!" Shadow Kaneshiro claimed. HARD LABOUR!? What exactly had he been doing that counted as hard labour?! All he had been doing was driving people to despair and suffering!

"He thinks robbin' people is something to celebrate? That guy needs to get his brain checked," Skull hissed. All of us quite agreed judging by the expression of the others' faces, but I don't think Maruki-sensei or anyone else would be able to help cure such a depraved individual; he was never going to change unless we went and forced him to change.

"With this much, I will be invincible! Omnipotent! I've changed, I'm no longer the person I used to be!" Shadow Kaneshiro declared. I had started to feel annoyed at the way he described himself as being all powerful, which we were happily proving that he wasn't, but the last bit caught more of my attention as my eyebrows furrowed at his words since it had been quite unexpected to hear him say that.

"The person he used to be? What could have happened to make him so distorted?" Panther wondered. Who knows? None of the other Rulers had ever explained why they became the way that they did, but honestly, I don't think a terrible past excuses the horrid things that he had done to others, especially when they had suffered so much that they might not even be capable of moving… perhaps even living.

"I don't know, but no matter what kind of past he had, his actions are unforgiveable," Mona reminded. I nodded my head in agreement and Skull also seemed to find no issue with those words; Panther was frowning but I think she understood the position that many of us were taking with what we had seen and heard from Kaneshiro, maybe she just didn't know what to think herself.

"That's right. Now, if my deductions are accurate, that should've been the final mechanism," Queen admitted. With that said, we quickly proceeded to return to the rings of vault and found that Queen was right with her guess, for there were no more rings barring our way to the centre of the room and there was even a sort of room at the centre which seemed to be more akin to the elevator given its cylinder appearance and small width.

"H-Hey, this is an elevator, yeah? So a way down really did show up. You're like a prophet, Queen," Skull commented. He seemed stunned by what was being displayed to each other, meanwhile I slung an arm over Queen's shoulder and pulled her into a hug, it seemed kind of fitting that our advisor had been able to see through the lies and tricks of the man who had threatened her and her sister.

"It's mostly thanks to that notebook. We wouldn't be here if it weren't for that," Queen insisted. It had been lucky for us that Shadow Kaneshiro had foolishly dropped it instead of running off with the whole thing or not leaving the first page. "More importantly, did you hear all those things Shadow Kaneshiro was saying?" Queens asked. Yeah, that was a pretty weird set of things Kaneshiro said from the third and fourth machine.

"Oh yeah, I was wondering about that! Didn't he seem kinda… insecure or something?" Panther wondered. That was certainly the way that he had seemed, that part about needing to have a huge presence was likely due to the desire for him to be infamous – which he certainly already was – but he seemed determined to never go back to who he once had been.

"Exactly. He kept bringing up how rich and powerful he wants to be," Queen clarified. The focus upon money and needing to be influential was all that had been spoken about, which had been incredibly grating, but it also gave us a look into the perspective of how Shadow Kaneshiro viewed his physical self's past which was a little unsettling if I'm honest.

"So, if he's insecure about that shit… he thinks he's really just some poor weakling, huh?" Skull guessed. That was probably what he meant by his old self, it was quite likely that at some point he had been this weak and poor individual; but to hate that so much that it had driven him to abusing other people and getting a Palace all so he would never be poor again… it was truly despicable to me.

"Maybe by thinking he was going to be a strong, wealthy man, he convinced himself it was true," Queen theorised. While Kaneshiro might have become wealthy, I don't think he was anywhere near being strong, but I might be biased since I consider the young men currently standing with me to be some of the strongest that I know, only Sōjirō seemed to be stronger than them to be honest.

"I wonder. Well, we will discover the truth for ourselves when we Change his Heart. Let us hurry, Joker," Fox insisted. We stepped closer to the elevator and found the section containing the door was covered in yen notes which I suppose shouldn't have been surprising; we stepped inside and the door closed pulling us downwards to where the Treasure was located. As soon as the doors pinged open, we stepped out.

There was more money scattered on the floor which was starting to feel like a running theme in this Palace beyond the obvious obsession with it. There were some metal contraptions further back in the room but the main focus was right in front of us, the Treasure was floating off the ground with nothing surrounding it; all there was, was a rainbow of lights on the dark flooring.

"Found it. It's right here!" Mona declared. It was such a relief to know that we had found it after all the effort we'd gone through in order to locate the damned object, all that was left would be our final step; however, a small sound echoed in the wide space which caused me to look over and I saw that it was Queen who had let out the sound.

"I don't see anything," Queen stated. In fact, she wasn't even looking at the Treasure's hazy form, instead she was just looking all around the room was if trying to find it; Skull walked up and pointed quite firmly at the object that we all knew would become the Treasure, Queen stared at it for several moments before turning back to look at all of us with wide eyes that showed just how confused she was by this revelation.

"Once we get this far, we need the Callin' Card," Skull reminded. Queen turned back to look at the Treasure and was staring at it quite intently, I could only assume that the wheels in her mind were spinning this information around as she tried to figure out what it meant; we had only briefly mentioned this part at the beginning, so it was no surprise that she was confused as to what was going on.

"A calling card… materialise… I see. Making the target believe that the Treasure is in danger will cause it to materialise. That's quite a bold trick," Queen realised. Well, it seemed that she hadn't required any further explanation which made sense given how well she had been able to take in the other bits of information that were just as difficult to explain at times given the weirdness of how they operated.

"Huh? She understood?" Panther questioned. Panther seemed rather surprised by how well Queen had taken that information on board, but I thought it made sense that she had been able to understand the idea of what we were going to do in order to get a hold of the Treasure; Queen had been quite a boon to us since she was able to fill a role that we'd sorely been in need of and provide us with her Nuke Magic, even if I didn't like being near it so much.

"Joker, we'll defer to you regarding its' timing," Fox stated. We all turned to look at our leader, with how he'd been acting, I wondered if he might want to get things done quickly – I know I did – or if he'd give all of us a day's break so that we could calm down after the rather horrible things that we had been hearing spewing from Kaneshiro's heart.

"Tomorrow, we're getting this done as swiftly as possible," Joker insisted. All of us firmly nodded at those words, I think it was probably best that we get this done as soon as possible given how Kaneshiro was threatening us quite forcefully; in fact, Queen seemed quite eager to get on with the heist that we were gearing up for.

"Okay guys, let's get ready for the heist!" Mona encouraged. With those words, we proceeded to head back up the elevator with everyone feeling much lighter and at ease, knowing that we were going to be able to stop Kaneshiro from unleashing that blackmail and smearing everyone's lives with muck and ruin; I really don't know what would happen to me, but I couldn't care less, the others were at much more risk than I was.

"The next time we enter that Treasure room will be after we send out the Calling Card," Panther commented. We had returned to the lock floor and were finalising what was going on with our heist before we proceeded to retreat for the day; just so long as we all took the next day easy then the day after would leave us incredibly refreshed and energised to face whatever enemies could come our way.

"In the end, that Kaneshiro bastard only showed his stupid face once," Skull pointed out. That had been quite the oddity, the previous two Rulers had shown up a few times before we reached the Treasure Room, Ouvrard might not have done as such, but it was rather strange that we hadn't seen Shadow Kaneshiro at all down here since we'd explored just about everywhere there had been.

"That doesn't matter. As long as we steal the Treasure, we'll change his heart," Mona reminded. I suppose that Mona was right, there wasn't much of a reason to dwell upon something that wasn't really going to impact the heist; we had everything we needed which just meant putting the finishing touches on the final step that we needed to take.

"Maybe this time we can do it without a massive monster battle," I hoped. The others all nodded their heads in agreement, except for Queen since she didn't really understand and wouldn't unless we ran into one, though I really hope that I hadn't inadvertently cursed ourselves to be faced with an incredibly difficult monster fight.

"Either way, let's act as the Phantoms should and send the Calling Card. It's on you Joker," Queen agreed. Joker was grinning widely and darted forward, we quickly made our way back to the Safe Room and proceeded to return to the main entrance; we were walking towards the exit point when I felt something suddenly press down on my shoulders as if it was some kind of ominous presence.

Turning around, I found that Joker was staring off into space again, guessing what this meant, I waved the others on and proceeded to approach our leader; he didn't react as I got close to him, so I followed his vacant stare. There was nothing there and I couldn't feel anything either which baffled me, it often felt like I had gone through to the Velvet Room physically, yet Joker was still clearly here. I wasn't entirely sure want to do other than wait, but eventually he came back to himself.

"I take it that was you going to the Velvet Room," I theorised. Joker seemed to still be coming back, but he was present enough for him to nod his head, I noticed that his Persona had gone and changed into a completely different entity but I couldn't clearly see it which made sense but I was a bit sad that I couldn't clearly see it since I was curious as to what it could be.

"Yeah, it's a little weird sometimes," Joker admitted. He shook his head as if that fully brought himself back, he then proceeded to smile at me and I noticed that it seemed more relieved than anything else which caused me to raise an eyebrow at him. "Still, nice to know you understand what's happening," Joker added on. Ah, that explains it, at least I would be able to reassure the others if this ever happened again.

"No problem. Now, let's get going before Shadows actually decide to attack us though," I encouraged. As unlikely as it might seem, I wasn't going to put it passed Kaneshiro to somehow cause that to happen; we proceeded to march towards the exit, content to nearly have this heist completed.