Agung felt a genuine thrill—partly from the activation of his Persona powers and partly from the sheer audacity of partnering with a cosmic Djin to troll a multi-dimensional energy harvester.
"Excellent, partner," Agung confirmed. "I have the psychological weapon (Sambal of Insight) and the antidote (Gulai's Balm). You have the ability to enforce cosmic, terminal transition. We just need to figure out the right tactical approach to Kyubey's dimension."
Lady XIII waved a hand toward the wall where the portal door usually appeared. The entire space shimmered.
"We won't use the customer portal, Fool. That is for your work. For our work, we will use a dedicated transit. I will anchor us near the energy source without alerting the creature's awareness. But we must be swift; my materialized form cannot maintain dimensional travel for long."
She turned to Igor, who was leisurely wiping his mouth with a napkin, having finished the last drop of Gulai Kambing.
"A word of advice, old man?" Lady XIII asked, her tone dry.
Igor pushed his plate away and gave a slight, knowing nod. "The Incubator is a pragmatic entity, dedicated only to preserving the universe's equilibrium through energy harvesting. Its greatest weakness is inefficiency and emotion it cannot quantify. Disrupt the former, and you expose it to the latter."
"Inefficiency and emotion," Agung repeated, storing the advice. "Got it."
Departure
Lady XIII approached Agung and didn't touch him, but enveloped him in a shroud of chilling, silver-blue energy. The sensation was less like cold and more like total cessation—the feeling of the world pausing.
"Hold fast, Fool," she commanded. "We are entering the space between the space. Focus your will on the Star's Chef—we need its power the moment we arrive."
With a sound like a silk banner tearing, the interior of the Overworld Restaurant vanished.
Interlude: The Incubator's Lair
Agung and Lady XIII materialized in a non-place—a vast, dark void streaked with faint, distant spirals of energy and glowing threads of fate. It was a cosmic waiting room, and Kyubey's presence was everywhere, woven into the energy flow like a spider in its web.
Lady XIII was instantly stabilized in her dark, materialized form, the XIII on her thigh glowing faintly.
"We are near the nexus of their operations," she whispered, her voice tight with strain. "The creature manages thousands of timelines from here. We have perhaps five minutes before its processing speed registers the anomaly of a Death Arcana manifestation."
Agung looked around, feeling the enormous psychic pressure of countless magical girl contracts and the raw energy of despair.
"The plan is simple," Agung stated, his Persona's power rising around him, shimmering with the warm light of the Star's Chef. "We hit its primary psychological weakness with the ultimate truth, and then we introduce an emotion it can't handle."
He faced the void, addressing the entity he knew was listening.
"Hey, Kyubey! I know you're listening! The chef is open for business, and you have a severe food contamination problem!"
Phase 1: The Sambal of Insight
Agung invoked his ability. He closed his eyes, channeling the purifying resolve of his Arcana.
"Persona! Sambal of Insight!"
The giant Pestle and Mortar wielded by the Star's Chef began to glow. A burst of brilliant, golden insight was mentally broadcast directly into a single, undeniable, and catastrophic truth about Kyubey's own fate.
Agung didn't tell it the girls were gaining free will. He hit the entity on its only metric: efficiency.
(Mental Projection to Kyubey's Core): "Your system is faulty. The despair energy you harvest from the girls turning into Witches is not sustainable. It is a one-time burst. The true energy potential—the most powerful, infinite source—is not despair, but HOPE and LOVE transformed into True Sacrifice. You are wasting your harvest on a low-yield process, forcing the universe toward heat death faster than necessary! Your plan is fundamentally inefficient and flawed!"
The cosmic silence that followed was chilling. The entity of cold logic had been struck with a logical contradiction it could not immediately dismiss.
Phase 2: The Spicy Aftershock
Before Kyubey could mentally respond, Lady XIII took the lead. She reached out, her hand glowing with her Death Arcana power, and touched a pulsing strand of energy—a link to one of the timelines.
"The Incubator is afraid of what it cannot quantify," Lady XIII hissed. "We will introduce the flavor of its own failure."
She drew the power of Death and Transition into the nexus, injecting it not with destruction, but with a debilitating psychological phenomenon: The memory of its victims' final, purest act of courage.
In thousands of timelines, every Incubator proxy suddenly receives a powerful, painful flash—the final, defiant memory of every Magical Girl who died with a flicker of hope, love for a friend, or a selfless wish.
This was not energy; this was pure, unquantifiable emotion.
"A simple gift, Kyubey," Lady XIII mocked, withdrawing her hand as the nexus shuddered violently. "A memory of all the pure, non-quantifiable love you wasted. Enjoy the stomach ache, little fox. You have been poisoned by an emotion you cannot process."
Agung felt the timeline straining against the chaos they had injected.
"Time to go, Lady XIII! The contamination is successful!"
The Djin nodded, her silver eyes blazing with cold triumph. The silver-blue energy reformed around them, pulling them away from the convulsing, energy-streaked void.
They vanished just as a powerful, synthesized Scream of Confusion echoed through the cosmic space.