Chapter 43 Academic Inventor

Karasawa pinched the memory card he had picked out from the fabric, turning it over to examine it.

On the front of the square memory card, there were inward-pointing triangular arrows at the top, bottom, and right sides.

Memory told Karasawa that this was a marking his father liked to use during his graduate school days to distinguish his experimental data. It represented the letter "K" starting Karasawa's name in Romaji. This habit had been carried on and was very easy to recognize.

The features were too distinct; if exposed, it would be discovered. Karasawa decided to stuff it into his inventory slot in a moment, otherwise hiding it anywhere else would make him feel uneasy.

Loading the memory card into the computer, Karasawa carefully clicked to open its contents.

As soon as the folder name came into view, Karasawa was struck as if by lightning right at the opening.

"Cognitive Parapsychology?!"

Karasawa stared at the characters on the screen and couldn't help muttering them aloud.

As a psychological concept, "cognition" itself refers to the process by which the human brain acquires, processes, and expresses information, which is the basic psychological function of "processing information to draw conclusions."

In the worldview of Persona, however, it is a very crucial and unique setting. Because there exists an alternative world formed by human hearts—the cognitive space—and various supernatural abilities arising around it, the discipline that studies how it operates, the underlying logic of cognition, and how cognition in turn affects reality is called cognitive parapsychology.

In Persona 5, Futaba Sakura's mother, Wakaba Isshiki, was a scholar who conducted related theoretical research, as was the enhanced version of the final boss, Takuto Maruki, though his research direction was more inclined toward practice.

Unluckily, just like how the Black Organization was currently eyeing the research of Karasawa's parents, Wakaba Isshiki was also targeted by villainous forces, her research achievements were appropriated by the villains, and she herself was murdered.

From this perspective, this really was a high-risk research project. After all, an innocent man is guilty of harboring a treasure; theories capable of fundamentally controlling the world and manipulating society are bound to arouse the greed of dark and evil forces.

"This is really fatal," Karasawa muttered to himself softly. "What's even more fatal is that I actually possess this kind of ability."

Thinking of this, Karasawa's expression turned grave.

He wasn't actually sure whether it was the time-traveling him, or "Akira Karasawa," who possessed the Persona ability, or if there was an even more absurd situation, akin to the setting where he had actually traveled through time long ago, but failed to awaken his past memories until the plot began...

Regardless, from an objective standpoint, the fact remained that "Akira Karasawa, the son of cognitive parapsychology researchers Ichikawa Karasawa and Leona Karasawa, possessed the ability to modify cognition through certain methods."

"Leon, you bastard! You probably did this on purpose!" Thinking of this, Karasawa desperately wanted to lie down in the Velvet Room right away and beat up his lousy assistant.

***

As soon as they met, Leon had told him, "In this world, reality and the cognitive world have long since merged," and casually said it wasn't a big deal, nothing major.

It was a huge deal! Many experiments that could never possibly yield results in the real world could now be observed directly without ever needing to enter the other world!

Even "Akira Karasawa's" ability might have been modified or induced precisely because of his parents' academic research!

No wonder the organization was tormenting a high school student to death. Even Karasawa felt that with this kind of character positioning, he would sooner or later have to accompany Conan to Teitan Elementary School.

And...

Taking a deep breath, Karasawa regulated his emotions, opened the folder, and began browsing the contents in the middle.

Having only read the index, Karasawa felt his temples throbbing—the worst-case scenario had indeed happened.

The fusion of the cognitive world resembled a process where information at the spiritual level flowed toward reality. Therefore, changing a person's psychological cognition would directly produce real-world impacts. Consequently, techniques involving psychological dimensions, such as hypnosis and brainwashing, would receive an epic-level enhancement.

Karasawa's parents had discovered the risks of cognitive parapsychology in these areas early on, but what they wanted to research was no longer something they had the final say in.

"Brainwashing devices, lie detectors, interrogation drugs... So the patents in their hands are these kinds of patents? It sounds like a surefire ticket to a long prison sentence..." After flipping through these directories, Karasawa's hands trembled slightly.

In these fields, the organization now possessed even more outrageous black technology than in the original work. Although it still seemed unable to prevent the rampant proliferation of fake booze, it sounded vastly more brutal.

To sum it up, Karasawa currently had only one thought.

Rei Furuya, Shuichi Akai: Endangered.

Scrolling further down, there were multiple experimental reports and papers. Judging by the signatures, they were all theoretical knowledge independently researched by his parents.

Having no time to read these long articles in detail, Karasawa briefly glanced at the summaries of each and was startled to discover—

They had already touched upon the existence of the cognitive world.

Relying on treatment samples from multiple mental illness patients, the Karasawa couple had slowly mapped out an abstract world composed of cognitive concepts over a decade of research. They believed that humanity's collective unconscious possessed boundaries that could be touched and explored, and could be utilized to reversely affect the existence of reality itself.

Subsequent application results, such as instruments for memory modification, were all spawned based on this solid set of theories they had developed.

***

To put it bluntly, had they not lacked the designated cheat item known as the metaverse navigation device, which made it impossible for them to contact the true cognitive space, they would have already pieced together the worldview settings of Persona 5.

Fortunately for them, most people understood their theory by viewing the abstract world more as a metaphor and didn't genuinely believe in the existence of another world, keeping Karasawa safe for the time being.

This complete core theory was his parents' most vital painstaking effort—precisely the data the organization wanted to extract from him.

With such a set of guiding theories, there was no telling what kind of major schemes the organization might cook up.

No, he had to stir up some trouble.

Karasawa touched the memory card plugged into the computer, recalled his alias plan, and smiled maliciously.

He first copied all the data inside into the computer, and then reopened the papers on the memory card.

As a hardcore gamer who played video games intensively, Karasawa had played entries in the Persona series and had also read plenty of strange, soft-science fiction that didn't exist in this world, leaving his mind overflowing with bizarre pseudoscience concepts.

Karasawa the academic inventor was about to get to work.

"First, let's stitch together all the concepts from Persona 3, Persona 4, and Persona 5. If you have the guts, try shooting yourself in the temple," Karasawa's fingers danced across the keyboard as he rewrote a theoretical index. "Then add some weird stuff, let me think... 'morphogenetic field' is very fitting, it sounds like a perfect match. The concept of 'cure' is also great; whenever questioned, blame quantum mechanics... Let's sew in some cyber elements as well. Prosthetic eye dream detective is a great term. Kotaro Uchikoshi, my superman..."

Muttering incessantly, Karasawa pulled out a heap of psychological concepts from various works, quickly stitching together an insane, soft-science-fiction magnum opus.

The white light emitted by the screen cast a gloomy reflection on Karasawa's grinning, wicked face.

"I'm actually quite curious about what kind of abomination reversed cultivation techniques can produce," he flipped through the nonsense he had written with satisfaction. "You guys had better not actually research anything out of this. After all—"

"The above content is purely fictional; any resemblance is purely a stroke of bad luck."