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Two beams of light collided midair.
The red beam fired from Alex's gun didn't just meet Tsukushi's orange blast—it erased it. Completely. The red streak skimmed past her cheek and tore straight through the tent behind her, blasting a clean hole through the canvas.
"Th-That's impossible… Is that a Teigu in your hand too?" Tsukushi's voice trembled. "No—that kind of power isn't possible for a Shingu… Could it be a Teigu? Like Father's blade?"
For the first time, fear crept across her face.
Teigu users were on a completely different level from Shingu users.
Alex lowered the gun, satisfied, and gave a small nod. "Nice. That'll do."
Tsukushi seized the moment and bolted out of the tent.
In a situation like this, there was only one move—team up with Akame and stall the Teigu user. She'd already fired a signal flare. Her father and the rest of the Elite Seven would arrive soon.
And when they did, even a Teigu user like Alex would be finished.
Alex didn't stop her. He simply followed her out.
By the time he reached the troupe leader's tent, it was already over.
Akame stood amidst bodies and blood. Every member of the troupe had been cut down.
"Akame! Be careful! He's a Teigu user!" Tsukushi warned urgently.
Akame gave a small nod. When she looked at Alex again, there was a new wariness in her eyes.
But Alex didn't even glance at them.
Instead, he looked at the corpses of Natalia and Amelia and sighed. "What a waste. Killed just like that."
Then he cast resurrection magic—Dia·Ophiuchus.
He no longer needed to chant.
With a casual wave of his hand, a green magic circle spread across the entire tent. One by one, pillars of green light enveloped the bodies—the troupe leader, Duncan, Koga, Natalia, Amelia.
And before Akame and Tsukushi's horrified eyes, the dead… breathed again.
"This… this can't be real! Does his Teigu control corpses?!" Tsukushi cried out in shock.
"They're not corpses," Akame said, her voice tight. "They're alive. Their bodies are fully restored."
This was beyond anything they understood.
The revived troupe leader stared at the two girls in terror. He remembered dying. So why was he alive?
Duncan, Koga, Natalia, Amelia—same reaction. Shock first. Then fear. Then caution as they eyed Akame and Tsukushi.
No one wanted to die twice.
Once everyone was back on their feet, Alex snapped his fingers.
"Unlimited Blade Works."
In an instant, everyone—and everything belonging to the troupe—was swallowed into his Reality Marble.
Then he shot into the sky and vanished.
When the Empire's assassination unit—the Elite Seven—arrived, they found nothing.
No bodies. No signs of battle.
And worse—they had lost contact with Akame and Tsukushi.
"Damn it. We're too late," muttered Nahashu, leader of the Elite Seven.
"That doesn't make sense," said Cornelia, the team's big sister figure, disbelief written all over her face. "The Sabatini troupe shouldn't have stood a chance against Akame and Tsukushi. So what happened?"
Akame and Tsukushi were like little sisters to her. The thought of losing them was unbearable.
"Akame will be fine. I'll save her," said Green firmly. He'd always had feelings for her. There was no way he'd just sit back.
"Calm down," Gai cut in, grabbing him. "First we figure out what changed."
At that moment, their leader—the man they called "Father"—spoke.
"Has anything unusual happened with the troupe recently?"
This was Gozuki, current wielder of the Teigu Murasame and head of the assassination unit.
Bonnie answered immediately. "Nothing major. Just… yesterday they took in a new recruit. His name's Alex."
Gozuki didn't hesitate. "Then that's the problem. We find him."
Everyone nodded.
Gozuki also contacted Bill, the administrator of the Empire's Reinforcement Division, and requested assistance.
Unlike the Elite Seven—who were the top seven selected during training—the Reinforcement Division accepted everyone and enhanced them with drugs. They had numbers on their side.
Bill agreed. Soon, Reinforcement assassins and soldiers were mobilized alongside the Elite Seven to search for Alex.
While they were tearing the Empire apart looking for him…
Alex was already thousands of kilometers away.
He flew straight to Longxi Village, near the Empire's northwestern border.
The village looked abandoned. Weathered. Like no one had lived there for years.
He picked a random house and flicked his wrist. With a simple dust-clearing spell, the entire place was instantly spotless.
Then he released Akame, Tsukushi, and the troupe members from his Reality Marble.
They stumbled out, faces pale.
No one could stay calm after seeing that world.
An endless plain of swords stretching to the horizon. No matter how far you walked, there was no exit. Just steel and sky.
It felt like standing inside the domain of a god.
The troupe members handled it better than Akame and Tsukushi, though.
They'd already figured out that Alex had resurrected them. If he'd gone through the trouble of bringing them back, he probably wasn't planning to kill them again.
That suggested goodwill.
Alex got straight to the point.
"Does this place look familiar?"
The two girls froze.
They glanced around—and their expressions changed instantly.
"This is Longxi Village…" Akame's voice tightened. "Why are we here?"
This village held memories she never wanted to revisit.
It was where the Elite Seven had "graduated."
Where the seven of them had slaughtered an entire village.
What shocked her most, though, wasn't the location.
It was the speed.
Just minutes ago they'd been in the Shiranami Mountains. Now they were here—over a thousand kilometers away.
How?
"You don't need to worry about how we got here," Alex said calmly. "I just want to show you something."
He performed a small memory projection spell.
A screen of light appeared before them.
And then—
He began playing Akame ga Kill!
"..."
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