Chapter 334
"Haaah!"
Akame raised her blade and slashed at Gozuki.
Gozuki blocked horizontally with his sword.
He felt the hair all over his body grow heavy, even affecting his movements.
The hair had absorbed too much water while proliferating, causing it to become overly heavy.
Controlling it now required even more stamina and mental focus.
Abandoning the manipulation of his hair, Gozuki swung Murasame and began an intense exchange of blades with Akame.
Every strike from Akame aimed straight for his vital points, and for a time, Gozuki could only maintain his defense, unable to find an opening to counterattack.
The two sharp blades constantly scraped out sparks. The clangs of their collisions were still extremely clear amid the rain.
The two figures shifted constantly, vanishing and appearing like teleportation.
"Hah!"
"!"
Their blades met head-on.
Both swung fiercely, the powerful force of the collision even blasting away the rainwater around them and forming a brief vacuum-like space.
Screech—
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Ting...
The blades swung into streaks of afterimages. Both of them focused completely, neither daring to relax in the slightest.
"Heh."
Suddenly, Gozuki smiled smugly.
He abruptly raised his leg. Akame reacted instantly and made the movement to block, but the kick that should have come never arrived.
She suddenly realized that this was body manipulation again.
The direction of attack was not from the front at all.
Bang!
A heavy blow came from the left side of her body.
Akame failed to defend in time and was struck directly, her entire body sent flying.
"Ah!"
The girl cried out in pain, flew a distance, then landed on the ground and rolled several times before finally stopping.
She pressed one hand against the spot where she had been kicked, feeling intense pain as she curled up with a frown.
"Cough, cough!"
The girl felt a hot surge rush up her throat. Opening her mouth, she coughed out a mouthful of blood.
'A swordsman who could freely manipulate his body was far too strong.'
'Adding a Teigu on top of that, Father was indeed one of the Empire's hidden top-class powerhouse.'
'But I can't die here yet.'
Touching the unbroken recovery potion in her pocket, Akame's eyes once again burned with a firm flame.
If she died, then Kurome would become a child no one cared for.
She could not let the Empire continue using her.
As the older sister, she had to take responsibility.
'I have to make it back alive.'
Akame gritted her teeth, endured the pain, and stood again.
She adjusted her breathing into a short and urgent rhythm.
Doing so would let her gain stronger power, though her stamina consumption would also intensify.
But that was fine.
Because the next exchange would decide the outcome.
"I will cut you down, Akame!" Gozuki suddenly shouted those words.
The instant Akame heard them, she immediately pushed all her senses to the limit.
Gozuki stepped forward as his leather shoe suddenly burst apart.
'It was coming.'
Akame locked onto this phenomenon.
She had already reacted the instant Gozuki raised his foot.
She leapt high with all her strength.
"What!"
Gozuki was shocked.
He had used the muscles of his toes to fire his toenails, giving those nails power beyond bullets.
This move was impossible to guard against and had allowed him to kill countless evenly matched opponents until now.
Even martial artists stronger than him would be shot dead before they could react to this move.
But why?
She had actually predicted it?
Wait.
Could it be?
Gozuki's memory returned to a long time ago.
Back then, when they were hiding together in the forest and waiting for reinforcements to arrive, he had once used this move against their pursuers, only to shoot dead a wild rabbit.
At the time, he had deliberately blocked the little brats' view so they could not see it.
Could it be?
Thinking of this, he suddenly realized.
The shoe?
After that, Akame had noticed the damage to his shoe?
She had guessed his trump card just from that?
'Ha.'
For some reason, even though his trump card had been dodged, he could not help but laugh.
"You really have grown into an excellent assassin, Akame!"
But she was still missing the final step.
Gozuki tightened his grip on the Demon Sword and slashed at Kiriichimonji with all his strength.
Akame, who had been preparing to cut Gozuki down, watched as her blade was cleaved into pieces by Murasame.
The fragments of the blade flew through the air, reflected in her eyes.
"Did you forget? Murasame is a Teigu. Even if yours is a Shingu, it can't withstand—"
He roared wildly, "Now it's really over, Akame!"
"Eliminate!"
'What?'
At that moment, Gozuki suddenly noticed that Akame's hands were empty.
She was not holding the sword?
No, she had let go the moment I broke the blade and attacked.
There was no emotion in Akame's eyes.
She grabbed one of Kiriichimonji's broken blade fragments and, before Gozuki could react, stabbed it fiercely into his neck.
"Kiriichimonji has fought with me for so long that I can notice even the slightest change in its weight."
"Gah... You... you knew all along that the blade was covered in cracks, and you were calculating how many more strikes it could endure!"
Gozuki staggered back several steps in shock.
Then his legs lost strength, and he fell to both knees while clutching his neck.
"Gah."
Blood poured from the wound in his neck and from his mouth, quickly washed away by the rain.
Before long, the puddles on the ground were dyed red with blood.
"Hahaha."
"I never thought I would lose to the child I taught myself."
"Noah, you bastard. It's all because you raised such a terrifying monster that I lost."
'No.'
'That's just blaming someone else.'
'I was the one who asked you to do it.'
"I lost, Akame. Come take your..."
Gozuki did not manage to finish his words before his breath cut off completely.
But the hand he extended, holding that beautiful Demon Sword, had already said what he wanted to say for him.
Akame knelt before him until the moment he died.
"Farewell, Father."
The girl removed the scabbard from Gozuki's body and fastened it to her own waist.
Then she took the Demon Sword from his hand and returned it to its sheath.
Kiriichimonji was completely broken and could not be repaired.
Because of that, the wound on her palm was no longer affected by the curse.
It would heal within a few days.
...
Noah moved his finger away from his closed left eye, and his vision returned from Black Nightmare to his own body.
He had personally witnessed Gozuki's end.
As an assassin of the Empire, Gozuki had committed countless evil deeds, and in the end, he had still failed to meet a peaceful death.
'Hm?'
Black Nightmare's vision had finally stopped on Gozuki's face.
After releasing the magic, Noah murmured to himself, "He actually died with such a satisfied expression. Did he see his life flash before his eyes? If so, what he saw was probably.... a very happy scene."
...
After Gozuki died, the final scene he saw was something even he himself could never have imagined.
He saw Nahashu, Cornelia, and the other children, including Akame, as well as Green, who had died first.
All of those children had returned to their childhood appearances.
They surrounded him, their faces filled with happy smiles.
How unbelievable.
He had clearly done so many things that used them, yet they still thought he had the right to be their father?
Ah.
He had not even taken proper care of his own daughter.
Before his consciousness sank into chaos, Gozuki felt as though he had finally been released.
Yet after that, he seemed to be pulled by some kind of power, and his consciousness was completely sealed away.
"For an untrained soul, maintaining consciousness after leaving the body is extremely difficult."
Noah held the Soul Jade containing Gozuki's soul and examined it in front of his eyes.
...
The next day.
The Imperial Guard discovered Gozuki's corpse.
Low-ranking personnel like them naturally could not know Gozuki's identity, so they simply treated it as an ordinary murder case and transported the body back to the guard station.
In the entire Imperial Capital, there were fewer than twenty "forensic doctors" who could truly examine corpses.
Normally, they were borrowed back and forth between the various departments.
Among these people were scholars like Noah, Bill, and Dr. Stylish.
Within two hours of receiving the news, Bill rushed to the Imperial Guard station in a panic.
The moment he entered, he went straight to the corpse and pulled away the white cloth covering it.
Then he was completely shocked.
"H-how is this possible? It really is him?"
What kind of joke was this?
Someone actually killed Gozuki in the Imperial Capital?
Who did it?
One had to know that although Gozuki operated in the shadows, his strength was absolutely real.
Calling him the strongest assassin in the Empire would not be an exaggeration.
But now, he had actually died on the street of the Imperial Capital?
Because of the heavy rain, all traces had already been washed clean.
There was no possibility of tracking the killer.
Moreover, judging from the time of death, at least six hours had already passed since the battle.
Even if they wanted to chase the killer, the other party would have disappeared long ago.
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