Fate: Kill

Chapter 8

The town Calla was by far one of the strangest places Akame had ever seen or lived within. It was somewhat surreal if she was being honest, but in any case, one wouldn't be able to tell what she was truly thinking from just her facial expression alone.
T

hat was a good thing.
Trying to understand the town and Shirou was too difficult for her to deal with in the first place without the added annoyance of looking dazed whenever Shirou or the townsfolk did something contradictory to her views of the world. She'd even learned that there was unspoken rule that Shirou was not allowed to discover the true capabilities of the townsfolk unless it was an emergency.
She digressed and shook her head, keeping silent while walking behind Shirou's back.
Her natural calm, and cold exterior expression was contrasted by the deep curiosity in her eyes that darted back and forth wherever she went.
She was not wearing a cloak of any kind, and was instead wearing a black sailor's uniform with a short skirt that reached just to her mid-thighs. A pair of combat boots were worn on her feet, and the cut of the boot reached just up to the top of her calves which were secured by thin leather straps.
"For the time being, you can stay with me."
She recalled the words that Shirou had spoken to her a day after the battle. She had just decided to stay in the town of Calla, but wasn't quite sure what role she should be playing as a new villager. She wasn't good at laundry, sewing, or taking care of children, but she did know how to hunt and use a sword, both of which in a peaceful day, wasn't really required in a town like Calla.
Calla had its own means of hunting food from a nearby lake, and a part of the town was already devoted towards agriculture for self-sustainment. It wasn't that her profession in hunting and swords wasn't in demand, but she wasn't exactly the most talkative individual. To register herself as a member of a hunting force, she'd have to talk with a woman named Elaine who she instinctively felt disliked her for reasons she did not know or bother with.
Talking with Elaine would have had been troublesome, so she didn't.
A day after the battle, Akame had secretly left the town of Calla and deposited carcases of animals at its doorstep in her own effort to contribute to village life. Happy as the townspeople were, Shirou was getting a headache from Elaine nagging him to get Akame to officially register as a Hunter in the village registry. As it would turn out, randomly leaving unclaimed food in front of the village was screwing up logistic distribution that Elaine had to handle as Calla's secretary and chief-of-affairs.
Shirou was forced to settle matters before a dispute broke out, leaving to the current situation where he ended up hiring Akame as a body guard to make use of her skills somewhere other than hunting.
Selka and the people of Heiwa were already handling the hunting anyway.
At the aftermath of the battle against the tribe from Hageishi, the people of Heiwa had decided to settle down in Calla while their clan leader woke up from his state of unconsciousness.
Turning to the distance, Akame watched as Selka whistled using her fingers in the distance and left with a group of Hunters into the forest of Danger Beasts.
Due to the 'Tiegu' Shirou had created before Akame's eyes, Selka and the others were able to contend with even some of the toughest Danger Beasts that the forest offered. The Hunted Beasts would then be processed before the left-over bones would be sent to Shirou to handle along with the corpses of the Mountain Shakers.
Left unsaid, the food problem Calla was facing was temporarily settled due to the enormous amount of meat that the town suddenly had access to. This was to say, that there was no real need for Selka and the others to hunt more, but they still did so with the reasoning of getting familiar with the terrain and keeping themselves in condition should the people of Hageshi return.
The feud between the waring clans in Wakoku was not something that would settle itself easily.
In regards to all the meat left out in the sun after the battle, it would all surely start to rot in a few days. Therefore, while Selka and the other Hunters went hunting, the rest of the townsfolk had been spending most of their time preserving all the meat that they could.
It resulted in a considerable number of rations.
The people of Calla would not be going hungry for a while, but what Shirou wanted to do was change 'for a while,' into 'forever.' To do such a thing, he needed to make Calla self-sustaining without just relying on hunting.
Agriculture was the key, and not simply on the small-time-level Calla was from before.
The introduction of the Mountain Shakers had presented an opportunity. In wake of the massive Danger Beast's attack, large sections of the forested region around Calla were flattened, exposing a vast open plain after all the debris was cleared.
It was the perfect farmland, but the problem, was as always, water.
Without water there would no life and no food. The reason Calla's agriculture could not grow large enough to sustain itself before was both because the source of water was too far away and the ground around Calla was mainly made out of stone rather than loose gravel. It made it hard to dig and irrigate to cultivate other plots of land, but not anymore.
Shirou was standing beside the wide lake that funneled in from a river upstream, his hands out in front of him while Akame scrutinized his actions.
Admittedly, she'd been fixated on finding out just what kind of 'Teigu' he possessed, but no amount of observation would be able to get her anywhere. More so with how inconsistent he was being.
At first, Akame had believed that his Teigu had to do with the creation of normal swords that could be sent out as projectiles, but then Mystic Codes appeared and ruined that assumption. Tiegu only had one type of power per weapon with a few having two or more, but there was never a Teigu as versatile as the one Shirou was displaying. The fact that Shirou had produced Teigu with various attributes only meant that perhaps she wasn't seeing things clearly yet.
Her eyes narrowed, but as if to overturn everything that she'd silently sorted out together in her mind, it was not a sword that Shirou decided to use.
"That's a shovel," she said blandly, a hint of frustration laced in her tone.
What kind of Teigu was this?
She really could not understand anymore.
Akame had been expecting Shirou to create some sort of new Teigu from out of the air, but what she saw instead was Shirou taking out a regular shovel from his backpack.
Without even waiting, she moved forward and inspected the shovel in Shirou's hands. Not finding anything unique about it, she felt an urge to pull at her hair. Obviously, she didn't due to her self control, but the way she was looking at Shirou made him realize that she was blaming him for messing with her.
"Yes, it's a shovel," Shirou replied back, missing the glower that appeared for an instant on Akame's face as he shifted his attention away.
It was as if her expression was saying that nothing made sense anymore. Especially when she watched Shirou mutter softly to himself and then proceed to pierce the metal scoop of the shovel directly through stone.
T-The hell? Akame's eyes dilated and for a moment, she thought that she was either dreaming or had eaten some hallucinogen from the mushrooms that she had foraged from the forest prior.
"That's not possible," she said in disbelief.
The reason the people of Calla could not expand their agricultural fields was because of the hard stone that surrounded the lake bed. Even sharpened steel would not be able to easily plough through such dense bedrock without bending or breaking.
This was definitely a normal shovel, Akame had made sure of it. Therefore, how?!
Without any hesitation, she took the shovel from Shirou's hands and imitated his action of shoveling the rock beneath her.
Shirou noted how dazed Akame looked as the shovel seemed to just sink into the stone without any resistance. The feeling was like digging into sand, and Akame shuddered just thinking how effective the shovel would be against heavy armour.
The way Akame looked at the shovel as she pulled it close to her face made it seem as if she wanted to break it out of spite. Her brow was twitching and her lips had thinned as she bit down on them.
"Teigu?" He could hear the sheer disbelief in her tone.
"Not quite." Shirou did not elaborate as he took back the shovel which he had Reinforced with magic. Now that he had an ample supply of Danger Beast bones to recover from, he was no longer as stingy when it came to his magecraft. "Just because something is strong does not mean it's a Teigu."
As if to explain further, Shirou shifted his hand and placed it on top of Akame's combat boots.
"Trace, on," he muttered while activating his reinforcement magic.
Akame stared at him and at her boots in confusion after he moved away from her.
"Your boot is definitely not a Teigu, correct?"
Akame nodded slowly. Her boots were standard issue, comfortable and efficient.
"Try cutting your boot with your sword."
She really didn't understand the purpose of Shirou's instructions, but she did so anyway, and when she did, her neutral expression finally broke.
Orange sparks illuminated her face as her blade's edge grated against the leather of her combat boots. The sound was reminiscent to striking plate armour and only a tiny scratch was left behind.
"…" Her mouth hung open, but no words came out.
She considered what Shirou just did and gradually pointed at the rest of her attire.
Shirou nodded.
"I can reinforce the rest of your clothes too," he admitted. "That doesn't make your clothing Teigu though."
Akame shut her mouth, and didn't say anything more, but inwardly, her mind was a complicated mess while she sorted out the powers that she was certain Shirou possessed.
He had the ability to create Teigu.
He had the ability to heal.
And now he also had the ability to reinforce.
With the things that she'd seen that Shirou was capable of, why did he not take up his swords and fight to make a difference? He was akin to a walking armoury, med bay, and smithy all in one. His sheer utility in any battlefield was beyond just useful.
"Why?" The word escaped passed her lips. "Why are you so strong yet not fight? I've already told you of what's happening in the Empire."
The question had been nagging at her since the moment she'd seen Shirou create such a massive sword to combat against the Mountain Shakers. That power didn't seem like it belonged to a single Human, but was instead something that belonged in legends.
Legends of…Magic.
Her eyes visibly widened at the thought, but she shook her head at the impossibility. Magic was said to exist in the world and had much to do with the Tiegu themselves, but there was no way that a wizard could exist in the present day and age. She tried to convince herself of this fact, but it was also true that Shirou had created new Teigu right in front of her eyes.
A vague suspicion was forming in her head, but she was more focused on the topic at hand.
Shirou paused after she had voiced her question to him. The shovel in his hand which he was using to manually create water channels, pausing for a moment before continuing.
The answer Akame got back was in the form of another question.
"Why fight and kill?"
Akame watched Shirou silently work, his digging pace prompting her to jog after him. She was waiting for an elaboration, but he didn't answer right away. There was a deep look that had manifested in his eyes, almost as if he was recalling a memory.
"No matter how strong someone may be, the amount of people that one can save on their own will always be limited," Shirou spoke softly, trails of dirt being left behind him as he worked. "You save and save and save, while in the end chasing after an unattainable ideal."
"You speak as if you've already tried," Akame's tone was flat.
Shirou did not answer, but his silence was enough.
Akame lowered her head.
"It's not wrong to save others, but what I had always wanted was to save everyone," Shirou admitted after a moment. The sun was shining down from over him, but he didn't seem the least bit phased by the heat. "I forcibly learned something at the end though by a woman who was too prideful to speak honestly."
Shirou thought back of Rin Tohsaka in his final days in his past life. The words that she had said to him were then repeated from out of his mouth. "If a single idiot can't carry the weight of saving everyone on his own, then what if that load was shared by one, or two, or more?"
It was only after Rin had spoken that he finally realized that she had been looking at him with an expression that said 'why hadn't you asked me or the others for help?'
Indeed.
What he could do on his own was limited, but how many people could have had been saved if he had taken another path? It was this question that caused him to change his approach in saving others in his new life.
Fighting and killing.
There were never any conflicts as simple as black and white. The more deaths, the more vicious the cycle becomes. Therefore, what if there didn't have to be deaths besides the necessary ones?
Shirou turned towards Akame and the two shared direct eye-contact. "It's not that I don't wish to make a difference, but because I already am," he said.
To protect those that were close to him, and one day extend his help out for everyone else in need, he first had to create a place without lies, deceit, and murder.
That was basis of the town of Calla; a dream his father in the new world had wanted to make real.
Akame digested what she'd just heard before looking off towards the distant town and its people smiling along the streets. It didn't matter what kind of person one was before entering Calla, they would all be treated the same.
There was no need to fight for a world of peace if it was already right here.
What mattered was protecting it until such a day it would grow and spreads out through the world.
It would be a different kind of revolution than the one planned by the Revolutionary Army. There was no guarantee that the leaders of the Revolutionary Army would not grow corrupt themselves. With Shirou and the town of Calla though, Akame was certain.
Her fingers curled up into her palms at the sudden revelation, the way she viewed the current conflict in the Empire shifting ever so slightly.
"There," Shirou dragged Akame's attention back to him as he rested over the shovel's handle.
The channel he'd dug all the way from the lake had now reached the empty plains of the battle against the people of Hageshi. Shirou's work was just about done, and he finished soon after he connected the path he dug up to the lake.
Water seeped into the dug-up channels and irrigated the once dry land, shifting the soil into a darker shade as deep crevices quickly filled to the brim. He'd call the rest of the townsfolk later to begin planting seeds for harvest.
"Akame," Shirou called.
She turned towards him. He was holding a spare shovel out to her while motioning towards all the other channels that still needed to be dug.
"Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to help?" He grinned.
She looked at the shovel in Shirou's hand, and then towards the townsfolk who had formed a crowd to watch the forming waterway.
It was tranquil.
There was no death, no conspiracies, no burden weighing down on her.
It was almost as if there was nothing for her to think about other than living her life.
Wasn't that the kind of future that she'd always been fighting for?
She had been having doubts since resolving herself to stay within the town of Calla, but, but…
Gradually, she reached out her hand, and took the offered shovel, watching as Shirou nodded at her.
Perhaps those doubts would one day go away on their own.
The sound of two shovels digging through rock echoed for the rest of the afternoon.
Shirou knew from experience that trouble was something that came from the unexpected, but he wasn't counting on it occurring so soon.
Standing at the front of the wall of large swords that he'd created to defend against the people of Hageshi, he was staring at Selka and the other Hunters who could not meet his gaze.
Selka was fidgeting, her hands clasped together while she awkwardly shifted her weight from one foot to the other.
She had left on a hunt with her fellow Hunters in the morning and somehow returned not with captured prey, but with hundreds of other people. Some were dressed similarly to Selka while others wore varying attires that resembled a mix of western and eastern customs.
"I-I can explain," Selka stuttered at his approach, her head lowered.
She tried to form a reasonable explanation, but the moment she turned up to face him, and then looked at the sheer number of people that she had brought, her determination began to waver.
"I-It's like this," Selka began talking from the beginning.
She and the Hunters had just gone on a regular hunt when they had encountered refugees forced out of their homes due to the Civil Wars occurring between the nations of Wakoku. Selka had not been able to refuse them a safe place to stay simply because she was familiar with all of them.
In the same way that the people of Heiwa had been attacked and forced to flee, Heiwa's neighboring nations were subjected to the same fate.
Of the hundreds of people that Selka and the Hunters had brought, many of them were close friends from other nations.
"S-Sorry, I know I should have had asked first, but I couldn't get them to stop following," Selka looked particularly guilty. She knew that the people of Heiwa already owed a great favour to Shirou, and now she was only bringing him more trouble.
The shame of her actions caused Selka's cheeks to flush in embarrassment while the other Hunters could only cough into their hands at their inability to say 'No' to friends.
I-I've brought dishonour to the family.
K-Kill me! Kill me now!
Selka's eyes kept shifting from Shirou to the ground, while inwardly berating herself, but contrary to her expectations, Shirou placed a hand on her shoulder.
"Good work,"
It was like she'd been visibly struck, her heart thundering violently within her chest as a warm expression was directed towards her. Her lips quivered ever so slightly, swirls forming in her eyes. Red was gradually climbing up her neck until it covered the entirety of her face in a crimson sheen. It felt like her face was burning. I-I can't! I-It's too much, t-too close!
"…ugh, agh," she couldn't get any proper words out and could only watch stiffly as Shirou let go of her shoulder to address the crowd.
The other Hunters around Selka watched Selka's reaction knowingly and inwardly cheered her on to take her future with her own hands. One of the Senior Hunters even went up to Selka and placed the claw of the fiercest hunted animal in her palms before patting her on the head.
"Work hard, daughter of chief Freesia," Selka's senior spoke reassuringly. "I sense strong babies in your future."
"S-Shut up!" Selka knocked her senior hunter over the head and darted away to find a hole to bury herself within in her fluster. If embarrassment was lethal, she'd have had died several times over already.
She was just thankful that Shirou was no longer paying as much attention to her at the moment otherwise if he'd heard what her senior hunter had said she might as well find herself a noose and end her misery.
The only one who raised a brow at Selka's actions was Akame who didn't quite understand what was going on with Selka in the first place.
Akame shrugged. It wasn't any of her business. What mattered was seeing how Shirou wanted to handle the new wave of migrants.
"You're all welcome to stay here."
As she had expected. Shirou went and didn't consider anything before agreeing to help others in need.
The way her lips quirked upwards was enough to reveal her amusement and solidify her belief in Shirou's character. When the others from Night Raid eventually came looking for her, they too should be able to see just what kind of person Shirou was. Maybe then she could avoid fighting against her former colleagues. She simply did not have the will to raise her sword against them.
Moving on though, it was in her job as a body guard to inform Shirou what he was getting himself into. Still, she had to wait for a better opportunity.
Right now, Shirou was currently getting mobbed by hundreds of thankful people who bowed to him in respect.
"For the time being, there's not enough housing within the town to accommodate all of you, so I'm going to have to ask you all to stay in the area just next to the town," Shirou explained slowly after extricating himself from the crowd. "I'll push for the construction of more houses as soon as possible, so please feel free to make yourselves at home. There should still be plenty of food to go around, moreover, we have a surplus of wood to use for building at the moment."
The wood came from all of the trees that were harvested from the battle against Hageshi.
After a busy two hours, Shirou finally managed to sort everything out, leaving the matter of organizing the new arrivals to Selka and the Hunters who were more familiar with everyone.
Finally left alone, Shirou stood atop the wall surrounding the town of Calla while deep in thought.
It was at this moment that Akame finally decided to speak.
"I'm not against taking in more people, but you do know what you're getting yourself into, right? Most of these people are from Wakoku, but I spotted a few from some of the surrounding villages in the area." Akame furrowed her brow before pointing outward with her sword in three different directions. "They came from there, there, and there."
Shirou's gaze followed wherever Akame directed, but he still didn't really react. "Does it matter?" He asked.
"You mean you don't know?" Akame seemed incredulous. "The land that the town of Calla is built on is actually part of a domain of a High Noble of the Empire. The villages I pointed out are from high-tax paying locations. Some of the refuges not of Wakoku may very well be fleeing tax payers, not that they can be blamed. The taxes are simply too high for most impoverished villages to pay off."
"Then all the more reason to shelter them. I thought I told you before, it's never wrong to help others."
Akame's brows twitched. She instinctively wished to call Shirou a fool, but what did that make her for choosing to side with such a fool?
An idiot, she decided, but nonetheless, the smile on her face revealed her true thoughts before she shook her head and schooled her features.
"The current Empire is unreasonable," she said ominously. "It simply doesn't matter if people already live in a certain plot of land. How land is distributed in the Empire is by circling an area on the map and laying claim to everything within the circle. Calla's land falls within the jurisdiction of a Noble named Berkin Sanders, and the man's reputation is far from good. He may not have had paid attention to Calla before because it was relatively isolated, but now that we've taken in so many people, he's bound to turn his attention us."
Calla's growth would surely attract the attention of the ruling land owner. Hell, it was already a miracle that Calla wasn't paid a visit to by Berkin Sanders yet despite how glaring the wall of steel Shirou had made was.
"Are you still willing to take the risk?" Akame was just asking to verify, but there really was no need.
Shirou's answer was straight forward.
"Calla is not like the Empire nor Wakoku," he said. "It will be its own kind of place, and all I have to do as its current leader, is defend it from harm. As I said before, if they come, then let them come."
He placed a hand behind his head and scratched his nose.
Akame felt like he wasn't taking the situation seriously enough. "Are you truly so confident?" She asked.
Yes. In fact, he actually was due to the sheer amount of Danger Beasts he now had in his possession. After all, Danger Beasts meant magical power, and magical power meant access to his personal armoury.
"The Empire and Revolutionary Army both have their own secrets and aces," he turned his gaze to stare in the direction of the distant capital of the Empire. "Whose to say that I don't have my own?"
For a moment, interface patterns flashed across his body, dying him in a pale blue light.
What Akame had just seen clearly wasn't a Teigu and she knew it, which only meant one thing.
The suspicion she'd been harbouring about Shirou must have had been true.
Magic.
A lost art of the world re-emerged once more in the hands of a man who she'd later realize could only have had been called a hero.
Magic to rend the earth asunder, the clouds parting at a moment's behest.
Walking natural disasters.
Super Class Danger Beasts in the guise of human form.
"W-Wizard," she muttered under her breath.
They were real.
Her shock only continued.
Shirou did not deny the title for it was the closest thing to the actual truth. Rather, he crossed his arms and turned his back in order to stare in the distance. "You wanted and fought for a world of peace," he spoke slowly, extending a hand outward and seeming to grab onto something illusory.
"One day, let me show it to you."
It was a promise that she would remember for a life time. The event that started it all.
A Wizard, an Assassin, a Town, and a beginning.
Kill the lies.
Kill the corruption.
Kill the deceit.
One final contract. One Final Target.
Fate: Kill
The Empire was not a place for the innocent. It was a den of debauchery, murder, filth, and scum that only the worst of people could prosper and thrive within. This was to say, that most Nobles currently in power were such people. Not like it mattered to them in any way.
Berkin Sanders was not a man who cared about what others thought of him to begin with. He'd participated in the Empire's Civil War and had accumulated merit points to elevate himself to his current position using the bodies of his colleagues as stepping stones.
He was a sly bastard of an individual. He had not actively fought in the Civil War but had instead lied in wait to strike at his own comrades, killing them and plundering their kills to further his own status.
Berkin didn't care in the slightest. He got fame, wealth, and everything that he had ever wanted. So, what if he trampled on others to get to where he was in life? Wasn't it always about survival of the fittest or pursuing one's own happiness?
Yes, he truly was a sick bastard, but it didn't change the fact that he was a person in a high position of power in the Empire.
This was the whole reason he was being used.
The hired 'mercenary' that travelled on a horse besides Berkin's personal carriage retched at the thought of even being associated with the man, but Berkin's still had his uses before she would kill him.
News had been spreading along recently about a mega settlement that all the smaller villages in the area were flocking towards. They called the settlement Calla, a place with abundant food and enough land to house several thousands of residents.
More than anything, it was the last place that the mercenary's colleague was known to have had entered.
The mercenary released a breath and eased the grip she had on the reigns of her horse, prompting it to stop as a sudden gust of wind pushed back her hood. A head of long blond hair was revealed along with a mature face with high-cheek bones and a sleek jawline. The rest of her body and attire was kept hidden beneath a cloak to maintain secrecy.
Her name was Leone, another member of the Revolutionary Army's Assassination Faction, Night Raid.
She was one of Night Raid's oldest members and excelled at gathering information and possessing quick and practical judgement.
She was sent by Najenda to verify Akame's status after nearly two months without any sort of contact whatsoever.
Leone could have had gone and investigated on her own, but she took the opportunity to alert Berkin Sanders of the rumours surrounding Calla to prompt the man into action. Berkin's greed would drive the man to personally visit Calla in order to enforce his tax rates on a town within the jurisdiction of his land.
It was the perfect opportunity for Leone to also decide the validity of Berkin's as a target for Night Raid. The man had been allegedly accused by a citizen of the Empire to have stolen, raped, then sold away the wives of many newly weds in the capital for money and pleasure.
As it would turn out, Leone's impression of Berkin was far from pleasant.
The validity of the citizen's allegation appeared to be all but true at this point.
Night Raid would definitely take the contract against Berkin, but for now, Leone was more focused on the matter at hand.
Right before her eyes, what appeared to be an imposing military wall came in view. It was humongous, scaling over thirty-feet high and blocking all sights of the town of Calla within.
T-This was supposed to be a town?
Leone could hardly believe it. Her neck inclined upwards as she tried to see the very top of the wall and assess if it was possible for her to climb it.
Different from Leone, Berkin was at a loss.
"Y-You, mercenary, go and investigate!"
Berkin sounded anxious, he couldn't be blamed though. If those really were military walls, then there would surely be armed sentries nearby. Berkin had only been expecting to flaunt his power before a defenceless little town and not a place that was heavily fortified. He simply did not bring enough guards to do such a thing. All he had with him currently was a small platoon of infantry that was no more than a couple dozen individuals including Leone.
"Hurry and go, then report back to me," Berkin ordered Leone, simultaneously gesturing for his carriage to turn around to reach a safer distance away.
Coward.
Leone scoffed at Berkin's actions, but said nothing. It was clear that whether she went or not, Berkin's would be heading back to his castle to prepare a larger force to accompany him.
She was just being sent out as useful scout. In fact, Berkin was probably hoping that she'd get herself killed so that he wouldn't have to pay her.
Still, she was fine with the arrangement.
There were some things that she could only do while alone.
She gave Berkin a nod and promptly left in the direction of the high steel wall with a hint of weariness.
Dismounting from her horse, she decided to proceed further ahead on foot.
Horses could hardly muffle their steps, but she was a trained assassin. No matter how fast she moved, there was not a sound or a trace left of her footprints. She was a professional. By distributing the weight of her body not just on the soles of her feet, but onto her toes as well, she mitigated the noise of her running.
A forest surrounded the entire area around the wall, and Leone became quickly aware that she wasn't alone while she ran forward.
She dug her heels into the ground and immediately stopped to hide.
Her ears were perked up and her pupils were darting from left to right before zoning in on the direction that she could hear fighting coming from.
Fighting was common for animals within a forest, but the sounds that she was hearing were not those made by beasts, but by prey and hunter.
She sucked in a breath, and it was suddenly as if her entire presence disappeared, melding in with nature as if accustomed to the habits of a wild predator.
It didn't take long before she stalked her way to see just what was happening and the first thing to enter her sights was the form of a Danger Beast in its death throws.
Her expression grew somber, her breath hitching. It wasn't the sight of the Danger Beast dying that shocked her so greatly, no, instead it was because of the Danger Beast's attackers.
They all wore attire that consisted only of thick waist cloths aside from the one woman in the group who had leather bindings around her chest. The group was interesting to look at as a whole, but what made the whole situation hard for Leone to swallow were the weapons that each Hunter in front of her were using.
Hard as it was for her to believe, t-they all appeared to be Tiegu.
One spurted out columns of flame, while another created spouts of pressurized water. Each and every single weapon that the Hunters used had a different ability.
The only woman in the group used a combination of daggers and a short bow latched onto her waist that made quick work of the Danger Beast as the weapons easily penetrated through its armoured hide.
Leone dared not make a noise while watching the Hunters before her tie up the Danger Beast's carcass and haul it towards the direction of the large walls. To make the situation worse, Leone carefully noted that the people in front of her were abnormal monsters. Just one of them had the power to lift the dead Danger Beast with one arm, even the woman in the group seemed to have no trouble performing the task.
High physical capability coupled with the fact that each Hunter that Leone had seen possessed a Teigu, and that was basically an elite force that not even the Empire could underestimate.
What didn't make sense to Leone was that such a force would be part of a random town that she'd hardly heard of before.
S-Such a town actually existed in the middle of nowhere?
In that case, the reports that Akame had been sent with had probably been rendered useless.
Akame infiltrated a place like this?
It had already passed almost two months.
T-Then didn't that mean-!
The thought caused Leone to grimace with both grief and regret. Admittedly, even she would have trouble against such a force of enemies if caught, let alone just Akame.
No NO. She's not dead. I refuse to believe it. Maybe she's just been forced into hiding.
Leone pulled the hood of her cloak further over her head while staring at the ominous walls in the distance. Even in the thick of the underbrush, the high walls produced a looming shadow that stretched on for miles.
Her intuition suddenly sent chills down her back as Leone scrutinized the walls further.
No, those weren't walls, the inside of her mouth dried. They almost looked like massive swords if anything else.
A warning of some kind.
A flock of crows flew into the air, their caws echoing in her ears.
Leone gritted her teeth and pressed onward, her worry finally evident on her face.
Akame, what happened to you?