After glancing at the delighted Remus, and then at the death-row prisoner who had been stabbed into a sieve, blood spraying out from everywhere, Bill completely failed to suppress the rage in his heart.
"Good my ass! I told you it had to be a one-hit kill! That means killing the target as fast as possible, not torturing them!"
Stabbing one person more than forty times could only be called a lynching.
For that prisoner to end up as practice material for an idiot like this really was the worst luck imaginable.
"S-sorry…" Remus hugged her head with both hands and squeezed her eyes shut.
She was obviously terrified of Bill.
"As punishment for Remus failing to achieve a one-hit kill, the seven of you will clean this entire place up together!"
"Huh?"
'Clean it up?'
'This place?'
Everyone's expressions changed.
What kind of joke was this? Forget cleaning it up—even just taking one more look at the horribly mangled corpses of the people they themselves had just killed was enough to make their stomachs convulse.
Of the seven, Kurome, Gin, and another boy named Natala were the only three who had managed clean kills.
Kurome, whose enhancement had taken the best effect, had arm strength on par with Natala, and both of them had chopped off their targets' heads in a single blow.
Gin's weapon was a large saber, and with the help of the weapon's weight, she had also split her target's head open in one strike.
The others had all chosen to attack vital points on the torso.
Three severed heads lay on the ground with their eyes still wide open, as if staring at the very people who had killed them.
It gave the boys and girls an intensely unpleasant feeling.
On the surface, the "punishment" looked like punishment, but Noah felt this was probably part of the lesson as well.
By using that excuse, they were being made to accumulate experience cleaning up scenes like this, while at the same time being pushed to grow more accustomed to killing their own kind.
Noah stood outside the field and watched the members of Class A vomit while trying to clean up, making almost no progress.
It was almost like watching an interesting experiment.
Looking at the awful expressions on their faces as they saw the floor they had just cleaned get splattered all over again by their own vomit, Noah figured that from now on, every time they killed someone, today's events would probably come back to them.
...
That afternoon, Noah continued studying all kinds of scientific theory related to this world.
Though it was called scientific theory, most of the knowledge and terminology was still tied to the keyword alchemy, all of it being conclusions accumulated by previous generations.
The term science had only become popular in the last hundred years or so, and the field still had not developed enough to produce anything so refined as formal textbooks.
Even Bill himself had no real gift for teaching.
A lot of the time, his explanations made Noah feel like he was wandering through nonsense.
But Noah could tell that Bill had ambitions of his own.
While working for the Empire, he also needed his current status and position to receive the Empire's backing.
Otherwise, how could he hope to push science to even greater heights?
Whenever Bill got abnormally excited talking about such things, Noah felt that he was like this world's version of Johann Conrad Dippel.
That name might sound unfamiliar to many people.
But if one mentioned the character created based on him, most people would be startled.
Frankenstein.
That work was also known as The Modern Prometheus, or the story of an artificial human monster.
It told of a biologist named Victor Frankenstein who stitched together corpses through cruel experiments and created a terrifying man-made creature.
In truth, Johann Conrad Dippel had been a philosopher and alchemist.
In his homeland, there were all sorts of rumors about him attempting to transfer human souls and using distilled human bones, blood, and the bodily fluids of other animals to produce an elixir of immortality.
Bill's obsession with modifying the human body made him highly similar to that legendary evil alchemist.
But Bill had not devoted everything to human modification from the very start.
It was just that the existence of Imperial Arms had shattered his earlier dream ahead of time.
As his studies deepened, Noah grew more and more curious about these miraculous creations called Imperial Arms.
If it were Hephaestus, she would probably call such weapons heresy.
But Noah's view differed somewhat from that goddess's.
At this moment, he was fascinated by Imperial Arms!
Almost impatiently so.
So he asked, "Will we ever get the chance to come into contact with Imperial Arms?"
Hearing that question, Bill paused, then nodded.
"Of course. Imperial Arms are treasures of our Empire to begin with. You can't just touch them whenever you want, but the chances of coming into contact with Imperial Arms—or rather, Imperial Arms users—are still far greater here than for ordinary people."
Imperial Arms users.
In other words, special individuals chosen by Imperial Arms and able to wield them.
Considering the power of Imperial Arms, Imperial Arms users were probably extremely valuable combat forces to the Empire.
"Do you know General Budo?" Bill asked while fiddling with a test tube in his hand.
If this had been the Noah from earlier, he probably would have looked blank and said no.
But ever since taking up his post in the Scientific Corps, he had made sure to remember the files of some of the Empire's important figures.
Budo was one of them.
"The Empire's strongest general, General Budo? Of course I've heard of him."
"Heh, his martial skill is indeed extraordinary. But the power of his Imperial Arm is just as important in making him the strongest general."
So the general was an Imperial Arms user too.
"General Budo's Imperial Arm is called Adramelech, the Imperial Arm of Thunder, which can control lightning. That Imperial Arm itself is already terrifying enough, and when combined with Budo's own strength, which lets him fully wield it, his power is simply unfathomable."
'A power that controlled lightning?'
'That had to be the power of the Super Danger Beast used as the material for Adramelech.'
Just imagining a Super Danger Beast that could control lightning was enough to make one understand how terrifying it must have been.
And after being turned into an Imperial Arm, its abilities would normally be strengthened further.
With that power in his grasp, calling General Budo the incarnate god of thunder on the battlefield would not be an exaggeration.
Although Weaver could also manipulate lightning, the scale was nowhere near the level of influencing the weather.
Adramelech, on the other hand, could freely create and command lightning strikes themselves, which made Noah all the more eager to see it in person.
In any case, so long as he produced some results in the Scientific Corps, that day probably would not be too far away.
The power of science was hardly limited to this much.
He would put the might of the tech tree to use and make his own impact on the Empire.
...
Several months later.
Deep in a certain mountain range, a girl who resembled Kurome by eighty percent was hiding in the grass, holding her breath and nervously staring at the "target" passing before her.
At her waist hung a sheathed blade.
Her hand rested on the hilt, as if she could draw it at any moment.
A Danger Beast was picking fruit up off the ground not far away from her.
It was a huge monkey.
But not merely huge. Its appearance differed quite a bit from an ordinary monkey, and its behavior was very close to that of a human.
Clearly, this was a Danger Beast, one at least of Class Four, perhaps even Class Three.
Though it was standing there calmly and looked harmless enough, in reality it was a terrifying monster capable of wiping out an entire village on its own.
Suddenly, its ears twitched.
The sound of the girl's body brushing against leaves had reached it.
The noise was faint, but not enough to escape it.
The giant monkey bared its sharp teeth in a grin, its gaze locking onto the patch of grass where the girl was hiding.
Danger Beast: Longxi Monkey.
The girl tightened her grip on her hilt. There wasn't a shred of fear in her dark eyes.
Instead, she analyzed every muscle of the Longxi Monkey's body, like a butcher deciding where to make the first cut on a slab of meat.
"I'm going to kill this thing by myself," she muttered.
She burst from the brush.
Seeing the tiny human actually dare to rush it, the Longxi Monkey roared, clenched its massive fist, and smashed it down.
Bang!
The terrifying strike blasted a huge crater into the soil, sending rock fragments flying like shrapnel.
But it missed.
As the monkey stared in confusion at the empty crater, the girl's nimble body slipped past its flank.
With astonishing speed, she circled right behind it.
Bending her knees, she used her explosive power to launch herself high into the air.
In a flash, her blade was drawn, the razor edge aimed dead at the back of the beast's neck.
She drove her entire body weight behind the strike, slamming into the monster and burying the steel deep into its cervical spine.
With a grisly, wet tear of flesh and bone, she severed its spinal cord.
Stepping off the monkey's broad shoulder, the girl flipped backward in midair, yanking the blade free in the same fluid motion.
Landing softly in the dirt, she flicked the hot blood off the steel, then slowly sheathed it.
Thud.
The Longxi Monkey collapsed and die.
The girl looked extremely pleased with her handiwork. She turned around and called out to a boy sitting on a nearby boulder.
"Boss, how was that? I took it down."
The boy had short golden hair and wore a crisp uniform resembling a knight order's attire.
He sat completely indifferent, casually flipping the page of the book in his hands.
Even though a brutal fight between human and beast had just played out ten feet away, he hadn't wavered in the slightest.
He gave off the unmovable presence of a mountain.
Hearing the girl's voice, he just sighed, acting as though the result was entirely expected.
"Hmph. Isn't this level of work only normal, you small fry?"
Even when the person she called 'Boss' dismissed her kill as small-fry work, the girl didn't look upset at all.
She was already used to his attitude.
A rustle in the trees announced the arrival of several others. They walked into the clearing, waving at the two of them.
"Hey, Akame, Nahashu! You two finished over here?"
Seeing her squadmates arrive, Akame waved back. "Just wrapped it up."
Snap.
The cool-faced boy, Nahashu, closed his book and stood up.
He gathered the squad together and announced, "Well done, small fry. The mission Father ordered us to carry out is now complete. We can head back."
"Yeah!!" The seven boys and girls cheered happily, sharing in each other's victory.
Together, they hiked back to a hidden cabin nestled deep within the mountains.
As warm smoke rose from the stone chimney, dish after dish of hot food was placed on the long wooden table.
The seven kids dug in heartily, exhausted from the hunt.
Seated at the head of the table was a dashing, imposing man. He had long, slightly disheveled white hair.
Though his face were handsome, the killing intent resting between his brows was impossible to conceal.
Any veteran fighter would know at a glance that this man was incredibly dangerous.
This was Gozuki, the leader of the Empire's newly formed elite assassination squad.
At the same time, he acted as the strict "father" of this twisted little family.
The seven orphans all addressed him as such.
"Did you go to the village again today?" Gozuki asked his "children" while casually reading a newspaper.
The seven assassins reported their patrol situations one by one.
As he listened, Gozuki multitasked.
He broke down the newspaper's seemingly useless headlines and recombined the letters to decipher a coded message sent by the Empire.
It was one of the covert methods he and Bill used to exchange intelligence.
This mountain base had been carefully established by the Empire to cultivate the strongest assassins in secret.
Nearby, there was only one small settlement. Longxi Village.
On the surface, it was just a remote, quiet mountain village, cut off from the rest of the outside world.
But the truth was, everyone here was an Imperial spy.
Whether elderly or young, every single person was a specially trained operative.
Their purpose was to help the elite squad complete their training and become qualified personnel.
The decision to make Longxi monkeys the enemy was the same.
Longxi monkeys were Danger Beasts highly similar to humans.
Not only were their bodies close in size, even the locations of their vital points were exactly the same.
'Looks like old man Bill dug up a pretty good seedling over there.'
Gozuki looked at the intelligence mentioning the Science Division's rising star, who had "recently been shining brilliantly."
'The adopted son of the Layden family. His name was Noah, wasn't it? What an incredible monster. To think he actually developed something this interesting.'
"Hey, you lot. Open the boxes on the table."
"Eh?"
"What is it? What is it?"
"Are they gifts?"
The instant Akame heard the word "gift," she immediately connected it with "food."
In her mind, gift equaled food.
Or rather, anything that was not food could not be considered a gift.
She hurriedly opened the box.
When Akame saw the pair of pitch-black rings inside, her brows furrowed, and she revealed an expression as though she had fallen from heaven.
'It's not food…'
As the leader of the group, and also the boss among the children, Nahashu asked, "Father, may I ask what these are?"
Holding the instruction manual he had deciphered from the report, Gozuki was honestly just as confused, but he still began explaining.
"Mm. It says this is new equipment developed by the Science Division. Apparently, it can increase the wearer's load and thereby produce a training effect."
'Seriously?'
Gozuki looked in astonishment at the plates placed on the table and the rings quietly lying inside them.
If what was written here was true, then this effect might even rival a Shingu.
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