Ch 46: Akame of the murasame

Currently the group was leaving the Guryen Volcano.

They just got space magic and also got the proof of the Dungeon conquest.

Space magic could be used in many ways, but the main one is the portal. A portal that shortens distances and could be very useful. As usual Hajime and Shia had no aptitude with this magic, but Hajime could make artifacts with it.

The Dungeon Conquest Proof was a black and red ring, the ring could be used to open a shortcut that would make it easier to exit the Guryen Dungeon and in addition would be needed to open the Haltina Sea of Trees Dungeon.

They used the proof of conquest and a door opened in the ceiling. Tio then turned into a dragon once again and everyone rode on it. The group flew out of the Volcano and out of the sandstorms that surrounded it.

"Hey Tio, can land now. We'll drive from now on."

"Hm? All right."

Hajime asked Tio to land. This was because he didn't want to draw attention with too many people knowing that Tio was a Ryujin(Dragon Man). They landed and got into the vehicle. Rimuru was driving, Chloe and Sakura were together with him in the front seat and the others were in the back seat.

"Tio-san, I have something to ask."

"Yes? What is it Shia?"

"Why did you turn into a dragon during the battle? There was no need for that, and now the demons know that Ryujin still exist. Can't your clan get in trouble because of that?"

"Hmmm, about that... I may have lost control when I thought that master had died and didn't even think straight. It was my mistake..."

The others were also curious about Shia's question and still didn't understand when Tio answered. Then Yue made a comment

"That's normal if it's with someone you love."

""Uh!?""

Everyone was surprised by Yue indicating that Tio loved Hajime. Everyone thought she was just a pervert. Hajime gave her a questioning look and asked

"Is that true Tio?"

"Yes, I love Goushin-sama."

""....""

Everyone was silent for a while, they were surprised at Tio revealing this so casually. Hajime broke the silence and spoke

"Well, I'm not in love with you, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop you from going with us. You are still our companion."

"Yes, Tio-san is our mate."

"Mhm, let's not leave her."

"Right."

"Yes, that's right."

Everyone agreed, and Tio looked happy. She approached Hajime who was being hugged by Yue and asked

"Goushin-sama... Can I come closer?"

Normally Hajime would have thrown her away, but he nodded. Tio hugged Hajime's arm and made a happy expression. She looked so docile that it would make anyone think "where did the pervert go?"

Yue was also hugging Hajime, while Chloe and Sakura were hugging Rimuru, and Shia was a little jealous that she was the only one not hugging someone.

After a while of traveling Rimuru spoke...

"Chloe, Sakura, I... have something to talk to you..."

"Hm?"

"What is it Rimuru-san?"

"It's just that..."

Rimuru told them something he wanted to do when they arrived in Ancadi. The two had no opposition and Rimuru was happy.

"Thank you, I swear I will continue to give you both the same attention."

"We already knew that."

"Ehehe, I had no doubt."

The three looked happy and the group continued their journey.

●●●

In the duchy of Ancadi.

Two days had passed since Kaori, Ciel, and Myu stayed behind and the rest of the group went to master the Great Dungeon.

Kaori and Ciel spent the last few days stabilizing the sick while they waited for the group to return. The two were resting and regaining magical power when Kaori asked...

"Ciel-san, what is that?"

"Hm?"

Ciel was eating a popsicle and was confused by Kaori's question. She looked at where Kaori pointed and understood. Kaori was pointing to the blue plush on Ciel's shoulder.

"That? It's a way to kill the master's nostalgia. He used to wear this form back in the day and whenever I get lonely I hug it."

Ciel hugged the plush. The plush had the appearance of a blue Slime with two straight eyes. Kaori had heard the story about Rimuru being a demon lord so she understood why the plush.

Ciel was very attached to Rimuru and there was no way she wanted to be away from him, but Rimuru asked her to stay here and she wasn't going to refuse. That's why she made the plush so she wouldn't feel lonely.

"Ciel-san, I understand...I miss Hajime-kun too."

Kaori looked up at the sky as she remembered her beloved. At this moment...

"Miss Kaori! Miss Ciel!"

A guard came from across the street and called out to them.

"I got a warning from the Count. He said, 'They have arrived'."

""!!!""

"Wow they sure are really fast"the guard said to him self

Hearing the guard's words Kaori and Ciel went as fast as they could to the entrance of the city.

When they arrived they saw Count Randzi talking to Hajime. Behind Hajime were, Rimuru, Chloe, Sakura, Yue and Tio.

Hajime was mentally tired after the meeting and was not at all focused on dangers around him. Hajime had 'detect presence' and was in a peaceful city that had no hostility to him, so he didn't worry about attacks.

Luckily for him Hajime had great reflexes because of the environment and hellish training he went through.... If he hadn't, he could have been dead in two seconds.

*TCHIN*

"Kh!?"

Hajime saw a katana heading towards his back at extreme speed. By sheer reflex Hajime pulled his weapons and managed to fend off the attack. He was shocked by the speed of the katana and when he looked at the attacker he saw a person of medium height wearing a black cloak that covered his face.

"Well, I guess I'm prone to receiving surprise attacks these days."

Hajime made a wry comment, but he was really wary of the person who tried to assassinate him. This person had a speed that Hajime could hardly keep up with. In fact Hajime had to activate 'Limit break' to be able to pull his weapons before he was hit.

His 'detect presence' didn't hate this person and it scared him a bit. Also something he found strange was that the attacker seemed to want to make a shallow cut on him, so probably his blade was poisoned.

The cloaked person seemed disappointed that his surprise attack didn't work, the person then said

"I am Akame. I was sent to kill you."

Akame took off her hood and drew her katana once again. She had been sent to kill Hajime and wanted to chat so she said just that.

"....."

Neither of them moved a muscle. The two were staring at each other as the sand brought by the winds hit their clothes.

Hajime didn't move because he really didn't know what to do. Hajime couldn't see himself beating this girl in front of him no matter how hard he tried.

Akame didn't move because she thought Hajime must have something up his sleeve. She didn't think that was Hajime's limit.

Hajime realized that if he didn't attack the 'Limit break' time would run out and drew Donner and Schlag. At the same time Akame drew her katana and went at him.

TCHIN TCHIN TCHIN

DOPAN DOPAN DOPAN DOPAN

"Shit..."

Hajime let out a disgruntled groan. Akame was giving safe attacks, but even those attacks Hajime had trouble dodging. They exchanged several blows and...

"Ugh..."

After a few more blows Akame increased her speed and gave Hajime's arm a slash. Hajime realized that the sword was poisoned, but he didn't worry about it as Hajime had high resistance to poisons. However...

"What the..."

Hajime was surprised as his veins slowly started to turn black and his arm started to hurt. The poison was acting up.

"It will be over soon. I'm sorry. I have nothing against you, but I had to do this..."

Akame said and turned to leave. Her poison was deadly and Hajime would soon die, or so she thought...

DOPAN DOPAN

"Hugh!?"

Akame was taken by surprise by two shots that came from Hajime. She managed to dodge and looked at Hajime in surprise. Hajime was not showing any of the symptoms of the poison. His veins were not black, he was moving normally, and he was not dying.

"How..."

Akame was surprised and took a closer look. She saw an empty vial with no lid next to Hajime. She realized that Hajime must have some antidote for his poison and that surprised her even more.

Hajime had used his ambrosia. Before the poison killed him Hajime took a vial from the treasure chest and drank.

"You have a pretty interesting poison in there, but that won't be enough to defeat me."

Hajime said and set out to attack. Akame also continued the fight.

●●●

Hajime and Akame had been fighting for 3 minutes. In this time Hajime had to use two more bottles of ambrosia and was unable to hit any attacks on Akame.

Then a problem arose. Hajime's time ran out, his 'limit break' which was the only thing that enabled him to connect with Akame was now unusable. He fell to the ground unable to move and Akame came forward to deliver the final blow. She attacked with her red katana.

TCHIN

Sparks jumped in the air. Akame's attack was stopped by another sword. Akame saw a girl with black hair, blue eyes and white clothes between her and Hajime.

"Hugh... Chloe?"

As Hajime said it was Chloe.

Chloe had forgotten her cloak in the Count's dining room and had gone to get it. That's when she heard gunshots and went towards them. She then saw Hajime lying on the ground about to be killed and stopped him.

Chloe also realized that this girl with the red katana was powerful. That's because Chloe tried to use her 'math' skill on Akame, but it didn't work.

This skill analyzed the enemies skills. However this skill did not work on Akame.

This was a big problem as Chloe's ability worked on both people stronger and weaker than her. The only people who can block this ability are those who have superior abilities like Rimuru who has 'Void God Azatoth'.

In other words, Akame has a superior ability. The only thing that Chloe found strange was that Akame didn't seem to be as strong as Rimuru or Guy who had this kind of ability. If she was as much pain and such she would have killed Hajime quickly.

Chloe then prepared herself for combat.

Akame was in trouble.

Akame was ordered to kill one person. She could choose between three people and kill the one she wanted. The names of the individuals were Chloe, Hajime and Sakura.

Akame wanted a lot of information so she was told why these were her targets.

His contractors, the 'Gods' wanted these people dead to shake up their enemy Rimuru. They didn't send Akame to kill Rimuru because they knew she wouldn't stand a chance. So they had Akame kill one of these three people who were very important to Rimuru.

Akame wasn't told why they wanted to shake this Rimuru, but she wasn't that interested either because she was just doing her job.

Akame then chased the targets through the shadows and analyzed each of them.

Sakura. She seemed to be the weakest of the three, but it would be highly difficult for Akame to attack her as Sakura was always close to Rimuru, of which Akame was warned to be careful.

Chloe seemed to be extremely powerful and Akame thought she would be harder to kill.

Hajime. The best choice. He was not as strong as Chloe and at various times was distant from Rimuru. So Akame followed Hajime through the shadows and when she saw him alone on the street of Ancadi she thought it would be the best opportunity for an attack.

However when now Chloe was in front of her ready to fight. Akame didn't want to kill more people than necessary to cure her curse so she didn't know whether to fight or run. Besides Akame didn't know Chloe's real strength.

"I'm going to have to fight" Akame thought. She had missed the surprise attack and it would be problematic to attack them from now on. So she pulled out her katana and prepared for battle.

Akame launched a vertical blow with her katana at Chloe.

That is the last thing Akame remembers from tonight.

●●●

Akame was slowly regaining consciousness.

"Rimuru, she's awake."

Akame heard a female voice and then heard footsteps. She felt that she was lying on a bed. Akame began to regain her memories of last night and remembered that she had lost the battle against the girl in white clothes.

Akame slowly opened her eyes.

"What the..."

She saw that she was in a room lying down and next to her bed was a blue haired boy sitting. He had a really beautiful face and Akame recognized him as the enemy of the gods.

And since Akame was working for the gods he was also their enemy.

"Huh!?"

Akame jumped out of bed and stood in combat stance. She didn't understand the situation she was in.

"Hey, wait! I'm not going to hurt you!"

Rimuru tried to calm her down, but Akame didn't seem to believe that he didn't want to cause her harm.

"Listen to me, please calm down. I just want to talk. I want to know why you attacked us and who you are."

Rimuru wanted to confirm her suspicion that it was the gods that sent her and also wanted to know more about the ability that Ciel analyzed of this girl, the "Goddess of rot Áclis" a superior ability.

"I know you can analyze memories. So why don't you do that instead of questioning me?"

Akame was wary as the gods did not provide much information precisely because of this ability.

"It's because I would have to kill you for that. That method damages the soul too much and I didn't want to do that."

"Why?"

"Huh?"

"Why don't you want to kill me?"

Akame tried to kill Rimuru's brother so she didn't understand why he wouldn't kill her. Rimuru found her question understandable and said

"It's because I was told that you were hesitating in battle. So I wanted to know your motivations before I took you as an enemy."

Chloe told Rimuru that Akame hesitated in battle against her. Akame was very defensive and made very bad attacks. It was as if she was conflicted.

"I..."

Akame was still hesitant to believe Rimuru. By his words Akame was alive because Rimuru didn't consider her an enemy, but she didn't understand how he could think that way.

"All right, I'll talk."

She asked nothing in return and told. Akame thought now that she should at least repay Rimuru's kindness by listening to her before killing her.

Akame then told Rimuru what he wanted to know. She told Rimuru about how she was hired by the gods to kill people close to him and also talked about her ability.

Akame's ability could wrap a poison in a sword, but that poison was not strong enough to kill someone. So Akame used his 'Murasame' sword which amplified the strength of the poison.

"Hmm, like Ciel-san said..."

Rimuru muttered softly. When Ciel analyzed Akame's abilities, she said that with her ability Akame could be as strong as Guy or Chloe so there was no way Chloe could have defeated Akame so easily.

Ciel's theory was that Akame came from a world that doesn't use much magic and so the magical concentration in the air of this world would be low. A world with low magical concentration makes it impossible for the users of abilities to control them properly, and this was probably the case with Akame.

Just for the record, the air of Rimuru's world had 100% magical concentration even before he was reincarnated as Slime. Much of this was because of the 'True Dragons' that lived there. As well as other beings that exuded a lot of magic like the Demon Lords.

The air of Tortus had a magic concentration of 50% so it wasn't the best world to train in either. The earth had a concentration of 4% and that was enough as Rimuru didn't know of anyone using magic there.

"Entao Akame-san, why did you accept the gods' proposal?"

Rimuru heard a little about Akame's background and didn't think she was the kind of person who would murder others for trivial things like money. She seemed to have a strong moral code.

"... ... Because of that."

Akame thought for a moment and took off his gloves. Akame's hands were releasing a strange energy. This energy seemed to have a purple coloration, but it was still transparent.

Akame was about to explain to Rimuru about his curse, but before he could...

"I see, you've lost control of your abilities, right? Maybe a curse or something..."

"...How do you know that?"

She asked incredulously. Rimuru smiled and explained...

"There's something in your soul. You probably can't vizualize Souls, but to me it's like a bad energy concentrated in your hands."

"..."

Akame didn't say anything for her words. She looked a little confused.

"Okay, let me take this off."

"Stop!"

Akame tried to stop Rimuru from touching his hand as it would kill him. Akame also doesn't know why she tried to deflect his hand, since if she killed Rimuru, the gods would surely heal his hands. However, Rimuru had not killed her and was still listening to her, so she didn't think it was fair to kill him in such a cowardly way.

But Akame was unable to deflect her hands in time.

"Hm? What is it?"

"...."

Rimuru didn't understand Akame's reaction. He thought she would like to get rid of the curse, but when Rimuru touched her hands and removed the curse Akame just stared at Rimuru's hands. Her eyes were wide open and her mouth was hanging open.

Akame was amazed that everyone who touched her hands died within seconds, but not only was Rimuru not dead, he had also removed his curse. Before she knew it tears began to flow from her eyes.

Rimuru tried to let go of her hand, but Akame wouldn't let her, she kept holding Rimuru's hand tightly.

Rimuru realized that maybe Akame had been with this curse longer than he thought. If it was months or years without touching someone without killing them, it must be pretty horrible, so Rimuru didn't pull her hand away.

Akame was simply feeling the touch. She hadn't felt it in a long time. It felt really good not to kill someone by touching them, she took a moment to stop crying and spoke

"... ... Thank you. Really thank you so much, I'll never forget that."

"Well, it was nothing. You don't have to worry about that..."

Rimuru turned red as Akame was squeezing his hand hard as if he didn't want to stop feeling what it was like to touch someone. Rimuru let go as he thought that this curse must have been horrible for Akame.

"I see... So you didn't really want to kill us. You just wanted to get rid of this curse. So you won't attack us anymore, right?"

"Obviously. You don't have to worry about that. I owe you a lot and will never cause any harm to you or your close ones again."

Akame said sincerely. Now she had no reason to.

"Okay, I just want one more piece of information about the gods, do you know who their leader is?"

I was not introduced to him, but I was informed that he would be the one to heal me. The only thing I know is his name. I think it was .... Velda.

"What!"

Rimuru was shocked at the name he heard. That person should be dead. Yuuki destroyed Velda right after taking his powers so how was Velda alive? Rimuru became thoughtful.

"Do you know him?"

"Yes, he is an old9 enemy. That could be problematic..."

If Velda still had his powers, he would be a powerful and dangerous enemy. Rimuru wanted to warn the others about that.

"Okay, thanks for the information Akame-san. That was very helpful."

"Don't say that. Next to what you did for me it was nothing."

"Well... And what are you going to do now? You have been healed so what is your path?"

Akame was thoughtful upon hearing his question. She then said.

"I'm going back to my world. I want to go back to serving my country."

Akame had nowhere else to go. The only thing she had left was loyalty for her country.

"I understand... But how will you go back?"

"...."

Akame hadn't thought of that. The gods would take her back, but they certainly wouldn't now. Rimuru realized that she was conflicted and said something.

"You know... We are also looking for a way out of this world. If you want to..."

"What? Are you saying that I could... go with you?"

"Yes, with your strength, you would be of great help."

"But I attacked one of your people. There's no way they'll accept me after that..."

"Don't worry, I know I can convince them."

Rimuru said confidently and Akame was left with conflicting thoughts. This would be the best chance to leave this world, but Akame didn't want new companions. She thought for a while and then answered Rimuru.

If you don't mind then... I guess we'll be traveling companions from now on.