Chapter 319
A short while earlier—
The moment Shikoutazer appeared, the young Emperor entered the cockpit located inside its head.
With his senses amplified through the Supreme Throne, he immediately locked onto Kiriya and the other three racing through the palace grounds.
"So you’re the rebels who killed my Great General?"
The young Emperor’s face hardened, his voice turning cold.
"You... deserve to die!"
Crimson light immediately gathered at the center of Shikoutazer’s forehead before firing toward the four of them.
Whether because this was the Emperor’s first time controlling the machine and he lacked experience, or because Shikoutazer’s influence was already making his mind increasingly violent and unstable, the beam missed.
Instead, it struck the Imperial Capital more than ten kilometers away.
That was the attack Najenda and the others had witnessed.
"Hahaha! Yes! Exactly like that, Your Majesty!"
Down on the ground, Prime Minister Honest practically danced like an excited child, applauding the Emperor enthusiastically.
"What a magnificent sight! Surely your parents and every Emperor before you would be proud!"
"With such power, you can annihilate every rebel who dares resist you!"
"So strong!"
Jeanne and Ryuu were both visibly shaken by Shikoutazer’s power.
"Oh?"
Esdeath, meanwhile, looked up at the enormous machine with intense interest, already calculating how she might defeat it.
"So this is the Empire’s final trump card. Not bad at all."
Kiriya’s attention, however, shifted toward Prime Minister Honest, who was still jumping around and shouting encouragement.
A dangerous gleam flashed through his eyes.
’You old bastard. You actually had the nerve to stay here?’
Honest remained completely unaware of Kiriya’s killing intent.
"Come, Your Majesty! Show these treacherous rebels that you are the true Emperor—the unquestioned god of this Empire—"
He only made it halfway through his sentence.
Kiriya appeared beside him with the Body Flicker Technique, clamped a hand over his mouth, and drove a fist into his stomach.
The blow caused agony that seemed to penetrate straight into Honest’s bones, yet it was carefully controlled so that it would not kill him.
A bastard responsible for this much suffering did not deserve a quick death.
So Kiriya immediately followed with Forest of All Things, binding Honest in wooden restraints and draining away his strength.
Prime Minister Honest instantly lost the ability to move.
"Ugh..."
Honest had never imagined Kiriya could move so quickly.
Despite considering himself quite skilled in martial arts, he had not even been able to react.
By the time his mind caught up with what had happened, he was already Kiriya’s prisoner.
Panic immediately overwhelmed him.
"Release him!"
The moment the young Emperor saw Honest captured, he flew into a rage as though Kiriya had seized his actual father.
Without thinking, he fired another beam directly at Kiriya.
Naturally, it missed.
By pure accident—or perhaps not—it grazed both of Honest’s legs instead.
"AARGH!"
Honest screamed like a pig being butchered.
"Y-Your Majesty!"
"You... bastard!"
Controlling such an overwhelmingly powerful Imperial Arms already placed enormous mental strain on the young Emperor.
Seeing Honest injured pushed him completely over the edge.
He began firing beam after beam at Kiriya.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Mushroom clouds rose one after another throughout the Imperial Capital.
Crimson light illuminated the night while scorching hurricanes tore through the city.
Akame and Kurome had long since been awakened by the enormous commotion.
Seeing their own Emperor behaving so disastrously left both sisters stunned.
’Why would you do this?’
Akame stared at the destruction with growing fury.
’Aren’t those people your citizens, Emperor?!’
Akame had already begun forming her own beliefs, and the sight filled her with an anger she could barely explain.
Kurome’s thoughts were much simpler.
To her, this looked like an opportunity.
A chance to kill these rebels.
She almost hoped the Emperor would wipe out everyone around her.
As for herself?
She did not particularly care.
If she died together with her older sister, that did not seem so bad.
The Empire’s darkness had already thoroughly poisoned Kurome’s mind.
"Kiriya, we have to stop him!"
Jeanne and Ryuu shouted at the same time.
𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞
Their sense of justice would never allow them to stand by while innocent civilians were slaughtered.
Esdeath, meanwhile, looked positively eager.
An opponent this powerful was not something one encountered every day.
Whoosh—!
Kiriya threw Honest toward the others.
After giving the Prime Minister some minimal treatment to make sure he stayed alive, Kiriya turned back toward Shikoutazer.
"Don’t worry."
His voice was calm.
"I’ve got this."
There was such confidence in those simple words that it immediately made the others feel safer.
"What are you going to do?" Esdeath asked excitedly.
She had a feeling she was about to see yet another one of Kiriya’s hidden cards.
Akame and Kurome were equally curious.
’What is he going to do?’
Kiriya grinned.
"Obviously, if he’s bringing out a giant robot..."
His eyes transformed into the pattern of the Mangekyō Sharingan.
"Then I’m getting in a giant robot too!"
It was a joke probably only Kiriya himself understood.
Then—Susanoo.
A colossal crimson-gold warrior rose from the earth.
It stood even taller than Shikoutazer.
Armor covered its massive body, a helmet crowned its head, and enormous wings spread behind it, blotting out huge portions of the sky.
A sheathed sword hung at its waist.
It resembled a divine war god stepped directly out of mythology.
Majestic.
Dominating.
Overwhelming.
Sacred.
Those qualities blended together perfectly within the towering form, leaving everyone who saw it deeply shaken.
Complete Body Susanoo!
The ultimate manifestation of the Third Power, a technique that could only be fully unleashed with the ocular power of the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan.
"This..."
Jeanne, Akame, and Kurome all stared upward at the mountain-sized giant, momentarily losing the ability to speak.
"I never imagined you were still hiding power like this."
Esdeath could feel the terrifying energy radiating from the Susanoo, and excitement sent tremors through her entire body.
"This technique... can become this enormous?"
Ryuu had seen Kiriya use Susanoo before.
But the version she had witnessed was only several dozen meters tall.
Compared with this colossal form towering hundreds of meters into the sky, it might as well have been a completely different technique.
Even she was stunned.
"No... impossible!"
The person least capable of accepting what he was seeing was Honest.
Shikoutazer was his faith.
A weapon he considered comparable to a god.
And now this crimson-gold giant was actually larger than it?
It was absurd!
"Probably just an empty shell."
Honest desperately tried to reassure himself.
"That has to be all it is. One attack from His Majesty and that thing will be destroyed."
"Yes... that must be it."
Apparently, the Emperor had come to exactly the same conclusion.
He immediately attacked.
Whoosh—!
A crimson beam crossed the distance in an instant and arrived before Kiriya.
Shing—!
Kiriya raised Susanoo’s sword and casually angled the blade.
The beam changed direction.
It streaked away toward a mountain outside the Imperial Capital—and erased the peak completely.
"What?!"
Both the young Emperor and Honest were utterly stunned.
An attack from the Empire’s strongest Imperial Arms...had been casually deflected?
"I don’t believe it!"
The Emperor screamed.
"I absolutely refuse to believe it!"
He increased Shikoutazer’s output again and again.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
A dense barrage of crimson beams tore through the night.
Kiriya simply raised Susanoo’s enormous hand.
One after another, he slapped the beams aside, sending every attack flying toward the wilderness outside the Imperial Capital.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Brilliant flashes illuminated the darkness in rapid succession.
Against that backdrop of destruction, the towering Susanoo looked even more like a god descended to earth.
"How...?"
The young Emperor panted heavily.
"Why isn’t anything working?"
That barrage had consumed enormous amounts of his mental and physical energy.
And yet—it had accomplished nothing.
The enormous scars now covering the outskirts of the Imperial Capital seemed to mock him.
’Is that all you can do?’
How could a proud Emperor tolerate such humiliation?
Driven by rage, he pushed Shikoutazer’s output to its absolute maximum.
A crimson beam dozens of times thicker than the previous attacks erupted forward.
Shing—!
Kiriya drew his sword.
Using Afterglow through the Complete Body Susanoo produced power on an entirely different scale.
Shhk—!
The beam—powerful enough to destroy the Imperial Capital—was split apart by a single slash.
The remaining force of the sword strike continued forward without stopping.
It cut diagonally through Shikoutazer.
Then it continued for more than ten kilometers beyond the city.
A distant mountain was sliced cleanly in two.
Under the pull of gravity, the severed section began sliding away before collapsing, triggering a massive earthquake.
"A mountain..."
Someone whispered.
"He... cut apart a mountain?"
Everyone who witnessed the scene felt as though lightning had struck their minds.
Their thoughts went completely blank.
"Aaaaaah—!"
Because Shikoutazer was directly connected to the Emperor’s mind, the catastrophic damage inflicted on the Imperial Arms caused devastating backlash.
The young Emperor died instantly.
BOOOOM—!
Under its own enormous weight, the upper half of Shikoutazer began sliding toward the city below.
If it fell freely, countless buildings and civilians would be crushed beneath it.
Kiriya immediately controlled Susanoo and caught the collapsing section.
With immense care, he lowered the enormous wreckage safely to the ground.
A force that could have become an extinction-level disaster for much of the Imperial Capital had been rendered almost trivial before Kiriya.
...
"Kami-sama!"
Somewhere in the city, a man’s knees gave out.
He fell to the ground, clasped his hands together—and began praying with absolute devotion.