Chapter 136 : The Fight Against the Stressed Tyrant

My calm yet determined command hung in the cold, ruined air of the cave. "We face him. Together."

Mirko looked at me, her fierce grin softening slightly into an expression of surprise mixed with respect. She, the hero who always relied on her own strength and instincts, had just been stopped by an intern she was supposed to be protecting. Edgeshot, who had returned to his normal form, looked at me with his sharp eyes, showing no emotion, but I could feel a reassessment happening in his mind.

The vibrations from the approaching footsteps grew stronger, making the pebbles around us dance. From the end of the dark, collapsed corridor, a giant shadow emerged. Re-Destro, in his Stress 150% form, was a sight from a nightmare. He no longer looked human. His body was a black tower made of condensed stress energy, with strange patterns pulsing all over it. His size easily rivaled Ryukyu's dragon form, but his aura was far more oppressive. He stopped when he saw us. He saw the unconscious Geten. He saw the severely injured Ryukyu in Mirko's arms. His white, pupil-less eyes fixed on the three of us who were still standing.

"So," his voice boomed, a deep echo filled with disappointment and anger. "The little rats managed to defeat my ice general. I must admit, I am impressed and very, very disturbed." He raised his giant hand. "The stress of my subordinates' failure... The stress of having to rebuild all of this... Thank you. You have just given me more than enough power to erase you from existence."

Mirko was the first to react. True to her nature, she never knew fear. "You talk too much, stress giant!" she roared. With a war cry, she shot forward.

She moved like a white guided missile, leaping from one wall to another to build momentum before launching her strongest axe kick toward Re-Destro's head. It was the same attack that had shattered Geten's ice walls.

But Re-Destro wasn't ice.

He didn't even move to block. He just let Mirko's kick land squarely on his blackened shoulder. There was a dull thud, like kicking a mountain. Mirko herself was thrown back by her own force, landing hard several meters away. On Re-Destro's shoulder, there was only a small, shallow scratch, which immediately disappeared as his stress regenerated the damage.

"Impressive physical strength," Re-Destro said in a condescending tone. "But utterly useless."

He swung his large arm in a deceptively slow motion. Mirko, with her incredible agility, managed to dodge it, but the shockwave from the blow hitting the wall behind her was enough to make us all stagger.

I immediately analyzed the situation. A direct physical fight was suicide. Re-Destro's power seemed limitless as long as he was under pressure, and this fight would only give him more stress. We couldn't win in a contest of strength. 'This isn't a fight that can be won with power,' I thought, the echo of the fight against All For One ringing in my head. 'This... this is a puzzle.'

"Edgeshot!" I yelled. "Don't attack his body! Look for openings, his eyes, his joints! Annoy him, don't anger him!"

Edgeshot understood. He thinned himself into a thread, disappearing from view. The fight turned into a desperate game of cat and mouse. Mirko, now understanding that a frontal assault was futile, changed her tactics. She no longer attacked Re-Destro directly. Instead, she used her superior speed to attack the environment around him. She kicked the remaining support pillars, causing the cave ceiling to tremble and drop rocks on Re-Destro. She became a noisy, unpredictable distraction.

Meanwhile, Edgeshot appeared and disappeared around Re-Destro's giant body, making small, precise strikes. A quick jab to the eye area (which was quickly covered by a layer of hardened stress), a slash to the back of his knee. The attacks didn't hurt him significantly, but they were incredibly annoying. Like being bothered by a mosquito you can't hit.

My role was the most difficult. I had to protect Ryukyu and the still-weak Nejire, while constantly analyzing the fight. I manifested my gauntlets and chest plate, placing myself in front of them, ready to block any stray attacks or falling debris. I felt my dragon's heartbeat pulse steadily in my chest, connected to Ryukyu's weak life signal behind me. The knowledge that I was her last line of defense sharpened my focus to a level I had never felt before.

Re-Destro grew increasingly frustrated. He couldn't hit the agile Mirko or the ghost-like Edgeshot. "STAY STILL! STOP MOVING!" he roared. He stomped his foot on the ground, and his entire body began to pulse with a dense black energy. "STRESS OUTPUT: 200%! LIBERATION AIR!"

He unleashed a wave of dense black air pressure in all directions. It wasn't an ordinary explosion; it was a wall of pure force that crushed everything. Mirko and Edgeshot were thrown violently against the cave walls. I myself, with all my strength, blocked the attack with my armor, but the impact still pushed me back several meters, my feet scraping the concrete floor.

"Now," Re-Destro said, walking toward us, who were now all knocked down or cornered. "There's nowhere left to run."

As he raised his hand to finish us off, a crazy idea, a final gamble born from desperation and the memory of the original Tatsumi, came to my mind.

'The more you resist, the greater my stress.'

Re-Destro's words from his fight against Fat Gum's team rang in my head. His power came from stress. From resistance. From struggle. So... what if we stopped giving him what he wanted? What if we gave him the opposite?

"Wait!" I yelled, my voice echoing in the silent cave.

Re-Destro paused, looking at me with cruel curiosity. "You have any last words, anomaly?"

I took a deep breath, gathering all my courage. "You're right," I said. "You've won. We can't defeat you. Your power... is incredible. You are the true embodiment of liberation."

Mirko and Edgeshot looked at me as if I had gone insane.

"Huh?" Re-Destro sounded confused.

"We surrender," I continued in a steady voice. "We admit defeat. You have proven that your ideology, your power, is superior. There's no point in us fighting anymore."

I deactivated my Incursio manifestation, showing my empty hands. I looked at him, not with a challenging gaze, but with a look of acknowledgment.

Re-Destro looked at me, then at the equally confused Mirko and Edgeshot. He was silent. He expected a fight to the death. He expected an unyielding heroic spirit. He expected more 'stress' to fuel his power. He had never prepared for... total surrender.

"What... what is this? A cheap trick?" he growled, but there was a hint of doubt in his voice.

"Not a trick," I said. "Just the truth. You're too strong. We lost."

I could see it. For the first time, his blackened aura wavered slightly. His stress, which was fueled by our resistance, was starting to lose its fuel. His giant form shrunk slightly.

My crazy plan... seemed to be working. But I knew this was only temporary. I needed something more. Something to truly break his spirit.

It was then that an opportunity arose. Amidst the chaos, I saw a small communicator fall from the pocket of one of Ryukyu's unconscious sidekicks. I had another idea. A bigger gamble.

I knew I couldn't contact her directly. But I could send an emergency signal to a broader frequency, a frequency I knew was monitored by my secret ally. I snuck over and grabbed the communicator. I didn't send a voice message. I just sent a single encrypted burst signal—a code I had learned from my dream memories, a call that only one person would recognize. A call for an assassin.

On a rooftop in Hosu, dozens of kilometers away, Akame, who was observing another Yozakura target, felt the wooden token in her pocket vibrate violently. It wasn't a passive echo. It was a deliberate emergency signal. The same signal that Night Raid had once used when one of them was trapped and needed immediate extraction.

She looked toward the Gunma mountains in the distance. She didn't know what was happening. But she knew one thing.

Tatsumi was in grave danger.

Back in the cave, Re-Destro still seemed confused by my surrender. "So... that's it? You give up?"

"Yes," I said.

He began to laugh, a hollow-sounding laugh. "Boring. So boring!" He raised his hand again. "I don't need the stress from your resistance. The stress of this anticlimactic victory is also enough!"

Just as he was about to attack, a black shadow shot in from the hole we had made in the ceiling. The shadow moved faster than anything I had ever seen.

Before Re-Destro could react, the shadow was already behind him. It was Akame.

She said nothing. She just did one thing. She drew Murasame and made a single, almost invisible scratch on Re-Destro's giant black heel.

Re-Destro laughed. "A scratch that small—"

He stopped. He looked down. The marks of a purplish-black curse began to spread from his foot, creeping up his large body with terrifying speed, fighting against his stress energy.

"Poison... what is this?" he growled, feeling his strength being drained.

Akame landed lightly beside me. She looked at me. "You called."

I could only nod.

She looked at the collapsing Re-Destro. "My work here is almost done."