Chapter 183 : A Crack in the Steel Mask

The silence that fell upon the war room was colder and heavier than the silence at the peak of any iceberg. The night cherry blossom crest was displayed on the main screen, an elegant symbol that carried a horrific meaning understood by only two people in the room.

Leone's and Hawks' eyes moved from the screen to Akame's face, trying to decipher why a family crest could provoke such a powerful reaction.

Akame's face, usually a calm and unreadable steel mask, was now cracked. Her complexion was as pale as paper, and her crimson eyes were wide with a mixture of horror, simmering rage, and a sorrow so deep it felt like a bottomless abyss. Her hands, always steady even when holding a sword, were trembling slightly. For the first time, they saw the ghost look... broken.

Tatsumi didn't hesitate. He immediately moved to Akame's side. "Akame, what is it?" he asked, his voice low and full of concern.

Akame didn't answer him. Her eyes were fixed on the screen, on her sworn enemy. "Yozakura..." she hissed, the name escaping her lips like poison. "What are they doing... in a place like this?"

"Akame," Hawks said, his tone now sharp and urgent, realizing he had just stumbled upon a massive piece of the puzzle. "What is the Yozakura Clan's connection to all of this?"

Akame took a deep, shuddering breath, forcing herself back to a state of calm. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. The cold fire had returned, but behind it now was a gaping wound.

"You see the PLF as the main threat. You're wrong," she said, her voice flat yet laden with hatred. "The PLF and even Humarise... they are just branches. The Yozakura are the root."

She began to explain, each word a revelation more horrifying than the last. "The Yozakura Clan isn't just an organization of assassins. Behind their facade of 'justice,' they have a darker business. They are one of the few factions in this world who know about the inter-dimensional 'Gates'."

Hawks and Leone stared at her, stunned.

"They work secretly with All For One's network and Dr. Garaki," Akame continued. "They act as a primary supplier. They don't smuggle weapons or drugs. They smuggle 'subjects'—humans from other worlds they manage to capture. Those subjects are sold to Garaki to be used as raw materials for stronger, more stable Nomu experiments."

The true horror of the situation began to sink in. This laboratory wasn't just a weapons facility. It was an inter-dimensional slaughterhouse. A place where souls from other worlds, perhaps even from their own, were turned into monsters.

"So... the girl in the tube..." Leone finally spoke, her voice filled with horror. "She's one of their 'subjects'?"

Akame hesitated, her face filled with a conflict and fear Tatsumi had never seen before. She remembered the fate of her sister, Kurome, who was turned into a puppet by the Yozakura. They never disposed of a useful "asset."

She looked back at the blurry image of the female figure in the containment tube. A terrible hypothesis, a fear buried deep in her mind, now crept to the surface.

"After our fight on that volcanic island," Akame said, now looking straight at Tatsumi. "She... disappeared. I thought she retreated to recover. But... what if she didn't retreat? What if she was too weak after that fight... and they found her?"

Tatsumi felt a chill run down his spine as he understood where Akame was going with this.

"The Yozakura would never pass up an opportunity like that," Akame continued, her voice barely a whisper. "To capture the strongest specimen that has ever existed. To study her. To perhaps try to control or replicate her. If they managed to capture her..."

She swallowed hard, forcing herself to utter the most terrifying possibility.

"...The woman in that tube... there's a chance... that it's Esdeath."

BOOM.

The word exploded in the middle of the room with more force than any physical blast. Hawks took a step back, his usually quick mind seeming to grind to a halt as he tried to process the implications. Leone stared at the screen with wide eyes, speechless.

Their greatest enemy. The apocalyptic-level threat that had nearly destroyed them all. No longer an independent force roaming out there, but a potential asset controlled by a PLF-Yozakura alliance.

Tatsumi looked at Akame's tormented face, then at the image on the screen. A primal fear of Esdeath stirred within him, an echo of the trauma seared into his soul. But seeing the suffering in Akame's eyes, seeing how this conspiracy was directly connected to her family's tragedy, cultivated something else. Something stronger than fear. A cold rage and a steely determination.

He was the one who broke the suffocating silence.

"If that's true," Tatsumi said, his voice low yet so steady it cut through the tension in the air. "If there's even the slightest chance that it's her... then there is no other choice."

He looked at Akame, then at Hawks and Leone. "We have to go in. We have to be sure."

His mission had fundamentally changed. It was no longer about intelligence. It was no longer just about rescuing a stranger. It was about confirming the existence of a weapon of mass destruction in the hands of their enemy, and about confronting the most terrifying ghost of their past.

Hawks looked at the faces of his team, filled with a new horror and determination. He saw his meticulous plans shatter into pieces, replaced by a far more dangerous reality. He let out a long sigh, shouldering the weight of the world.

"Alright," he said, his voice heavy with a new awareness. "We change the plan. Completely."