In the towering palace, countless maids and attendants surrounded a young boy with an immature face.
The boy held a cup of fine wine, with all kinds of delicacies laid out beside him.
They were foods he had loved in his original world—now recreated using this world's methods. They couldn't compare to the original flavors, but even a faint resemblance in taste was enough for him to savor for a long time, letting him drift into memories of what he had once lived through back in his old world.
He wasn't originally from this world. No matter how much he tried to blend in, no matter how noble his status became, it all still felt hollow—like he had no true sense of existence here.
Sure, in the entire court no one dared say "no" to him, and no one dared act recklessly toward him.
But precisely because of that, he had no one worth confiding in.
Everyone around him was a pack of sycophants. They never spoke honest, harsh truths—only whispered slander and flattery.
Lailian's head was about to explode from listening to it all.
It was all the same—boring, repetitive, lacking any novelty. And that only made those petty people strain themselves even harder to invent new slanders and sweet talk, just to please their king.
As the dominant power of this world, Lailian had no intention of expanding outward… but even here, he couldn't find any meaning in his own existence.
And if life had no meaning, then living itself felt pointless.
Back in his old world, he might've studied seriously, had a puppy-love romance, or scored well on the college entrance exam and gotten into a good university.
But in the Akame ga Kill! world, there was no such thing as a college entrance exam.
People here were born into their class. There was no such thing as turning your life around.
If you were nobility, then you stayed nobility—unless the king punished you, your status would never truly be threatened.
And if you were an ordinary nobody with no identity—lower than dirt compared to others—then the only way to climb out of that was through brutal means: joining wars between nations, killing countless people on the battlefield. Only then could you gain recognition, only then might the king take notice of you.
That's right.
Everything—absolutely everything—was decided by the king.
The king stood at the top of this world, the one who gave orders, the existence no one could defy.
And yet Lailian, as that very existence, didn't feel it was something good.
For the sake of this throne, the people beneath him had fought endlessly—brothers slaughtering brothers, sisters killing sisters.
Back then, the organization Night Raid had once wanted to place the person they approved of onto this throne.
But those rebels, in the end, had also fallen into tyranny.
Tatsumi had been Lailian's friend.
At the beginning, the two of them had lived together carefree and unburdened.
But in the end, Lailian realized that even a king installed by a rebellion was still destined to become a debauched fool.
Maybe he wouldn't do anything cruel, but his mediocrity would invite the greed of other nations. They would set their sights on this country, wanting to carve it up and split it apart.
To end that chaotic age of division, Lailian chose to become king himself—killing the original king.
With iron-blooded methods, he forced the lords and ministers of every faction to bow their heads, not daring to overstep. The nation returned to long-lasting stability.
But in doing so, he also made an enemy of Tatsumi.
The two turned against each other completely.
Tatsumi believed Lailian was just like the corrupt ministers of the past—violent, brutal, lustful, extravagant, unworthy of being king.
Even the iron-fisted policies and methods Lailian created were condemned by Tatsumi as cruel and unjust, devoid of any morality.
Lailian tried to explain.
He wasn't accepted.
In the end, he let Tatsumi go—only for Tatsumi to gather a rebel army in the north and march on the capital.
To placate the common people, crush the rebels, and let civilians live in peace, Lailian had no choice but to order Tatsumi captured.
And he sought help from the outside world—
Dior.
He implanted the flesh bud into Tatsumi's brain.
But he never expected that Tatsumi would ultimately break free of the flesh bud's control—and even brew a plan of this magnitude.
It was all because he hadn't been ruthless enough—because he hadn't beheaded his former friend and displayed him as a warning.
Now, after waiting for Dior for a long time and receiving nothing, Lailian reviewed the world's images—only to discover that Dior had already been erased by Tatsumi's son…
Roger Eikam.
Too late.
Overwhelming regret swallowed him. If only he had killed that brat back then—then this country wouldn't be facing catastrophe now.
He looked through Roger's life, his actions. The more he read, the more troubled he became.
What kind of world could produce a person like this?
A child raised on hatred and blood from the very start… who ultimately became a monster who killed without blinking.
He unleashed the Rumbling and overturned an entire nation.
Lailian had endured endless hardship just to keep his own country from splitting apart—to let his people live in peace.
And this man, with nothing but hatred, had swallowed an entire nation whole.
It made Lailian's heart turn cold.
"My lord… do you intend to eliminate that man?"
Lailian heard the voice and turned his head.
A maid was speaking.
Seeing her king so weighed down, she wanted to slip in a word—if she happened to hit the king's true intention, maybe glory and wealth would follow.
But Lailian loathed that kind of behavior.
The things in my mind—how could natives of this world possibly understand them?!
"Come, come. Come here."
Lailian beckoned, motioning for the maid to draw near.
The maid thought her moment of riches had arrived. She walked forward excitedly, eager to hear what her king would say.
But Lailian suddenly clamped a hand around her throat and commanded her not to resist.
The maid was terrified. Standing on the edge of death, she couldn't even think about obeying commands anymore.
Yet every time she struggled even a little, Lailian squeezed harder.
"Presuming the monarch's intent is a capital crime! Didn't you know that?!"
Lailian snarled, crushing her throat with force, then tossing her corpse aside.
The other maids around him went mad with fear, scrambling over to kneel before Lailian, smashing their foreheads to the floor as they begged forgiveness.
"From now on, anyone who dares to guess my thoughts is committing treason! The punishment will be quartering—along with extermination of nine generations of their family!"
Lailian shouted, then swept his sleeve and turned to head back to the inner palace.
But he knew the truth.
That maid had been smart.
She'd seen through him at a glance.
And the thing he hated most in this world… was being seen through.
Not just hate.
Utter, absolute revulsion.
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