Unnamed Swordsman

1•The Beginning of it All

In a rotten Empire, an unforgivable, sinister plan was put into motion...

Standing on a cliff over seeing the whole of Gifnora Forest, a bald man with a monocle stood at the edge of a cliff, overseeing the forest in front of him, behind him was a corpse of a massive danger beast, on top of the corpse was another man eating the said beast's meat off a blade.

"Now then I wonder which of the children will reach here first." Said the man sitting on top of the danger beast corpse, taking a bite off his food before the bald man with the monocle spoke, "...I thought that your plan was to buy up a group of a hundred children from across the Empire to groom them into assassins... No matter how you look at it, you've placed more than a hundred children in the forest."

"It's fine. This is exactly how the plan was meant to start." The man answered, munching on the danger beast meat, "This weed-out process will definitely kill a few dozen children."

"I see... So weak candidates will just eliminate themselves on their own." The bald man with the monocle deduced, still staring at the forest where the said hundred children were, "So Gozuki, how many can you train?"

"Hm..." Taking his time to think, the man named Gozuki took a few seconds to think before answering the bald man. "I guess seven would be the limit for me as I am now."

Finding the answer satisfying, the bald man spoke up. "Very well. After ranking them, we'll give the top seven candidates to you. We will take the rest."

...

In the forest, a young boy with messy jet black hair ran through the forest. While all other kids had had the looks of fear, the boy had an emotionless look on his face, running around the forest with a makeshift knife in hand, which is just a sharpened stick.

No noise came from his lips, only the fluttering of the rag he called clothes, the boy's eyes roamed around his surrounding before he ran up a tree and kicking himself of it, latching onto a danger beast's neck as he jams the makeshift knife multiple times at its eyes, completely blinding it before jamming the knife even deeper the eye socket. The beast roared in pain before it fell to the ground, completely lifeless.

Landing on his feet, the boy used the rags he considered his clothes to wipe off the blood from the beast. "Bi...Big sis..." He heard the voice of a little girl call out to her big sister, causing him to turn his head to the left and down the ridge he was on was two girls who seemed to be quite close with one another.

One of the two girls was about his age, the other was probably younger than he was. The girl about his age stood in front of the younger girl, the boy didn't take too long to figure out their relation of being sisters, especially when he heard the younger girl call out her sister.

"I can't run anymore..." The younger girl exclaimed, clearly fatigued from all the running they had done as she panted with her hand on her knee helping her not to fall down.

"We're almost there! You can do it, Kurome!" The older girl said, turning around and encouraging her younger sister, Kurome, to continue their journey to the finish line.

Kurome who had seen what was behind her sister grew surprised and frightened and seeing her sister's expression of fear, Akame turned what Kurome saw and her very own red eyes widened in horror. Many children like them were dead in front of her, stuck in the mouths of carnivorous plant like danger beast before them.

"We can't go this way! Come on, we have to go around!!" Akame exclaimed hurriedly, grabbing onto Kurome's arm who stood there frightened of what she saw, of course she would, she's just a child after all.

"The-They're being eaten..." Feeling her sister's grip on her tighten, Kurome turned to Akame, "It's alright. Your big sis is with you."

Hearing her big sisters words of encouragement, Kurome let out an "Okay" before she nodded as they began to move away from the man-eating plant, a wolf suddenly came jumping out from the shadows. Lunging onto Kurome, biting into her shoulder as the younger girl yelps in pain.