A little ball of blue light zipped down the hallways.

Upon looking closer, it was not just a ball of light but rather, a small wolf pup created through magic. This was Aomine's specialised magic, used exclusively for tracking. It was because of this magic that he even came into contact with the First Emperor back then.

Aomine was in the lead, with the rest of the group following behind him as they raced to catch up to the wolf pup. The wolf was set to sniff out Akashi's location. The closer they were to Akashi, the faster the wolf ran.

"What use is there for a magic tracker that leaves its owner behind as it chases after the target?" Kise grumbled, slightly out of breath.

"Shut up. It's not like I can control it." Aomine replied back.

"But it's your tracker! Do something about it!" Kise shouted in frustration.

"Stop fighting. Save your breath and focus on running, you idiots." Midorima cut in, displeased.

Conversation grounded to a halt, all desperately running after the ridiculously fast wolf pup. They had long left the palace army behind, though Murasakibara did throw out a barrier to prevent them from following too quickly just in case.

The wolf sharply curved to the left, and curses spilled from Aomine's lips as he promptly changed directions. He nearly collided into a wall, and he wasn't the only one. Lowly hissed grumbles came from all those a step behind him as well.

The little blue magic tracker was headed straight for a door. Two seconds later, it vanished inside.

Upon seeing that, all of them rushed towards the door, nearly tumbling over each other in their haste.

As they screeched to a stop – gasping for air – they found themselves in a partially destroyed room. And there, the very person they were looking for was crouched on the ground, staring at the cutely panting wolf pup seated beside him.

Akashi raised his head, taking in their appearances. He reached out a hand, dispelling the magic tracker with a single tap of his finger on the wolf's forehead. He never once looked away from them even as he did that.

His eyes were cold and hard, with a frown on his face. His gaze settled on each of them, pausing on Aomine first, and then Kise.

"I see your power has increased." He commented.

"Ah… Yes. Due to some circumstances, we ended up drinking dragon's blood."

"Is that so?" Akashi glanced away, attention drawn elsewhere.

Midorima followed his gaze, and blinked when he noticed two other people resting against a crumbling pillar.

"Nijimura?" Aomine gasped, quickly running over to him.

"He is fine now. The injury was quite severe, but because it was cleanly made, healing it wasn't too difficult. Though, it was considerably time-consuming." Akashi quietly reported.

Nijimura sluggishly blinked open his eyes.

It took a couple for blinks before he could focus.

"…Aomine?"

"Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, thanks to Akashi healing me." Nijimura replied. He turned his head to the right, at where Kiyoshi was placed beside him, still unconscious.

"…Who did this to you?" Aomine asked, his eyes wide.

The one who answered Aomine was not Nijimura, but instead, it was Akashi.

"Kuroko Tetsuya."

"The new kid?"

Akashi gave a curt nod. "Or rather, he was the new member. He has lost himself, and is no longer a part of the rebels."

"What?" Kise gasped.

Akashi stood up smoothly, and turned to Kise.

"It seems he has awakened his full power, and has lost the ability to make correct judgements. To prevent a cataclysm from descending upon this world, I will erase him."

Kise's mouth fell open, his eyes filling with horror.

"Y-y-you… A-are you saying that you will kill Kurokocchi?"

"Yes."

"No, you can't!"

"Ryouta, you have not seen with your own eyes the monster he has become. As he is now, he cannot be saved."

"But maybe, if we try to reason with him – "

"Kise Ryouta."

Kise's mouth involuntarily clammed shut at the look Akashi directed at him.

Satisfied that Kise wasn't going to pointlessly argue with him anymore, Akashi turned his head to look behind him. His gaze settled on the still bound up emperor. But the difference now was that the emperor was awake and sitting up. He faced the front again, and addressed the rebel group members before him.

"Kuroko Tetsuya has fallen into insanity and has gone berserk within the palace. The explosion earlier was caused by him. The bond I placed between Kuroko and the white dragon's soul has been severed. Somehow or another, he had fulfilled the promise he made. Therefore, he is no longer chained down by anything. Letting him run about, completely unrestrained like this is very concerning."

Akashi spun around lightly, focusing on the emperor.

"But right now, this gives me perfect opportunity to deal with the First Emperor."

He stepped towards the emperor, who was trembling violently as he stared up at the approaching Akashi.

Akashi stopped right in front of the emperor, glaring down at him.

"For countless years, you have controlled the people as you wish. Rather than ruling as a true emperor, you chose underhanded methods to get people to submit to you. By doing so, it is already a violation of this world's laws. But still, you did not stop, and this time, you have even sacrificed both humans and Dark Creatures for your own selfish wants. You are nothing more than a pitiable, foolish man clinging onto the throne that no longer belongs to you."

Akashi's heterochromatic gaze pinned the emperor down in his place, where he was unable to even move an inch under the intensity of those merciless eyes.

"I am Akashi Seijuurou, a Sleeping God tasked with your annihilation. First Emperor, your reign has gone on for too long. It is time for you to sleep for an eternity."

"N-n-no! D-d-don't you dare! I will – "

"Resistance is futile." Akashi cut him off as his left eye took on an eerie glow.

He stretched out his hand, resting his fingertips on the emperor's forehead. And then the area around the two of them exploded with light. A magic circle appeared over their heads, not overly large, accompanied by a pillar of light that shot out to completely envelop the two of them.

An overwhelming power burst out together with that light, so strong that no one could even attempt to look at it. It wasn't blindingly bright, but still, due to the suffocating pressure of that display of power, everyone had to turn their heads away from Akashi.

Even the emperor himself had to shut his eyes.

"…Oh? You are quite a cautious man, First Emperor." Akashi suddenly murmured.

Try as he might, the emperor still couldn't open his eyes.

"You have separated yourself, haven't you? I can see a thread of soul connecting to somewhere else. In this host, only half on your actual soul is here. The other half is hidden away, isn't it?"

Akashi hummed, tilting his head.

"Well, no matter. I can drag out this half of your soul now and hunt down the other half later on."

"No! Stop!" The First Emperor's desperate cry was ignored as Akashi softly chanted an incantation in an indiscernible language.

A blood-curdling scream tore through the palace.

Akashi ripped out the First Emperor's soul, containing it in a glowing square of light.

The emperor's body violently jerked and then fell to the side the next instant, the magic bindings around him slowly fading away. Akashi tucked the glowing square into his clothes. It was strange indeed, one would have expected his clothes to carry a faint glow because of it, but it was as though the square had been placed into a different dimension of sorts, it completely vanished, leaving nothing behind.

Akashi glanced at Nijimura, who was the first to recover from being in contact with his power.

"…Sleeping God?" Nijimura whispered.

Akashi gave him a small smile, and the slightest of a nod.

"It should be fine now, the original owner of the body will return the next time he regains consciousness." Akashi gestured to the emperor.

Nijimura turned his head to follow the direction where Akashi pointed.

"…Will he remember all that he has done while under the control of the First Emperor?" Nijimura asked.

"Perhaps he may. You will have to ask him if you want to know, because this is something that even I am unsure of." Akashi replied.

"I see."

Akashi paused for a moment, then said, "Nijimura Shuuzo, Kiyoshi Teppei."

"How scary. I wasn't even awake for more than ten seconds and you could already tell." Kiyoshi chuckled, slowly opening up his eyes.

Akashi smiled. "I have a favour to ask of both of you."

"A favour?"

"Yes. Because both of you are aware of what's truly happening, I could easily remove the First Emperor from its host. It allowed me to change my strategy and make it easier for me to complete my task. Therefore, as siblings of the current emperor, I would like for the two of you to gather the people and explain everything that has happened to them once this is over."

Nijimura and Kiyoshi frowned, not saying anything in reply to his request.

Akashi understood their concerns. It would be difficult to expect the people to believe such an outrageous story such as the emperor being controlled by his ancestor.

"I will leave it to you to decide how much you are going to tell the people, but you have to make sure that the people understand that none of this is done willingly by the current emperor; Imayoshi Shouichi. Once I have found and captured the other half of the First Emperor, the large ranged hypnosis spell will be removed. Because this involves the royal family, I will leave it all in your hands."

"Do you think the people will still accept Imayoshi as the emperor after they learnt of everything?" Nijimura murmured to himself, eyebrows knitting together as he thought.

Still, Akashi decided to answer him.

"I do not know. Besides, did Imayoshi Shouichi even want to be emperor in the first place? He did rule for a short period of time, but even during then, the First Emperor was already within him. Was his actions truly his own? Why don't you have a talk with him? Perhaps, a change in emperors may be a good thing."

Akashi received firm nods in response to his suggestion.

"Now then." Akashi turned to face the rebel group members. "It is time to deal with Kuroko Tetsuya. Searching for the other half of the First Emperor's soul is easy, so the priority will be the elimination of Kuroko Tetsuya."

Akashi left the throne room immediately after that, not even staying long enough to watch their reactions to his words.

Because he knew that they won't be able to disobey his orders.

Kuroko frowned.

He had felt the release of Akashi's power earlier, and that scream that echoed in the palace. He must have done something to the emperor while Kuroko was away. Did he kill him? Kuroko shook his head. No, Akashi wouldn't kill him. Instead, he probably did as he had said and removed the First Emperor's soul.

Kuroko was annoyed that Akashi had stolen his prey, but he couldn't do anything about that anymore.

Right now, he was flying towards another area within the place that was filled with an astounding amount of magic. Perhaps there would be something interesting there.

The deeper he made his way into the palace, the more familiar it became.

Yes, this route that he was taking now… He had once passed this exact path. Encouraged, Kuroko sped up and shot towards his destination.

He blinked as he came upon a spacious room with high ceilings. But there was a strange deep darkness in this place. Curious, Kuroko quickly entered the room. He didn't worry about being careless and triggering whatever 'guards' were placed here, because as he was now, he was almost invincible.

In fact, Kuroko was itching for a fight with Akashi.

He wondered who the stronger one between them was.

He walked around the room, and finally came to a stop before a large gem embedded into the wall. He could feel immense magic power coming from it.

"Should I tear it out?" Kuroko mumbled to himself.

The gem flickered, shinning brighter.

"Hm?"

Kuroko blinked, focusing on the gem.

"What was that? Did it just shine brighter?"

As though to prove Kuroko's words, the gem glowed even brighter.

Kuroko reached out, resting one hand on the gem.

It was warm.

There was a strange heat coming from the gem.

Kuroko grinned.

"You're not just any ordinary gem, are you? Even if one fills a gem with magic power, it wouldn't contain such warmth. There must be something else that is hidden inside this gem."

Kuroko moved back a few steps.

"Let's see, what shall I use? I can't recklessly destroy the wall since the gem might be affected. In that case, how about some fire? I can use wind magic with that to prevent any flames from accidentally breaking the gem… Alright!"

With an excited smile, he began chanting a familiar incantation.

A silver-blue magic circle appeared above his head, almost the same size as the gem spanning the entire wall. Under his feet, another circle formed, and Kuroko connected the two with a single thread of silver magic.

"Ravaging Inferno."

A burst of white flames shot out from the circle above his head, and the one under his feet glowed as the flames were contained within a spiral of wind. The magic spells sliced through the wall like it was made out of flimsy paper, and soon enough, the huge gem fell out of the wall with a low rumble.

Kuroko dispelled his magic, squinting at the dark hole in the wall.

He threw a little ball of fire into the hole, to light it up. The black hole was seemingly endless, similar to the one Kuroko had created.

"Oh." Kuroko breathed, eyes alight with curiosity.

He wanted to enter it, wanted to see where it would lead to.

But a soft clink tore his attention away, and he glanced down at his feet. The gem was lying face down, and before Kuroko's eyes, little cracks began to spread across the surface of the gem. It didn't break, but watching the gem cracking like this didn't seem like a good thing.

And then a sudden loud roar echoed throughout the palace.

Kuroko stumbled, barely catching himself in time as the palace tilted onto one side. The impact shook the entire palace, and fractures immediately formed on everything, with little bits of concrete falling from the ceilings.

"What was that?" Kuroko's eyes narrowed as he created a barrier with wind magic to redirect the falling pieces of concrete away from him.

"Did the palace sink in to the ground? Did the earth give way? But that's strange… The impact didn't feel as though it was sinking in."

Maybe he should check on what's going on outside?

Kuroko hummed, shattering a window and quickly flying out of the palace.

From the sky, he stared down with wide eyes.

Below the palace was a massive hole, where the earth had caved in on itself. And the entire palace was floating above that hole, or rather, only one side of it was. The other end of the palace had crashed into the corners of the hole, smashing quite a bit of the building. Now that he was outside, he could clearly sense the magic casted on the palace.

"…Did that gem control the magic?" Kuroko frowned. "But it's really strange. If all it did was to control the magic, why was the gem radiating heat? There must be something else, something I am unaware of."

Thankfully, the side of the palace that contained the gem was still safely floating.

Kuroko turned around and entered the room again.

He lightly landed onto the ground, staring down at the shinning gem expressionlessly.

It was only a moment later that he heard the sounds of multiple footsteps coming his way. Kuroko's back was to the doorway, and he simply turned his head to look behind as he waited silently.

The footsteps got louder and louder the closer they came.

And the first one stepping through the doorway was someone very, very familiar.

Their eyes met.

Kuroko smiled.

"So you came to me?" He spoke up first.

And he received a reply in a tone as cold as ice. "Yes. I expected to find you here, because you are very adept at creating chaos, Kuroko Tetsuya."

"Of course. Don't you remember the words you said to me not too long ago? You said that I'm a being that will bring death and ruin to everything."

"Indeed. You are something that should have never been born."

"How harsh. Though it would be a lie if I said that I wasn't expecting those words from you. After all, with you being what you are, it's only natural."

Kuroko turned around slowly, placing himself into a position where he could fully face the person before him.

A little smirk formed on his lips.

"Isn't that right, Sleeping God Akashi Seijuurou?"