Chapter 174

Rion hunts down and kills a man in an alley, collects her fee from a local agency, and declines its offer of steady work. To a curious employee, the paymaster describes her only as a talented killer with some hidden past who was cast out of the JAA. She returns to the abandoned rest stop the pair have been squatting in, greeted by Uzuki, who narrates that they have been fugitives for a year now.

Spotting blood she failed to wash off, Uzuki grabs her hand and scolds her for killing again, warning it leaves a trail. Rion insists she covered her tracks and that they need the money, and when he suggests hiding their faces to find honest work, she calls him naive: wiping out the more than twenty veteran assassins guarding Al-Kamar to free his friends demands real funds. Half-joking, she wishes Sakamoto and Nagumo could help, then catches herself. Uzuki tells her plainly that he does not want her to die or to keep killing, which flusters her even as she reminds him they must destroy the enemy to save the others. Lying back to back, Rion privately admires his ideals but decides the cruel world needs someone to keep kind people kind.

Elsewhere, Asaki learns the JAA has pinpointed Uzuki and knows of Rion's illegal jobs, and blames her for leading Uzuki off his intended path. The next day Rion returns to the agency meaning to refuse work, but the escort job, guarding a corporate CEO's fourteen-year-old daughter, changes her mind, and she messages Uzuki, who agonizes that his inaction keeps forcing her to kill. Asaki then approaches Uzuki from behind and asks him to come back to Al-Kamar. When Uzuki refuses, Asaki offers a bargain: free his friends in exchange for killing a certain skilled assassin. Separately, both Uzuki and Rion resolve that their next kill will be, for one a first and for the other a last.

A year on the run finds Rion taking illegal assassination jobs to fund the eventual raid on Al-Kamar, over Uzuki's objections. Asaki tracks the pair, blaming Rion for corrupting Uzuki's path. Rion accepts an escort job protecting a CEO's teenage daughter. Asaki offers Uzuki a fateful deal, freedom for his friends in return for killing a certain skilled assassin, while both Uzuki and Rion privately steel themselves for a decisive kill.

Titled A Certain Skilled Assassin (Aru Ude no Tatsu Koroshiya), this is the one hundred seventy-fourth chapter of the JAA Jail Arc. It ran in issue 33 of 2024 on July 15, 2024, and is collected in Volume 20. The chapter debuts the unnamed child Rion is hired to escort, and Sakamoto and Nagumo appear only in mention.