Summary:
Inside the 13th District, Haru's group are waiting for Mana's group to arrive at the subway station, but instead they are approached by a strange girl. The group is then confronted by Seven Sheathes members Suou and Mizumi who have come to kidnap Haru under Tokisada's orders. While Ruru is being held off by Mizumi, Suou overwhelms Yaegaki and Haru can only watch helplessly. When it looks like Yaegaki is going to lose, the strange girl summons a ninja who is dressed like "The Invisible Man" (can't translate his name) who drives Suou away by throwing kunais. Haru doesn't understand what is going on anymore, and the girl (can't translate her name either, but she's referred to as "Hime" by the Seven Sheathes) explains that she is the former ruler of Yamata and the ninja is her personal bodyguard. Suou and the ninja appear to have some history with each other and the ninja summons his own guardian blade from the shadows to battle Suou. The two engage in a vicious sword fight in which Suou appears to gain the advantage, but the ninja reverses the situation and smashes his knee into Suou's face, downing the Seven Sheathes leader. Just as the ninja was to finish Suou off, Tokisada suddenly appears from the skies and whisks Suou and Mizumi away. Haru once again wonder what's going on, and suddenly the phone in a nearby phone booth starts ringing.
I didn't know the Invisible Man was a such great sword fighter.
Some time before the developments on Haru's side, Mana's group has arrived at a subway station but Haru's group is nowhere in sight. While waiting around for the other group, Mana asks Alex about what the Crusaders are really up to, and Alex states that the Crusaders' goal is to retrieve the three sacred treasures (Amateratsu, Tsukuyomi, and Susanoo) for safekeeping. At this moment the Hollyhock agent informs the group that they have arrived at the wrong station, and upon stepping outside the group is confronted by Tokisada who had come to kidnap Mana. Alex immediately attacks Tokisada due to Tokisada's betrayal of the Crusaders and he appears to have sliced Tokisada in half, but Tokisada recovers and uses kido to seal Alex in a block of crystal. Alex powers out of the seal but is then blown up by Tokisada's enchanted tags. Refusing to let Mana fall into Tokisada's hands, Alex stabs himself with a knife and uses a special spell to teleport Mana and the Hollyhock agent to another location. Seeing that Alex is near death, Tokisada leaves the scene to retrieve the defeated Suou. Alex uses his last ounce of strength to make the phone call to tell Haru that Mana is at "Babel". The big Crusader then passes away.
Alex is one man who won't be frozen into a popsicle.
Back at the other subway station, Haru wonders where "Babel" is. Hime states that Babel is Yamata's headquarters before the disaster and agrees to lead Haru's group to it. After the ninja makes his exit, Haru asks Hime for an explanation of the whole thing about Yamata and the metamorphosing blade. Hime explains that everything started four years ago when her organization tried to resurrect the island of Yamata by summoning metamorphosing blades and their wielders to a tournament, and at the end there were four wielders left including the ninja. The plan was supposed to be for the combatants to fight until one wielder and his blade is left, and this would activates the three treasures and allow the island to be resurrected. For some reason, three of the wielders remained and so the island ended up being resurrected upside down. Soon after the disaster Tokisada swooped in and took over Yamata. Hime reveals that her goal is to save her older sister who is being held by Tokisada. Hime then asks what Haru's goal is, and Haru states that he wants Mana to become his blade.
Elsewhere in the 13th District, Suou blames his loss to the ninja to the fact that he only has a prototype metamorphosing blade instead of a real one, and in response Tokisada offers to turn Suou's blade Kanna into a real metamorphosing blade.
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The story of XBlade continues to move along in this volume. We have two new important characters, and the principle villains have shown themselves. I thought Mana and Haru would reunite in this volume, but they are now more separated than before. I also didn't think Alex would go down so quickly, but he was up against the main villain. So for now Haru's group is traveling with this Hime who supposedly wants to free her sister from Tokisada's clutches, but being the former leader of Yamata she probably has some other things in mind as well. As for Haru, his intentions of stealing Mana away from Kuushirou is not surprising at all. Everyone wants a pretty girl who can turn into a powerful sword, right? In addition to that, Haru probably wants to find out the truth about what happened inside the 13th District and in particular about that strange girl who looks like his little sister.
Even though this volume was good, I still liked volume 6 better, mainly because that volume had the sick monsters whereas this volume didn't. The two fight in this volume (Suou vs. the ninja, Alex vs. Tokisada) were very nice, but they weren't as cool as the scene when Haru's group were entering the district and attacked by monsters. In addition, I'm also a bit confused about Yamata and its resurrection. You can probably see from summary that I didn't really get it, and this is partly attributed to by my poor Chinese skills (since I was reading the Hong Kong version of the volume). I don't get why the resurrection went ahead when there were three participants left in the tournament. Hopefully the story will explain why there were three participants left at the end instead of one and why Hime didn't stop the resurrection when she knew the conditions weren't met. I also want to know about Tokisada's history with the Crusaders as well. There is still a lot of unexplained stuff in XBlade, and it could be long time before I find out the answers given the irregular releases for this series.
Last irrelevant note: if you are wondering how got the names of some of the characters but not others, there is a character sheet at the end of this volume, but it doesn't include some of the new characters like the ninja and "Hime".
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