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We report the first experimental measurement of a strong pulse shortening of a seeded plasma-based soft x-ray laser at high electron densities. As a consequence of the gain gating caused by subsequent collisional ionization, the duration drops from 1.4 ps to an unprecedented value of 520 fs RMS when the electron density increases from 4 to 7.6×10^{19}cm^{−3}. These measurements, performed with an original single-shot method, are in good agreement with results from 3D Maxwell-Bloch simulations.