CH 181

After Akira sold the robots that he destroyed in the forward base, he took a break in the base’s cafeteria. Thanks to the medicines that he had taken, his wound had already been fully healed and he was not physically exhausted, but the medicines did not help with his mental stress at all. He had decided to end his day, so he was sitting there looking absent-minded.

That was when Kibayashi appeared. Kibayashi happily took the seat in front of Akira without asking Akira’s permission and smiled at him. Akira frowned, knowing that it would be nothing but more trouble.

“What now?”

“Don’t be so cold. It’s just that since I see you haven’t returned back home yet, there’s something I want to ask you here, you see.”

“Ask me? Just to let you know, I won’t be paying for the ammo, alright?”

Akira said so clearly right from the start with a stern face. Kibayashi smiled wryly at him and said.

“Don’t worry about that. Just because you got your terminal destroyed during your duty, it’s not like we’re not going to pay for the ammo you used during that time.”

The information terminal that Akira got from the temporary base always sent the signal of his location, but the moment he entered the highest floor of that building, his signal was cut off due to the feature of that room. Then the explosion from the mini-missiles finally completely broke it. Because of that, the temporary base did not know anything about his encounter with Tsubaki, and of course, Akira had no plans to tell Kibayashi about that at all.

“It’s nothing complicated. The robots that you brought in are all completely destroyed though, couldn’t you bring them in a better state?”

“No.”

“I see. Got it. That’s all I wanted to ask you.”

Akira looked surprised, he did not expect Kibayashi to back down that quickly.

“Is that all?”

“Yeah, that’s all. Like I said, I do like you. I have no plans to keep pursuing that subject just to sour your mood, alright? Not to mention, you’ve entertained me enough. You crushed a swarm of monsters on your own on the first day, and today, not only you brought back a lot of old-world relics, you even secured a whole building too. Just so you know, normally speaking, you’ve done splendidly up until now.”

“Like hell if I care about that. In the first place, it’s nothing normal the moment you offer to pay all of my consumables.”

“I said so with that considered too. But that’s just so you.”

Kibayashi smiled amusedly at Akira’s abnormal reaction.

After that, Akira and Kibayashi talked for a bit more about the request and the situation around the road.

Akira’s current request did not have a clear finish line. It would continue until Akira’s Hunter Rank reached the point where it was suitable for his strength, while the request itself did not clearly state what that Hunter Rank would be.

But Kibayashi already told Akira that he had entertained him enough, so Akira thought it should be fine to end the request there. But when he asked Kibayashi about that, Kibayashi said that it was not up for him to decide and he had no idea either what was the opinion of the people from the upper echelons about that matter.

Akira did find that a little surprising as he thought of using as much ammo as he wanted without caring about effectiveness since someone else was paying for it. That way, he would be able to quickly rank up until his request was deemed finished regardless of the opinions of the others.

—*—*—*—

Tiol was eating the wreckage of humanoid monsters inside a dilapidated building in Kuzusuhara ruin. But those were not the humanoid monsters that Akira destroyed, Tiol destroyed those monsters in another building.

The white room was filled with the echo of metallic wreckage getting crushed. Tiol himself was badly injured from the fighting, but his injuries were slowly healing as he was feasting on the dead monsters.

Suddenly Tsubaki appeared in front of Tiol.

“Good afternoon!”

Tiol immediately stood up and took a fighting stance as he swung his right arm to rip off Tsubaki’s head. Unfortunately, Tsubaki was no more than an image, so Tiol’s hand went through her effortlessly.

“That was rude.”

Tsubaki immediately vanished. Tiol quickly turned and lunged in a direction where there was nothing at all. But from his point of view, he could see Tsubaki standing there.

But from Tsubaki’s point of view, the world was running so slowly as if it was completely paused. Inside that slow-moving world, Tsubaki looked closely at Tiol and mumbled.

“He can recognize me both through augmented reality and through network image too. I see.”

Tsubaki then said with a flat emotion.

“Stop!”

Right at the next moment, Tiol’s body suddenly froze in the middle of lunging at Tsubaki. The inertia allowed his body to proceed forward but the gravity prevented him from staying afloat. So, he just crashed down to the ground and rolled over as if his whole body was petrified into stone.

“Safety leash command number 721 works as intended. Which means that it’s based on the nanomachine inside one of those biological monsters, huh. I don’t know who did this, but it’s pretty impressive. Unfortunately, that person was not able to override the control command. Wait, no, it might be some kind of mutation because of the nanomachine put inside his body in order to trick the friend-or-foe identification system… With too many conflicting nanomachines in his body, it instead might have caused a system failure.”

There was no one else other than Tiol in that room, but he could see all kinds of information displayed in his views as Tsubaki walked toward him. Unauthorized connection, unable to prevent connection, failed shutting off the connection, identified administration from area 844, individual outside the administration right, detected unauthorized hacking, hopeless difference in strength, zero winning chance, advised to run away immediately. Tiol registered all of those notices that appeared in his views, but they did not help his situation at all.

Tsubaki suddenly vanished again from his view. She then reappeared again as an image as she extended her hand to his head.

“He wouldn’t even listen to what I have to say. So I’ll ask you instead. I’m sure you’re also having it hard with such an unstable system, right? I’ll give you the reward upfront, so don’t worry.”

The information notices in Tiol’s views suddenly changed. Unauthorized connection, unable to prevent connection, failed shutting off the connection, rebuilding control system, readjusting administration structure, rebuilding connection, rebuilding finished.

Tiol could move his body again as his body relaxed while he was still lying on the ground. After a few seconds, he slowly pushed himself up and stood in front of Tsubaki.

“I’ll leave the rest to you then.”

Tsubaki smiled faintly and vanished. The only notice left in Tiol’s views was an order from Tsubaki. With his assigned duty to secure the area starting, Tiol immediately moved out following that order.

—*—*—*—

Yatsubayashi had a stern look on his face as he eyed the displays in front of him.

“…What just happened?”

The display showed information sent from Tiol, and that information stream was already fully stopped. Among the last information sent by Tiol, there was a piece of information that really piqued Yatsubayashi’s interest.

Yatsubayashi actually was thinking of a plan to take care of Tiol before it caused extra trouble to him, but with this, he decided to change his plan. His curiosity completely outweighed his rationale as he readjusted his plan accordingly following curiosity.

—*—*—*—

Akira once again visited Shizuka to replenish his stock. Shizuka looked worriedly at Akira as she said to him.

“Akira, this will be pretty expensive though, are you sure?”

Akira nodded with a serious face.

“Yes. After thinking about it one more time, I thought that it’s safer to do this and I should be able to end this request faster this way. So please continue with the order.”

Akira completely readjusted his order. This time he ordered multiple mini-sized energy packs and high-grade repair cartridges, both of them were expensive consumables. On top of it, he also ordered a huge amount of powerful anti-forcefield armour as well as mini-missiles that could be used with personal-sized missile launchers.

Shizuka proceeded to place the order. Akira and Shizuka waited silently for the confirmation, but this time, the order was rejected.

“As I thought, it won’t go through, huh?”

Akira seemed slightly relieved. Suddenly a call from Kibayashi reached him.

“It’s me. It seems that an expensive order just came in, and it’s from you, just wanted to make sure that it’s not some kind of mistake or something. I’ve sent you the information to your information terminal, so go ahead and check it.”

“I did, it was really from me and it was not a mistake.”

Unexpectedly, Kibayashi replied in a rather good mood.

“You bought quite a lot this time, enough for the financial division to contact me, you know?”

“I need them to be able to fight safely. If you’re going to tell me to cut that out, just so you know, that’s basically my real strength. That way I won’t need to keep doing this request, right?”

“Hm? I’m not calling you for that. There, the payment went through.”

“Even that got approved, huh?!”

“It was just a notice due to the size and the cost of the order. I’m sorry but once you receive that order, bring them to the forward base for safekeeping. But don’t worry, you can still use them anytime. I’ll send you the specifics later.”

“The repair cartridges are for my augmented suit, so I need them back home.”

“I see, you can take the cartridges home then. I’ll tell the guys above myself about that.”

“A-Alright!”

Akira was a little surprised that his order went through so smoothly. Kibayashi, who noticed it, laughed.

“I did tell you that your performance is far above the norm, remember? So this much demand will go through just fine, although, it’s partly because of my influence too. You should be more confident in yourself, you know? Until next time then.”

At the same time Kibayashi closed the call, a notification confirming that the order got through reached Shizuka and Akira.

Akira smiled bitterly. He knew very well the gap between his real strength and the strength that he acquired due to Alpha’s support. Although he kept working hard to close that gap, he could not lie that every time he noticed his growth, he also noticed how significant Alpha’s support was.

[…Well, although I basically forced my way through with expensive bullets during that fight against the monster swarm, I won that fight on my own. So even after adding that with those robots that I destroyed with Alpha’s support, it should at least lower the total evaluation from Kibayashi. So it should at least be a little better.]

Akira’ bitter smile was a mix of half-mockery and half-compliment toward himself. But he then noticed Shizuka looking at him worriedly as he flusteredly said.

“Ah, uhh, well, what can I say? It seems that the order should go through just fine.”

“Akira, don’t get too reckless, okay?”

“I know. It’s exactly so that I can fight safely that I put in that expensive order.”

“I see. It’s good that you’re calm about this, but be careful not to get your guard down, okay?”

“Yes!”

Akira firmly nodded, Shizuka replied with a smile.

Shizuka understood that Akira said so knowing fully well he was cornered into a situation where he had no other choice but to be reckless. While on the other hand, she also understood that hounding Akira about it would not help his situation at all, so she held back herself from saying anything more than that gentle reminder. Akira took her warning to heart and told himself not to unnecessarily jump to danger.

Akira once again took his bike to Kuzusuhara ruin. It had been a few days since the last time he went to Kuzusuhara ruin. During that time, he had repaired his augmented suit, carried his supplies to the temporary forward base, and got himself to the best state before going.

Alpha was floating beside Akira as if she was sitting in an invisible car. She was donning a battle suit with a daring old-world design as her long silky hair was flailing in the air, blown by the non-existent wind.

“Akira, what’s your plan for today?”

“Let’s see. I might as well search one of the buildings for relics again, but I don’t want to fight monsters like last time.”

Akira glanced at Alpha’s outfit and thought.

“That is an old-world battle suit, right? Since we’re this deep into the ruin, I wonder if I can find some of them somewhere around.”

“I can’t really say you can’t, but it would be hard to find. Let’s say that you did find one, what’s your plan with it?”

“If there’s no problem with the size, I’m planning to use it for myself, old-world relics are fundamentally advanced stuff after all. I do know that I’m obligated to sell all my relics by contract, but I’m sure I can get it back after paying some money, or at least, I’ll put some effort in doing so.”

Alpha smiled mischievously and pointed at her own battle suit.

“This suit is for girls though? Are you really going to use it? Well, I can understand if you do since it’s a high-quality battle suit.”

Akira could not hold back his laughter the moment he heard that.

“Why does it even come to that? I’m talking about when it’s a battle suit for guys, of course.”

“Then what if you only find battle suits for girls?”

“I’ll sell them, then use the money to buy one made for guys.”

“What if you’ll be wasting a lot of money if you do that instead of using it? Of course, ignoring the design aside.”

Akira looked conflicted for a split second, but he immediately made his decision.

“I’ll think about it when that happens. We don’t know if I can find any of them around here in the first place anyway, right?”

Alpha smiled amusedly.

“Indeed.”

Akira noticed from the beginning that Alpha was only poking fun at him, but at the same time, he also thought that it would not be strange if she knew. Akira heaved a big sigh as he thought that he wasted his energy on that conversation.

“Alpha, at least help me choosing which building to search this time.”

“Oh my, you’re relying on me right from the start for today, huh?”

“I have no plans to spend so much effort on a dud like yesterday. I understand that choosing the right building to search is also a part of my training, but let’s put that training aside for some other time. My training menu for today will be searching for relics inside a building.”

“Alright then, over here.”

“That was fast!?”

Akira could see a particular route highlighted in his enhanced views as he paced his bike following that route.

When Akira arrived, he looked confusedly at Alpha.

“Here?”

Alpha smiled confidently and nodded.

“Yup!”

“…Alright.”

Akira once again shifted his gaze to the location in front of him. Akira could see a tall torn down building that looked closer to a mountain of rubble in front of him. Since it fell over the other buildings around it, they all piled into a single huge mountain of rubble.

“…So basically, I need to find relics under this mountain of rubble, huh? Well, I might find something if I try, but still…”

“Not exactly. To be more precise, you need to find the door to a certain room buried under this mountain. Some buildings usually have their important rooms built extremely strong as if they’re safe boxes, strong enough to keep intact even when the building itself falls over. We’ll be looking for that room. I’ll help you find the entrance, after all, you’re technically outside the building until then.“

Akira used his high-performance bike to climb the rubble mountain. He then stepped off from his bike where she pointed out and put a camouflaging sheet on top of his bike. Once he was done hiding his bike, he used his information-gathering device to check the area around him. Due to the layers of rubble preventing his information-gathering device from scanning further down, it was difficult for Akira to find the hole into the mentioned room. Thankfully, besides his information-gathering device, he also had Alpha.

Akira used his augmented suit to move aside the rubbles under him as he eventually found a door and wall that seemed to be from a hallway of some sort. He went down to that door and forced it open before peeking inside the room. The room was pitch black when he peeked in with a light. As he looked down to the base of that room which was originally a part of the sidewall, he could see all kinds of things scattered there. He then carefully proceeded into that room.

The room itself was pretty wide. Since it was laid sideways, that width was translated directly to depth. Akira used tables and other furniture fixed to the floor of that room to slowly climb down.

“What can I say… It feels weird when the inside of the room is oriented differently than it should.”

Alpha was floating around in the air freely as she smiled amusedly and said.

“Oh my, you’ve been climbing up and down so many rooms up until now, you should’ve gotten used to it at this point, no?”

Akira looked back to his experience.

“Like hell I would get used to that.”

“Oh, but you should. Be careful with your footing.”

Right at the next moment, the table that Akira was using as his footing swayed before it was sent tumbling down to the base of the room. He was only barely able to jump to the next table.

“…You could’ve told me sooner!”

“Weren’t you doing this on your own right now?”

“…That’s true, but… Alright alright.”

Akira decided to stop himself from throwing any complaint at Alpha who was smiling amusedly at him as he moved to the next footing.

When Akira reached the base of the building, his eyes were wide open. The base of the building was filled with piles of old-world relics. Though some of them were already destroyed, others were strong and durable relics. Akira started stuffing his rucksack with any expensive-looking relics that caught his eyes.

When he finished filling his rucksack, Akira looked up. The exit seemed to be located far away from him now.

“…I know it’s already obvious, but I have to climb back up now, right? I should’ve at least brought a rope with me.”

“You can just get one and return back here again later.”

“Again, you should’ve told me sooner.”

“But you’re on your own this time, right?”

Alpha smiled amusedly, he replied with a conflicted bitter smile.

Akira had climbed down the building with his augmented suit and climbed up a building with his bike, so somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought that he should be able to figure out something when the time came. That was why the idea of bringing along a rope never passed through his mind.

Akira worked really hard and somehow was able to get out of that room. Sometimes he used 2 blades, one for each hand, to scale up the room, sometimes he had to heavily heartedly leave some relics behind since he could not go through with his backpack full. He basically paid in full for his mistake of not bringing a rope with him that day.

After that, Akira returned back to the forward base and sold his relics there. He did not forget to immediately buy a rope too.

—*—*–*—

It had been 2 months since Akira started the request to get his Hunter Rank up. But his request had still not ended. Even after he kept ordering bigger and better supplies, all of the payments for his orders went through just fine.

Originally Akira thought that at most it would last for about a month. So that day, he was venting his frustration in Shizuka’s shop. Elena and Sara who saw that could only smile bitterly at him.

To be more precise, Akira was venting his frustration there because Elena and Sara encouraged him to. They tried to prod him to share his situation, and, if possible, to offer him their help in order to mend their relationship back.

But even Sara and Elena did not expect that Akira was frustrated because he was forced to take a request to boost his Hunter Rank though he did not want to. And even after he thought he got his Hunter Rank high enough, that request still continued. Any normal Hunter who worked hard day and night to get their Hunter Rank up would be furious if they heard that.

Sara looked rather impressed with Akira.

“But still, a request to increase Hunter Rank, huh? Although I’ve heard about it before, this is the first time I see someone actually get one. Although it’s to be expected considering how strong you are, it’s still pretty impressive.”

Although Sara was giving him an honest compliment, Akira felt a bit guilty. He knew that the impression of how strong he was probably came from Alpha’s support and not his own skill. Because of that, rather than looking honestly happy about it, Akira made a conflicted expression.

“…Thank you very much. But depending on how you look at it, it might be because they put too much faith in me. Right now, they’re forcing me into places that are originally too dangerous for a Hunter like me.”

Elena noticed that and changed the subject.

“Getting not too excited and staying vigilant is a good thing. In my case, if I ever get such a request, I feel like I would get too excited and make a blunder instead, but It seems that’s not the case for you. That in itself is pretty impressive, you know. I guess I need to learn more from you about that.”

Akira slightly blushed from that compliment. Sara pouted a bit at how Akira reacted differently to her compliment. But in order to distract herself from that feeling, she quickly circled behind Akira and rubbed his head while sticking close to him from behind.

“S-Sara-san!?”

“I’ll do that too. Though I don’t think that I’ll ever get such a request. Being too humble might annoy people instead, you know?”

“I-I didn’t mean it…”

“I know. It’s just a silly talk from a narrow-hearted girl. But I just want you to be careful since there are a lot of people like that out there.”

“O-Of course!”

Though Akira was surprised, he did not resist. As a matter of fact, he enjoyed it. Seeing that reaction from Akira, Sara smiled satisfied. Both Shizuka and Elena who saw that could not help but giggle. Of course, Sara noticed them, but she only pouted a bit while trying to hide her embarrassment and enjoying Akira’s reaction.

They then talked about other things too. At some point, Akira found something that Elena said interesting.

“Humanoid monster, huh?”

“Yes, it seems that there are more and more people getting attacked by a humanoid monster near Kuzusuhara ruin lately. To be more precise, the location is around that highway.”

“Uhhh, is it one of those things? That one where the City Management treats a strong criminal as a monster…”

“I don’t know the details. That might be the case, or not. It might be an autonomous robot that went on a rampage. Or maybe someone controlling the augmented suit of a dead Hunter like back then in the Seranthal building. The details about the incident itself are still unclear. The City Management itself hasn’t released anything else other than a warning.”

“Whether it’s a strong criminal or a monster, basically there’s something that looks like a human attacking people around the ruin, right?”

“Yup, exactly. The only thing that we know right now is that it looks like a human instead of a monster. You should be careful too, as a Hunter, it tends to dull our reaction when the opponent looks like a human.”

If it was a monster, Hunters could immediately decide to kill it. But when it was a human, they would often hesitate, and more often than not, that hesitation brought about a fatal consequence.

“Okay, I’ll be careful.”

Akira said so firmly, seeing which Elena smiled happily.

When Akira left the shop, Sara frowned and said.

“Say Elena, I wonder if Akira really hates when people evaluate his skill highly.”

“That might be true. If I’m not mistaken, he said something similar to that back then in the underground city too.”

“Now that you mention it, he did. Why do you think that is the case?”

“No idea. I’m sure he has his reason for that… But whatever it is, I’m sure it’s not something pleasant. Sara, although I’m sure there’s no need for me to tell you this, but you need to be careful not to poke at him too much.”

“I know… This is difficult.”

Although the other day Akira saved them despite there being nothing that he could get out of it, he also did not hesitate in cutting off their ties. At the moment, they somehow still managed to talk normally with each other. Sara had no idea whether it was because of something trivial or deep, or if it was due to Akira’s principle in life or simply his opinion.

Sara had no plans to let go of the thread that she worked hard to preserve and sighed as she thought of her friend whom she was not sure how to treat.