CH 215

Akira woke up and found himself lying on the ground. He slowly pushed himself up and coughed out blood. He leaned his body against a nearby wall for support. But the sharp pain was too overwhelming and he tripped over again. His reality-bending mental mode had already been turned off. Thanks to that, his head was assaulted with an excruciating headache as he pledged, not to ever use it again. Both his legs and arms were screaming in pain. His augmented suit had also spent all of its energy. He used up all of it without holding back in that battle.

Akira squeezed all the remaining strength he had to reach for his medicine. He then gulped it down together with the blood in his mouth. Immediately, his throat reacted and made him cough, flinging some blood off. He ignored the possible side effects as he just took all the medicine that he had in one go. Thankfully, the 10 million Aurum box of medicine was quick to show its effect; suitable for its price tag. The pain slowly subsided and his consciousness became clearer. As he regained enough strength to move, he once again stood firmly on both feet. He then looked around, picked up his blade, which was lying on the ground nearby, and tried to reevaluate his current situation.

[…How long was I unconscious? A few seconds? Minutes? Hours? Since I’m still alive, it means that the other guy is dead, right? I don’t even remember landing on the ground. My augmented suit and the force field armour on my coat must have been off while I was unconscious, huh. Well, that means that I got pretty lucky there. I guess my luck isn’t all bad…]

Akira smiled wryly and thought.

[I still can’t connect to Alpha. As I thought, my luck is not the worst…]

Now that the pain in his body had subsided, it only left him with a headache.

[I was able to actually bend reality with my will back then. I’m not sure if I can ever do that again, but I was able to successfully do it once. It should be easier to do it next time… But the burden is nothing to scoff at. I might even get myself killed next time if I do that. It would be great if I can fight back the side-effects with medicine, but judging from the fact that my head is still hurting, it means that medicine doesn’t help much in this case, huh? Or is it already the maximum effect of the medicine? I have no idea. Either way, it is better than getting killed. Although it isn’t cheap, I guess I’ll take some more.]

Akira carefully returned back to his vehicle. Since he parked the vehicle close to the building, it was not that far from him. But it took him a lot of effort to return to his vehicle. It had been quite a while since the last time he had to move his augmented suit on his own without Alpha’s support. Furthermore, his heightened nervousness along the way drained his focus as well and energy.

Once he reached his vehicle, he opened the back door, got in, and closed the door before letting out a huge sigh of relief. His nervousness fell as he praised himself for splurging on strong armour plating for his vehicle,

The communication device on the vehicle was still showing that it was still being jammed. Akira found that regrettable as he set the auto-drive to head back to the temporary base. The vehicle reacted accordingly and started moving, Akira was relieved to find that his vehicle was still working as it should, thus easing his nerves a little bit more.

He proceeded to eject the energy packs from his rifles and replaced them with high-quality energy packs, ignoring just how expensive they were. As he did that, he then thought that it would have been better if he had been using them right from the start. But at the same time, doing that would raise his expenses and that might result in a monetary loss for him, so it was out of the question. Akira got a taste of common problems plagued by many Hunters, choosing between expense and safety.

After replenishing all of his equipment, he took an extra dose of medicines to make sure that he was ready to fight anytime. He then leaned on the wall of the vehicle to relax his body While at the same time, he operated his information terminal and information gathering devices to watch out for his surroundings. That was when the vehicle suddenly slowed down and asked for further instructions.

Akira frowned. The display on his head showed the reason why the vehicle was asking for further command. The signals showed that there might be a huge ongoing battle along his route back to the base.

“What the heck is going on? Another ambush from monsters? Good grief, give me a break already…”

The vehicle was stopped, waiting for further instructions on whether to take a detour to avoid battle or to just ignore it and move forward. The auto-drive system followed its setting not to enter an active battlefield without confirmation from its user.

After taking a few seconds of thinking, Akira decided to wait instead. His priority now was to avoid fighting. After all, he had not fully recovered from his last fight. Or course, he had the choice of taking a detour to avoid the battle in front of him, but it would take too much time. The reason why he could come so deep into the ruin with his large APC was thanks to the supply route. If he took another route and got stuck in some small roads instead, it would not be funny if he got attacked by monsters in that situation. At the moment, he was inside a large vehicle, protected with resilient armour plating with no monsters detected around him. Not to mention, that the communication line might recover if he waited long enough. That was why he decided to wait here.

Of course, Akira was also worried if the decision that he made there was the correct one. But any decisions might as well be the worst decision, as such, his only option was to recover as much as possible in preparation for anything bad that might occur. As Akira thought so, he went to the portable bed and took a rest there.

Suddenly the radar of the vehicle, which was in standby mode, picked up signals from enemies and the vehicle immediately accelerated. Akira was dropped off from the bed due to inertia, but he quickly reacted and readied himself for a fight while cursing.

“That was fast goddammit!!”

No matter which decision he took, he might have gotten more resting time if he had made up his mind sooner. Seeing from that perspective, his decision back there was indeed the worst one.

The control device of the vehicle made a rough estimation of the enemy’s position based on the damaged armour tiles, as the vehicle accelerated away from that direction. The source of that attack seemed to be coming from the general direction of a nearby ongoing battle.

When Akira looked in that direction, he could see a young boy in a Hunter augmented suit running in his direction. He was running at the same speed as Akira would if he used his augmented suit.

[He’s running away from the battle, huh? Then that means that was stray bullets from the monsters chasing after him?]

As Akira was considering helping that Hunter and to confirm the situation with him afterwards, he aimed the APC’s machine gun past that young boy and frowned. The ones chasing after that boy were multiple armed vehicles, there was no doubt that those vehicles belonged to the other Hunters.

While Akira was still thinking about what to do there, the young boy hid behind Akira’s APC; thanks to that, the other Hunters aimed straight at Akira’s vehicle instead. Although the APC itself was undamaged thanks to its strong armour tiles, it was only a matter of time before the armour tiles failed.

Akira had a bad feeling and opened the back door while the APC was still running. He then tried to ask what was going on to that young boy.

“Hey! What-”

But the young boy suddenly aimed his rifle at Akira and came for his life without any warning. Thanks to the ominous feeling that he got, Akira was ready and was able to react. In a blink of an eye, bullets immediately flew in and out of the APC.

Although they were shooting at each other at such a close range, since both of them prioritized not getting hit, both were uninjured in that exchange. The young boy quickly jumped on top of the vehicle, hiding away from Akira’s line of sight.

Akira scowled and looked at the ceiling, that was when a voice mixed between displeasure and happiness came from the ceiling.

“So you’re here too, huh!! It’s great that you’re here! This time I will win for sure! I’ll kill you together with those Hunters!!”

Once again, it sounded like his opponent this time also knew him beforehand, and again, Akira did not remember who it might be.

“Are you another guy from the afterlife?! Who are you? Don’t tell me you’re Sebla!”

“Who’s that Sebla? I’m Tiol!”

“The heck?! Tiol who!?”

Tiol’s face twitched with hatred.

“You don’t know?! I see I see!! You won’t even remember my name, huh!? I expected that much!”

Hearing Tiol lash back like that, instead of getting confused, Akira was more irritated.

Grenades rained down on and around the vehicle. The explosion also consumed Tiol, but he protected himself using some kind of protective outer coat. The equipment that Tiol was using, was unnervingly similar to the ones that Akira used during his fight against the monster Tiol in the past.

Tiol clicked his tongue and jumped down. He then ran along Akira’s APC and said to Akira while looking straight at his face.

“I’ll get back to you later. Don’t worry, I’ll definitely be back to kill you! Both you and that guy!!”

Tiol only said so and started shooting at the Hunters who were coming at him as if he was protecting Akira’s APC. After that, he left the place using his augmented physical strength.

Akira was still a bit confused by that sudden turn of events, but the shaking coming from the barrage from the incoming Hunters pulled him back to reality.

“That bastard!! He left those Hunters for me to deal with!”

Judging from the intensity of the incoming fires, Akira understood that those Hunters were mistaking Akira as Tiol’s ally. Even if he wanted to tell the truth, they were outside his communication range.

Akira knew that not firing back would not stop the other side from firing him. He could try to get close enough for his voice or for the short-range communication to reach them. But, there was no guarantee that he would not be killed before he could do that. So the conclusion he came to was that he had no other choice but to fight back. He changed the vehicle to half-auto mode and set the machine gun to provide suppression fire. While he, himself, peeked out from the vehicle and left the APC with an order to just immediately get away from that place.

The APC’s powerful machine gun unleashed countless bullets while Akira himself released a barrage of guided armour-piercing grenades. The grenades were set to explode before reaching the Hunters for the sake of slowing them down. Although Akira only intended to suppress them, the grenades that he used were still lethal weapons, thanks to that, it was able to successfully slow down the pursuing Hunters. The Hunters coming at him switched their focus from pursuing Akira to evading the incoming grenades. Thus, lowering their rate of fire toward Akira as well.

Akira used that chance to get away as far as possible from them. Setting the acceleration to the maximum, he was able to open up some distance between them. After he got away far enough that they could not shoot at each other any longer, Akira went back inside the APC and sighed.

“For real though, what exactly is going on?”

Akira rubbed his hair in frustration, but no one was there to answer that question.

The leader of the Hunter team that was chasing Tiol made a grim face and said.

“Dammit!! He got away! To think that he has allies as well!!”

The young leader then renewed his resolve.

“I don’t know who that was and what his aim was, but I won’t let him disrupt the expedition!! I’ll definitely make this expedition a success no matter what!! Katsuya here!! How is the damage!? As long as the connection has not recovered, don’t trust anyone you meet! You’ll get ambushed otherwise!!”

The team chasing Tiol was Katsuya’s.

Akira was still not sure what just happened as he drove through the ruin. The situation was only getting worse, according to the radar, it seems that the ongoing battle was only spreading wider. He spotted some flying monsters fighting flying powered suits. He was only barely able to get away from those on the ground with the help from his APC’s machine gun.

In this expedition, the city management sent in the powered suit squad first to secure the area. Even someone like Akira knew that plans had gone awry at this point. But that did not give any hint as to how the situation would evolve from there.

Akira smiled wryly and mumbled.

“I guess this is the rebound from relying too much on Alpha all the time”

Akira hesitated to look for another Hunter in order to group up with them. The reason was simple, he got attacked by other Hunters numerous times in the past. The line of command among Hunters was also already completely destroyed. He did find an underground parking lot on his way and thought of hiding there for the time being, but the other Hunters already taking shelter within those places suddenly started shooting at him without any warning. Of course, he did try to talk with them since they were close enough for short-range communication, but the only returning words that he received was ‘don’t come any closer!’. It was a messy situation where everyone could not trust those they did not know.

[I bet that Tiol guy also got himself in some fight with the other Hunters just like this. I wonder if there are other Hunters in his situation as well? I guess that’s the case for that Zalmo too, huh? Or maybe they are actually friends? Can’t tell… I have no idea at all…]

Akira continued driving through the wasteland while wondering about the answer to those questions. That was when a destroyed powered suit blocked his way forward. The destroyed powered suit had its lower half completely decimated and its body was severely damaged at different spots.

Akira stopped his APC. He thought that if he used the full power of his augmented suit, he might be able to move that powered suit aside, so he then walked toward the destroyed powered suit. That was when suddenly a short-range connection call reached his information terminal.

“Long time no see. To think that we meet in this place, it must be some kind of fate. Anyway, you came at the right time, can you help me for a bit?”

“Who’s this?”

“It’s me, Nelia.”

Akira immediately looked around.

“Where are you calling me from?”

“You see a destroyed powered suit nearby, right? I’m inside it. But I can’t get out by myself, so like, can you help me?”

Akira hesitated for a bit, but then he carefully approached the blast door and grabbed the bent handle. He swiftly opened the door and switched to his rifle as he aimed inside.

Right there, Nelia was smiling amusedly at the surprised Akira. Similar to the powered suit, Nelia only had the upper half of her body. One of her arms was crushed within the bent powered suit.

“That was a rather cold reaction from you considering that we don’t get that many opportunities to see each other.”

“Well, considering the situation and the other party, I had to do at least this much.”

“Is that so? Well, it doesn’t really matter. Can you take me back to the temporary base for now?”

Akira gazed silently at Nelia with a serious face, his rifle was still poised at her. So Nelia raised her eyebrows and asked.

“Oh my, do you have some kind of interest in girls that are paralyzed?”

Akira sighed exasperatedly and lowered his rifle. It was not because he was sure that Nelia would not shoot at him in this situation. He understood that very well. Nelia was an insane Hunter, there was no doubt about it, but her madness was the thing that guaranteed her as non-hostile at this moment. This strange feeling reminded him that there were many things out there that he did not know about in this world.

“Let me at least confirm this first. You’re not hostile at the moment, right?”

“Sure, if you think so.”

“Alright, do tell me beforehand if you’re going to attack me, okay?”

“Of course, I’ll be sure to tell you beforehand.”

Akira grabbed Nelia’s remaining hand and pulled her out, but the cable connected to her crushed arm prevented him from doing so. Thus, Akira put in more power and tore that cable forcefully before carrying Nelia out.

Akira was carrying Nelia by grabbing her remaining arm and letting her body hang down. That Nelia smiled teasingly at Akira and poked fun at him.

“That was not gentle. Are you not familiar with how to treat a girl’s body? I know that some girls like it hard though, do you perhaps have a preference for them?”

“The heck are you even talking about?”

Akira only said so and carried Nelia back to his vehicle. After putting Nelia on the driver assistant’s seat, as if to vent his anger, he turned the vehicle violently and rammed it to the blocking powered suit to push it aside.

“You’re bad at driving, do you want me to drive instead?”

“How are you going to drive with your body like that?”

“The control device in this vehicle is connected to one of the terminals, right? You just need me to connect to that terminal. Although I can’t fight with this body, I feel bad leaving everything to you without helping at all.”

Akira hesitated, but he then pulled out a terminal from the APC, he then connected the terminal to a jack on Nelia’s neck as she had instructed. Not too long after that, the APC suddenly started moving with her control. With this, Akira could just focus on fighting and let Nelia handle the driving.

After that, Akira and Nelia exchanged information to understand the situation. Hearing what had happened to Nelia’s powered suit, Akira frowned and asked.

“Wait a sec, are you being serious? The powered suit squad got beaten? Isn’t the whole squad using the same powerful powered suit that you were using before? And you still got beaten?”

The rider of the powered suit that Tsubaki cut in half was Nelia. She was lent that powered suit in order to advertise it.

“If the commander was not that stupid, we would have retreated instead. I tried to use a melee weapon since none of our ranged attacks worked, but then this happened. So yes, close-range, long-range, nothing worked. I don’t think they have anything to turn the tide at this point. If they had any trump card, they would have already used it at this point.”

“Which means, those invisible monsters right now are…”

“Now that the powered suit squad is gone, there is no one to stop them. I think they’re roaming around the area right now. In the first place, thanks to that old-world automaton, the squad was not able to stop any monsters at all.”

With that, Akira’s hope that the situation would fix itself with time was completely dashed. If more and more mechanical monsters did not stop pouring out from the other side, the situation would only get worse with time.

Because of this, Akira no longer hesitated, just waiting until the situation got better was out of the question now. He heaved out a huge sigh and made a grim face.

“Alright then, Let’s force our way back to the temporary base. Although judging  by the signal, there’s a huge battle near the supply line, but that’s still better than just staying here.”

“We’re already heading there.”

“…I see.”

Akira was surprised that Nelia just decided where the APC was heading without consulting with him first. But since it was a good thing that they were already heading toward the temporary base, Akira decided not to say anything about it.

“But still, after hearing your story, this means that our chain of command has been destroyed. And then, for some reason, we’re now caught in a situation where the Hunters don’t trust others that they do not know. This is quite an issue. But to think that we would meet each other in this situation like this, I wonder if we’re connected by fate or something.”

“Well, judging that I’m here in right now, it is safe to say that my luck sucks.”

“That’s pretty harsh.”

The APC’s radar picked up some new signals. Akira noticed that and went to open the back door of the APC to clear his line of fire, in case those signals were enemies. He more or less had a grasp on how many enemies there were thanks to those signals detected. As he aimed his rifle, he suddenly spotted a powered suit flying from behind a building, still far away from him.

“Nelia, are those powered suits here to pick you up?”

“They are enemies! Shoot them down!”

Right at the instance Nelia said that, the powered suit aimed its rifle at Akira’s APC.

“Hold on if you don’t want to be thrown out of the APC!!”

Nelia made the APC do sharp turns in order to evade the incoming bullets. But even so, some of them still hit the APC’s sidewall and rooftop. Each shot was huge, fired from an equally large rifle equipped on the enemy’s powered suit.

The expensive armour plating protected the APC from those shots, but eventually, some plates had their durability worn out and fell to the ground. But even so, the barrage did not stop at all. The force from the bullets pushed the APC to the point that it almost rolled over, but Nelia was able to skillfully control the APC, preventing it from rolling over.

Akira quickly grabbed the APC by reflex in order to maintain his balance while his other hand pulled the trigger of his SSB rifle. Due to Nelia’s rough driving, his aim was far from accurate. But the homing armour-piercing frag grenades were still able to find their way toward the enemy’s powered suit. Enveloping it in a sea of flame

Now that the APC was out of the hostile powered suit’s line of sight, Akira went to his terminal to check for its signal. The signal was still moving, indicating that their enemy was still alive.

“Nelia, just a question, have you fought against that powered suit before?”

“Nope, how about you?”

“Me neither… So how were you able to immediately tell that it was hostile?”

“What are you talking about? Just look at how it moved from the signal. It’s obvious that it did not come in peace, no?”

Akira could not tell. But he thought that it was unwise to say that he did not know, so he decided to just shut up. Nelia found that silence suspicious as she then continued.

“Well, it’s true that it might just have been careful of us, moreover, it’s dangerous to try and come this close. Close enough till it can send its identification code. Even if that powered suit held no hostility, it should be aware that we might be hostile against it. Although my judgement is basically based on the end result, I don’t deny that I was not being that careful when deciding if it was hostile or not. But do you think we should let it close considering that it might suddenly spring an ambush and get us killed?”

“No, that’s fine. It’s true that it is hostile too after all.”

“Right?”

Akira just tried to end the subject as he agreed with Nelia, thus she returned back to her usual mood.

“But still, since both of us don’t remember fighting it at all, then why is it attacking us? Did the user go on a rampage after losing the rest of his team?”

“From what I see, it seemed to be obviously aiming for us though?”

Right after Nelia said that, someone suddenly connected to the vehicle’s short-range communication feature. It was because the user of that powered suit had dialled his device communication output to maximum, allowing him to only send his voice to Akira.

“Akira!! I’m not going to let you run away!! You’re going to die here! That I can guarantee!!”

Akira’s face twitched as he scowled. In contrast to that, Nelia smiled amusedly and said.

“It seems that it is chasing after you. Are you sure you don’t remember that guy?”

“…This voice, it’s Zalmo.”

“I see, so, what is your connection with that guy? It seems that guy really hates you, did you cuckold him or something?”

When Nelia jokingly said so, Akira climbed up the top of the APC through the open back door and turned on his communication device.

“He once attacked a shop owned by someone I know. I’m pretty sure I killed that guy then and there. I did blow his head off back then and there was no mistaking it, his brain was scattered all over the place after that. But, for some reason, he is still alive. Maybe it’s someone else posing as that guy.”

Nelia listened with full interest.

“That’s a pretty interesting story. If you were not lying, then either he got resurrected or he’s a ghost. There’s a story about the beguiling ghost around this area, after all. I guess it’s not that weird to find a deadman roaming around this place.”

“That story about the beguiling ghost, wasn’t it supposed to be the old-world area managers? You know, those AI managing the old-world buildings? I saw one back in Mihazono ruin when I went to Seranthal building”

“There are many different theories about that beguiling ghost. Well, putting that aside, it might be possible to resurrect someone with a destroyed brain with old-world technology. ”

“…No no no, that’s just simply impossible no matter how you look at it, right?”

“And old-world technology is such a thing that turned such absurdities into reality, right? You are a Hunter yourself. So it’s better to keep in mind that nothing is impossible for the old-world technology”

Akira indeed had gone through a lot of things that were out of the ordinary, so he found it interesting that he still had some common sense left inside him as he smiled wryly. Even after using an augmented suit that boosted his physical strength outside the realm of common sense, the SSB rifle that could spit out an impossible amount of bullets; and had spent days living together with something as absurd as Alpha, Akira found it interesting how resilient this so-called common sense could be.

“He’s coming from above!!”

Akira aimed his SSB rifle up and pulled the trigger. One of his SSB rifles was spewing out homing armour-piercing frag grenades while the other one was spewing out anti forcefield rounds. Akira shot that barrage with such intensity, that he emptied his magazines in a blink of an eye.

Way above Akira, the hostile powered suit was flying so high that he was barely able to spot it. That powered suit aimed its guns at Akira and, just like what he had done just now, it also emptied its magazines, releasing a storm of bullets in Akira’s direction.

The bullets and explosives both rushed up and down past each other. Some of them collided and exploded in mid-air. The bullets that came from above landed and created large sinkholes in the ground. Some of them managed to hit Akira’s APC, shaking it violently, causing some of the armour tiles to fall. While the frag grenades flying upwards hit the side of nearby buildings and exploded. The shrapnel collided with the powered suit, resulting in flashes of light on the forcefield armour.

During that exchange between the two opponents with an overwhelming difference in size, both parties exchanged an uncountable number of bullets, heavily damaging the area.