Chapter 5 - The Value of One’s Result (2/2)

“I-I see, you’re right… It’s not like you’re planning to abandon them, right?”

“If I was planning to abandon them, I would’ve been running away by now.”

“I-I see.”

Darbe was immensely annoyed at his friend who he was talking with. He thought that if only these guys didn’t stop him, then they wouldn’t be in that situation.

—

Akira took a long detour to avoid encountering Darbe and his gang. Finally, he arrived back to where they were. He then carefully took aim at one of the boys’ head while keeping watch at the other children who were already injured. The dead kid, the fainted kid and the kid who saw Akira and whispered something, all of them were silenced as Akira pulled the trigger. There were 3 gunshots followed by 3 bodies rolling over the ground with holes in their heads.

“…That’s 3, only 2 more left.”

“Get back to hiding now.”

“Roger that.”

Akira withdrew to another alley and hid himself. As Akira rested his back on the alley’s wall and straightened his breathing, Alpha gave him her next instruction.

“Akira, take out the medicine that you didn’t sell and eat it.”

“But I’m not injured, you know?”

“Just take it, take about 10 pills.”

Akira was puzzled, but he immediately took out the medicine box from the paper bag and opened its seal just like instructed. He took out a few pills into his hand.

[…Since this is also a relic of the old world, then this is the medicine of the old world, right? This might be a super effective medicine. It feels like it’s such a waste to take it while I’m not injured at all… But Alpha told me to take it, so…]

Since it was Alpha’s instruction, it must have some kind of reason behind it. As Akira convinced himself, he swallowed the medicine.

—

Hearing the sound of gunshots, Darbe and his friends hurriedly ran back to his injured friends. Darbe’s face twitched in anger looking at their dead bodies.

“Dammit, he circled around us, huh?!!”

Darbe’s friends arrived behind him. Their face turned pale as they saw the dead bodies of their friends. One of them took a few steps back from Darbe before shouting at him with grim expression.

“I-it’s your fault!! It’s all your fault!! It’s because you shot that boy!!!”

After shouting, he ran as fast as he could, leaving Darbe behind. As he ran, another gunshot reverberated. It was Akira who fired that shot, it missed. The boy kept running deeper into the slum while screaming and vanished.

Darbe was also thinking of running away but he couldn’t. The hatred from seeing his friends getting killed and the scorn towards his friend who left him, pushed him forward. He just stood there without running away and shouted.

“That d.a.m.n kid!! He’s s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with me!!”

There was only one branch road from where Akira could take a shot at the boy who was running. Darbe just shoved aside his fear of getting killed and ran towards the branch road.

As for Akira, he was getting himself ready for a shoot out against Darbe. He hid himself in the alley as Alpha was standing in front of him and telling him Darbe’s position.

Akira was planning to shoot Darbe’s head the moment he peeked into the alley, and for that, Akira was holding his gun with both of his hand and getting himself ready as he waited for that moment.

But something unexpected happened. Akira thought that Darbe would stop and carefully try to take a peek into the alley. But on the contrary, Darbe threw caution out the window and blazed into the alley.

Darbe thought that Akira would have run deep into the alley, that’s why he sprinted full speed and plunged into the alley, but instead, he found Akira standing right beside him. He never expected such scenario.

Both of them were surprised. They found themselves in a close distance between each other. They hurriedly pointed their guns at each other and pulled the trigger at the same time.

Both of them fell to the ground, the bullet hit each other’s arm. Both of them were severely injured. But as they were on the ground and writhing in pain, they thought of the same thing, the opponent was still alive and that shot wasn’t enough to kill the enemy. Thus they hurriedly tried to finish their opponent and pointed their guns at each other again while ignoring the pain.

When Darbe was about to point his gun, he already found himself at the end of Akira’s muzzle. Akira pulled his trigger and a bullet flew from his gun and hit Darbe in point blank range. It wasn’t a killing shot, but it was enough to rob Darbe from his power to fight back. Darbe dropped his gun and fell down into the pool of his own blood, thus ending his short life.

After killing Darbe, Akira immediately looked at his injuries. There was a hole in his dress and quite a lot of blood was flowing out from it. It was a severe wound. But even so, he did not feel his movement dulled, he did not even feel any pain. As he was wondering at what was happening, Alpha suddenly shouted at him with a serious face.

“Akira, you have to tend to your wound.”

“Alpha, for some reason, I don’t feel much pain…”

“That’s the effect of the painkiller, the medicine that you took before. But it doesn’t heal the wound.”

“I see, so that’s why you told me to take the medicine beforehand, huh?”

It was all thanks to the painkiller that he could still move just fine. Moreover, since he got shot right after he took the medicine, he could immediately focus on tending his wound. Although the effect was light, it allowed Akira to survive.

“First of all, swallow 10 pills of the same medicine. Then take another 10 pills, open them up and sprinkle them onto your wound. And finally, dress the wound with the healing tape… Hurry up, if you faint and become unable to tend your wound, then you’ll die.”

Akira was somehow able to move his body that had gone numb. He took the paper bag that he dropped not too far from him and swallowed 10 pills. And then he opened up 10 pills with his still shaking hand and sprinkled them directly into his wound. The very same pain as when he got hit, a.s.saulted him as he sprinkled the painkiller on his wound. He just clenched his teeth and somehow was able to bear the pain. And when he was done, he turned to Alpha while looking worried.

“A-Alpha, i-is this good enough?”

“Applying the painkiller directly to the wound would reduce the effectiveness of the painkiller. But on the other hand, that would let the nanomachine in the medicine to work directly on your wound, thus making it more effective. So just bear with it.”

Then for the final touch, Akira pulled out the object that looked like a bandage from the paper bag and dressed his wound with it.

“That should be enough. Let’s hurry up and move away from this place. It’s dangerous if we stay here for long.”

“I don’t even know if I can move… But I have to get away from this place no matter what or something bad will happen.”

Akira was somehow able to bear with the pain when he stood up and started walking. Every time he took a step, he could feel pain stung his whole body. But he managed to keep walking. Looking at how bad his wound was, it was actually a miracle for him to be able to move around like that. It only showed just how amazing the medicine from the old world was. It was able to heal him that much in such a short time.

But Akira was in so much pain that he didn’t have the leeway to think about that at all. His face was twitching with pain as he kept walking.

Alpha looked at Akira who seemed like he was so close to fainting. To keep him conscious, she cheered him on with a serious face.

“Give your best!”

“Yeah”

Akira somehow managed to get to a different sleeping place from yesterday. He tried to keep himself awake as he was preparing his sleeping place, while watching his surroundings and being more careful than usual. He thought that he would definitely get killed if someone approached him in that situation. So he hid himself in the back alley in such a way so that no one would be able to find him. And when he finished preparing his sleeping place, he just dove into it and laid on his side.

“…Alpha, I’m on my limit. I’ll sleep now, goodnight.”

Alpha replied back with a soft voice while looking worried.

“Goodnight, have a good rest.”

As Akira closed his eyes while still holding off the pain, his consciousness immediately flew off.

[…I hope I will still be able to open my eyes again tomorrow morning.]

Although he just made a wish there, he himself didn’t know to whom he was wis.h.i.+ng to.

—

Strangely enough, Akira woke up into a refres.h.i.+ng morning. As he was surprised by what happened, he was deeply moved when he found himself still alive.

“…I’m still alive, huh… Hm?”

When he checked his arm that was feeling weird, he found something on the place where he got shot yesterday. After looking closer, it was as if something was lodged in between his skin and the healing tape. So he cautiously peeled off the tape and found a malformed bullet. It seemed like the bullet was stuck in his body, and his body had pushed the bullet out.

“…Is this the bullet from yesterday? So it was stuck inside my body, huh?”

“That seems to be the case. It looks like the nanomachine tried to get the bullet out from your body but then it was obstructed by the tape. It might be a good idea to take the tape off.”

Akira was a bit surprised to find Alpha right beside him, but he was not as surprised as he was yesterday. This just means that Akira started to get used to having Alpha beside him.

After he forcefully pulled out the bullet that was planted on his skin, he put the tape back on the wound but did not feel pain any longer.

Alpha smiled again.

“Akira. Good morning. You’ve had a rough day yesterday but… Did you sleep well?”

“Yeah. I really had a good night’s sleep… I even overslept for a bit.”

The sun was already up, so it was way over Akira’s usual waking time. His stomach grumbled, he had not eaten anything since the night before and at this rate he would miss his morning meals too.

“Oh c.r.a.p!! The food distribution hasn’t ended, right?!”

Akira hurriedly went to the food distribution place and he barely made it in time.

Originally, he was planning to go to the Kuzusuhara City ruins, but he canceled it due to Alpha’s instruction. In the end, he decided to take rest for a whole day to fully recover his condition.

It was actually weird that he only needed a day’s rest after getting shot at. Akira himself understood that it was indeed weird. But the pain had already gone and the numbness had, for the most part, disappeared. Akira finally realized that it was all thanks to the medicines from the old world. He was feeling awed as he was taking a rest in the alley.

[The medicines and the tape are both made by the old world civilization. So they are relics from the old world, they should fetch quite a lot of money if I sell them. As I thought, it was such a waste to use them… But then, I would’ve died otherwise.]

There are many objects created by the advanced technologies of the old world that can’t be reproduced by the current technologies. And that is not only limited to medicines.

As an example, once, a certain small knife relic was found in the ruin. It could easily cut anything by only applying a very small amount of force, forget fish or meat, it could even cut steel and concrete. While at the same time, it couldn’t cut human flesh no matter how hard you tried. At a glance, these two functions seems to contradict each other. Moreover, it wouldn’t get dull even after you use it to split steel into two, it wouldn’t rust even if you get it wet and it wouldn’t corrode even when you dip it in aqua regalia. When the researchers from the companies turned off the safety check of the knife, it cut a tank, that was totally unreachable to it, into two before disintegrating it into nothingness.

More than half of the current mathematical knowledge were developed by decoding the mathematical knowledge of the old world. But even for the researchers who had spent their whole life studying, there were still so many relics that they were using without adequate knowledge of its operation. That’s exactly why people will pay a lot of money for these relics. Also, the real pleasure of being a Hunter is using these relics yourself rather than selling them.

His survival was all thanks to that highly effective medicine relics of the old world. Thus even for Akira who was not really knowledgeable, knew well that the medicines could get him a lot of money if he sold it.

But, he hadn’t realized yet that something much more amazing than the medicines, was right beside him.

Silavin: Nothing can replace a Wifu, Akira. Nothing.

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