Chapter 31 - Cannon Insect (2/2)

The last few cannon insects were only standing in their place without doing anything. They already ran out of ammo and there were no more resupplying robots around them. The Hunters just walked to them and crushed them in order to vent all of their pent up frustration and stress. Eventually, all the cannon insects turned into wreckages and the battle had come to a closure.

Akira let out a big sigh, he was very tired.

“…It finally ends, huh. Avoiding warheads while shooting at monsters… Although we somehow pulled it off, I don’t want to do that ever again.”

“That would have been a hard fight if it was not for this bike. As I thought, it’s still too early for you, Akira.”

“Is it because of my equipment? Or my skill?”

“Both. Or more like, you lack everything.”

“…Although I have an augmented suit now and your amazing support, I’m still not that good, huh?”

Akira was a bit depressed. He thought that he got a big power-up ever since he got his augmented suit. But now it was as if his incapability was thrown right at his face.

Alpha smiled and tried to cheer him up.

“If you can get strong in one night, then we won’t be doing all of those training up until now. So let’s keep on working hard in the future too.”

Akira just changed his mood and faintly smiled back.

“You’re right. There’s no other choice but to work hard, huh… That aside, I wonder how they are going to distribute the reward from this. We worked really hard this time, so I’m looking forward to a big reward. Although to be honest, I don’t really know how they are going to decide on my reward.”

“Well, I suppose it’ll be at least enough for you to stay in a room with a bath. So you can look forward to having a good rest today.”

“That’s true, I guess I’ll just do that.”

Akira took a short rest before returning back to the truck. When he arrived, the other Hunters who went back to the truck before him welcomed Akira.

“That was amazing. I thought you were planning to be a decoy since you went out only with an AAH rifle. But that was really something.”

“Well, it’s the famous AAH rifle after all.”

Although Akira was half-joking when he said that, the guy looked convinced with the answer.

“Are you, by any chance, an AAH fan? Is that gun a modified AAH rifle?”

“AAH fan? Well, I do like the rifle though. After all, I bought it from my acquaintance’s shop, but I didn’t particularly put any modification on it.”

“In that case, that would mean your acquaintance is actually selling modified rifles without telling you. Fans tend to do that in order to get more people loving their favourite gun. Well, if a Hunter like you really like that rifle, I bet there’ll be more people liking that gun in the near future. As expected of a famous rifle.”

Akira did not fully understand the reasoning, so he asked Alpha.

“Alpha, what is this AAH fan thingy?”

“I think it refers to the people who really like AAH rifle.”

“Well, I can at least understand that much though, but still…”

“If you’re curious about it, you should investigate it later by yourself. It’s also a type of training, after all.”

“…Alright.”

As Akira was still wondering about the meaning of those words, another Hunter came up to him. He looked hesitant when he spoke to Akira.

“I’m sorry but we got more injured Hunters. We already used all of our medicines. If you have some to spare, can you sell some to us again?”

“Sure, I should still have some left…”

As Akira lowered his rucksack and gun, pulled out a box of medicines, and was about to hand it over. He suddenly had a really bad feeling, as a matter of fact, it was the worst one that he felt that day. Suddenly a monster appeared near Akira and the other Hunters and it was running straight to them.

It was a relatively big sized biological monster with a powerful and durable body. It ignored bullets that were flying towards it as it shoved aside corpses and wreckages when it ran towards the truck before it was knocked down by a powerful blast.

The Hunters thought that it was dead, but it actually was only knocked unconscious. During the fierce battle that just happened, they did not have the time to check if all the downed monsters around them were really killed. Thus they left this monster alone thinking that it was dead.

Once the monster regained its consciousness, it followed its b.e.s.t.i.a.l instinct to attack the nearest human, and the nearest human was Akira.

Akira moved to shoot that monster, but he realized that he had no gun in his hands. He quickly tried to reach for his gun that he dropped on the ground. But that sequence of thinking made his reaction slow down even more.

Akira’s late reaction turned his situation for the worst as the monster was already right in front of him with its big mouth wide open.

[I won’t make it in time!!! I’m really dead now!!]

As the world felt like it was running in slow motion, Akira could feel the death that was creeping onto him.

In the next moment, Akira’s augmented cloth moved on its own. His whole body rotated with his left leg as a pivot as Akira raised his right leg at the same time. The augmented suit ignored its user’s safety and mustered all of its strength, thus for a spare second, Akira’s strength and ability broke through the limit of a mere human and transcended into the realm of a superhuman.

Akira’s right leg sliced through the air and drove into the head of the monster that was right in front of him with enough power that it would be able to easily send metal wreckages flying.

But even with that much power, it was not able to kill the monster. Although it recoiled back from the kick, it did not fall to the ground. The strong shock on its head only stopped its movement momentarily.

During that opening, Akira’s arm quickly reached for his AAH rifle on its own. Although he was still very confused, Akira quickly regained its composure as he immediately shoved his gun into that monster’s mouth and pulled the trigger. As he held the trigger of his gun, the bullets spewed out from its muzzle tore through the monster’s head from the inside.

But even so, it was only enough to fatally injure the monster and not enough to kill it. Akira firmly held the trigger and emptied his magazine into the monster’s mouth. There was a moment of silence after which the monster’s large body fell down to the ground and never moved again for the second time.

Akira was breathing roughly.

“W-was that you who moved my body, Alpha?”

“Yep. You should quickly treat your wounds before your augmented suit stops working.”

“Stop working? Is it broken?”

“It’s running low on energy. Although I was able to increase its power output above its limit for a few seconds, it consumed a huge amount of energy in that short amount of time. I didn’t have any other choice back then, you know. But since I pushed it past its limit, it might be broken, we should make a thorough check later.”

Akira sat down. His whole body was pulsing in pain, especially his right leg.

“…My right leg, I wonder if it is broken.”

“Well, I did harden the augmented suit as hard as it could, but since it’s not designed with user protection as one of its main functions, there was a limit on how hard it can go. If you don’t heal your leg, you won’t be able to walk back home you know. So you should quickly treat your leg.”

Akira quickly picked up his rucksack and took out some medicines.

“I just need to swallow them, right? Since it’s a broken bone, it’s not like I should open up my leg to apply the medicine directly onto my broken bone, right?”

“In the worst-case scenario, you have no other choice but to do that, you know? For now, you just need to straighten your broken bone and swallow the medicine. It might take some time to fully heal your broken bone, but I think that will be fine at the moment. So, should I help you straighten the broken bone?”

“…Yes, please.”

After that, Akira’s hands started moving on their own and grabbed his right leg. Alpha then partially turned off some parts of the augmented suit, thus the augmented suit regained its elasticity and weight. And with that, the whole augmented suit forcefully straightened Akira’s broken bone.

Intense pain immediately a.s.saulted Akira, he gritted his teeth and endured the intense pain. After that, Akira took his medicine box and poured all the medicines inside that box into his mouth. As he swallowed all of those medicines, the a.n.a.lgesic inside the medicine immediately dulled his pain, but even so, he could still feel the healing nanomachines quickly gathering around his right leg.

As he strongly squeezed the empty medicine box, Akira’s eyes met with the eyes of the guy from before. He quickly grabbed his rucksack and confirmed that he did not have many medicines left with him. He hesitated for a bit before he decided to hand over one box to that man. That Hunter received the box, stopped for a moment and then returned the box back to Akira. Akira looked puzzled when that Hunter did that, but he just smiled and said to Akira.

“There’s no way I can accept that box when someone who’s as good as you make that face. Not to mention that you already gave me a box before.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, the Hunters are not that badly injured anyway. They’ll be okay if we just let them rest.”

The other Hunters came running as they heard gunshots, then the guy in front of Akira shouted at them.

“There was a monster that just lost consciousness and was not dead yet!! Go and check the other monsters, if you find any of them with their head intact, shoot them a few times in the head as a precaution!!”

The other Hunters quickly picked up their guns in panic. All of the Hunters there, including Akira, had lowered their guard as they thought that the battle was over, thus it took some time before the Hunters were able to return their guard back up.

The Hunters who just repelled the a.s.sault from the cannon insects swarm were once again waiting for reinforcement.

Akira used his injury as a reason to take a rest as the other Hunters kept monitoring the surroundings. The reason why none of them complained when Akira was resting was because they acknowledged Akira’s hard work.

Akira started to prepare himself for another fight. Of course, he hoped that there would be no more battle, but the world did not care about his wishes. Thus he had no other choice but to prepare himself.

He replaced the power source of his augmented suit with a new energy pack before his augmented suit ran out of energy and turned into a mere dead weight heavy suit. He then took a full magazine and inserted it into his AAH rifle. He also attached some spare magazines around his augmented suit. When he finished, his right leg was almost fully healed. With this, he was ready to go for another round.

Akira stared inside his rucksack and let out the biggest sigh of the day. He only had a spare amount of reserve ammo and healing medicines.

“…I don’t have much left, I need to replenish my ammo reserve when I get back… I’m going to get a reward from this, right?”

Alpha smiled and tried to cheer him up.

“I don’t know for sure how much that bike is, but you fought quite a lot today, so I’m sure the reward will be enough to cover it. So don’t worry, it’ll be fine.”

“Is that so? Well, I guess you’re right.”

Akira decided to just accept her explanation. Although he remembered Alpha once said to him that she did not know for sure how much reward he would get, Akira just decided to forget that part for now. After all, he would feel better this way.

As the day turned darker and the sun was about to set, reinforcements finally arrived.

They decided to tow back the broken truck back to the city. As they were preparing to tow back the trucks, Akira just sat on his bike and waited for them to finish. Suddenly, Kibayas.h.i.+ waved at him. He looked like he was in a good mood.

“Yo there! So you’re still alive, huh!! I heard everything from the other Hunters, you did a crazy thing back there. To be honest, I thought that you’d be definitely dead by now. It seems that my ability to judge people has gone bad, huh. But at least, I was correct when I said that you are a Hunter who would challenge a reckless, impossible and even futile things.”

Akira frowned a bit when Kibayas.h.i.+ said that he thought Akira was definitely dead by now. But he was able to understand Kibayas.h.i.+’s opinion, thus he controlled himself and didn’t retaliate.

“…The bike was really useful, so thank you for the bike.”

“I’m glad to hear that. It was the right choice to give you that bike. And that’s doubly true if it helped you do those crazy things.”

“Ah, right. About the emergency request that I accepted, what should I do before it’s considered finished? Is it until these Hunters return safely back to the city?”

“Ah, about that, wait for a sec.”

Kibayas.h.i.+ pulled out his information terminal and operated it.

“Alright, I’ve finished registering your accomplishment for the emergency request. You can do whatever you want now.”

“Is that it? Is it really okay not to escort those Hunters back to the city?”

“Yeah, after all, we came here because of another aid request. The monster group that headed to the city from Kuzusuhara ruins was already annihilated by the defense squad. So that emergency request has ended. Because of that, we have the leeway to send some people to help other Hunters now.”

“Ohh, I see.”

“Now that you mention it, do you want to take the aid request too? If you want to accept that request, I’ll help you with the registration here and now.”

Akira looked so tired as he shook his head.

“…No thanks. Since I’m done with the emergency request, I’ll go ahead and return back to the city first. After all, I already used most of my ammo reserves and not to mention that I’m really tired now.”

“Well, that’s just too bad. I was actually hoping to see what kind of crazy things you would do if we get attacked on our way back, you know.”

“…Hahaha, give me a break already. Well then, I’ll head back first.”

“Be careful on your way back, okay? If you’re going to die, make sure that you die doing something really crazy. So don’t drop dead because of something lame like tripping off your bike, okay?”

Akira felt even more tired as he saw Kibayas.h.i.+ so excited and in such a good mood. He then let out a sigh and went ahead to the city.

As Kibayas.h.i.+ was seeing Akira off with a big smile, another Hunter Office staff came to him and reported.

“Kibayas.h.i.+-san, I’ve checked the history log data from the battle. It seems that the damage on the truck was mostly done on its driving function, thus we were able to easily retrieve the data, but… There’s this one weird data…”

“Weird data?”

“For some reason, there’s this one Hunter who made a strange move, or more like, a reckless move. There’s this ridiculous data saying that this Hunter charged right into the monster swarm all alone and started shooting at the swarm. It might also be because of some kind of a malfunction in the information gathering device though…”

Kibayas.h.i.+ burst out in laughter when he heard that report. He then said to the other staff.

“Ask the other Hunters to check whether that data is correct or not. No, wait, I’ll do that. Don’t go ahead deleting the data even when you think that it’s from a malfunction, okay? Aaaah, or more like, just send the data to me and I’ll check it later. I’ll go and ask the Hunters in the tray, you just go ahead and start driving once the preparation is complete.”

“Yessir.”

That staff then returned back to his job of preparing the truck for moving out. As for Kibayas.h.i.+, he smiled and mumbled.

“…That boy, he was crazy enough to even make the staff doubt the data huh. That’s really nice!! It’s been so long since the last time I met a Hunter with this much zest!!!”

Kibayas.h.i.+ was in a really good mood that day.

Silavin: G.o.d. It seems like his body is falling apart. I wonder if this was what caused the others that Alpha had dealings with to break down?

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