Chapter 32 - Even 10,000,000,000 Aurum Is A Small Amount Of Money (1/2)

Chapter 32, Even 10,000,000,000 Aurum Is A Small Amount Of Money

Translator: Athena13

Editor: Silavin

Proofreader: p4553r

The gathering place for the patrol request was now filled with the Hunters who came back from the emergency request. Some of them were celebrating with their friends who returned alive; even if they were injured. Meanwhile, some of them grieved for their lost friends. The scene showcased that it was not only Akira but all the Hunters involved had also gone through a fierce battle during the emergency request.

But for now, Akira was just glad that he was able to return back alive.

“Everything is fine as long as it ends well. Although a lot of things have happened, it is finally over.”

Alpha smiled and said to Akira.

“Good work for today. Let’s take rest for the remainder of the day.”

“You’re right, I’ll take a good long bath today, after all, I couldn’t take one recently at all.”

Akira was beaming as he was looking forward to his bath time. But Alpha just smiled bitterly and destroyed his joy as she said.

“Akira, I have bad news.”

“…What is it?”

“The reward is still not transferred yet, so we don’t have any money to rent a room with a bath for today.”

Akira looked surprised and confused at the same time.

“W-what do you mean?”

“It seems that since there were a lot of Hunters who took the emergency request, it’ll take some time before they finish calculating the reward distribution. You can check your request history to see all the details.”

Akira grabbed and operated his information terminal in a panic to access his request history and opened the reward tab. He found out what Alpha said was really written in his terminal monitor.

“But I worked super hard in this request…”

Looking at how Akira was so dejected, Alpha smiled and tried to cheer him up.

“I bet they’ll transfer it by tomorrow. And even if you take a long bath today, there’s a good chance that you’ll fall asleep in the bath which is really dangerous. So with that in mind, let’s refrain from taking a bath today.”

“…Alright.”

Akira knew that it would be pointless to complain, thus he decided to just obediently accept her reasoning.

“Akira, putting that aside, what will you do with this bike? We don’t have enough money to rent a room in an inn with a parking lot, but if we just leave it in a random place, someone will steal it. Or do you want to sleep on the bike tonight?”

Akira frowned at Alpha’s logical suggestion. He was exhausted and wanted to avoid having to sleep in the back alley at all cost. But he also did not want someone else stealing his bike. And if he folded the bike and brought it back to his room, he might get scolded at by the innkeeper. Akira took some time thinking about his options before he came up with an idea.

“…Alright then, let’s leave the bike with Sheryl. She told me to visit her from time to time. She could lend me a parking spot. So I can visit her every time I go there to take my bike.”

Akira then rode his bike to Sheryl’s place.

***

Sheryl was trying to sleep in her private room when she heard someone knocking on the door of her room. She could not help but quickly get out of her bed and run towards the door, annoyed. Since she was about to sleep when she heard the knock, she shouted with irritation.

“What? I’m about to sleep here, you know!!”

“Boss!! Akira is here!!”

Sheryl immediately woke up from her half-sleepy state, she also understood very well why the other members of her gang woke her up. All the children there were too scared of talking to Akira without her around.

Sheryl immediately tidied up herself and hurried to meet Akira. She stopped right beside Akira who was waiting on top of his bike near the entrance and took a deep breath before speaking.

“I’m sorry for the wait, come in.”

“Thanks but it’s okay. Sorry for coming in this late, I have something that I want to ask you.”

“Please feel free to ask anything. I’ll do anything so long as it’s something that I can help with.”

Akira felt weird as Sheryl was smiling at him the whole time. He thought that her behavior should have gotten better since the last time he met her. But looking at this, it seemed that Sheryl’s behavior had actually gotten worse. Or this might be her real personality and this was how she would behave in front of Akira from here on out. As he was pondering about that, he decided to just drop the subject and go straight to the real reason why he came. He was already exhausted to think about anything else.

“Can you keep this bike here for me? I’ll come here again to take it when I need it.”

“I understand, I’ll take good care of the bike. Is there anything else? If there’s nothing else, would you please come in for a bit? You can go back after having a cup of coffee at least.”

As she spoke, Sheryl casually reached for Akira’s hand and stared into his eyes. She looked very happy for some reason. From her smile, the way she looked at him and grabbed his hand, how casually she invited him in… Akira thought that she was being a bit pushy. So he immediately pulled his hand back while being fl.u.s.tered and said.

“Nah, it’s already late today so I’ll return back to my room. A lot of things happened today and I’m really tired right now.”

Sheryl looked disappointed as she said.

“I see. Although I wanted to talk a lot with you because it has been quite a while since the last time you came, it is really unfortunate.”

“I’ll come again soon.”

“I’ll be waiting for you.”

Sheryl smiled as she saw Akira off, there was a shred of loneliness in her face.

Akira was a bit taken aback by what just happened, but he thought that it was still better than the last time. Plus, he was very tired at the moment, so he just decided to forget about it and headed back to the inn.

Sheryl told the young boy who was on the guard duty to put the bike inside the base.

“I don’t think I even need to tell you this, but be really careful when you move the bike. Tell the other kids not to mess around with the bike and also tell them that it’s Akira’s bike. I’m sure they know what would happen to them if the bike is stolen or broken. So be very careful with it, okay?”

“Okay, I understand.”

The young boy answered back nervously as he imagined the worst-case scenario.

Sheryl just smiled bewitchingly at that young boy.

“I’ll go and take a rest now. Good luck with your job tonight. Good night!”

The young boy was mesmerized for a few seconds, his face went beet red and looked fl.u.s.tered. Sheryl noticed his reaction before she went back to her room.

When Sheryl got back to her room, she looked at her smiling face in front of a mirror. But after that, she immediately stopped smiling.

[…It’s actually working. But why is it not working on Akira? Or is it that I just didn’t notice it?]

Sheryl knew that she had a good face and body. And she understood how to use it to coax other people. Smiling, holding hands, staring right into other person’s eyes, she knew that all of these would increase the effectiveness of her coaxing.

But it hardly affected Akira, that was why she tested it on the young boy who was on the guard duty. And just made-up gentle smile full of charm caused the young boy to react as she expected.

Her execution should have been flawless, but even so, Akira did not react at all and she was extremely disappointed by that.

“…I still have to work hard, huh?”

Sheryl mumbled those words before she prepared herself to go back to sleep.

***

On the next day, inside a cheap small room without a bath, Akira was sleeping like a log. He was dead tired after what happened the day before. Eventually, he opened his eyes. He was still in a daze as he looked around and saw Alpha smiling beside him.

“…Alpha, good morning.”

“Good morning, Akira. Reward from yesterday has already been transferred. You can check it if you want.”

Akira was still sleepy, but he immediately got up when he heard the word “reward” and operated his information terminal while still being half-asleep. But when he clicked the reward tab in the request history page and looked at the notification, all his sleepiness was blown away.

“12,000,000 Aurum!?”

Akira could not believe his eyes as he took another good look at his information terminal, he finally understood that it was indeed 12,000,000 Aurum. He was so surprised that he felt like he would faint.

The details of his reward payment were written on the page. It included the basic reward for the emergency request, plus a reward for fighting against 2 swarms of monsters, plus the money from the number of Hunters that he saved, plus the payment from the medicine box that he gave to the other Hunters, minus the price of the bike that he got as an upfront payment. But Akira did not read all the details.

“Well, this amount of money might not be that much when compared to the risk that you had to take for earning it.”

When Alpha spoke, it was as if she was not fully satisfied with the amount of the reward. This caused Akira to quickly come back to his senses.

“…But still, well, it’s true that I risked my life for the request and I almost got killed back then. Not to mention, we spent a lot of ammo just like the other Hunters, but still, you know…”

Akira started to doubt the worth of the reward money. But he was not familiar with both the difficulty of yesterday’s battles and the amount of money, thus he could not make any conclusion.

But his confusion was cleared when he heard what Alpha said next.

“I guess we should get some equipment with this spare change for today.”

“S-spare change!?”

“Akira, stop getting surprised for every single thing.”

“Ah! Even if you tell me not to get surprised, that is just impossible in this situation!! If 12,000,000 Aurum is still just spare change, then how much does it take for it to not be considered spare change?!!”

“As long as it’s in Aurum, even 10,000,000,000 Aurum is nothing but spare change.”

Although Akira was confused and did not understand the meaning of Alpha’s words, he calmed down and asked her.

“…What do you mean?”

“It will take a lot of time to explain everything. When you go to s.h.i.+zuka’s shop to restock ammo and buy new equipment later today, you can ask her about the equipment that you can’t buy using Aurum. I’m sure she’ll tell you about the equipment that you can’t buy with spare change. We’ll go there once you finish preparing yourself. But for now, how about you eat your breakfast?”

The moment Alpha mentioned breakfast, Akira immediately noticed that he had an empty stomach. He then remembered that he went straight to sleep without eating dinner last night because he was tired.

“…You’re right.”

Filling an empty stomach took the highest priority. So Akira just put aside all the questions he had and started preparing his breakfast.

Once he finished all of his preparation, Akira headed to s.h.i.+zuka’s shop. And as usual, s.h.i.+zuka was waving at him from the counter and welcomed him when Akira entered her shop.

“Akira, welcome, how’s the augmented suit? Is it useful to you?”

“Yep. It’s better than I imagined.”

s.h.i.+zuka looked glad as she saw Akira in a good mood. The press reported news about a huge swarm of monsters heading to the city, a swarm that was big enough for the city to gather and send the defense squad to intercept it. The report also said there were Hunters who joined the battle. s.h.i.+zuka had a feeling that Akira also joined that battle, so she was worried about him. But looking at how he was doing fine today, she thought that it was a needless worry.

“That’s good to hear. I was worried that you would get killed because I picked up a bad augmented suit. You’re a prime candidate for becoming this shop’s regular customer after all. So it would be bad if you get killed, you know.”

Akira smiled proudly in reaction to s.h.i.+zuka’s light joke.

“And I’m here today to take another step towards becoming your shop’s regular customer. I want to buy one more AAH rifle, as I thought, it would be bad if my rifle breaks when I only have one. And also, is there a type of rifle that works well against mechanical monsters? Since I have an augmented suit now, I don’t mind a heavy rifle.”

“So one AAH rifle and one more rifle to fight mechanical monsters, right? Well, there are a lot of rifles that you can use though, and all of them have a different price range. So how much is your budget?”

“Including the AAH rifle, I’m planning to spend no more than 10,000,000 Aurum.”

s.h.i.+zuka, who was smiling at Akira, looked so surprised that she stood in a daze for a while. She then looked a bit troubled as she said to Akira.

“…I’m sorry to ask you about this, but how are you going to pay for it? I do want to sell you the rifle, but since I’m a merchant, I can’t accept credit payment, you know? Or is that you’re planning to use the credit card from the Hunter Office? Although you might be eligible to pay it in instalments, it’s no different than taking a debt, so you should rethink it.”

“I’ll pay it in one go, so it’ll be okay.”

Akira answered back in a normal tone almost immediately, but that caused s.h.i.+zuka’s expression to change.

“…Is that so? You got your augmented suit 3 days ago, right? And you said that you didn’t do any dangerous work until you got it, right? In short, you only had 3 days, so how did you get that much money in such a short time?”

Although s.h.i.+zuka was smiling gently at him, Akira could feel pressure radiating from her smile. He then remembered that he had promised s.h.i.+zuka not to do anything too dangerous. So Akira tried to come up with an excuse in panic.

“W-well, about the money, you see.”

“Yep.”

“I-I encountered a group of monsters during yesterday’s patrol request. I didn’t expect that to happen, thus I got some unexpected extra reward too, and it was way more than I thought. Even I’m too surprised by that.”

“So in short, you went to do a dangerous request yesterday, right?”

“W-well, about that, I was only trying my best to survive…”

“And so you did something dangerous, right?”

s.h.i.+zuka’s voice carried a strong pressure.

“Yes…”

Akira looked down and confessed. s.h.i.+zuka’s worried face then turned stern.

“Are you alright? Did you get injured? I heard that yesterday’s battle was quite fierce.”

“As you can see, I’m okay. And it’s not like I’m using this augmented suit now because I’m injured and immobile.”

Akira was not lying, it was all true at least up until this point. But s.h.i.+zuka locked her stare at him and he could not endure it and he confessed.