Chapter 69 - An Unlucky Girl (2/2)

And then, a disaster that often befell most of the green Hunters, who wandered through the slum city, also befell Akira.

“Akira, someone took your wallet.”

“Wha-!?”

Akira half-shouted, he quickly checked his pocket, and as Alpha said, he could not find the wallet that was inside the pocket.

“Be more careful next time. I might be able to protect you from pickpockets when you’re using an augmented suit that I can control, but as long as you’re not using an augmented suit, you should handle this kind of thing yourself, okay?”

Alpha just gave him a light warning as if it was not that big of a disaster to her. The wallet that Akira lost contained 100,000 Aurum. Although it was a big amount of money, compared to the money that he earned lately, it was not big enough to cause any inconvenience. So Alpha just brushed it off as the fee for a small lesson for teaching Akira to be more careful.

But there was a big difference between Akira and Alpha as to how they took this incident.

Akira took a few seconds to register, process, and understand what had just happened. After a few seconds of silence where Akira did not move from where he was standing, he finished a.s.sessing his situation and immediately said.

“…Who took my wallet?”

In his calm emotionless voice, there was a fit of dark foreboding anger seething under it. Behind his calm expression, Akira was leaking out an aura showing the sharpness and readiness to fight.

“Alpha, do you know who took my wallet?”

In order to not cause any suspicions, Akira asked that through telepathy. It showed that he had regained his calm and composure, enough for him to remember to talk with Alpha through telepathy.

Alpha was surprised by how angry Akira was. At the same time, she took this chance to gather more information about him and readjusted her image of Akira inside her mind. With this, she was able to understand his character at an even deeper level.

Alpha quickly answered back.

“It’s that girl.”

At the same time as Alpha pointed her finger, Akira’s vision enhanced, allowing him to see through obstacles. His attention quickly zeroed onto a young girl who was already in the back alley. He immediately started running the moment he found his target.

Alna was looking through the insides of Akira’s wallet.

“…Oh!! 100,000 Aurum! Lucky!! This should be enough for a few days.”

Alna was beaming since she got more money than she thought she would get this time. But that smile immediately vanished.

“…This should be enough for a few days, but after that…”

Alna cut her sentence there. She did not want to say its continuation nor to think about it. It was exactly because she understood the meaning behind it.

It was an extremely difficult endeavor to become successful in the slum city. Of course, being successful here did not mean being rich, but getting a stable income enough for one’s living through honest work would be enough. Even so, getting to that point was an extremely difficult struggle.

In order to get an honest job, one would need to have enough knowledge and education. But in order to get enough education, one would need enough money and connection. Most of the residents of the slum city did not have the knowledge to get that money nor enough money to gain such knowledge.

Alna knew somewhere inside her heart that her future was bleak. She would definitely ruin her own life one day. There was no way she could keep on living as a pickpocket. After all, if she kept doing that, she would be found one day, captured, and made to pay the price for everything that she had done.

She had no idea what kind of price she would have to pay. It might be just getting beaten up and then dumped in the back alley, or she might get raped and then left battered on the roadside, or maybe she would be simply killed. In the worst-case scenario, she might be put in a living h.e.l.l where death would have been better.

But with that being said, Alna had no other skill that she could rely on to survive other than picking pockets. And since she was able to survive until now, that particular skill of hers was very well polished.

Alna shook her head to help her forget her thoughts.

“…Let’s stop here. There’s nothing I can do about it even if I start thinking about that here. Now that I have some money with me, let’s just go and grab some food, an empty stomach will only make me more depressed.”

Alna started walking toward the shop that she often visited.

She suddenly heard a loud sound coming from behind. She quickly turned back to check the source of that loud sound. On the other end of the narrow alley, she could see Akira running in her direction. That loud sound came from when Akira kicked the obstacles out of his way as he ran through the back alley.

Akira’s eyes met Alna’s. Both of them froze for a few seconds before Alna regained her composure and started running as fast as she could toward the opposite direction from where Akira was.

Alna quickly understood that Akira found out that she took his wallet and he was there chasing for her.

[How did he find out? It didn’t seem like he noticed anything when I took his wallet!! And even if he did, there’s no way he would know that it was me?! And that too!! It doesn’t seem like he was randomly looking for me and found me by pure coincidence!! He ran here fully knowing my location!!]

Alna did not know what kind of person Akira was. But that was not the only reason why she was running as fast as she could, it was because she saw Akira’s expression.

“He’s going to kill me!! He’s definitely going to kill me if I get caught!!”

Alna, who could feel the intense killing intent from Akira, ran as fast as she could for her life.

The moment Alna started running, Akira snapped back to his senses, he quickly fixed his stance and took an aim with his AAH rifle. But before he could pull the trigger, Alpha warned Akira who had lost his calm.

“If you pull the trigger, you might hit innocent people. Are you sure you want to do that?”

Alna and Akira were not the only people in that small alley. Although it was not like it was filled with people, there were quite a lot of people there. Some of them were merchants who could not open their shop in public, some of them were customers and guards of those shops. There were also people, who had lost their place, sleeping in the corners of that alley.

Although Akira’s shooting skill was way better than before, at the moment, he had no augmented suit that would allow Alpha to a.s.sist his aim and he was using a brand new gun that had never been used before. Thus he had no confidence that he could shoot accurately.

When he was hesitating, the people around him noticed that Akira had his rifle out and ready to shoot, they started to panic as they moved away from Akira. But at the same time, they also blocked his line of sight at his target.

Akira himself had no wish to get other innocent people involved. So he decided to pull back his rifle and started chasing Alna again.

The distance between Akira and Alna was not getting closer.

It was mainly because Alna could use her smaller stature to easily pa.s.s through the narrow alley.

On the other hand, Alna could not completely break away from Akira’s chase since Alpha was always informing Akira of her exact location.

Even after taking so many forked turns hoping that Akira would lose her, he was still able to precisely know which way she went. Thus Alna started to panic.

“How!? How does he know exactly where I am?! … Don’t tell me-“

Alna thought that Akira’s wallet might be equipped with a tracker. If that was the case, it was no wonder why he could accurately pinpoint her location. So she threw Akira’s wallet toward his direction.

When he saw his wallet fly above his head, Akira stopped, turned, and picked up his wallet.

Akira more or less regained his calm after he got his wallet back. The expression on his face also loosened.

Now, if the money in the wallet was still there, then Akira would get back everything that he had lost, and he would be able to clean his history of getting his wallet stolen. If it was the past Akira from when he was still living in the back alley, he would have never allowed such a blunder.

He then would be able to learn from this incident and be more careful next time, thus closing the incident there.

When Akira checked the inside of the wallet, it was empty, all the money in it was already taken out.

Akira’s face immediately turned stern.

“…Alpha.”

“Over there. I won’t be able to pinpoint her location if she’s too far from me. So if you want to chase her, you need to hurry up.”

“…Roger that.”

Akira answered back swiftly with a voice that would send a chill down to one’s spine. He then started running again.

So in short, that incident did not end there. Akira blazed through the alley once again, chasing after Alna.

Alna, who was running through the back alley of the lower district, stopped as she was running out of breath. She then took a long breath and tried to calm herself. Her gaze was fixed at the alley that she just ran through, but she did not see Akira there. Even after she somehow calmed herself and adjusted her breathing, she still did not see Akira.

“D-did I lose him…? So that wallet was really equipped with a tracker, huh? Well, I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

Alna felt relieved and smiled. But that smile immediately vanished, it was because she saw Akira running towards her through the alley.

“…You gotta be kidding me?!!”

Alna was so surprised that she reacted late. When she started running again, the distance between her and Akira was already not that far.

Alna was focused on running. Her face was distorted due to fear, she was even half-crying. As she desperately ran away, she did not confirm what was in front of her before jumping out from the alley to the big road in the middle of the lower district. Because of that, she crashed right onto someone who was just pa.s.sing through that road.

“Whoah!! Careful there!!”

Alna looked terrified as she turned toward the person that she just crashed onto. It was a young Hunter. Looking at his equipment, he seemed to be a pretty skilled Hunter.

His expression was showing that he was angry, but the moment he saw Alna’s frightened expression, his rage vanished. He then worriedly asked Alna.

“Are you alright?”

He smiled as if to calm Alna who seemed horrified. The moment Alna saw his handsome smiling face, she forgot her situation and was captivated by his smile, fear disappeared from her expression, her cheeks turned red as she let out a small gasp.

But the moment Alna could feel Akira’s presence coming from behind the alley, she quickly snapped back to her senses. Her eyes s.h.i.+fted back and forth between the terror coming from deep beyond the alley and the dazzling smile that gave her hope.

Alna decided to take the bet as she hugged that boy and screamed.

“Please help me!! I’m being chased!!”

<script>