Chapter 72 - The Buried Ruin (1/2)

Akira headed to s.h.i.+zuka’s shop to receive his new equipments.

When he entered the shop, s.h.i.+zuka waved at him.

“Welcome, Akira. Over here.”

s.h.i.+zuka smiled at him and then guided him to the backroom of the shop. The backroom was used as a warehouse for the stuff that she sold, thus it was filled with guns and ammo.

Akira noticed something and asked s.h.i.+zuka.

“By the way, is it okay to leave the counter unguarded?”

“It’s fine. It’s not like there are that many people who want to buy guns anyway, so it will not be much of an issue even if I leave the counter. Even when the city was attacked by a swarm of monsters not too long ago, there were more people coming in than usual but it was not that many to even form a line in front of the counter.”

“I meant it more like someone might steal something…”

“The rifles in the display are inside anti-thieving showcases, I have also installed security cameras, and have insurance with a private security company. So it’ll be fine.”

Even if someone was able to break the secured counter, take s.h.i.+zuka’s money from it, and escape from the security, she’ll be paid with the same amount of money that she lost. Thus it was highly unlikely that s.h.i.+zuka would suffer much damage that Akira thought she would.

Not to mention, the private security company that was working together with the insurance company, which s.h.i.+zuka was contracted with, would catch that person dead or alive. If that person was caught alive, he would be fined with all kinds of charges and would be forced to exchange his life, his body, basically just everything that he had to pay the fine. Depending on the severity of the fine, he might get his property seized, or forced into a labour work, or used as a guinea pig for developing new medicines or technologies.

Seeing how Akira still seemed to be worried, s.h.i.+zuka smiled at him and said.

“If you’re still worried that I’m leaving the counter for your sake, just think of it as me giving some efforts to get a regular customer. It should bother you less that way, right?”

Although Akira had spent 80,000,000 Aurum in s.h.i.+zuka’s shop, it did not seem that she had thought of him as a regular customer.

Either because it showed on his face or just simply because her intuition was very sharp, she noticed what Akira was thinking and so she continued.

“I’m really thankful that you’re contributing to the revenue of this shop. But to be honest, I hope that you would buy goods that I sell in my shop. I don’t get much profit from that augmented suit that I ordered from another shop, you see.”

Although s.h.i.+zuka was only joking, Akira fl.u.s.teredly replied.

“Ahh, well, I’ll do that from next time…”

“Fufufu, I’ll be waiting then.”

s.h.i.+zuka smiled invincibly, after which, she pointed at the entrance shutter of the warehouse.

“Now then, your new equipment set is over there.”

When Akira peeked in, he was a bit surprised as he happily said.

“Although I know the contents of my new equipment set from reading the doc.u.ment s.h.i.+zuka-san gave me, is it really okay to get this included too?”

s.h.i.+zuka smiled in triumph as she said.

“Of course, it’s still under the budget limit, you know.”

In front of Akira was a large-sized vehicle which was also included in his list of new equipment.

Akira and s.h.i.+zuka walked to that vehicle. Akira looked closely at it, wide-eyed. Although it looked not much different from the truck that he once rented from a rental shop and was just a common vehicle, it was still way better than a rental vehicle.

“Well then, let’s check if you have got everything that you ordered.”

s.h.i.+zuka then pulled out a doc.u.mented list of the items and handed a copy to Akira. They then checked the items with that doc.u.ment.

“So you get 1 4WD vehicle specially designed for traversing the wasteland, it’s Teros 97 made by Tatsumori Heavy Industry. Although it’s rather old, it’s fully equipped for exploring the wasteland. I’ve also exchanged the control unit with a new one.”

Akira scanned the vehicle, it was an open type vehicle without a roof designed so that Hunters could shoot their portable heavy weapons from the seat. Since it was a vehicle designed to be used in the wasteland, it could be said that it was made to fight against monsters. Thus, its body was even equipped with force field plating.

The force field plating was a type of armour plating that would activate a force field when hit by an impact to disperse the force of that impact. But after it activated a force field, the plating tile would peel and fall off. That was the reason why the wasteland was filled with used plating tiles.

“Then, 1 CWH anti-material rifle. 1 DVTS mini-gun. Both of them are installed into the vehicle so you can use them even without an augmented suit. Although you can demount them and use them just like a normal gun, you need to be careful since the DVTS mini-gun consumes a lot of ammo. I’ve also added some modification parts so it’s compatible with piercing ammo. Although it’s loaded with that type of ammo right now, you can also use normal ammo for it, so there’s no need to worry about that part.”

Akira then looked at the rear part of the vehicle. Behind the back seat, there was a removable tray equipped with a gun station. Akira’s CWH anti-material rifle and DVTS mini-gun was installed there. Although they lacked firepower compared to the preinstalled big guns in tanks, for the current Akira, they were already pretty powerful. If he was going to meet another swarm of monsters next time, he could at least put up a fight.

“Then there are also 2 information terminals for Hunters. Since they are strongly built, they should not break easily even if you use them rather crudely. Anything can happen in the wasteland, it’s better to have a st.u.r.dy information terminal just to be safe so that you can use it for sending SOS request during an emergency.”

Akira peeked at the driver seat, there were 2 durable-looking information terminals.

“Then 2 electric knives. Well, if you find yourself having to fight monsters using those knives, it means that you’re already in a pretty bad situation, but it’s at least better than nothing. Each knife can only be used for causing a single shock, if you’re lucky, it can shut down a mechanical monster with its shock.”

There were 2 knives beside the information terminal on the driver seat, they might be some kind of bonus items from buying the information terminal. Of course, for most Hunters, it would be suicide to challenge monsters in a close-range battle. Moreover, since most of the people knew that mechanical monsters were weak against electric shock, Akira thought that monsters must have at least adapted to that by now, and that must have been the reason why s.h.i.+zuka added ‘if you’re lucky’ when she said.

“Then lastly, the ERPS information-gathering device integrated augmented suit. Its name is PWD Silence. It’s inside that case over there together with all of its equipment set. The equipment set includes an aiming device that can be connected with the augmented suit, so be sure to install it later.”

Akira grabbed the handle of the case which was placed on the seat and pulled it out from the vehicle. But it was way heavier than he antic.i.p.ated, it took everything he had to drag it out from the vehicle even after he used both of his hands.

Seeing this, s.h.i.+zuka extended her hand from behind Akira and easily picked up the case that he was struggling to drag out. Akira, who saw that, gasped in amazement.

s.h.i.+zuka smiled and said.

“…It’s not me, it’s my augmented suit, okay?”

s.h.i.+zuka was using a simple augmented suit under her clothes. Akira remembered the time when she had mentioned it to him.

Although Akira’s reaction was not that big, it seemed to have offended s.h.i.+zuka.

“Eh, ah, yes, I know.”

Akira tried to gloss it over as he fl.u.s.teredly replied back.

s.h.i.+zuka took out the augmented suit from that case and helped Akira put it on.

Unlike his previous augmented suit, Akira’s new augmented suit did not have the skeletal-like frame. But instead, it had thin hard rubber linings on top of its artificial fibres that looked like capillary vessels. There were some holes that looked like a connection port on that hard rubber lining.

Akira looked curiously at those holes, s.h.i.+zuka then explained to him.

“You can use those ports to connect the augmented suit with small-sized information-gathering devices. I did explain that it’s an information-gathering device integrated augmented suit, remember? So, it has a small-sized information-gathering device installed in it. After all, it was designed to be used in tandem with information-gathering devices.”

“I guess this kind of thing is really expensive, right?”

“Of course a better augmented suit cost more money. But, this PWD Silence is rather special, I got it at a pretty cheap price. Compared to the other augmented suits that you can buy with the same amount of money, this augmented suit is basically one level better.”

“Rather special, huh?”

Akira knew that s.h.i.+zuka would not recommend any defective products to him, but it still bothered him when she said that it was rather special.

“Well, it’ll be fine. It’s not like it’s a used product with a shady background. It’s a new product and not one of those products that got called back in the past for some kind of defect in its design. It’s just that it’s very unpopular for some reason. On its day of release, a particular Hunter made a very bad remark about this product, and since that person was rather famous, the bad review quickly spread in the market. In the end, it became a failure product that didn’t sell at all. Later it was known that there was no defect in its design or functionality when another model with the exact same specs and design but with the different name was released and was selling well.”

After hearing s.h.i.+zuka’s explanation, Akira somehow felt a sense of affinity. Both him and that augmented suit had bad luck. Thus, it might be the perfect augmented suit for those who tried to fight back and rise up from that situation.

When Akira turned the augmented suit on, it tightened up and fit perfectly with his body shape, he did not feel any discomfort at all. Even after moving his body around, he still did not feel anything uncomfortable. If he could move this fluidly even before the fine-tuning, there should be no problem with the augmented suit just like s.h.i.+zuka told him.

Akira then closed the augmented suit’s case and put it back in his vehicle. Thanks to his enhanced physical strength due to the augmented suit, he was able to do that easily.

s.h.i.+zuka smiled at Akira as she said.

“And with this, we’ve confirmed that you received all your new equipment set. Are you happy with them?”

“Yes, thank you very much.”

“I’m glad to hear that, I hope that you’ll keep coming to my shop.”

s.h.i.+zuka took a step closer to Akira and gave him a hug.

“…I know that you’ll return back to doing your Hunter job, so please be careful out there, okay?”

“Yes.”

After s.h.i.+zuka let him go, Akira got into his vehicle. s.h.i.+zuka lightly waved at him as she saw him off, Akira lightly bowed back to her and turned the vehicle, he then drove back home.

When s.h.i.+zuka could no longer see Akira, she sighed and smiled bitterly.

“…This is bad; I am getting too attached. And here I thought I was more disciplined than this. I’m getting too emotionally invested in Akira that I’m now willing to go beyond my self-set boundaries. If it were not because Akira was also making a good contribution to my shop, this would have been really really bad.”

s.h.i.+zuka thought that at this rate, she would even become willing to face some monetary loss just to get Akira better equipment. She reminded herself to be more rational and to calm down before she returned back to the counter.

—*—*—*—

It had been 3 days since Akira got his new equipment set, and today, he was driving his new vehicle through the wasteland.

The control unit installed inside his vehicle was already under Alpha’s control. Thanks to that, she was able to drive the vehicle. But this time, she allowed Akira to take full control to get him used to drive his vehicle.

He had already gotten himself familiar with his new equipment, he had tried using his augmented suit to move around and took some test shots with his new guns. This was the first day he was going to do a real job after getting his new equipment.

He was heading to an area in the Kuzusuhara ruin that he only visited for a short time once before he took that request to the underground city. It was the area where the pointer was pointing to the underground when he was looking for old-world facilities using the information that he had gotten from the Lion Steel Corporation’s information terminal.

Although there were a lot of rubbles above the ground, there was no building standing out in that area. But just like the underground city of Kuzusuhara ruin, there might be a facility buried underground.

If he could find a load of old-world relics in an unexplored ruin, it would bring him a lot of money. This was the same exact reason that pushed a lot of Hunters to go out to the wasteland and continue exploring. Some of them got lucky and became rich overnight before retiring as a Hunter. This kind of success stories pushed more Hunters to go out to the wasteland hoping to find the same luck, but unfortunately, most of them got swallowed and vanished in the wasteland instead.

Akira was driving his truck following a guide shown on his vehicle’s control unit’s monitor. The monitor even showed the estimated time of arrival.

He then asked Alpha who was sitting next to the driver seat.

“But still, I never thought that I would get a vehicle this quickly, you know. With this, even if I find an unexplored ruin, the other Hunters should not be able to find out about it, right? If I remember it right, had it been a rental vehicle, other Hunters would be able to backtrace the log and find the unexplored ruin too, correct?”

“Yep, it’s also the same case for subjugation requests. By the way, since you’re not in a subjugation request this time, be careful with your ammo expense. After all, you won’t be able to get back the money that you spend on your ammo this time, that is, as long as you don’t bring back the dead bodies of the monsters that you defeated and sell them.”

“So it’s better if I bring them back to the city, huh? The Exchange Center in the Hunter Office should accept monster corpses too, right?”

“Let’s not do that now. It’s something that you only do after getting enough information about where to sell them, how much they’ll sell, and which parts of those monsters are profitable. Then you’ll have to think about the transportation and the escort too to make sure that you’ll still end up with profits. You’ll also need to learn how to kill those monsters without damaging the value of their organs. I’m sure you already know this, do you think someone would buy the carca.s.s of a monster that you turned into minced meat with the DVTS mini-gun?”

“Nope.”

“See? Moreover, it’s better to keep your load to a minimum since it’ll affect the speed of your vehicle. So it’ll only be a useless extra weight if you bring them back just out of a whim.”

“Roger that.”

When Akira was still living in the slum alley, he did think that it would at least get him some money if he brought back monster corpses to sell in the city. But it seemed that in reality, it would not bring him money if he just randomly killed monsters.

“But that aside…”

Akira glanced at Alpha who was sitting next to him.

Alpha was wearing a snow-white dress. The multiple layers of that snow-white dress looked luxurious and glossy, it gave off a holy and clean aura. Her hands were enveloped in white gloves that extended up to her wrist, thus hiding her long beautiful slim fingers from plain view. Her trouser also extended all the way to the floor, hiding her legs. It was as if her dress was designed to hide everything under her neck.

Normally, such a dress would get stuck here and there inside the vehicle and it would have been really hard to stay sitting on a running vehicle while dressed like that. But since Alpha was nothing more than an image, she was able to sit comfortably next to Akira.

“Can you do something about that dress?”

“Oh my, you don’t like it? I guess you don’t like this kind of dress, huh?”

“That’s not the problem here. It just doesn’t fit this place, so it’s like, it feels really weird. It’s not something that normal people would wear when they go to the wasteland, right?”

“I did tell you that I’m doing this intentionally, remember? This is so that I can easily find out if there are other people who can see me. That’s why I’m wearing this kind of dress to incite their reaction.”