Chapter 79 - Hunters In Debt (2/2)

Not too long after that, Guyver returned back with more stuff than when he left the room.

Dale quickly ran to him.

“Guyver!! Our vehicle’s auto-drive activated and it went back to the city!!”

In contrast to Dale who was panicking, Guyver looked completely calm.

“Yeah, I know, it was the monster.”

“Hah?!”

“A monster attacked our vehicle, well, it’s because we just left it there in the open after all.”

“What do you mean?!”

According to Guyver’s explanation, he encountered a monster when he was pa.s.sing near their vehicle. Although he was able to repel the monster back, it caused enough damage to activate the auto-drive function on their rental vehicle and Guyver was too busy facing the monster to stop their vehicle. It seemed that the explosion and the gunshots were from him fighting that monster.

Guyver unloaded the stuff that he was carrying on the floor.

“Fortunately, I was able to save the relics and our ammo reserve and equipments.”

Dale frowned, but his expression quickly turned grim.

“What exactly were you doing back then? If you could save all of this stuff from our vehicle, you should have had enough time to kill the monster, right?”

Guyver turned to Sebla and said.

“This guy said that he wanted to see our equipment, that was why I took these out of the vehicle. And as I was showing it to him, the monster suddenly came at us, you know. So it’s not like we were taking them out while fighting that monster.”

“But even so, you should have been able to protect our vehicle!!”

Guyver hesitated as he glanced at Sebla again.

“Well, uhh, I know that it’s my fault, but I can’t really protect the vehicle while also protecting this guy. So I ended up fighting that monster while using the vehicle as our cover, you see. It was also because I was caught off-guard since I couldn’t detect that monster thanks to the rain…”

Sebla looked apologetic and said.

“…I’m sorry.”

He then bent his neck so deep that no one there could see his face, because of that, Dale chose not to reprimand him any further. Since he thought that it was not a good thing to strongly blame Sebla in front of Sheryl, Dale just clicked his tongue and decided to hold himself from asking him to take responsibility.

But it did not change the fact that they lost their vehicle now. In that situation, in contrast to Dale, who was making a grim face, Guyver looked completely calm. It caused Dale to become even more annoyed.

“…You look pretty calm there, you know? How can you stay calm like that? We just lost our only means to return back home, you know?”

Guyver smiled lightly and said in a relaxed tone as if he was trying to calm Dale down.

“Just calm down. It’s true that we lost our vehicle. But fortunately, there’s still one vehicle left in this place, remember?”

Guyver then turned to Sheryl. Dale and Colbert followed suit and looked at Sheryl too. Sheryl’s expression stiffened.

Dale then apologetically asked her.

“Well, that’s how it is. So like, can you please give us a ride back to the city?”

Guyver too smiled and asked Sheryl.

“You’ll basically get 3 more Hunters to escort you for free, so I think it’s not a bad proposal, right? We can even drive the car for you if you want. It’s hard to fight monsters while driving the vehicle for your Hunter there, right?”

That was not a bad offer for Sheryl, but she then glanced at Akira to check with him. Being the escort was Akira’s job, if Akira seemed to have any objections, Sheryl would have to come up with some kind of explanation to reject that offer.

Akira did not change his expression as he carefully said to Sheryl.

“We don’t have much choice, let’s give them a ride.”

Sheryl then lightly bowed to Dale and his friends.

“Very well, Dale-san, Guyver-san, Colbert-san, we’ll be counting on you on our way back.”

“Just leave it to us.”

Dale confidently replied as the representative of that team.

Akira kept his eyes on Dale and his friends, to be honest, he was against giving them a ride back to the city. Although it was true that they would have more Hunters to help in case they had to fight monsters, it would also increase the unpredictable factors that he would have to handle.

But with that being said, if Akira declined that offer and left them in the wasteland, they might even start a fight. So to be honest, it was not like he had any other choice as he reluctantly agreed with their offer.

“Alpha, what do you think?”

“You definitely need to keep your eyes on them.”

“Thought so.”

Akira also figured that all of his good predictions would betray him and any of his bad premonitions would come into reality. Which in that case, he had to prepare himself to face it.

If he knew that his bad premonitions were accurate, then he could reduce the possible loss by getting himself ready to brace for it. If he did that, he would not sustain much damage even if it really happened. That was what Akira was telling himself in order to sustain his mental stability.

In the middle of the rain outside the mansion, there was a vehicle that was traversing the wasteland without any driver inside it, it was Dale’s vehicle. A part of its armour plating was crumbling down. Because of that, the control unit installed in that vehicle judged that the vehicle would be destroyed at this rate. As such the auto-drive function inside it activated and drove the vehicle back to the city on auto-pilot.

The display of that vehicle’s control unit was showing the reason as to why the auto-drive function was activated. It based its results on the findings of the diagnostic device installed in the control unit of that vehicle.

It was saying that the auto-drive function was activated because of the damage caused by gunshots or explosion. The scanning device installed in that vehicle did not detect any monsters around when that happened. The display was also showing a warning that shooting at the unit might cause a misunderstanding, in which case the evaluation of the customer might be lowered because of that.

The vehicle kept on heading towards the Kugamayama city while displaying that message which no one read.

It had been quite a while since Guyver returned back. Dale was checking the stuff that Guyver retrieved before their vehicle left. After checking the relics, he proceeded to check the equipment and the ammo reserves, his face suddenly turned grim.

“Hey! The decoy device is not here, nor the ammo.”

The decoy device referred to any type of device that could be used to attract monsters’ attention. There were a lot of ways to use them in the ruin, they could be used to gather monsters in one place and then take them out all together in one go, or they could be used to sneak from the monsters as they gathered in a certain place. These devices used all kinds of means like sound, heat, smell, light, or vibration to attract monsters.

Of course, if they were not careful when using the decoy devices, the Hunters could end up attracting powerful monsters from the deeper part of the ruin. There were various ways to activate them, some of them could be activated using remote activation, or time-set, or even by sensor trigger. Some of them could even be launched like a projectile.

These decoy devices were of course much more expensive than a normal bullet. And the decoy devices that they lost were all owned by Dale. So no wonder his face turned grim.

But then Guyver answered apathetically.

“They’re not there? They should be still in that vehicle then.”

“You didn’t take them out of the vehicle?”

“It’s not like I took all the equipment out from the vehicle. I only picked out the equipments that boy wanted to see.”

“…Dammit! Those are expensive, you know?”

Dale was extremely frustrated. If he knew this would happen, he would have used all the decoy devices when he escaped from that ruin. Even in the middle of that rain, they should at least still have some effects. If he had used the decoy devices to fool the monster back then, he would have had no need to take shelter from the rain in this mansion.

While Dale was still lamenting his loss, Guyver suddenly stood up and was about to leave the room again. But Dale annoyedly shouted at him.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’ll patrol the area while looking for relics in this mansion. After all, there might still be some monsters around.”

But then Dale snapped back at him.

“…Isn’t it because you roam around aimlessly that the monsters easily spot you? Isn’t that also the reason why our vehicle got attacked?”

Dale was basically blaming him for loitering around their vehicle and getting their vehicle attacked.

Guyver just laughed it off as he said.

“Even if you say so, there might still be some monsters around, you know? So it’s better if we keep our guards up, ain’t I right? Don’t worry, I won’t go near Sheryl’s vehicle. After all, I too don’t want to have to walk back to Kugamayama city.”

Guyver left the room after he said that. Sebla then followed behind him afterwards. When Dale saw that, he shouted at Guyver.

“Are you seriously going to bring that boy too!?”

“This boy also feels guilty about what happened and he’s trying to make it up for that blunder. So just let him do it, will you? You just stay here and protect Sheryl and the other children. If you don’t do at least that much, I feel like they won’t give us a ride back home after all. Later then.”

Guyver then left that room together with Sebla.

Akira kept looking at the door through which Guyver and Sebla exited the room. His bad feeling would not go away.

“Alpha, can you check what that Guyver guy is doing from here?”

“Unfortunately, they are outside my detection range. The rain really reduced my detection range after all.”

“I might be overthinking this, but in case if they mess with our vehicle, would you be able to tell from here?”

“If that’s the case, then there’s no need to worry. I’m connected to the control unit in your vehicle. Although I set the detection range to the minimum to conserve the energy, it would leave a record if anyone tries to approach it. You can look at that record from your information terminal, although, you won’t get the latest record unless you’re within the data transfer range.”

“Then it should be fine, huh…”

“Are you suspicious of them?”

“Yeah, I have a bad feeling about them. I always have a good sense when it comes to dangerous things, you see. There were times when I was saved thanks to that. Well, it’s not like everything will be fine as long as I don’t have any bad feelings, so I can’t completely put my guard down too.”

“…I see.”

Alpha thought that since Akira could connect to the old-world domain, he might have been receiving some kind of information without him even realizing it. He then might have been a.n.a.lyzing and interpreting that information unconsciously and mistook it as his intuition. After all, if he could come up with something without any basis, that would be easily interpreted as an intuition.

Although it looked like Alpha was smiling like usual, she was telling herself that she needed to be careful about that. Akira noticed that Alpha was staring at him. So he tilted his head and asked her.

“What’s wrong?”

“Hm? I was just thinking that you are being a bit too paranoid. It’s true that it’s a good thing to be careful of any possibilities, but it’s impossible to consider all kinds of possibilities in the first place, not to mention that it would be highly ineffective too. You can just leave that kind of things to me, I have confidence in my calculation ability after all!”

“Well, that’s true, I’ll be counting on you then.”

“Just leave it to me!”

Alpha smiled invincibly but gently to Akira.

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