Chapter 80 - Traumatized Hunter (1/2)

Translator: Athena13

Editor: Silavin

Proofreader: p4553r

A few minutes pa.s.sed by since Guyver and Sebla went out of the room.

While in the room, Dale was showing the relics that he gathered that day. Both Sheryl and her underlings were looking at those relics with full interest.

Dale proudly told them the tale of those relics.

“Of course, the people during the old-world did all kinds of jobs and it seems there were similar companies compared to the current age. It’s still unclear whether they had those companies since they were also human like us, or it is because the people of this era are imitating the old-world people. Well, putting that aside, take a look at this relic. This is a Yasunabas.h.i.+ Corp logo. There were bad and good companies among the old-world companies. Yasunabas.h.i.+ was one of those good old-world companies, so people are willing to buy their products at a good price. If these people are not being careful, they would buy anything at a good price as long as it has this logo. Because of that, some bad Hunters make counterfeits by affixing forged logo of Yasunabas.h.i.+ Corp onto some random garbage that they find. And it’s not rare for relics exchange centres to get fooled by that. But of course, the relics exchange centres that properly examine the relics can quickly identify these fakes. I heard that it’s easy to identify fake relics since this logo is printed with some kind of advanced old-world technology. After they discovered that, some Hunters who got lucky and found an old-world printing machine started using that machine to print this logo. And that’s how these relics fakers and the people from the exchange centre are trying to outwit each other…”

“U-uhmmm.”

Sheryl suddenly interrupted Dale who was enjoying himself.

“I’m really thankful for giving us all of this information, but are you sure it’s okay to share this info?”

Although Sheryl did intentionally encourage Dale to leak out information, she was rather worried since he just could not stop blurting information. Sheryl thought that she should calm him down first and so she interrupted him there.

After Dale calmed down a bit and looked back at what he said, he also noticed that he might have said too much. But after he saw Sheryl’s worried expression, he quickly came up with excuses to balance out all the information that he gave.

“Well, uhhh, it’s not exactly a secret after all. So I think it’s fine. Moreover, you can just take it as my payment for giving us a ride. I don’t want to be left in the wasteland without any means to go back to the city after all.”

“If that’s the case, thank you very much for sharing them with us.”

Sheryl lightly bowed and smiled at Dale, who blushed and started talking again.

Akira was observing them not too far away from them. He then asked Alpha while carefully trying to make sure that his expression did not change.

“That guy just blurted out secret information like it was nothing. So this is Sheryl’s ability, huh. To be honest, it’s a bit scary. If you ask me what exactly is scary about it, its the way she makes that guy happily leak information.”

From Akira’s point of view, the information that Dale was giving was valuable information. If Akira tried to get that information by normal means, it would take him a lot of money and time. Even the price of that information would put a dent on Akira’s savings. But Sheryl was able to extract those information through simple conversation. No wonder Akira felt a bit scared of her.

Alpha then told Akira her evaluation about Sheryl, she adjusted the way she said her evaluation in order to give Akira a warning at the same time.

“It’s because Sheryl knows her strength well and she’s using that to its fullest extent. She has the talent and now she’s the boss of a gang, I’m sure she made a lot of effort to sharpen that talent. Akira, you should be careful about her too, you know? And of course, this is not limited to Sheryl only. As you get stronger, more people will try to approach you to get some benefits out of you. It’s fine if they’ll also give some kind of benefits for you too, but I’m sure a lot of them are only going to leech off of you.”

Akira then tried to objectively evaluate himself.

“I understand. I’ll be fine, maybe… As long as they don’t try to bait me with good food like those meals from that restaurant.”

There was an occasion in the past when s.h.i.+ori invited Akira for a meal in a high-cla.s.s restaurant. After having experienced the level of meal that completely destroyed Akira’s view of food, he was not sure if he could keep his brain straight if he was baited with that kind of food. When something like that happens, he would have no other choice but hope that Alpha would stop him.

Alpha smiled and said.

“It seems that there’s a need for you to earn enough money to go to that restaurant from time to time, huh?”

“That’s very true.”

Akira sounded a bit optimistic when he said that.

Suddenly Alpha’s expression stiffened, Akira who noticed that quickly got his guard up.

“Akira, carefully peek out the window with your aiming device.”

“Is it a monster?”

“That’s what exactly you’re going to confirm. There’s some noise triggered within my detection range, if it’s not from a monster, then let’s just forget about it.”

The current Alpha was almost fully reliant on Akira’s information-gathering device to gather information. Because of the rain, Alpha’s detection range was greatly reduced, so in order to check more thoroughly, Akira had to do it himself using his aiming device.

Akira readied his rifle next to the window and peeked outside through the aiming device. He followed Alpha’s instructions to adjust the direction he was checking and so he quickly found the source of the noise.

“That thing, huh? That’s pretty big.”

Akira spotted a monster away from the mansion. It was obvious from the first glance that it was a carnivorous monster. Its fur that was drenched in rain looked heavy for some reason.

That monster was sniffing around as if it was looking for something, but it did not seem that it had noticed Akira.

“It doesn’t seem like it’s heading this way… Right? It seems that it’s looking for something around that area though, I wonder if there’s anything there?”

Although that monster had not noticed Akira yet, it also would not move away from the mansion. It kept on loitering around in the same area.

“It’s keeping a distance that’s bothering me, is it a form of bullying or something?”

“I don’t remember doing anything bad to that monster though.”

Although they had to be careful with that monster, it was not like that monster was coming at him either. After Alpha said that implicitly, Akira calmed down a bit and replied with a light joke.

Dale and Colbert were also watching the outside through the other windows.

Dale was watching the situation outside without the help of any equipment and so he did not find any monsters. He then asked Akira.

“Did you find anything?”

“Yeah, a monster. A big one, it’s just loitering around that empty building over there.”

Dale pulled out his binocular and looked at the direction that Akira told him.

“…That monster, huh? You’re pretty good to be able to spot that monster. You weren’t really checking the outside while you’re staying in this room, right?”

“It’s a high-tech after all.”

Akira lightly smiled when he said that. Alpha, who heard that, smiled smugly.

Akira was basically saying that Alpha was high-tech. While Dale thought that Akira was talking about his equipment.

[…Leaving his skill aside, he’s basically saying that he has good equipment, huh. Is it because this boy is strong enough to protect Sheryl alone that she did not bring anyone else with her? Don’t tell me that his body is a cyborg body. When he said that, does he mean not only his information-gathering equipment but also his cyborg body? Or he means more about his own skill?]

From Dale’s point of view, Akira’s age and aura did not give any impression that he was a strong Hunter. But his evaluation changed now that he knew Akira was able to find a monster sooner than him.

[How strong is this boy? If I know how strong he is, I can at least guess how much reward he gets from escorting these kids. Then from there, I can guess how much money his employer, Sheryl, has… Well, I guess I’ll get a chance to find out on our way back.]

Unlike what Dale expected, the chance to see Akira’s ability would come way sooner than he thought.

Colbert was also using the aiming device on his rifle to check the situation outside just like Akira. It did not take long for him to find the monster that Akira just spotted.

The moment he spotted that monster, Colbert’s face distorted with fear, his hand that was grabbing his rifle was slightly trembling. Very soon his trembling stopped, but his expression turned grim. His face was obviously showing a deep hatred toward the monster that his rifle muzzle was pointing at.

Something snapped inside Colbert that made him pull the trigger of his rifle. Gunshots reverberated throughout the room. The bullets flew out from his rifle and accurately hit that monster. But it did not inflict any serious damage to that monster.

That monster noticed Akira and the other Hunters as it roared. It immediately started running toward Akira.

“Die!! Die!! Die!!!!”

Colbert kept shooting at that monster while cursing it. Due to Colbert’s shooting skill, all of his shots. .h.i.t that monster. After showering in those bullets, that monster started to move slowly, it eventually dropped down and stopped moving. But Colbert did not stop shooting at it with a desperate face. It took sometime before he started slowing down and eventually let go of the trigger.

Everyone in that room was directing their gazes at Colbert. Akira was just surprised by that sudden outburst, nothing more. But Dale was obviously looking angry as he was sending his gaze to Colbert.

“Why did you do that?!!”

Colbert shouted back at Dale with more or less the same volume.

“Of course because I want to kill it!!”

“It didn’t notice us until you shot, you know?!”

“Are you going to wait until it attacks you?! You kill them before they have the chance to kill you!!”

As Dale and Colbert started to argue, a gunshot suddenly interrupted them.

It was from Akira. Both Dale and Colbert immediately turned to Akira, who then calmly said.

“Can you do that later? To be more precise, after you guys take care of the rest.”

After he said that, Akira started shooting. The bullet that he shot hit another monster that was running at his direction and blasted that monster’s head off to small pieces.

Around the dead monster that Colbert just killed, there were already some monsters gathered around. Those monsters quickly noticed Akira and the other Hunters as they rushed toward the mansion.

Colbert quickly started shooting too, Dale clicked his tongue before helping out.

Monsters of all sizes started to gather and formed a swarm as they rushed toward the mansion. 2 legged lizard, 4 legged beasts, 6 legged turtles, 8 legged horses. They had such a distorted form as if someone made them as a pure joke, their body was half biological and half mechanical as if they stopped midway from turning into a complete robot.

The turtle monsters had a big cannon perched on their sh.e.l.l and they directed those cannons at Akira.

When Akira saw that monster, he could not help but get shocked.

“The heck is that?!”

“That’s the Tochka Turtle. We’re lucky that they haven’t reached adulthood yet. Their weakness is their cannon mouth. Don’t just look at it, start shooting.”

Alpha operated Akira’s augmented suit, Akira aimed the CWH anti-material rifle on his hand toward that cannon and pulled the trigger.

Due to Alpha’s advanced calculating ability, Akira was able to shoot the inside of the canons of those turtles accurately. Those bullets then hit the ammo reserve inside those cannons and set the gunpowder within them to explode, taking out the tochka turtle and the other monsters around it.

As Akira saw the tochka turtle explode into small pieces of flesh, he praised Alpha.

“That was nice, but still, to think that there’s a dangerous monster like that in this place, was this place always this dangerous before? Did this place really change that much just because that greedy crocodile got killed? Moreover, why are so many monsters gathering like this? Are they looking for a place to take shelter from the rain too?”

Akira’s questions were understandable. Alpha did not see that coming. Or to be more precise, Alpha thought that the possibility of such a thing to happen was negligible. After all, if she had known that this would happen, she would have not recommended Akira to take shelter in that mansion.

But leaving Alpha aside, Akira was not in a position to think about that. Alpha then told Akira to keep his focus on shooting the monsters.