Chapter 60 (1/2)

Index

Editor: Silavin

Proofreader: p4553r

Kain kept monitoring the situation around the building. He was using the information-gathering device installed in his powered suit to check everything around him. Every little change in the area was displayed in his enhanced vision. It was also showing a warning that the scanning sensitivity was worsened because of the colourless mist.

It was only a matter of time before the colourless mist waned, and that would be really bad for Kain and Nelia. If the colourless mist stopped preventing Akira from contacting the temporary base, the base would know about their existence and there was no doubt that it would send the city’s defensive squad to that place. As such, they had to withdraw from that place before the base comes to know about them.

“She’s taking too long. What the heck is Nelia doing? With her ability, she should be able to make a short work of that brat…”

Kain thought highly of Nelia. He even thought that no one would be able to win against Nelia in CQC. She might even be able to kill him and all of his companions by herself if they were not in their powered suits and were forced to fight her in close range. So, he thought that Nelia should be able to quickly kill Akira and come back by now.

But even so, she still had not come back from the fight in that building. It was not an exaggeration to say that it was really alarming.

At first, he thought that Nelia would eventually contact him anyway and he would only be a nuisance if he contacted her first. That was why he decided to hold himself back from doing so. But now that things had turned rather worrying, he decided to contact her.

“Nelia!! How long are you going to take?”

Nelia quickly replied back, she sounded happy.

“Kain, I’m having a good time right now. If it’s not something urgent, can you put it for later?”

“Hey! This is something very urgent!! The colourless mist is getting thinner!! Depending on the relay device that they’re using in the temporary base, they might be able to establish a connection by now!! Stop wasting time and get him already!! Or is it that you need more time since you’re chopping the corpse to pieces?”

“I’m not wasting time. And it’s not like I have that kind of hobby either!!”

“Then, are you having trouble confirming the death? It’s not like Yajima set the program so that it would reject any attempts of confirmation, right?”

“That’s not the problem either.”

Kain guessed what was going on with Nelia, to be honest, he did not want to believe his guess as he mumbled.

“…Don’t tell me.”

“Yep, you guessed it right. To think that there’s someone who can fight me evenly in close combat. No wonder Yajima got himself killed. Although he’s not as strong as me, he had his strengths, that’s why we left him to take care of the underground side of the operation. I guess he was really unlucky to meet this boy. Well then, you’re disturbing my focus, so let’s stop here.”

Nelia then disconnected his call.

Kain carefully analyzed the new information that he just got from her.

“…Having Yajima killed is a pretty bad turn of events already. And now this, huh? Is it because there were discrepancies between the information that we shared? Or is it just bad luck piling up on one another by pure coincidence? No matter whichever it is, I need to make a change in the plan.”

There was no one listening to him. But he sounded completely different compared to when he spoke to Nelia and the others.

After ending the call, Nelia quickly closed in and threw a slash at Akira.

“Sorry for the wait. I got a call from my friend that I had to take. Did you wait long?”

When Nelia was talking with Kain, she was keeping her distance with Akira and her movements were dulled.

When Akira saw Nelia keeping her distance from him. He thought that she did that to take a breather as she was close to her limit in their CQC fight. He even hoped that she was thinking of retreating. But it turned out that he was sadly mistaken.

Akira was trying hard to fight back as he said.

“Don’t mind me, you can take your time talking with your friend.”

Nelia answered back provokingly.

“Don’t be so cold. Girls won’t like you if you say something like that, you know?”

“I have no plans on getting liked by a girl who loves to kill her lover.”

“Oh my, it’s not like I do it because I like it. As I said, it just adds a little spice to life. It’s boring to have a dull life, don’t you think?”

“Sadly enough, I have enough spices for my life right now!!”

“Is that so? Then, in that case, you can just enjoy a little bit more, right?”

Nelia looked like she was having the time of her life as she kept swinging her blade at Akira. Her cyborg body that was designed for dexterity rather than strength danced gracefully in the middle of the battlefield as her beautiful slender arm swung the liquid metal blade in her hand. The blade was so thin that it was almost transparent, but even so, it had an unbelievable sharpness as it cut through rubbles and wreckages without any effort.

Thanks to the painkiller in his medicine, Akira did not feel any pain as his body was forced to move to evade Nelia’s attacks. But the moment his augmented suit ran out of energy, he would not be able to lift even a finger. Even though he was in the midst of battle, his brain kept telling his body to shut down, while on the other hand, his survival instinct was telling him to stay awake no matter what.

Akira was close to his limit. While on the other hand, Nelia had a lot of leeway during their fight. If things kept going at this rate, there was no mistaking that he would end up dead.

But there was something else that had hit its limit before Akira. It was the very place where Nelia and Akira were having their fight.

Nelia had sliced and diced the ceiling of that room, after that, they both released a powerful kick to the ceiling at the same time. The floor of that room was also sliced so many times during their fight that it was significantly weakened.

The ceiling that was destroyed earlier was crumbling and its pieces were falling over Nelia and Akira. Normally, with their ability, it was not a hard thing to evade those falling rubbles.

But it was an entirely different story now as they were closely watching each other’s movements for any openings. They both knew that even the smallest opening would be fatal. In order to get the upper hand over one another, they were mostly ignoring the falling rubbles.

The impact of the falling rubbles damaged and cracked the already weakened floor. As Akira and Nelia were fighting while keeping their eyes on each other, suddenly, they were swallowed up by the crumbling ceiling and floor and fell down to the lower floor.

One of the piles of rubbles on the lower floor moved. Rubbles were shoved aside and Nelia stood up from within the pile.

“Good grief, to interrupt our date like this, what a bunch of rude rubbles?!”

Nelia looked at the handle in her right hand, it had lost its blade. Although she tried many times to recreate the blade, the silver blade just would not come out from the handle. It was either the handle was broken during that fall, or it had run out of liquid metal, or it had no energy left.

Nelia threw that handle away and looked around. She could not find Akira anywhere. She thought that he might be buried somewhere. At least, after that fall, there should be no possibility of him pulling off an ambush.

After scanning the area, she could see Alpha’s body. It was still sliced into two as it was lying on a pile of rubble. She could see Alpha’s location with the map of the Kuzusuhara ruin that she was connected to.

[That is… his friend, right? The one who I killed earlier. I’m glad I killed her despite the fact that I had to sacrifice an expensive relic. If she’s as strong as him, this would be 2 against 1 and I would be the one losing.]

The image of Alpha in her vision vanished for a split second before returning back. It was because Nelia set her vision to only show information coming from her cyborg body.

[Since my cyborg body can’t see her, it means that she’s using some kind of advanced camouflage. I can’t even see the blood around her too, so it must be something more than just an optical camouflage. It might be some kind of old-world technology. Was it because she thought I couldn’t see her that she was caught by surprise back then?]

Nelia judged that Alpha was really there. It was because she was seeing Alpha’s sliced body in front of her. That body was bleeding out and leaving traces just like a real body should, thus, judging solely on what she was seeing, there was no doubt that Alpha was really dead.

After confirming her surroundings, Nelia turned her attention to the most important thing in that location, Akira. Akira popped out and stood up from a pile of rubbles, he wobbled for a short moment before falling over.

Nelia approached him, she was also all wobbly. The fall had dealt quite a lot of damage to her cyborg body too.

[…Well, let’s put everything aside for now. First things,first…]

Nelia smiled in relief as Akira was not carrying his blade too. Instead, he was using his CWH anti-material rifle to help him stand on his feet.

“…First things first, I need to kill you!!”

Nelia started running toward Akira. Because of the damage on her cyborg body, her movement stuttered a bit, but even so, she judged that she was still strong enough to take out Akira given their situation. She charged at him, hoping to put an end to their fight.

Akira who just came out from the rubbles kept on stumbling over. Although he tried to get back on his feet as fast as he could, he just could not do it. Both his body and his augmented suit were put under immense stress when he had to fight Nelia.

“Alpha, I can’t move my body well, can you control my body through the augmented suit?”

“Unfortunately, I can’t do that right now. A part of the augmented suit and one of its control units were broken after that fall. Because of that, I can’t completely control your augmented suit anymore.”

Akira smiled bitterly and gritted his teeth. Losing Alpha’s support because of his broken augmented suit meant that his fighting ability was greatly reduced.

“Why now of all times? But it’s not like it’s completely broken, right?”

“You should still be able to move it. After all, the input signal should be much more stable when you use it compared to when I control it. It still has some energy left too. You should still be able to move it if you try.”

“Is that so? So I keep stumbling because I’m not trying hard enough, huh?”

“It’s true that the damage also makes it more difficult to move the augmented suit. I’ll keep trying to take control of your augmented suit while also finding an opening to strike back. Just try to buy as much time as possible until I get that chance.”

“Roger that, and please hurry up.”

Akira was somehow able to keep himself standing using his CWH anti-material rifle to support his body. Extreme pain ran through his whole body. He gritted his teeth to endure that pain as he kept his eyes on Nelia who was coming towards him.

Nelia’s cyborg body was sustaining significant damage. But even so, it still had enough power to close the distance between her and Akira faster than a normal human.

Akira raised his CWH anti-material rifle and pulled the trigger. But because of the pain and lack of support from Alpha, he was moving way slower compared to when he was evading Nelia’s blade.

Even before he was able to pull the trigger, Nelia kicked the CWH’s muzzle. The bullet flew out from the gun’s muzzle and hit somewhere far away from her. With that kick, the CWH rifle was also thrown off from Akira’s hand and landed nearby them.

After that, she continued launching consecutive strikes toward Akira. Akira’s CQC ability had gotten way better because of Alpha’s training, thanks to that, he was barely able to defend himself. But with that being said, he was not skilled enough to be able to counterattack. Akira could only desperately defend himself from Nelia’s flurry of attacks.

Every time Akira blocked Nelia’s strike, he could feel his bones cracking and his muscles tearing. Looking at how he was being pushed to only defend himself, Nelia increased the intensity of her attacks.

Since Akira was moving very badly compared to before as if he was a different person, Nelia overestimated his injuries.

Although it actually was his real ability since he had lost his support from Alpha, there was no way for Nelia to know that. So, she started to smile faintly.

[He’s moving way worse compared to before!! I have to kill him now before he can regain his composure!!]

Akira kept facing Nelia’s attack head-on. The reason why he did not run away from that place was because he simply did not want to get attacked from behind. Not to mention, his CWH anti-material rifle was lying on the ground not too far from them.