Chapter 84 (1/2)

Index

Editor: Silavin

Proofreader: p4553r

Akira planned to go to the unexplored ruin together with Elena and Sara again.

Just like before, he met up with Elena and Sara near the border between the wasteland and slum city. The situation was the same as Alpha planned to stop giving her support once Akira was out in the wasteland.

Alpha donned a full-body battle suit with a fastener on her upper and lower body. The glossy fabric stuck tight to her skin as it pronounced her already charming body lines even more. The fastener in front of her extended from under her neck, all the way down between her legs, and to the back. She let that fastener open down to her belly. Her fair skin was clearly exposed through that opening, showing that she was not wearing any underclothing.

If the people around Alpha could see her now, there was no doubt that she would gather a lot of attention. Although it showed less skin than her usual swimsuit, there was not much of a change in its seductiveness.

Akira saw that and stopped himself from making any comments thinking that it was at least better than her usual swimsuit. Clearly, he had more or less gotten used to it by now.

He saw Elena and Sara heading his way as the meeting time was getting closer, Alpha then smiled and told Akira that she would stop her support.

“So then, good luck for today.”

“Alright.”

“You can call me anytime if you feel lonely, okay?”

In contrast to Alpha who smiled when she said that, Akira pouted. Alpha then just giggled and vanished from Akira’s vision.

Before Elena and Sara arrived there, Akira took a deep breath and returned his expression back to normal.

Elena and Sara stopped their vehicle next to Akira’s, Akira smiled at them.

“I’ll be in your care for today.”

Elena smiled and replied, but somehow, her smile was a little clouded.

“We’ll be in your care too. But there’s something I want to ask you first. Akira, do you have an auto-drive function on your vehicle?”

“Yes.”

“Can you set it to follow behind us?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, once you set it like that, can you get on to our vehicle? There’s something I want to talk about.”

“…? Alright.”

Akira did find that a little weird. Even so, he set his vehicle in auto-drive to follow behind Elena and Sara’s vehicle before hopping into their vehicle. Once Elena made sure that Akira had set himself in, she then started the vehicle and drove to their destination.

Sara, who was sitting in the driver assistant’s seat, stood up and turned back to Akira who was sitting behind her, she then apologetically said.

“Please let me apologize first, we’re really sorry.”

“What happened?”

“It seems that someone discovered the ruin that we went together the other day.”

Akira was obviously a little surprised. He did expect that it would happen sooner or later, but he did not think that it would happen so fast.

“…I see. But it’s not like it’s Sara-san and Elena-san’s fault, or like, do you have any idea why that happened?”

Elena, who was driving the vehicle, answered Akira’s question.

“Nothing. Or at least, we’ve done our best to make sure that wouldn’t happen. Well, even if the information about the existence of the new ruin leaked from the selling route that we’ve employed, there is no way they would know about the location of the ruin too. And according to my scan back then, no one was following us either.”

Akira just smiled lightly and said.

“Well, it’s just a pure coincidence then. So I don’t think it’s your fault. Not to mention that it might be because of something that I did. After all, I went back straight to the city the first time I returned back from that ruin. So it might have been me all along.”

It was indeed unfortunate that other Hunters knew about that ruin, but that would happen sooner or later anyway and this time it happened sooner than expected. That was all Akira thought.

Elena and Sara frowned when they heard Akira’s answer, Elena then mumbled.

“…So you’re not suspecting us at all, huh? Aren’t you least bit suspicious that we sold the info about that ruin? I did tell you that the info of an unexplored ruin alone can fetch you a lot of money, remember?”

“Not at all.”

“Why can you be so sure about that?”

“The reason, hmm….? Just my intuition, I guess.”

There was a short pause before Akira continued. He was thinking of any excuse as to why he thought so and conveyed anything that came up in his mind to Sara and Elena while half-joking.

“Moreover, if it was Elena-san and Sara-san who were selling the info for money, I’m sure both of you would come up with a method that would bring you lot more money, like selling the info piece by piece, right? Well, that’s just my intuition though.”

Elena’s and Sara’s serious-looking expression softened when they heard Akira’s reply.

Elena laughed and replied with a joke as well.

“That’s true. If it was me, I would do it in a more profitable manner.”

“If it’s you, I’m sure you’ll mix some fake info while selling it. After all, it’ll fetch you more money while leaking less info, right?”

Sara also jumped in with a joke, Elena laughed and said to Sara.

“But of course! I’ll sell them as expensive as possible too!!”

She then smiled and said to Akira with a calm voice.

“Akira, thank you for trusting us. I’m honestly happy that you do.”

There were many reasons why a team of Hunters broke up, one of them was trust issues. Exploring the old-world ruin means that they were putting their lives on the line to search for expensive relics worthy of that bet. And those expensive relics were the very thing that made these Hunters doubt each other. Thanks to that, there were many Hunter teams which broke up and ended up pointing their rifles at each other.

But Akira completely trusted Sara and Elena, he did not doubt them at all. Elena was extremely delighted with that fact.

Elena, who was starting to feel embarrassed, decided to change the subject.

“Alright then!! That’s it for this matter!! Now to the next subject, listen closely, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Although we’re heading to the same ruin that we visited previously, it might be pretty dangerous this time. So I need everyone to be extremely careful. If anyone gets some bad feelings or any other reasons that make you think it’s better to withdraw, don’t hold back and tell the others too, we’ll immediately withdraw when that happens. I just want to put that out first. Akira, you’re okay with that, right?”

“Yeah. Let’s be extra careful this time. By the way, Elena-san, why do you think that the ruin would turn dangerous this time?”

There were no monsters around that ruin when they visited last time, so Akira was a bit confused why Elena thought it had turned dangerous.

Elena then answered his question.

“When info about a new ruin comes out in the market, it will include all the info regarding that ruin like its location, the interior map of that ruin, the monsters around and inside that ruin, the relics that you can find inside that ruin, and many other kinds of info. But this time, according to our investigation, no other info except the location is available in the market right now.”

“A lot of Hunters will flock to that ruin if they know they can find expensive relics in that ruin, so like, isn’t that just because the people who sold the info didn’t want that to happen?”

“Of course, that’s also one of the possibilities. But there’s also another possibility, it might be because no one returned back alive after diving into that ruin, so no extra information about that ruin comes back to the city. Or the companions of the Hunters, who dove into that ruin, waited outside and killed them on their way back. That would explain why there’s no other info other than the location of the ruin. Or maybe, the people who sold info deliberately only sold the location to make others explore that ruin and wait for the info about the interior of that ruin to be available in the market, that way they can prepare themselves better for exploring that ruin.”

Hearing this, Akira nodded with a serious expression.

“…I see. Let’s be extra careful this time.”

Akira completely erased the thought that the ruin should be safe just because he did not find any trouble the last time he visited that ruin.

On his way to the ruin, Akira was at a loss whether he should call for Alpha or not, but after hesitating for a long time, he eventually decided not to do it. After all, unlike last time with Sheryl, Akira had no extra luggage this time. Not to mention, he had Sara and Elena with him too. They had also decided to withdraw the moment any of them thought that things might get dicey. So Akira decided to do his best on his own for the time being.

Unlike last time, they went to the ruin directly rather than taking any detour. When they stopped their vehicle behind a wreckage near the ruin, they saw a completely different scene compared to the previous time they came there.

There were countless corpses of biological monsters scattered around the area, they were riddled with bullet holes. There were also remnants of mechanical monsters that were blown up with some kind of explosives. And of course, there were also empty magazines, bullet casings, and other equipment as well as dead Hunters among them. All of them were the remnants of fights between Hunters and monsters.

Akira scanned the area and mumbled.

“That’s a hell lot of them!”

It was a huge mess, the rubbles from the explosives that both the monsters and the Hunters used, flesh and blood of the biological monsters and Hunters, mechanical parts both from Hunter’s equipment and the mechanical monsters. All of them mixed together and scattered all over the area. It could be inferred that a group of Hunters fought a big swarm in this place.

Sara also scanned the area and said.

“If these Hunters came here for the ruins, then where did all these monsters come from? Did these monsters come from the inner part of the ruin? Elena, did you find anything?”

Elena checked the signal from her information-gathering device.

“It’s alright. There’s no monster around the area. If these monsters did come from inside the ruin, it seems that the Hunters have killed every single one of them.”

As Akira approached the entrance to the ruin, his expression turned grim as he noticed that the fight was fiercer around that area.

“…If there were this many monsters in this place, it was actually a good thing that the location of this ruin leaked out. Basically, we had other Hunters scout the inner part of this ruin for free thanks to that.”

Elena agreed with Akira’s opinion.

“You might be right about that. The scariest thing about an unexplored ruin is that it has as many monsters as the unclaimed relics inside it and we have no information about both of them at all. Looking at this, it is better to assume that no one was able to return back alive from searching the ruin, and that’s why there is not much info about the ruin available in the market. Either we just got lucky when we came here last time, or someone made a huge blunder inside the ruin. Akira, we can withdraw now if you want to.”

“…I’ll leave that decision to Elena-san. At least for me, I don’t think we should withdraw yet.”

There was a trace of hesitation in Akira’s voice, it showed that he carefully made that decision after considering the possible danger. Elena smiled happily and said.

“Alright, let’s go then.”

Sara seemed a little bit excited as she joined in.

“I look forward to seeing your performance, but don’t push yourself too hard, okay?”

Akira, Sara and Elena stood in front of the stairs leading down the underground ruin. The wreckage and rubbles around the entrance looked as if they were shoved out of the way by something huge, and that trace continued all the way inside the ruin. It seemed that there was some kind of powerful monster inside.

Akira took his CWH anti-material rifle and DVTS minigun off his vehicle. He did not forget to stuff his rucksack with ammo too.

Akira prioritized filling his rucksack with ammo rather than reserving space for relics. He was planning to throw away some of his magazines in case he found expensive-looking relics later. After all, it was better to find himself having to throw away ammo rather than finding himself running out of ammo.

Thanks to his augmented suit, Akira did not find any trouble carrying all those ammo. Although the energy consumption of his augmented suit increased, it should still have enough energy to last for the day.

Sara and Elena were also gathering their equipment from their own vehicle. It seemed that they were making sure that they had everything they needed since they noticed the ruin was more dangerous than they thought.

Elena then asked Akira.

“Akira, are you ready?”

“Yeah. I’m ready.”

“Alright then, let’s go.”