Chapter 106 (1/2)

Index

Editor: Silavin

Proofreader: p4553r

When Akira was talking with Carol on the 25th floor, a small change started to happen around the Seranthal building. Or to be more precise, a change had already started and the Hunters in that area had noticed it.

Some of the Hunters there chose to carry the leftover wreckages of the dead autonomous weapons. Rather than risking having to fight the other Hunters over the relics inside that building, these Hunters chose to harvest the leftover wreckages of the autonomous weapons that Akira had defeated.

They had no idea who defeated those monsters, but since that person just left them there, they assumed these wreckages must be trash for said person. Those Hunters thought that person must have ignored those wreckages aiming for the relics inside the Seranthal building.

Those Hunters were guarding their prized loots while waiting for the arrival of the truck to carry the wreckages. They kept checking their information-gathering device and killed any small fry mechanical monsters that approached them. They were planning to carry those wreckages, so they could not let other mechanical monsters consume their prized find.

At first, they looked relaxed, but their expression suddenly changed, a look of astonishment flashed on their faces. There were quite a lot of mechanical monsters heading their way, and the number just kept increasing endlessly.

One of them then said.

“Hey, something is strange, don’t you think? Why are so many of them coming here?”

“I heard that those powerful monsters guarding the Seranthal building will always be back not too long after you kill them. So the mechanical monsters might be swarming here to gather the wreckages to rebuild these guardian monsters. I guess, if we take into consideration the size of the guardian monsters, it’s to be expected that they would need to bring a lot of those small mechanical monsters to carry these huge wreckages.”

“I see, that does make sense.”

“These wreckages might contain something valuable that they’re trying to retrieve it, so I’m sure these wreckages will fetch a lot of money.”

As they imagined the amount of money that they might earn, those Hunters started to smile.

The Hunter who was worrying also smiled after hearing what his friend said. The mechanical monsters coming to their direction were all weak monsters, so he thought that he must have been overthinking it. When that guy thought so, suddenly a loud bang echoed from afar. It was immediately followed by repeated gunshots. It was the sound of Hunters fighting monsters.

The source of that sound was moving closer and closer to those Hunters waiting for the truck. They eventually could see some Hunters running toward their direction.

The guy who was so worried just now was utterly dumbfounded as he said.

“A-aren’t there too many of them?”

There was a swarm of monsters following behind those Hunters, who were running toward the Seranthal building. The Hunters who were desperately fighting those monsters were swallowed one by one by that swarm. Distorted by the fear, the Hunters used grenades and explosives at a close range, close enough to even injure themselves. Those explosions would take out a bunch of monsters and open a hole in that swarm, but it did not take long for that hole to be covered by monsters again.

The Hunters around Seranthal building started shouting at each other.

“R-run away!!”

That guy shouted as if he was saying to everyone in that area.

“R-run away? To where exactly?”

The mechanical monsters were swarming the Seranthal building from all directions, there was no opening where the Hunters could run to. All of the Hunters in that area were running toward the only location where they might have any survival chance, it was the only location where they might be able to defend themselves, it was the Seranthal building.

All the Hunters who were still alive outside the Seranthal building quickly gathered inside the building, they were able to temporarily push back the swarm. The entrance to the Seranthal building turned into a bottleneck, the Hunters focused their fires there to repel the monsters that were trying to enter the building.

But suddenly, the mechanical monsters made a huge push, as if they gathered their numbers first before delivering the push. They kept pushing forward no matter how many of their fellow mechanical monsters were killed in front of them. As the monster swarm kept pushing their way into that building, they shoved the wreckages of their dead brethren aside to open up a road or just trampled them into small pieces and slowly closed the distance between them and the Hunters.

A Hunter suddenly shouted.

“Hey!! Someone, just anyone, relay the situation to the other Hunters upstairs!! It’s not the time to be looking for relics!!”

“We’ve already been doing that!! But we can’t get any contact at all!! Is it the colourless mist?!!”

“Hah?!! Why now of all time?!!”

“Hell if I know!! I can’t do anything about it, I just can’t contact them!!”

Without the help of the Hunters who were looking for relics upstairs, the Hunters in the first floor had no chance of winning. But since they could not get any contact, they could not call for help.

“…It can’t be helped, I’ll go and call them back.”

One of the Hunters said that and left the other Hunters.

“I-I’ll go too!”

“Me too!!”

Some of the Hunters followed suit and left that place.

The first guy really went to call the other Hunters to get back, but that was not the case for the other Hunters who followed him. They were just running away from that place, thinking that it was too dangerous to stay there. They wanted to get into safety since it was safer to join the rest of the Hunters who were hunting for relics upstairs.

Then, some of the Hunters who noticed that also followed behind them with the same excuse rather than trying to stop them. Although it was only a portion of the Hunters there that went upstairs, it was enough to make the frontline crumble.

The monsters that were held back until now quickly flooded into the building. They used their cannons, guns, and their powerful mechanical bodies to kill the Hunters. The Hunters who could not stand the situation started running away out of fear and the ones who were trying to hold the monsters on the first floor were overwhelmed as they slowly retreated to the second floor.

It only took a few seconds for the monsters to completely seize the first floor.

—*—*—*—

Akira was searching the 30th floor. Since his information-gathering device was getting less and less sensitive, he continued his search carefully to make sure that he would not get ambushed. Alpha was guiding him to take the safest route while looking for a stair to go up.

“Akira, it’s about the sensitivity of your information-gathering device… It seems that it’s not because of the colourless mist.”

Akira looked happy, but his expression quickly turned into one of confusion.

“That’s good to hear… Right? Wait, it’s not like the sensitivity returned back to normal either, huh?”

“Yes, the sensitivity is falling down even now. I think it’s because of this building.”

“This building? But didn’t you say just now that it has nothing to do with this building?”

“What I meant back then is the layout of the rooms and the hallways inside this building. It’s not limited to the old-world ruin alone; when the government or big corporations negotiate about some secret stuff, they would use a special room that prevents any information from leaking out in any forms to the outside of that room. And we’re in a similar situation to that, it’s highly difficult to even scan your surroundings using your information-gathering device at the moment. If my guess is correct, this building might have some kind of feature that blocks signals.”

“So you mean that signal blocking function suddenly turned on, huh. But why so suddenly?”

“I have no answer to that question.”

Akira stopped and thought. He then asked Alpha with a serious expression.

“Should we pull back for now? Although we can’t get to our main goal, I’ve already gathered quite a lot of old-world relics today.”

Alpha thought for a bit before answering that question with a big smile.

“If you think so, then let’s retreat. I guess it’s better to cut it short before your bad luck goes off again.”

“Roger that.”

Akira smiled bitterly and turned around, just when he was about to swing his leg forward, Alpha suddenly signalled him to stop.

“What’s wrong?”

“Someone is coming. That person is running in this direction, it seems that he’s in a hurry. At this rate, he will reach here soon.”

Akira pointed his gun in the direction where Alpha told him that person was coming from. It was to be safe just in case if it was an ambush.

But that person was Carol. As she was running through the hallway, she spotted Akira and shouted at him while still running.

“Akira!! Help me!! Do something about them!!”

As Akira peeked behind Carol, he could see small mechanical monsters with half-destroyed bodies chasing her. He found that weird, but he decided to at least give Carol a help.

“Are you out of ammo? Get out from my shooting line.”

Carol quickly ran out of Akira’s line of sight. Akira then aimed at those monsters using his A2D rifle and shot them. As the piercing bullets hit the monsters’ half-destroyed bodies, it turned them to scraps and blew them to pieces.

Akira could only consider those monsters as weak and started to ponder. [If they were this weak, Carol should be able to defeat them without my help, there was no need to ask for my help.]

He found that weird as he mumbled. “If it’s only that much, she should have done something about them herself-“

But before he could even finish his sentence. A swarm of monsters suddenly gushed in from the hallway where Carol came from.

Akira quickly pulled out his DVTS minigun and showered those monsters with bullets. Although it was able to make quick work for the smaller mechanical monsters with weak armour, the monsters with thicker armours kept pushing forward against the raining bullets.

When Akira was about to change to his CWH anti-material rifle, Carol who had already stood beside him shot them first. The bullet that she shot pierced the monster’s thick armour and sent it flying back. It only took one shot to kill that thick armoured monster. Although she was using nothing but a hand cannon, it might have the same firepower as a CWH anti-material rifle. But she could not use it for continuous shooting, thus it was not a suitable gun to fight a swarm.

“We need to run away!”

After Carol said that, she immediately started running again, leaving Akira behind.

Akira quickly followed Carol, Alpha was floating beside him while smiling bitterly.

“It seems that we’re too late. Akira, your bad luck is really fast.”

“You can say that again!!”

Akira was chasing Carol with an irritated face.

Unlike Akira, who came to the Seranthal building for the first time, Carol had come there numerous times in the past, thus she was able to keep running without getting lost.

Although the situation inside that building was completely different from what Carol had known, Carol placed her bet that the layout of the building did not change as she kept running forward without checking whether there were monsters in front of her or not. The monsters were coming from below, so as long as the layout of the building did not change, the monsters should not be able to circle their way around Akira and Carol.

Akira was still running behind Carol when he asked her a question.

“Carol, what’s going on here? What happened downstairs?”

“Mechanical monsters are gushing out from below. A swarm of monsters is climbing the building while fighting the Hunters on their way. They’re having a fierce fight downstairs, although it’s not that bad, it’s not a good idea to go downstairs right now.”

“Is it that the other monsters from outside are coming inside this building since I killed the monsters guarding this building?”

“I don’t know. Well, I guess that’s the case for the Hunters, but… I actually thought you used an opening in the monsters guarding this place to kill some of them and sneaked into this building, but judging from what you said just now, you killed all of them, right? And you did that alone on top of that. You’re a really interesting fellow, how did you kill those guardian monsters?”

Carol seemed to be honestly interested when she asked that question, Akira’s face turned stern as he said.

“I can’t tell you. It’s my secret trump card after all.”

And even if Akira told Carol the truth, it would only end up with Carol questioning his sanity or suspecting that he was just simply lying. So he decided to deflect that question, he did not tell any lie there.

It seemed that Carol was not expecting Akira would tell her anyway, so she just smiled as she said.

“Is that so? If we’re not in this situation, I would love to spend more time to loosen your lips, but it’s not the time for that. And also, even if someone destroyed all the autonomous weapons outside, it won’t cause the other mechanical monsters roaming the ruin to flood this building.”

After that, Carol’s expression turned cloudy.

“…Or at least, that should not cause something like this. The mechanical monsters inside the Mihazono ruin are security drones with fixed patrol areas that they’re protecting, there’s no way they would go outside their designated area. That’s why, in Mihazono ruin, you sometimes can save yourself by entering a nearby building when you encounter powerful monsters. Thanks to that, this ruin is a relatively safe ruin for the Hunters to explore. That’s the real reason why so many Hunters frequent this ruin, enough for the Hunter Office to build their branch in this ruin.”

Akira frowned and asked a question.

“Then why is this happening right now?”

Carol twitched a bit and then screamed.

“Like hell if I know!! That’s how it has always been up until now!! I’ve never found monsters inside this building and the monsters outside have never tried to enter the building!!! Even if those Hunters ran to this building from a group of monsters, those monsters would not even try to enter this building to chase those Hunters!! So if there’s any reason why this is happening, I want to know that reason too!!”

Although there was no way for Akira and the other two to know it, the reason was actually very simple. It was simply because the manager of that building, Seranthal, had given permission for those monsters to enter that building. And at the same time, she also requested for reinforcements to take out the intruders. Because of that, all the monsters in that ruin answered that request and quickly gathered there to kill all the Hunters inside.

Akira was still running as he said.

“As I thought, old-world ruin is really scary. No one can say for sure what will happen.”

As Carol looked at Akira who was still calm, she regained some of her calmness. She then smiled bitterly and said to him.

“…You’re right about that, I put too much trust on my experience coming to this place.”

Akira then asked another question.

“By the way, I understand that we can’t head downstairs, so where exactly are we heading now? It’s not like we can find a way to escape if we keep going upstairs, right? Are you planning to make a stand somewhere? Or are you just running randomly from those monsters?”

“Nope, I did tell you before, right? I know a backdoor, we’re going to use that backdoor to escape.”

Akira was so surprised when he heard that unexpected answer, he then asked another question.

“…So the backdoor that would allow us to escape this building is located upstairs?”