Chapter 114 (1/2)
Index
Editor: Silavin
Proofreader: p4553r
Akira, Carol, and Shikarabe eventually arrived at the meeting site. It was one of the many destroyed buildings inside the Mihazono ruin, but in front of that particular destroyed building, Elena and Sara were standing guard.
Inside that building, there were Hunters who Elena and Sara had saved. They were the remaining Hunters who could not fit in Shikarabe’s APC in one go. The reason why Shikarabe limited the number of people inside his APC was not based on the open space inside the APC, but it was more based on the number of unknown armed people that he was okay putting inside the same APC with him. So it was more of a matter of his personal safety.
As for the reason why Elena and Sara stayed behind with the remaining Hunters, it was simply because those Hunters desperately asked them to since they were afraid of getting abandoned. After a lot of consideration, Elena decided to take their request. It was because of her good nature and how pitiful those Hunters were. Furthermore, there was also the detail of her contract, and most importantly, it was because she knew that she could kill them all in case they tried to do anything funny.
Those Hunters sighed in relief when they spotted Shikarabe’s APC. When Shikarabe parked his APC near them and opened the back door, those Hunters immediately flooded the back door together with the relics that they carried with them.
Shikarabe then stepped off from his APC and asked Elena.
“Anyone need the corpse bag?”
“Nope. There’s no fatally wounded Hunters and no dead bodies.”
“I see. If they’re really okay, they should just barricade themselves somewhere. Because of them, I had to go back and forth with no escort, you know.”
Shikarabe looked annoyed, to which Elena responded with a light smile as she said.
“They’re paying with their money in exchange for safety and we’re receiving that money for our reward. That’s all there’s to it.”
“Well, you’re right about that.”
Akira and Carol also stepped off from Akira’s vehicle and headed towards Elena and Shikarabe. Although Elena and Sara were planning to welcome Akira with a smile, their expression turned conflicted when they saw the girl next to Akira. It was because Carol was using an augmented suit with a design that was obviously inviting the opposite s.e.x.
Elena and Sara did hear beforehand from Akira that he would be bringing another Hunter. But they did not expect him to bring Carol, who was obviously flaunting her charm there.
Akira then greeted Elena and Sara.
“Elena-san, Sara-san, I’ll be in your care for today… Is that okay? Although I do want to join the team, if me bringing another Hunter is a bad thing, I don’t mind moving as a different team. And even if we decide to work as one team, I’ll take responsibility if Carol causes any trouble.”
Elena looked a bit troubled as she said.
“Uhhh, wait for a sec, let me calm down for a bit… Alright then.”
Elena knew that she must be making all kinds of faces there. She then told herself that she needed to make decisions with a cool head since she was the team leader.
She then looked at Carol, she tried to throw away her preconception, or at least, put it aside for now, as she spoke to Carol.
“I’m Elena, and this is Sara, my best friend.”
Sara awkwardly smiled, it was obvious that she could not completely move on from the shock.
“I’m Sara, nice to meet you.”
Carol smiled and introduced herself.
“I’m Carol. Nice to meet you.”
Elena then continued as Carol was still smiling.
“We’re working as a team of 3 with Shikarabe at the moment. The team leader is me, so if you want to negotiate about the reward, you should talk to me.”
“Okay, but please talk about that with Akira. I’m working under Akira at the moment so I’ll prioritize his orders too.”
“Well, now that we’ve gathered here, I would like to take command of the whole team though.”
“It’s not like we’re already formally formed a team, right? Moreover, you haven’t even made a deal with Akira on how to share the reward, right? So I think it’s only normal for me to prioritize on the contract that I’ve made beforehand.”
“Well, you have a point there.”
Elena and Carol were smiling at each other. For some reason, Akira could feel the awkward mood around them. But he could not tell the reason why.
Elena then smiled at Akira and took a step closer.
“So then, Akira, let’s start the negotiation.”
“O-Okay, please be gentle.”
Akira could feel some kind of pressure coming from Elena as he was questioning if she was standing a little too close.
Shikarabe then interjected.
“If it seems that it’ll take some time… No, even if it does not, how about we go back first? Whichever the case, we need to transport these people after all. No matter whether we’ll move as one team or not, I’m sure both of you need to talk it out first before deciding. So, both of you can finish that in the middle of our way back. Moreover, it’s easier to handle the contract process if we do it near the Hunter Office.”
Elena then calmed herself one more time.
“…You’re right. Okay then, Akira, you’re okay with that too, right?”
“Yeah.”
Akira then returned to his vehicle with Carol. Elena and Sara watched Akira’s back with a conflicted face.
They then once again drove through the ruin. Akira asked Alpha a question while driving the vehicle.
“Alpha, what do you think was that?”
Alpha casually replied.
“I don’t think there’s any need for you to worry about that. Even for Elena, there are times when she has a bad mood and it’s normal that there are people who just don’t go along well with her.”
“Hmmm, I guess you’re right about that.”
“I’m sure both Elena and Carol could differentiate between their jobs and their personal feelings. I’m sure it’s just that because they were thinking about what to do with the contract. Don’t worry. I think it won’t go as far as causing a fight. Moreover, it seems that you really trust them, so I bet you have no plans to complain about the details of the contract and the way they’ll share the reward. But for Carol, it’s their first time meeting each other. So to get a better deal and to make sure not to get swindled, it’s nothing strange for them to show off a little bit of intimidation like that.”
Akira was fully convinced by Alpha’s explanation.
“I guess you’re right about that too.”
Let’s say there was a certain girl who liked a certain boy, although it was not as far as love, that girl pretty much liked that boy and she thought that boy also liked her back to some extent. But when they planned to meet up, that boy brought another girl, who was a beauty in a seducing attire. Akira was still so socially inept that he could not imagine what those girls whom he was going to meet might feel.
There were a lot of reasons why Akira was socially inept. He grew up in an environment that did not give him the chance to learn such a skill, he originally already had a distorted character, and to top it off, although Alpha knew it, she always came up with another excuse to convince Akira while keeping him unaware about that aforementioned fact. Of course, Alpha did that intentionally, after all, it was better for her if Akira stayed that way.
Alpha looked and smiled at Akira who was successfully tricked by her words.
They were driving through the Mihazono ruin toward the Hunter Office branch. Midway, they were communicating with each other using the local connection of their information terminal to talk about the details of the request and the current situation.
The request that Elena and Sara took was an emergency request. Basically, it was a request to save the Hunters who could not get out from the ruin on their own. The request did not come from those Hunters, it came from the individual insurance companies that those Hunters were registered in.
There were all kinds of insurance for the Hunters. Most of them offered a subsidy in case those Hunters got badly injured. But in order to get their injuries treated, they needed to return back alive first. Thus, in order for them to return back alive, the insurance companies offered all kinds of service in case those Hunters went into a ruin and could not come back on their own. When those Hunters sent a request or when they were out of reach for a certain period of time, the insurance company contracted to those Hunters would dispatch a squad to help them.
Some of the insurance companies had their own special squad to send, but most of the insurance companies usually either made a request to the private security companies that they were contracted with to send their squads or sent that request to the Hunters. And that was how Elena and Sara received that emergency request.
By getting such an insurance before going out to the ruins, in case if they got attacked by monsters and could not return back on their own, these Hunters could just barricade themselves somewhere while waiting for a rescue squad. Or at least, in the worst-case scenario, the rescue squad would retrieve their bodies instead of leaving them in the wasteland.
Akira then asked a simple question to Elena through his information terminal.
“So basically, this request is made by the insurance company for Drankam and then Drankam distributed it to us, am I correct?”
Elena refuted that.
“No, this one comes from a completely different source. It seems that there was a lot of things going on with Drankam, including that similar request that Drankam made yesterday. But our request this time has nothing to do with them.”
Akira sounded a little confused.
“Is that so? But if that’s the case, it’s weird that Shikarabe is with you…”
Shikarabe sounded a little irritated as he said.
“It’s true that Drankam also dispatched rescue squads and it’s true that they sent me a request to be added to that squad. But I declined it and decided to join Elena and Sara’s team that has nothing to do with Drankam management.”
“Why did you do that?”