Chapter 121: Troublesome Negotiation (1/2)

As Sara had guessed, Elena was having a difficult time negotiating. When Sara explained the current situation to Akira, she deliberately hid some information including the reason why Elena was so irritated to the point that she raised her voice.

Although it had been decided that the squad sent to Seranthal building would consist of the Hunters that successfully hunted a bounty monster in the past. And with that many Hunters that would be sent to Seranthal building, they would need to have a clear chain of command so that they could work together effectively. But at the same time, this chain of command could be the source of another trouble.

The City Management was originally planning to use the same chain of command used during the bounty monster hunt. After all, it was to be expected that the Hunters who led the group that successfully hunted the bounty monster should at least have a good commanding skill. Even the group that was able to successfully hunt the Big Walker actually had a sudden team reconstruction before they were dispatched, and yet, they were able to kill the Big Walker with that team. The City Management thought that the Hunters would sort out any problems regarding the chain of command by themselves.

In order so that the Hunters had the same chain of command in the field, they needed to take someone who was already a leader of a team or an officer from an organization or a gang. Thus, the City Management let the team with the most contribution during the bounty hunt to pick the squad leader.

Which in this case, meant the City Management left that decision to Drankam since Drankam bounty hunt team had contributed greatly during the bounty hunt. Most of the independent team from the Drankam were also able to successfully kill a bounty monster too. Moreover, the gang also contributed greatly in defeating the strongest bounty monster. Thus, it was no surprise that the City Management left the details of the investigation squad to Drankam. So, the current plan was to let Drankam decide the strategy and the leader of the team, then the other Hunters would work under Drankam’s command.

But in the end, an unexpectedly lot of Hunters complained about that.

When the situation in Mihazono ruin suddenly changed, Drankam issued the SOS rescue requests to the Hunters around the ruin. This resulted in a lot of Hunters getting trapped inside the ruin. Most of the rescue targets for the current SOS rescue request were actually the Hunters who got trapped from the previous SOS rescue request.

Although they ended up judging the situation only from the result, this basically meant that Drankam had sent a lot of Hunters into the wasteland just to get them trapped there only for a small reward. There was not a small number of Hunters who fortunately were able to return back alive while their companions got killed back in the ruin, and most of these Hunters ended up holding a grudge against Drankam. Due to a lot of Hunters getting trapped in the ruin because of that SOS rescue request from Drankam, the current public opinion of Drankam had already significantly fallen.

While on the other hand, some people in Drankam were thinking of using this chance to increase Drankam’s reputation in Kugamayama city.

There were a lot of other Hunter gangs in Kugamayama city beside Drankam. If Drankam was able to make the investigation a success with the strategy that Drankam itself decided, there was no mistaking that it would definitely make Drankam even more renown. So, if someone not from Drankam took the command and participated in that investigation and made it a success, it would give a boost to the reputation of the gang that Hunter was affiliated with.

Moreover, there were also Hunters who were worried if Drankam took command of the squad, people from Drankam might push the dangerous jobs to the other gangs.

Because of those reasons, a lot of Hunters refused to have Drankam taking command of the squad.

Then to top it off, there was also an in-fighting within Drankam itself.

Drankam had already dispatched its Hunters to Mihazono ruin, and that particular squad was formally commanded by Katsuya. So any reinforcement who joined that team would basically work under him.

Inside Drankam, there was friction between the young Hunters and veterans, there were also some young hunters in the gang who were members of the anti-Katsuya faction. Although they were not as bad as Shikarabe, a lot of Hunters in Drankam refused to work under Katsuya, enough for the gang not to be able to just ignore those Hunters. They demanded to shift the command from Katsuya to one of them or for the City Management to accept the extra conditions that they imposed for that request, and in order to do that, they even dragged the upper echelons in Drankam to get involved in the negotiation.

Then, to top it off, each Hunter had different aims during the negotiation. Some of them demanded as much rewards as they could get, some of them deliberately picked a fight against the other gangs in order to be able to refuse that request while keeping their reputation, while some of them tried to get special favour in exchange for taking that request.

With all kinds of people gathered there, each of them was aiming only to bring profits to themselves, or to the gangs that they belong in, it was only to be expected for the negotiation to turn complicated.

At the moment, there were a lot of people gathered in the Hunter Office branch of Mihazono ruin including the negotiators from Drankam, leaders from various Hunter teams, and people from the request brokers that some of the Hunters were contracted with, Elena was one of them. They were trying their best to reach a consensus.

All of them gathered in the cafeteria of the Hunter Office branch. Carol and Elena were also there, Carol was sitting next to Elena on one of the tables in the cafeteria. Sitting opposite to them was a negotiator from Drankam by the name of Maeda.

Elena and Maeda were talking to each other with a stern face, while Carol was listening to them with a relaxed smile.

After that Maeda listened to a report from one of his co-workers, he then cut the call on his information terminal, sighed, and said to Elena.

“…I just checked with Drankam side again, and as I said, the answer is still a no. We can’t accept the conditions that you put up.”

“I see then. It means that we have no deal here, yes?”

When Elena said that, Maeda’s face twitched.

“You do know that we can’t have that here for the sake of both of us, right? It’s a request from Kugamayama City Management, you know? You do know well how angry they’ll be if we keep dragging this negotiation without any good reason, right?”

Elena did not waver at all, her expression did not change as she replied.

“Of course. I bet the City Management wants us to quickly finish this negotiation so that they can dispatch the squad to take control of Seranthal building as soon as possible.”

“If you understand it, can you at least lower your demand? The longer we drag this negotiation, the more the City Management would hate both of us.”

“Just to let you know, in order to save us from that, we already lowered our demand as low as we can, you know?”

“…You demand 5 times the original reward offered by the City Management and for us to pay some of that reward in advance as the condition to join the squad under Drankam’s command… Then you say that it’s already as low as you can go? You know that we can’t accept that demand no matter how you look at it, right?”

“That’s because we recognize this request is much more dangerous than Drankam is willing to admit. Like I said, it’s the lowest we can go. If we had more time, I would have demanded even more reward, you know?”

Maeda was staring at Elena with a stern face, there was no trace of deception in Elena’s expression and words. Maeda then sighed.

“…Seriously now, are you for real? This is a request from the City Management, you know? If you keep insisting on making such impossible demand, we have no other choice but to tell the City Management that the negotiation has failed because you keep making that demand. Are you sure you’re okay with it if the City Management thinks of you as a Hunter who can’t be reasoned with?”

Hunters spent their days fighting dangerous monsters in the old-world ruin, so in order to have a winning chance against those monsters, they had to bring along powerful weapons, and it would be an overkill using those weapons that were designed to kill monsters on humans. So, for the sake of maintaining order in the eastern district, the City Management had no other choice but to get those Hunters armed with powerful weapons under their control.

The cities of the eastern district, the corporations that were in control of those cities, and the Corporate Government that controlled those corporations, all of them were doing all kinds of things to maintain order in the eastern district. There were times when they made use of the Hunter Office to threaten the Hunters so that they would not get ahead of themselves and go on a rampage in the eastern district.

They sometimes had to reason with the Hunters and reminded them to keep their behaviours in check, or some other time, they had to convince some Hunters to not wreak havoc. There were even cases where they had to act as arbitrator between 2 Hunters in conflict or offer certain benefits to persuade certain Hunters. Or if nothing worked, they sometimes blatantly threatened Hunters to just stop. But the City Management would only do these kinds of things if they saw that those Hunters could be reasoned with.

As for those Hunters who could not be reasoned with, the City Management saw them as equal to monsters. Those Hunters were treated as threats against the public order in the eastern district, usually a bounty would be put for their heads and they would be killed by other Hunters.

Being recognized as someone that could be reasoned with was a very important thing in the eastern district where most of the people knew how to fight and powerful weapons were freely distributed around.

Although no one could tell what kind of effect it would bring if Drankam informed the Hunter Office that Elena was a Hunter who would only make one-sided demands and would not listen to other people, it was obvious that it would bring some level of harm toward her.

Most of the Hunters in Kugamayama city already knew that Drankam was deepening its relationship with Kugamayama City Management. So of course, Elena also knew about that too. Thus Maeda lightly threatened Elena there hoping that it would ease her demand.

But then Elena stoically said.

“You can go ahead and do whatever you want. But don’t you forget that I’ll also explain to the City Management why the negotiation with Drankam side ended up in failure. I’m pretty sure that they can understand my reason, that’s why, if it’s possible, I hope you can just let me negotiate directly with the City Management.”

Elena did not waver at all. Maeda who saw that put both of his hands on his face in frustration. Elena herself knew that Maeda was also stuck in a difficult position, but that did not mean that she should lower her demand just because of that.

“By the way, just to let you know, you’re the one who suddenly butted in when I was negotiating with the City Management in the first place, you know? So I have no reason to play nice with you.”

“We’ve been giving you requests through Drankam. Although it doesn’t mean that you have the duty to accept all of our demands, you can at least make some compromises, can’t you?”

Elena’s face turned slightly irritated.

“You’ve used that favour entirely in the last request that you gave us. To be more precise, although we’ve agreed on it in the contract, we did not make any complaint when you cut a big part of our reward money last time.”

Elena thought that she was keeping her poker face and that she was calmly assessing the situation, but in reality, her face was slightly changed and a part of her real feeling was starting to leak out, Maeda also noticed that.

Maeda was using a glasses-type information terminal. That information terminal was connected to Drankam’s server and was showing information about Elena on its transparent display. To be more precise, Maeda was looking at Elena’s request history.

Maeda picked the last request that Elena accepted and checked its detail. The record also contained the subject about the reward cut too. But it only said that both sides agreed on that reward cut and there was no problem with it at all.

[…What the heck is with this ‘no problem at all’, this is one heck of a problem, isn’t it? Who the f*ck wrote this report… Mizuha? That new officer who just got promoted from the administration department, huh? She’s an officer now though, is she that stupid as to write ‘no problem at all’ here? Or is it that someone from the other faction overwrote the report? Seriously though, I really hope they would stop roping me into this infighting problem between factions. It’s really making my job difficult. Wrong information like this is really fatal during negotiation.]

Although Maeda was a member of Drankam, he did not belong to either faction. To be more precise, he was more of a neutral faction, and this faction chose to keep itself from getting involved in the infighting.

[With more infighting inside the gang, more negotiations are happening lately. Most of the negotiators are ending up arbitrating among Hunters inside the gang, and so, fewer negotiators are available for negotiating with people outside the gang. Good grief, I really hope they would do something about this… Whoah. This is not the time to worry about that, I need to do something about this negotiation first.]

Maeda shook off his irritation while still lamenting how he got roped into such an annoying situation.

Drankam side could not afford to accept Elena’s demand. After all, Elena was not the only Hunter that Drankam had to negotiate with. If the other Hunters discovered that Drankam accepted Elena’s demand, they would use that information to demand more rewards too.

But with that being said, Drankam could not afford to have the negotiation break down there and let Elena negotiate directly with the City Management. Drankam was the one who used its connection with the City Management to butt in when Elena was negotiating with the City Management, as such, if he reported back to the City Management that he failed, there was no mistaking it that the City Management would lower its evaluation of Drankam.

But the more time he spent trying to reach a deal there, the worse the evaluation from the City Management would be.

Maeda, who had no idea what to do there, shifted his gaze from Elena to Carol. Although he was sure that Elena had the last say there, since Carol was sitting next to her, Carol might be able to somehow affect the direction of the current negotiation. Thus in order to change the mood, Maeda turned to Carol and spoke to her.

“Carol-san too, I’m sure you don’t think it’s a good idea to be stuck in this place forever, right? If we keep being stubborn here, no one would win, it’ll only bring trouble to both of us, yes?”

Carol was still smiling as she asked Maeda a question.

“In that case, can you at least tell us how Drankam organizes its Hunters and who will take the responsibility for making the plan?”

“…Will it even make any difference if we tell you?”

“You won’t then?”

“Like I said, it won’t make any difference, right?”

“It’s part of making compromises, no? If the one who will take command is a skilled and experienced Hunter, then we, as the Hunters who might be working under that Hunter, would feel safer, right? I want you to understand that we asked that much rewards since we feel uneasy about that part.”

“Are you saying that you can’t trust the leader that Drankam picks?”

“I won’t go that far though, but like, you know, a lot of Hunters are trapped inside the Seranthal building because of the last request that Drankam issued, right? I heard that it was enough to cause panic among the insurance companies.”

“So you’re saying that it’s Drankam’s fault? No matter how you look at it, no one could have predicted something like this would happen, yes?”