Chapter 126: Forcing The Way Forward (1/2)

Reina, who just exchanged shifts with Kanae, asked Shiori.

“Shiori, did anything happen when I was resting?”

Shiori smiled gently to calm Reina.

“No. Nothing happened in particular. Or at least, I don’t see anything that might worsen our current situation. So please be at ease.”

“… I see.”

Reina was a bit weirded out since Shiori answered back so firmly, she then forced a smile.

Reina understood very well that she was the very reason why the situation was getting worse from here and on out. Her dejection was slightly leaked out of her forced smile.

Shiori then made a suggestion to help Reina take off her mind from the current problem.

“Milady, since you’ve woken up, let’s get a bite. I’ll prepare the meal right away, so please wait for a bit.”

“…Alright.”

Reina was still a bit overwhelmed by Shiori’s reaction as she was barely able to reply back.

Shiori immediately made the preparation for the meal. She somehow magically transformed a part of that room into a luxury restaurant, it made a rather awkward scene against the backdrop of the old-world ruin’s room.

She put a clean white tablecloth on top of a portable table, then she placed warm food on top of it. Although all of them were foods designed for Hunters, they were from expensive products that might even be much more delicious than most of the self-proclaimed high-class restaurants out there.

The portable foods were designed to reheat themselves when opened, and their containers were designed to keep the foods from going cold, the soup there was even steaming.

If a Hunter who did not know what was going on suddenly saw this scene, there was no mistaking it that he or she would be completely dumbfounded.

Shiori and Reina were sitting facing each other while they were having the meal. Shiori decided that it was better to take the meal together with Reina rather than standing next to her and serving her.

Consuming food is important even when they were barricading themselves. Reina’s face relaxed as she took a spoon of the delicious meal. Shiori, who saw that, smiled. Reina, who could feel Shiori smiling at her, blushed and tried to throw a conversation to change the mood.

“I know it’s a bit too late for me to be saying this, but this reminds me that these portable meals are really something.”

“The usual portable meals from Drankam are cheap portable meals after all. The portable meals that we’re having right now are from a different supplier that I’ve selected. Although they’re pretty expensive, I believe that their quality to price ratio is pretty good compared to the other foods usually sold in the wasteland. Some people don’t care much about the food that they eat while some others do, and I’m sure it’s impossible for Drankam to distribute this level of portable meals to all its Hunters. Indeed it’s better to eat the usual portable meals if we’re together with the other Hunters, but since there are no other Hunters at the moment, I believe it should be alright to take these portable meals.”

“Now that you mention it, that does make sense. I feel like it’ll cause trouble if we eat this kind of portable meals while the other Hunters are getting the usual ones.”

Reina imagined a situation where she was eating a luxurious looking meal while the other Hunters around her had to nibble on their Hunter ration, she then lightly smiled.

Reina and Shiori continued chatting while having their meal when Reina suddenly asked Shiori something that just came up in her mind.

“Say, Shiori, do you think that our current situation has something to do with the Mihazono Ruin’s ghost story?”

Reina heard about 3 ghost stories of Mihazono ruin from Shiori.

The ghoul building. From time to time, a lot of Hunters and monsters in the Mihazono ruin would suddenly vanish. According to that ghost story, the real cause of that was because the Seranthal building grew hungry and ate them.

The second story was about a door that would suddenly appear out of nowhere inside the Mihazono ruin. It would bait the Hunters to enter that door with relics, but when they entered, the door would shut and the Hunters were never seen the outside ever again.

The third story was about the lonely ghost. It was said that the dead corpses of the Hunters left in the ruin sometimes suddenly started moving on their own and attacking the other Hunters. They must have been longing for more friends.

Shiori thought for a bit before answering.

“I can’t say for sure. If I have to make a connection, it might be related to the story of the ghoul building. But it’s also not normal to find this many monsters in this place, not to mention, they’re abnormally strong, even stronger than the Hunters who took that SOS request. I’m sure the Hunter Office already knows about that fierce battle too. The level of abnormality is too big to blame everything on a ghost story. So I believe that it’s not related to that.”

“I see. I just thought that if it’s related, it might give us some hints on how to get out of this building.”

“It’s common for weird things to happen around old-world ruins, which might develop into ghost stories later. That’s why let’s not drop our guard and keep being careful… I understand that in the past you loved to explore the mansion, Milady. But please don’t do that here, if you get inside that vanishing door from the ghost story, it would be hard for me to find you, you know?”

Shiori smiled teasingly when she said that.

While on the other hand, Reina remembered her past self and could not help but to make a bitter smile.

“I know.”

After that, they continued having a silly talk while taking the meal. Once she was done and got her stomach filled, Reina regained some of her energy. Nutritious food was the main fuel for fighting, that was why they were worth their price.

As Shiori was cleaning after the meal, Reina suddenly apologetically said to her

“Shiori, I’m sorry.”

Shiori tried to think of the reason why Reina was apologizing. Although she could come up with several guesses, it did not change what she would reply with.

“Milady, there’s nothing for you to apologize for.”

“But if I had properly listened to you and decided not to come here, we wouldn’t be in this situation right now.”

“Neither I nor Milady could have seen this coming. I also only thought that this Seranthal building would only be a little bit more dangerous than what Drankam thought it was. I also did not expect it to be this bad. Although it might be an exaggeration, I believe that being able to see this coming at that time would be close to predicting the future. If I knew that something like this would happen, I would have tried everything that I could do to stop Milady back then… After all, I’ll never let you go to a dangerous place just to get killed. I hope that Milady could at least believe me about that.”

Shiori had a serious look when she said that to Reina. Even if Reina somehow doubted Shiori’s loyalty, Shiori’s devotion will not waver. But even so, Shiori still held the desire of Reina trusting her.

Reina herself trusted Shiori more than anyone else, she thought of her as one of her family that she had been together with through thick and thin. For her, Shiori was like a reliable sister.

Sometimes, that level of trust caused her to make selfish requests to Shiori, and the current situation was the result of one of her selfish request.

Reina replied with a serious face.

“I know, and I do trust you.”

Shiori smiled happily, she looked somehow satisfied. But her smile then changed to a teasing smile.

“In that case, as I explained just now, I hope Milady would understand that there’s nothing for Milady to apologize.”

“Alright alright.”

Reina smiled, her expression was saying that she understood Shiori just pulled a good one on her.

After cleaning up the table, Shiori returned to check her equipment. She returned back to the wreckage that she was using as a seat. From there, Shiori could see Kanae who was lying down not too far from her and Reina who was sitting close to her.

Shiori looked at both of them for a few seconds, her face then turned rather stern. She took a deep breath to calm herself down, her expression turned back to normal, and then she said to Reina.

“Milady, if I may?”

Seeing from how Shiori was acting there, it seemed that she had something important to talk about.

“Sure, what is it?”

“We’re barricading ourselves inside this room for days since we hope that the situation outside will get better with time, hoping Drankam might send out a rescue team for us, or the monsters that were surrounding this room might leave. But with that being said, we can’t keep barricading ourselves inside this room forever. If we keep ourselves inside this room without no means to check the situation outside, we can only hope that the situation outside is getting better, and sooner or later, we have no choice but to dismantle the barricade and try to make a run for it.”

They could not check the situation outside and they could not make any contact outside either. Due to the unknown source that was lowering the sensitivity of information-gathering devices inside that building, they could only detect a few metres outside the entrance, and they knew nothing about the area further than that. They could only wait and hope there that the situation outside was getting better.

If they got unlucky, the situation outside might have actually turned worse than before when it was filled with monsters, screams, and cries.

Reina then replied back firmly in order to expel the fear and worry that were creeping inside her.

“…alright, so then, when are we going to do that? Is it soon?”

Seeing how Reina replied back so firmly like that, Shiori made her resolve too.

“We’ll do it once we’ve finished all the preparations. We need to dismantle the barricade and Kanae just took a rest not too long ago. We have several strengthening drugs too, but they’ll take some time before the effect kicks in. Other than giving Kanae more time to rest, we have other preparations to do. We’ll try to make our run once we’re sure we’re 100% ready…”

As Shiori was explaining things to Reina, Kanae, who was sleeping suddenly opened her eyes and sprung up.

She stared at the wall as if she was checking something outside that room, she was in a stance as if she was ready to fight anytime.

The moment Shiori noticed that, she immediately stepped in front of Reina to protect her while keeping her eyes on the barricaded entrance. But Shiori did not see anything out of the ordinary.

“Kanae, what’s wrong?”

Kanae looked amused as her rare talent was telling her that a presence that she liked was somewhere close.

“Ane-san, we need to get ready to break out of this room, this might be our only chance.”

Kanae was beaming when she said that.

—*—*—*—

Elena’s team just reached the 30th floor. To be more precise, they were climbing the stairs from the 29th floor to the 30th floor and were checking out the situation on the 30th floor.

Akira’s face twitched when he saw the situation on the 30th floor. The same also happened for Carol, Elena, Sara, Shikarabe, and Togami, although at different levels.

The reason why Akira and Carol looked far more concerned than the other Hunters was because of their experience. They could see countless monsters filling the hallways in front of them.

Fortunately, there were no monsters at all near the stairs, thanks to that, they were able to check out the situation on the 30th floor from a relatively safe place.

Sara frowned.

“Elena, what should we do about this? Or more like, are we still going to push forward?”

If it could be helped, she actually did not want to proceed forward. After all, that would mean that they had to fight all of those monsters for the sake of the Hunters who might already be dead by now. Elena easily caught what Sara was trying to say.

Sara evaluated that this was as far as they could go safely.

But Elena was still unsure, she was still facing forward, looking at the monsters in front of her, she then said with a stern expression.

“If we have no extra information, the right choice, in this case, would be to pull back, but…”

Shikarabe immediately intervened.

“So in short, you have a piece of information that warrants us to push forward, right?”

Elena then answered Shikarabe’s question.

“On our way here, I found similar information relay devices like the one we found back on the 15th floor. The content of those relay devices is also the same so I thought that there’s no need to tell anyone. But then, basically, I also found similar devices here but with different content. Look at your map.”

Elena updated the map data that the others were receiving from her to show an indicator that was pointing at a particular room on the 30th floor.

“If we are to trust the data from that relay device, the people who owned those relay devices should be in that room.”

Carol sounded slightly impressed as she said.

“So basically they ran all the way from the below up to this floor and barricaded themselves inside that room, huh. Well, it’s true that room should be able to hold for a long time against all the monsters outside as long as they properly barricaded the entrance. And it won’t be strange for them to find that room if they bought a map of Seranthal building before they came in here. Shikarabe, you know all of this, that’s why you guessed that they’re still alive, right?”

Shikarabe’s expression did not change as he replied.

“Possibility wise, yes.”

“I see.”