Chapter 146: Cleaning Up The Aftermath (1/2)

Sheryl, Akira, and some of Sheryl’s gang members gathered inside a room in the gang’s base, there were leftovers of battles scattered all around the places inside the room. After Akira killed the attackers, the gang finally calmed down.

Sheryl had a grave expression as she asked a question to her men.

“How are the casualties?”

Alicia also had the same grave expression.

“…5 people dead, many are injured. I’m not even sure whether Erio can be saved or not.”

“…I see. Take the wounded to the clinic. If they ask you about the payment, just bring out mine and Katsuragi’s name, they should give you decent care after that.”

“…Okay.”

Akira was taking care of his own wounds while he overheard Sheryl’s conversation. He checked his medicine reserve and called Alicia. He then lightly threw a box of medicine that was still pretty much full.

Alicia looked at the medicine box in her hand and was surprised, she knew that it was one of those 2,000,000 Aurum per box medicine. She also knew that Akira was telling her to use that for Sheryl’s men, but when she thought about how much it cost, she could not help but hesitate.

Akira thought for a bit while making a rather sad face before saying to Alicia.

“I’ll just put it on Sheryl’s tab. No one could have seen this coming, so don’t worry, I’ll give a big discount.”

Sheryl smiled at Alicia as if to calm her down and said.

“It’s okay to use everything, so hurry up, before it’s too late.”

Alicia looked at Akira and Sheryl and lightly bowed, then rushed out of the room.

Sheryl then bowed to Akira and thanked him.

“Thank you very much. It should be able to save a lot of souls… So, uhmm, how much is it? Although I’m not sure when I can pay it, I will definitely pay for it eventually.”

“Just pay me with anything. I said that to make them think that it isn’t free. After all, although I know that you guys don’t have money, it would be troublesome if you guys start leeching off me.”

“…I understand. I’ll take up on your generous offer then.”

Sheryl bowed deeply one more time to Akira.

Akira then continued tending on his wound. He swallowed several pills of medicine and straightened up his broken bone while the pain killer was still active. He then took off his augmented suit and applied the paste-type medicine on his skin that got peeled off due to the friction with his augmented suit. Although the pain killer was still active, he could feel pain when he was applying the paste on his exposed flesh, but he just gritted his teeth and continued tending his wounds.

He seemed to be already so used to it as he covered his wound with bandages before putting his augmented suit back on. Akira then lightly moved his arm to check his broken arm, but he felt something was not right.

“Hmmm, my arm doesn’t feel right though, is this because of that crazy thing that I did?”

But Alpha then said to Akira with a serious expression.

“I have bad news regarding that subject.”

“Eh…? Is there something wrong with my arm? I knew that it would be bad so I took a rather large amount of medicine though, wasn’t it good enough?”

“For your body, it will recover just fine after a short rest. I’m talking about the damage to your augmented suit. It was already in a bad shape before, but after that fight, its condition has considerably worsened. Some of its parts are broken, so to make sure that it’s still functional, I’ve changed some of its parts from nerve-transmitter type to movement sync type. But due to that, those particular parts can only move slower than usual.”

“My augmented suit is in such a bad shape?”

“Well, you got eaten by a monster, ran down a building’s wall, got shot, used its full power back in Seranthal building, and so many other things. It’s in a pretty rough shape right now.”

Akira thought and remembered everything that had happened. It was true that he had been using his augmented suit pretty crudely, so there was no surprise that it finally broke. He then asked Alpha.

“It’s not like I lost your support, right?”

“Yup, it’s because of the damage on your augmented suit, so it’s not like you lose my support.”

Akira seemed relieved, but Alpha then warned him.

“But it doesn’t change the fact that its ability has been significantly lowered. So you can’t do any crazy moves like that again until you get a new augmented suit.”

“It’s fine. I’m planning to stay inside the city until my new equipment arrives anyway, so I’ll just take it easy for the time being.”

Akira finished tending his wounds, put back his augmented suit, and took his rifles back to his shoulder. Although he was still not in his tip-top shape, he was ready to fight again, as a matter of fact, he had returned to his usual state of mind where he was ready to fight anytime. So now he shifted his focus to the men that he had been ignoring until now, the attackers that he had knocked unconscious before.

“Sorry for the wait, so, let’s hear your explanation now.”

They were stripped naked off all of their equipment and their hands were tied tightly with the anti-bullet sheet, all of them were already awake and they were looking at Akira with a grim face.

They already understood the situation that they were in, but they did not panic and they looked completely calm. Not too far from them, there were 4 corpses of their friends lying, killed by Akira. Those were kept there to scare the attackers that Akira spared. They thought that Akira might see some worth in sparing them since he did not kill them yet. As they thought so they believed that they had a chance for negotiation.

Other than the attackers, there were also Akira, Sheryl, and some of Sheryl’s men inside the room. Sheryl’s men were glaring at the attackers, but that did not scare them at all.

The one person that they needed to negotiate with was Akira, so there was no need to pay attention to other people, they at least knew that much. And since Akira was just a boy, they hoped that they could find some openings that they could take advantage of.

One of the attackers cautiously spoke to Akira.

“If we tell you everything, will you spare us?”

Akira replied casually, there was no intimidation in his voice.

“One thing for sure, I’ll kill you if you don’t. But don’t worry, I don’t like torturing people, so I’ll give you a swift death. After all, if you won’t tell me anything even if you’re dead, then you’re better off dead.”

There was no killing intent or a sense of threat from his voice, but the attackers understood very well that Akira was being serious.

“Alright, what do you want to know?”

“Right, for the starter, why did you attack this place?”

Akira and Sheryl tried to extract as much information as possible regarding the current incident. To put it simply, the reason why the attackers attacked Sheryl’s base was because they were in need of money. So they decided to attack a shop that seemed to have expensive goods but weak security, that kind of reasoning was common in the slum city. So after gathering information, they ended up choosing Sheryl’s base to rob.

Among the information that they gathered, it included the information about the Hunter that was protecting Sheryl’s base. It particularly said that the Hunter protecting Sheryl’s base was a weak Hunter who got his wallet stolen, and when the pickpocket’s friend scared him, that Hunter pulled back and ran away. It must have been the information that those men received from the same information broker who gave the same information to some pickpocket that Akira had been encountering lately.

The moment that subject surfaced, Akira’s mood immediately worsened. But he was somehow able to keep his calm. The attackers were really frightened when that happened, but Akira did not give a shit about that.

There was still one thing that Akira and Sheryl could not understand, it was how they knew that there were expensive articles in Sheryl’s shop and who bought that article. Unfortunately, the one who told them that was already dead, to be more precise, Akira killed that guy.

That person was Zalmo. According to them, Zalmo joined their group before they knew it and he brought all kinds of information to the group, he was also the one who prepared the fencer to sell the relics that they would rob. Among the attackers that Akira spared, it seemed that none of them knew Zalmo well.

Akira found that weird, but since it was impossible for him to defeat Zalmo without killing him. Akira thought that it could not be helped and decided not to question the attackers that he spared further about that subject. He did not think that they were lying and Alpha agreed with him.

After listening to their explanations, Akira looked at those men pitifully and mumbled.

“What can I say… It’s really important to get the correct information, huh.”

Sheryl agreed with him as she said.

“That’s right. As far as I can get from their explanation, it seems like they were tempted by rumour, or more like, tricked by fake information. I guess that’s the gist of it, it’s really troublesome.”

According to those men, after gathering all kinds of information, they concluded that there was a few million Aurum worth of articles in Sheryl’s shop, and the owner of that shop did not know that and the shop was guarded by a weak Hunter.

If that was true, it was only to be expected for strong people like Zalmo to try to rob that place. Akira could understand that reasoning.

Akira and Sheryl explained to them that they were mistaken, but they could not believe that because of Sheryl’s dress. Sheryl dress was an expensive old-world relic that even got refitted, it was enough as proof to cement those men’s misunderstanding. It made them think that Sheryl must be earning a lot of profit enough to get her that dress.

But when Akira and Sheryl told them that she only got that dress as a gift from Akira, her lover, rather than from the profit of running the shop, those men were so embarrassed that they hung their heads low. It was not rare for Hunters who were earning a healthy amount of money to buy their lovers expensive things out of their own money to express their pride in their abilities.

Those men finally understood that that the truth was the exact opposite of what they were expecting. Rather than a rich shop with a weak guard, it was a cheap shop with a strong guard. They hung their head low the moment they realized that. Seeing them acting like that, Akira and Sheryl looked exasperatedly at them.

Although Akira and Sheryl felt sorry for them, it did not change the fact that they attacked the shop. Akira then changed the mood and asked those men a question.

“That’s all I have to ask. So then, regarding what we are going to do with you next, you can either pay us money or die, which one you want to pick? If you’d rather die, don’t worry, I’ll give you a quick death. As I said, I have no plans to torture any of you.”

Those men looked at each other, one of them then scaredly asked Akira.

“…How much should we pay?”

“Oh, you’re going to let us decide? Well, how about 10 billion Aurum each?”

The moment Akira said that, those men were dumbfounded. One of them flared up and shouted at Akira.

“Are you fucking kidding me?! There’s no way we can pay that much money!!”

“Then how much can you pay us? Just to remind you, you guys did shoot at me fully intending to kill me so I’m being nice to you to let you off the hook only with that much money. If you can’t give me a good offer, I’ll just kill you here and that will be the end of it.”

Those men shivered to Akira’s declaration, there were already 4 unrecognizable dead bodies next to them showing just how serious Akira was. If they could not give a good offer, he would not hesitate to add them to those dead bodies. Another one of them shifted his gaze to Sheryl and begged.

“Hey, are you really okay with that? There’s no good thing that you can get from being greedy, you know? And it’s not like you can get any money if you kill us, right?”

That man thought that it should be easier to talk with Sheryl rather than with Akira.

But Sheryl just smiled and replied.

“I don’t really mind, you can go ahead and die.”

“Haah!?”

“If Akira decides so, I have no wish to stop him.”

“Y-You’re the boss in this gang, right? He’s just your guard, isn’t it?!”

“Yup, but, this and that are two different things. Not to mention that you guys killed some of my men too, so I have no reason to stop him.”

“…But the guy who killed your men is already dead over there, isn’t it? We didn’t kill any of your men.”

“That’s exactly why we’re willing to let you solve this incident with money.”

Sheryl told them to die with a smile on her face. She knew that Akira would not be satisfied with a small amount of money and she knew well that those men could not pay the amount of money that Akira demanded of them, that was why she told them to die.

Those men had run out of moves that they could make, one of them then said with a pale face.

“W-wait, you won’t get anything if you kill us, right? And you already killed enough people to scare us. So just think about it, it might be a good idea to let us live and get some profit out of that.”

Akira swiftly replied.

“I know, so, how much are you going to pay?”

That man hesitatingly replied back.

“…1,000,000 Aurum.”

After hearing that, Akira looked at Sheryl without saying anything, Sheryl reacted by shaking her head. So Akira replied to that man in place of her.

“Not good enough.”