Chapter 148: Selling Corpses (1/2)

Akira followed Sheryl to the clinic, which was located inside the slum city. Although it was located outside Sheryl’s territory, it was not that far from the base.

It was located in a particular area inside the slum where there was an unwritten rule among the residents not to cause any trouble. After all, if the clinic got involved in a fight, it would bring trouble to all of them. Also, even if the clinic was fine, it might refuse to treat them if they caused trouble there. Although it was an unwritten rule, it was effective enough to make people around the area obey.

When Akira saw the exterior of the clinic, he frowned and asked.

“…Sheryl, is this really the place?”

“Yes, it’s this building… I understand what you want to say, but this is the clinic.”

“… I see.”

The clinic looked suspicious from the outside. Rather than a clinic, it looked more like a laboratory, weird devices were sticking out of its roof as if to say that they were doing questionable experiments inside. The dangling signboard was so worn out, the letters written on it were almost unreadable. But, it still could be read ‘Yatsubayashi’s clinic’.

Akira and Sheryl entered that clinic, a guy in a white suit was tending Sheryl’s men. He might be tending their wounds, but judging by the glowing liquid that he was using, it looked more like he was experimenting on Sheryl’s men. That man noticed Akira and Sheryl, he immediately went to Sheryl, whom he had asked to come to the clinic, and said to her.

“You’re here, huh. It’s about the medicine that I use… Hm?”

That man looked at Akira and felt like he had seen Akira somewhere before. He then lightly smiled and said.

“Oh, it’s you. Long time no see.”

But Akira did not remember that guy at all.

“Did we ever meet before?”

“It’s me, Yatsubayashi. I tended on your wounds back in the Kuzusuhara city, remember?”

When Yatsubayashi said that, Akira immediately remembered him.

“…Ohhh, the guy from back then, huh.”

“Now you remember. I heard that you got badly injured right after I tended to your injuries though. Thanks to that, the City Management intervened and I couldn’t use the data that I gathered from tending your wounds, you know?”

“It’s not like I can do anything about it even if you tell me so”

It seemed that Akira’s contract with Kibayashi to erase all kinds of records from back then had affected Yatsubayashi too. But it was not like Akira could do anything about it even if Yatsubayashi told him so, and in reality, Akira himself was not bothered by that.

Sheryl lightly bowed to Yatsubayashi and said to him.

“Thank you for helping us, so I heard that there’s something you need to talk to me about…”

Yatsubayashi looked at Sheryl and Akira alternately, he then lightly nodded and said.

“Nah, it’s not a problem now. It seemed that the guys your men brought in had been treated with some expensive medicine. So I just thought that if you have enough money to buy that kind of stuff, I want you to properly pay for the treatment, but it seems that’s not the case.”

Yatsubayashi thought that it would not be strange for Akira to easily pay for those expensive medicines to win some points from Sheryl. After all, from his point of view, Sheryl was beautiful enough for Akira to aim for her. He then smiled and said.

“Putting that aside, do you want me to charge more for the treatment? The more you pay me, the better the treatment that these guys will get.”

Akira flatly replied.

“I have no reason to go that far.”

“I see, well, that’s to be expected.”

It seemed that Akira was not really that interested in Sheryl. Yatsubayashi thought so when he saw Akira react that way, so he decided to stop offering more treatment. He then shifted to Sheryl.

“Over there are the people that I’ve finished treating. 2 of them ended up dead, but that’s not my fault. If you want me to take care of the bodies too, then you’ll have to pay more. If not, then take them home. While for those who are still alive, they should be able to walk back home by themselves by tomorrow.”

“I understand, Akira, I’ll go and check on them.”

Sheryl lightly bowed and left. Sheryl’s men who had already finished getting their treatments noticed Sheryl although some of them were still half-dazed. Some of them were already recovered enough to move, it might be because their injuries were not that bad, or it might be because the strange green medicine was pretty effective.

Akira suddenly casually asked Yatsubayashi a question.

“How bad were the people that you couldn’t save?”

“Hm? They got shot in their body and their organs were in a mess. They were bleeding pretty badly too.”

“Was that really that bad? I thought that level of injury is only a light injury, right?”

Yatsubayashi lightly laughed.

“That’s indeed the case for Hunters. You can’t just compare the injuries between Hunters and normal people. Normal people would die with that level of injury, you see. As for those who are still alive, even after they are left with nothing but their heads, they are mostly cyborgs. While those who are still alive even after they get cut into two are only alive because they use a lot of medicines to forcefully keep their bodies functional. Those people with enhanced bodies basically have a completely different level of resilience compared to normal people. So if you compare these normal guys with Hunters, they would die, you know? You gotta be careful about this difference.”

“Now that you say so, that’s kind of true…”

Akira smiled bitterly, he just realized how badly skewed his perception was.

Yatsubayashi then changed the subject.

“Well, putting that aside, since you’re here, how about getting some treatment too?”

“Ah, that’s right, I wanted to have a check-up. As for my injuries, I already treated them with my own medicines, so I just want you to do a normal body check up and also check the nanomachine leftover accumulated inside my body.”

“Just a check-up, huh. Geez, just to let you know, it won’t be free.”

“I know.”

Akira took off his augmented suit and did a check-up there. Just like last time, Yatsubayashi used weird devices to check Akira’s body. When he was doing that, it seemed that something picked his interest as he said to Akira.

“Say, are you trying to be superhuman or something?”

Akira asked back confusedly.

“Superhuman? What are you even talking about?”

“You were putting your body under immense stress while consuming a lot of medicines, right? And that stress was so immense that it more or less negated the healing effect from the medicines that you consumed. Do you have any recollection of doing something like that?”

“Well, I did fight a lot while consuming medicines to compensate for the stress from my augmented suit though. Is it from that? Is there anything wrong with that?”

Yatsubayashi sighed.

“So you don’t even realize that you’re doing it, huh. You’re really crazy.”

“What are you even talking about?”

“Although not many people realize it, the people of the eastern district would improve a lot only with a small amount of training, you see. Of course, the effect differs between people and there’s a limit on how effective it is. But some people have an abnormal level of growth, these people basically can throw a tank without any extra help, these people are what you usually call superhuman. But even those people can’t get that level of strength purely from training. After all, their talent only increases their potential the more they train, not their real strength, that’s why they need to do something else other than just physical training to obtain that strength. And one of those methods is to put your body past its limit while consuming powerful medicine. They do that to compress the training intensity as much as possible.”

Akira searched through his memories, it was true that he did something similar numerous times in the past.

“Is that even effective?”

“I heard so, but well, rather than doing that, it’s far faster to just modify your body or to just use an augmented suit though. So, unless you’re obsessed with getting that level of strength only with your body, no one would try to do that.”

“But, that kind of thing is a talent that you are born with, right? So I bet most of the people can’t do that even if they try.”

Yatsubayashi seemed to be having fun talking about that subject, it might be a subject that he was interested in.

“Surprisingly enough, a lot of people actually have that kind of body, they just don’t realize it themselves. Some theories say that those superhumans might be the descendants of enhanced people from the old-world era. As the story goes, some people tried to be superhuman by using technologies in the old-world era, much like how they did it in the past. On the other case, some people get their bodies modified before they even realize it because of the nanomachine that they keep using. Either way, that strength propagated to their children and then their children used new technologies to achieve the same thing. And basically, everything accumulated together.”

The old-world technology was at a level where it could redefine what it meant to be a human. As a matter of fact, the current people of the eastern district were created through the old-world technology, so they were, in a sense, old-world relics.

Because of that, relics sometimes cost a lot of money. For example, the people who can connect to the old-world domain were prized highly. And that worth would not go down until they completely analyze the cause and extract the technology from it.

“I even heard that some people from the central district call the people from the eastern district as mutants or even biological weapons. Well, looking from that point of view, it could be said that everyone in the eastern district is a mutant, and since we call biological monsters as monsters because of similar reasons, I can’t say that is wrong.”

Akira slightly frowned. The free food distributed in the slum city were free because they were not safe, they were filled with stuff that might cause mutation and Akira had been eating such substances for a long time. His body might as well have been mutated, although it was just not enough to kill him straight away.

“A lot of veteran Hunters have abnormal strength. Although they are not superhuman, they get pretty close to being one from all of the training that they have gone through. Well, of course, a lot of them died before they could reach that point, or just decided to enhance their body with a particular technology that has been fully analyzed, or lose their potential to be a superhuman because of an unexplainable reason even now, that’s why there are not that many superhumans out there. Personally speaking, I don’t recommend trying to be one too.”

“I don’t want to be one either.”

“Yep, if you want to get stronger, my recommendation would be to modify your body. So, want to try it? Although you can’t use any insurance for this, I’ll give you a big discount so that it’ll cost more or less like a normal treatment, you know…”

Akira swiftly replied.

“No thanks.”

Yatsubayashi clicked his tongue and looked slightly disappointed.

“You don’t need to be that wary. It would be fine, of course, I already checked that it’s more or less safe.”

“I want a guarantee, not ‘more or less safe’.”

“Isn’t the possibility of getting killed an occupational hazard for a Hunter? It’s less risky than exploring old-world ruin. And considering that it’ll give you a superhuman strength if it succeeds, I would say that it’s a very low risk.”

“Still no.”

Yatsubayashi sighed.

“I wonder why people hate it so much, they often commented that the outlook of this clinic looks so suspicious. Why does no one other than me find this old-world vibe interesting.”

Akira remembered the outlook of the clinic. According to Yatsubayashi, it was based off on old-world design. Now that Yatsubayashi mentioned it, Akira could understand his point. But rather than giving the high-tech vibe from the old-world, it still gave off a suspicious impression. Akira thought that it was normal for other people to think so too.

After Yatsubayashi finished with the check-up, he told Akira the result.

“Your injuries will fully recover in no time as long as you don’t do anything crazy. But as I thought, the nanomachine count inside your body is too high. I’ll prescribe you a medicine to clean it off, so make sure to take it. You can buy the medicine in another place, but if you buy it from me, I can give you a better one, although I can’t guarantee its safety. If you decide to take my medicine, I’ll put the medicine cost together with your checkup cost. The check-up alone is 10,000 Aurum, if you want to buy the medicine too, the total will be 100,000 Aurum.”

“I’ll take your medicine.”

“Thanks for the business.”

Right after Akira paid for his check-up and medicine, Sheryl came. She then thanked Yatsubayashi one more time before leaving the clinic together with Akira.

After Akira and Sheryl left, Yatsubayashi mumbled.

“The record says that he’s been using a lot of expensive medicines, it means that he’s earning a lot of money and I am always in need of more money for my research. It seems that he’s Sheryl’s lover, I wonder if I can get a lot of money from him through Sheryl… I guess I’ll think about it.”

Yatsubayashi was a kind person, he had saved the lives of a lot of people who would have died otherwise. But that kindness did not come for free. The biggest reason why he opened a clinic in the slum city was because poor people would be desperate enough to try something risky. In the slum city, it was relatively easy for him to test pretty dangerous stuff that would have originally taken a lot of money and time. Not to mention, no one would complain if some of them got killed in the process.

The slum city was the perfect place for those researchers who believed that small sacrifices were unavoidable in order to save many people.

After Akira took Sheryl back to her base, he headed back home. In the middle of the way, he thought of something and asked Alpha.

“Say, Alpha, about that superhuman thing though, do you think I can be one?”

Alpha smiled and replied.

“Possibility-wise, yes. But the success rate is too small that it’s unrealistic to change your training schedule just because of that.”

Akira seemed a bit disappointed.