Chapter 179: Mechanical Armoured Spider Bug (1/2)

Akira continued searching the ruin. The inner part of the Kuzusuhara ruin expanded through a wide area and it was still quite a distance away from the deepest part of the ruin. But even so, compared to the outskirts of the ruin, the buildings were not that dilapidated, and the condition of the area was not much different compared to the deeper part of the ruin.

Alpha was floating horizontally next to Akira as if she was lying on top of an invisible bed.

“Akira, you’ve been driving around for some time now, are you not going to check one of those buildings?”

“I just thought that I should check the structure around this place first. That’s for the sake of registering buildings that seem to have expensive relics too. By the way, is it true, it’s better to aim for big buildings?”

“Hmm, I’m not really sure about that. Larger shops are easy to spot, so I feel like other Hunters would be searching such a building first. In that case, you might only end up with a small number of relics instead. What’s more, big buildings like that tend to be guarded by relatively powerful monsters. So all in all, it might not be a good choice.”

“I see.”

Akira nodded, then something came up in his mind.

“…Wait, isn’t this considered as support from you?”

Alpha smiled mischievously at Akira.

“I won’t count a small silly talk like this as support. If you really want to do this without my support at all, it might be better if I remove my image and voice too. But I just thought that you would be lonely if I do that, right?”

“Well, thanks for being considerate.”

Akira smiled wryly.

In the middle of searching the ruin, Akira suddenly stopped his bike and looked around him.

The large building next to him seemed like it had been chomped by something big. Next to it, there were multiple corpses of greedy crocodiles together with the leftover of what seemed to be the defensive equipment of that building. Other beast-like biological monsters were feasting on those wreckages.

One of those monsters suddenly noticed Akira and stopped eating, but it immediately lost interest in him and returned back to its meal.

After watching that for a few seconds, a certain word came up in Akira’s mind: ‘food chain’. It was a word that he had learnt from Alpha’s class. He always thought that he would not be able to see for himself the meaning of all the words that he learnt in Alpha’s class, but that did not seem to be the case.

“…A living organism that started as a creature that eats buildings instead of grasses…? Nah, that can’t be.”

“Hmm, they might be the monsters produced by facilities with self-readjusting food chain preservation function in order to clean up the city.”

“No no no, it would be meaningless for them to be eating the building then, wouldn’t it? And even if that’s true, then why would they even go as far as to fight the defensive equipment just to eat that building?”

“They might need to eat fresh rubble in order to be able to harvest the energy pack implanted into one of those self-repairing buildings. So basically, for them, the buildings are like fresh meat while the already destroyed buildings are like rotten meat.”

Akira listened to Alpha’s explanation with full interest.

“...Is that so?”

Alpha smiled, amused.

“No, that’s just my guess.”

Akira frowned and looked slightly annoyed, but Alpha did not seem to be bothered by that at all as she kept smiling like usual.

“I don’t mind if you want to talk about how the world works, but don’t forget that we’re in the middle of a job right now. If it still bothers you that much, I can reserve some time to give you an extra lesson about the monsters living in the old-world ruins. Though it won’t be detailed to the point that you would be able to use that knowledge in real Hunter jobs. Do you still want to do it?”

The very same question was also in active research in the eastern district. Any pieces of knowledge that the researchers could get from that research would then be used to help them to pinpoint the nests and the production facilities of those monsters as well as their distribution around the eastern district.

“No thanks, at least not for the time being.”

“I see.”

Akira interpreted Alpha’s smile as telling him to stop dilly-dallying and get back to his job, so he once again operated his bike and left that place.

After Akira left that place, an abnormality happened in one of the dead greedy crocodiles. An arm suddenly burst out of its strong scales.

The owner of that hand forced itself out of that greedy crocodile after he tore a hole in that carcass.

The other monsters in that area quickly focused their attention on Tiol and attacked him. Though Tiol only looked emotionlessly at those monsters, his right arm already swung at their heads while his left arm, which was in the shape of a cannon, was already shooting at them. It did not take long for him to destroy all the monsters attacking him. Once he was done, he immediately vanished into the deeper part of the ruin.

Akira once again stopped his bike. But this time, it was not because something piqued his interest.

“…Alpha. Unless my eyes are tricking me, there is a swarm of Tank Tarantula right?”

The roads and buildings in front of Akira were crawling with spider-like monsters, some of them had metallic skeletal frames while some of them had concrete-like bodies. Although some of them were unarmed, most had cannons growing on their backs. And their length ranged from barely 1 metre to all the way past 3 metres.

Akira’s expression turned stern. But Alpha was smiling like usual as if it did not bother her.

“Those are a swarm of spider-type armoured insects. Classification-wise, they’re similar to the Yarata Scorpion.”

“…So they’re not Tank Tarantulas?”

“Tank Tarantula is the name of a bounty monster, so it doesn’t refer to a type of monster. But if one of those spiders eat enough food to grow abnormally big and go through an abnormal evolution, there’s a chance that it’ll grow, evolve, or maybe mutate into something similar to that Tank Tarantula.”

Akira thought for a bit before he decided not to avoid them. He let go of the bike’s handle on the right and grabbed his rifle.

“Are you going to fight them? I don’t see there’s a need to fight them though?”

“I don’t want them to turn into a swarm of Tank Tarantulas later just because I leave them alone now. And that’s still my stance. Even if the possibility of something like that happening is very small, I should be prepared. What’s more, this is a good chance to test my new equipment. After all, I’m free to use as many bullets as I want this time. I’ll fight without your support first, but if things are getting bad, I’ll need your support.”

“Alright. I’ll stand back and watch this time, so you can go ahead and give it your best shot.”

Akira looked at the gun in his right hand and smiled bitterly.

“Though to be honest, rather than my skill, I think you’ll have a better look at my new equipment and all the free ammo that I’m going to use this time.”

At first, Akira was looking for a multi-type rifle that could shoot out grenades like his A4WM automatic grenade launcher, but he later decided to take that requirement off. After all, a rifle and a grenade launcher were basically two different things, so putting them into one gun caused the cost of that gun to skyrocket.

So in the end, he aimed for a gun that could do long-range sniping and continuous firing on top of being compatible with a wide range of ammo. After checking all the guns that Shizuka recommended within his budget and searching for the best gun among them, Akira decided on an SSB multi-weapon rifle.

SSB multi-weapon rifle was an amalgamation of DSS assault rifle, DVTS minigun, and CWH anti-material rifle. Its total length was just a little longer than an AAH assault rifle and shorter than a CWH anti-material rifle. It was compact enough to be used with one hand. It was also equipped with force field armour technology to reduce its recoil, thus effectively reducing its kickback and increasing its accuracy. But in exchange, it actively consumed energy packs to power its force field armour. The stronger ammo that Akira used, the faster it would burn through its energy pack. So, although it had so many features, one of its drawbacks was how much he had to pay for using that rifle.

Akira then used the rest of his budget to buy modification parts for that SSB multi-weapon rifle and his A4WM automatic grenade launcher, which totalled 200 million Aurum. And he still had to buy ammo, energy packs, and other consumables on top of that.

As he aimed his SSB multi-weapon at the spiders, Akira frowned, worrying if his new equipment could perform as well as he expected; considering all the money that he had splurged for it. The spiders immediately noticed him and tried to swarm him. The spiders with cannons on their back aimed it at Akira and started shooting at him.

Akira pulled the trigger, his SSB multi-weapon rifle was loaded with a magazine filled with ammo that was as expensive and as powerful as CWH anti-material rifle special ammo. Although the kickback from that ammo was nothing to scoff at, thanks to the recoil suspension system of the SSB multi-weapon rifle, Akira barely felt anything. Inside his extended time perception, Akira was extremely surprised, but of course, that did not stop him from aiming at the spiders in front of him. Even in that extremely extended time perception, he could feel multiple bullets leave the barrel of his rifle. The moment that bullet reached its target, it showed no mercy and blew its target to smithereens.

Akira was surprised by its firepower as he swept through the swarm. Although it reduced the intensity of his barrage, it was more than enough to pierce and kill the spiders. Akira biked up to the top of the scattered metallic wreckage of the dead spiders mixed with the rubbles and other things while he kept shooting at the spiders.

The falling warheads from the spiders bombarded Akira, but he was able to evade them with the speed of his bike as he turned left and right to disrupt their aimings. While at the same time, he was also circling the swarm, releasing a few shots every time he spotted that swarm from the openings between buildings.

Every time Akira passed through a crossroad, multiple warheads would be immediately released in his direction from the spiders both on the ground and on the buildings. But he accelerated his bike to slip through those warheads, or sometimes, he would compress his time perception to its limit in order to evade them, while leaving the spiders chasing him behind. He then sometimes stopped his bike to lay and wait, and immediately released a barrage the moment that swarm made a turn on that crossroad.

Akira kept circling the swarm while shooting at them. Every time he made a full round, the radius of the swarm got smaller and smaller. Akira prioritized shooting at the monsters with weaker-looking bodies made of a mix of brittle mechanical parts and flesh, thus leaving only the strong armoured spiders behind. He also shot down all the spiders that were latching on the building walls as they smacked down right to the ground.

Right about when the size of the swarm was halved, Akira finally ran out of ammo. But even so, he kept aiming at the swarm.

Akira had also equipped his SSB multi-weapon rifle with a guiding beam. Thanks to a rather extreme modification part that he had bought, he managed to add a mini-missile launcher on his A4WM automatic grenade launcher fixed on an arm behind his bike. And that guiding beam was able to work together with that missile launcher.

Akira fixed his aim at the relatively strong looking spiders. When he did that, the information display on his goggles marked those spiders. That was when he pulled the trigger and released multiple missiles from behind him straight to those spiders.

The small-sized missiles floated for a while as if they were fixed in that positions, but then, immediately, some of them went overhead, drew a perfect curve before raining down at the spiders from above, while some of them travelled parallel to the ground following the guiding beam from Akira’s rifle with a huge momentum before colliding with the spiders from the side. With the missiles coming from above and from the front, the explosions immediately devoured the spiders.

When the aftermath of that explosion subsided, the swarm left nothing behind at all. Only a larger sized monster that led the swarm was left in the middle of the destroyed swarm.

That monster, which looked like a pseudo Tank Tarantula, started to move. Part of its body opened up, exposing pods behind them, and released multiple mini-missiles that immediately hunted for Akira. Akira, who saw that, could not help but frown.

But he immediately accelerated his bike and jumped straight into one of the buildings near him. The missiles that were chasing him were not smart enough to pursue him as they collided into the wall of that building. As each explosion took a part of that building away, the missiles dug through the building and caused it to crumble down. Akira forced his way through that building on his bike and jumped out from the crumbling building. The building behind him crumbled down and made a loud sound as it fell to the ground.

The pseudo Tank Tarantula released another barrage of missiles. The missiles filled the sky before raining down on Akira. But before those missiles flew downward, Akira quickly compressed his time perception and reloaded a new magazine into his SSB multi-weapon rifle.

Multiple anti-forcefield armour bullets flew out from the rifle’s muzzle in rapid succession. The bullets ripped through the air and hit the Tank Tarantula right on its head. The bullet was even powerful enough to pierce through its head all the way to its torso, making a mess of that monster’s inside.

The Tank Tarantula exploded from inside, engulfing its big body in flames before blowing up into small pieces. With the mini-missiles losing their guidance system, they just flew straight down to the ground and exploded. Once all the missiles had exploded, silence returned to the ruin.

Akira heaved a big sigh.

“…I somehow got through that.”

Alpha smiled and praised him.