Chapter 180: Old-World Equipment (1/2)

Akira finished searching the fourth floor, but he still could not find anything valuable yet. Though he tried taking some relics which were in relatively better condition, all of them were turned into sand when he opened up his rucksack again to put in more relics later. So he decided that it was meaningless to keep doing that.

Akira sighed, slightly bummed out.

“I always thought that I should be able to at least find some expensive relics since we’re in the deeper part of the ruin, but it doesn’t seem to that easy, huh.”

Unlike Akira, Alpha still had her usual smile.

“Well, we’re still around the main road made by dispatching a big army. I’m sure that they already collected all the easy-to-spot expensive relics.”

“But still, that building you showed me the first time we met still had quite a lot of relics, right? Although the direction is not the same, that place was more or less of the same distance from the city, you know? So I thought I should be able to at least find some expensive relics here too.”

“The distance and the danger are different. Thanks to the properly maintained road, it’s an easy thing to send people to this place, you can’t afford to compare that place to here. Not to mention, that place was still patrolled by huge monsters, so only a limited number of Hunters managed to reach it.”

“Is that so?”

“If you want to find a lot of relics, you should look for buildings that other Hunters haven’t searched. I’m pretty sure you can find a lot of relics if you go past the front line, you know? Want to try to do that instead?”

“I wouldn’t go that far either though…”

Akira did think so too, but the front line was already guarded with powered suits. There was no doubt the area beyond it was highly dangerous. Of course, since he was free to use as many bullets as he wanted, he could just force his way there. But he also thought that there was no need to be that reckless, at least not for now.

“Well, for the time being, I’ll hunt for relics and monsters around this area.”

As he said so, Akira also kept reminding himself that he promised Shizuka not to do anything reckless.

Akira continued looking for relics in that building. Although he had reached the seventh floor, he still got no meaningful result. He forced his bike to go up the stairs and finally reached the eighth floor and noticed that it was different compared to the other floors downstairs.

The floor was filled with big snails, some of them were 1 metre long. Its shell was made of metal and a small-sized cannon was perching on its back.

“So, what’s your plan now? If you have no plans to collect money by hunting monsters, I don’t think there’s any need to fight them. We also could not find any good relics up until now, so, want to head back instead?”

“No, I’ll kill them and continue searching this building. Since there are monsters on this floor, I’m sure other Hunters who only came to take a quick glance of this place wouldn’t have tried to search for relics past this floor. So basically, there’s a good chance I still can find some relics ahead.”

“I see, good luck then.”

Akira stepped off from his bike and aimed his SSB multi-weapon rifle from under the shadow in that hallway. He aimed his rifle carefully and pulled the trigger, the bullet flew and pierced a hole in that snail’s shell.

The moment that happened, the snail pulled back its soft body as if to hug the floor while its small-sized cannon immediately targeted Akira. Akira quickly pulled back his body, the warhead flew past him, struck the wall and created a small explosion.

“Its cannon is not that powerful either.”

“With that being said, it does not mean you can afford to take that shot, okay?”

“I know.”

From that short exchange, Akira thought that the enemy was not that strong and it seemed he only needed a few shots to take it down. But after he took a few shots at that snail, he could not help but frown. All his shots did hit that sail, but the bullets only ricocheted off its shell. The same thing happened even after he did that 5 times. Every time the bullets hit that snail, a flash was released from its shell.

Akira was amazed by what was happening as he evaded the warheads coming at him.

“It suddenly turned hard. And also, that light, it is due to the kinetic energy conversion to light from the force field armour, right?”

“That seems to be the case.”

“So I have to kill it quickly before it can notice me, otherwise its shell will harden, huh? What a pain!”

Akira calmed his breathing and immediately jumped out from behind the cover. He compressed his time perception to its limit, aimed his SSB multi-type rifle at that monster, and pulled the trigger, aiming for the same spot as accurately as possible with each shot.

The combination of his compressed time perception, the recoil compensator of his SSB multi-type rifle, augmented physical capability from his augmented suit, and all the hard work that he had done from his training, allowed him to release rapid-fire with surgical accuracy. Thanks to that, all the bullets that he shot hit mostly the same location.

Even the powerful force field armour of the snail could not handle that. The bullets blew a hole through the snail’s shell and ricocheted inside the snail’s shell, destroying its innards. Not to mention, the snail had retracted its body into its shell, thus immediately killing it. It then leaned and rolled over with a low rattling sound.

“Alright then, well, although I was only able to kill it thanks to all the bullets that I consumed, a win is still a win. But still, I didn’t expect monsters with force field armour to be loitering around this place. I guess that’s normal when I’m this deep, huh. Maybe Kibayashi allowed me to use that much money because he knows that it would be this dangerous.”

Akira felt happy that he was able to defeat a relatively strong monster on his own. But Alpha immediately shot it down.

“Unfortunately, that might not be the case. This snail is not a strong monster. Judging from its strength, the spiders that you fought the other day is stronger.”

“That might be true for the big spider leading that swarm, but that’s not the case for the smaller ones, no?”

“Not really, that’s also the case if you compare that snail with the smaller spider.”

Akira raised his eyebrows. He then asked.

“…Is that so? But the smaller spiders had no forcefield armour, you know. The snail is stronger no matter how you look at it, right?”

“Akira, there are many monsters which are stronger when they are in a certain condition. The snail is basically one of those monsters and this situation is the condition where it is strong. You can actually defend yourself from bullets just like that snail if you spent your energy to temporarily increase the strength of the force field armour on your coat.”

“Even if that’s true, it’s not like I can keep up that level of force field armour for so long, right?”

“I bet that snail is taking the energy from the building. It might be harvesting that energy so it can’t move in the meantime. If that’s the case, then it won’t be able to use its force field armour outside the building, that might be the reason why you don’t see them outside.”

“…Is that a guess?”

“Yep. But again, if that snail can use such a powerful force field armour that is even able to block a bullet that’s as power powerful as CWH anti-material rifle special bullet anywhere, it would have been roaming outside the building and the City Management would have put some effort in eradicating them.”

Akira nodded.

“Well. Considering that its shell becomes that strong if I don’t kill it while it hasn’t noticed me, honestly speaking, it’s actually a pretty troublesome monster…”

Akira hung his head low. Not only did he give his enemy a chance to turn the situation to its advantage, he then forced himself to defeat that monster in that situation just to misevaluate it, thinking that it was a strong monster and got ahead of himself because of that.

He then realized that Alpha was smiling at him amusedly and raised his head.

“It doesn’t really matter, a win is a win. Moreover, I bet other Hunters who came here before me thought that it was too much of a hassle to defeat that monster and left without searching this floor. So there’s a good chance I might find some expensive relics here.”

“You have a point there. But I’ll at least let you know this. There are still multiple similar monsters in this building, so make sure to get them without getting noticed, okay?”

“Roger that, let’s go!“

Akira sounded a bit desperate when he said so as he continued exploring the ruin.

The exploration itself went well. As he expected, Akira encountered some snail monsters again, but he was able to take them down without getting noticed. There were also times when there were multiple snails so that he could not take all of them down at the same time, although he got some of his shots deflected by their hardened shells, Akira then would open up some distance to wait for their shells to soften back before shooting at them again.

Thanks to that, he was able to quickly defeat all of the snails although he had a hard time fighting the first snail that he had met. Akira himself realized that fact as he smiled wryly.

Although the exploration went well, he still could not find any valuable relics. He had already reached the twelfth floor but still ended up with nothing. Akira stopped for a bit as he heaved a big sigh and said.

“Still nothing, huh? Although, it’s also weird that there are fewer of those bad relics too.”

“Those snails might have eaten them.”

“Good grief…”

Knowing when to give up was also an important skill for a Hunter. Akira knew that too, but he could not shake off the feeling that he might be able to find something if he continued searching that building, thus preventing him from making that decision. Furthermore, he had to fight those troublesome snails to be able to reach that place, so it would be such a waste to give up here. As he continued searching the building, he eventually finished the second last floor of that building, the 19th floor.

Akira sighed again and said.

“…Alpha. I know that this might be counted as your support. But since I’ve come this far, tell me if I missed any expensive relics behind.”

“Nope. Based on my sensor, I didn’t find any good relics either.”

“So, this place really has no expensive relics, huh… If I still can’t find anything on this floor, then it would mean this building is a dud although it’s such a big building. I wonder if I have no talent in this.”

Alpha smiled and lightly cheered up the discouraged Akira.

“Sharpening your sense for such a thing is not easy. I believe that piling up experience is the only way to do that.”

“That’s true, but still…”

Although Akira understood very well that his ability to hunt both relics and monsters was significantly lowered without Alpha’s support, he thought that he should be able to at least manage something. But it seemed that the reality was not that kind.

“Moreover, we still have the last floor left, it might be too quick to decide that this place is a dud right now. Don’t give up and do your best to the very end.”

“…You’re right.”

Akira thought that getting discouraged there would not help him with anything, thus he shook it off his mind and continued the exploration.

The last floor only had a long hallway that connected the stairs to a door. Akira went through that hallway and stepped off from his bike in front of that door. But when he tried to open it, the tough door would not budge even with the power of his augmented suit.

“It won’t even move, why did they make this one door so strong? All the other doors downstairs were easy to open.”

“That might be simply because the snails downstair sapped their energy and make the doors brittle.”

“Which means that there should be no snails on this floor then. Well, I guess we’ll know soon enough once we get in…”

Akira turned up his augmented suit’s performance to max, ignoring its energy consumption, and tried to open the door. But again, the door did not budge at all.

Akira, who started to get annoyed, aimed his SSB multi-weapon rifle at the door. If he barraged that door with anti-forcefield bullets at that range, he thought he should be able to destroy that door no matter how strong it was. But at the same time, he also hesitated using bullets made to kill monsters for something like that. Although he did not pay for those bullets himself, it did not change the fact that he would be using more of those expensive bullets although he still had no meaningful results up until now. It would be no surprise if he received some complaints from Kibayashi later. Akira still had his rifle aimed at the door without being able to bring himself to pull the trigger.

That was when Alpha smiled bitterly at him and said.

“Akira, if you want to destroy the door, you should use the blade instead. There’s no need to use expensive bullets for a target that doesn’t move even when you’re up this close.”

Akira looked surprised and smiled wryly. He then took out the blade that he had forgotten until now. It was the blade he brought back from the Tsubakihara building.

Akira’s body suddenly started moving on its own. Of course, it was Alpha controlling his augmented suit. He then took a stance as a blade extended out from the handle in his hand.

“Alpha?”

Alpha suddenly started providing support to him again. Akira looked at Alpha in surprise, but she ignored it.

“This much is fine, right? Let’s hurry up and open that door. After all, it would be a bad idea to waste the energy left in that blade.”

Akira smiled bitterly and matched his body movement with his augmented suit’s movement.

With the help of Alpha’s support, Akira swung the blade with the skill of a swordmaster. The blade sliced through the thick metallic door as if it was not there in the first place.

After he executed that slice, Akira took a breath before retracting the shape part of the blade. A few seconds later the pieces of the door fell back and made banging sounds. Seeing how the door was cut clean, Akira could not hide his amazement.

“This blade is as sharp as usual. I somehow can understand why those Hunters, who are able to get their hands on this blade and are able to use it freely, choose to fight monsters in close range.”

Alpha frowned, which was very rare for her.

“Don’t do that, okay? Although I also train you on how to use that blade, it’s basically melee training that includes hand to hand and close-range shooting. It’s not so that you would specialize in fighting in close range with a blade.”

“I know.”

Akira only said so and stopped pursuing that subject. But in reality, many Hunters tend to specialize in a single type of weapon when they got their hands on powerful weapons, even more so when that weapon was an old-world weapon. After all, due to its abnormally high performance, there were times when that weapon saved them during unlikely situations, thus increasing their trust in that weapon.

When Akira entered that room, he immediately stopped, surprised at what he found inside that room

The whole highest floor consisted of a single room. That room had a pure white ceiling, wall, and floor. Although there was no window in that room, it was bright enough for Akira to see clearly. It was big, seemingly limitless, and the boundary between the ceiling, wall, and floor was blurred. It really threw Akira’s sense of distance off.

“Alpha, this is…”

“A room designed for 3D projection or augmented reality. The white floor, ceiling and wall are to remove any needless information from getting into your views. The whole room itself is equipped with some kind of projection device.”

“What can I say… This room feels really weird.”

Akira’s vision was filled with the colour white no matter where he looked. When he looked down at his feet, it gave an impression that he was floating. The same conclusion could be seen from the data gathered by his information-gathering device as if it was malfunctioning.

The moment Akira noticed the reading of his information-gathering device, he tensed up since he understood that he was in a situation where he could not rely on his information-gathering device. It was as if he was in the middle of a thick colourless mist.

“Alpha, though I should have done this sooner, let’s end the training here. Help me get a better reading of this room.”

“Oh, are you giving up?”

“Yeah, I’m giving up.”