Chapter 181 Humanoid Monsters (1/2)

After Akira sold the robots that he destroyed in the forward base, he took a break in the base’s cafeteria. Thanks to the medicines that he had taken, his wound had already been fully healed and he was not physically exhausted, but the medicines did not help with his mental stress at all. He had decided to end his day, so he was sitting there looking absent-minded.

That was when Kibayashi appeared. Kibayashi happily took the seat in front of Akira without asking Akira’s permission and smiled at him. Akira frowned, knowing that it would be nothing but more trouble.

“What now?”

“Don’t be so cold. It’s just that since I see you haven’t returned back home yet, there’s something I want to ask you here, you see.”

“Ask me? Just to let you know, I won’t be paying for the ammo, alright?”

Akira said so clearly right from the start with a stern face. Kibayashi smiled wryly at him and said.

“Don’t worry about that. Just because you got your terminal destroyed during your duty, it’s not like we’re not going to pay for the ammo you used during that time.”

The information terminal that Akira got from the temporary base always sent the signal of his location, but the moment he entered the highest floor of that building, his signal was cut off due to the feature of that room. Then the explosion from the mini-missiles finally completely broke it. Because of that, the temporary base did not know anything about his encounter with Tsubaki, and of course, Akira had no plans to tell Kibayashi about that at all.

“It’s nothing complicated. The robots that you brought in are all completely destroyed though, couldn’t you bring them in a better state?”

“No.”

“I see. Got it. That’s all I wanted to ask you.”

Akira looked surprised, he did not expect Kibayashi to back down that quickly.

“Is that all?”

“Yeah, that’s all. Like I said, I do like you. I have no plans to keep pursuing that subject just to sour your mood, alright? Not to mention, you’ve entertained me enough. You crushed a swarm of monsters on your own on the first day, and today, not only you brought back a lot of old-world relics, you even secured a whole building too. Just so you know, normally speaking, you’ve done splendidly up until now.”

“Like hell if I care about that. In the first place, it’s nothing normal the moment you offer to pay all of my consumables.”

“I said so with that considered too. But that’s just so you.”

Kibayashi smiled amusedly at Akira’s abnormal reaction.

After that, Akira and Kibayashi talked for a bit more about the request and the situation around the road.

Akira’s current request did not have a clear finish line. It would continue until Akira’s Hunter Rank reached the point where it was suitable for his strength, while the request itself did not clearly state what that Hunter Rank would be.

But Kibayashi already told Akira that he had entertained him enough, so Akira thought it should be fine to end the request there. But when he asked Kibayashi about that, Kibayashi said that it was not up for him to decide and he had no idea either what was the opinion of the people from the upper echelons about that matter.

Akira did find that a little surprising as he thought of using as much ammo as he wanted without caring about effectiveness since someone else was paying for it. That way, he would be able to quickly rank up until his request was deemed finished regardless of the opinions of the others.

—*—*—*—

Tiol was eating the wreckage of humanoid monsters inside a dilapidated building in Kuzusuhara ruin. But those were not the humanoid monsters that Akira destroyed, Tiol destroyed those monsters in another building.

The white room was filled with the echo of metallic wreckage getting crushed. Tiol himself was badly injured from the fighting, but his injuries were slowly healing as he was feasting on the dead monsters.

Suddenly Tsubaki appeared in front of Tiol.

“Good afternoon!”

Tiol immediately stood up and took a fighting stance as he swung his right arm to rip off Tsubaki’s head. Unfortunately, Tsubaki was no more than an image, so Tiol’s hand went through her effortlessly.

“That was rude.”

Tsubaki immediately vanished. Tiol quickly turned and lunged in a direction where there was nothing at all. But from his point of view, he could see Tsubaki standing there.

But from Tsubaki’s point of view, the world was running so slowly as if it was completely paused. Inside that slow-moving world, Tsubaki looked closely at Tiol and mumbled.

“He can recognize me both through augmented reality and through network image too. I see.”

Tsubaki then said with a flat emotion.

“Stop!”

Right at the next moment, Tiol’s body suddenly froze in the middle of lunging at Tsubaki. The inertia allowed his body to proceed forward but the gravity prevented him from staying afloat. So, he just crashed down to the ground and rolled over as if his whole body was petrified into stone.

“Safety leash command number 721 works as intended. Which means that it’s based on the nanomachine inside one of those biological monsters, huh. I don’t know who did this, but it’s pretty impressive. Unfortunately, that person was not able to override the control command. Wait, no, it might be some kind of mutation because of the nanomachine put inside his body in order to trick the friend-or-foe identification system… With too many conflicting nanomachines in his body, it instead might have caused a system failure.”

There was no one else other than Tiol in that room, but he could see all kinds of information displayed in his views as Tsubaki walked toward him. Unauthorized connection, unable to prevent connection, failed shutting off the connection, identified administration from area 844, individual outside the administration right, detected unauthorized hacking, hopeless difference in strength, zero winning chance, advised to run away immediately. Tiol registered all of those notices that appeared in his views, but they did not help his situation at all.

Tsubaki suddenly vanished again from his view. She then reappeared again as an image as she extended her hand to his head.

“He wouldn’t even listen to what I have to say. So I’ll ask you instead. I’m sure you’re also having it hard with such an unstable system, right? I’ll give you the reward upfront, so don’t worry.”

The information notices in Tiol’s views suddenly changed. Unauthorized connection, unable to prevent connection, failed shutting off the connection, rebuilding control system, readjusting administration structure, rebuilding connection, rebuilding finished.

Tiol could move his body again as his body relaxed while he was still lying on the ground. After a few seconds, he slowly pushed himself up and stood in front of Tsubaki.

“I’ll leave the rest to you then.”

Tsubaki smiled faintly and vanished. The only notice left in Tiol’s views was an order from Tsubaki. With his assigned duty to secure the area starting, Tiol immediately moved out following that order.

—*—*—*—

Yatsubayashi had a stern look on his face as he eyed the displays in front of him.

“…What just happened?”

The display showed information sent from Tiol, and that information stream was already fully stopped. Among the last information sent by Tiol, there was a piece of information that really piqued Yatsubayashi’s interest.

Yatsubayashi actually was thinking of a plan to take care of Tiol before it caused extra trouble to him, but with this, he decided to change his plan. His curiosity completely outweighed his rationale as he readjusted his plan accordingly following curiosity.

—*—*—*—

Akira once again visited Shizuka to replenish his stock. Shizuka looked worriedly at Akira as she said to him.

“Akira, this will be pretty expensive though, are you sure?”

Akira nodded with a serious face.

“Yes. After thinking about it one more time, I thought that it’s safer to do this and I should be able to end this request faster this way. So please continue with the order.”

Akira completely readjusted his order. This time he ordered multiple mini-sized energy packs and high-grade repair cartridges, both of them were expensive consumables. On top of it, he also ordered a huge amount of powerful anti-forcefield armour as well as mini-missiles that could be used with personal-sized missile launchers.

Shizuka proceeded to place the order. Akira and Shizuka waited silently for the confirmation, but this time, the order was rejected.

“As I thought, it won’t go through, huh?”

Akira seemed slightly relieved. Suddenly a call from Kibayashi reached him.

“It’s me. It seems that an expensive order just came in, and it’s from you, just wanted to make sure that it’s not some kind of mistake or something. I’ve sent you the information to your information terminal, so go ahead and check it.”

“I did, it was really from me and it was not a mistake.”

Unexpectedly, Kibayashi replied in a rather good mood.

“You bought quite a lot this time, enough for the financial division to contact me, you know?”

“I need them to be able to fight safely. If you’re going to tell me to cut that out, just so you know, that’s basically my real strength. That way I won’t need to keep doing this request, right?”

“Hm? I’m not calling you for that. There, the payment went through.”

“Even that got approved, huh?!”

“It was just a notice due to the size and the cost of the order. I’m sorry but once you receive that order, bring them to the forward base for safekeeping. But don’t worry, you can still use them anytime. I’ll send you the specifics later.”

“The repair cartridges are for my augmented suit, so I need them back home.”

“I see, you can take the cartridges home then. I’ll tell the guys above myself about that.”

“A-Alright!”

Akira was a little surprised that his order went through so smoothly. Kibayashi, who noticed it, laughed.

“I did tell you that your performance is far above the norm, remember? So this much demand will go through just fine, although, it’s partly because of my influence too. You should be more confident in yourself, you know? Until next time then.”

At the same time Kibayashi closed the call, a notification confirming that the order got through reached Shizuka and Akira.

Akira smiled bitterly. He knew very well the gap between his real strength and the strength that he acquired due to Alpha’s support. Although he kept working hard to close that gap, he could not lie that every time he noticed his growth, he also noticed how significant Alpha’s support was.

[…Well, although I basically forced my way through with expensive bullets during that fight against the monster swarm, I won that fight on my own. So even after adding that with those robots that I destroyed with Alpha’s support, it should at least lower the total evaluation from Kibayashi. So it should at least be a little better.]

Akira’ bitter smile was a mix of half-mockery and half-compliment toward himself. But he then noticed Shizuka looking at him worriedly as he flusteredly said.

“Ah, uhh, well, what can I say? It seems that the order should go through just fine.”

“Akira, don’t get too reckless, okay?”

“I know. It’s exactly so that I can fight safely that I put in that expensive order.”

“I see. It’s good that you’re calm about this, but be careful not to get your guard down, okay?”

“Yes!”

Akira firmly nodded, Shizuka replied with a smile.

Shizuka understood that Akira said so knowing fully well he was cornered into a situation where he had no other choice but to be reckless. While on the other hand, she also understood that hounding Akira about it would not help his situation at all, so she held back herself from saying anything more than that gentle reminder. Akira took her warning to heart and told himself not to unnecessarily jump to danger.

Akira once again took his bike to Kuzusuhara ruin. It had been a few days since the last time he went to Kuzusuhara ruin. During that time, he had repaired his augmented suit, carried his supplies to the temporary forward base, and got himself to the best state before going.

Alpha was floating beside Akira as if she was sitting in an invisible car. She was donning a battle suit with a daring old-world design as her long silky hair was flailing in the air, blown by the non-existent wind.

“Akira, what’s your plan for today?”

“Let’s see. I might as well search one of the buildings for relics again, but I don’t want to fight monsters like last time.”

Akira glanced at Alpha’s outfit and thought.

“That is an old-world battle suit, right? Since we’re this deep into the ruin, I wonder if I can find some of them somewhere around.”

“I can’t really say you can’t, but it would be hard to find. Let’s say that you did find one, what’s your plan with it?”