Chapter 183 A Swarm of Young Boy Robots (1/2)

Yatsubayashi was charging a crazy amount of money to the Hunters brought to his clinic.

Thanks to the first aid done to his head, that Hunter was able to stay conscious even after he was gravely injured. The expensive treatment cost was enough to make his face go pale though. He did try to bargain, but Yatsubayashi wouldn’t budge at all.

“No, no money, no treatment. You need to pay first.”

“C-can you at least cut me some slack for that one?”

“Good grief, if you’re that healthy, I bet you can get yourself back to the forward base. You can ask your friend to carry you there, I’m sure you’ll get there without dying. But well, with that injury, I bet you’ll either get a prosthetic or a cyborg replacement though.”

“I want to keep my body the way it is, since you said that your treatment would still enable me to still stay the way I am, I came to you.”

Indeed they could take a regenerative treatment to grow back their lost limbs that would normally need to be replaced with a prosthetic or cyborg body, but that kind of treatment was more expensive than replacing them. Furthermore, there were not many Hunters out there who would become a cyborg out of their own volitions. No matter how strong a cyborg body was, there were still unique advantages to keeping a flesh body, and this Hunter wanted to keep his body.

His friend then jumped in.

“Can you at least do something about it?”

“We can get this done right away if you’ll pay in his place.”

“Don’t be crazy, we don’t have that much money. It’s not like we can use our health insurance too, right?”

“Sorry but my clinic is not a corporation’s clinic, so I don’t really accept health insurance. And there’s a limit on how much the Hunter Office would be willing to lend you to pay for it too. Not to mention, their lending limit is extremely low for a small individually ran clinic such as mine.”

That guy then sighed and rubbed his head with one of his hands. Although he had no plans to abandon his injured friend, it did not change the fact that he did not have any way to save him either.

Moreover, it was not like he was going to die if they decided to take him back to the clinic in the forward base, though, he would be living with prosthetics and incur debt for that medical treatment. In the first place, this was an injury stemming from the occupational hazard Hunters faced. It could happen again. That thought discouraged them from paying the cost of Yatsubayashi’s treatment no matter what.

Seeing that, Yatsubayashi hid his real intention as he made a suggestion to those Hunters.

“Well, I can understand that you want to save your friend. And I’m a doctor, you see. But if I treat his injury here for free, it’ll only give me a lot of trouble later down the line. That’s why, I have a suggestion here, instead of paying me with money, how about you pay for the treatment for your friend by helping me with a certain job?”

“Job? What kind of job are we talking about here?”

“It’s basically a kind of emergency rescue request, you see. Of course, it’ll be a secret one though.”

Yatsubayashi started explaining the aforementioned job with a suspicious smile. To put it simply, those Hunters only needed to go to a certain location to rescue a certain Hunter and bring him back to Yatsubayashi. Although it sounded simple, it sounded as if it had a lot of hidden intent behind it.

“Why should this be a secret anyway? Moreover, I checked my information terminal and it doesn’t seem like there’s any SOS request from that location though?”

Yatsubayashi smiled at that question.

“Well, that’s because that Hunter doesn’t want to have a record of this happening left in the Hunter Office, you see. Basically, he’s one of those Hunters who do not wish for the Hunter Office to be informed of an SOS rescue request that he had submitted. Other than protecting his reputation, it’s also to save money. After all, if you needlessly ask for SOS requests, your insurance bill will go up, you see. That’s the same for the treatments in hospitals and clinics too. What I’m saying here is that if you treat your injuries in my clinic, I can help you make sure that it won’t leave any record in the Hunter Office, the catch is that you can’t use your insurance though. Other than that, well, maybe his reputation among his colleagues and gang? To put it simply, he wants to say that he didn’t get in any trouble, he just randomly met some Hunters in the wasteland and those Hunters arbitrarily helped him without even being asked.”

“I see, so basically you’re accepting that kind of request under the table, huh. But still, you’re willing to give him free treatment just by saving one Hunter, this is too good to be true, you know?”

“Are you kidding me? Of course, it won’t only be once. I’ll have you do that for me multiple times until I judge you’ve worked enough to pay for the treatment cost.”

“…I see.”

The Hunters nodded and looked at Yatsubayashi with a stern gaze. They thought that Yatsubayashi was planning to use them and charge them with more bills every time they returned back with more injury.

“If you’re going to take that request, I’ll get him treated right away. I won’t do something as cowardly as postponing his treatment until you work enough for me. So, what do you think? Am I nice or what? Well, I won’t force you though, so it’s still up to you.”

Putting it from a different point of view, it also meant that Yatsubyashi gave no space for negotiation, and the wounded Hunter also started begging his friend. So in the end, the other Hunter clicked his tongue and took that offer.

Elena and her reconnaissance team proceeded deeper into the ruin. Their main job was to harvest the information gathered by the small information-gathering device spread beforehand inside that ruin while retrieving and replacing those small information-gathering devices owned by the City Management. The accessibility of the site with a vehicle, the number of monsters in that area, and the number of rubble and their material found around the area, all of this information was enough to judge if a site was worth exploring or not.

The members of the reconnaissance team were free to search the inside of a building. They were even allowed to gather relics. Even if it might disturb their main duty of scouting the ruin, the relics that they gathered could also be used to judge if that part of the ruin was worth securing or not, not to mention the information that they brought back, also took note of the difficulty and the danger of that building. As such, no one stopped them from doing so.

Elena scanned her surroundings while driving her vehicle slowly. Sara stood ready next to Elena, guarding her, but she was also eyeing the buildings that seemed to be containing expensive relics.

“Elena, can we just like, you know, go and take a peek?”

“No. We will only take a route that this scouting vehicle can go through, so we won’t be searching the inside of any buildings. Didn’t we agree on that right from the start?”

“I know, but still…”

“I can understand your feelings, but no. There’s a good chance something will attack this vehicle when we’re away searching the inside of a building. We have almost close to no information about this area, so I can’t really guarantee the safety of this vehicle when we’re gone. Or more like, we’re exactly here in order to gather that information, no?”

Hunters who tend to work alone or in a small group often left their vehicles behind when they searched the inside of a building. But of course, no one could guarantee that their vehicles would be still in one piece when they returned. Elena and Sara had more than enough experience with losing their vehicles in such a manner.

Of course, they could just get more Hunters with them and have some of them guard the vehicle when they were gone. But with more headcounts, each of their shares would also reduce. There was also the possibility of the Hunters guarding the vehicle running away abandoning the Hunters inside the building when monsters attacked them. So it did not change the fact that it would still be a gamble in the end.

The only thing that the Hunters could do was to increase their winning chance with all kinds of methods that they could find. Getting stronger, working with a team, deepening their trust with the other team members, emphasizing the loss in case someone betrayed them. If they did not do that, they would end up as one of those lost Hunters with broken dreams who could not return back from the wasteland.

But Sara seemed to be not fully convinced by it, seeing which Elena gave another reason to convince her.

“If we get ourselves into trouble and send out an SOS request, Akira might come to answer that request, you know. That would really erase our dignity and his trust in us as his senior Hunters, you know. Although, I’m not even sure that we still have those two things even right now.”

Sara frowned and sighed.

“Alright. I still want to stay as the senior Hunter that he can rely on, after all. I’ll hold myself back.”

Sara suddenly turned obedient, seeing that, Elena could only smile bitterly.

“Honestly, I really hope you would be this obedient when your best friend warns you though.”

“That’s that, you know. It’s like we’re one soul, so hearing you warn me like that is like giving myself a little scolding. So it’s much more likely for me to just ignore it, you see. Just like how it’s more likely for me to get selfish when I’m alone.”

“Is that so? In that case, then I’ll be doing that too when I’m pondering about something.”

Elena and Sara lightly smiled at each other before returning back to watching their surroundings.

Not too long after that, Elena, who was keeping her eyes on her sensor, suddenly stopped her vehicle and tilted her head.

“Elena, what’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing in particular. It’s just that when I checked the data, I found something interesting. The sensor caught multiple signals of something that looked human.”

“They might be other Hunters exploring this area, no?”

“Possibly, yes. It’s just that there’s something bothering me.”

Some of the signals were possibly from the monsters. Judging from their positions and the signal that the fact that they seemed to be coming from something with a humanoid shape, Elena could not shake off her bad feeling. After all, if some of those signals were from monsters and some others were from Hunters, they were close enough to notice each other.

As such, they would have started fighting by now. There were many types of monsters that ignored Hunters who had even stepped into their territories. While on the other hand, most of the Hunters would rather avoid having to fight all the monsters that they encountered. There were many reasons for them not to fight each other.

But Elena remembered a certain rumour, specifically, about a humanoid monster that prowled the Kuzusuhara Ruin. Her sharp intuition was telling her that this was it although she did not have enough evidence that supported it.

Elena thought for a bit before she stepped on the gas. But she made sure to change her direction, away from it.

“Sara, we’ll be changing our scouting area. It might lower our area coverage and the information accuracy that we can get, which in turn might lower our reward later. Sorry but please just let this one go.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll leave making that kind of decision to you. So let’s just continue this safely.”

Sara lightly smiled, she seemed to be not bothered at all by that. Seeing how Sara fully trusted her, Elena’s stern face slightly softened.

–x–x–

A certain Hunter named Sonoda grumbled as he strolled in the middle of the ruin.

“Another dud, huh?”

Sonoda was one of the Hunters forced to work for Yatsubayashi to help the treatment fee for his Hunter friend. He came to the location where there should be someone who needed help but did not want to send an SOS request. But when he arrived, that person was nowhere to be found and there was not even a since remnant of a fight, and this had happened multiple times now.

Sonoda called Yatsubayashi using his information terminal to complain, but Yatsubayashi just replied casually.

“It’s not a proper SOS request to the Hunter Office after all. It’s also not clear who’s the issuer of that request, heck, not even I know. So, it could be just that there are some people who played a prank on you. Well, I’ll at least put in some words with those that informed me of that request, so I hope you would work the best as you can for your part. Don’t worry, even if you don’t get to find anything, I’ll still count your work. I’ll send you the next location.”

After Sonoda ended the call, he received the location of his next target. He clicked and put his information terminal back into his pocket.

“Good grief, these guys are sending us to the deeper part of the ruin like it’s nothing! Alright guys!! To the next one!!”

“Alright… Hm? Wait, it seems that there’s someone over there.”

“Oh, the target ran over there, huh? Let’s get him.”

Sonoda led his group to the location where that signal came from. It came from the first floor of a building not too far from them. They moved slowly and carefully into that building and spotted a young boy standing in a dark hole in the wall not too far from the door.

“Is that the guy? Hey, are you alright? Where’re the monsters? Did you run away to this place? And are you alone?”

That young boy reacted to Sonoda, but it was not in the form of words for communication.

“The current area is under a lockdown. Due to the emergency situation protocol, the security system is allowed to kill any intruders. Please give your identification information…”

Sonoda immediately raised his rifle and barraged that young boy, pushing him all the way to the wall from the shockwave. Sonoda’s teammates immediately jumped in to support him. The young boy lost his head and all of his limbs were torn apart.

Sonoda quickly told them to retreat.

“We’re running away!! Let’s go!!”

“W-whoa, I only shot to help you since you started shooting first though, was that alright?”

“You didn’t notice it yet?! That young boy is not the rescue target!! It’s the one that attacked the rescue target!! Retreat now!!”

Sonoda and his friends quickly left that building when another sound came from the dark hole behind them.

“…Unable to identify. Immediately changing to restraining protocol…“

“Get in the vehicle!! We’re retreating back to the clinic! Something bad is coming, I know it!”

Sonoda retreated back as fast as he could while barking orders to his team.

The limbs that were torn off from the young boy were scattered on the ground. His arms from elbow down were completely turned into rifles. It was not like a rifle fixed on a prosthetic arm, it was more like rifles that were growing out from those arms. Its body seemed like it was layered with armour in a glance, but it was not armour, it was countless layers of metallic scale.

Another young boy emerged from the darkness. He took the gun lying on the ground, the leftover limb of the other young boy and started chasing after Sonoda and his men.

While around the same time, Akira was bored guarding the clinic when a notice reached his information terminal. The coordinate written in that notice was around in the direction where the reconnaissance team went.

Akira thought for a bit before he hopped on his bike and paced it.

Alpha frowned.

“We don’t know for sure if Elena and Sara are there, there’s no need to go there yourself, no?”