Chapter 185 - Exceptional Monster (1/2)

Translator: Athena13

Editor: Silavin

Proofreader: p4553r

Deep inside the Kuzusuhara ruin, Tiol was having his meal, or to be more precise, collecting more resources. His face was filled with pain.

Tiol ate all kinds of weird things, like the wreckages of dead monsters, carcasses of dead biological monsters, rubbles from buildings, Hunters along with their equipment.

He did not really care that much back when his consciousness was still a part of the system. But now that he had regained his consciousness, he also regained some of his humanity. As such, he could not help but get bothered when he ate raw meat, scrap metals, and rubble. He would have chosen to eat rotten leftovers given the chance, but this was torture that surpassed common sense.

If he let the system take over, it might be easier for him. But if he misjudged how much of his consciousness was to be relinquished to the system, there was a chance that his mind would be once again drowned by the system. Tiol, who understood that very well, made sure not to cross the dangerous line while harvesting resources.

Every time he took a bite of the carcass, it sent an unpleasant sensation throughout his body. Every time he tore off a metallic scrap with his jaw, he could not help but feel terrified of himself for being able to do it. He kept telling himself that he had no other choice but to do it in order to replenish his ammo and to reach his goal. He cursed the situation that he was in as well as everything that led him into that situation.

Tiol’s body changed in response to his feelings. The hatred inside him broke a part of the system restriction, allowing him to break through the limit on his body. Thus turning him into a giant, powerful, and vicious monster.

His hatred fueled his desire for power. Even if he constructed a lot of those simple robots that he could remotely control, Akira would be able to destroy them single-handedly. And even if he also brought along a swarm of weapon dogs, they would be taken care of by the other Hunters. In order to reach his goal, to defeat Akira and those Hunters, Tiol needed more power. And for the sake of gaining that power, he had to eat those corpses and wreckage. Thus fueling his hatred even more.

The effect of Tiol’s hatred reached the semi-autonomous drones around the area. The other drones that were also collecting resources were pushed to surpass the restriction from the system. When those drones were done with harvesting the pile of resources, they were transformed into giant monsters. Some of them turned into giant humanoid robots or heavily armed tanks. Their bodies had no sense of aesthetic as if they were made of forcefully combining mechanical parts and biological flesh, it was a pure expression of power and force.

These monsters started to move pushed by their insatiable desire to grow bigger and more powerful. Tiol, who now had turned into something that looked like a heavily armoured powered suit from the outside, also started moving.

—*—*—*—

Akira had returned back to the forward base in order to replenish his ammo when he received a call from Kibayashi to meet him in the cafeteria.

Kibayashi sounded really disappointed when he explained why he had called Akira, but in contrast to that, Akira was listening to him with a big smile.

“It’s finally done, huh!”

“Dammit, you look so happy. You really hated this job until the very end, huh?”

Akira’s request to increase his Hunter Rank ended that day. For Kibayashi, it was bad news, but of course, for Akira, it was great news.

After all, Akira had a hard fight just the other day. As a matter of fact, he used that as an excuse to buy expensive expendables without even glancing at their prices. He basically filled the warehouse of the forward base with the expensive mini-missiles and anti-forcefield armour magazines.

The ratio between Akira’s expense and achievement finally surpassed what Kibayashi could handle.

“As expected, you’re spending too much money. Unless you’re planning to use those in the frontline, they’ll no longer pay for your expense.”

Akira lightly laughed as if he was completely ignoring Kibayashi’s complaints.

“Well, didn’t expect splurging on the expendables to actually work.”

“Good grief! You’re basically the only Hunter that I know who would make the City Management cancel its Hunter Rank-up request for a trivial reason like that, you know. Though, to be honest, that’s so like you.”

Yatsubayashi glanced at Akira and sent a bitter smile, although, there was also a bit of delight too in his smile.

“To be honest, I was hoping that you would do something crazy on your last day. But unfortunately, I guess that won’t happen now. Starting from today, you’re assigned to guard the forward base. Well, you can just randomly roam around the forward base.”

“Is that good enough?”

“The weather forecast says that it’ll be raining for the next few days after all, so there are no plans for a huge battle anytime soon. The effect from the colourless mist will get thicker with the rain, so I bet you’ll be just holding yourself in the forward base for a few days. Well, actually that’s also one of the reasons why they cancelled your rank-up request though.”

It was common sense in the eastern district to only go explore the ruin when the weather was clear. After all, not only did rain reduce the sensitivity of the information-gathering devices, it also reduced the Hunters’ visual range. No one would go picking a fight with the monsters in that situation out of their own volition.

The City Management made sure that all the important points had enough guards to hold on their own in any weather. Of course, their budgets were already decided beforehand. And in the case if they employed a high-ranking Hunter, the City Management would have to pay a lot of money for that Hunter. Now that Akira had raised up his rank considerably, the City Management had no budget left to employ him.

“Well, if you don’t like the idea of doing nothing for a whole day, you can instead join the Hunters working to secure the frontline.”

“No thanks!”

“Yep, knew you would say that.”

Kibayashi fully expected that answer from Akira, so he smiled disappointedly but also gleefully at the same time.

***

Akira was driving his bike around the forward base. Behind him was an unmanned truck. Alpha was sitting leisurely on top of the covered truck.

The truck was filled with ammo taken from the forward base. After the last fight, Akira was worried if he would run out of ammo in the middle of a battle again, thus he decided to splurge his money on a small truck.

The truck itself was not armed and not well armoured. It was basically the polar opposite of Akira who was armed to the teeth. The only thing that he considered when choosing that truck was whether it was better than carrying the ammos using his bike.

Akira glanced at the truck.

“If this is everything for today, there was no need to buy the truck. I guess that was an unnecessary spending.”

“If the money you spent to prepare yourself for a danger turned out to be unneeded, it’s something that we should be happy about, right?”

“Well, you have a point there… Hm?”

Akira noticed the falling droplets and looked up, it had started raining lightly. He could see the sky blocked by a thick cloud.

“Oh, it started raining.”

Alpha passed through the ceiling of the truck and dropped to the driver assistant’s seat of the truck. She then pointed at the driver seat and called Akira.

“Akira, how about coming here? There’s no need to keep driving on your bike under the rain.”

“Good idea… Hm!??”

Akira, who was still looking up at the sky, noticed something. He spotted something flying under the thick cloud.

Akira extended his information-gathering device to zoom in on that spot. He could see something that looked like a humanoid robot and an aircraft.

“Oh, they’re flying… Wait, isn’t this bad?”

Akira remembered that a flying object in the eastern district would attract powerful monsters that roamed the sky. So he continued to stare at that flying object with a stern expression.

Right at the next moment, Akira noticed missiles flying past him, which went straight for that aircraft. Those missiles came from the anti-air tanks posted in the forward base. The aircraft was hit with explosives and fell down together with the humanoid robot.

At this rate, they would crash close to him. So Akira accelerated his bike and immediately evacuated from the crash point.

The aircraft that was falling free under the mercy of gravity suddenly slowed down as if it pulled the brake right before it crashed into the ground. After floating a few centimetres above the ground, it landed with a loud bang.

Akira watched that scene unfold with wide eyes, but Alpha suddenly shouted at him.

“Akira!! Shoot it down!!”

The A4WM automatic grenade launchers fixed on Akira’s bike immediately released mini-missiles. Akira reacted accordingly by pulling his SSB multi-weapon and immediately emptied its magazine at that humanoid robot.

The humanoid robot aimed both of its giant arms at Akira and took a stance as if it was about to shoot, but before it could do that, Akira’s bullets reached it first.

The shockwave from the bullets threw the humanoid robot off-balance, but that did not stop it from releasing shots accompanied by loud bangs. One of the warheads went straight at a building, blowing off the half-crumbled building into smithereens in one shot. While the other warhead travelled astray into the wasteland before landing with a loud explosion.

The bullets barrage from Akira pierced through the robot’s armour, leaving its body riddled with holes, splattering its oils and sending its body parts flying into the air. But that did not stop Akira from shooting at that robot, showering it with bullets and its own body parts.

Even with its balance broken, the robot kept shooting with both of its arms. It kept trying to fix its aim at Akira while releasing stray warheads into the wasteland. Echoes from the explosions ran through the wasteland, raising a cloud of smoke with every explosion.

While Akira was in the middle of shooting the robot, the missiles that were launched first finally reached their target. They slipped through the holes on that robot’s armour and exploded, blowing its mechanical part to pieces and releasing its body fluid that looked like blood from its body container.

Akira who saw that raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“…a biological monster?! Not a humanoid robot?!”

“It’s still a type of humanoid weapon, but its species is much closer to the greedy crocodile. You can just think of it as a heavily armed powered suit.”

“So what is that thing flying in the sky?!”

While Akira was still confused. Another round of explosions burst on top of his head. When he looked up, he could see multiple similar aircraft flying in the sky as well as the missiles that were trying to shoot them down.

Those aircrafts were not only carrying similar humanoid monster that Akira defeated just now, but they also carried other types of monsters. Although they were of different species, all these monsters shared the same characteristics, all of them were gigantic with abnormally thick armour and powerful weapons.

The aircrafts that the missiles missed just went past the forward base and headed straight to Kugamayama city. While the transport aircraft that got shot down unloaded their cargo one by one.

Akira stood frozen as he watched the destroyed aircrafts and monsters that were raining down from the sky with a stern face, but the blaring alarm coming from the terminal lent by the City Management pulled him back to reality. As he checked the contents of the notification, his already tense face turned even sterner.

“It’s telling me to fight the best I can without going back to the base.”

“Akira, whether you plan to fight them or not, we should go into the ruin. This place is no good.”

Although the missiles were able to shoot down some of the aircrafts, the huge monsters that those aircrafts carried were mostly able to land on the ground just fine. But after they landed, those monsters immediately headed back to the ruin instead of going in the direction of Kugamayama city.

The monsters started shooting their gigantic guns toward the forward base and the area around it. The tanks and the powered suits guarding the forward base reacted by fighting back.

As for Akira, he rode his bike and paced it toward the ruin.

“…In the worst-case scenario, isn’t it safer if I go back to the base?”

“You have your ammo here with you. Aren’t you glad that you decided to take them with you?”

Alpha said so and smiled teasingly. Akira returned that smile with an annoyed look. He then spotted a warhead landing on a building not too far from him, tearing that building down. Seeing that, Akira knitted his eyebrows.

“…Why does this happen on my last day working here?! As I thought, my luck really sucks.”

Akira spitted out a complaint as he immediately accelerated his bike.

***

The forward base was filled with the shouts from the guards and the sounds of the battle.