Chapter 189 - The Value of Money (1/2)
Chapter 189, The Value of Money
Translator: Athena13
Editor: Silavin
Proofreader: p4553r
Akira woke up inside a hospital room. He pushed his body up from the bed and looked around, once he understood what had happened, he sighed.
“Again, huh?”
“Yep, again.”
Alpha was sitting on the bed beside Akira and smiled at him.
“Morning, Akira. Did you get a good sleep?”
“Yeah… But well, this makes it the second time, huh? I don’t know whether I should be happy that I survived or I should be sad for getting hospitalized again.”
“There’s no reason for you to be sad, so just be honest and be happy about it.”
“Let me confirm it, why can you be so sure?”
“There’s no reason to not be happy since you survived, that is true for both me and you. I’m really glad that you survived that fight.”
Alpha smiled gently. Akira who saw that blushed a bit. But that was only until he heard her next words as she half-jokingly said.
“Moreover, this isn’t your first time having to face something like that, right? It would be a waste of time to question that now, wouldn’t it?”
“…Well, you have a point there… And I really hate the fact that I have to accept it.”
Akira once again laid back on the bed, Alpha only looked at him gently when he did so.
Not too long after that, Kibayashi entered the room.
“Akira, you’re finally awake, how are you feeling?”
“I’m fine.”
“Really? Do you feel anything strange around your arms or legs? Can you move your fingers?”
Akira thought that it was weird for Kibayashi to say that, but he still tried to move his fingers to confirm it, and as expected, he did not feel anything wrong.
“Still nothing, why did you say that? Don’t tell me that you gave me the bare minimum treatment since you didn’t know whether I can pay or not, right?”
“It’s the opposite. You were strapped into an emergency life-support system when I arrived in the forward base. You were in pretty bad shape. Especially your limbs, they were close to being turned into minced meat, you know. Though in the end, we used those super expensive regeneration treatments to get them back, they were basically grown and then sewn to your body. So it won’t be strange if you feel something wrong with them. But you seem to be alright. So yeah, the treatment cost is going to be crazy high.”
The damage on his legs was from that jump while the damage on his arms was from the barrage. Akira remembered vividly that he did do those things. So when he imagined how much the treatment cost was going to be, he started to get nervous.
“…So, how much is it?”
“About that, you see. We need to have a talk. It will be a long one since I need to let you know what had happened and we need to discuss the reward for your request too, so let’s talk while having a meal… Don’t worry, you did very well back there, the treatment cost won’t surpass your reward money.”
Kibayashi smiled at the flustered Akira.
Akira changed to the clothes available in the room and left the room with Kibayashi. They hopped on a vehicle that came to pick them up and returned back to the Kugama building.
As Akira was about to head to a restaurant on the first floor, Kibayashi stopped him.
“Akira, not that one.”
“No? Then why did you bring me here? Do we have to do some administrative stuff first?”
“Nope, we’re going up.”
Kibayashi pointed up with a smile filled with excitement. Akira found it weird, but the moment he understood what Kibayashi was signalling, his expression changed.
The restaurants on the upper floors of the Kugama building were so great that they changed Akira’s views on food, and this would be the third time he went to that building for a meal.
Akira sat on the seat that he was guided to. He was jovial and excited but at the same time a bit confused while he sat there, Kibayashi ignored it and extended a handshake with a big smile on his face.
“First of all, let me congratulate you. You have become a great Hunter, great enough even for the City Management to treat you to a meal in this restaurant. The first time I saw you, you were stuck with the other Hunters who could not manage to raise their ranks in that truck, and now look at you, you’ve gone up the ranks so quickly in such a short time. It’s really impressive. As someone who has kept his eyes on you through all of those crazy things that you did, I can’t help but give myself a pat on the back for spotting your potential.”
“Eh? Ah, yeah, sure.”
Akira was behaving like a small fry who had never visited such a high-class restaurant. But he had the achievements sufficient for the restaurant to let him in. Kibayashi found that discrepancy very interesting as he laughed hard.
“You should get yourself used to this kind of restaurant soon, you know? I like you, so I can tolerate how you are acting, but more often than not, others would take advantage of it. Those types of people often invite well-established Hunters, who can’t handle negotiation, into this kind of high-class restaurant and use that opening to poison them. So you should be careful, okay?”
“Even if you say so, I don’t have enough money to visit this kind of restaurant that often, you see.”
“In that case, I can bring you requests that would allow you to use a high-class restaurant as the negotiation site. Though it would be nothing but high-level and dangerous requests, since it’s you we’re talking here, so I’m sure you’ll do just fine.”
Akira’s expression soured a bit.
“No thanks. I bet it’s something that would send me to hospital again.”
“You don’t understand. If it’s a request dangerous enough to get you hospitalized again, you’ll get a huge reward if you can finish it…”
“Yeah yeah, make sure that it won’t get me hospitalized first.”
As Kibayashi boasted about himself on how he would be able to bring such high-level requests to Akira, Akira only listened to him with a seriously annoyed face. Once they calmed down at some point, Akira opened the menu as if to cut short that subject there. Kibayashi who saw that only smiled amusedly and opened the menu too.
Once they had placed their orders and were waiting for the food, Kibayashi started explaining to Akira what had happened after he fainted.
When Akira arrived at the forward base half-dead, he was immediately put into the life support system just like the other severely wounded Hunters.
Among all the other severely wounded Hunters that were not treated seriously, Akira received better treatment which guaranteed his survivability. Nelia did something to make sure that Akira would be treated as if he was working under Yanagisawa.
The battle between monster swarms and the city’s defence squad was still ongoing around Kugamayama city after Akira fainted. Although the size of the swarm was smaller than before, there were huge monsters and even flying monsters mixed in that swarm, thus they were relatively more dangerous than before. Average Hunters could not handle them and they would only slow other Hunters down as such only high ranking Hunters were offered high rewards and sent to repel that swarm.
When the City Management was considering sending out its trump card, the swarm suddenly broke down. Monsters that were originally heading straight to the city suddenly changed their directions. As some of them started rampaging, destroying anything around them, some of them retreated and vanished into the wasteland. While more than half of the swarm returned back to the ruin.
It was because they were forcefully manipulated by Tiol to go against the system. And with Tiol gone, the control returned back to the system. Although some of the monsters that had grown past the system’s control did not return back, those that returned back to the system’s side returned to their patrol area. For those that had their patrol area information destroyed, they just followed the broken order from the system to wander aimlessly, while some of them received the order to patrol a different area.
The city’s defence squad pushed back the swarm just like that until they met the squads from the forward base, and that signified the end of the battle against the swarm. Now that the route between the city and the forward base was secured, those who were severely wounded in the forward base were transported back to the city. Akira was identified as a Hunter who would not have a problem with paying for the treatment cost, so just like last time he was hospitalized, they went ahead and gave him an expensive treatment without asking him first. After his wounds were healed, they cleaned the nanomachines leftover inside his body, and now, he was back all healthy and ready to go again.
Although Akira did not understand everything, he more or less understood the big idea of what Kibayashi was saying, and of course, that would mean he did not understand what Kibayashi was unclear about.
“What happened to those large monsters after that? Did you kill them all?”
“No, some of them are still left. The city’s defence squad also returned back to their post once the swarm retreated after all. I’m sure there are still some of those large monsters roaming in and around the ruin. Although they’re not regarded as bounty monsters yet, they’re strong enough that the City Management is considering putting a bounty on them. So any Hunters who get to kill any of those are offered a special reward. Although they’re big and strong, as long as they don’t form a swarm, they’re not that hard to kill after all. It’s the perfect target for those Hunters who want to get their name out there. So other than those that have returned back to the ruin, I bet most of the monsters roaming in the wasteland are already being hunted down.”
Kibayashi smiled happily and warned Akira.
“Though I won’t exactly prevent you, I recommend you not to join the hunt. You already got yourself a pretty highly prized target under your belt, so let lower rank Hunters have them instead. It’s one of those ‘good manners’ as a high-ranking Hunter.”
“…Manners, huh. Well, I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Yup, you better do it.”
The ordered meal finally arrived at the table. Akira did not know which one to pick, so he had ended up ordering the recommended menu. When that meal arrived in front of him, it changed Akira’s solemn expression to a smile. And when he scooped that up to his mouth, he could not fight back the taste that spread around his tongue and his smile widened.
Akira could not stop chowing down the food in front of him as if he was completely defeated by the taste of the meal. Kibayashi who watched it thought that Akira really needed to get himself used to coming to a high-class restaurant.
After they finished the meal and Akira could finally focus on the discussion, Kibayashi started talking about the main reason why they came there.
“I guess it’s time to talk about the reward then. First of all, the rank boost. This will affect the rest of your reward, so think carefully before you decide. Your Hunter Rank can basically go up somewhere between 42 and 50. Of course, the more you put your reward on your Hunter Rank, the less money that you get. So, how far do you want to go?”
Before Akira could say 42, Kibayashi frowned and continued.