Chapter 191: More Visitors

With their respective goals and desires on the line, Akira and Yumina had fought each other to the death, and Akira had won.

The boy had found killing necessary to survive the back alleys of the slums. And ever since escaping his old life and becoming a hunter, the number of those he had killed—whether monsters or humans—had continued to climb.

In his old slum days, he’d had nothing to speak of—now, among other things, he had a fit, muscular body, clean clothes, and a roof over his head. And he no longer had to worry about where his next meal was going to come from. He owned powerful gear and weaponry to protect himself and had earned an unimaginable sum of money. And he’d met someone he’d absolutely never wanted to see die—someone he’d certainly never wanted to kill.

Yet in the end, he’d slain her too and survived once more.

At first, he’d tried not to grieve for her. What right did he have to be sad, when he himself had ended her life? How arrogant would that be? But when he’d woken up in the hospital, Shizuka had embraced him and given him permission to cry, telling him it was okay to mourn.

So Akira had bawled in her arms, mourning the loss of his special someone from the bottom of his heart. It no longer mattered that he’d been the one to kill her—losing a loved one was tragic all the same. This firsthand experience and understanding was yet another thing Akira had gained from winning that fight.

Still, many more battles lay ahead. And Akira would continue to gain, learn, and experience even more that he hadn’t been able to in the slums—as long as he kept surviving.

◆

When he could cry no more, Akira sighed deeply in Shizuka’s arms. Noticing his tears had finally stopped, she gently released him and stepped away. Then she smiled—he looked calmer. He would probably be fine now.

“Um...” he began, embarrassed by his behavior. “Th-Thank you. I...feel a whole lot better, actually.”

“You’re very welcome. I can tell you’re in a much better mood now. Well then, I should probably be going. I’d like to stick around a little longer and chat some more, but visiting hours are almost over already, it looks like. Time really flew, huh?”

Then Akira realized he’d been clinging to Shizuka and crying for longer than he thought. He gave her a stiff, awkward smile to hide his bashfulness. Seeing right through him, she found his reaction amusing—but also reassuring. He wasn’t trying to cover up his sorrow or act tough. Most likely, he hadn’t completely recovered from Yumina’s death yet, but if he was able to smile like that, at least he was now looking forward instead of backward.

Thank goodness, Shizuka thought, glad that she had been able to play a part in helping him and grateful for the opportunity to do so.

“Now be sure to rest,” she instructed. “I mean it. When I see you back at my store, I want you to be in tip-top shape. Understand?”

He nodded. “Yes, ma’am. You got it!”

Shizuka gave him one last smile and returned his nod before leaving the room. Once she was gone, Akira felt Alpha’s gaze on him.

What are you staring at me for?

Hm? Oh, one sec. Alpha wrapped Akira in her embrace. But Alpha only existed within his augmented vision, so he didn’t actually feel anything. As she pressed his face against her chest, the shape of her breasts changed as if they were real and soft, but the only effect they had on Akira was to obstruct his vision.

What’s this all about, Alpha? Akira muttered with a puzzled frown.

Alpha released him and gave him a teasing, melodramatic sigh. So hugging me doesn’t have the same effect unless you can feel me with your whole body? I guess touching me with just your hands isn’t the same as the embrace of a real woman, is it?

For a moment, Akira looked even more confused, but then he realized what Alpha was getting at. Since he’d lost the use of both hands during the battle in the Kuzusuhara Town Ruins, he was currently wearing prosthetics while undergoing treatment. Alpha had reprogrammed his prosthetic hands so that he could now “touch” her, or at least simulate the experience. As the memory surfaced, it reminded him of his reaction when he’d felt her breasts like pillows in his hands for the first time. In an effort to hide his embarrassment, he lay back down on the hospital bed, covering his head with the sheets. I’m tired, okay?! Night!

Very well. You do need your rest, after all, she said. Sweet dreams.

Akira hadn’t disliked Shizuka’s embrace at all—rather, he’d enjoyed it—and was glad that she’d let him cry in her arms. But Alpha’s words flustered him all the same.

In other words, he’d recovered enough from Yumina’s death to feel something besides grief.

◆

About the time the swelling around his eyes had gone down and his mortified blush had faded, the doctor came in to explain his medical condition.

Aside from his hands, Akira had made a full recovery. He could technically be discharged right now, but since Inabe currently had him under lockdown, it was up to the city executive to decide when Akira could actually leave the hospital.

Then the doctor asked Akira what kind of treatment he wanted for his hands. Ultimately, he had three options: keep his ruined hands as they were, replace them with upgraded prosthetic versions, or have his original hands restored. The artificial hands he wore at present, aside from the fact that they were white and had a texture like rubber or plastic, were so high-tech that they felt as natural as his real hands when he moved them. They wouldn’t prove an obstacle to any part of his daily life. Even in combat, the powered suit would compensate for any consequent loss in functionality by receiving and processing the signals from his nerves just as his regular hands would have. So at least until he decided he wanted upgraded, prosthetic hands or his old hands back, he could choose to keep the artificial hands if he wanted.

If he chose the upgraded prosthetics and had his current prosthetics swapped out for mechanical versions, the doctor told him, he’d obtain a host of new perks not available to a fully human body. On the surface, they’d look exactly like normal hands, yet they would instantly grant him levels of strength that only a superhuman could typically achieve. He could deviate from—or even transcend—the possibilities available to normal humans: for instance, additional joints might allow him to rotate his hands more than 360 degrees, while other modifications could let him transform his hands into guns or blades at will. Plus, if his hands ever got broken or damaged again, he could simply repair them or replace them with brand-new ones, allowing for a swifter, more effective, and much cheaper recovery than that afforded by the large doses of medicine to which he was accustomed.

The doctor nonchalantly pressed him to consider the prosthetics, although not so aggressively as to make the boy feel like he didn’t have a choice in the matter. “So, how about it? If I were you, I wouldn’t pass up this opportunity. Many active high-ranking hunters these days have at least one artificial limb, but hardly anyone would lop off a perfectly intact appendage just to replace it with a cyborg version. Nearly all of them lost their limbs in battle, like you.”

“R-Right,” Akira said, sounding hesitant.

“And by the way, the city will be paying for your treatment in full this time. That means if you decide to go for the prosthetics, you can get the city to cover them, and you won’t have to pay a dime. In other words, depending on your answer, you could turn your misfortune into a blessing. What do you say? Ready for a new you?”

Despite feeling pressured, Akira managed to say, “Um... I think I just want my old hands back, thanks.”

“I see,” the doctor said. He looked ever so slightly disappointed but didn’t let his smile falter. “Very well. Then there are two ways we can go about restoring your hands.”

He told Akira that the boy could either have new human hands generated from his stumps, or he could have the hands grown independently, then surgically reattached. There were advantages and disadvantages to each method, but because the first approach would mean he couldn’t use the artificial hands while waiting for his hands to regenerate and would therefore be impaired during his entire recovery, he chose the latter option in the end.

The procedure began without delay. First, both of his limbs were severed at the forearm to serve as bases for the growth process. Then two devices that read nerve transmission information—the same kind used when exchanging human limbs for prosthetics—were installed onto the stumps of each severed arm. Finally, the white artificial hands he’d used before were reattached. Now Akira’s biological hands could receive his nerve data even while they were growing, which meant that after surgery, he wouldn’t need rehab to get used to his old hands again. He’d be able to move them normally right off the bat.

The initial procedure was so simple that it was completed in around ten minutes and was performed while Akira was still conscious. He was given anesthetics so he wouldn’t feel any pain, but he still couldn’t bring himself to watch and averted his eyes the whole time.

“It’ll take about a week for your new hands to grow,” the doctor explained afterward. “In the meantime, get those artificial hands moving and touch as many different surfaces as you can. The more data you provide, the more likely the growth procedure will be successful. It’ll also reduce the chances of complications after surgery. And if you ever feel any sense of discomfort with those artificial hands in the meantime, please call us right away. It’s been a pleasure.”

The doctor placed Akira’s severed limbs in a storage receptacle and was about to leave when he turned back once more. “Oh, and by the way, I can always replace those temporary hands with combat prosthetics, so you can test them out while you wait! If you ever change your mind, just let me know. I’ve even got hands that’ll let you shoot lasers out of them! Doesn’t that sound cool?”

“I-I’ll think about it,” Akira said stiffly.

This wasn’t a complete refusal, so the doctor looked satisfied and nodded as he left the room.

Akira looked down at his hands. “Nah, lasers would be a little much, I think,” he muttered.

Are you sure? Perhaps you’d find them so convenient you wouldn’t want to go without them. Here, try raising your arm out in front of you.

Akira did as he was told—and a powerful beam erupted from it. The torrent of energy vaporized everything in its path, boring a gigantic hole through the wall of the hospital room and continuing beyond. Of course, all of this destruction only occurred within Akira’s vision; in reality, the hospital remained unharmed. Even so, Akira had just experienced exactly what it would feel like to use such a weapon.

That’s a pretty accurate simulation, I’d say. So, what’d you think? Alpha pressed him.

Well... I think that if I ever feel like I want to shoot a laser, I’ll just buy a laser cannon. I don’t really need it to shoot from my hand, right? Besides, what if I end up firing it without meaning to?

I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen, so don’t worry.

Yeah, but what about when I’m disconnected from you and have to manage it on my own? Or how could I possibly relax and enjoy my baths, knowing I have a weapon for a hand? It’s a no.

Very well then, Alpha said, and Akira’s vision returned to normal. The hole in the wall in front of him disappeared. Even knowing it had just been a simulation, he couldn’t help but feel relieved.

Then Alpha sidled up beside him. Now then, she said with a grin, since we only have a week until you get your new hands, feel free to enjoy touching me all you like in the meantime!

Yeah... I’ll pass.

Aw...! Don’t tell me you’re still shy around me after all we’ve been through together? she teased, pretending to pout.

Akira just averted his eyes, his face flushing slightly.

◆

Because the city was still keeping Akira confined to the hospital, he couldn’t leave right away. Moreover, he was allowed only a limited number of visitors, and their time together was limited too. The final visitors Akira had that day were Elena and Sara.

Upon seeing that he had made a full recovery, the two women first and foremost felt relieved. Elena approached his bedside and, sitting next to him, spoke first.

“We heard you were out cold for a whole week,” she said with a grin, “so it’s good to know you’re finally awake.”

“Sorry for making you worry,” Akira replied. “But I slept a lot, so I’m in perfect condition now. Oh, except for these,” he said nonchalantly, showing them his white, artificial hands. “Apparently, they’re gonna be like this until the treatment’s over. Other than that, though, I’m doing great.”

Sara peered at his hands with interest. “Those look pretty pricey. How do they feel?”

“Amazing,” he said. “I can move them just like my old hands, and I can feel things the same as before too. Honestly, they’re good enough that part of me thinks I could manage with just these from now on.”

“Oh yeah? Can I give them a feel?”

“Go ahead,” he said.

Sara reached over, took Akira’s hand in hers, and stroked it a few times, seemingly amused by the hand’s texture.

The sensation of her hands on his made Akira blush a little. “D-Don’t you think that’s enough already?” he said.

At that, Sara grabbed his hand and pressed it against her chest. For security reasons, visitors weren’t allowed to wear powered suits in the hospital, so she and Elena were wearing their everyday clothes. Through the thin fabric, Akira could keenly feel the softness of Sara’s breasts. Red-faced, he yanked his hand away.

Sara laughed. “So the sensors really do work well.”

“Wh-What was that for?!”

“C’mon, it’s not a big deal. After all, these are just as artificial as your hands.”

“W-Well, I guess, but still...!”

Sara’s body had been augmented, and her chest stored the nanomachines that her body consumed. The size of her chest reflected the amount of nanomachines inside, so indeed, one could say it was just as fake as Akira’s hands. However, as one might have gleaned from Akira’s reaction, her breasts looked and felt no different from real ones.

“Sara, quit teasing him,” Elena said, sighing dramatically. “The poor guy’s in the hospital, so we ought to cut him some slack.”

“All right, all right. Sorry, Akira. Do you forgive me?”

“Well... Y-Yeah, I suppose,” he said with a smile. Even though he was being made fun of, Akira could tell from the grin on her face that she was only joking, and so he kept his tone equally light. They continued talking about trivial things for a while longer until the mood suddenly turned somber, as a new topic surfaced.

Akira was actually the first to broach it. Straightening up, he regarded the women with a serious look. “Elena, Sara, I want to thank you for rescuing me. You two saved my life.” He bowed his head politely.

“You don’t have to thank us,” Elena said soberly. “More than anything, we were just glad we weren’t too late.”

“Well, to be honest, we did cut it a little close,” Sara said with a grin, “but we made it in the end—and more importantly, we managed to save face as your seniors.” Then she shot Elena a look that said, “Do you want me to tell him, or will you?”

As team negotiator, Elena had more experience navigating tough discussions, so she decided the duty ought to fall to her. “We heard about Yumina from Shizuka,” she said.

Akira went rigid.

Elena continued, “To be completely honest with you, I’m not really sure what I should say here. I don’t know the circumstances that led to her death, or whether we even ought to know. I only know it’s something we shouldn’t ask you about lightly or demand the answer to. So if you want us to know, we’ll listen, and if you don’t, we won’t ask.”

Akira said nothing.

“However, while we won’t ask, that doesn’t mean we have nothing to say about it. So I’ll just say this for both of us,” she said, glancing back at Sara. “We’re glad you made it back safe. That’s truly how we feel.”

“Right,” Akira said, after some hesitation. To his ears, it sounded like Elena had just said they were glad Yumina had died if that was the price of Akira’s survival, so he couldn’t just respond with a thank-you. Nevertheless, he was grateful that they cared about him so much, and he managed to show it.

The hunter profession was harsh and unforgiving, and it was common for hunters to lose people important to them. But while Akira had just experienced such a loss for the first time, Elena and Sara were much more familiar with it—a difference evident in their reactions to Yumina’s death.

With the air thus cleared, all three of them let out a sigh and felt better once more.

“Anyway,” said Elena, “if you ever feel like you need to cry, we’ll lend you our chests to sob into. Though from what I hear, you spent an awfully long time buried in Shizuka’s,” she added with a smirk.

Akira spluttered, “E-Elena! Don’t say it like that!”

“But you didn’t dislike it, right?”

“Th-That’s... That’s not a fair question!”

“Oh, c’mon, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. I’m sure you have your preferences as to what kind of chest you’d like to bury your face in, but as luck would have it, we have someone right here who can adjust her size however you like it!”

Sara grinned, going right along with Elena’s teasing. “Elena, this chest is more or less my lifeline, so would you not treat it so frivolously?”

“Don’t be silly. Is there any better way to show trust in a friend than letting them borrow something that’s important to you?”

“I see—I never thought of it like that! All right then, Akira, wanna have some more fun?” she asked, approaching him with her arms outstretched.

“N-No thanks!” he said, his face flushing red.

Seeing his childlike reaction, Elena and Sara couldn’t help but burst into laughter.

They continued chatting for some time, throwing in some more jokes and teasing on occasion; but time flew faster the more fun they had, and their visiting period was over before any of them even knew it. Before leaving, however, Elena had one more thing to say.

“Seriously now, be sure to rest up, okay, Akira? Don’t be sneaking out of the hospital and heading to the wasteland just because you’re bored.”

He could tell she was saying it in jest, so he grinned. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll stay put.”

“If you just can’t take it anymore, at least give us a call first,” Sara joked. “That way you won’t be alone.”

“I’m not going anywhere, seriously!” he insisted, grinning. “You don’t have to worry so much!”

“Well, can you blame us? We take our eyes off you for just a little while, and you land in the hospital!”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be good, I promise,” he said, his smile strained—he didn’t really have much of a rebuttal.

On their way home, Sara looked conflicted. “Hey, Elena,” she said suddenly, “you saw how he was acting. Do you think he’ll be all right?”

“I think so, yeah. I got the feeling he was forcing himself a little to match your super positive attitude. But since he’s able to do that, he should be just fine. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have joked around with us like he did.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Sara said. Both women understood that Yumina’s death was still bothering Akira, but neither of them found anything wrong with that. A friend of his had just died—the women would have been much more concerned if Akira had just bounced back immediately like nothing had happened. As long as his trauma didn’t prevent him from getting back on his feet again, he would be all right in the end. Eventually, he’d be able to stand up once more, and Elena and Sara would be there to lend him a hand if need be. In the meantime, they’d let the passage of time take its course.

Of course, they didn’t want Akira to become completely desensitized to the deaths of those around him. An Akira who no longer felt anything when someone died couldn’t be called human. He would be no different from the monsters of the wasteland—and in the end, he’d probably be eradicated like one too. At the same time, if he never learned how to endure the loss of close friends, the resulting grief would shatter his heart, sending him to an early grave. So he couldn’t become numb to it, but he couldn’t let it consume him either.

Elena believed that maintaining this delicate balance was absolutely critical to a hunter’s survival. She didn’t want to force her beliefs on Akira, but she earnestly hoped that in due time, Akira would learn how to cope with Yumina’s death, rather than letting it crush him.

◆

The hospital room Akira was staying in was reserved for wealthy patients and included a larger-than-average bathroom. Except for the size of the tub, everything about the facility was several grades higher than what he was used to at home.

As he soaked, he let out a blissful sigh. Man, I better not get too used to this, or I won’t wanna use my bath back home anymore, he said. I really gotta get my bathroom remodeled already. How much do you think it’ll cost, Alpha?

I’m not so sure you’ll have sufficient funds for the kind of remodel you have in mind, considering you still need to purchase a full set of gear, replied Alpha, who was of course naked in the bath with him. Not to mention the hospital bill.

Uh... Gear aside, I’m pretty sure the city’s covering my hospital bill, right?

Technically, Inabe only promised to pay for your treatment. He didn’t say whether that includes the cost of your hospital stay.

W-Well, yeah, but surely he’s gonna cover that part too...right?

Besides, if you’re planning on buying even better equipment this time, you’ll need even more money for it than before, she admonished him, bringing her face closer to his. I don’t mind if you spend whatever’s left over as you please, but I won’t permit you to cut corners on your gear for the sake of redoing your bathroom.

Akira groaned. He knew what Alpha was referring to—even with his previous set of gear, which had cost him three billion aurum, he’d nearly died in Kuzusuhara. So if he skimped on it now, he might actually end up dead next time push came to shove. Fighting wasn’t his top priority, but at the same time, he didn’t want to die. All he wanted was to improve his quality of life a little by upgrading his bath, but doing so would be pointless if he wasn’t alive to use it.

Well, I’ve got time to think about it, at least, he said. But don’t worry—even I know good gear’s more important than a bathroom upgrade.

Then that’s all I’ll say, she said with a smile, scooting so close that their skin would have touched if she’d had an actual body.

Akira used his artificial hand to push her away. Personal space, please. You’re too close.

Oh? But I’m always this close to you when we’re in the bath, aren’t I?

S-So what?! Just back off already!

Fine, fine, whatever you say. Alpha did as she was told and sat on the edge of the tub a short distance away.

But having her bewitching, naked body so close to him was still distracting all the same. Had Alpha continued to be a merely visual entity, with no chance of ever being touched, Akira would have been able to just ignore her like always, even when she was right up next to him. But thanks to his artificial hand, he could now touch her—albeit temporarily—which made him more aware of her presence than ever. Of course, Alpha had just modified her own image in Akira’s vision to align with his touch—appearances notwithstanding, he wasn’t really touching her. Even an artificial hand would normally just pass right through her like it would the air. But Alpha had created the impression that he was really feeling her because she knew this would have a stronger effect on him. Seeing the boy’s face, slightly flushed from the hot water, turn away from her bashfully, Alpha smiled in satisfaction.

◆

The next day, Kibayashi came to Akira’s hospital room. Noticing Kibayashi was in extremely high spirits, Akira immediately scowled.

At that, Kibayashi grinned, amused. “What’s that face for, Akira? Is that the look you should make when someone goes out of their way to visit you in the hospital?”

“What about you?” Akira rejoined. “Is that an appropriate face for visiting someone who just woke up after being out for a week?”

“Oh, come now, Akira! By now, falling unconscious and getting sent to the hospital is just business as usual for you, right?”

Akira couldn’t argue with that, so he just sighed heavily.

Kibayashi burst out laughing as he took a seat by the bed. “Man, did you ever pull some crazy stunts this time! A legion of Kokurous couldn’t even touch that colossus, and you defeated it all on your own! Crazy, reckless, and rash—you get a perfect grade! That’s my Akira—you never fail to entertain me! I knew I made the right choice by sending you those supplies in bulk!”

Even Akira could tell Kibayashi wasn’t just flattering him—the city official’s praise was genuine. Nevertheless, the boy couldn’t bring himself to be happy about that, because it simply proved just how much danger he’d faced. But he was grateful to Kibayashi for the supplies, so he decided he ought to thank him.

“Well, without them, I would have died, so thanks for those, at least.”

“No need to thank me! You and I are buddies, after all!”

In lieu of a reply, Akira just sighed heavily again.

Kibayashi then brought up the main reason for his visit. “Well, I did come to see how you were doing, even if only as a pretext. So as a get-well-soon gift, I’ll bring you up-to-date on everything I’m sure you’re dying to know, like the reason the other hunters went after you all of a sudden, and how the power struggle between the city bigwigs played out.”

“All right,” Akira agreed. “I guess that since I entertained you with my crazy, reckless, and rash antics, you do owe me that much. Gimme the scoop, then scram.”

“You got it! Let’s see, I guess we’ll start with Inabe and Udajima,” began Kibayashi with a grin.

Inabe and Udajima’s struggle for power was still ongoing, with Inabe currently in the lead. More specifically, thanks to the recent disturbance in Kuzusuhara, Inabe had achieved his goal of staging a comeback against his rival.

This was in large part due to the deal between Tsubaki and Yanagisawa, which defined all of Zone 1 as Yanagisawa’s territory—immediately snuffing out any competition between Inabe and Udajima there. But Yanagisawa didn’t have the time to manage all of Zone 1 on his own, of course, so he’d divided it in half with the city road running down the middle. Then he’d given Inabe control of the side with Tsubakihara and set Udajima over the opposite side.

This had caused a dramatic shift in the power dynamic between the executives. After the incident in Zone 1, Kugamayama had temporarily designated it off-limits. Some parts had since become accessible again, but the area around Tsubakihara was still restricted and heavily guarded by the city’s defense force. Since hunters couldn’t enter it, no valuable relics would be forthcoming, regardless of how many were actually there. Typically, having such territory foisted upon him would have been the final nail in Inabe’s coffin.

But Inabe’s territory also included the sector that Tsubaki oversaw. And as part of their agreement, Yanagisawa had convinced Tsubaki to pay the city handsomely with aurum, in exchange for sending the defense force to keep Tsubakihara secure. Naturally, an Old World entity like Tsubaki had no use for a modern currency like aurum and didn’t keep any on hand, but there Yanagisawa’s business acumen had come in handy. In the end, he had persuaded Tsubaki to agree to trade with the city. She would first sell her Old World relics to the city for aurum, then use that aurum to pay the city for protecting her territory. That circulation of money would profit the city, and though Yanagisawa would reap the lion’s share of those profits, Inabe—as the manager of the area in and around Tsubakihara—would receive a huge boost as well. Now the tables had turned, and Udajima found himself the underdog.

Akira listened attentively. But Kibayashi, feeling that the boy’s reaction fell short of the gravity of what the official was revealing, shook his head, as though to say, “You just don’t get it, do you?”

“Akira,” he said aloud, “you might not realize this, but I’m telling you something pretty incredible right now. For you to show no reaction whatsoever—well, I know that’s just how you are, but still, you could at least give me an ‘ooh’ or ‘aah’ or something.”

“I mean, I dunno what to tell you. I’m sorry?”

“Okay, how about this? As a get-well-soon present from me, I’ll explain to you exactly why this is such a big deal, so listen up,” the man said smugly.

As Kibayashi had said, Kugamayama City was using aurum to buy relics from Tsubaki, who would then buy the city’s protection with aurum—and this had several significant effects. First, the city could now buy relics directly from an Old World entity, a source that was on a completely different level from the average hunter or relic shop. In general, the humans of the New World thought of relics as affordable items one could find in stores and through trade (though there were rare and valuable exceptions).

Not so from the perspective of the Old World’s denizens. In their eyes, since hunters had looted all these goods from the ruins, the relics had never belonged to the New World at all; its people were simply exchanging stolen goods between themselves and justifying their possession under made-up rules.

On the other hand, buying relics directly from Tsubaki would be considered a legal transaction even by Old World standards. Such items would then actually belong to the New World—an enormous improvement over the existing relic trade. Normally, only the Big Five corporations could clinch such a deal with an Old World entity—yet Kugamayama City, a mere mid-rank governing body within the vast East, had succeeded in doing so as well.

The significance of this could not be overstated—especially since in transactions with the Old World, the standard medium of exchange was chrome, not aurum. After all, someone from the Old World wouldn’t consider New World currency legal tender. And yet, Kugamayama had persuaded Tsubaki to accept a business transaction in aurum—thus acknowledging the value of a New World currency. This was a remarkable feat, not to mention a huge win for Sakashita Heavy Industries, the company issuing the aurum currency.

Such an accomplishment was unheard of for any mid-ranking governing body in the East. But in addition, Tsubaki had agreed to pay the city—again, in aurum—to protect her territory, which meant she’d acknowledged Kugamayama as reliable and trustworthy. This could hardly pass unnoticed in the East—in all probability, the other four megacorporations of the Big Five would soon show up with offers for the city, intending to poach Kugamayama away from Sakashita Heavy Industries.

Even the chronically impassive Akira finally looked surprised. “W-Wow, that really is a big deal!”

“Exactly!” Kibayashi nodded, satisfied with the boy’s reaction at last. The official had slipped into an overly enthusiastic manner during his explanation in his attempt to shock Akira, but his tone now became casual once more. “Anyway, now that I’ve given you my gift, I need to ask you a personal question. What do you plan to do from here on out?”

“Haven’t really thought about it. First, I need to get my hands back and replace my gear, then I’ll take my time worrying about it.”

“So probably a week from now at the earliest, then. Okay, got it.”

“Hold on, what do you mean by that?” Akira asked, feeling a sense of foreboding in the pit of his stomach.

“Isn’t it obvious? Your next job, of course! If we don’t start thinking about it right now, all the good ones will be gone! You really entertained me this time, so as thanks, I’ll do my best to introduce you to some work that’ll really suit your ability. Stay tuned!”

Being introduced to such a job would be a great boost to Akira’s hunter career, and the boy knew it. Even so, he scowled, rejecting Kibayashi without even asking Alpha for her opinion.

“Go to hell!”

Chapter 192: Cause and Effect

Sheryl was on the roof of her base in the slums, thinking about Akira. She let out a deep, heavy sigh.

“Even after rising so high in society that I can attend the city’s dinner parties, I’m still just the boss of a slum gang at the end of the day,” she muttered.

She’d been so worried about Akira—first concerned for his safety, even before hearing he’d fallen unconscious and was in the hospital, then, after hearing he was no longer in critical condition, hoping his condition would stabilize.

Relief and joy had washed over her at the news. At once, she had tried to arrange a visit, but even typical visitors to the hospital had to undergo rigorous vetting—for those who wanted to visit someone like Akira, both the number of persons and the length of time allotted were all the more limited. What’s more, the application process wasn’t first come, first served—those with higher positions in society were prioritized over lower ones. For these reasons and others, Sheryl’s appointment had been postponed—at least, so Viola had told her after Sheryl had asked her to set it up. The girl had then asked Inabe if he could pull some strings for her and move her appointment up, but he’d said no, and of course she couldn’t argue with a city executive. So now she had no choice but to obediently wait her turn.

All her efforts, and she couldn’t even see Akira in the hospital when she wanted to. It made her realize just how wide the gulf between the two of them truly was. She sighed heavily again.

Just then, Viola appeared. “Hey now, why the long face? Sure, it’s a shame you can’t go see Akira in his time of need, but at least he’s out of the woods and no longer a suspected nationalist. Plus, your rival in love kicked the bucket, so on the whole, I’d say things are looking up and you don’t need to pout.”

Sheryl had mixed feelings over Yumina’s death. When Sheryl mentally removed Akira from the equation, she thought of Yumina as someone she’d generally gotten along with. The slum girl hadn’t been surprised to hear she’d died—hunters flirted with death daily, after all—but had felt a little sad at the news.

Still, as Viola had just pointed out, Sheryl was fully aware that a reprehensible part of her actually considered Yumina’s death a windfall. But she also knew that if Akira ever picked up on those feelings of hers for even a second, he’d hate her just as much as she hated herself for thinking them. He’d cut her off in a heartbeat. So she absolutely could not let anyone know how she felt, and responded in as normal a tone as she could.

“He’s still missing both hands. I’d hardly say that counts as ‘out of the woods.’ Of course, I’m thrilled he’s no longer in critical condition, though that goes without saying.”

“Sure, we’ll go with that, then,” Viola said with her usual sly grin, apparently seeing right through Sheryl’s act.

Sheryl just sighed again, this time in exasperation. “So, what did you want?”

“I simply wanted to check up on you before I head out. That, and my client was just so pushy, you know? Honestly, I told him it wouldn’t do any good to ask, but he just wouldn’t back down.” She beckoned to someone standing at the roof’s entrance, and a man in a business suit came over, bowing politely to Sheryl.

“My name is Haraji, and I’m here on behalf of Yoshioka Heavy Industries’ sales department. I have come today hoping your organization and my company might reach an agreement.”

Sheryl already knew Yoshioka was large enough to do business with the governing corporations. So she was quite shocked to hear such a company was interested in making a deal with her, but she didn’t let it show.

Once she heard the details, however, she realized the salesman’s true aim, and she immediately refused. “Absolutely not. Good day.”

Haraji wanted Sheryl to mediate between Yoshioka and Akira to resolve the incident in which one of their units had attacked him. But if Sheryl were to agree to such a request, Akira might misunderstand and think she was siding with his enemies. Not wanting to risk that even for a second, she turned Haraji down with no room for argument.

Haraji was surprised by her vehement rejection, but as Viola had repeatedly warned him beforehand that he was wasting his time, he wasn’t particularly fazed.

“Now, now, let’s not be too hasty. We’re only asking that you assist us with the negotiations, not requiring that you succeed. Regardless of the outcome, we’re prepared to compensate you suitably for your support—”

“Good day.”

“In addition, this would be a prime opportunity to deepen your relations with our company. With your enterprise located in such an area, I daresay you need to take considerable security measures. Our company can help you with procuring the supplies you need—”

“Please leave,” she said, cutting him off and forcing a polite smile.

Sheryl clearly wasn’t going to budge. Viola tapped Haraji discreetly on the shoulder to get his attention, then shook her head with a grin.

With that, Haraji realized it was no use. “Sorry for taking up your time,” he said, bowing apologetically, and turned to leave.

“I’ll be heading out too,” Viola announced and followed out the door behind him.

Watching her go, Sheryl muttered under her breath, “You’ve really got some nerve, don’t you?” She was astonished by the woman’s gall. Even after Akira had shot her, Viola had still accepted Yoshioka’s request and agreed to assist them in mediating with the boy.

Now that Sheryl was alone again, however, her thoughts turned back to Yumina.

“It didn’t have to turn out this way, you know,” she said, addressing the deceased girl. “If Katsuya was so important to you, you could have taken him by the hand and dragged him out of the wasteland by force—far, far away from all this—and lived peaceful lives together. Was that not good enough?”

She didn’t know why Yumina hadn’t done so. Perhaps she’d tried and just hadn’t succeeded. Or perhaps their ties to Druncam had been too strong. Sheryl could think of a number of possible reasons, but as the one who knew the answer was no longer here, Sheryl would never know the truth. Even so, she couldn’t help but wonder, just a little, if there hadn’t been some other path that could have led to a happier ending.

All Sheryl knew regarding the deaths of Yumina and Katsuya was that both had died during the operation to eradicate the nationalists. She didn’t know what was, in many respects, the most important part—that Akira had killed them. Viola had deliberately omitted that from her report.

Rather than deceiving people to gain their trust and then betraying them, Viola leaned into her reputation as a villain and exploited others’ doubts and distrust in her. She goaded them into overanalyzing her statements or behavior, which led them to wrong conclusions. And so, despite the great number of people who wanted her dead, she’d made each of them reluctant to be the one to kill her. That was how she’d survived to spread her malice to this day.

◆

In his hospital room, Akira looked over at Haraji with an irritated expression. “I know what you came here to tell me—Zalmo acted on his own, and Yoshioka Heavy Industries had nothing to do with his attack on me, right?”

“That’s correct. It’s true he belonged to a unit of ours, but in no way were his actions the will of the company. Now don’t get me wrong—we don’t intend to deny that this was our fault. But our company was wondering if we could just let bygones be bygones. Naturally, we’re prepared to negotiate a satisfactory amount for compensation—”

“Don’t bother. I couldn’t care less about any of that. You said what you wanted to say, so get out.”

“N-No, wait...” Seeing that Akira was just as unapproachable as Sheryl in his own way, Haraji’s businesslike smile froze over. He glanced at Viola, who was standing beside him, and pleaded with his eyes for her to bail him out.

Generally speaking, Viola would have been just as unqualified to enter Akira’s hospital room as Sheryl. But she’d gotten around that obstacle by leveraging her position as a negotiator hired by Yoshioka. And now it was time to do the job she’d been hired for.

“Listen, Akira: even if negotiations like these can be a pain, surely you can manage a better attitude than that. Or do you actually plan to assault Yoshioka after this?” she said with a grin.

Shocked at how casually Viola could mention something so outrageous, Haraji couldn’t help glancing at Akira. The average hunter wouldn’t even dream of making an enemy of a company like Yoshioka, but he already knew Akira could be quite reckless at times. If this attempt at reconciliation fell through, the whole situation could even culminate in an irreconcilable confrontation. So while feigning calmness, Haraji nervously analyzed Akira’s expression. But he found no reaction there indicating that Viola had correctly guessed Akira’s intent—only the same irritation as before.

“I’m not planning to, no, but I don’t wanna get bogged down in annoying negotiations right now either,” said the boy. “I mean, look at me—I’m hospitalized. Leave me alone and let me rest already.”

“As difficult as ever, I see,” Viola said. “And after Yoshioka went out of their way to come here and try to make amends with you.”

“So? That’s their problem,” he spat. Then he turned his gaze back on Haraji. “In the first place, Yoshioka was already on my shit list long before this incident—messing around during the slum gang war and even my hunter rank advancement job. If you wanna apologize for your incompetence, at least mention all your screwups instead of just the most recent one.”

Yoshioka had indeed indirectly wrapped Akira up in a number of troublesome incidents, forcing him into battle against the legion of mechs during the gang war and—even if it was to boost his hunter rank—the mandatory commission from the city that had sent him to Iida. So there was a hint of reproach in Akira’s gaze toward Haraji. Since Akira was bringing up these behind-the-scenes incidents, the sales representative decided to adjust his attitude toward the boy.

“Regarding the gang war, we weren’t the ones who involved you in our demonstration—you interfered. And as for the commission, I believe you came out quite ahead in the end, no?”

“I’m the one who decides that, not you,” Akira said, a hint of a threat creeping into his tone. But Akira didn’t really want to start a fight in his hospital room, and Haraji wasn’t about to let a little intimidation deter him, so the mood didn’t sour any further.

Viola, smiling as she watched them, chimed in with a suggestion. “Akira, if the only reason you don’t feel like negotiating with Yoshioka is because it’s tedious, then how about I handle everything for you? I’ll wrap all of this up in a way that satisfies both parties—I guarantee it.”

Akira glanced at Viola, back at Haraji, and then at Viola again. This woman was notorious for causing mischief, but he didn’t know anyone more skilled at negotiating than her. As long as she didn’t involve him in whatever she was planning, perhaps leaving things to Viola wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. He groaned to himself for a little while, mulling it over.

“I’ll think about it,” he decided. “For now, though, get out of here and leave me alone.”

Haraji interpreted Akira’s response as favorable. Considering the boy’s personality, he would have kicked them both out of the room by force if he truly had no intention of hearing Yoshioka out. Haraji glanced furtively at Viola, who gave him a small nod—apparently, she agreed.

“Very well,” the sales rep said. “In that case, I’ll get out of your hair for today. I truly thank you for your precious time.”

As Haraji bowed politely in farewell, Viola gave Akira her usual smile. “If you decide you want my help, Akira, you know how to reach me. Calling your hospital room from my end requires going through a lot of red tape, so it’ll be easier for both of us if you call me instead.”

Once they had left Akira’s room, Haraji turned to Viola with a stern look. “If he agrees to let you negotiate for him, what exactly do you plan to do?”

“For starters, I’ll have to find out from you just how far Yoshioka’s willing to bend to settle this. In fact, why not simply tell me right now? To ensure that product demonstration number three is treated as a success, just how much is your company prepared to offer?”

Hearing Viola casually allude to their third demonstration, about which he’d never mentioned one word to her, Haraji was reminded just how talented the woman was at gathering intel.

“That depends on the degree to which the boy is willing to cooperate,” he answered. “For a more specific answer, you’ll have to ask my superiors.”

Though it hadn’t originally been planned as such, the initiative to exterminate the nationalists had become the third demonstration of the latest mechs from Yoshioka Heavy Industries and Yajima Heavy Industries. Given the performance of Yajima’s Shirousagi model during the operation, Kugamayama had judged this mech type to be extremely cost-effective, including the higher-grade versions. At present, the city was strongly considering incorporating them into the defense force unit that had been reassigned to guard Tsubakihara.

The reception of Yoshioka’s Kokurous, on the other hand, had been lukewarm. Yoshioka could have offered any number of excuses for this, such as that their unit had been up against Tsubaki, who was so powerful no mechs ever had a chance of defeating her, or that they’d lost to the leader of the colossi because it had been much tougher than all the others. But excuses wouldn’t change the fact that they’d lost, and their reputation had suffered a huge blow.

Worse still, Akira had single-handedly finished off the same colossus that an entire unit of Kokurous couldn’t defeat, and he’d even defeated a Kokurou during his battle with Zalmo. Akira also had strong ties to Inabe, who now managed the Tsubakihara territory. If Akira spoke ill of the Kokurou in Inabe’s presence, the city executive might reevaluate whether the Kokurous were even worthy of being introduced into the defense force at Tsubakihara. Preventing this outcome was the chief reason Yoshioka was so eager to reach an agreement with Akira.

Haraji sighed heavily. “Honestly, though, based on his attitude back there, do you actually think he’d agree to our terms even if you negotiated on his behalf?”

“I told you, that depends on how willing you are to compromise,” said Viola. “I can tell you right now that if you think a paltry sum of money will be enough to shut him up, you’d better think again.”

“Yeah, I figured as much,” the man said glumly. Thinking of how messy the forthcoming negotiations were going to get—with Akira, his superiors, and possibly even Viola all involved—he couldn’t help but grimace. Viola, on the other hand, was all smiles, eagerly anticipating the chaos that was to come.

◆

The doctor came into Akira’s hospital room, carrying the boy’s new hands. Floating in a cylindrical tank of water, they weren’t fully grown yet, so they were only about the size of a small child’s hands at the moment.

As Akira gawked at them, utterly fascinated, the doctor tweaked the settings on the boy’s artificial hands, remotely syncing them with the ones in the tank. “Now, then,” the man said, “we’re going to check how your new hands are developing. Try moving your prosthetic hands around however you want. If anything feels unnatural or uncomfortable, let me know.”

Akira did as he was told. His movements felt a little stiffer than what he was used to, but the motions of the hands inside the tank mirrored those of his artificial hands.

“Well?” inquired the doctor. “How does it feel? Can you sense the water in the tank on your hands, for instance? It should feel like they’re submerged in a room-temperature liquid.”

“Yes, I can feel it.”

Next, the doctor had Akira move his hands in specific directions, open and close them, hold his fingers up one at a time, and perform other tests. In the middle of these, Akira thought of something else he wanted to try and did a little experiment.

“Looks like this works just fine too,” he muttered to himself.

The doctor glanced over at the hands in the tank and noticed they were behaving differently from Akira’s own hands. Then he looked at Akira and realized this wasn’t an error but intentional on Akira’s part.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” the doctor cried out in a panic. “Don’t do that, please! Controlling both hands simultaneously after they’ve been synced will duplicate the input and mix things up!”

“O-Oh, sorry!” Akira quickly went back to moving only his artificial hands.

Seeing that the hands in the tank were once again matching the boy’s movements, the doctor relaxed. “My bad, I should have warned you about that. Still, I’m impressed you can pull that off. Most people can’t, you know.”

“Well, I’ve done something similar with my powered suit, so I just wanted to give it a try. I was surprised it actually worked.”

“Is that so?” the doctor said, intrigued. Then he smiled with determination and seized his opportunity. “In that case, would you like me to install some additional arms for use with your suit? Because they’re artificial, they’re easier to familiarize yourself with than flesh and blood limbs—and if you already have that level of control, it’ll take even less time!”

“Um, well—”

“Have you ever thought to yourself, ‘Gee, if only I just had one more arm’? Well, now you can! Wouldn’t you love that convenience? If you want to test it and see how it feels, just say the word!”

As the doctor’s sales pitch grew more and more aggressive, Akira found himself feeling somewhat intimidated.

The boy let the doctor finish his spiel but, in the end, turned down his suggestion. The doctor looked a little disappointed but didn’t press the matter any further as he finished up his tests and left the room.

Once he was gone, Akira breathed a sigh of relief, which Alpha found amusing.

I thought it was a pretty good proposal, you know, she told him. You’re already using support arms, so this wouldn’t be much different.

A support arm’s one thing, but a cyborg arm’s different! he retorted. What if I try it out and like it so much that I feel unsatisfied with only two? That would be a serious problem!

Would it? Well, it’s your choice in the end. Everyone has their preferences, after all.

Preferences? But... I mean... Even you only have two arms, right?

Do you want me to add more?

No, please and thank you! He got the vague feeling that if he argued any further, Alpha really would start sprouting arms one after another. And he knew that the sight would definitely stir his curiosity to give it a shot, so he adamantly refused.

◆

Later, Inabe dropped by to see Akira again. He explained that he’d wanted to come sooner, but his schedule had always been full whenever Akira was awake and ready to receive visitors. Recently, however, things had finally slowed down enough on the executive’s end that he could put in an appearance.

“That said,” he added, “I still can’t stay very long, but I certainly have more time than before. So ask me whatever you want to know, and I’ll answer.”

“All right, then,” said Akira. “For starters, what about the fee for my hospital stay? Are you taking care of that too?” He’d heard that the city would be covering all of the expenses for his treatment, but did that include his hospital stay all the way up until he was discharged? And would it have covered the cost for cyborg arms as well, had he chosen to get them? Did he really not have to pay a single aurum?

“Don’t worry, we’ll be covering the entire amount. As for the arms, you can expense the regular ones for use in everyday life. If you’d selected combat arms in the hundred-million-aurum range with laser cannons and other expensive weaponry attached, we would of course have needed to negotiate with you first, but you chose to have your hands regrown, right? That’s only a little more expensive than your regular treatment, so we’re not going to charge you for that.”

“Really? All right, I appreciate that,” said Akira with a very relieved sigh.

Inabe, though, found this sigh puzzling, as it sounded overly dramatic to him. “But even if we did have you pay the whole amount, you’d be able to afford it, right? So why do you sound so relieved?”

“Oh, that’s because I don’t really have any extra money to spare. My last set of gear cost three billion aurum, and I still almost died. If I want even better equipment this time, my new set’s gonna have to be even more expensive.”

Seeing his worry, Inabe asked, “If you’re already thinking about how to get better gear, I take it that means you plan to continue following the hunter profession?”

Akira frowned in confusion, unsure why he would even think otherwise. So Inabe seized his chance to address the main topic he’d come to discuss.

“In fact, this is a good opportunity to ask the big question at hand: What are your plans from here on out? I’d like to hear what you’ve decided, if you have anything concrete in mind.”

“Well... I wasn’t really thinking anything specific. Once my hands heal and I’m out of the hospital, I was gonna buy some new gear and then head back to the ruins. That’s all.”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about your ultimate objective. You might not realize it, but right now, you’re standing at a very important crossroads in your career as a hunter. I want to know which path you plan on going down.”

Akira looked like he still didn’t understand. So Inabe told him that for exterminating the nationalist threat—numerous monsters and troops alleged to be on the nationalists’ side, as well as the leader of the colossi—Akira’s hunter rank had gone up to 50, and he’d been awarded five billion aurum. That was an extremely vast sum of money—as long as he spent it in moderation, he could live comfortably on it for the rest of his life. In other words, if he was merely in the hunter profession for the money, it would no longer be worth continuing to risk his life for relics in the ruins. In particular, since the boy had nearly died during his most recent adventure, Inabe wouldn’t have been at all surprised if Akira had been planning to hang it up after this. Having become extremely wealthy, would Akira continue hunter work or retire?

This was the first “crossroads” Inabe was alluding to.

The second one, assuming he planned to continue raising his status as a hunter, was whether he wanted to stay and work in Kugamayama City now that he was rank 50. Generally, there was an upper limit to how high one could raise their rank working only in Kugamayama, and allowing for occasional slight deviations, the average hunter hit that limit around 50. For while a hunter’s strength and ability grew over time, the difficulty of the monsters in the surrounding ruins generally remained constant. Eventually, the hunter would reach a point where cheap relics and weak monsters weren’t going to raise their rank any further. To reach greater heights, they’d have to seek out new locales.

Thanks to the city highway, however, which was still in the process of being extended even now, the Kuzusuhara depths had changed this to an extent. With the depths and their formidable monsters more accessible to hunters, that upper limit on rank would most definitely rise. But even so, it would take some time for the hunters themselves to realize it. Most still thought that once they reached rank 50, it was time to pack up and move on. And Akira had that option as well—the second “crossroads” he had to consider.

“So, what will it be?” Inabe inquired. “Retire from the hunter profession? Stay here and continue to hunt around Kugamayama? Or head to another city farther east? The choice is yours, but it doesn’t sound to me like you want to retire, so you have two paths to choose from. What I want to know is, right now, which of those have you been considering?”

“Uh... I hadn’t really thought about it at all.”

“I see,” Inabe said after a pause. “Well, you don’t have to decide right away. While you’re still in the hospital, you can take some time to mull it over.” With that, he dropped the issue and casually asked, “Oh, by the way, what are you going to do about Druncam? Planning to wipe them out once you’re all geared up?”

“Huh? Wipe them out? No, I wasn’t planning on it. Why would I?”

“Well, the Druncam team that Katsuya and Yumina were on not only mistook you for the boss of the nationalists but attacked you, right? I figured you’d be champing at the bit to get your revenge on the whole organization.”

“Oh, that. Well, I already killed the folks who attacked me, so I don’t need to go after the entire organization. Besides, Druncam’s divided into factions, and only the desk jockey faction was involved, I hear. Though if they do come after me, all bets are off.”

“I understand. Then what about Udajima? He was the one who hired them to kill you, you know.”

Akira hesitated briefly. “Um... Is it really okay for me to answer honestly? I know you and Udajima are enemies, but you’re a city executive, and the city owns this hospital, right?”

“Don’t worry. Nothing you say here will go in the city’s records, and I swear I won’t breathe a word of it to anyone else.”

“Oh, okay. Well, in that case, yeah, I’m thinking I’ll kill him.”

Normally, announcing one’s intent to assassinate a city bigwig in front of another city bigwig would have been extremely problematic—but as this was exactly the answer Inabe had expected, he didn’t even bat an eye. “Well, that’s more or less what I thought, since it’s you we’re talking about. But I wouldn’t recommend that for two reasons. First, Udajima’s an executive of the city, so by killing him you’ll make an enemy of the city. And second, Udajima lives inside the city walls, so you’d be trespassing and antagonizing the city anyway.”

“So you’re telling me I can’t hunt him down?”

“Rather, I’m suggesting you hold off at least until the issue at hand is settled—in other words, until Udajima falls from grace and loses his standing in the city. Once he’s been chased outside those walls, you can go after him.”

“Well, I get what you’re saying, but—”

“You’re wondering how we’re going to pull that off? Well, there are two ways: either you can do it, or I can.”

Akira gave him a blank look, so Inabe went into greater detail. The first option was the simplest: Inabe could secure a complete victory against Udajima in their struggle for power. Then Udajima would lose his position as city executive, after which it would be easy to chase him outside the city walls. The second was for Akira to grow so powerful as a hunter that he posed a threat to the city. Put simply, if Akira became skilled enough to join the hunters on the Front Line, his influence alone could drive Udajima out. The military and economic power of Front Line hunters far outclassed that of a single city, so merely antagonizing one would be enough to erase Udajima’s influence without a trace.

Of course, neither method would be easy to carry out. But they weren’t impossible either, nor was there a need to pick one at the expense of the other. If Inabe and Akira worked on their respective approaches at the same time, they’d stand a much better chance of succeeding.

“The way I see it,” Inabe concluded, “if you want to kill Udajima, this method is a much wiser course of action than recklessly breaching the city walls and causing a scene. Don’t you agree?”

“So you’re asking me to team up with you?”

“No, I’m not saying you need to go that far. We’d just be working toward our own respective interests, which happen to align. To be perfectly candid, though, I have a more selfish reason as well: you’re currently considered a supporter of mine, and if you were to breach the city walls, some out there might hold me accountable. So I’d like you to go the hunter-rank-boosting route to kill Udajima, rather than barreling in guns blazing. That’s all.”

“All right, fine,” Akira agreed.

For now, Inabe was satisfied with that response. With this, he’d managed to put a lid on some of that crazy, reckless, and rash disposition of Akira’s that Kibayashi was so fond of. Inwardly sighing in relief, Inabe went on, “Besides, even apart from the Udajima issue, raising your hunter rank will only benefit you in the long run anyway. Fewer people will want to mess with you, for one thing, so you’ll be able to avoid a repeat of the Druncam desk jockeys sending Katsuya’s team after you.”

Akira didn’t seem to understand what Inabe meant by that. The executive explained that the biggest reason that the desk jockey faction had accepted Udajima’s request and sent Katsuya’s team to attack Akira was that they thought it was a gamble they could win. Had they expected Katsuya’s team to lose, they never would have gone along with the proposal, regardless of whatever tactics Udajima had used to threaten them. But since Akira’s hunter rank had been 45 at the time, fresh off of his rank advancement commission, they’d believed that rank was an accurate assessment of his ability. Of course, one’s hunter rank wasn’t necessarily an indicator of their overall hunting skill, but fighting monsters was such an essential aspect of the job that rank was a critical part of evaluating a hunter’s capability.

The desk jockeys had been confident Katsuya’s team wouldn’t have any trouble against one rank 45 hunter. Even if his actual ability turned out to be several ranks higher, they’d felt sure Katsuya’s team would still win. But they had been mistaken—Akira’s true ability had been far beyond rank 45. In fact, after he’d taken out the colossus leader all by himself, people who saw his current rank would probably find it hard to believe that he was really only rank 50. The point was that if Akira’s rank had reflected his actual ability, Druncam’s desk jockeys would most likely have considered eliminating Akira a lost cause.

In that sense, it could be said that Akira’s negligence in raising his hunter rank had been a catalyst for the trouble in the Kuzusuhara depths.

This news came as a great shock to Akira. Inabe was essentially telling him that if he’d only been more proactive—if only his hunter rank had accurately reflected his ability with Alpha’s support included—he might have been able to avoid killing Yumina with his own hands!

Akira’s surprise took Inabe aback as well. “Um, well, it doesn’t change the fact that Druncam made the bad call here. Their incompetence is to blame, not you. Yet at the same time, you can’t assume everybody’s automatically going to think you’re capable. That’s why if you don’t want to make unnecessary enemies, it’s critical to have an objective indicator of your strength that even the most incompetent fools can understand.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Akira said, hanging his head dejectedly.

Inabe felt honestly at a loss. The executive had only advised Akira to be more proactive about raising his hunter rank if he aspired to kill Udajima, which seemed more or less common sense to Inabe. Yet apparently none of this had occurred to Akira at all. Secretly bewildered, Inabe hid his feelings and sought to wrap up the conversation. “All right, it’s getting late, so I ought to be off. Oh, but before I go, I just want to check something. Viola came to visit you, right? What did she have to say?”

“Oh, just some stuff about negotiating with Yoshioka, that’s all.”

“Is that so? She didn’t tell you anything about Druncam, then? How with Katsuya, Yumina, and the others dead, that place is in utter chaos right now?”

“No, she didn’t say anything about that.”

“I see. Well, perhaps I’ll explain all that another time. You just take it easy and rest for now. Oh, also, Sheryl’s probably going to show up before long.” As Inabe mentioned Sheryl’s name, he scrutinized Akira’s expression carefully for any sort of noticeable reaction. “She wanted to come much earlier, but had to wait a while due to...various circumstances.”

After he had taken his leave, and Akira and Alpha were alone once more, Alpha spoke up cautiously. Akira? Are you all right?

Yeah. I’m fine, he said with a nod. He was recalling what Shizuka had told him earlier: “In that case, I want you to deplore what you’ve done. Regret your deeds. Grieve for her. Never get over the fact that you killed her. Let it torment you, so that you won’t get used to the idea, so that her death will never seem trivial in your mind—and most of all, so that you won’t repeat the same mistake.”

“Don’t worry, Shizuka,” he said aloud, with resolve in his voice. “I’ll never repeat the same mistake again.”

After leaving Akira’s hospital room, Inabe scowled to himself. Why didn’t Viola tell Akira about Druncam? Was it just that she didn’t know? Or did she deliberately keep quiet? What would she have to gain by not telling him? I just don’t get it.

In the end, Inabe decided it was pointless to spend any more time trying to interpret Viola’s antics, and he directed his focus onto a different concern. At any rate, it might be better to delay Sheryl’s meeting with Akira even further after all—perhaps even to the day of his discharge. That way, even if Akira does learn about that, he’ll have some time to cool his head before seeing the girl. And if he’s still upset even then... It’s a shame, but I guess I’ll just have to sever ties with her.

Inabe sincerely hoped he was just worrying for nothing. But he also wouldn’t hesitate to cut Sheryl off if the worst came to pass.

◆

Once Akira’s new hands had fully developed, it was time for the surgical process to attach them. First, the nerve-reading devices implanted in the stumps of his arms were removed. Then his stumps themselves were trimmed ever so slightly, in order to provide a flat surface for the new hands to adhere to. A matching base was created on the wrists of the new hands, and then the doctor used a high-tech apparatus to connect the two surfaces—bones, nerves, veins, muscle fibers, and all. Akira felt the entire process—even with his sense of pain reduced to some degree, it was still excruciating.

Once the attachment procedure was complete, the doctor applied medicine to the areas where the arms and hands met, then bandaged them. With this, Akira’s treatment was finally complete.

Akira moved his hands to test them out. Even though they had just been attached, it felt like he’d had these hands all his life. There was nothing unnatural or stiff about the way they moved.

“No problems here,” he said.

“Excellent! Now, just in case, I’m going to ask you to refrain from doing any heavy lifting for a while. Because those hands are new, they’re still weak, so they’ll need to be retrained. If possible, I recommend using your powered suit to facilitate that process. Though some people require more adjusting than others, there’s no question it’ll be faster than training them up from scratch.”

“That’s really necessary?”

“Naturally. Even if a superhuman lost their arms and had new ones made, their new arms wouldn’t be superhuman right out of the gate. They’d need to build those arms up again.” He grinned. “I know what your next question is going to be: Then if you took a superhuman’s arms, legs, or any other part besides the head and attached them to a normal person, couldn’t you mass-produce superhumans? Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work like that. I wonder why—maybe because the person isn’t actually a superhuman? Who knows? It’s truly a mystery.” Then his grin widened. “By the way, with artificial arms and body parts, you don’t have to worry about any of that! They allow anyone to reach the level of a superhuman, so what do you think? Just say the word, and I’ll attach an extra arm so you can see how it feels—”

“I-I’m sorry, but I really think I should focus on buying a new set of gear first,” Akira told him.

“Oh, I see,” the doctor said, sounding disappointed. “Well, all right, if you say so. Anyway, your treatment is officially complete now. Thank you for your cooperation.” With a final bow, he exited the room.

As Akira watched the man go, there was a hint of fear in the boy’s eyes.

Akira now had his hands back, but he needed to stay in the hospital another half day for observation, in case there were any complications. While he waited to be cleared to leave, Sheryl came to visit him—her appointment had finally been approved.

She looked nervous as she walked in—so nervous, in fact, that even Akira noticed something was up.

“What’s wrong, Sheryl?”

“O-Oh, it’s nothing. I apologize for only coming to see you right as you’re leaving. I wanted to come sooner, but they wouldn’t let me make an appointment...”

“Oh, that’s all? Then you couldn’t help it. Don’t worry. I’ve basically been confined here, and apparently it’s hard for people to come see me. And you made it, even if only at the end of my stay, so that’s good enough, right?” He grinned, trying to reassure her that he had no right to complain about her late arrival when she’d gone out of her way to try and see him.

Sheryl did her best to manage a smile back. “I’m glad to hear that. Anyway, I know it’s belated, but first, let me just say I’m truly glad you made it out of there safely.”

Yet though she really did feel relieved and Akira wasn’t upset at her for being late, the tension remained on her face because the root of her anxiety wasn’t there—it lay within herself.

Just before coming to visit Akira, Sheryl had gotten a call from Inabe.

“You’re about to go see Akira, aren’t you? Before that, I have something I need to tell you. I’m the one who blocked you from visiting him right away—I judged it better to wait a little while before you met with him again.”

This shocked Sheryl, but she managed to reply, though with a hint of wariness in her tone. “And why is that?”

“I’m sure you know by now that a hunter named Yumina died recently. She was someone Akira was quite close to.”

“Yes, I’m aware. I heard she died during the fight with the nationalists. It was truly a shame.”

“How much do you know about the truth of that incident?”

“Huh? Well, not much beyond the fact that she died during the operation.”

“Then before you meet with Akira, allow me to share with you what I know.”

Sheryl wasn’t sure what he meant, but it sounded like he was trying to tell her something extremely important, so she steeled herself and listened.

But she couldn’t have ever prepared herself enough for what she heard.

“The one who killed her,” Inabe said, “was Akira.”

“E-Excuse me?”

“Nor was it an accident. He deliberately fought her as an enemy and killed her. The Druncam team she was on got roped by Udajima into securing him under the pretense that he was the boss of the nationalists.”

“Y-You don’t say...” Then Akira hadn’t hesitated to kill even Yumina, once she had become his enemy. The news hit Sheryl like a truck, even more so when she realized she had been on the verge of heading to meet Akira without even knowing the truth. What would have happened if she’d accidentally made a comment about Yumina in his presence?! Part of her was relieved that Inabe had called her before then.

But Inabe’s next words erased even that sense of relief. “That’s not the most important part.”

There’s more?What could possibly be more important than that? Sheryl wondered, fearful of whatever might come next.

“Katsuya was the team’s leader,” Inabe said, “and ultimately accepted Udajima’s request to secure Akira—but only because he made a deal with Udajima. In exchange for apprehending Akira, dead or alive, he asked Udajima to save you.”

“M-Me?”

Sheryl couldn’t believe what she was hearing as Inabe added that Katsuya had agreed to go after Akira only on the condition that Udajima help clear Sheryl of any suspicion of being a nationalist. And as a loyal member of Katsuya’s team, Yumina had deferred to Katsuya’s decision, gone up against Akira, and lost her life.

“Here’s the problem: that makes you one of the reasons Yumina died. Though you were only an indirect cause, Akira had to kill her because of you.”

Sheryl’s mouth dropped open. She couldn’t even speak.

So Inabe continued, “I can’t say for certain, but I’m pretty sure Akira hasn’t connected the dots yet. When I talked to him the other day and mentioned your name, he didn’t react any differently.” Sheryl’s breathing became erratic. Inabe could hear her panting, but went on anyway. “But there’s no guarantee he won’t find out later. It’s possible someone who does know might tell him down the line. Udajima’s a possibility, of course, but there’s also Druncam and those involved with them, or the person I hired to investigate the matter. And of course, anyone who figures out the truth on their own could spill the beans to him. There’s even a possibility Viola already knows.”

Sheryl couldn’t even make a sound to show she was listening. But she was taking in every word.

“A while back, I’m sure you recall, you gave me cause for concern in another matter. I asked if we were going to have a problem, and you said no. But this time, I’m not going to let you tell me this isn’t a problem. It’s a major problem, and I’m going to trust that you’re capable of fixing it. That’s all I have to say. Goodbye.” Already well aware that this wasn’t an issue she’d be able to resolve, he hung up without even waiting for a response.

Pale-faced, Sheryl stood frozen to the spot without a sound. Because of her, Akira’d had to kill Yumina? Just what would happen if he came to that conclusion? Merely imagining it was enough to pierce her heart.

In Akira’s hospital room, Sheryl gauged Akira’s reaction. She didn’t detect any hostility or loathing in his eyes as he looked at her. On the contrary, he seemed happy she’d come to visit him. Then it’s probably fine, she told herself in an attempt to regain her calm. It’s still fine. The worst hasn’t happened yet. This will surely all work itself out.

All the while, she tried her absolute hardest to smile in front of him.

Chapter 193: Akira and Hikaru

The day after Akira was discharged from the hospital, he headed to Shizuka’s shop to discuss purchasing a new set of gear. Shizuka greeted him with a smile and, after confirming he’d made a perfect recovery, looked relieved. “Looks like you did what I said and rested up like you were supposed to.”

“Yeah, and look! I’ve got my hands back!” he said, proudly showing Shizuka his new pair.

They looked so natural that she couldn’t even tell that they were replacements. He opened and closed his fists with no awkward motions at all. To her eye, he seemed to have made a full recovery. However, the training he’d put into his original hands, as rigorous as the regimen of someone aiming for superhuman status, had not carried over to these ones, so it would be quite some time before he would be completely back to normal.

Even so, both of them grinned, happy and relieved.

“I knew keeping my human hands was the right move,” he said. “That doctor at the hospital was hounding me to try switching to mechanical hands, but even if those would’ve been more efficient, natural hands are just the way to go.”

Laughing, he then recounted his experience with the pushy doctor. Shizuka smiled as she listened.

“Anyway, I’d rather not lose my hands again if I can help it,” he said lightheartedly, “so I’d like some even better goods this time. That way I won’t have to get all reckless again—hopefully. I was wondering if you’d be up for discussing this with me.”

He was asking to be polite, but in truth, he didn’t think that Shizuka would turn him down. So when the shop owner furrowed her brow, he was a little taken aback.

“Actually, Akira,” she told him, “there’s something I need to talk to you about regarding that.”

“Oh yeah? What is it?” he asked, a little warily.

Looking apologetic, Shizuka informed him that it was going to be very difficult for her to continue being his supplier going forward.

While procuring his previous set of gear, Akira had entered into a contract with Kiryou that stipulated his next powered suit also had to be a Kiryou model, in exchange for a deep discount on the suit he’d purchased. As long as he bought his suit from Kiryou, he wouldn’t need to worry, but if he were to violate the contract, he’d be penalized with a steep fee.

The problem was that other companies were now appearing with offers to cover Akira’s penalty fee if he switched to their products instead, thanks to his extremely impressive performance during the nationalist extermination effort. After all, he’d taken down a colossus so formidable that even a Kokurou unit had to retreat from it—and he’d done so all on his own. If word spread that he’d been wearing a Kiryou suit during that fight, the company’s publicity would receive a tremendous boost. And just as bad press could sink a product no matter how well-made it was, great press could increase a shoddy product’s sales—more than a few companies besides Kiryou wanted to capitalize on Akira’s success by taking a slice of that pie for themselves. Since Kiryou had won the first round, it was therefore hardly surprising that its rivals were already laying the groundwork to take advantage of Akira’s next venture.

Sighing, Shizuka concluded, “And so, while you were in the hospital and they knew you wouldn’t be here, a few salespeople from those companies came here to see me. They were all fighting among themselves for the right to deliver their passionate sales pitches to me— Ugh! Just recalling it is giving me a headache.”

“O-Oh, really? I’m sorry, Shizuka. Looks like I caused you trouble.” He bowed his head in apology.

Shizuka just grinned. “Oh, no, Akira, don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind you coming to me for supplies—rather, I’d like nothing more! Whenever you show up, my sales go through the roof, so I want to try my best for you.” Her brow furrowed again. “The problem is, I’m not so sure my best will be enough. Those salespeople were so shrewd and pushy that I was honestly overwhelmed. I’m worried that if you leave it to me, they might just run me over and do whatever they want.”

Shizuka might have gained the patronage of a rank 50 hunter, but in the end, she was just the owner of an average shop that typically catered to hunters rank 30 or below. And the salespeople pressuring her regularly dealt with hunters who forked over hundreds of millions of aurum without batting an eye. She wasn’t used to doing business with such tycoons.

“S-So, Akira, what do you think I should do?” she said with a smile, trying not to look too troubled.

“That’s, um, well, a very good question?” He returned her smile, failing to conceal his concern quite as skillfully as she had.

◆

Heading home from Shizuka’s shop, Akira gave a small sigh. Their meeting had ended up with the two of them simply looking hopelessly at each other—they hadn’t been able to decide on anything at all. The unwelcome businessmen would undoubtedly come to visit Shizuka again in the near future, and since the two of them still hadn’t come up with a plan, Akira would just have to trust her to handle them on her own.

Alpha, since this problem concerns my gear, do you have any ideas about what to do?

It’s quite the conundrum, to be sure.

Even for you, huh?

If we simply had to choose the best option off a list of items that fit your budget, she told him, I could just suggest a few optimal choices, and you could pick whichever one felt right to you. But according to Shizuka, we’re going to have to do some major negotiating with multiple corporations if we want something really high-quality. Technically, you could show up at the negotiation table and merely repeat whatever I tell you to, but you wouldn’t be able to explain your sudden business acumen as mere coincidence or intuition. It would look far too unnatural.

Oh, right. Yeah, I hadn’t thought of that. Akira was hardly savvy when it came to such things, so it would be clear as day that he had a supporter behind the scenes coaching him on what to say. As he couldn’t afford to let anyone else pick up on Alpha’s existence, that wasn’t an option. I wonder what we should do, then. Is there anything we can do? He groaned, at a loss.

Just then, he got a call from Kibayashi, who asked if they could meet up as there was something the city official needed to discuss with him. Deciding it might not be a terrible idea to talk the gear issue over with him as well, Akira agreed and headed out.

In the Kugama Building’s first-floor lobby, which also served as the passage through the city walls to the inner city, Akira waited for Kibayashi near the Hunter Office information desk.

The lobby was packed with hunters heading this way and that, which reminded Akira of his first visit here. At that time, he’d been little more than your typical slum kid, and he recalled being intimidated and overwhelmed by how much stronger and more experienced everyone else around him looked. Today, Akira was still the outlier, but now it was because he was stronger than them. And as soon as they noticed him, the other hunters looked shocked and nervous, and some even wore looks of admiration. News about the nationalist extermination project was now public knowledge.

More than a few hunters kept their distance or leaped out of the way in a hurry when they saw him coming. Some were even watching him with fearful looks in their eyes. Alpha giggled. Looks like you’re finally getting recognized, she teased.

Y-Yeah, I guess so. In truth, though they’d looked down on him and ignored him before, he couldn’t exactly say he was thrilled to see them do a one-eighty either. Still, he did prefer this over their previous attitude—the more that people were afraid of him, the less likely that anyone would attack him. If those desk jockey guys at Druncam had seen this, I wonder if things would have turned out differently, he suddenly mused. He quickly decided not to follow that line of thinking any further.

As all eyes in the room remained glued to Akira for one reason or another, a girl appeared from the inner-city side of the lobby and walked toward him. Looking mature, but not quite old enough to be called an adult yet, she wore a city official uniform and a rather self-assured look on her face—the look of someone who knew how competent they were.

The girl stopped in front of Akira and bowed with a polite smile. “Mr. Akira, I presume? I’m terribly sorry for making you wait so long. My name is Hikaru, and I’m from Kugamayama City’s General Administration Department. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Huh? Uh, r-right, nice to meet you. Do you need something?” he asked, wondering why this random person was coming up to him and introducing herself all of a sudden. “If so, can you make it quick? I’m supposed to be meeting a guy named Kibayashi here in a bit.”

Hikaru, for her part, looked a little puzzled at Akira’s reaction. “Yes, I’m aware. Kibayashi called you here, and he’s made you wait all this time, I presume?”

“Well, yeah...”

“I figured as much. Then rather than having you stand around any longer, let’s go somewhere we can sit down and talk.” She gestured to the restaurant nearby, assuming Akira had already realized why she was here and would agree to follow her.

Akira was so caught off guard that he almost trailed behind her automatically, when he caught himself. “W-Wait just a second!” He pulled out his terminal and called Kibayashi, who picked up immediately.

“Yo, Akira,” the man said. “What’s up?”

“Don’t ‘what’s up’ me! You called me here, so where the hell are you? This girl named Hikaru showed up instead, and now she’s wanting me to follow her. Should I?”

Kibayashi sounded utterly amused at Akira’s account. “So let me get this straight: Right at the time and place you’re supposed to meet me, someone else wearing a city uniform shows up, and they seem to know who I am. And rather than swallow her story automatically and follow her, you decided to ask me first to confirm? Not bad, Akira, not bad! Let me just say you made the right call.”

“What do you mean?” demanded Akira.

“I mean, there’s a possibility that this girl might be trying to deceive you.”

Akira glanced over at Hikaru, who couldn’t help but flinch at the abrupt side-eye from such a high-ranking hunter.

“Oh, but don’t misunderstand me,” Kibayashi continued. “I’m not confirming that she is, just saying that there’s a chance. So stay on your toes.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean? So is it okay to follow her or not?”

“That’s up to you.”

“What?!”

“Listen, Akira. That girl calling herself Hikaru is indeed an acquaintance of mine. This I can guarantee—but no more.”

“None of this makes any sense! If you’re not gonna explain so I can understand, I’m leaving.”

“That’s a viable option too. After all, when you’re at the negotiation table, you shouldn’t trust anyone, and you won’t always get things explained to you in detail. Sometimes that constitutes too much of a risk, and walking away isn’t always the wrong choice. Not saying it’s always the correct one either.”

Akira sighed. He was on the point of turning around and leaving when Kibayashi finally got to the point.

“Look, Akira. There’s no doubt that you’re a strong hunter. You’re rank 50 now, for crying out loud. In terms of the hunters in this city, at least, you’re right up there with the cream of the crop. But when it comes to your ability to negotiate, to put it bluntly, you’re basically a novice. And that’s going to be a serious problem going forward, wouldn’t you agree?”

Kibayashi then explained that he wanted Akira’s negotiation skills to more closely match the level of his combat skills. “From this point on, all sorts of suits and fellow hunters are going to approach you with enticing proposals,” he said. “As you might already be aware, the question of where your next set of gear will come from is already getting messy, what with every company coming out of the woodwork to get you to use their products over others.”

The official was aiming to improve Akira’s business smarts for the sake of the boy’s future—but also to make sure things didn’t get too boring. On the one hand, if Akira’s inability to negotiate led him to wage war on those companies and cause a huge scene, Kibayashi would have found that just as entertaining. But if instead it led to those companies walking all over Akira as if he were a doormat, that would be a huge buzzkill.

“Before those sharks gobble you up,” Kibayashi added, “you ought to learn at least the ins and outs of negotiation while you’re still able to. That’s why Hikaru’s there for you to practice with. Take note of her upbringing, her position, her ideology, her emotions, whether she seems competent, and things like that. Then decide for yourself whether she can be trusted.”

Feeling like Kibayashi had hit him where it hurt, Akira grimaced but continued to listen.

“I’ve told you before that you’re a favorite of mine. That’s why I went out of my way to set this opportunity up. But whether you actually get anything out of it depends entirely on you. That’s all from me. Later, Akira, and good luck.” With that, Kibayashi ended the call.

Inwardly tearing his hair out, Akira turned back to Hikaru. She smiled at him awkwardly, with just a hint of nervousness.

The two of them made their way to a restaurant on the first floor of the Kugama Building where they could talk in private and, above all else, make sure they were both on the same page.

Hikaru gave a small sigh and bowed apologetically.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Akira. It’s my fault for assuming you already knew what was going on. For the record, I was only told to come meet you because doing so would benefit both of us in the future. That’s the only explanation he gave me.”

“You too, huh? Man, what’s wrong with that guy? Anyway, now that we’re here, what should we do—um, Miss Hikaru?”

“Oh, no, just ‘Hikaru’ will be fine. In fact, you don’t even need to be especially polite. Please, simply talk to me like you would anyone else. Trust is a critical component of business, after all, and stiff formalities can sometimes make intentions unclear, inviting misunderstandings and doubt. Besides, I prefer to keep things casual myself—though I have to say I think Kibayashi’s gone a little overboard here,” she added with a wry smile.

Akira smiled back and rolled his eyes. “All right, works for me. Then feel free to talk to me casually too. It’s easier for me that way.”

“Really? Okay, then I’ll drop the ‘Mr.’ and just call you Akira. Once again, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Akira.”

“The pleasure’s all mine,” Akira replied. Here was someone else who knew what it was like to get jerked around by Kibayashi, and he couldn’t help but feel a sense of kinship with her. He began to relax, and his tense grin softened into a genuine one.

Hikaru, meanwhile, saw this as her golden opportunity.

Forging friendly relationships with high-ranking hunters was extremely important for the governing corporations, both from an economic perspective and for the continued protection of the cities in the East. These hunters regularly spent hundreds of millions of aurum on gear and various kinds of expensive ammunition. Then they went into ruins and took out monsters so formidable that such pricey equipment was essential to face them. Finally, they gathered up and sold priceless relics to make their efforts worth it, allowing them to start the cycle all over again. The economic impact of such exploits could not be overstated, and as a hunter’s rank rose, so too did their influence. In fact, the most skilled hunters in the East, those currently working near the Front Line, each possessed more economic pull than one of the smaller governing corporations. Therefore, it followed that anyone capable of negotiating with such high-ranked hunters, earning their trust, and getting them to cooperate with the city would gain unfathomable influence as well—and the most prominent example within Kugamayama City was Kibayashi.

This was not to say that Kibayashi enjoyed a particularly favorable reputation among hunters. He preferred it when they acted crazy, reckless, and rash, believing that they were at their best when they went full throttle—and if they died in the process, at least they’d gone out with a bang! To him, that was what being a hunter was all about, and he would gleefully hand people extraordinarily difficult jobs to push them to their limits. But while he was clearly good at securing opportunities for them, most hunters didn’t want such opportunities in the first place. More than a few times, down-on-their-luck hunters had sought out Kibayashi for one last chance to turn everything around, only for him to send them on some harrowing, high-risk-high-return job that they simply hadn’t had the skill to survive.

But not all of them had failed, and Kibayashi never deliberately sent people to their deaths knowing they couldn’t handle what lay in store. He didn’t like to see hunters fail—he wanted to see them succeed in the face of extreme adversity. He sought to witness the moment that they pulled through on sheer guts, willpower, and determination. A surprising number of hunters he’d given jobs to had in fact risen to the challenge and survived—enough that the city continued to allow Kibayashi to issue these challenges despite the failure rate, at least.

And everyone who survived, without exception, had gone on to become a high-ranking hunter, and many of them had left Kugamayama and headed farther east. Kibayashi had thus solidified his own position by having connections to such capable hunters, to the point that the city turned a blind eye to his antics and eccentric reputation.

Hikaru knew all of this well. And now, she’d been given the opportunity to forge a connection of her own with a high-ranking hunter—Akira. If she could win him over, gain his trust, and become his go-to liaison between him and the city, her standing would skyrocket from that of a regular, nondescript employee to a position of actual responsibility! She couldn’t let this chance slip away, so while her smile to Akira was calm and polite, inwardly she was more fired up than she’d ever been in her life.

Akira’s rank 50! And he accomplished all that wild stuff during the battle with the nationalists! And he’s got ties to Mr. Inabe! I don’t know what Kibayashi’s thinking, just handing me an opportunity like this, but whatever! I’ll gladly take it!

Skillfully concealing her inner excitement, she gave Akira a friendly glance. “So, how about it? Want to do what he said and practice your negotiation skills on me?”

“Are you really all right with that?”

“Of course. I don’t mind at all.”

“Then I guess I might as well—but how am I supposed to start?”

“Kibayashi didn’t give you any hints?”

“Hmm... Come to think of it, he did tell me to pay attention to your background and upbringing and stuff like that.”

“Then let’s start from there. After all, right now you don’t even know if I’m really employed by the city or just some swindler attempting to deceive you. So with that in mind, I’ll reintroduce myself.” She gave him an exaggerated bow, as though she were an actress in a play. “Pleased to make your acquaintance! My name is Hikaru, and I belong to the Kugamayama City General Administration Department.”

Playing along, Akira grinned and bowed as well. “I’m Akira. Nice to meet you. Um, are you really a city employee? Can you prove it?”

“Of course I’m really a city employee. You don’t believe me?” she replied, seemingly taken aback.

“Sorry, but I can’t just take your word for it. I’m gonna need more than that.”

The two continued to act out the scenario, treating it like a game in which Akira’s objective was to determine whether Hikaru really was employed by the city, and Hikaru’s objective was to convince Akira that she really was who she said she was. As Akira had pointed out, her word alone wasn’t enough to convince him, so she set her terminal down on the table and pulled up her identification page to show him.

“This is my ID page, which I accessed directly from the city’s website. You can see that my face matches the photograph. Also, notice I’m wearing a city uniform. If anyone other than a city employee wears this uniform, they’ll be severely punished for impersonating a city official. Is that enough proof for you?”

Akira nodded. But since this was supposed to be a training exercise, he deliberately tried to find fault with her argument. “Can you prove you didn’t make that ID and that web page yourself? And if you wore that uniform here while mingling with a bunch of real city employees, could anyone really tell the difference?”

“I figured that was coming. Then shall we head to the Hunter Office desk and inquire with them about my identity?”

“And what if you’ve already paid them off to give me fake information?”

“Now that’s a little too ridiculous. You’d need to do a whole lot of work to get a Hunter Office employee to conspire with you, you know?” Hikaru shook her head, as if to say it was completely out of the question.

But Akira shook his head as well. “No, depending on the location and who’s running it, it’s actually more doable than you think.”

Akira was recalling when he’d first registered as a hunter. In a building that could have passed for a dilapidated bar from the outside, an extremely unmotivated Office employee had handed him a license that looked like a mere scrap of paper. That man had been so careless with his job that he’d even printed Akira’s name wrong on the paper. Someone like that could definitely be bought off with enough money, and as though to vent his frustration over the incident, Akira explained as much to Hikaru quite enthusiastically.

Hikaru had lived inside the city walls her whole life, so she found Akira’s story a little hard to swallow. But seeing his attitude as he recounted it to her, she judged it had to have really happened, and she was honestly astonished.

“So even Hunter Office employees can be that careless outside the walls?” she mused. “But in that case, we simply need to go to a Hunter Office kiosk that’s guaranteed to be reputable, right? Like this one in the Kugama Building. Surely that ought to satisfy you, right?”

“Well... I guess.”

Seeing his nod, Hikaru gave a victorious grin, proud that she’d successfully convinced a high-ranking hunter with her words alone. “If that wasn’t enough proof for you, though, I’m not sure what else I could do. I suppose you’d just have to investigate me on your own until you were satisfied, and I’d have to assist with that investigation however you wanted me to. Now then, in a scenario like that, what would you wish to look into first?”

“Hmm, well, I’m not really sure...”

Akira, Alpha chimed in, just so you know, I’m not going to offer any advice here, so don’t bother asking. This is a training exercise, and I want you to handle this on your own.

Yeah, I know, he replied. But try as he might, he couldn’t think of solid questions to ask. So, telling himself that was fine because this wasn’t a real negotiation, he asked Hikaru instead. “Well, what do you think I should ask?”

“It wouldn’t be much of a training exercise if you didn’t come up with that answer yourself, now, would it? Besides, you’re supposed to be suspicious of me. Wouldn’t it be a problem if I gave you an answer to deliberately throw you off my trail?”

“Yeah, you’re right.” In the end, he couldn’t let anyone else think for him. He had to do this on his own. Frowning, he mulled his dilemma over once more. But once again, he couldn’t think of anything to ask her.

After watching Akira flounder for a while, Hikaru finally threw him a lifeline. “Well, since you’re a hunter, it wouldn’t be realistic to ask you to investigate me on your own anyway. Ultimately, you’d have to ask someone you trust to do it for you.”

“Oh, right! Yeah, that’s a good point!” he exclaimed, glad to be bailed out.

“It’s pretty common for high-ranking hunters like yourself to have people they can go to for that sort of thing, in fact. So as part of your training, if you already have someone like that, how about calling them up and asking them to investigate me? Then you’ll know whether you can trust me, and I can see how accurate their intel is—which will tell you whether you can trust them for info.”

“Are you really okay with being investigated, though?”

“Sure, I don’t mind. Of course, I wouldn’t like being investigated without permission very much, but right now my job is to be your training partner, so I’ll assist in any way I can. Go right ahead.”

“All right, if you say so.” He took out his terminal and called someone he knew to be quite capable of handling such requests.

As she watched him make his call, Hikaru was inwardly jumping for joy. She’d already guessed that if Kibayashi had called Akira out for his lack of negotiation skills, then the boy had to be a complete novice in that department. Just from their conversation so far, she’d been able to confirm that this was indeed the case—and if so, his informant was probably none too skilled either. When the results came back, she’d just point out each of the inaccuracies in the intel and recommend he find someone more reliable. Then she could offer to help him test any other informants the same way until he found one he could trust. If all went well, this could give her a significant foothold in becoming his exclusive negotiator! Just imagining the standing she’d gain within the city as a result made her grin.

Akira finished his call and put his terminal away. “She says it’ll take thirty minutes,” he said.

“Wow, thirty minutes? I wonder how much dirt she’ll dig up in that amount of time,” she teased. “I hope she goes easy on me.” As I thought, he’s got a rookie informant, she told herself. As she lived inside the city walls, and was a government employee to boot, her personal information was guarded far more securely than that of those from outside the walls. She fully expected the results to be “I tried, but I couldn’t find much.” In short, she was convinced she was safe.

She and Akira spent the next half hour chatting about trivial matters as they waited for the results. But suddenly, something unexpected happened. When Alpha alerted him, Akira’s face immediately became grave.

“Don’t look now, Hikaru, but we’ve got some guys surrounding us right now. Any idea who they might be?”

“What?”

This news blindsided Hikaru completely. Akira discreetly motioned with his eyes to indicate the men’s positions to her. One was seated at a nearby table, one was stationed near the restaurant entrance, and one waited beyond the glass wall—and there were others as well. None of them had been present until just moments ago. They were all wearing inconspicuous clothing, like business suits and city uniforms, but anyone with the eye for it could tell they were all highly skilled in combat. Akira hadn’t noticed them until Alpha had pointed them out, but now that he was looking at them, he could definitely sense they were different from the other restaurant patrons.

However, it wasn’t Akira they were all focused on—it was Hikaru. And it was evident from her reaction that she had no clue what was going on either.

One of the men signaled with his eyes for the others to stay put, then he and two of his subordinates approached Akira and Hikaru’s table. The first man came to a stop in front of Akira, while the other two stood on either side of Hikaru as though to make sure she didn’t escape.

“Mr. Akira, Inabe wants to speak with you,” the man in front of him said.

At that moment, a call notification appeared on Akira’s terminal. Just as the man had said, it was from Inabe.

“H-Hello?”

“Akira, I’ve received information that there’s an impostor posing as a city employee, trying to deceive you. What’s your situation right now?”

“Oh—well, I’m just participating in a make-believe scenario for training purposes...”

“Training?!”

Inabe sounded dubious, so Akira filled him in. Meanwhile, the men Inabe had dispatched to the scene interrogated the flustered Hikaru. From her answers and the identification she provided, they were able to confirm she was indeed a legitimate employee of the city.

“Commander, we’ve confirmed the target’s identity. Hikaru Sakuyama, General Administration Department. She’s the real deal.”

“Understood,” the man said, and proceeded to notify Inabe.

Akira could hear the executive’s heavy, exasperated sigh over the receiver.

“Akira, will this ‘training’ you speak of prove fruitful, you think?”

“Um, I believe so, yes,” he replied awkwardly.

“Glad to hear it. Goodbye.” Don’t make me do something so troublesome again was what Inabe wanted to say, but he couldn’t criticize Akira for checking, since Hikaru could very well have been an impostor. So he just settled for a gruff farewell before hanging up.

Inabe’s men bowed to Akira once more. “Very well, our work here is done. We apologize for disturbing you both.”

“No, it was my fault. Sorry you guys had to come here,” Akira replied.

The three men, along with the others on standby, left the area together. With the situation defused, everything around them returned to normal. But the atmosphere remained awkward between Akira and Hikaru.

“Yeah... Sorry about that,” he said sheepishly.

“D-Don’t worry about it. I was the one who told you to check.”

“I-If it’s any consolation, I didn’t ask Inabe to investigate—I asked a woman I know named Viola. And I’m guessing she said something weird that made him misunderstand.”

“Y-You don’t say?” Hikaru replied, somehow managing a smile. But it couldn’t have been any more forced.

◆

Even after her meeting with Akira had concluded and the boy had left, Hikaru remained in the restaurant. With an exhausted look on her face, she ordered an enormous parfait, hoping that the extreme sweetness of the expensive yet delectable dessert would soothe the buildup of mental fatigue she’d accumulated from that one meeting. By the time the sighs from her mouth had changed to ones of pleasure instead of weariness, she was finally able to calm down and reflect on the conversation she’d had with Akira.

“Well, not everything went as planned, but overall, I’d consider that progress,” she concluded aloud. She’d certainly been able to confirm that Inabe held Akira in high regard, given the way he’d responded to the potential threat. Had Hikaru truly been an impostor, those men would have undoubtedly arrested her and taken her in for questioning. And judging from the number of men that had been dispatched, Inabe must have considered this a serious matter indeed.

That told her just how much value Inabe placed on Akira. And that meant forging a connection with such a person would be incredibly beneficial to her. It wouldn’t be worth getting to know him if it wasn’t at least a little frightening, she reasoned, choosing to see this first meeting with him in a positive light.

“And now that I’ve made his acquaintance, I just need to come up with reasonable excuses to keep running into him,” she muttered, scooping another spoonful of parfait into her mouth. The taste was so divine that even though she’d eaten much of her dessert already, her stomach kept making room for more. While enjoying this period of supreme bliss, she grinned to herself, imagining the glorious future that surely awaited her.

Then she received a message on her terminal. As she checked the contents, her blissful smile immediately froze over—Inabe wanted to meet with her.

When she reached Inabe’s office and was summoned inside, Hikaru sat opposite the executive, unable to conceal her nervousness.

“First off,” he began, “I didn’t call you here because you’re in trouble or anything, so don’t worry about that.”

“R-Right.”

“It seems Kibayashi provided you an opportunity to meet with Akira but didn’t tell you much about why.”

“Y-Yes, that’s correct.”

“So what do you think?”

The question was terribly vague, but Hikaru knew that if someone like Inabe was asking a question like that, then he was being vague deliberately. So, guessing the intent of his question, Hikaru took a deep breath and answered, “On the whole, I’d say I got a favorable impression.”

“Is that so?” was all he said, his eyes not leaving Hikaru’s face. Feeling like he was evaluating her by some unknown metric, her anxiety skyrocketed.

Then, after ten seconds of silence, Inabe spoke. “Well, I’m pleased to hear that because, in fact, I was thinking of appointing you as Akira’s handler.”

“Huh? M-Me?”

“Is that a problem?”

“N-No, absolutely not! You can count on me! I’ll do everything within my power to succeed!” She was so elated at this chance that she forgot to craft the calm, composed smile appropriate for meeting with a superior and ended up flashing a confident grin instead.

“Glad to hear it. Now, I know Akira can be, shall we say, difficult, but if your impression of him is already favorable, I doubt you’ll have any problems in the future. I know you’re quite capable, and I trust you’ll utilize every bit of that capability for the sake of the city.”

“Yes, sir!” Hikaru bowed to him deeply, then left the room on cloud nine.

Inabe sighed softly. “Well, she ought to behave better than Kibayashi, at least.”

Because Hikaru was skipping down the hallway, she was already too far away to hear his comment.

◆

Akira was resting at home when he got a call from Hikaru, who informed him that she’d been appointed to be his handler.

“And so, I look forward to working with you from now on! Just think of me as your personal liaison.”

“Personal, uh, liaison? I don’t think I’m so important as to require all that.”

“That’s not true at all! You’re a rank 50 hunter! You’ve reached the level at which you deserve special treatment now!”

“Even so, that’s pretty surprising. I thought if anyone would be my handler, it’d be Kibayashi.”

“Aw, you’d prefer Kibayashi over me?” she said, faking a pout.

“Hell no,” he said with a grin. “Given the choice between you two, I’d go with you any day.”

“That’s what I figured, but I’m glad to hear you agree. Thanks a bunch!”

With that out of the way, Hikaru moved on to her chief topic. “So, I suppose I should ask: Got any hunts planned for the future? If you don’t have anything scheduled, let me try to find some good-paying jobs for you. I don’t mean to brag, but I’m so capable that even Mr. Inabe’s got his eye on me, just like you. With his connections, I’m sure we can find some really lucrative work!”

She name-dropped the executive to prove to Akira how capable she was. Akira, thinking this meant Inabe was planning to introduce jobs to him through Hikaru in order to raise his hunter rank more quickly, saw this as a favorable development. But certain circumstances kept him from getting too excited.

“A-Actually, Hikaru, I appreciate that and all, but to tell the truth, I’m gonna need a full set of new gear before I go on another commission.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I can take care of that for you. When would you like it by?”

“Well, I don’t really know. To be honest, things are kind of complicated on this point...” He went on to explain the situation to Hikaru.

“I understand,” she said when he was finished, her voice brimming with confidence. “Then I’ll just take care of all those pesky negotiations for you too.”

“Wait, you can do that?!” Even someone as inept at business matters as Akira could imagine what a headache it would be to try negotiating with multiple corporations at once and still come out on top, so her answer honestly shocked him.

“Sure can! Just leave it to me,” she replied proudly, well aware of exactly what a headache she’d just volunteered for. “And if you have any other problems like that, just let me know. I’ll take care of those as well while I’m at it.”

“Whoa... Really? Well, in that case, Yoshioka Heavy Industries and I really aren’t on the best terms right now.” He briefly explained the situation with Yoshioka to her.

“Got it. I’ll just negotiate with them alongside the other corporations, then. Anything else?”

“N-No, that should be it... That sounds like a whole lot of work to me, though. Are you really gonna be all right handling everything on your own?” Of course, Akira wasn’t really worried that Hikaru couldn’t handle it, nor did he think she was just making empty promises. He just found it hard to believe that anyone could survive dealing with such a massive workload.

“Oh yes, I’ll be perfectly fine,” she said, as though this was no big deal for her. “I don’t want to sound conceited or anything, but as the youngest within the General Affairs Department, I’m considered something of a prodigy. So you don’t need to hold me to the standard of the hoi polloi.”

Akira didn’t understand why that was impressive, but he at least understood she was good enough to brag about it, which worked for him. “I see. So you’re kind of a hotshot, then, huh? Well, if you say you’ve got things under control, then you probably do. Go for it.”

“You can count on me! Later, Akira!” Sounding overjoyed, she hung up.

Akira looked over at Alpha. “Guess this means our gear problem’s solved. Um... Right?”

It seems that way, at least. Let’s hope for the best. Alpha didn’t want Akira to stay away from hunter work too long either, so she found this turn of events preferable to more drastic options.

After hanging up on Akira, Hikaru let out a happy sigh proportional to how well she thought the call had gone.

“All right, that went perfectly!” she said, grinning to herself. Now if she could resolve all of Akira’s issues just like she’d promised, his trust in her would go through the roof. And if she recommended him highly coveted, lucrative jobs on top of that, she could forge an even deeper connection with him. Akira had already agreed that Kibayashi could help him there, apparently, but he’d also said he preferred her over the official, so he’d likely come to her from now on instead. If all went extremely well, even her dream of becoming a city executive might one day be a dream no longer! And when she thought about this, she couldn’t help smiling from ear to ear.

“Now then, which one of these matters should I tackle first? Probably the gear, since he’ll need that before I recommend him any jobs.”

In order to make the future she wished for a reality, Hikaru began firing on all cylinders.

Chapter 194: A Conversation at the Bar

Back when Akira had still been unconscious in the hospital, Yanagisawa had secretly ordered his subordinates to retrieve Katsuya’s corpse from the Kuzusuhara Town Ruins. Then he’d autopsied the body at his secret hideout. He carried out the procedure on his own, not even letting his subordinates touch the body, until he was convinced of two things: first, that the body was really Katsuya’s, and second, that resurrecting him in this state would be, as far as he knew, impossible even with Old World technology.

Once he was done, he breathed a sigh of relief.

Most likely, Katsuya was the one the coterie made a contract with. And now that he’s dead for good, they’ll have to scrap their trial and go back to the drawing board. That should buy me a considerable amount of extra time. Normally, he concealed his inner thoughts with his usual cocky smile, but right now, the relief on his face was palpable. After all, extra time was critical to Yanagisawa.

At that moment, he received a call from Nelgo, which made him notice he’d let his mask slip. Quickly reapplying his usual smile, he answered, “Yo, Yanagisawa here! What’s up?”

“I heard you recovered Katsuya’s body, comrade. I wanted to discuss that with you. Do you have a moment?”

“Well now, I thought I’d covered my tracks pretty well. How’d you find out about that?”

“I have my sources. More to the point, what did you learn? Is Katsuya truly dead?”

“Dead as a doornail. Oh, right, you were planning on taking him for yourself, weren’t you? He’s just a corpse now, but you still want him?”

“Is his brain in a reusable state?”

“Nope.”

“Then he’s useless to us.”

Whether Yanagisawa had deliberately put the brain into an unusable state, Yanagisawa didn’t say, and Nelgo didn’t ask. All the latter needed to know was that the organ could not be repurposed. “One more question, comrade. How would you evaluate the hunter named Akira?”

“How? Well, like we discussed before, he’s a hunter from the slums, and he’s probably not an Old Domain User. I thought we both agreed on that.”

“Not what I mean. I’m talking about your overall impression of him, including his tendency for surprises like taking down a giant colossus all on his own.”

“Overall impression, huh? Well, he’s obviously pretty strong, right? I mean, he managed to kill Katsuya, after all.” As he answered, he thought back on the results he’d gathered from his investigation on the boy. A hopeless slum child only a short time before, Akira was now a hunter who’d recently made it to rank 50. His level of growth was so unbelievable that initially, Yanagisawa had indeed suspected that the coterie might have been behind it. But after seeing the footage of Akira fighting the colossus for himself, his suspicions had greatly waned. That footage, captured from the scanner in Nelia’s cyborg body and the Kokurou’s built-in scanning device, was rough in spots and had somewhat poor quality throughout—but it was good enough that Yanagisawa could at least tell that in the middle of that colossus fight, Akira had suddenly, dramatically, grown a lot stronger.

Normally, this would have been immediate grounds to suspect the coterie’s involvement. But given that Tsubaki had been interfering with communications at the time, it would have been impossible for them to support him. In other words, the strength that Akira had displayed had to have been his own. Maybe he was the kind of person to awaken to his true potential in a pinch—or put less glamorously, the kind of person who couldn’t get serious unless his back was up against the wall. He knew the boy had already cheated death an unnaturally high number of times, but this explanation sufficed.

Plus, the boy had killed Katsuya. And Yanagisawa was almost certain that Katsuya had made a contract with that shadowy coalition. The executive found it hard to believe that two of their subjects would fight each other to the death. Even if the coterie hadn’t been able to control their subjects due to the communication breakdown, the two subjects would have had orders not to fight each other. Therefore, Yanagisawa had judged that Akira’s ability had to be his own and that he wasn’t receiving any outside help after all.

“But there are a number of other hunters stronger than him right now anyway, so at the moment, I can’t say I’m really interested in him at all,” Yanagisawa added. Having noticed that Nelgo’s question had been deliberately roundabout, he was answering the question he thought the man had really wanted to ask—in other words, Yanagisawa was saying he didn’t care whether Nelgo’s organization took Akira or not. And unlike with Katsuya, the executive didn’t care if they asked his permission first.

“Very well,” Nelgo said. “I understand.” Nelgo’s actual aim in asking that question had been to gauge how dangerous Yanagisawa considered Akira at present. Nelgo’s comrade Zalmo had seemed to think the boy was extremely dangerous, and Nelgo was trying to determine whether this was the case.

Nelgo’s and Yanagisawa’s ultimate motives were at odds with each other, so they had conflicting impressions of Akira in their minds. They were collaborating with each other on the surface, but that would only last as long as their interests aligned—then all bets would be off.

“By the way,” Yanagisawa asked, “are you going to continue infiltrating Druncam?”

“No, I’ve backed out. With Katsuya now dead, I have no more reason to be there. Officially, I died during the operation to eradicate the nationalists.”

“Hmm, you don’t say. Well, even if you’d stayed, it’s not like Druncam’s going to be around much longer.”

As neither of the men had any interest in a Druncam without Katsuya in it, they wouldn’t care even if Akira decided to destroy the syndicate once he woke up.

After their conversation, Yanagisawa found himself reflecting on Nelgo and his organization. They weren’t afraid of death, but not because they couldn’t die. It was because they devoted their entire lives and beings to the realization of their cause. Dying, killing—all was permissible for the cause. If only that lack of fear would make them reckless, if they could temporarily lose their immortality somehow, or if they could somehow be fooled into thinking they weren’t immortal, then Yanagisawa would be able to deal with them. Then he’d be able to threaten them. But the threat of death held no power over those who would die for their ideals with smiles on their faces, even if they could die. So no matter how many he killed, their resolve wouldn’t waver.

Right now, he was cooperating with them. But he didn’t know how much longer that alliance would hold out. As long as their ultimate goals were different, he and they would eventually become enemies—and this could happen at any time. He reminded himself that he needed to stay vigilant.

But that would also present a serious problem when it happened.

“Damn, this sure is a tough spot,” he muttered to himself, heaving a genuinely exhausted sigh. His usual confident smile was nowhere to be found.

◆

Katsuya’s death had utterly devastated Druncam.

Arabe, Shikarabe’s friend and a Druncam executive, looked absolutely haggard, no doubt the result of countless back-to-back meetings at HQ. And Shikarabe’s face clearly revealed his sympathy for his poor colleague.

“All right, Arabe,” he said as they sat down. “What’s the sitch?”

“Right. Well, first off, the desk jockeys are getting hounded by their sponsors inside the walls for an explanation of what happened.”

Druncam’s desk jockey faction had formed a number of close ties and long-term deals with backers from the inner city, but on the assumption that Katsuya would continue to grow and develop in the future. Under such conditions, a hunter syndicate could typically replace their best hunter with another one of comparable skill if the first died in the middle of the contract period. But in this case, Katsuya essentially was the contract—his absence rendered all those agreements null and void. So Mizuha, who’d spearheaded much of the efforts to do business with the wealthy individuals inside the walls, was currently swamped renegotiating with these partners, including paying them all penalty fees.

Shikarabe snorted. “‘Renegotiating,’ huh? Isn’t that what the desk jockeys wanted anyway?”

“Most definitely. After all, their business partners are the city’s upper crust. They’ll want to keep that connection going as long as possible, I’m sure.”

And Shikarabe and Arabe laughed together, mocking the desk jockey faction’s bad fortune. Then, with an irritated sigh, Shikarabe asked the question he’d been deliberately avoiding until now.

“And? How’s Akira?”

“Pretty badly wounded. He was carried out of the ruins and brought to a hospital, and last I heard, he still hasn’t regained consciousness. But apparently he’s undergoing some expensive treatment, so his life isn’t gonna be in danger. He’s expected to wake up before too long.”

“And then he’ll probably come after us.”

“Yeah. Thanks to those dumbasses sitting behind their desks, Druncam’s made an enemy of Akira—so depending on how things shake out, the syndicate could be finished.”

In other words, Druncam had antagonized a high-ranking hunter who had close ties to a city executive. That alone called their continued existence into question—who knew if Akira might rush into HQ, fully armed and guns blazing? Both veterans knew the boy had already taken down the colossus leader on his own, so neither of them doubted his strength.

So grim were the syndicate’s prospects that it seemed every one of its members was holding their head in their hands.

Even after Akira awoke, Druncam wouldn’t be in a position to reach an understanding with him. Ideally, the syndicate’s representatives would have come to a compromise with him while he was still rendered harmless in the hospital, but they couldn’t even approach him because of the strict policies surrounding his confinement. So they’d tried asking Kibayashi to mediate on their behalf—but he’d turned them down, protesting that it would be far too risky for him to mention Druncam around Akira right then. And so, while they were still at a loss as to what else to do, Akira had been discharged.

Shikarabe was feeling a mix of emotions right now. For the sake of Druncam’s future, he didn’t want to be Akira’s enemy. The desk jockeys had started all of this trouble, not him, and he wasn’t about to put his own life on the line to clean up one of their messes. Yet he still had a deep attachment to Druncam—otherwise, he would have accepted Kurosawa’s invitation and left Druncam long ago.

Despite being so conflicted, however, he came to a firm decision. “I think I’m gonna bite the bullet and go meet with Akira. You should come too, Arabe.”

Arabe hesitated for a moment, but sighed. “Fine. Man, I thought I’d long retired from the battlefield, and here I am putting my life on the line again.”

“Come on, what are you saying?” Shikarabe replied with a small grin. “That’s what we hunters do, right?”

“Yeah, true enough!”

Shikarabe and Arabe, who had both been with Druncam since its founding, smiled grimly at each other—for they were true veterans, and could laugh even in the face of such adversity.

◆

When Akira received a call from Shikarabe, asking if they could meet, the veteran sounded serious, so the boy agreed without asking many questions. He merely prepared to head out and made for the same bar he’d visited previously in Kugamayama’s entertainment district.

The pleasure quarter was bustling, just like last time. And as before, he passed many hunters along the way. But now, they were clearly reacting differently to him. No one sneered like he was some weak slum child anymore. He had been weak—that was a fact—but no one saw him that way any longer. And for better or worse, his own negative self-image had also been overwritten in his mind—he wasn’t going to downplay his own strength from now on. Yumina had been strong, yet he’d killed her. So to think of himself as weak any longer would be an insult to her. In fact, had he only evaluated himself accurately in the past—or even overestimated himself—rather than downplaying his talents, she might still have been alive.

Previously, as Akira constantly belittled himself and called himself weak, his heart had become twisted. But his new insight did not undo the damage—rather, as he reflected on what had happened with Yumina and realized that yes, he was in fact strong, his heart only twisted further. He had to become stronger, he told himself—to grow stronger and to acknowledge every bit of improvement, to make sure he’d never repeat the same mistake again.

Thus, he yearned for even more power. And because he was an Old Domain User, far more likely to unconsciously transmit negative thoughts than positive ones, his twisted feelings were leaking out via telepathy to everyone around him. So all who approached him were keenly aware of the land mine they were passing—and none of them wanted to step on it, so they were keeping their distance.

Shikarabe and Arabe were waiting for Akira on the second floor of the bar, at the very back. Shikarabe’d had a few sips to drink while waiting, but Arabe hadn’t indulged in a single drop.

“Shikarabe, you ought to go easy on the booze,” Arabe said reprovingly.

“I know, I know. I’m only having a little,” Shikarabe reassured him. “Besides, if I’m buzzed and in a good mood, Akira might be less wary around me. Not that it’ll matter whether I’m sober if he’s already set on killing us,” he added with a wan smile.

“Yeah, I guess not,” Arabe said with a chuckle.

“Oh, but that doesn’t mean you should drink, regardless of what I do. After all, you’re the one who has to negotiate with him, assuming he’ll let us. Can’t be all tipsy then. Gotta keep that mind of yours sharp, you know?”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Arabe. “I’m hoping something as simple as negotiation is all it takes to resolve this, so don’t worry.”

Once again, the two veterans shared that knowing grin. In a way, they were about to head into battle together. And right at the scheduled time, Akira appeared.

The moment Shikarabe saw him, he automatically sobered up.

Based on Akira’s current hunter rank, which was public knowledge, and the footage making the rounds of his fight during the nationalist incident, Shikarabe and Arabe already had a rough idea of Akira’s strength. They knew he’d reached a level of skill that no one could dispute—and this made Shikarabe anxious. What if the moment he met Akira, he felt again the same sense of weakness from the boy that he always had? He’d probably never be able to trust his hunches again. For that matter, he might even decide to retire from the hunter life for good—a hunter’s instincts were critical to their survival, so by entrusting his life to a faulty intuition, he’d only be sending himself to the grave.

So Shikarabe had steeled himself for this meeting in more ways than one. But his fears proved to be unfounded—before Shikarabe’s eyes was a hunter he felt could have indeed easily taken out a colossus that a legion of Kokurou mechs couldn’t.

Looks like my intuition’s back to normal, he thought. Deeply relieved, he motioned for Akira to take a seat. “Yo, thanks for coming! Want anything to drink?”

“I’ll pass, I don’t drink,” said Akira. “Come on, what’re you doing offering alcohol to a minor? Are you nuts?”

“Why, ’cause it’s not good for your body?” Shikarabe replied with a grin. “News flash, Akira—we’re hunters! We do things that aren’t good for us all the time when we’re in the wasteland, including ingesting medicine that screws up our bodies. So what harm’s a little more alcohol gonna do?”

“I don’t think that’s the actual problem here, but whatever,” Akira said, taking a seat opposite him. “So, what did you want to talk about?”

“Oh, right, guess there’s no need to beat around the bush, is there? Then I’ll get right to it. Akira, just what are you planning to do about Druncam?”

Akira looked confused, which surprised the veterans.

“I mean, Katsuya and them all attacked you, right?” Shikarabe said, spelling it out. “As far as we’re concerned, the desk jockeys stirred that up on their own, but we felt sure you were coming to take revenge on the whole organization. So we were just wondering what the extent of that vengeance might be.”

“Oh, gotcha.” Akira nodded, then frowned. “Well, I saw that as something Katsuya and his team pulled, rather than Druncam as a whole. And I already killed Katsuya, so for now, I wasn’t really planning on doing anything to Druncam. Unless they attack me first, that is.”

Mentally, Akira had divided those involved into two: the party who had ordered the attack, and the party who had carried it out. Even if he took revenge on both, he blamed the order not on Druncam’s desk jockey faction but on Udajima. And as Akira, in pursuing his revenge, meant to treat Udajima as an individual and not a city executive, he had no intention of holding the entire syndicate accountable.

Neither of the veterans had expected such a response and felt quite bewildered. But as this worked to their benefit, they didn’t press him any further and simply moved on. “All right,” said Shikarabe. “In that case, I’ve more or less covered what I wanted to discuss with you here. Arabe has some other minor things he wants to say, I think. Oh, I forgot to introduce you—this here’s Arabe. He’s a Druncam executive who’s in charge of external negotiations.”

Arabe bowed to Akira. “Nice to meet you. I came with Shikarabe to negotiate a peace treaty of sorts.”

“A peace treaty?” wondered Akira. “I just told you we’re not at war. Is my word not good enough?” He scowled, as if to say that such an arrangement sounded like more trouble than it was worth.

So Arabe undertook to educate him as to the benefits of a formal ceasefire.

Currently, many within Druncam, mostly among the desk jockey faction, were afraid that Akira might come attack them at any time. Some might have been relieved at his declaration that he had no intention to do so, but others would definitely be suspicious of how easily he had let them off the hook—that he planned to crush the syndicate later regardless. Knowing Akira’s personality, that certainly seemed possible.

So Arabe proposed drawing up a peace agreement through the Hunter Office. If Druncam compensated Akira as much as their finances permitted and Akira accepted their offer, the desk jockeys would be able to accept that he really had abandoned any idea of targeting them, and they’d calm down. Arabe added that while he understood the whole procedure was a bit troublesome, it would be better to draw up an agreement now to avoid an even more troublesome scenario down the road.

Akira thought this more or less made sense, but he still wore a frown—he was unfamiliar with undertaking such negotiations on his own.

Shikarabe, sensing what he was thinking, spoke up. “If you’d rather not do this yourself, why not find someone to do it on your behalf, like when you asked that Kibayashi fellow to stand in for you in the automaton negotiations?”

This was good advice—but Akira didn’t want to ask Kibayashi. Then another possibility crossed his mind, someone he’d recently met who might fit the bill. “Um... Just a minute.” He pulled out his terminal and placed a call.

When Hikaru heard his request, she gladly accepted. “Understood! Basically, you want to convince the people at Druncam that you desire peace, but you also want to exploit them for all they’re worth, right? No problem! Just leave everything to me!”

“Uh, I didn’t say anything about wanting to exploit them—”

“Don’t worry, I know exactly what you mean! Just sit tight and wait—I guarantee you’ll be satisfied!”

Hikaru was over the moon: Akira had come to her with a negotiation request instead of going to Kibayashi! That meant she’d succeeded in snatching a business opportunity from right under the man’s nose! She was determined not to fail now.

“Now, then,” she added, “I’ll get right to it.” Still on the line with Akira, she called up Arabe as well. “Mr. Arabe, was it? My name is Hikaru, and I’m with the city’s General Administration Department. I will be handling today’s negotiations on Akira’s behalf. So, without further ado...”

And just like that, Akira’s negotiations with Druncam commenced.

Arabe had been caught off guard but went along nonetheless. Watching his friend hard at work, Shikarabe grinned and busied himself emptying his tall glass.

“Hey Akira, order whatever you want off the menu! My treat! If alcohol’s a no-go, order some food—or if you’re not hungry, how about a woman? Like I told you last time, the floor above us is actually a brothel. So if you see a girl you like, let me know and I’ll call her over for you!”

“First you recommend alcohol to a minor, and now women?!”

“Sure, why the hell not?” Shikarabe replied, laughing.

Akira just sighed. “You sure you know what you’re offering? You made me come all the way out here, so watch out or I’ll take advantage of your generosity—I’ll order everything on the menu, starting from the most expensive item.”

“Go right ahead! I’d rather buy you the bar’s entire food supply than fight you. Including my booze tab,” he added, downing another tall glass of liquor.

So Akira obliged and ordered some expensive dish. He and Shikarabe chatted for a while about this and that, until the tipsy Shikarabe started talking about Katsuya. This was, of course, a dangerous topic to broach around Akira right now, but Akira just listened intently while finishing his meal.

“To be honest, I never did like that guy. In fact, I loathed him. And I still don’t really like him, but you know...” Shikarabe paused to take another swig. “At first, I thought there was simply no point hating someone who’s already dead.” The more the veteran drank, the looser his lips became. “But looking back now, I don’t even really know why I detested him so much.”

The more Shikarabe talked, the more he grew irritated with himself. “I’ve thought and thought about this, but it just doesn’t make any sense. Why was I so averse to him? Sure, he was a cheeky brat, but that was all. He could be irritating, but in the end, he was just trying to protect his friends in his own way, wasn’t he?” The regret in his voice was evident. If only I hadn’t been so pointlessly hostile to him, would things have turned out differently? he wondered to himself.

As he tried to put his conflicted feelings toward Katsuya into words, Shikarabe looked both sorrowful and angry at himself for not doing anything to stop the tragedy. “In the end, that idiot ended up taking the friends he’d saved right along with him. What a stupid way to die.”

All the while, Akira, Katsuya’s killer, listened to everything the man said without uttering a word.

By the time that Shikarabe had far too much to drink and Akira’s belly was full to bursting, Arabe and Hikaru had decided they wouldn’t be able to hash out all the details in one night and chose to finalize things at a later date.

On the way home, Akira found himself puzzled by one of the details Shikarabe had shared. Hey Alpha, any thoughts on what Shikarabe said about Katsuya?

You mean how he wasn’t sure why he’d hated Katsuya so much? None in particular.

So you don’t think that’s strange, then?

Not at all. As for why she didn’t find it strange, Alpha chose to remain silent.

Really? All right. Akira decided that if Alpha didn’t find the fact strange, it probably wasn’t strange after all, and he quit thinking about it.

Alpha smiled as though instructing a small child. Well, some people are just naturally predisposed to hate one another, of course. But if you hate someone without any real reason, it’s not unusual to suddenly come to your senses and wonder why you hated that person in the first place. So to avoid making any more accidental enemies, you ought to stop hating other people for no real reason too.

Akira grinned. Yeah, point taken. I’ll be more careful.

Before, Akira hadn’t cared about making enemies—he’d just kill them and that would be that. But now he saw the flaw in such reasoning—he hadn’t accounted for enemies he didn’t want to kill. Part of him still felt it was overly lenient to think about not killing an enemy, of course, but if he didn’t want to repeat the same mistake—if he didn’t want to kill anyone else he cared about—then lenience was necessary.

Alpha’s smile indicated that she approved of his answer. Now she could worry a little less about Akira radiating unnecessary hostility and making enemies unnecessarily if she ever got disconnected from him again.

◆

Hikaru called Akira to let him know that the negotiations over his gear were complete and that he could purchase new gear from Shizuka’s shop once again. Arriving at the store a little earlier than scheduled, he was greeted by several familiar, smiling faces—Hikaru, looking proud of herself; Shizuka, who wore her usual welcoming smile; and Elena and Sara, both grinning cheerfully.

Also present were the sales representatives from Kiryou and Toson—Maebashi and Someya respectively—who had won the fight to sell Akira their gear last time. Despite each one’s private eagerness to secure a rank 50 golden goose like Akira once again, they wore calm business smiles. Behind them, their subordinates also maintained professional demeanors so as not to disgrace their superiors.

Shizuka regarded the source of their anxiety with the same composure she always did. “Welcome, Akira! Please, this way.”

And Akira responded with the same happy grin he always gave her. “Okay!”

While the boy donned his new gear inside the shop’s storehouse, Maebashi and the other corporate suits gave him a rundown of each item. His basic gear was the same as before—a CA31R powered suit and LEO multifunction gun—but their overall specs were dramatically improved over his previous models. The CA31R was already designed to be highly customizable and multipurpose, with a variety of add-ons to fit any situation, and while Akira’s budget hadn’t allowed for such expensive enhancements the previous time, now he was able to add all the parts he wanted. The resulting boost to his suit’s abilities was exponential. His LEO was also modified to be more powerful than ever before.

Of course, such advanced gear meant the low-level consumables Akira had been using thus far, like standard magazines and energy packs, would no longer suffice. But now that he’d reached rank 50, items exclusive to high-ranking hunters were available for him to purchase. Although he already had financial assistance that allowed him to buy ammo suitable for a rank 50 hunter, that had just put the incredibly expensive ammo he already had access to in his price range—he still hadn’t been allowed to purchase ammo that was locked behind hunter rank.

From this point on, his ammo and other consumables would be far more powerful and of higher quality than anything he’d used previously: an energy pack so small you could hold it in one hand yet which held more power than the largest tank he’d ever used, magazines of C-bullets with higher charging limits than ever before, and even extremely high-quality recovery medicine! Everything Akira regularly relied on during his hunts had upgraded versions that were more suitable for high-ranking hunters like him.

But the most important feature of his new gear lay elsewhere: the CA31R optional add-on known as the AF laser cannon. Despite the name, it didn’t actually fire a laser—it just overloaded a C-bullet with so much energy that the bullet disintegrated when fired. The resulting burst of light looked like a laser, giving rise to its name.

Still, as one might expect from the weapon that was locked behind hunter rank 50, there was no denying its power. When not in use, it stayed folded up, small enough to be stored on the back of the user’s suit. The user could then command it via the powered suit to unfold into a cannon.

Hearing this, Akira tried activating the gun through his suit. The compact mechanism on his back quickly transformed, reconfiguring itself into a massive cannon that extended out over Akira’s right shoulder.

“Whoa, pretty cool! With this, I might be able to take down monsters like that colossus way more easily, huh?” he remarked to Maebashi offhandedly.

As Kiryou’s sales representative, Maebashi chose his words carefully. “Well, you already defeated the colossus without the cannon, of course, but I’d say you would have likely had an easier time of it with one.” He knew that carelessly answering “You certainly can!” could be taken as a company guarantee of the product’s effectiveness. Maebashi couldn’t promise that, nor would he ever make such a statement during a sales pitch. But since his customer was Akira this time, Maebashi was able to merely suggest that the boy would at least fare better than before.

And Akira, not even realizing that Maebashi had evaded the question, nodded with satisfaction. Precisely because the answer satisfied him, however, he then frowned, puzzled, and waved Hikaru over.

“Um, Hikaru,” he whispered in her ear, “are you sure all of this is really free?”

The highest-priced version of the CA31R powered suit, complete with an AF laser cannon and two brand-new LEOs that had already been modified to maximize their power, would normally come to the grand total of well over five billion aurum. But thanks to Hikaru’s negotiation skills, Akira was getting all of it virtually for free. The deal was so good that he honestly suspected there was some sort of swindle involved, and so he wanted to check with her one more time to make sure.

Hikaru just nodded with a smug grin on her face. “Absolutely. I already explained to you how I arranged it, didn’t I?”

“W-Well, yeah, but still...”

Technically, Akira would only be borrowing this gear. But there was no deadline for returning it, and he wouldn’t be charged even if it got destroyed. Instead, any such fee would become the responsibility of whichever company he bought his next powered suit from. Rather than dragging out the negotiation process and delaying Akira’s acquisition of his gear—possibly incurring his displeasure in the process—Hikaru had convinced the other companies besides Kiryou to let her finalize Akira’s deal with Kiryou so that the next opportunity for those companies would arrive faster. Kiryou had no problem with that either, as it meant they could advertise the fact that Akira was using their most powerful model—which Hikaru had persuaded them would net them a bigger profit in the end than charging him for the goods. Furthermore, she had promised the other companies that she would send Akira on missions that would make it more likely for him to need to replace his gear faster, while assuring Kiryou that those jobs would provide the company with excellent publicity. And on top of all that, she’d guaranteed Akira that the rewards for completing his tasks would be well worth the effort.

Thus, Hikaru had arranged that all three parties—Akira, Kiryou, and the other competing companies—would all benefit from Akira requiring new gear sooner rather than later. In other words, everyone left the negotiating table satisfied.

“If you feel guilty about getting all this gear for free,” she told Akira, “then just do your best to push it to its limit when you’re out there in the wasteland. I’m sure you can manage that, right?” She grinned.

With that, Akira’s unease was assuaged, and he grinned back. “Yeah, all right. Then make sure you find me jobs where I can do that, okay?”

“No worries. You just let me handle everything,” she said.

Feeling much better now, Akira turned to Elena and Sara. “Come to think of it, did you two upgrade your gear this time as well?” He recalled that his previous contract had also included better equipment for them.

But Elena shook her head. “No, we’re just here for work today. We’ve been hired to guard her.”

“Who, Hikaru?” Akira turned back to the girl. “You going somewhere with them?”

Hikaru looked surprised. “Yeah—right here, of course. I mean, I’m outside the city walls, so isn’t it only natural to have a bodyguard or two?”

“O-Oh, perhaps so.”

Akira realized that to Hikaru, the area outside the walls would be a place dangerous enough to require protection—and he was taken aback to realize just how far his own perception of things deviated from the norm.

Chapter 195: Monster Culling

A convoy of four large armored vehicles were heading east from Kugamayama City. Akira, Elena, and Sara stood on the roof of one, staring out over the wasteland.

“You know, Elena,” Akira observed, “we’ve traveled a good distance already, and the scenery hasn’t really changed at all.”

“That’s because the East is so vast we haven’t really gotten that far at all yet. We’re not really going to see much of a difference until we approach Zegelt City. At that point, apparently, we’ll start to see floating islands in the sky and such.”

“Islands in the sky?! Wow, okay!” the boy exclaimed, nodding with anticipation.

“That said,” Sara added with a smile, “just because the scenery hasn’t changed doesn’t mean the monsters are still the weak ones we’re used to. Be sure not to let your guard down.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t.”

Sara’s smile took on a hint of teasing. “My, how reliable! Then again, I guess I ought to expect as much from a big shot rank 50 hunter, huh?”

“Oh, um—yeah, leave it to me. I got this!” Previously, his instinct would have been to say, “No, I’m nothing that special” or “Nah, I’ve still got a lot to learn,” but now he had resolved to own up to his strength. So while his response came off a little awkward, he didn’t downplay his ability.

Elena smiled at him approvingly. “So you’ve finally decided to abandon the humility act? I’m glad to see it. Want me to call you ‘Mr.’ Akira while I’m at it? After all, you hired us for this one.”

“W-Well, you don’t need to go that far,” he said with an embarrassed smile, causing Elena and Sara to burst out in laughter.

At that moment, Kurosawa ordered them all to get back inside the vehicle. Akira quickly ushered the other two back in, then entered himself.

Inside the vehicle, Kurosawa waited with two other hunters—Erio and Shikarabe. Hikaru was also present virtually, by way of a monitor. Now that Akira and the other two had descended from the roof, everyone was accounted for, so Kurosawa started the meeting.

“All right, everyone, we’re about to reach the area where we’ll get our first bit of action. So just to make sure everyone’s on the same page, I’ll go over the operation again. Our objective is to thin out the monster presence in the region ahead. But keep in mind this isn’t just your bog-standard extermination job—it’s a distribution job as well. We have to make sure the intercity transports that follow can reach their destination safely.”

Distribution jobs, as hunters called them, consisted of guarding and supporting the large-scale convoys of supply transports that the Eastern League of Governing Corporations would periodically mobilize. For the ELGC, the transport routes that ran between the cities of the East were the economy’s lifeline. But because the wasteland was teeming with monsters, keeping those routes clear and maintained demanded a huge effort. The maintenance costs were also expensive—in fact, more than a few transport companies had taken on crushing debt and ended up bankrupt. And of course, when those companies had gone under, the routes they’d managed had ceased to be maintained, making the overall situation even worse.

So the ELGC would routinely shell out tons of money to stimulate the economy and improve distribution. This allowed the people, goods, and money of the East to support the economy, each in their own way.

“During a normal monster-culling mission, you might go a few hours without even catching sight of a potential threat in your designated area, and yay, mission accomplished,” Kurosawa declared. “But it won’t be so easy this time. We’re expected to uproot and eradicate all monster presence in the region. That’s mandatory, since this job lasts until the intercity transports have made a round trip from the city and back.”

Intercity transport vehicles were giant semitrucks that carried massive quantities of supplies between cities, often traveling long distances. They had to be this large because their massive cargoes were essentially what supported the circulation of goods in the East. And when such large vehicles crossed the wasteland, inevitably all sorts of monsters from far and wide took notice, including those who usually stayed holed up within ruins. The average transport wouldn’t hold up against such a horde, and the resulting influx of monsters would likely affect any cities near the distribution routes as well. To make sure that the transports could pass without trouble, a great number of monsters had to be exterminated beforehand. Plus, this helped keep the transport routes clear, as taking out so many monsters ensured that the routes would remain safe—at least until the monster population revived.

“Also,” added Kurosawa, “while our client this time is Kugamayama City, the area we’ll be working in falls under Mirukakewa City’s jurisdiction. That said, this is comparatively one of the least difficult areas in their territory, but stay vigilant regardless.”

In other words, Kurosawa was warning them that these monsters were going to be unlike anything the Kugamayama City hunters were used to. Akira and the others tensed up.

“Just for reference, most of the hunters active in the Mirukakewa region are around rank 40 to 60 on average. Since the average in Kugamayama is 40, as you all know, that ought to give you a good idea of the spike in difficulty we’ll be facing. Even the highest-ranked hunters from our area would be nothing to write home about in Mirukakewa, so expect the monsters to be at that same standard.”

As everyone listened to Kurosawa’s briefing, Erio’s face grew paler and paler. Kurosawa pretended not to notice. “Finally, Miss Hikaru here is our contact for this mission. No doubt she’s expecting big things from us, but quite frankly, I couldn’t give a damn about that. My main concern is everyone’s safety. As I stipulated in my contract before taking this job, I’m going to lead us to success by taking as few risks as possible, and I won’t let anyone tell me otherwise.”

Hikaru’s smile on the monitor faltered slightly, but Kurosawa had indeed included that condition in his contract, so she couldn’t say anything otherwise. She’d known from the start she wanted Akira on a distribution job, but of course she couldn’t send him alone, so she’d decided instead to build a support team around him.

First, she had invited Elena and Sara because they were already friends with Akira. Shikarabe and Kurosawa, for their part, were participating as a result of the Druncam ceasefire with the boy. And Erio and his team were here to test Kiryou’s all-in-one support system in live combat.

“I repeat: we are not going to suffer any casualties here. I will not force you to do anything you feel you’re not capable of. If I say retreat, you retreat, regardless of the situation. And if you disobey my orders, you’re on your own. Is that clear?”

Kurosawa looked around, gauging everyone’s reactions. No one said anything, so he took this to mean everyone was on board. “That being said, we’re also going to make a killing from this job. I’m going to make sure we earn as much as staying within the boundaries of safety will allow. Akira, our main powerhouse, is going to be the key to this. Simply by taking out all the monsters he can reasonably manage, he’ll automatically be helping the rest of us rack up kills easier. The harder he works, the less likely we’ll have to retreat. Got that, Akira? We’re all counting on you here.”

“Got it,” said Akira with a nod.

“Good. Now, as I said before, the monsters around these parts are made of much tougher stuff than those we’re used to in Kugamayama. But even the most formidable monsters eventually die when peppered with enough powerful ammo, and fortunately, the client’s fully covering our ammo expenses for this job. So there’s no need to be stingy—fire away!” He took a breath, then brought his speech to a close. “I’m sure this is already obvious, but I’ll say it anyway: just because Akira’s our main asset doesn’t mean you can just let him do all the work. You’re to support him to the best of your ability. The only way we’ll make it back home unscathed is if we all pull our weight as a team. That’s it—you may now return to your vehicles.”

All the hunters except for Akira got up and made their way toward the exit. Before leaving, however, Sara called out to him.

“Hey, Akira, I know Kurosawa already said this, but you’re going to hear it from me too: whatever you do, don’t get reckless. If you think your situation’s dangerous, there’s no shame in retreating. Got it?”

“Yeah, I know. I’ll pull back if things get dicey. But you’d better support me, then, all right?”

“Don’t worry—I’ve got your back!” she declared. She and Elena were pleased Akira had answered honestly that he would back down, rather than acting cocky and saying he could handle such things on his own. The women grinned, satisfied, as they returned to their vehicle.

By now, Kurosawa and Shikarabe had already left, so only Erio and Akira remained. Glancing at Erio, Akira said, “Are you gonna be all right? Want to stop and take a break?”

“N-No, I’m good.” Steeling himself, Erio leaped out of Akira’s vehicle with some help from his suit and landed atop his own, where the rest of his team was waiting.

Once Akira was alone again, Alpha gave him a placid smile. Relax, Akira. You’ve got my support again, remember? Together, we can easily kick the monsters in this region to the curb.

Oh yeah? That’s reassuring to hear. I’d feel even more reassured if you could guarantee I wouldn’t have to act recklessly to do it. Even during the times when his connection to Alpha hadn’t been severed, he’d found himself in a number of harrowing situations, including getting assaulted by enormous hordes of enemies and swallowed whole by a gargantuan serpent.

Faced with Akira’s criticizing gaze, Alpha averted her eyes slightly. Well, you know, even I can’t predict the future.

He sighed. Yeah, me neither. Which is why I’ve just gotta keep my guard up.

There was a fine line between calm and overconfidence. Keeping one’s composure was all well and good, but not if it invited negligence. So even though these monsters might not end up being much of a challenge with Alpha’s help, Akira focused himself on the battle ahead.

◆

Inside one of the four armored vehicles in the convoy, some of the other elite combat specialists of the Sheryl Family were killing time chatting or doing whatever else they could to take the edge off their nervousness.

“Hey, isn’t this region supposed to be so dangerous that Kugamayama hunters don’t even go near it?” one of the boys said. “Are we really gonna be all right?”

“Don’t worry, we’ll be fine,” another declared. “I mean, we’ve got Akira as our main attack force, and a bunch of other hunters over rank 40 are gonna be helping him. Not to mention our commander’s someone known to prioritize safety over everything else. We’re essentially here as warm bodies, so we can just sit back and fire at the enemy from a distance. Child’s play.”

“Y-You really think so?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. It won’t be any big deal at all.”

As the children tried to keep their spirits up, one of them raised a different topic. “Actually, did you guys hear about that Katsuya guy from Druncam? Apparently, he kicked the bucket.”

“Seriously? That Katsuya? But wasn’t he supposed to be, like, super skilled?”

“Yeah, I heard about it too—but don’t go mentioning that incident too carelessly.”

“Really? Why?”

“Haven’t you heard the rumors? Apparently, Akira killed him.”

“H-Holy shit... Is that really true?”

“Yes—I don’t know the details or anything, but it looks like Katsuya antagonized Akira somehow. However, that’s nothing compared to the real shocker. You know that Yumina girl? The one Akira seemed to really hit it off with?”

“Yeah, I remember her. They got along so well, in fact, that the boss’s eyes would turn all scary whenever she saw them together.”

“Righto! Well, I heard that when Akira killed Katsuya, he killed her too.”

“S-Seriously?! Even though they were so close?!”

“I guess Akira doesn’t care whether you’re his friend or foe, huh? The moment you get on his bad side, it’s curtains for you.”

“No kidding! Damn, I’m getting chills just hearing about this... Then again, when Zebra turned traitor, Akira did go massacre the gang of that Yazan guy who had started all the trouble, so maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised. Akira just doesn’t think anything of killing people.”

“Exactly. And if he heard we were talking about him behind his back here, what do you think would happen? So we ought to keep this on the down-low.”

“Yeah, good point. I know I don’t wanna be next. Let’s drop it and talk about something else.”

The other children all nodded in agreement. Akira was more frightening than he was dependable, but as long as they didn’t antagonize him, they ought to be fine—hopefully.

At that moment, Erio made his entrance, having returned from Akira’s vehicle.

“Hey, Erio,” someone said. “How’d the briefing go?”

“To be honest, I felt way out of place,” Erio replied. “I mean, I know I’m supposed to be at the briefing as the leader of our group, but still...” He sighed, looking exhausted.

The kids all rallied around him to encourage him. “Hey, hey, we’ll be fine! You’re our leader. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.”

“That’s right, man!” said another. “Each of us is stronger than the average hunter flunky, and you’re way better than any of us. So have more faith in yourself.”

“If you can’t handle it,” added a third, “we sure as hell won’t be able to. Don’t compare yourself to a freak like Akira.”

Hearing his teammates’ heartfelt attempts to pep him up, Erio felt warmth spreading through him. “Thanks, you guys,” he said with a small smile.

None of them were lying—they really did want Erio to have more confidence in himself. After all, if Erio died, one of them would have to assume the position of leader and fight alongside Akira in his stead. And no one wanted that.

◆

Akira was once again standing on the roof of his vehicle, waiting for the operation to begin. In each of his hands, he held a brand-new LEO multifunction gun. The other vehicles were following at some distance, their riders also in position. Because the large armored vehicles were designed for riders to fight with their own weapons rather than with mounted ones, their sides and roofs could be folded in and out to provide shelter, footholds, and the like as needed.

Kurosawa’s voice came over the wireless. “All right, Akira, it’s almost time. You ready?”

“Just say the word.”

“That’s what I like to hear. Then I’m deploying Vehicle A’s threat magnet now! Begin the operation!”

On Kurosawa’s cue, a vibration resounded from inside Akira’s vehicle—designated Vehicle A—and an extremely powerful threat magnet hummed to life. When used properly, such lures could be incredibly useful tools in combat—especially during a retreat—and so were commercially available to hunters. But because one that was too powerful would risk drawing monsters from a wider radius to a single location, and because some feared that the nationalists might use one near the city as an act of terrorism, there were restrictions on their usage and purchase. Akira was transporting one so powerful that the League’s permission had been required to activate it, and the League itself had needed to obtain the permission of the cities in the designated area beforehand. Such a tool was only to be lent to hunters performing distribution jobs.

Of course, Kurosawa didn’t set such a formidable device to full power right from the get-go. But even at its lowest setting, it was still far more powerful than any of the standard threat magnets on the market. And its effect was immediate—Akira saw monsters start to appear from the ruins ahead in quick succession. One after another, they emerged: ten-meter-tall multilegged machines resembling hermit crabs, shrimp, and other crustaceans. Their bodies, seemingly a mix of organic and mechanical parts, included artillery cannons, machine guns, and missile pods sprouting from the tops of their hard, armored shells.

Akira raised both his LEOs toward the incoming enemies. Hmm, these look pretty mean after all. Guess Sara was right—the landscape might look the same, but these things are on another level.

Alpha just flashed her usual smile to show she wasn’t worried. That reminds me, Akira, how much support do you want from me this time around? Since they look so formidable to you, maybe it’d be best not to push yourself beyond what you can handle and lean on me instead. The implication was that he should ask for her full assistance. Because Akira had pulled through the nationalist incident without her help, she wanted to remind him of what she was capable of.

Yeah, best to play it safe, he agreed. Then let’s go all out—or so I’d like to say, but can I request something first?

Sure. What is it?

Well, I want it to look more like I’m strong and less that the monsters are too weak, if that makes sense. And I’d also like to make this a training session, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.

Understood!

Akira was almost certain he was requesting something rather bothersome, so when Alpha responded with an immediate nod, he felt a little taken aback. You agreed awfully quickly.

Of course I did, she replied smugly. A request like that is simplicity itself for me.

This recalled to Akira’s mind just how capable she was. Right, how could I forget? She can do pretty much anything, he thought to himself. Then he grinned at her and said, Glad to hear it! Are you ready to rumble?

Of course! Let’s do this!

Akira had already started manipulating his sense of time. Once everything around him had slowed so much that he could send ten seconds’ worth of communication in a telepathic instant, he aimed both guns at the enemy and pulled the triggers. Countless C-bullets erupted from their barrels.

The energy packs attached to the guns had far higher capacities than Akira had ever used, and were reserved for hunters of rank 50 and higher. Thanks to the extra power they provided, each C-bullet was also charged far more than his previous ones—they even negated the natural dampening effect from the trace amounts of colorless fog in the air. These bullets sailed in a straight line, piercing the air and striking their targets without losing any of their force in flight. The monsters’ armor and armaments, which shrugged off even standard armor-piercing bullets, were blown to pieces—their cannons, machine guns, missile pods, laser cannons, and other long-range weapons were obliterated in no time, thanks to Alpha expertly analyzing and targeting the horde in order of highest priority.

But merely destroying their ranged weapons wasn’t enough to disarm them. Pincer claws appeared in place of the destroyed machine guns, and with unbelievable speed for their size, the creatures closed in. Others scuttled toward Akira rapidly on masses of legs, tank treads, or wheels. Some even flew toward him. A body slam from any of these could fling a truck over on its side, or perhaps topple a building.

However, destroying their ranged weapons had significantly reduced their power, and Akira could now easily shoot them down before they got too close. Steering his vehicle along the perimeter of the ruin, he continued to take out every ranged weapon he could. At the same time, he focused the threat magnet in the direction of the ruin so the monsters coming from it would target him first. That meant he now had to deal with the beasts who were trying to slam into him and every new creature that appeared.

Akira continued to fire, arms akimbo, darting here and there across the vehicle’s roof. He could have avoided an enemy machine gun on his own, and his armored vehicle could tank such an attack without harm. But shells and missiles could topple it over and knock Akira into the trajectory of an incoming projectile, so he had to be thorough about eliminating the enemy’s ranged weapons. He thus chose to ignore any monsters that weren’t targeting his vehicle, which meant that rockets aimed at him kept whizzing past. None hit their target, but the wind pressure they created as they passed was enough to tear a human body apart, not to mention blow them into the sky. But his powered suit kept his feet firmly on the roof, preventing him from getting knocked off, and the suit’s force-field armor protected him from the fierce shock waves. At the cost of spending a little energy, he remained completely unharmed.

He continued to dodge, jump over, and shoot down projectile after deadly projectile, reading the trajectory of every enemy shot fired at him. He never let up on his triggers once. Even if a gun was advertised to fire ten thousand times per minute, such wouldn’t be practical in combat. Having a mountain of bullets on hand was pointless if they were fired so quickly as to run out immediately—the gun would be no better than a blunt weapon afterward. But Akira had solved that problem with the inexplicably high-capacity magazines he was now using. He would have already gone through an entire vehicle’s worth of standard magazines, and yet he hadn’t had to stop to reload once—even though each bullet boasted power incomparable to standard ones.

With such raw power at his disposal, Akira was mowing down beast after murderous beast without any help from his teammates. A showing worthy of a high-ranking hunter was indeed vividly on display for all to see.

Still, this was an area that only high-ranking hunters were ever assigned to. Even for him, annihilating the whole horde solo would have been impossible. Some of the newly arrived beasts were also trying to corner his vehicle, and they were not the kind he could render powerless merely by targeting their ranged weapons. He had no choice but to eliminate them, delaying his response to the monsters attacking from a distance. At this rate, one of them would slam into his vehicle sooner or later, leaving him to be trampled by the enemy horde or struck by enemy projectiles.

But that didn’t come to pass. Even as Akira glanced at the oncoming horde, an intense barrage pelted the creatures from the side. Supporting fire from another vehicle pierced the monsters’ thick armor and tore through their insides. The force of the impacts ruptured their organs, killing them instantly. Some especially resilient beasts with force-field armor survived the first wave, but they were blown to smithereens by the next one because the first round had essentially vaporized their defenses.

Akira looked in the direction the gunfire had come from. There was Sara. Noticing his gaze, she gave him a smile and a thumbs-up. Akira grinned back at her, then returned to his fight.

While Akira fought from the top of Vehicle A, the other vehicles stayed at a distance, in position to aim at the monsters from the side while they followed him. Elena and Sara fired from the roof of their ride, Vehicle C. Both of their guns were longer than the women were tall, and as one might expect from such massive weapons, their bullets contained devastating power. The two hunters grinned as they unloaded salvo after salvo onto the monsters.

“Damn, talk about power!” Sara exclaimed. “With these, we’re definitely not gonna hold Akira back, huh?!”

“You said it!” Elena agreed. “He was kind enough to invite us, so we’ve got to give him a performance he’ll be satisfied with!”

Because Elena was no stranger to negotiations, she’d already realized she and Sara had been chosen not for their ability but because they were good friends with Akira—in other words, Hikaru was using Elena and Sara as a pretext to gain Akira’s trust. But Akira had been thrilled to have them along all the same, so Elena wanted to do her best for him. With that in mind, she’d negotiated with Hikaru behind the scenes to procure these extremely powerful weapons for them during this commission.

And now, thanks to her efforts, their gunfire was piercing right through the monsters of the Mirukakewa region. Seeing how effective their weapons were fired them both up.

“Hey Sara, let’s kick it up a notch, shall we? As Akira’s mentors, we’ve got to do a lot better than this if we wanna save face!”

“You said it! And that goes double for me, since I’m supposed to be the powerhouse of this duo! We’ve gotta make Akira say he’s glad we came along!”

And sharing a grin, they unleashed their most powerful salvo yet, as though trying to make their presence known to Akira. The annihilated monster corpses that littered the wasteland in their wake testified to their efforts.

Shikarabe and his colleagues, Yamanobe and Parga, were riding in Vehicle D. The three of them were only at hunter rank 40, but the equipment Druncam had lent them for this mission dramatically boosted their combat strength.

“Not bad!” Shikarabe marveled. “No wonder this stuff costs an arm and a leg.”

Parga grinned. “Are you really that surprised? These are the premium goods for hunters who’ve reached rank 50 and above. Guess we can’t really chide the rookies for augmenting their skill with expensive gear anymore, can we?”

Shikarabe grinned wryly. “What do you mean? I never had a problem with them borrowing gear in the first place. It just irked me a little that those brats always got far better outfits than we did.”

“A little? Could’ve fooled me, given how you were always bad-mouthing them. That said, it is good that we’re finally starting to get the treatment we deserve.”

As the three of them chatted idly, they also fought, enjoying the benefits of exceptionally powerful equipment at last. The effects of the decline of Druncam’s desk jockey faction were being felt everywhere, in every department of the syndicate. One such effect was that the syndicate was finally renting out top-tier outfits to its more experienced members. From now on, their stock would also cater to veterans, not just rookies.

Naturally, these goods were incredibly pricey and hence difficult to purchase with Druncam’s current budget. Even Mizuha had only managed to secure the all-in-one support system for her rookies after multiple negotiations with Kiryou, and with the stipulation that Katsuya’s group would gather test data for the company. A mere restructuring of the syndicate wouldn’t have been enough to account for buying such expensive gear—but the twenty billion aurum they’d earned from the nationalist extermination initiative had made the difference. Of course, since the syndicate had lost Katsuya in the process, it had still taken a big hit, but this didn’t change the fact that it had acquired an enormous sum of money—the combined reward for (supposedly) taking out the boss of the nationalists and compensation from Udajima for the loss of their most elite unit.

With this money, Druncam had also bought the four armored vehicles for this mission—providing these and the hunters’ gear was part of their ceasefire with Akira. In other words, it could have been said that the syndicate was keeping its head above water by spending Udajima’s money for Akira’s benefit. The compensation also doubled as a kind of severance pay, because Druncam had since cut Udajima off and switched over to Inabe’s side at Hikaru’s suggestion—an outcome of her negotiations.

Under Druncam’s new structure, the veterans were enjoying better treatment than they had in quite some time. But Katsuya’s death had brought many of them, like Shikarabe and his colleagues, back to their senses. Feeling partly responsible since they had not stopped the rookies from acting recklessly and thereby prevented the tragedy, they no longer felt like treating the young hunters as coldly as before. Therefore, Shikarabe and the other veterans had decided that from now on they would treat both the experienced and the inexperienced alike, prioritizing the organization’s members over its financial gain.

Parga turned his gaze at the individual responsible for this change in Druncam. “Seriously, though, when we first hired that kid for the bounty hunts, he was only rank 20, remember? And now he’s already rank 50! At this rate, I bet he’ll be on the Front Line before long!”

“Yeah, I don’t doubt it,” Yamanobe said with a small smile. “Back then, I pegged him as one of those hunters whose bloodlust would destroy him in the end, but he’s just gone on to kill anyone who could possibly pose a threat to him. Word on the street is he even pissed off an executive and got an undisclosed bounty put on his head. Said executive sent Katsuya and his team after him, which is why Akira killed them.”

“So I hear,” Parga replied. “And he plugged several of the city’s Investigation Bureau people as well, right? Though the city swept that under the rug pretty quick. Wonder if the powers that be figured letting him go was preferable to the losses they’d suffer from trying to apprehend him? What a scary dude!” He turned to Shikarabe again. “Back when you hired him, you’d already realized he was like that, hadn’t you? You told us you were bringing him along because he was a member of the hundred million club, but maybe the real reason was that your intuition told you he was a force to be reckoned with.”

“Who can say?” said Shikarabe noncommittally. More accurately, he’d hired Akira in order to test his intuition, but he dodged the question. “All right, you two, enough shooting the shit. We’ve gotta work. If we don’t do our part, this ceasefire with Akira might fall by the wayside.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Roger that!”

With that, the three of them sent a ferocious hail of bullets down upon the monster horde, determined to provide results that would keep Druncam in Akira’s good graces.

Meanwhile, Erio and his crew were putting up a desperate fight atop Vehicle B. A section of the armored roof had been raised to form a temporary wall behind which they could take cover. Some of the children were even firing from the open side doors of the vehicle.

The all-in-one support system guided the entire team with precision, having them concentrate all their fire on one difficult opponent before moving on to the next and urging them to take cover whenever it got too dangerous. Thanks to the system, all of them were able to fight safely and efficiently.

In addition, Kiryou had issued Erio and the others upgraded weapons and armor. Naturally, they didn’t individually have the power to take down the monsters of Mirukakewa on their own, like Elena’s or Shikarabe’s groups did, but they fought well enough when coordinated as a team.

The boys weren’t the only ones to benefit from this arrangement—Kiryou did as well. As things stood for the company now, a lone hunter had single-handedly eliminated an elite unit that had been aided by Kiryou’s support system, even after that system had been bolstered through the financial backing of a city executive. Overall, this did not reflect well on the efficacy of the system, and the company needed to restore the product’s reputation somehow. Luckily for them, the same hunter had also taken out a colossus that had driven off a Kokurou mech unit—and he had been wearing a Kiryou powered suit at the time. The company had seized their opportunity and found another unit to use the system while accompanying Akira on his job—namely, Erio’s team. Kiryou was hoping that their success on this commission would revive the system’s reputation.

Kiryou had been able to work all this out through their negotiations with Hikaru—or rather, Hikaru had more or less orchestrated the entire arrangement. In exchange for Akira choosing a Kiryou powered suit over any other company’s offerings, and for Hikaru promising to ensure Akira didn’t give the system a poor review, Kiryou had agreed to provide five billion aurum’s worth of gear for use on this mission at essentially no charge.

Erio and the others didn’t know anything about the details of this agreement, but Sheryl had told them that Kiryou would reward them handsomely for their success and that the company was expecting a lot out of them. Only a short time before, they’d been merely slum children, so to hear a corporation had high expectations for them—not to mention the promise of a big payout—had lit a fire underneath them, and they’d jumped at the chance to participate.

But out in the wasteland, that enthusiasm had considerably waned—and the moment they’d seen the enormous monsters charging toward their vehicle, any remaining trace of it had disappeared completely. Right now, they were just a terrified mess.

“Yikes! Another one’s coming this way, you guys!” one boy shouted, spotting a giant monster on the horizon, bounding in their direction.

“Then shoot it down!” Erio scolded him. “Don’t just stand there—keep firing! Shut your eyes if you have to, but don’t let up on that trigger! The support system will correct your aim for you!”

Erio and the others were assaulting the monsters, but the battle was far from one-sided. The enemies were also focusing their machine guns and artillery shells at the children. Akira destroyed as much of the horde’s ranged weaponry as he could, but of course he couldn’t take care of everything on his own. Some creatures slipped through the cracks, and their gunfire struck Erio’s vehicle while their artillery shells touched down right next to it, causing Vehicle B to shake and rattle.

Each time the automobile jolted, the children cried out. “Whoa! I-Is it just me, or was that one way too close?!”

“It didn’t hit us, so all’s well!” Erio called back.

“A-And what if one of them does hit?!”

“This vehicle can withstand a barrage of cannon fire or two!” Erio shouted, irritated by his comrade’s pathetic complaints. “Stop whining and fire! If we don’t hurry and kill these things fast enough, they’ll shoot us to death!”

The guidance from the support system could help them if they froze up due to panic, uncertainty, or terror. Even if they ducked down with their hands over their heads or shut their eyes, the system would aim their guns for them, never allowing them to stop fighting. Even boys in a stupor continued to attack, their bodies moving on their own. Their gunfire tore the limbs off of a large multilegged armored crustacean, then blew huge holes in the creature’s shell. Fluid poured from the holes, staining the ground of the wasteland.

“W-We did it! We took ’em out! Victory!”

“Keep it up! No time to celebrate now—here comes the next wave! Don’t let them get close!”

Killing such a monster was far beyond their raw skill. And the creature was only one out of many, so it was far too early to relax. But their triumph over an extremely dangerous enemy did dilute their panic and fear somewhat, and a sense of calm and confidence gradually took over as the battle raged on. Before long, no one inside the vehicle was screaming anymore. Erio and his team had mastered their fear.

“You know, we might actually survive this,” one boy said. None of them would have declared that this battle was “easy” by any means, but no one had died or been mortally wounded yet, and so far, none of the larger monsters had managed to approach their vehicle. Despite the danger, they were handling the situation effectively.

“See? What’d I tell ya?” Erio said, grinning at his comrades. “We’re gonna be fine. Akira wouldn’t have brought us along if he’d thought we were gonna be dead weight. He wouldn’t want us to just be in his way.”

The other children all grinned and nodded a little too emphatically. “R-Right! Good point!”

Of course, none of them were naive enough to actually believe such was the case. But Erio’s pep talk at least kept the children from getting discouraged. They turned back toward their enemies with renewed zeal.

“All right! Let’s do this!”

“Yeah! We’re gonna earn ourselves a big payday!”

“That’s the spirit!” Erio called out. “Let’s show ’em we can handle this, no problem!”

And so, having regained the enthusiasm they’d lost upon entering the wasteland, Sheryl’s boys fought on with everything they had.

Chapter 196: Another Unforeseen Development

The monsters Akira and his team were culling came from one of the many unnamed ruins that dotted the East. Such sites were unnamed because they were neither large enough nor unique enough to distinguish themselves from any of the others. If a team of hunters ever went to one of these on a mission, they might refer to the ruin by a combination of the region’s name and the ruin’s coordinates, or by a temporary name just for convenience during the job, but no more. That said, to most hunters, unnamed ruins weren’t worth the trouble. The only reason to give such a place a name was if it lay in close proximity to a named one that was actually worth visiting.

There were many monsters lurking inside this ruin. But most never bothered to leave it and come out into the wasteland, so a person was safe as long as they kept their distance from the site. The same was true of the transports that ran through the wasteland. So normally, hunters hired to clear transport routes would leave those ruins alone.

Consequently, the inhabitants of the ruin almost never encountered hunters, and so the population of monsters inside had over time grown so large as to nearly exceed the ruin’s capacity. Even so, hunters were safe as long as they didn’t get too close. But during distribution periods, an abundance of transports would pass through. And enough large objects passing near the ruin at high speed would inevitably lure out creatures who typically stayed within.

Then monsters would pour into the wasteland in droves, significantly impeding the transports.

Therefore, to keep that from happening, Akira and the others were using high-powered threat magnets to draw out all of the monsters in the ruin and eliminate them before the distribution began. Akira, Elena and Sara, Shikarabe and his colleagues, and Erio’s team had been taking out monster after monster for an hour now without any breaks.

While they fought, Erio and his companions observed Akira as he fought up ahead of them. As they zoomed the scanner’s display in on him, astonishment and envy appeared on their faces.

“That guy really is something else,” one muttered.

“You said it. Look at his face—he’s grinning. He’s taking on that many monsters at once, and he’s having fun! Just what is he, anyway?!”

“Y’know, I’m glad our gang’s protected by someone that strong, but I’m also afraid of what would happen if we got on his bad side. No wonder the boss always looks so frazzled around him.”

As reliable a presence as Akira was, he made them feel just as uneasy. Erio and the others couldn’t help but take furtive glances in his direction, even in the midst of battle.

Yet while Akira may have looked cool and collected to Erio’s team (and indeed Akira wanted to give this impression), in reality, he was just as on edge as the children were. For one thing, he’d been aiming countless C-bullets at innumerable targets for a full hour without a single break—despite the extraordinary capacity of his upgraded magazines, his guns were firing so rapidly that he was about to run out of ammo anyway. Moreover, because he was spending so much energy charging his C-bullets, his energy pack was draining quickly as well.

The intensity of the enemy offensive didn’t allow him time to reload manually, but that wasn’t a problem. Once empty, his magazines and energy packs ejected from his guns automatically, while a device on his vehicle launched fresh ones at him. He only needed to swing a gun quickly in their direction, and the airborne magazines and energy packs would get drawn into the weapon as if to a magnet and load themselves.

So with his ammo and energy restocked to full, he took aim once more. His bullets demolished a crustacean’s missile pod, formed from an amalgam of carapace shell and organic explosive material. Micromissiles spilled from the destroyed pod, sailing all around in arbitrary directions and exploding on the crustacean itself and other nearby monsters. Alpha had calculated the attack for maximum efficiency.

But Akira didn’t look too happy. You gotta be kidding! Two meters?! How could I be that far off?!

In his augmented vision, he could see the trajectory his shot would have taken if Alpha hadn’t corrected his aim, as well as a numerical display of how wide his shot would have gone.

Your concentration’s slipping, Alpha chided him. Just because you’re training right now doesn’t mean you can let your guard down. You need to focus.

While this battle was a real fight against real enemies, Akira had requested that Alpha make this a training exercise for him. He’d also asked her to make it look like he was strong, rather than that the monsters were weak. Alpha had fulfilled both of his requests, and now Akira could see the results for himself.

All right, I’ll be more careful. Guess I’ve still got a long way to go after all, huh?

He was picking off enemy after enemy at long range on top of a moving vehicle with extraordinary speed and accuracy, and he did understand what a difficult undertaking that was. Still, some of his shots had been off, and this wasn’t good enough. He had to develop his own capabilities until they matched Alpha’s support as closely as possible.

No complacency. No accepting limits. Limits were a deception for those without the talent and discipline to continually strive for greater heights, and he had yet to even reach the threshold of such lies.

He had to get stronger—to attain strength he’d never previously thought possible. Otherwise, he’d never reach the heights of power he desired.

Driven by this thought, Akira poured every last drop of effort into the battle.

Meanwhile, Kurosawa was observing Akira intently from afar—naturally, as the boy was their main force. For the sake of the mission’s success and everyone’s safety, he had to watch for any signs of Akira buckling under pressure so he could immediately order a retreat.

And now the commander looked torn. “Hmm... What to do?” he murmured.

Since the battle’s start, Akira had made no missteps whatsoever, nor was he overconfident or reckless. He remained calm and composed as he fought, not seeming overwhelmed or even the least bit pressured—yet Kurosawa detected a bit of strain in his expression, as though the boy was forcing himself to smile.

What does that expression mean? the commander thought to himself. It’s not panic, and he’s not inwardly shaking in his boots or anything. If he were afraid, it would definitely show in his movements. Is he overexerting himself a little in an attempt to show off, perhaps? Maybe he’s in a little too deep, meaning I should send more support his way and ask him to fall back for a while.

Was Akira really as calm as he looked? Or was that just a front? Try as he might, Kurosawa just couldn’t tell.

The monsters, hybrids of multilegged machines and gigantic crustaceans, continued to pour from the ruin for some time, until the threat magnet on Akira’s vehicle powered down. Then Kurosawa’s voice came over the comms.

“All right, Akira, you’ve made a full circle around the ruin. Fall back toward my position and take a breather. Great work out there.”

“Got it. Thanks.” Of course, just because the threat magnet had shut off didn’t mean the monsters would immediately stop chasing him. He needed to keep driving them back while maneuvering his vehicle toward Kurosawa and the others. But now that no more enemy reinforcements would be coming from the ruin, the other members of his team could mop up the remaining enemies while Akira took a back seat.

Once the threats were all taken care of and the area was clear at last, Akira sighed deeply in relief. Thank goodness. Then he glanced over in the direction of the ruin, where monster corpses were littering the ground all around the entrance. Not bad. Guess we can consider this a job well done, huh?

Of course. You had my support, after all.

Yeah, I guess you’re right. She hadn’t given him quite the answer he wanted to hear, but he grinned back at her anyway. Indeed, he reminded himself, that pile of corpses was the result of Alpha’s full support. He couldn’t let himself mistakenly chalk it up to his own strength instead. But around others, he had to act like it was all his doing—not in a conceited way, but he couldn’t act too humble either. He could no longer deny his own strength, lest others attack him without hesitation. He didn’t mind keeping up the facade, as long as doing so helped him avoid a repeat of the Yumina incident.

And so, with their first operation complete, Akira and the others retreated to safety without further incident.

◆

Akira was spending his break chatting with Elena and Sara when Kurosawa came over.

“Hey Akira, I wanted to ask you something. How was it, fighting all by yourself back there?”

“How was it?” wondered the boy. “I mean, you saw how I did out there, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I watched the whole thing. But how did you feel in the midst of it? Were you calm? Was it easy for you? Or did you just make it seem easy while you were actually pushing yourself?”

“Um... Well, I wouldn’t say it was easy, but I felt like I did my job,” Akira said, avoiding giving him a concrete answer.

Kurosawa’s suspicions deepened. He tried a different approach.

“Oh, for sure. You did exactly what you were supposed to do. But as I was watching, I just found it curious that your expression didn’t change once during that entire battle.” He went on casually, “Normally, when someone fights that hard, there’d at least be traces of exhaustion on their face, or their movements would become more sluggish. If you charted their performance on a graph, it would eventually trend downward. I was watching you carefully, waiting for that moment so I could pull you out before you overexerted yourself.”

Had Akira fought with only his own power, he indeed would have reached that stage. Since Alpha had been helping him, however, his movements had never faltered.

“But if I charted your performance back there on a graph,” the commander continued, “it would just be a straight, horizontal line. No detectable change whatsoever. So I was wondering if you had a tendency to keep your enemies from seeing you sweat, because I was worried you might be more tired than you let on.” He watched the boy’s reaction carefully. “For all I know, that battle could have been as easy for you as kicking a pebble on the side of the road. If it really didn’t tire you out at all, then great. But if you’ve just been overexerting yourself and hiding it really well, either deliberately or unconsciously, then cut that out. I told you—I won’t let you get reckless on this job. It’s in my contract.”

Kurosawa didn’t necessarily believe Akira was lying to him, however, and wanted to make sure the boy knew that, adding, “All I’m saying, Akira, is that you’re our best man on this job, and if you really aren’t as calm and collected as you appear, that’s a problem. After all, your composure is essentially the team’s safety margin. If it slips, we all slip. Make sense?”

Akira, who’d been concerned that Kurosawa was trying to gauge his true ability, nodded.

“Good. Then let me ask again: How did it feel, fighting all by yourself out there? Was it easy? Could you handle it?”

“Yeah, that wasn’t a problem,” Akira said. “I’ve got recovery meds on hand in case I ever get a little tired, and I didn’t even have to bust out this thing either.” He pointed to the AF laser cannon on his back. He hadn’t used it because doing so would defeat the purpose of his training exercise, but it was still ready to use whenever he felt like it.

Kurosawa reasoned that if Akira hadn’t felt the need to use the laser cannon, he probably wasn’t faking his composure. “Yeah? Well, I’m glad to hear that, then. I said I didn’t want anyone overexerting themselves, but everyone has their own limits, you know. Some people out there would call getting their arm blown off just a flesh wound, for example.”

“No way that’s true! Surely anyone would call that a serious injury, right?”

“You’d think so, but there are all kinds of people out there. For instance, a large part of the population in the East have cyborg bodies these days, so they can easily replace a lost limb with a new one. I just wish more people would remember that’s not really an option for human bodies,” Kurosawa said with a small sigh. “And you be careful too from now on, got it? I heard you lost both your hands and had to regrow them. Don’t assume you can simply keep sprouting new ones if you lose them again.”

Akira made a face. “Not to worry. I just got these hands back after all that trouble. I’m gonna take good care of them.”

“Glad to hear it! Anyway, that’s all I wanted to ask. Enjoy the rest of your break.” Kurosawa walked away with a smile.

When he was gone, Elena spoke up cheerfully. “He’s right, you know. Your calmness is directly linked to the safety of this mission. So if you’re feeling any pressure at all, you know you can always rely on us a little more.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Sara chimed in. “No one’s expecting you to do everything on your own. That’s why you have a team.”

“Sara also wants to be given more opportunities to show off,” Elena teased. “I’m always taking care of the scouting and negotiations, so I get to demonstrate my talents all the time. But she can’t prove herself to you anywhere but on the battlefield.”

“Was that really necessary, Elena?” Sarah rejoined, a discontented look in her eyes.

Akira gave a small smile. “All right, I hear you loud and clear. I welcome all the help you can give me, Miss Sara.”

“W-Well, if that’s how you’re going to address me, I suppose I have no choice, now, do I?” she said, her pout turning to a grin.

Beside her, Elena was trying her best to suppress her laughter. She, too, had worried that Akira had been pushing himself somewhat, so she was pleased and relieved to hear Akira’s honest acceptance of his friends’ aid.

While Akira and his friends were taking their break, Erio’s team continued to work under Kurosawa.

“When do we get our break?” one of the kids grumbled.

“Shut up and work,” another said. “The faster we finish this, the sooner we get to rest.”

“Fine, fine.”

The boys had been tasked with switching the cargo between Vehicles A and B. Once Akira’s break was over, he would be riding in Vehicle B this time. He himself hadn’t received any damage in the fight thanks to Alpha’s support, but his vehicle hadn’t been so lucky and had suffered heavy gunfire, resulting in severe damage.

Glancing back at the battered vehicle, one of the boys grimaced. “Damn. Look how dented that thing got. Even its force-field armor didn’t save it.”

“That’s because the armored tiles got torn off, see?” replied another. “And here I heard it was tough enough to repel your typical cannon fire.”

“And we’re going to be riding in it from now on? You think we’re gonna be all right?”

“Actually, it’s better than getting put in a vehicle with no damage at all, right? Think of it this way: Kurosawa’s prioritizing safety, so he probably won’t push us as hard if we’re in a damaged vehicle.”

Once they’d finished their task, Kurosawa rationed out fresh ammo among the team. However, he did not do so equally—he had calculated what each person should receive with the team’s overall efficiency in mind.

One boy looked at the amount of ammo he’d been given. “Hmm. I wasn’t really paying attention to it much in the heat of battle, but these are really weird, aren’t they? No matter how much we shoot, we never run out. What is this technology, anyway?”

“Aren’t they those extended magazines or whatever?”

“No, I don’t think so. I mean, even extended magazines have a limit. These are just outright bizarre.”

“Dunno, maybe it’s Old World tech or something, then. Only rank 50 hunters and up can buy them, right? As far as we know, all that high-ranking hunter gear could be made with Old World tech.”

“Oh, right! That’s probably it, then.”

Akira had purchased the ammo his team was using for this mission, and hunters were allowed to share such supplies with lower-ranked teammates. Thanks to that, Erio’s group was able to freely use ridiculously advanced ammo that they would never have been able to get their hands on otherwise.

“Hey, guess what?” one spoke up. “Apparently, just one of these costs five mil!”

“Five mil?! Holy shit, that’s expensive! No wonder they’re so powerful!”

Next to him, another kid looked down at the ammo and gulped. “Just one of these...is worth five mil...?”

“Hey now, don’t be getting any weird ideas. You steal from Akira, he’ll kill you. You’d basically be snatching five million aurum from him right under his nose.”

“I-I know that! I was just thinking five million aurum for one of those magazines is a ton of money, that’s all.”

At that moment, the other boy cocked his head in puzzlement. “Wait, five mil a magazine? No, I heard they were five mil a bullet.”

“C-Come on, that’s just ridiculous! That can’t be true. Think about it: If they were five mil a bullet, just how much would one of these magazines cost?”

“Yeah, good point. I must have just misunderstood.”

Erio’s team headed back to work without ever knowing how much the ammo they’d just been issued had truly cost.

◆

Once break time was over for everyone, the team headed back out to continue culling monsters. As before, they swept in a wide circle around the ruin. Since the bulk of the monsters had been eliminated the first time, far fewer were lured now, so the hunters had no trouble taking them out.

Just as Akira was about to circle the ruin a third time, Kurosawa contacted him. “All right, Akira. This time I’m going to turn the threat magnet’s intensity up even higher. I’m not sure what kind of monsters are lurking deep in there, but if it follows the typical pattern, stronger creatures live deeper in, so the beasts that are about to emerge will be far tougher than before—to say the least. Be careful.”

“Got it. Go ahead, I’m ready.”

Kurosawa raised the threat magnet’s power. Akira stood vigilant on the vehicle roof for some time, waiting for action, when all at once a twenty-meter-tall, heavily armed crayfish burst out of the entrance. The design of its exoskeleton made it look as though it were wearing a bulky powered suit, and it had many sets of enormous pincers in front. From these sprouted various weapons like machine guns, cannons, and missile pods.

It looked for all the world like a fully armed human had transformed into a lobster.

The monstrosity fascinated Akira. So when you go farther east, the monsters start wearing powered suits as well, huh?

There’s no rule that powered suits belong only to humans, after all, Alpha commented. And since you’re wearing one, you can’t complain that it’s unfair.

Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s going down all the same! Akira raised both of his LEOs in front of him, toward the gigantic monster. During his first circuit around the ruin, he’d had to ration his bullets for many enemies, but now he could focus everything on this one foe. With the synergy between his astounding ammo capacity and his extraordinary rate of fire, he sent a tsunami of C-bullets at the crayfish. His assault not only overpowered the creature’s defensive fire but blasted off the powerful armor on its body, which was tougher than the armor on Akira’s own vehicle.

Good, I hit all bull’s-eyes that time. Looks like taking a breather helped me restore my focus.

True, you aimed well without my support, but you wasted too many bullets, so I’ll have to dock a few points.

Does that really matter when we have an overabundance of ammo here? Besides, Kurosawa told me to watch out for the deadlier enemies, so I’m just playing it safe by spending more bullets, that’s all.

However you want to justify it is fine, but look sharp. The next one’s already here. Don’t let your guard down.

On it!

The newcomer appeared to be a crab and was just as heavily armed as the first one. It, too, had an exoskeleton resembling a bulky powered suit, with four additional pincers that looked mechanical, almost like they’d been mounted on. So clumsy did it seem that Akira doubted its ability to charge forward quickly at first, when the crab suddenly streaked toward him at high speed.

Maintaining a calm smile, he trained both LEOs on his target. As a general rule, the larger a monster was, the more powerful and dangerous it would be. Yet massive beasts were weighed down by their own girth and tended to be sluggish, while also being easier to hit and more prone to weak spots. But the monsters from the Old World completely defied such logic with incomprehensible agility, unbelievable toughness, astounding resilience, or any combination of the three. During Akira’s first lap around the ruin, the creatures he’d faced had been ten meters tall at most, but those before him now were around twenty meters. And such monsters were often even more dangerous than they initially appeared.

Even so, Akira held his own against them. There were two reasons for this. First, he had far fewer monsters to contend with now—no more than three seemed to appear at any given time. So he didn’t have to worry nearly as much about the enemy’s long-range attacks striking the other vehicles either, which greatly reduced the strain he was under. And second, he didn’t have to skimp on ammo. Just like his first time around, he was still in training mode. But because Kurosawa had given him permission to fire with abandon, and he’d been told doing so would keep Elena and Sara safe, he prioritized his friends over conserving ammo for the sake of his training.

Thus, his barrage was now even more overwhelming than before, and more than sufficed even against this new round of monsters, as formidable as they were. It didn’t hurt that he also had reliable support from Elena, Sara, and Shikarabe’s group, and Erio’s team was also doing all it could to help. Alpha’s support was the main reason he maintained his composure, of course; but thanks to the others pitching in as well, he finished his third circuit just as calmly as he’d told Kurosawa he would.

After another short break, he set out on a fourth lap. Then Kurosawa raised the threat magnet’s output even higher for his fifth. Each time, fewer and fewer monsters came out, none of them any taller than twenty meters. Akira took another break between the fifth and sixth sweeps, and during the sixth, no creatures emerged at all.

Before Akira set out for the seventh time, Kurosawa contacted him again. “All right! For this next lap, I’m turning the magnet up to full power. If no monsters appear, we can safely assume the ruin’s clear. Even if we miss a few, at that point it’s more efficient for us to head to another ruin than continue to hang around this one.”

“So does that mean we’re basically done for the day?”

“Highly likely, since no monsters appeared during your last sweep. But this time I’m setting the magnet to max power, so we might unexpectedly reel some super behemoth out. So stay on your toes no matter what.”

“Heard, loud and clear.”

“Good. Now let’s finish this.”

And thus, with the threat magnet now at max power, Akira’s seventh lap around the ruin commenced.

Given how easily things were going, Erio and his companions had relaxed considerably.

“Guess we’re just about done here,” one said proudly. “This was actually easier than we thought it was gonna be, no?”

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” another warned. “Don’t celebrate until we get back safely, remember? That’s the proper hunter mindset.”

“Well, sure, but I mean, we’re basically already safe, right? They say a relic hunter’s work isn’t complete until you have cash in hand for the relics you gathered, but we just came here to kill monsters and leave. The beasts on the way back to the safe point won’t give us any trouble, so we have nothing to worry about.”

“Relic hunters, huh? Come to think of it, couldn’t we go in there and grab a few relics before we leave, now that the monsters inside are all gone? It’d be a breeze.”

“Good idea! Maybe we should ask!”

As they talked, they grew less and less cautious. Even the boy who’d warned them not to celebrate had never intended to scold the others harshly to begin with, and he, too, ended up joining the conversation right along with them.

One boy who’d let his guard down entirely sighed deeply with relief. “You know, since Akira’s here with us, I was pretty worried that something awful was gonna happen, but I guess I was just worrying for nothing. Thank goodness!”

Everyone inside the vehicle went dead quiet. Someone had actually been careless enough to voice the thought that they were all thinking, and it had shocked them into silence. The awkward atmosphere hung in the air for a moment—only to be broken by an alarm from the support system, warning them that a dangerous monster was approaching.

Understandably caught off guard, the children panicked.

“This is all because you went and made a comment like that! You jinxed us!”

“It’s my fault?!”

Indeed, the boy had been correct who had cautioned them that hunters were technically still on the job until they made it back home safe and sound.

The warning notice from the support system also reached Kurosawa.

“Yeah, that’s a big one, all right,” he muttered, looking at the reading on the screen.

The all-in-one support system was linked to all four vehicles’ scanning devices, so it could search far more effectively than any one vehicle’s scanner. And so it showed Kurosawa in great detail the massive size of the monster that was making its way out from the ruins’ depths. The entity was still too far off—with too many buildings and other obstacles in the way—to get a good idea of its shape, but he could see it was around thirty-five meters tall, the largest monster they’d encountered yet that day. And its greater size ensured it would be more powerful.

Should he ask Akira to fall back temporarily? Kurosawa considered it, but too late. Akira had already leaped from his vehicle and was charging toward the beast.

Thanks to Alpha’s support, Akira had detected the monster’s presence before Kurosawa and the others.

Akira, training time’s over.

Sure thing. Wait, it’s that strong? The young hunter sounded a little apprehensive.

But Alpha just gave him a placid smile. Indeed. Strong enough that it might finally be time to use that laser on your back.

All right! Guess we finally get to see what this bad boy can do, huh? Judging from Alpha’s smile that the current situation was well within the bounds of what he could handle, he allowed himself to grin. He stowed away the guns in his hands, then jumped out of the vehicle and followed Alpha, who was already heading in the monster’s direction. As he ran, he activated the AF laser cannon on his back. The weapon immediately folded out to form a large barrel protruding over his shoulder. Akira seized it in both hands, aimed the cannon at his target, and held the weapon steady.

Ahead of the barrel was a monster that looked like a cyborg octopus. Its tendrils moved as flexibly as those of any normal cephalopod, yet they appeared to be made of metal or rubber. A comically large cannon was protruding from where its mouth would usually be, and despite being even larger than Akira’s vehicle, it was moving toward him steadily without tires or tank treads.

The monster hadn’t yet gotten close enough for Akira to perceive it with the naked eye, but thanks to Alpha’s support, its figure was clear in his augmented vision, notwithstanding the objects that obstructed his sight. He knew exactly where to aim, and light started to glow brighter and brighter in the muzzle of the AF laser cannon as it charged up.

“Akira, can you handle that thing?” Kurosawa asked.

“As long as this laser cannon’s as powerful as advertised,” Akira answered. “But it’s too dangerous for you guys to remain behind me, so stay back.”

“Understood. We’ll be counting on you, then.” Sensing calm and confidence from Akira’s reply, Kurosawa decided to trust the boy and left him to his task.

Even in the brief span of their conversation, the distance between Akira and his target had already shrunk drastically. To make sure he didn’t misjudge the timing of his fire, Akira slowed his sense of time to a crawl. The cannon’s muzzle was already brimming with energy, indicating it was ready to fire. All he needed to do now was pick his moment.

Just then, the opportunity presented itself. The massive octopus smashed right through the ruin’s entrance, storming out into the open.

Akira immediately fired. At the same time, the monster quickly trained its own cannon on Akira—ignoring his vehicle, which he’d preset to drive around the area as a decoy—and attacked. The bullet inside Akira’s laser cannon, overloaded as it was with energy, disintegrated into radiant sparks that blazed from the muzzle in a tightly focused beam, scorching the air in its path and striking its target in an instant.

The angle of the AF laser cannon’s laser could be widened or narrowed to adjust the beam’s intensity and area of effect as needed. A wider area of fire could hit many enemies at once but would be less powerful. Conversely, a narrower beam would be stronger but hit fewer targets. Alpha had adjusted the beam to the optimal settings for this situation: as the enemy was advancing on Akira quickly along a straight path, she set the cannon to fire in a devastatingly powerful focused line, straight ahead. The beam pierced right through the monster’s armored exterior and organs with ease, neutralizing every cell it struck. Because the monster’s force-field armor was natural and generated at the cellular level, this attack drastically decreased the creature’s defenses. The beam was less than a millimeter in diameter, yet it wrought incredible destruction, opening a huge hole in the octopus’s body. Even the part of its interior that had avoided direct contact with the laser was singed.

Thus, despite the monster’s unbelievable natural vitality, Akira’s laser had killed the beast instantly. The projectile it had fired just before its death went wide, whizzing past Akira by a good distance before landing in a massive explosion far behind him. A violent wind blasted against his back, but Akira was more interested in the power his laser cannon had demonstrated.

Damn, it really did work as advertised, he said with a grin. Yep, I could definitely have taken down that colossus in no time if I’d had this.

Now, now, don’t forget that it was only that powerful thanks to me, Alpha reminded him.

Yeah, yeah, I know already.

The appearance of a monster so unexpectedly strong had prevented Akira from maintaining his composed demeanor to the very end like he’d wanted to. Yet even so, he’d survived his first monster culling without so much as a scratch.

◆

On the way back to Kugamayama City, Akira and the rest of his team gathered in his vehicle for another briefing. Once again, Hikaru was present via the comms. Elena and Sara stared intently at him with smiles on their faces. They didn’t say a word, but Akira already knew what they wanted to ask.

“N-No, it’s not what you think!” he said, preemptively making excuses. “I was trying to play it as safe as possible! I only left my vehicle so that I could use it as a decoy. Sure, that plan didn’t really work since the monster saw right through it, but it was a safer bet than staying in the vehicle and getting blown up along with it, right?!” Trying his best to convince them that he hadn’t just been acting reckless, yet only feeling Elena’s and Sara’s gazes on him intensify, he glanced over at Kurosawa. “B-Besides, Kurosawa didn’t order me to fall back either! Right?”

Kurosawa realized Akira was asking to be bailed out, so he gave his opinion from a commander’s perspective. “I know it sounds like Akira is just making stuff up after the fact, but I believe in this case he made the right call. I could have ordered him to fall back and wait until we all got there, but doing so would have put everyone in the other vehicles at risk. Considering the possible casualties, it was safer for the team as a whole to let Akira head in alone and hit it with everything he had. I even asked him if he could handle things on his own, just to make sure, and he sounded confident that he could. And, well, he did.”

Akira nodded vigorously, grateful for the backup, and Elena’s and Sara’s smiles softened.

“Well, if our commander approves, I suppose we can’t complain,” Sara said with a sigh. “And it sounds like you really did have your own safety in mind, so we’ll let you off the hook this time.”

“Just keep that perspective, okay? That’s all I ask,” Elena added. “Don’t forget that feeling of wanting to keep yourself safe.”

“I won’t, don’t worry,” he replied.

With that, the women let Akira off the hook for trying to solve a problem on his own despite being on a team.

But Kurosawa wasn’t finished. “If there’s anyone to criticize here, it’d be you, Hikaru.”

“Me? What did I do?”

“We planned this operation according to the information we were given, and we were never told something like that behemoth might show up. Now then, did you already know that monster was in this area?”

She hesitated for a moment. “The octopharos you just fought is a monster commonly found near the eastern border, so no, I didn’t expect one to appear somewhere as far west as the Mirukakewa region. That was quite a surprise!”

“You can’t just brush that off with a ‘Whoops, my bad,’” Kurosawa said, adopting a deliberately critical tone. “Not when our lives could have been in danger.”

Hikaru said nothing. An awkward silence hung between them for a moment until Kurosawa spoke once more, a different note in his voice.

“Therefore, in order to continue, we’ll have to be prepared in case something else like this happens again. We wouldn’t want to let Akira keep handling everything on his own, would we? So if you could equip the rest of us well enough that we can fight safely alongside him, we’d really appreciate that.”

At that, Hikaru visibly relaxed. So Kurosawa’s goal wasn’t to point out her mistake—he was just using it as leverage to score himself some better gear. And that suited her just fine—the more she supported Akira’s team, the more indebted to her they’d become. So she acquiesced with a smile. “Very well. I’ll ask the higher-ups about it.”

“Thank you very much.”

The briefing concluded, the hunters fell to chatting among themselves.

“Well, we had one surprise, but all’s well that ends well, I suppose,” Kurosawa mused. “And yet, it’s strange.” He glanced over at Akira. “To be honest, since you’re here, I was certain something terrible was gonna happen. I mean, consider everything that happened back in the Iida Commercial District.”

“What, you want me to apologize?”

“No, no, nothing like that. I’m not even saying it’s your fault. It’s more like you’re a jinx—wherever you go, bad luck follows. Whenever something unlucky happens, you inevitably seem to be involved in some way. Surely by now you’ve noticed it yourself too.”

Akira couldn’t say otherwise, so he kept his mouth shut—even as Erio nodded vigorously nearby.

“Though depending on how you look at it,” Kurosawa continued, “perhaps that’s why you’re always so calm in the face of unexpected developments—you’re so used to them. And that’s probably a big reason you’ve been able to survive, no matter what messes you’ve found yourself in.”

Now it was Elena, Sara, and Shikarabe’s turn to nod to themselves. Akira alone knew the real cause—that Alpha was helping him—but he couldn’t tell them that, so he didn’t bother to correct them.

Beside him, Alpha grinned. True, I think you might have gotten a little too used to unforeseen developments at this point, Akira. Taking them for granted might cause you to slip up and get careless, so watch out, okay?

Noted, Akira said, trying his best to suppress a sheepish smile.

Chapter 197: When Strength Is Obvious at a Glance

The monster-culling job Akira had accepted from Hikaru was not a one-and-done deal—it wouldn’t be over until a significant portion of the monsters in the region had been eradicated. But that didn’t mean he had to go out to the wasteland every single day. In order to give the team time to rest and recuperate, repair and service their damaged vehicles, and restock ammo and supplies, they took a break for several days between each operation.

Akira spent one of those rest days visiting Sheryl at her base. Since also becoming a relic shop, the building had greatly expanded in size, adding among other things a warehouse to store relics and dormitories to accommodate the constant influx of new members into her organization. One of the newest additions, however, was a large building the size of an aircraft hangar. There Akira now stood, gazing up and marveling at the sight before him.

“Wow, so they gave you one after all!” he exclaimed.

Sheryl, who’d led him here, looked up at the object too and grinned. “Not that I doubted you, but truth be told, I couldn’t really allow myself to believe it until I laid eyes on it myself.”

“I don’t blame you. I didn’t think Hikaru had any reason to lie to me, but to be honest, I doubted it a little myself.”

In front of them stood one of Yoshioka Heavy Industries’ Kokurou mechs, the result of Hikaru successfully negotiating with the company on Akira’s behalf. Yoshioka was technically loaning the mech to Akira, but Akira had agreed to sublease it to Sheryl, which was why it was currently at her base.

Akira was already an incredibly powerful asset to the Sheryl Family, but because he had to go out into the wasteland regularly, he couldn’t be at the base every day around the clock. It wouldn’t matter how strong he was if he were never there. So Akira was loaning the mech to Sheryl and her gang in his place. This was how Hikaru had reconciled the dispute between Akira and Yoshioka—for the company, it also served as a guarantee that Akira recognized the mech’s potential. After all, if Akira was treating it as a substitute for his own strength, that was as good as saying the Kokurou was as capable as he was. Strictly speaking, such a statement would be a little contradictory coming from someone who’d defeated a colossus that a unit of Kokurous couldn’t, but Yoshioka could always spin things in their favor if need be, especially since their agreement with Akira stipulated he had to keep his mouth shut.

At any rate, Yoshioka no longer needed to worry about Akira’s performance during the nationalist incident tarnishing their reputation. And Akira was satisfied because Yoshioka had effectively agreed to work for Sheryl in his stead, provided their reputation stayed intact.

The Kokurou in the hangar did not come equipped with heavy weaponry like cannons or missile pods, but the guns in each of its hands would be more than effective at handling any dispute within the slums. On top of that, Sheryl had Erio’s team, outfitted with Kiryou’s support system. Now, the Sheryl Family would remain the most powerful gang in the slums in Akira’s absence—even the officials of the city would hesitate to order them around.

Finally, for Hikaru, the deal had allowed her to display her competency to both Akira and Yoshioka, as well as lay the groundwork for a separate plan of hers. And as a result of each party seeking its own interest, a Kokurou now stood before Akira in the hangar of Sheryl’s base.

Behind Akira, the Sheryl Family’s officers—Erio, Aricia, Nasya, and Lucia—stared up at the mech in awe.

Because the gang had grown so large of late, more children had since been appointed to better manage its members, and those had also received the official title of “officer.” But only these four were considered “senior officers,” directly underneath Sheryl.

There were, in fact, seats open for more senior officers. If anyone in the gang ever decided they wanted such a position, they would probably receive it on the spot. Erio and the others weren’t incapable by any means, but they hadn’t exactly earned their positions by beating out every other hopeful for the job either. Someone with the same level of skill, or perhaps even a little less, could join their ranks at will, and the entire gang knew it.

Doing so would grant the aspirant access to some quite enticing perks, including a bigger bedroom and access to Sheryl’s most luxurious bathroom. They could also borrow more powerful gear and would receive a salary no average hunter could ever earn by risking their life out in the wasteland. And with that money, they could purchase more delicious food, nicer clothes, and other luxuries beyond the reach of the typical slum child.

And yet, no one had applied. Competition between gang members over officer positions never included the senior officer level.

“Yeah, we’re really gonna need more than just four of us from now on,” Erio grumbled. “Or at the very least, someone besides me who actually knows how to fight.”

Aricia sighed. “Right. Because you’re the only one of us skilled in combat, you’re automatically the one who has to go on that monster-culling job.”

“You got it. If we had just one more person, I could at least switch off with them now and then.”

Although Erio had returned home safe from the first round of monster culling, Aricia wasn’t exactly keen on the prospect of her lover heading out to risk his life in the wasteland over and over. Besides, when she’d heard Akira was also taking part in that mission—and that while there they’d run into an abnormally powerful behemoth that never should have been in the region—her anxiety had gone through the roof. She’d been so worried, in fact, that she’d even tried to use her clout as a senior officer to remove him from the roster.

“Is five million just not alluring enough, I wonder?” she asked him. For the first part of the monster-culling job, Erio alone had been awarded five million aurum because of his status as a senior officer—each of the other gang members involved had only received a tenth of that. But Erio hadn’t done ten times the work—they knew it, and he knew it. Rather, he’d clearly gotten special treatment thanks to his position.

Erio didn’t look too thrilled about this, however. “Guess not. I even promised the others they could make that much too if they became a senior officer like me, but the most promising response I got was ‘I’ll think about it.’”

“Should’ve figured,” Aricia said with another sigh.

“And if five million doesn’t sway them, I doubt any amount of money will. Not that I’d actually go up to the boss and demand she raise the senior officer rate.”

“Right,” she agreed. Besides being a senior officer, Aricia also handled accounting for the gang, so she knew even more than Erio just how difficult it would be to ask for a raise. Thanks to the success of the relic shop, the Sheryl Family was more profitable than ever. But that money belonged to the gang—in other words, to Akira. Sheryl wasn’t going to spend a single aurum that didn’t need to be spent. Even if Erio and Aricia said they only wanted a raise to lure in more senior officers, they and their peers clearly stood to benefit more than anyone else, which made their proposal hard to pitch. Aricia had run the numbers in her head already, and five million aurum was the absolute maximum Sheryl could possibly spend on Erio.

Erio glanced over at Nasya and Lucia next. “On the other hand, if you two hadn’t joined, it’d just be me and Aricia. So things could be a lot worse, I suppose.”

“It’s not like we volunteered freely,” Nasya said with a wry smile.

The two girls had nearly been killed by Akira after Lucia had stolen his wallet. Akira had forgiven them in the end, but because the Sheryl Family owed everything they had to Akira’s support, Nasya and Lucia had been shunned by nearly everyone in the gang. Some members had even been openly hostile. To improve their standing within the syndicate, the two girls had found no option but to seek officer positions. However, as the fighting over regular officer ranks was so fierce and Nasya and Lucia were so unpopular, they had been forced to apply for the one role with no competition whatsoever.

Since then, they’d performed their jobs with such skill that their reputations within the gang had drastically improved. Even their past clash with Akira was now only ever brought up to allude to how tough and courageous they were. Of course, a few members were still displeased that the two girls now ranked above them in the hierarchy, but the general response to such complaints had been “If you’re so dissatisfied, then become a senior officer yourself and take it up with Akira.” Before long, no one dared to speak negatively about either girl.

A strained smile appeared on Lucia’s lips. “Still, it’s not like we can ask anyone to switch out with us two, even if we had new officers.”

“That’s right,” Nasya agreed. “So you’re gonna have to work a little bit harder to take the load off me, aren’t you?”

Nasya enjoyed helping other people out, and though it made her a bit of a busybody, her social acumen helped her manage the gang’s members quite well. Lucia, on the other hand, was still rough around the edges as an officer in many ways. Seeing Nasya’s smile, Lucia knew she was teasing her, but still couldn’t help but feel like it was her fault Nasya had so much on her plate. As grateful as she was to her friend for making up for her own shortcomings, she sighed.

At that moment, Akira turned around to face the senior officers. Then, pointing up at the black mech, he asked, “Come to think of it, this mech is supposed to serve as my replacement, but who actually looks stronger to you guys? Me or this thing?”

Another difficult question to answer, all four instantly thought. Even worse, Sheryl was urging them with her eyes to respond. But rumor had it that Akira could see through lies, and if so, flattering him here would have the opposite effect; yet an honest answer might also rub him the wrong way. So Erio and the others hesitated, agonizing over finding a suitable answer—when Lucia steeled herself and spoke up.

“I already know for a fact that you’re stronger,” she answered nervously. “However, just looking at the two of you, the mech appears more powerful to me. I-It’s much larger, after all. Besides, anyone would think a giant robot was stronger than a human...right?” She watched his face carefully, waiting for him to scowl.

“Yep, makes sense,” he said with a nod, grinning at her answer. Then he turned his back on them once more.

Lucia let out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, while Erio and Aricia each patted her on a shoulder. “Way to go, Lucia!” Erio exclaimed.

“Great job! We’ll be counting on you next time too.”

Lucia made a face and glanced for help at Nasya, who just gave her a pat on the head.

“Let’s work hard together, okay?”

With her dear friend cheering her on, Lucia couldn’t say no.

Looking up at the Kokurou again with Sheryl, a thought occurred to Akira. I guess it really is important to look tough at first glance. He knew he was stronger than the Kokurou—partly because his gear was so advanced, of course, but he wouldn’t lose against one in a fight regardless. Yet any bystander he asked would say the mech looked stronger. And this made sense, as a normal human who went up against a mech was reckless, to say the least.

However, fighting and defeating one in battle just for the sake of demonstrating his power would be utterly pointless. Had he looked dangerous from the start, perhaps no one would have wanted to mess with him—perhaps he never would have had to kill Yumina, Katsuya, and the others. Maybe he could have prevented the fight before it had even begun. He needed some sort of easy-to-understand indicator of his strength.

And Akira already knew of something that fit the bill: his hunter rank.

Rank 50 isn’t high enough. I need to raise it even higher, he thought. Right now, Akira only desired strength. In a sense, that was no different from any regular hunter—except his reasoning for that desire was even more twisted than it had been when he’d first embarked on this path.

◆

They all left the hangar and went to the floor of Sheryl’s base that served as a break room. Akira and Sheryl sat down at a four-person table, facing each other, and began talking about how Sheryl’s gang was getting along.

“By the way, Sheryl,” Akira asked after a while, “who’s gonna be piloting that mech?”

“I’ve kicked around several potential candidates,” she replied, “but for the moment I’m thinking Erio, since he’s one of my strongest members and a senior officer. I can’t just let anyone pilot it, after all—they’ve got to be capable.”

Yoshioka had dispatched maintenance men to Sheryl’s gang to help with the mech’s upkeep but hadn’t sent a pilot over. They were essentially saying, “We’ll give you a gun and some bullets, but you’ve got to do the aiming and shooting yourself”—in other words, they didn’t want to be held responsible for any casualties. Sheryl had gotten the message, and thought this seemed reasonable.

As far as a pilot went, she had several options. She could ask Yoshioka to recommend one to her through a third-party agency. Or she could ask Inabe to send someone qualified over from the city’s defense force. But on the off chance either of those partnerships went south at any point, she had decided it would be wisest to proceed with one of her own members as the pilot.

“And in the meantime, we have the support system,” she added. “So I was thinking about asking Kiryou to set up some sort of training simulator so that Erio won’t be the only combat specialist we have capable of piloting the mech.” Thanks to inertia and similar factors, it was incredibly dangerous for the average person to operate a mech, so the pilot usually needed to wear a powered suit. Erio and his team already had Kiryou’s all-in-one support suits, automatically making them the best choice.

“Of course, we could also just set the mech to fight on autopilot. But unless the pilot is a complete amateur, having a human at the helm is always going to be more effective in combat than otherwise. From what I’ve researched, a mech on autopilot isn’t much more useful in battle than a scarecrow.” Then she grinned. “That said, I certainly wouldn’t complain if a scarecrow was all we needed. We’d have to be in serious trouble to use the mech at full power.”

“That’s true.” Akira grinned. He wholeheartedly agreed with Sheryl’s opinion—after all, it was better for the mech to serve as a deterrent to the gang’s enemies, preventing conflicts before they happened, rather than as a tool to crush them.

Meanwhile, Erio and the other senior officers sat where Sheryl had posted them, at the next table over. Knowing their boss, they’d expected her to tell them to escort Akira back to her room and then return to work; so they found her order a little odd, but decided she probably just wanted them nearby in case their input was needed during the conversation. Beyond that, they didn’t give it much thought.

They weren’t exactly wrong—however, they didn’t guess her main reason. In truth, Sheryl wanted them on hand because she found it incredibly difficult to be alone with Akira at present. Akira had been forced to kill Yumina because of her—however remotely or indirectly a cause she might have been. And Sheryl was beside herself with fear imagining what would happen if he found out. The entire time she spoke to Akira, she observed him anxiously.

Beneath her smile, the gears in her head were spinning furiously. She didn’t sense any hostility or enmity from him whatsoever. But was that because he didn’t know, or because he knew and didn’t mind? If he did know and didn’t hate her for it, then could she relax?

Seeing as Akira seemed to be in such a good mood today, Sheryl decided to bite the bullet and find out. Straightening her posture, she looked at him intently. “Regarding the incident with Katsuya... Well, I’m truly sorry I couldn’t have been of more help to you.”

Akira looked a little puzzled as to why she was bringing that up now all of a sudden.

As though to explain herself, she continued. “Among Druncam’s desk jockey faction, the ones who really made things happen were Mizuha, Katsuya, and the latter’s followers—and I was acquainted with both Mizuha and Katsuya, you see. Had I worked more aggressively to get them to leave you alone, things might have turned out differently.”

“Oh, that’s what’s bugging you? Nah, don’t blame yourself for that. It was Katsuya and the others’ fault for getting deceived by the nationalists—though they only attacked me because they fell for it, so I can’t really place the blame on them either... I guess you could say everyone present bears some responsibility, including me. But it’s definitely not your fault, that’s for sure.”

“Really? Honestly, I’m extremely relieved to hear that.” She let out a small sigh, then lowered her head to hide a smile. She’d only referred obliquely to “the incident with Katsuya” because she couldn’t bring herself to actually speak Yumina’s name in his presence right now. And she also hadn’t admitted to knowing the details of Yumina’s demise, including that she was partly responsible, nor had she asked him to forgive her. And yet without being prompted, Akira had told her she wasn’t to blame. A massive weight seemed to roll off her shoulders.

But then Viola walked in.

“Hey, Akira! Sorry about what happened earlier. My bad, my bad.” Yet though she was apologizing, the smile on her face clearly showed she was not the least bit sorry.

Akira looked appropriately put out with her, sighing heavily. “I only asked you to look into Hikaru’s background. How’d you manage to botch things so abysmally?”

“Well, because you’re just that important of a person to Inabe. And if I had to guess, I’d say he also meant to send you a warning of sorts.”

“What the hell for?”

“Good question. I think he intentionally overreacted in order to demonstrate to her what would happen if she did try to scam you. Freak her out, in other words.”

Akira nodded. “That tracks.”

Wearing her usual smile, Viola observed him closely. Then she sat down without being invited and, looking directly at Akira and Sheryl, said casually, “By the way, it’s such a shame about Yumina.”

Sheryl immediately froze. Then, feigning an air of absolute calm, she looked back at Viola. Was the woman just trying to rattle her, or did she actually have some other reason for bringing this up? Was this Viola’s way of hinting to Sheryl that she knew Sheryl’s role in what had unfolded? And by bringing it up in front of Akira, was she making some kind of threat? Or was she just trying to gauge how Sheryl would react in order to deduce the truth?

For all her speculations, however, Sheryl just couldn’t deduce the truth. She could suspect the informant all she wanted, but she didn’t know what the woman’s true motives were. And she couldn’t just ask, because that would most likely backfire on her somehow. Viola had probably already set things up this way—she was that kind of woman, after all. So Sheryl remained at a loss.

Akira was equally clueless as to why Viola had suddenly brought up Yumina. But his reaction was quite different from Sheryl’s—after glaring at the woman for a minute or so, he stood up without a word and aimed an LEO at her head.

“I bet it was you, wasn’t it?” He phrased it as a question, but he already sounded almost certain.

Naturally, even Viola’s smile went rigid. Feeling a trickle of sweat run down her brow, she responded in her usual casual tone. “Hey, I’m not responsible for everything bad that happens, you know. You can’t just accuse me of—”

He pressed the barrel of the gun to her forehead, his expression deadly serious. She fell silent. More sweat started to trickle down her face.

“Lie to me, and I’ll kill you. Refuse to answer, and I’ll kill you. Say anything other than the answer, and I’ll kill you. All I want to hear is a yes...or a no. Now tell me: Did you have anything to do with what happened to Yumina?”

Viola looked right into his eyes and answered, “No. I had nothing to do with it whatsoever.”

Alpha?

It’s not a lie.

That was good enough for him. “Really? All right, then, sorry for doubting you like that. Yumina’s kind of a touchy subject for me right now.”

Even as he apologized, however, Akira didn’t lower his gun. Keeping the barrel pressed to her forehead, his next words were like ice.

“But mention her again, and I’ll kill you, even if it’s a misunderstanding.”

Implicit in his words was the message, “Don’t do anything that might cause a misunderstanding either.” Having made his intent loud and clear, Akira finally lowered his gun. Then he sighed.

“Sheryl.”

“Y-Yes?!” she yelped, completely unnerved by what had just happened.

Ashamed of himself for not keeping his murderous impulse in check and for causing a scene, he tipped his head apologetically. “Sorry about that. I’d better go home and cool my head before I cause trouble for anyone else. Later.” He left the room without another word.

At any other time, Sheryl would have at least insisted on escorting him out. But she couldn’t even summon the willpower to get up from her chair. The suspicion that Viola had been involved in Yumina’s death had nearly driven him to kill the woman on the spot. If Akira found out how Sheryl had been involved, would she be next? She desperately tried to maintain her composure as anxiety and fear threatened to consume her.

Viola, for her part, had escaped another brush with death. But Akira hadn’t pulled the trigger—exactly as she’d predicted.

Why mention Yumina’s death, knowing full well what she was getting into? Simple: Viola couldn’t go against her innate drive to create chaos. Ever since his return from fighting the nationalists, Akira hadn’t done anything interesting at all. Not only had he failed to shoot up Druncam’s base, he’d formed a peace agreement with them! On top of that, even though he usually worked solo, now he’d formed a team around him at his handler’s request. And to top it all off, he didn’t seem likely to rebel against his handler, since he’d agreed to everything she’d suggested thus far.

To Viola, these were all signs of a hunter who’d grown complacent with his current situation. The past Akira had dreamed of success and recklessly pursued his goals; but now that he’d achieved his dream, he’d become soft and only wanted to maintain the status quo. Sugarcoating it, he was a hunter who knew his limits—put more bluntly, he’d traded his passion for hunting in for riches and glory. At least, that was how Viola saw matters. She worried that his success during the nationalist incident had made him boring.

The old Akira had been so amusing. Whether he was dragging the corpses of Shijima’s men all the way back to the gang boss’s base, butting into a gang war between mechs and antagonizing both sides, murdering city officials, or opposing city bigwigs, there had never been a dull moment with him. And no matter what type of chaos or confusion he’d caused, he’d always come out alive on the other end. Yet now, he’d acquiesced to the city’s demands, had a team formed around him, and was working earnestly on a job the city had assigned him—exactly what a boring, typical hunter at his level would do. Had the gunpowder known as Akira finally gotten too damp to be used anymore? Was the boy who would explode at even the slightest provocation gone for good?

She’d wanted to find out for certain, so she’d mentioned Yumina’s death in front of him.

In a sense, Akira’s reaction had been exactly what she’d hoped for. He was still a loose cannon who’d unhesitatingly kill someone if he so much as suspected they were his enemy. And inwardly, that filled her with elation. In fact, even as she’d sweated nervously with the barrel of his gun to her forehead, she’d found it extremely difficult to suppress her smile—especially since she’d been confident he wouldn’t actually pull the trigger. Though she didn’t know how, he clearly had some way of figuring out whether someone was lying to him. And she’d predicted that he would immediately suspect her of being involved in Yumina’s death and then use his lie-detecting ability to find out whether she really was a culprit. Moreover, once he learned she had nothing to do with it, then knowing the kind of person he was, he’d lower his weapon.

Her predictions had turned out to be right on the money.

As Akira had turned his back on her to leave the room, she’d found herself reflecting. The gang war wouldn’t have been nearly as entertaining if the boy hadn’t been involved. Nor would the power struggle between executives and the nationalist incident have exploded to the degree it had. Viola realized that merely egging on slum gangs to destroy themselves wasn’t going to satisfy her anymore. Where could Akira be placed next to cause the largest possible conflagration—one that would satisfy her natural desire for chaos? And what preliminary steps would she need to take to put him there? As a number of plans naturally began formulating in her mind, Viola smiled to herself.

Erio and the other senior officers had nervous looks on their faces as they watched Akira leave. After waiting several seconds, as though to make sure he wasn’t coming back, all four breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Then another group of children burst into the room. “What the hell happened?!” they demanded.

Sheryl hadn’t cordoned the floor off to the other members—the children had just been keeping their distance from the break room because Akira had been inside. And this particular group had been brave enough to observe him from afar. In fact, they actually wanted to become senior officers like Erio and the other three—fear of Akira had kept them away, but they’d wanted to see for themselves whether he really was as scary as the rumors said.

Maybe, they hoped, there was no need to fear him after all. It wasn’t like he was using his status as the gang’s patron to inflict violence on its members for petty reasons, and he didn’t lay his hands on any of the girls either. Sure, he was a bit trigger-happy, but the only members of the Sheryl Family he’d ever killed were those who’d betrayed the gang. He’d even let Erio live after the latter had tried to hit him, and Lucia after she’d stolen his wallet—in fact, they’d gone on to become Sheryl’s right-hand officers. So maybe the position of senior officer wasn’t so dangerous after all. Maybe, as long as they took care not to get on his bad side, filling that role would be all right. Maybe the perks that came with being a senior officer weren’t so difficult to earn!

Enthusiastic, the children had ultimately decided to covertly observe Akira that day. If he seemed better than everyone said, they’d apply for the senior officer positions. In a sense, they’d had their guards down, which had made the sight of Akira pressing his gun’s barrel to Viola’s forehead all the more shocking to them. Even at a distance, they could tell from his murderous aura that he hadn’t been making idle threats—he had really been on the verge of killing her. In the end, he hadn’t—but none of them really thought the coveted positions would be “all right” now. Averting their eyes from the figure of the boy as he’d left the room, the children had immediately gone to ask Erio and his friends what had happened.

However, the senior officers couldn’t really answer that question. They didn’t know any of the circumstances beyond what they’d heard from eavesdropping at their table. As far as they could tell, Akira had accused Viola on false pretenses, threatened to kill her, and then left in disgust after pinning blame on her.

So that was what they told the newcomers, whose faces went taut from surprise and fear.

“Seriously?! Just saying that was enough to set him off and make him nearly kill her?”

“W-Well,” Erio began, not wanting to speak badly of Akira, “Viola did have a previous offense, to be fair.”

“Even so, who in their right mind would pull a gun on someone because of a trivial suspicion? No one, that’s who!”

Aricia also attempted to defend Akira. “B-But I mean, it was only a misunderstanding, and it got resolved right away—”

“If his suspicion of her was that easy to clear, then it definitely wasn’t worth pulling a gun on her,” someone rejoined. “I’d understand if he’d just gotten the wrong idea, but this is something else entirely.”

Neither Erio nor Aricia could argue that point. And because both of them were so transparently in agreement, the children naturally assumed that they were only defending Akira because as Sheryl’s senior officers, they couldn’t speak badly of him.

Nasya gave a small sigh. By now, she’d realized that the children had been hoping to find Akira less of a threat because they wanted to become senior officers. But they were also underestimating the hardship the four current officers had to bear. Nasya thought this was fine—the children didn’t need to be overly afraid of Akira in the first place, and whatever their motives, having more senior officers would place less work on her and the other three. However, she sensed their naive optimism was starting to wane, and if it disappeared completely, they wouldn’t want to become senior officers anymore. Turning to them with a smile, she approached things from another angle.

“Well, I can’t blame you for thinking that way. To be honest, Akira’s kind of a handful. That’s why we’d really appreciate it if you’d join us and help out!”

So Nasya said, but what the other children heard was “Become senior officers and join us in dealing with Akira! Let’s all share a position where we could be murdered in cold blood at any given moment without warning!”

With a tentative “E-Er, well...” they all averted their eyes from her, then silently backed out of the room in a hurry.

Erio smiled wryly. “Well, at least they realize how hard we have it now, right?”

Aricia, Nasya, and Lucia couldn’t help smiling too. Being a senior officer was tough, but at least their shared hardship had brought them all a little closer.

Chapter 198: The Unwelcome Hunter

Akira and his team continued culling monsters without incident. Because of the unexpected threat they’d met with the first time around, even more forces had been placed at their disposal, and thanks to Kurosawa’s safety-first mentality, no casualties had been suffered even when fighting the formidable monsters of the Mirukakewa region.

It was going so well, in fact, that they’d even had free time to look for relics, making some easy money by harvesting valuables from the ruins with incredible efficiency. Kugamayama hunters found the local monsters too dangerous, while Mirukakewa hunters considered the relics they guarded too cheap, so both normally steered clear of the area. But Kugamayama considered such relics incredibly precious, and now that Akira and his companions had cleared the area of threats, these treasures were ripe for the taking. Even the supporting members who weren’t skilled enough to fight could pitch in here, and with their combined efforts, the team managed to secure a bevy of relics.

The additions to the team included more members of the Sheryl Family who could hold their own in a fight, as well as hunters affiliated with the gang like Dale, Levin, and Kolbe. New hunters from Druncam had joined as well. As before, Akira took the lead, with Elena, Sara, and Shikarabe and his veteran colleagues directly beneath him; the newcomers were subordinate to all of them.

It was quite common for the city or Hunter Office to urge individuals or very small groups to form larger teams once they’d risen high enough in rank. The city saw hunters as armed might, and it benefited from keeping them organized in units so as to more easily manage them. Of course, this came with some disadvantages too, like the fact that hunters would be more powerful in groups if they decided to revolt, but even so, teams were preferable to having a chaotic mass of unorganized individuals beyond Kugamayama’s control.

That was more or less what was happening to Akira now—Hikaru had formed a team around Akira as a countermeasure against him. And it was also the main reason Viola was so concerned that Akira had become a boring, run-of-the-mill hunter like the rest. Hikaru had Akira wrapped around her finger—and now, the city would see just how well she was handling him.

As she wrote up another regular report, Hikaru grinned to herself and nodded in satisfaction. “Perfect. Not that I’d expect any less of myself!” She knew she was singing her own praises, but she did have the results to back them up.

However, she couldn’t stay satisfied for too long lest she grow complacent. Since it was Akira’s team—or really just Akira—she was dealing with, couldn’t she send him to cull an even deadlier area farther east? He had, after all, defeated the octopharos without any trouble, so surely he could handle that! Spurred on by her confidence and determination to improve, she fixed her sights on achieving even greater results.

Then she called Akira up and told him what she had in mind.

Akira’s response was lukewarm. “Well, I don’t really mind, personally, but you’ll have to get permission from Kurosawa first. He’s in charge of making those decisions, not me.”

“Are you sure? It’s your team, after all. Shouldn’t you be the one to call the shots?”

“I know it’s my team, but that’s the point. I’m not capable of making decisions with others’ safety in mind. So I asked Kurosawa to come along and take care of that for me. I wouldn’t have needed to if I were working alone.”

Hikaru gave up on persuading him, having surmised that Akira most likely didn’t want to throw caution to the wind if it meant putting Elena and Sara in danger. “All right, no problem. I’ll just talk to Kurosawa, then.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it. See ya.”

When Hikaru contacted Kurosawa, his answer was much more definitive.

“Absolutely not.”

Hikaru protested, “But if you look at what your team has accomplished so far, and consider that you even have new members, don’t you think we have the leeway to head a little farther east?”

“That leeway is calculated to give us a comfortable margin of error should anything unexpected crop up. If we move to a tougher area, we’ll have our hands full with the monsters, meaning that margin evaporates and we won’t be ready for a worst-case scenario. So my answer is no. Besides, we’re already heading farther east as we go from ruin to ruin. That’s as far as I’ll allow.”

Hearing Kurosawa’s firm response, wholly unlike Akira’s indifferent one, Hikaru grimaced. But she didn’t give up just yet. “Shouldn’t Akira have the final say, as the team leader? I just talked to him, and he didn’t mind.”

“Well, that’s true. Can’t argue that he’s in charge.”

“Then—”

“But if he really insists on heading out there, I’m leaving the team. I wasn’t hired to fight—I was hired to command this team with safety in mind. So, regrettably, if I can’t do that, I have no reason to be here.”

Hikaru started to panic. If Kurosawa left the team, Akira might determine it was too dangerous to proceed after all and abandon the mission entirely.

“That said, while he might have told you he didn’t mind, maybe deep down he really is itching to go wild on some challenging monsters and just wants someone to talk him out of it. If so, perhaps I should do the honors? That is what I was hired for, after all.”

Hikaru’s face went taut. This was the exact opposite of what she wanted, and Kurosawa knew it. He was implicitly threatening her that unless she dropped the proposal at once, he’d tell Akira exactly what she was trying to do. “No, no! There’s no need to go that far, I assure you. I’ll contact him myself and let him know you didn’t approve.”

“Very well,” Kurosawa said, his tone becoming businesslike again now that she’d backed down. “Then if that’s all, I’ll hang up. Thanks for your continued assistance.”

The call ended, and Hikaru sighed, looking slightly exhausted. Then a smile reappeared on her face. “Well, no helping that. He’s got years of experience under his belt as a hunter, so he’s no pushover like Akira when it comes to business.”

It wasn’t at all rare for up-and-coming hunters to be poor negotiators, especially those who were naturally gifted in combat. Since such people could get most of what they wanted by force, they didn’t find as many opportunities to develop the fine art of diplomacy. Even swindlers who tried to dupe them were wary of getting found out and killed, so such lowlifes wouldn’t put anything into an agreement that they couldn’t justify or make excuses for later. Thus, even cases like this almost never proved fatal for the hunters involved.

In short, hunters could live quite well with little to no negotiation skill—so long as they remained average.

But once someone had risked their life out in the wasteland long enough to become high-ranking, their business acumen was almost immediately put to the test. Cities, corporations, and other hard-to-intimidate organizations now approached them with offers, represented by expert negotiators. Any hunter whose business smarts weren’t up to snuff would get played like a fiddle.

In a way, this was what Hikaru was doing to Akira now. She was taking advantage of his inexperience to manipulate him however she saw fit. He benefited from her arrangements too, of course, but he hadn’t negotiated those benefits for himself, and whatever Akira gained would just make her seem more trustworthy in his eyes. So she was still using him for her own gain.

Kurosawa, on the other hand, was a skilled negotiator who could comfortably deal with anyone, including the city. As his MO was to refrain from risky endeavors and play it safe, he was unpopular with hunters who preferred to take more risks out in the wasteland. In the process of avoiding these hunters’ ire while working with them, he’d necessarily become quite talented at hashing out agreements with them beforehand. As a result, his negotiating competence was above average even for a hunter of his experience.

“Maybe putting Akira and Kurosawa together wasn’t such a good move after all,” Hikaru reflected. “I was sure the two of them would cancel each other out.”

She had hoped that she could create an extremely successful team by bringing together Akira—a hunter crazy, reckless, and rash enough to be favored by Kibayashi—and Kurosawa, who was cautious and played things extremely safe. Even with Kurosawa’s discretion, Akira would probably take enough risks on his own to really achieve something impressive. Already, Akira had exceeded her expectations when he’d defeated the octopharos.

The team as a whole, however, had yet to impress her. Yes, the hunters were doing the job they had been hired for, and they were doing it well. But surely, with Akira leading them, they could accomplish more! She didn’t foresee them taking any huge risks with Kurosawa as commander, of course, but she hadn’t expected Akira to play it this safe.

“Or more precisely,” she told herself, “I hadn’t expected Akira to prioritize the safety of his teammates so heavily.” Knowing how reckless he could be, how many times he’d cheated death as a hunter and come back stronger each time, she’d assumed he would be numb to the prospect of danger by now and unconsciously hold everyone else to the same standard. She’d been expecting him to drag his team into reckless situations by sheer momentum. And yet he’d done the opposite—he was taking special care to make sure he didn’t force his teammates into anything over their heads by deferring to Kurosawa’s safety-first leadership and standing on the front lines all by himself, almost as if to shield the rest of the team from harm.

Of course, being considerate of one’s teammates was an admirable trait. But the way Hikaru saw it, Akira’s team was holding him back from reaching greater heights. “Maybe it was a mistake to treat him like your typical high-ranker and make him form a team after all,” she wondered aloud. “But does that mean I should just let him go it alone from now on? I dunno about that...”

His team was making great gains at the moment—perhaps she was being a little too greedy. But was that really the kind of attitude someone with ambitions like hers should take? Was this really the time to settle for less? She groaned as she mulled over how to proceed.

At that moment, Kibayashi approached her desk. “Hey there! How’s life as Akira’s handler treating you? Working out like you thought?”

“Yes, it’s going well. So well, in fact, that it’s almost disappointing. I thought it’d be more of a challenge.” Determining that Kibayashi had come over to find out how she was doing with the job—and quite possibly gloat at her incompetence—she faked a relaxed smile as she replied.

“No kidding? Glad to hear it! I know he can be a real handful sometimes, so I was just coming over to offer my help in case he was giving you trouble.”

“You don’t need to worry,” she said. “I’m doing just fine on my own. Oh, also, I know it’s a bit late for this, but I’d just like to say that even though Section Chief Inabe made the call, I’m sorry about stealing a hunter of yours from under your nose.” As Kibayashi was her boss, she made sure to stress Inabe’s role so as to forestall any complaints. She was so pleased with her clever maneuver that her smile turned a little more smug than she’d intended.

From one point of view, this was insubordination—but for Hikaru, it was just a bit of sweet revenge.

Having been hired into the General Administration Department at such a young age, Hikaru was considered by her peers to be an exceptionally talented prodigy with a promising future, and she also believed herself to be such. She was confident she could live up to everyone’s expectations and beyond. But Kibayashi didn’t recognize her potential—he’d never told her as much directly, but it was clear from the way he treated her.

And Kibayashi wielded great influence within the city, thanks to his connections with the top hunters he’d cultivated by providing ridiculously risky jobs to. He did stay in touch with them from time to time to maintain those relationships (and to reap their benefits), but Kibayashi was a busy man, and he spent most of whatever free time he had looking for new challengers. So he didn’t always have time to deal with those who’d already beaten his game and would usually foist the ones he’d lost interest in on his subordinates in the General Administration Department. If selected, these employees would gain a valuable link to a high-ranking hunter, which, used wisely, would help them turn quite the profit. What’s more, as hunters Kibayashi had grown bored with, they were no longer as crazy, reckless, and rash as they had once been and were therefore comparatively easier to handle. Thus, his subordinates were often champing at the bit for him to pass them the hunters he’d written off.

Hikaru was no exception—she was fully capable of performing such important work, and everyone knew it. So she’d assumed she would be a shoo-in. But Kibayashi had just brushed her request off, as though the idea was absolutely preposterous. And she’d been stewing over it ever since.

So when Inabe had appointed her to be Akira’s handler, she’d been ecstatic. Inabe had gone over her superior’s head to offer her such a position directly! Then she really was as outstanding as she thought! It was Kibayashi who was in the wrong for not recognizing talent when he saw it! Feeling vindicated, her mood had drastically improved, and now that Kibayashi was here in front of her, she couldn’t help but let a hint of her self-satisfaction leak out in her smile.

Naturally, Kibayashi read her like an open book—and her attitude only put him in even greater spirits. “Oh, don’t worry about it. I’ve been really busy as of late, so the timing was perfect. But are you sure? Akira’s so tough to handle, yet you’re not having any trouble at all? Gotta say, that’s pretty impressive. No wonder Inabe requested you specifically for the job!”

“Th-Thanks...” This was not quite the reaction she had been expecting at all, and she was a little taken aback.

Kibayashi pretended not to notice and proceeded to casually explain why he’d been so busy recently. Now that Inabe was in charge of Tsubakihara, Udajima was losing their power struggle. Though Udajima wanted to make it as difficult as possible for Inabe to proceed with his work, perhaps even stage a comeback, such was impossible because Tsubakihara was under Yanagisawa’s jurisdiction. Getting in Yanagisawa’s way was a short path to destruction.

Therefore, Udajima had to take another approach. But any viable option would have to yield something greater than the relics from Tsubaki’s district, and at present Kugamayama offered him no means to do so. Normally, this would have meant checkmate, but Udajima was stubborn and had taken yet another risky gamble—he was now focusing entirely on conquering Zone 2 of the Kuzusuhara depths.

Generally, the deeper one went into Kuzusuhara, the better the relics they’d find. If Udajima cleared out Zone 2, then once the city highway was extended that far, there was a chance the region could turn up relics in greater numbers and of higher quality than the city’s deal with Tsubaki had produced. Such an outcome would reduce Inabe’s influence since he was in charge of handling Tsubaki’s relics. Moreover, since Yanagisawa was also working feverishly to extend the highway, his interests currently aligned with Udajima’s. If they reached an agreement to collaborate, Udajima could expect a kickback from Yanagisawa for his efforts in Zone 2 as well—and because he was technically working on Yanagisawa’s project, Udajima wouldn’t have to worry about Inabe interfering and thwarting his plan. And on the off chance that Udajima’s activity in Zone 2 stirred up trouble—like a stampede of Zone 2 monsters suddenly appearing in Zone 1, for instance—the incident might even nullify Tsubaki’s agreement with the city, lowering Inabe’s authority that much more.

It was a plan with a lot of hypotheticals, and there was no guarantee any of it would turn out as Udajima hoped. Still, he’d judged this was better than doing nothing and letting himself get chased out of the city. He would cling to any strand of hope available.

But for this to work, he’d need capable hunters to conquer Zone 2 for him. And if the monsters in Zone 2 were tough enough to repel a legion of mechs, regular Kugamayama contractors wouldn’t cut it. He needed people who worked much farther east and who were used to fighting much tougher opponents. Fortunately, it was almost time for one of the periodic mass distributions. Seeing his opportunity, Udajima had exercised his authority as a Kugamayama executive to summon a number of such hunters.

Kibayashi had no interest whatsoever in Udajima and Inabe’s feud. But as part of the initiative to conquer Zone 2 that Yanagisawa was pushing, Kibayashi had been tapped to invite the high-ranking hunters he knew to Kugamayama. Coming up with ways to convince them to come and then reaching out to them had kept him quite busy.

Kugamayama was positioned in the very center of the vast region known as the East. The ruins surrounding it were all close to the city, compared to those found near other cities, and the hunters working there ranged anywhere from complete novices to rank 40 powerhouses. Once one reached rank 50, however, it was time to think about heading farther east. When the local spoils were no longer satisfactory, it generally indicated that a hunter had entered the big leagues. For this reason, Kugamayama City was seen as a kind of fast track to success for many hunters, and quite a few came there from all over the East, hoping to ascend the ranks.

But for those who’d long ago passed that benchmark, nothing in Kugamayama City presented enough of a challenge or reward to bring them back. After all, Kugamayama was just the product of one of many mid-sized governing corporations in the East. The only thing that would even have a chance of swaying them would be the Kuzusuhara depths—and even then, it would be a slim chance.

Even so, Kibayashi had tried. He’d told them that even though they didn’t yet know whether Zone 2’s relics would be worth the trip, hunters could still make plenty of money from eliminating the monsters there. Kugamayama City had forged an agreement with an Old World entity, Tsubaki, so they were guaranteed to get paid. And Kugamayama was already in the process of building a maintenance bay near the ruin so that hunters could bring their tanks and mechs along without worry. And as a result of his efforts, he’d successfully convinced several teams of hunters to make the journey back.

But his job wasn’t done. Now that he’d invited them, he had to figure out how to bring them back. The best way to travel long distances in the East was to use the intercity transports, but these were extremely pricey, especially the farther east they were contracted to travel. What was more, hunters who had conquered Kibayashi’s dangerous jobs often formed the main fighting force of their units, so he couldn’t bring them without the rest of their team, or he’d be depriving the latter of most of their strength. This made conveying them all, along with their gear and tanks and mechs, even more expensive. Regardless of how greatly the hunters’ contributions would benefit Kugamayama in the end, the city was naturally not prepared to pay such a sum, meaning Kibayashi had to compromise there as well.

“So then I thought of putting these hunters on security detail on the intercity transports, then letting their teammates ride for free in lieu of a monetary reward, but well, guys like these aren’t gonna go for that, right?” he went on, as if he were casually venting to a friend at the office. “And even if I got them to agree, I’d be taking away the jobs of the security firms the transport companies typically hire, which would open up a whole other can of worms. Man, this sure is tricky!”

“S-Sounds like it,” Hikaru said. “Well, good luck—seems like you’ll need it.” She was surprised that Kibayashi had unloaded so much on her all of a sudden, but she’d listened intently to everything he’d said. She was also a little concerned about why he seemed to be in such a good mood despite all the headaches he had just mentioned, but she ultimately dismissed her worries and decided to use this encounter as a learning opportunity, putting herself in his shoes and coming up with ways she would solve his problems.

“Yeah, no kidding. Honestly, this sure is exhausting, because if that plan’s not gonna work, I’ll have to call in the usual transport security teams. But even if I hire the bare minimum of staff, that’s still more people than before, and I need to make sure everyone has rooms to stay in...” He sighed dramatically and then, as though snapping back to his senses, moved to wrap up the conversation. “Uh-oh, looks like I’ve been yapping for way longer than I thought. Sorry for taking up your time with all this.”

“It’s fine, I found it all very helpful to know.”

“That so? Glad to hear. Good luck with Akira, and like I said, if you ever feel like you need help, just let me know anytime. Later!” He turned and walked away, without ever letting on that he’d been paying careful attention to her reactions.

As Hikaru watched his retreating back, puzzled, Kibayashi wore a grin she couldn’t see.

With her boss gone, Hikaru went back to thinking about her plans for Akira. Something she’d heard from her superior had sparked an idea in her head.

“Oh! Right, that could work! Wait, could it?” She analyzed the idea in her head for a while to make sure, evaluating its effectiveness and plausibility.

Then she grinned.

“Yeah, this’ll definitely work! Hikaru, your genius just astounds me sometimes! All right, time to get started!”

More fired up than ever, Hikaru got to work on her new plan, completely convinced she’d come up with it all on her own. She didn’t worry too much that she was basing her plan on information that Kibayashi had suddenly provided unprompted. He’d probably just been careless.

◆

While relaxing at home in his bath, Akira received a call from Hikaru. His terminal was in his bedroom, but he answered the call through Alpha without getting out of the tub.

“Hey, Akira! I’ve got something I want to talk to you about. Actually, it’s more like a request.”

As before, Hikaru wanted Akira to participate in the guarding of the intercity transports—but this time, she proposed he do so alone. Like Kibayashi had mentioned, the transport companies usually wanted at least a team of hunters for such jobs. But there was also no rule stating only teams could sign up. Akira had survived everything that had happened during the nationalist extermination initiative—the companies would probably acknowledge his qualifications to undertake the job on his own. So Hikaru had first called him to let him know what this plan would entail.

Akira sounded a little leery. “I guess that’d be fine, but what’ll happen to the rest of my team?”

“While you’re away, either we can postpone the monster culling until you get back or they can just finish up without you. We’re almost done already anyway.”

“So in other words,” Akira clarified, “it’s not that the culling job’s over and you’re putting me on a new one, it’s that you’re prioritizing this job over the old one. Which means if I turn this job down, the culling mission will continue as scheduled, right?”

Had Akira been working solo, he wouldn’t have minded the sudden change of plans at all. But he was part of a team right now—a team that included Elena and Sara. Worried that a change in schedule would inconvenience them, he wasn’t exactly gung ho about the idea.

Sensing as much, Hikaru tried to smooth things over. “Well, as I said, your current mission’s almost finished as it is, so I don’t think there’s any need to worry about your team. I can have them switch over to less difficult ruins, and with someone like Kurosawa as their commander, they’re in good hands.”

“Hmm. Yeah, that’s true. Maybe they’ll be fine after all.”

“Right? Also, Inabe left you in my capable care, remember? Guarding the transports will really help raise your hunter rank, so I’d strongly encourage you to consider it.”

None of this was a lie, strictly speaking. Inabe had appointed Hikaru as Akira’s handler, and guarding the intercity transports would significantly boost his rank. But those two facts weren’t related at all, despite Hikaru implying that they were. And because Akira knew Inabe was helping him raise his rank, he automatically connected the two in his mind, thinking that Hikaru’s plan to put him on transport security had actually come from Inabe.

“All right, I’m on board.”

“That’s the spirit! All right, we’ll plan accordingly going forward.” Hikaru felt elated that everything had worked out exactly as she’d intended. “Oh, and by the way,” she added casually, “if any other troublesome negotiations have popped up in your life since we last talked, just let me know. I’ll take care of ’em all without breaking a sweat, just like before!”

“I mean, even I can’t get into more trouble that quickly,” Akira quipped.

“Really? Well, I certainly hope you’re not holding back on my account.”

“Nah, not at all. If I absolutely had to pick something, though, remodeling my bathroom has been on my mind for quite a while.” After tasting that most luxurious of baths at Sheryl’s base, he was no longer satisfied with his and had wanted to remodel it for some time now. And unlike before the nationalist incident, he now had the extra budget to afford it.

So he’d called a company to see about remodeling.

Upon hearing exactly what kind of bathroom he had in mind, however, the sales rep had recommended that he just think about moving to a new house instead. They couldn’t merely alter his bath the way he wanted—they would need to build a brand-new bathroom from scratch. Moreover, they’d claimed, his current home was meant more for hunters around rank 30, and now that Akira was rank 50, his living quarters ought to reflect this. If a high-ranking hunter like him was unsatisfied with the facilities his current home provided, he would be better off planning to move to much nicer lodgings than spending more money to improve what he already had.

Now Akira was torn. “I mean, I see their point,” he told Hikaru. “But besides my bath, everything else in the house still suits me just fine, and I feel like moving would be a huge pain. So I’m not really sure what to do, to be honest.”

“Simply do what they recommended,” she told him. “I completely agree with the bath company’s opinion here. You’re an amazingly talented hunter, and you definitely have the money, so you ought to treat yourself and get the home you deserve. Think about it: Wouldn’t this be a prime opportunity to upgrade everything in your house, rather than just the bath?”

“Hmm. I dunno...”

Realizing Akira still wasn’t exactly on board with the idea, Hikaru immediately backpedaled. “Well, that said, it’s your house and you’re the one paying for it, so what ultimately matters most is how you feel. Choose whichever option seems right to you, and if you’d like, I can negotiate on your behalf to get you what you want.”

“Are you really fine with that?”

“Of course! Just say the word, and you’ll have that nice bathroom you want in no time. Oh, and since it’ll probably be noisy inside the house while the room’s being built, how about I also schedule the construction to take place while you’re away on the intercity transport mission? Then when you get back home, you’ll already have a brand-new luxury bathroom waiting for you! Wouldn’t that be exciting?”

“Wow! That sounds awesome! All right, let’s do it!”

“I’m on it! I’ll make those arrangements at the same time as the ones for the intercity transport job, and we’ll be all set!”

After Hikaru had hung up, Akira idly looked around his bathroom. Now that he knew a new one would be taking its place soon, its current structure seemed shabbier than ever. “Can’t believe I once thought this was the height of luxury,” he mused. “Guess I really have come to appreciate the finer things, huh? I’m already getting excited just imagining my new setup.” He grinned widely.

If it’s just the appearance you’re looking forward to, I can do that for you right now, you know, commented Alpha, who was in the bath with him as per usual. Almost immediately, his current bathroom, viewed through his augmented vision, transformed into the model he’d requested from the sales representative, right down to his exact specifications.

“Wow, now that’s pretty convenient. And yeah, if I only cared about the appearance, I’d probably say this was good enough. But changing my surroundings won’t do diddly-squat for the actual water,” he said, scooping up a cupful with his hands.

Alpha gave him a mischievous grin. Oh, that’s right—the sensation of touch is super important to you, isn’t it? Silly me, I should’ve known.

“Well, yeah. I mean, after experiencing how the water in Sheryl’s bath felt, this stuff just seems...”

Belatedly realizing what Alpha was alluding to, Akira trailed off mid-sentence. Despite being just an image in his vision, Alpha’s naked body was close enough now that he could have reached out and touched her had she been real. What’s more, thanks to the technologically advanced artificial hands he’d worn while in the hospital, he had—just once—been able to experience for himself how her body felt. Alpha smiled at him teasingly, wholeheartedly enjoying his reaction.

◆

Having received Akira’s permission to send him on the intercity transport security gig, Hikaru immediately set about arranging everything, including the negotiations with the transport company. Just as she had guessed, the company had no complaints about Akira working solo, but they did have another concern: Akira was not yet authorized to enter Kugamayama’s middle district—in other words, to pass within the city walls. The security measures for the city’s transports were just as strict as those in the city’s middle district, and the company couldn’t in good faith allow a hunter without such clearance to work security on one of its transports. If Akira ventured there at present, he’d be considered a trespasser.

So the transport company’s only stipulation was that he obtain the necessary clearance first. Hikaru assured them this wouldn’t be a problem and finalized the agreement.

Now she just needed to submit the request for authorization to enter the middle district. As he was a high-ranking hunter with connections to an important city executive, this seemed to her a mere formality.

But much to her surprise, her request was denied.

Apparently, sending the request on Akira’s behalf as his representative wasn’t enough. Nor was any reason given for the rejection. So she tried again, this time adding a personal recommendation from herself. But once more, it was denied.

This time, a reason for the rejection was provided, brief and vague: “Security concerns.”

Now Hikaru was starting to panic. Even if she sent a third request and it happened to go through, Akira wouldn’t receive permission immediately. The paperwork would take at least a day—perhaps even a week—to process, which might be too late for him to work the transport job. And without him, there would be a gaping hole in the intercity convoy’s defenses—defenses that were supposed to be as rock-solid as the city walls. Failing here would leave a black mark on her record that simply couldn’t be overlooked. And that wasn’t all: Akira was also already hard at work preparing for this task because she’d given him the okay. After all the confidence she’d shown, she could hardly call him back and tell him there’d been a change in plans and he couldn’t go after all—Akira’s faith in her would undoubtedly take a nosedive.

I gave him my personal recommendation, and they still rejected him?! I’m from the city’s General Administration Department, for crying out loud! If that’s not good enough, I dunno what is, but I have to do something! I guess I could call up the defense force and ask them precisely why my request was denied, then negotiate to get my way? No, there’s not enough time for that!

At any rate, one thing was obvious to her: if her recommendation didn’t suffice, then someone else had to be interfering behind the scenes. And when she calculated the amount of time she would most likely require to untangle that mess, even her tightest estimate ended up well after Akira’s job was scheduled to begin.

Hikaru furrowed her brow, deep in thought. Eventually, she came to a decision. “Well, I didn’t want to have to force my way through, but I don’t really have much choice at this point.”

The defense force was in charge of granting any clearances to the inner city that lasted a year or longer. But the General Administration Department had the authority to grant temporary clearance for a brief time, like several days or a couple of weeks. In other words, Hikaru herself could grant Akira temporary permission. However, just because she could didn’t mean she should—granting permission to someone the defense force hadn’t cleared might be seriously frowned upon. She might even wind up accused of abusing her authority, going behind the defense force’s back and compromising the security of the middle district.

Still, she decided to do so anyway. Even at the risk of the defense force criticizing her actions, after weighing the consequences, she judged that would be better than having to scrap all of her plans. So she filled out the necessary documents with haste.

“All right, that ought to do it,” she murmured. “Maybe including Inabe’s name as well was a little overkill, but now there’s no way the defense force will complain.” The way she’d filled out the papers gave the impression that she hadn’t wanted to resort to this, but a city executive had ordered her to, leaving her with no choice. By mentioning Inabe, she hoped to make it look like she wasn’t to blame, that she had simply been doing as she’d been told.

Upon submission, her document was also automatically sent to the defense force. While she attended to her other daily professional tasks, she waited to see if anyone would respond. This was just temporary clearance for the sake of completing a job, she told herself—it wasn’t like she was granting him permanent permission, and she’d made sure to clarify as much in the document. Surely they’d allow this—or at least any rejection would have to come straight from the defense force itself. When the workday ended and she’d received no reply, she decided it was safe to assume the paperwork had gone through, and she finally relaxed.

Because Hikaru had used Inabe’s name, the city executive was among those notified of her submission. And after mulling it over for a while, he decided to wait and see what would happen before making any moves.

Chapter 199: Hikaru’s Blunder

The day of the intercity transport security mission arrived. Once Akira was all set to leave, he headed to the Kugama Building’s first-floor lobby and waited for Hikaru to show up.

For this job, he’d purchased two more modded LEO multifunction guns, bringing his total number of LEOs up to four, and he already had the AF laser cannon. All five weapons were stored in a case at his feet. As he would shortly be entering the middle district of the city, inside the walls, he could wear his powered suit, but he couldn’t have his weapons out in the open—or more accurately, he hadn’t been authorized to do so.

As always, the lobby was crawling with hunters. But this time, their eyes weren’t glued to Akira. A number of other incredibly skilled hunter teams from farther east were currently visiting Kugamayama to conquer Kuzusuhara Zone 2, so the sight of a high-ranking hunter like Akira wasn’t that unusual by comparison.

Akira found himself a little disappointed but felt more relief than anything else. Guess those teams of top-tier hunters I heard were coming really did show up, then.

Looks that way, Alpha said, floating next to him with her usual smile. We’re in the distribution period now, so they probably arrived on the intercity transports you’re going to be guarding soon. Look over there!

Alpha glanced off to the side, and Akira’s gaze followed. He saw a hunter wearing a jacket so designed that it didn’t seem possible to zip the front closed, over a powered suit that looked more like a swimsuit.

Judging from how racy that looks, it must be an Old World-inspired outfit, concluded Akira. So that’s one of those hunters from way out East?

That’s right. And the outfit’s probably not just Old World “inspired”—it’s actually from the Old World.

A real Old World suit? Well, if they can afford gear like that, they’ve gotta be pretty skilled. And a bunch of them are here right now, huh? No wonder I don’t stand out anymore. After the nationalist incident, Akira had, in a sense, been Kugamayama’s top hunter, though only for a short time. But now the bar had been raised to a much higher level—now he was just another high-ranking hunter.

I’ve got to climb even farther, Akira thought, having recognized the vastness of the East anew.

Just then, Hikaru showed up, right on time. “You’re already here, I see. Excellent! Right this way.”

Akira followed her through the corridor leading to the middle district.

As they walked, Hikaru commented, “Did you see those racy outfits? Those hunters must work pretty far east, no?”

“Probably,” Akira agreed. “And while some hunters just wear Old World gear to make themselves look more dangerous than they are, that one back there sure seemed like the real deal to me, at least.”

The ridiculously powerful Old World gear worn in the far East came with equally ridiculous designs. To someone who knew nothing about hunters, fighting in such outfits would look about as foolish as rushing headlong into an extremely dangerous monster hive armed with only swimwear and water guns. Yet Old World gear made such seemingly impossible scenarios possible and would even keep the user safe while doing so.

Alternatively, some high-ranking hunters chose to use New World gear modeled on Old World technology, which provided similar levels of safety and functionality. However, there were also those who wore cheap knockoffs that only resembled Old World gear in appearance. These people were often mocked and looked down upon by other hunters because their bluff worked only on humans and not monsters—though it did in fact work on monsters intelligent enough to recognize an opponent’s strength from visual information, of which there were quite a few.

As experienced as Akira was now, he, too, could distinguish fake Old World gear from the real deal. “Hikaru,” he asked, “have all of those superpowerful hunters reached the city already?”

“Yes, and their arrival will undoubtedly accelerate our conquest of the Kuzusuhara depths. Of course, that means more hunters will be running around the city in outfits like those, which might cause problems in and of itself,” she added with a small smile. “You know, maybe once you’re able to afford gear like that, you’ll look the same too.”

“Nah, I’d rather not if I can help it,” he said, grinning at her joke. “Though I definitely wouldn’t mind a set of Old World gear that looked more normal.”

“What if it was a really powerful, really cheap set?” She smirked. “Would you wear it then?”

He paused for a moment. “D-Depends on how powerful.”

“Heh, I knew it. To you hunters, power is everything.” She looked amused.

Akira smiled sheepishly. Indeed, from swimsuits to maid uniforms to bunny suits, a hunter had every reason to wear something that would allow them to stay safe and kick powerful monsters to the curb. Between looking normal and keeping yourself alive, the choice was obvious. And those who couldn’t make that choice had no business out in the wasteland because they weren’t going to survive.

As they chatted, Akira and Hikaru passed through the border checkpoint between the lower and middle districts. Akira noted that the guards here were armed far more heavily than the security in the lower district. After they had proceeded down the corridor a while longer, Hikaru stepped in front of Akira and grinned proudly.

“Here we are, Akira! Welcome to Kugamayama City’s middle district!”

The scenery that lay inside the city walls spread out before Akira’s eyes. The enormous wall was a barrier that carved out two different worlds in terms of public safety, economics, and discipline. Akira couldn’t even count the number of times he’d stared up at the imposing structure, wondering what could possibly lie on the other side—and now, he’d made it here at last.

They headed to the intercity transport station in a vehicle she had arranged for. The car made its way automatically to its destination, with no driver in the front seat. As he rode, Akira gazed out the window in fascination.

Hikaru, sitting opposite him, looked somewhat dissatisfied with his reaction. Compared to the city outside, the middle district’s landscape was elegant and pristine, as though everything had been carefully calculated to be uniform. Most hunters from the outside who laid eyes on this scenery for the first time looked astonished, surprised, taken aback, or incredibly tense—all appropriate reactions for hunters who’d finally been permitted to set foot in a place they’d always been denied. Hikaru had been hoping for a similar reaction from Akira—she wanted him to recognize just how amazing the district she lived in truly was.

But his reaction didn’t meet her expectations. He wasn’t completely unfazed, of course, but rather than visible shock or surprise, his expression seemed to say something like “Now that’s something you don’t see every day.”

And this just wasn’t good enough for Hikaru.

“I really thought you’d be more shocked,” she said with a hint of a pout in her smile. “Perhaps the middle district isn’t quite as impressive as you imagined?”

“Wh-What? Nothing could be further from the truth,” he replied. “No, this really is worlds apart from the city I’m used to, that’s for sure. And I’ve definitely never seen a self-driving car outside the walls.”

“Oh yeah?”

She still found this an insufficient reaction. Determined to make him realize just how amazing the middle district was compared to the lower one, she racked her brain for something that might impress him.

“Look,” she said casually, “it isn’t just the scenery that’s so different here, you know. Listen to this! In the middle district, you can’t just kill people out in the street. Murderers here are immediately apprehended, interrogated about their motives, put on trial, and thrown in prison for as long as their sentence dictates! Isn’t that awesome?!”

“Wow, no kidding?! Gotta say, that is really different from the city outside!”

Now Hikaru was a little taken aback—if anything, this felt like an overreaction to her. But she could tell he wasn’t just trying to match her enthusiasm—he was being genuine. And such a reaction did meet her expectations, at least, so she decided she was satisfied for now.

Still, to think that was what impressed him, of all things—sounds like the state of law and order outside the walls is even worse than I thought. Believing that such must be the reason for Akira’s surprise, she found herself even more thankful that she lived in such a wonderfully safe district.

The intercity transport station inside the walls was designed more like a ship port, largely because the transports were the size of cargo ships. Around them swarmed other large vehicles, carrying the cargo to be loaded on board. The tires on these loading vehicles alone were even taller than Akira, and the transports themselves dwarfed the loading vehicles. Upon arriving at the station, Akira stared, absolutely astounded to see the massive transports parked there, so enormous that they messed with his sense of perspective.

“Damn, that’s huge!” he exclaimed, looking up at one. “I didn’t even know they made transports this big!”

Hikaru grinned smugly. “Well, they’re intercity transports, after all. And this particular one, the Gigantas III, is specifically designed to make long trips across the wasteland, such as from Kugamayama to Zegelt, so it’s especially large.”

“Yeah? Now I understand why hunters are hired to clear this thing’s route beforehand. Something this massive making its way across the wasteland is gonna draw every monster in the vicinity.”

“Exactly. Now, shall we head in?”

Akira and Hikaru ascended the ramp into the Gigantas III, then headed to Akira’s assigned room. It was a much larger space than Akira himself needed, and it even came furnished with its own bath. There were no windows, but a holographic display on the wall showing the scenery outside allowed him to enjoy the view regardless. As one might expect from the inside of a transport that was as secure as the walled city outside, the Gigantas III’s passengers mostly consisted of wealthy city residents. Its rooms weren’t quite expensive bedroom suites, but they were at least luxurious enough to keep such clientele mostly satisfied.

As Akira scanned the room in wonder, Hikaru grinned, amused by his enthusiasm. “All right, now that you’ve got your new quarters, I’ll be heading back. If you need anything on the trip, don’t hesitate to let me know. I’m limited in what I can do from here in Kugamayama, of course, but I’ll support you the best I possibly can. And above all, good luck! I’m expecting great things from you.”

“Thanks,” he grinned. “Don’t worry—you gave me this opportunity, so I’m not gonna waste it.”

After Hikaru had left, looking satisfied, Akira walked around the room again, marveling at everything until he reached one room in particular. “Whoa, the bathroom’s pretty awesome too!”

Alpha replied, And a bathroom that could give this one a run for its money is getting installed in your house as we speak. So now you have an idea of what to expect when you get home!

Oh, right! Yeah, I can’t wait! His face lit up even more.

As Hikaru walked away from the station in incredibly high spirits, she thought, Perfect. Everything’s working out just like I planned! But a moment later, her expression changed.

Kibayashi was calling her.

Huh? Kibayashi? And on a secret line, no less? What’s going on? Bewildered, she answered anyway, making sure not to let her voice be heard by any passersby. “Hello, Mr. Kibayashi. May I ask why you’re using a secret line? Is something up?”

“Oh, no, not particularly. I just wanted to talk about Akira with you for a bit.”

“About Akira? Things couldn’t be going better with him. In fact, I’ve landed him a job to guard the intercity transports during the mass distribution, and I just now got him all settled in his room on the Gigantas III. They’ll be leaving any minute, most likely. Of course, the journey from Kugamayama to Zegelt won’t exactly be smooth sailing, but since it’s Akira we’re talking about, I’m not worried. In fact, he’ll probably make even greater strides that way.”

Hikaru was certain that Kibayashi had called her in order to snoop around and check if she was managing his favorite hunter properly, so she spoke cheerfully and confidently in order to leave no openings for her boss to attack her.

But his response was something she’d never expected.

“Dammit! Sounds like I was too late, then. I really screwed up.” He sounded genuinely frustrated with himself.

“Wh-What do you mean by that?” she asked nervously, her smile vanishing.

“To be honest, this isn’t just your fault. It’s mine as well. I knew you had a tendency to be overconfident, y’see, and I thought that if I exploited that a little and nudged you into putting Akira on the intercity transport job, it might lead to something really exciting. But I messed up. I didn’t want this to happen.”

Hikaru hadn’t had an inkling that Kibayashi had baited her. Finally realizing why he had mentioned the intercity transports during their previous conversation, her first thought was one of regret for allowing herself to fall into his trap. But there were bigger issues at hand—if Akira boarding that transport really was a problem, she might be held responsible for it. Her whole plan might backfire on her. She couldn’t see how his presence there could possibly be a problem, but she had an uneasy feeling in her gut all the same.

“What do you mean by that, exactly?” she asked despite herself.

“First, take a look at this.” Kibayashi sent her a document over the secret line.

When she opened it up, she saw data pertaining to Akira, as well as extra notes from Kibayashi containing his opinion and speculation. She started to read, and almost immediately gasped when she saw what was written there: according to the findings of Kugamayama’s Investigation Bureau, Akira was estimated to have killed anywhere from around two hundred to one thousand people.

By her standards, the boy was a demon.

I-Is this number really accurate? she wondered, her face taut. A thousand?! What does that mean? She also couldn’t ignore the uncertainty: the Investigation Bureau had an error margin of eight hundred kills—and they thought one thousand was a reasonable body count where Akira was concerned!

Now she thought back on her conversation with him and how surprised he’d been to hear that murderers in the middle district were immediately apprehended. If he’d really killed that many outside the walls, his reaction made sense, she realized with a shiver.

Still, she managed to stay calm. It’s okay, Hikaru. Crime outside the walls is just that hopeless. All things considered, it’s nothing to get too surprised over. Akira was originally from the slums, after all, and even now as a hunter, he had ties to a slum gang. Naturally, he’d had to kill in order to survive. There was no need for serious concern, she told herself, and read on.

And then she gasped again.

Among the individuals Akira had killed, it said, were three members of the city’s Investigation Bureau.

Huh?! Y-You’ve gotta be kidding me! You’ve even killed city officials, Akira?!

The only official data from the bureau was that he’d killed three of their members. But the results of Kibayashi’s own investigation into the matter followed, clarifying that the three of them had been ordered by Udajima to assassinate the Sheryl Family’s boss and that Akira had killed them before they could kill Sheryl.

As she read, Hikaru blanched. However many Akira had killed, she’d never dreamed he would attack genuine representatives of the city. That unconscious assumption of hers was now shattered. Wait... Then the plan for “something really exciting” Kibayashi mentioned just now was to invite such a dangerous individual onto one of the intercity transports?! And to make me do it instead of dirtying his own hands?!

She felt anger flare up within her—even more so since he’d actually carried out his plan. But then she stopped herself: What else had he said? “I messed up. I didn’t want this to happen.”

In other words, somehow the situation had managed to take a turn for the worse. At that, she forgot her anger and, with a knot of dread in the pit of her stomach, continued reading.

She gasped for the third time. There, before her eyes, was the most shocking news of all—Akira was conspiring with Inabe to kill Udajima.

What the hell?!

There was no concrete evidence of this; it was just speculation on Kibayashi’s part. But the more she read his reasoning, the more plausible it seemed. After all, Akira was ruthless toward his enemies. He’d killed members of both gangs who’d antagonized him during the war in the slums and had even targeted the pilots of their mechs. He’d killed the bureau investigators who’d tried to eliminate the boss of the gang he was supporting. And yet somehow, even though Druncam had tried to kill him during the nationalist incident, he’d formed a peace treaty with them instead.

Why make an exception for them? Kibayashi guessed there was someone else higher up on Akira’s kill list. Who? Most likely the person who’d sicced Druncam on him, Udajima. Then what would be the optimal way for him to kill the executive? To cooperate with Inabe and raise his hunter rank, of course. Faced with enough pressure from both Inabe and a high-ranking hunter, Udajima would have his standing stripped and be cast outside the city walls, where Akira would kill him.

Kibayashi’s voice entered her thoughts. “You probably don’t know this, Hikaru, but Akira was so disinterested in raising his hunter rank before that he got upset when he thought the city was forcing him to. Lately, though, he’s been fervently working to raise it. There must be some reason, and I’ve been investigating to find out.”

When the city covered a hunter’s ammo expenses for a job, the hunter received less of a monetary reward, but the city made the hunter’s rank easier to raise in exchange. And for both the Gigantas III job and the monster-culling mission, Akira had requested the city shoulder the burden of his ammo expenses. Everything fits, Hikaru thought with a shiver.

Then she gasped louder than she had yet. There, on the Gigantas III’s current passenger registry, was Udajima’s name.

“Udajima probably decided that going to Zegelt directly to ask the hunters there to help him would make them easier to convince,” Kibayashi told her. “After all, if a city executive went out of his way to invite them personally, they’d find it harder to turn him down.” Because of the monsters roaming the East, travel between cities was extremely harrowing. A hunter who felt that Udajima respected them enough to brave danger and travel all that way to see them would feel far more inclined to accept his invitation to clear Zone 2. “But that’s come back to bite him in the ass now, because Akira’s also a passenger on that transport. I’m sure you can imagine what might happen if they run into each other while on board.”

She certainly could.

“Well, that said,” added her boss, “it’d be pretty hard for him to assassinate a city bigwig regardless. Udajima’s got bodyguards with him, first off, and he probably won’t even leave his room while they’re traveling. Most likely, Akira won’t ever have the opportunity to kill him.”

That’s true, she thought, sighing in relief.

Then Kibayashi continued, “But it’s Akira we’re talking about, remember? For some reason, that kid’s got a tendency to get wrapped up in huge commotions. I wouldn’t be surprised if something happens while they’re out there that gives him the opportunity somehow. So we can’t relax.”

Her face twisted in even more panic than before.

“So that’s the situation,” he concluded. “This was my fault, so as an apology, I’ve provided you with all of the information I’ve got. You’ll have to take care of the rest yourself. Sorry you’re in this mess, but, well, good luck.” He hung up.

Hikaru stood there for a moment, still as a statue. When she finally snapped back to her senses, she ran as fast as she could in the direction she’d come, back on board the transport. Reaching Akira’s room, she caught him in the very act of leaving.

Seeing her panting from running so hard, Akira wondered what was up. “Huh? Hikaru? I thought you said you were going home.”

“Akira,” she wheezed. “Wh-Where are you heading off to?”

“Uh... Well, I’m kinda hungry, so I was thinking I’d go check out the cafeteria.”

“A-Actually, how about staying in here for a little while longer?” With all her strength, she pushed him back into the room.

Akira was wearing a powered suit, so normally, Hikaru wouldn’t have been able to budge him an inch. But Akira sensed the desperation in her behavior, and he obediently yielded as she pushed him.

“So what’s up?” he asked, puzzled. “You know this transport’s about to leave, right? If you don’t get off soon, you’ll—”

“O-Oh, yeah, about that... I decided I’m going to come with you!”

“Wait, what?”

“I mean, think about it! Won’t it be easier for me to support you if I’m nearby? There’s only so much I can do remotely, after all.”

“Oh, that makes sense. Works for me, then.”

“Great! In that case, I’ll be sharing this room with you during the trip. And also, due to certain circumstances, I’m gonna have to ask you not to leave the room on your own if you can help it.”

Akira found the stiffness in her smile odd but didn’t think too much of it. “All right,” he replied.

“Thank you, Akira, truly! You’re a lifesaver.” She sighed deeply, relieved.

Akira gave her a suspicious look, but she wasn’t in the state of mind right now to worry about something that trivial.

All right! Now I’ve just gotta keep him reined in for the whole trip to make sure nothing bad happens! If Akira caused a scene, her own career advancement would be in jeopardy—especially if Akira harmed Udajima. In the worst case, she could be held responsible, and it’d be her head on the chopping block next! It’s all right, Hikaru. You can do this. This’ll be easy for a genius like you!

She had no choice but to succeed.

An announcement that the Gigantas III was now departing rang through the transport’s corridors. Then the massive vehicle began to lurch forward slowly. A section of Kugamayama’s city wall opened up, and the Gigantas III passed through. Once the vehicle was out in the wasteland, it picked up speed and headed toward its destination.

Even before its departure, there had already been signs of trouble on the horizon. But there was no going back now. Akira and Hikaru’s mission on the Gigantas III had begun.

Chapter 200: Eastward

The intercity transport Gigantas III proceeded through the wasteland, kicking up massive clouds of dust and debris as it steamrolled every obstacle in its path. Shards of collapsed buildings, roughly ten meters in length, and the remains of giant monsters were like pebbles compared to the ridiculously large vehicle. Nothing before it could block its progress.

Its frame was blanketed with force-field armor strong enough to repel weak cannon fire, and the mounted cannons on its roof could shoot down large flying monsters. The vehicle also had enough space to hold the entire population of a small town, along with every kind of facility needed to satisfy them all during their stay. In other words, the Gigantas III was more like a mobile fortress than a desert utility vehicle.

Akira was hanging out in his room, waiting for his security shift to begin. He glanced over idly at Hikaru. She was facing an empty corner, grinning amiably and moving her mouth without actually speaking out loud. Anyone who saw her without understanding the world’s technology probably would have thought she was out of her mind, but Akira understood that she was using an AR device to hold a conversation with someone who wasn’t present. Even so, he couldn’t help but find the sight bizarre.

Hey, Alpha. Is that how I look to others when I’m talking to you?

Only when it’s just the two of us, she said. Not while we’re in public, so don’t worry. Though I won’t deny people did look at you strangely at first, when you were still getting used to communicating with me, she added cheerfully.

So I did stand out back then, he said, suppressing a wry smile.

Just then, he received a call from someone identified only as the transport security team. When he answered it, Hikaru’s image appeared in his augmented vision. Startled, he looked over at the real Hikaru in the corner. She was casting a glance in his direction with a cheerful grin on her face.

“Looks like it connected just fine,” said the virtual Hikaru before him. “Okay, Akira, I’m going to be your operator for the duration of this commission. I’ll handle all communications with the security team on my end, so you don’t need to worry about any of that.”

There was no voice coming from the real Hikaru, who had her back turned to him again. And yet, he could hear her voice through his comms. Puzzled yet intrigued, he tried answering via the comms as well. “Got it. Oh, by the way, what do I look like on your end?”

“I can only hear your voice right now, but if you send me your visual data as well, I’ll be able to view it.”

“Um... How?”

“Your scanner should be able to generate an image of its user. I’m doing something similar with my own device right now, in fact.”

Can you do that, Alpha?

Let me try.

“All right, the image came through!” she said. “I can see you now. Say, while we’re at it, can you link your scanner to my device? That’ll make it easier for me to support you as your operator.”

Akira asked Alpha to do so.

Consider it done, she said, and Akira’s scanner became linked to Hikaru’s data terminal.

“Thanks a bunch!” Hikaru said happily. “You’re the best.”

With this, Hikaru would be able to keep tabs on where Akira was at all times, which would make it easier to restrain him. Or so she thought—in fact, the data she was receiving from Akira’s terminal had all been censored and modified by Alpha before it reached Hikaru. Therefore, she couldn’t truly monitor him, and Akira and Alpha’s brief conversation with each other just now had gone unheard by her.

“All right then, looks like it’s time to get down to business!” Hikaru said. “I just got word from the security team, and you’re almost up. Get ready!”

“Roger that.”

In order to access the outside, Akira had to leave his room and head through the transport fully armed. There was no avoiding this. Hikaru wanted to think she was just worrying for nothing, but there was a nonzero possibility he’d run into Udajima on the way. Despite her mounting anxiety, however, she managed to give him a proper smile, and he grinned back, oblivious.

He finished his preparations quickly. Two of his LEOs were at his hip, ready to draw, while he attached the other two onto his suit’s legs as backup. He also had his AF laser cannon, folded up on his back, as well as a support arm carrying a backpack stuffed with spare ammo and energy packs. He certainly looked the part of a high-ranking hunter.

And yet, seeing him all geared up like that didn’t reassure Hikaru at all. To her, Akira was a dangerous individual, an explosive that could go off at the slightest provocation. And she couldn’t help but think that supplying him with all this gear had just made him all the more deadly.

“All right, I’m gonna head out.”

“R-Roger. Good luck!” she said.

Akira left the room. Hikaru watched his back retreat down the hallway, when on the spur of the moment, she ran to catch up with him.

“O-On second thought, I ought to at least escort you out! Since I’m your operator and all!”

“Ooookay...” Was this really part of an operator’s job description? Akira doubted that a little, but Hikaru seemed so enthusiastic about it that he decided not to ask.

They made their way to the transport’s roof. Until they reached the roof hatch, she treated him like a dangerous individual she couldn’t take her eyes off of for a second, all while remaining as wary of her surroundings as if she’d entered a dangerous ruin.

Intercity transports were almost always designed solid and rectangular—force-field armor was more effective when it was mounted on simple shapes. Therefore, save for the cannons mounted there, the roof of the Gigantas III was flat like the top of a rectangular prism. Here there were no obstacles to intercept the wind, and because the transport was as tall as a multistory building and as fast as any other moving vehicle, the wind blowing across the roof was fierce. The average person would probably have been blown off before they could even get their footing.

But the wind posed no problem for Akira. Thanks to his powered suit, he had no trouble standing like usual, and none of the other hunters there were struggling either—such was expected of any hunter qualified to guard an intercity transport. In fact, it was such a trifling matter that it wasn’t even mentioned as one of the minimum requirements for the job.

Akira’s job here was to intercept any monsters that attacked the vehicle. But so far, he had yet to fire a single bullet. The Gigantas III’s security team was on the lookout for any dangerous creatures approaching and would let him know if any appeared, so Akira didn’t have to do his own scouting. And as he and his team had already culled many of the monsters that might have otherwise shown up along this route, there weren’t likely to be many attacks to begin with. Every now and then, a monster would shoot at them from afar, but this was nothing a few hunters couldn’t handle. In rare cases, one would draw close enough to ram the vehicle, though most failed and were run over by the vehicle’s massive tires instead, or would latch onto the hull only to be shot to death by the hunters.

Akira and the other hunters dotted the large roof sparsely, yet the small group could comfortably handle any threat that came their way. So Akira mostly stood on the edge of the roof, looking bored as he stared off into the horizon.

Man, there’s a lot of downtime, he commented.

That’s because we’re still not all that far from Kugamayama yet, explained Alpha, considering the total length of our route. It’s only natural nothing’s presenting a challenge yet.

Then I guess all that monster-culling we did paid off. Well, since we’re working security, it’s a good thing nothing’s happening, right?

If you’re bored, wanna do some studying?

Sure, except Hikaru might get mad at me for slacking off. She can see what I’m doing, can’t she?

Don’t worry. I modify the data that gets sent to her before she receives it, Alpha said cheerfully. I’ll just make it look to her like you’re standing there diligently in silence.

Akira gave a small smile. This meant he’d be using Alpha’s support to deceive others, but in a sense, that had been the case ever since he’d met Alpha. Well, I couldn’t have gotten this far without you augmenting my skills anyway, so no use feeling guilty about fooling people now.

Books and other teaching materials appeared in his augmented vision, and Alpha’s outfit became that of a schoolteacher. A teaching pointer appeared in her hand.

Seeing her getup, Akira recalled a previous time they’d studied together. Uh, Alpha, you’re not gonna strip this time too, are you?

Don’t tell me you’d rather me put on more clothes instead?

I don’t care! Just don’t strip again!

All right, all right, if you say so!

On the roof of the Gigantas III, Alpha began her class. Their session lasted all the way until Akira’s day shift ended and the night-shift hunters took over. When Akira climbed back into the transport, Hikaru was already waiting for him at the roof entrance.

“Good work out there today!” she said. As the two of them headed back to Akira’s room, she appeared to have calmed down considerably.

◆

After seeing Akira off, Hikaru had returned to their room. By the time she returned hours later to pick him up, she had calmed down considerably.

She’d spent her time alone in the room mentally reviewing her conversation with Kibayashi. This time, she picked up on a few details she’d been too frazzled to properly notice before: most notably, that his explanation was a mix of facts and speculation. She had to acknowledge the facts—she’d briefly double-checked what Kibayashi had told her just to make sure he was telling the truth—but the rest was pure conjecture. So there was still a chance his ideas were way off base—or that once again, he was trying to guide her thoughts in a certain direction.

Having seen the facts for myself, I have no choice but to admit that Akira’s more dangerous than I’d guessed. But planning to assassinate Udajima, a city bigwig? There’s no way he’d go that far. And even if he did, he could never pull it off here on this transport, of all places. Kibayashi must be overthinking things.

According to Kibayashi, Akira was planning first to strip Udajima of his standing, then to kill him. In other words, even Akira himself hesitated to charge right in and murder the man. Inabe’s influence within the city, great as it was, wouldn’t suffice to erase the crime of killing a city executive—an act on a completely different level from killing a few Investigation Bureau personnel. In short, Akira didn’t want to antagonize the city and so was holding back for now.

Besides, there was a good chance Akira didn’t even know Udajima was on board. Kibayashi’s fears were groundless, she concluded.

“And that means I’ve been worrying for nothing too. But I probably ought to prepare some countermeasures, just in case.” She took out her terminal and pulled up Akira’s Hunter Office profile page. Then she edited it to add Akira’s current commission—security detail on the Gigantas III—to his job history.

“There. That ought to do it,” she said aloud. If Kibayashi’s suspicions were correct, Udajima was probably also monitoring Akira’s whereabouts and activities. Now, he would know Akira was on board and could take appropriate measures to avoid him.

That took care of Udajima. All that remained was to watch Akira and make sure he didn’t get into a fight with any other hunters during this trip, and all would be well.

She finally allowed herself a deep sigh of relief.

Then she spent the rest of Akira’s shift catching up on her work remotely. Because she’d suddenly decided to accompany Akira and so was absent from the office, she’d had to move around some appointments on her schedule. That was a little annoying, but she finished quickly and managed to meet up with Akira right on time.

◆

After they retired to their room for the night, Akira and Hikaru ordered dinner via room service and enjoyed a private meal, just the two of them. Amused by the bliss on Akira’s face as he voraciously consumed the delectable fare of the upper class, Hikaru grinned.

“It sounds like today was smooth sailing for you, but keep in mind the real job starts tomorrow,” she said. “This is no longer the periphery of the East—from here on out, we’ll be in true eastern territory.”

“No worries, I’ll work hard.”

“I know you will.”

After their dinner, they each took a turn in the bath and then headed straight to bed. Their first day on the Gigantas III had been a little turbulent—at least for Hikaru—but had ended without incident.

◆

The next day, Akira returned to the roof of the transport to guard against monster attacks. The Gigantas III had been running all night without stopping and so was now much farther east than the previous day. They were still a long way from the Front Line, which served as the border separating the corporation-ruled part of the East from the Uncharted Zone, but the scenery around him already looked markedly different from the wasteland he was used to.

Hey Alpha, am I seeing things? Are those objects that resemble gigantic islands in the sky real?

Yes, they’re real. Or at the very least, they’re not images I’m projecting into your vision.

Then that means those skyscrapers stretching down from underneath the islands are also real. To think these have actually been here in the East all this time...

He stole a brief glance at Alpha. What he saw was only an illusion in his augmented vision, and yet he couldn’t think of her as anything but real. Yet these skyscrapers supporting islands in the sky were actually real, even though he’d doubted his own eyes when he saw them. Just seeing something didn’t guarantee it existed.

“Feels like I can’t even trust my own eyes anymore,” he muttered with a frown.

Some things in this world just aren’t as they appear, Alpha commented.

“That’s not what I mean at all.”

Just then, he received a call from Hikaru, her AR figure appearing before him—another thing he could see, yet wasn’t actually there.

“Akira, some monsters are heading your way,” she informed him. “A group of giant insects is approaching the transport ahead of you. The elite hunters up there, armed with cannons and the like, will take care of the bigger bugs, but a few of the smaller ones might still head your way, so stay sharp. The security team will keep you updated on the best position for intercepting them, so just follow their instructions.”

“On it!”

The Gigantas III had departed Kugamayama City alone but overnight had fallen in line with a fleet of other transports and was now traveling in a convoy. When heading straight for a pack of monsters, generally the lead vehicle was in the most danger, while the transports behind were safer the farther back they stayed. But the security team on the rearmost transport also had to intercept monsters approaching from behind, so the safest transport in the convoy was actually the second to last.

The more dangerous the monsters that hunters killed, the more money the latter would be paid. So hunters looking to earn a lot needed to put themselves in greater danger, and those tasked with dangerous jobs needed to be up to the task. That meant the team guarding the second-to-last transport in line typically had the least skilled hunters among those participating.

At present, this was the Gigantas III—Akira’s transport.

Well aware of the situation, Hikaru decided to prod him a little. “Say, Akira. Doesn’t it bother you that you weren’t placed higher up in the convoy line?”

“Not especially,” he answered. “I mean, even though I’m rank 50, that’s still pretty green compared to everyone else here, right?”

“I suppose that’s fair. But it seems to me less that they’re treating you like a novice and more that you’re working as a one-man team.”

Hunters were assigned to their respective transports based on their overall capability as a team. Therefore, it was more or less a given that a lone hunter who was a novice (in the transport security team’s eyes, at least) would be assigned to the safest transport.

“But I know you’re capable of so much more,” she continued. “You could cover any of these more dangerous transports—no fuss, no muss. So if you excel here and prove to them what you can really handle, they might switch you over to a transport where you can earn a higher paycheck! Let’s aim for that, shall we?”

Here was the biggest reason Hikaru had put Akira on this security job to begin with. She was hoping this arrangement would yield results that accurately reflected his real abilities. The monster-culling campaign needed a larger margin of safety since the team had to travel back to the city afterward, but here, Akira could always just take refuge in the transport when things were too dangerous. And as Akira was the only member on his team with the skill to take on this mission, he didn’t have to worry about covering for any less capable teammates—anyone from the monster-culling job who would normally have held him back was no longer here to do so.

To make her ambitions a reality, Hikaru had deliberately chosen the Gigantas III, which was scheduled to arrive at a vast settlement far to the east known as Zegelt City. She knew the area to the west of Zegelt was teeming with extraordinarily deadly monsters. By assigning Akira to this task, she could let him loose in the safest, most efficient, and most effective manner possible. Now she just had to wait for Akira to show what he could do, and the more she thought about it, the more her anticipation grew.

“I’m not asking you to bite off more than you can chew, of course,” she told him. “But if you feel undervalued and want to show them you’re capable of a lot more, then I say go ahead and show them!”

Sensing her high hopes for him, Akira grinned. “Are you giving me carte blanche to spend every single bit of the ammo you supplied me with? Considering how expensive it is, don’t blame me if this puts the city deep in the red.”

“As long as you bring results, go right ahead.”

“Hell yeah! I’m holding you to that, okay? Now just sit back and wait—I’ll show you what I can do!”

“I have no doubt about that,” Hikaru said cheerfully and vanished from his sight.

All right, Alpha, you heard her, he said. Full throttle.

Indeed, she replied with a smirk. It sounds to me like she’s expecting us to put the city way over budget. Let’s not disappoint her, shall we?

The cloud of massive insects was drawing nearer, flying toward them from up ahead. Akira could already see them with the naked eye. The security team had provided him with an overhead map of the region, on which he could see the creatures’ positions marked. After comparing the map with what he could see for himself, however, he looked puzzled.

“Are they really that far away still?” He focused his eyes on the monsters, and his scanner automatically zoomed in on one of them. Now he could see the distant enemy more clearly, but he just seemed to be looking at a normal insect under a magnifying glass.

Actually, Alpha explained, you’re having a hard time judging how far away they are because they’re so enormous. There’s nothing nearby in the sky that you can compare their size to. Here, let me add a frame of reference to make it easier.

As he continued watching with his vision zoomed in, an image of Alpha appeared beside the giant insect. Since he was familiar with how she looked, he was immediately able to tell how large the insect was in comparison—and he grimaced. Its head was only a tiny part of its gargantuan body—and Alpha was even smaller than one of its eyes.

The monster looked like a tiny insect that might land on one’s finger, but enlarged to the size of an island—and it was merely one of the vast throng headed his way.

“Those’re just way too huge... What the hell are those things?”

They’re giant bugs, and when they cluster together like this, they’re known as a swarm, for reasons that should be obvious at a glance.

And we’re actually going to fight them? How can we possibly win?

Don’t worry! Hikaru said we’ll only be dealing with the smaller ones, right? Look over there.

A cannon mounted on the roof of the transport swiveled in the direction of the approaching monsters. Massive vehicles like the intercity transports had to carry an astonishing amount of energy to function, and so its ordnance could fire off devastating shots. Light began to gather in the cannon’s muzzle, foreshadowing how powerful the blast would be once released. Nor was the cannon alone—an entire arsenal of similar weapons began lighting up.

Then, as one, they unleashed massive beams of energy so powerful they scorched the very sky.

The beams pierced right through the enormous insects, tearing holes in their resilient armor and incinerating the flesh inside. Despite the enhanced vitality of their island-sized bodies, pieces of the swarm began dropping to the ground like rocks, one after another. Yet because they were so large, it looked to Akira like they were falling in slow motion.

But the battle was far from over. As the large corpses continued their descent, countless smaller insects burst from them. Speeding toward the convoy, they each grew rapidly until the largest were around eighty meters tall.

The hunters on the roof of the tenth vehicle from the rear engaged them in combat. The roof of their transport was so wide that they had brought along tanks and mechs. Their gunfire and artillery annihilated many of the insects in an instant. Then the hunters—all high-rankers, all used to dealing with the monsters of the far East—joined in with powerful weapons that matched their ranks. Such weapons could have easily destroyed any of the bounty monsters around Kugamayama single-handedly, and they overwhelmed the giant bugs one after another.

Even so, the insects didn’t passively allow themselves to be shot down. They fought back with strange liquid projectiles that solidified upon contact with the air, at a rate of fire that rivaled even that of extended magazines. They also launched missiles and laser beams that their bodies naturally produced. The hunters intercepted these with their own bullets, shells, and lasers—truly a conflict worthy of the people who undertook it.

“Whoa,” Akira murmured, astonished at the sight. “So that’s what battles farther east look like. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but it really is like a different world out here, isn’t it?”

You’re more correct than you realize. Because the technology out here is so advanced, its influence on the environment is far more pronounced, and so its ecosystem has mutated accordingly. A hunter working in this area wouldn’t bat an eye at monsters like these.

“No kidding? Man, I thought I’d gotten a lot stronger, but compared to them, I’m still just a small fry.” Feeling like the universe was calling him out for getting too full of himself, he smiled bemusedly.

Really? I think you’ll be even stronger than them before long, Alpha said with a smile.

“Huh? Even stronger than them? Easier said than done.”

Actually, easier than you think. True, those hunters are much more skilled than you at the moment. But when you consider how far you’ve come since you met me, in such a short time, surpassing them doesn’t seem so difficult, now, does it?

Akira looked shocked for a moment, then nodded, realizing she was exactly right. He’d once been a powerless child living in the back alleys of the slums, yet it hadn’t taken long for him to be capable of guarding one of the East’s intercity transports. The hunters who were fighting the insects on the roof eight transports ahead were indeed incredibly skilled, but given his current rate of growth, catching up to them really wouldn’t take that long at all.

“Yeah, you’re right! Well then, I guess I’d better work hard so I can reach their level soon!” He raised both of his LEOs, ready to fire.

That’s the spirit! Let’s go!

The giant insects finally reached Akira. Each was about the size of an automobile—the hunters farther ahead had been focused on larger enemies, ignoring these smaller, weaker stragglers that had skirted by. But even such runts were dangerous enough to easily kill the average Kugamayama hunter, and a huge knot of them was headed for him. Their readings were already blotting out his scanner’s overhead map.

Yet Akira didn’t feel the least bit panicked. He fired both guns at the insects, holding down the triggers in order to bombard his foes with C-bullets until his magazines were empty. As usual, each C-bullet was charged to the max—his vast energy supply imbued his shots with devastating power, piercing exoskeletons and rupturing organs. Thus the insects died, falling like hail and crashing into the wasteland ground or the roofs of the transports.

Those that survived fought back. Darting around in the air, they fired guns and cannons, or even attempted to dive-bomb Akira directly. The boy dodged, ran around, and replied with powerful kicks and more gunfire of his own.

Akira’s security mission on the Gigantas III had finally begun in earnest.

◆

Hikaru watched Akira as he fought, at first using the default first-person feed from his scanner. But before long, the fight grew too intense for her to stomach.

“Ugh! All right, no more of that. I’m feeling queasy.” She switched to an overhead view instead.

Just as Akira had felt out of his depth when watching the hunters on the transports ahead of him, so Hikaru, an ordinary citizen, was in awe as she watched Akira. With the power of his suit and his ability to manipulate his sense of time, he was zipping around the battlefield so fast that viewing the fight through his eyes had made her nauseated. If someone saw first-person footage like this out of context, they probably wouldn’t even be able to tell it was battle footage—it’s too fast-paced, she thought.

Now, from the top-down perspective, she could mostly follow Akira’s movements with her eyes. But he was still moving unbelievably fast, nimbly darting to and fro around the transport’s wide roof. Up here, there was no shelter behind which to take cover—and if he stopped for even a second, the giant insects’ shower of gunfire would overwhelm him. So he had to make continuous quick, erratic maneuvers to dodge their attacks, all while firing a rapid stream of C-bullets from each gun.

And bug after bug fell from the sky.

Already, Akira was surrounded by a pile of insect corpses, and with each fresh kill, it only grew until it was a mountain. Yet even this was only a fraction of all those he’d killed, because most were actually landing on the ground.

Hikaru’s jaw hung open as she watched Akira fight. Until now, she’d thought she had a pretty good grasp of how capable he was, which was exactly why she’d put him on this job in the first place. But not in her wildest dreams would she have guessed he was this strong. During the monster-culling mission, Hikaru had assumed that Kurosawa had evaluated Akira’s potential merely as a member of their team. She had expected he would perform better solo, of course—but now she realized how severely she’d underestimated him nonetheless.

“No wonder Kibayashi favors him so much,” she muttered. To be completely accurate, it wasn’t that Kibayashi favored the boy himself so much as his crazy, reckless, and rash antics, but the fight she was witnessing now would have definitely sparked a belly laugh in the man, had he been there to see it. So she wasn’t entirely wrong—this was indeed why Akira was one of Kibayashi’s favorites.

As impressed as she was, however, her expression grew grim. “And now, as his handler, I have to keep someone with this kind of power in check? Now I see why Kibayashi wields such influence—he’s managing hunters like this all the time.” High-ranking hunters who could eradicate monsters like the giant insects could also inflict serious damage if they ever went rogue. Therefore, keeping those hunters in line was one of the most important tasks for city officials like Kibayashi. And this wasn’t easy—if someone imposed too many restrictions on a hunter, the hunter might revolt, which would defeat the purpose of managing them in the first place. Handlers needed to find the delicate balance of allowing the hunter enough freedom to feel unrestricted, without actually letting them loose. In general, this essentially meant that the hunter could do anything they wanted, as long as it was to the city’s benefit.

In this regard, Kibayashi had gone above and beyond the city’s expectations—or at least, his successes on that front were so great that they canceled out whatever ill repute he had among the other city officials, and the city even turned a blind eye to his questionable hobbies. Hikaru was one of the many officials aiming to reach a similar level of success. But having finally witnessed Akira in action, she was second-guessing herself a little: she’d just put a hunter of this caliber—and with a history of murdering city representatives, no less—on a transport whose security was as tight as Kugamayama’s middle district. If he caused a scene here, she’d also be held accountable.

“Don’t tell me Kibayashi goaded me into doing this so he could evade responsibility,” she groaned. Maybe she didn’t have to worry about the possibility of Akira attacking Udajima anymore, but Akira was like a walking land mine, a dangerous individual who could explode at the slightest provocation. And at least until the end of this mission, it fell to her to keep that bomb stable.

She gave a heavy sigh.

“Perhaps I should quit while I’m still ahead— No, no way!” She dismissed her doubt with a vehement shake of her head. “You can do this, Hikaru! You’re a prodigy, remember? You can’t throw in the towel here!”

Her plan to have Akira guard the intercity transports had, at first, seemed to her like a low-risk, high-return venture, especially considering the boy’s prowess. But now that she’d properly grasped how dangerous he was, her wager was now a high-risk-high-return gamble—exactly the type that Kibayashi was so fond of.

Like it or not, her gamble was already underway. Now her only option was to win. And she could still come out ahead. Joining the city’s General Administration Department despite her young age had put her in an enviable position already, but if this gamble paid off, her status might very well skyrocket.

“I can do this. I’ll make it happen!” she declared.

And a determined grin spread across her lips.

Chapter 201: The Swarm

As Akira’s fight raged on, mountains of giant bug corpses continued to pile up around him. Yet as before, he dashed around the transport’s roof while shooting both guns at his airborne foes, not letting up on the triggers for even a moment.

Sometimes he kept his eyes forward while firing to his left and right—other times he glanced to either side while firing straight up. It didn’t matter whether he looked at his target—all of his shots hit dead-on. This was neither luck nor coincidence—with his sense of time slowed to a crawl, he could aim with precision at each foe. And as skilled as he was now, he no longer needed to see an enemy with his eyes to hit it—he could also rely on his guns’ sights and his scanner to help him strike every bug’s weak points with deadly accuracy. Even the enemies behind him in his “blind spot” weren’t safe.

And then there was Alpha—thanks to her help, his bullets struck home even when his guns were aimed in different directions. She also adjusted the power for each C-bullet, so that each shot was sufficiently devastating yet did not waste energy, killing the giant bugs as efficiently as possible.

In a word, it was a massacre. A one-man squad, Akira was slaughtering swarms of insects the size of trucks. Yet he couldn’t relax. He only held the advantage right now because Alpha was helping him, he reminded himself—he couldn’t do so well without her. But he had to exert all the effort he could as well, or his own ability would never catch up.

Man, they just don’t stop coming! Akira commented. I’ve already killed so many, and it feels like the swarm hasn’t thinned down one bit!

Well, that’s because it hasn’t, Alpha answered matter-of-factly. About fifty percent more insects have joined since the fight began.

I knew it!

Another empty magazine and energy pack ejected from one of his LEOs. However, he had many more loaded and so didn’t have to pause to reload—he could keep firing at the countless insects just as before. But his supply wasn’t infinite, and with more enemies constantly joining the fray, he couldn’t afford to stop firing for a moment lest he be overpowered.

Even when the ammo and energy in his guns ran dry, he didn’t panic. His backpack, which was partly mechanical and could be controlled remotely to eject its contents, launched fresh magazines and energy packs into the air. All he had to do was wave a gun at them, and they automatically loaded themselves, allowing him to reload in an instant without ever letting go of his weapon. He could also reload manually, provided he had the time, but right now the battle was too frenetic.

Markers appeared on the overhead map in his augmented vision—the transport security team was ordering him to change position. Akira followed their instructions and made his way to the front of the transport. The team of hunters there traded places with him, moving to the back.

As they passed him, they kept their distance.

So I’ve been doing alone what all those hunters have been doing as a team, huh? No wonder I haven’t had any room to breathe!

That’s probably because the hunter’s positions are decided based on their performance as a team, Alpha suggested.

Well, looking on the bright side, I guess that means they’re starting to acknowledge my results.

In fact, Akira was faring better alone against this threat than all the other hunters on this transport combined. The security team had realized that and had determined he was needed up at the front of the vehicle instead.

You’re right about the number of enemies, though, Alpha said. Luckily, now that you’re up here, there’s no danger of hitting other hunters anymore, so we can really mow them down without worry. Time for the AF laser cannon, Akira!

Yes, ma’am!

The AF laser cannon on his back unfolded itself. Akira handed off his LEOs to his support arm temporarily, then held the cannon steady with his now-free hands.

A beam erupted that literally erased the swarm of insects. Unlike during the battle with the octopharos, he widened the angle of fire as far as he could this time, allowing it to sweep through a vast number of enemies at once. However, it failed to kill any of them—spread out over a greater area, the beam itself was weaker. It scorched the insects’ massive exoskeletons and scalded their insides, but it certainly wasn’t powerful enough to reduce its targets to ash.

Yet such had been within Alpha’s calculations. At first glance, the insects looked unharmed, but gradually, they started to plummet out of the sky one after another, or otherwise veer away from the transport and out of Akira’s vicinity. He was battling on a fast-moving vehicle, after all. Just impairing the insects’ ability to stay in the air neutralized the threat they posed.

Akira looked at the overhead map. There were already far fewer insects in the area than before. He couldn’t help but grin at his laser’s power. Now that’s what I call a weapon! Hey, how much was one of these C-bullets again?

Five million aurum per shot.

That’s their market price?

No, that was after your discount.

Holy shit! Talk about expensive!

Akira now had fewer enemies to deal with, but his respite was brief. Relatively few insects had been driven off from swarming around his transport, and reinforcements were already heading his way. As he couldn’t fire his AF laser cannon again so soon, he switched back to dual-wielding his LEOs.

Akira, I’m going to fire your laser cannon again the moment it’s ready.

Got it. Honestly, though, I don’t even wanna think about the total cost of all the ammo I’m using here.

Why worry about that? We won’t be footing the bill, and besides, Hikaru gave us permission to fire away, right? Alpha said with a smirk.

Akira understood what she was implying and grinned back. Hikaru’s permission included the ridiculously expensive C-bullets the AF laser cannon used. He wouldn’t need to hold back on account of the cost. True! Guess that’s the beauty of having the client cover your expenses!

As both LEOs had astounding fire rates and were packed with expensive extended magazines, they generated continuous sprays of devastating gunfire. Many of the approaching insects were blown to pieces before they could reach Akira. But the rest continued on undaunted. When they fired their combat liquid with the force of a bullet and it hardened in the air, the resulting projectiles could easily pierce through steel. The insects also occasionally shot a sticky liquid that held their targets in place, or sprayed fluid from their bodies that was so corrosive it could melt iron. Force-field armor repelled said fluid, but the transport’s metal roof would cave in if too much hit it, which would cause Akira to lose his footing.

What was more, these haphazard attacks often as not hit their fellow insects—and sometimes even themselves—yet they went right on bombarding Akira with their own bodies, slamming into him with the force of an artillery shell and trying to tear into him with teeth sharp enough to chew up a tank with ease. Anyone observing their relentless assault would have immediately understood why the transport companies only hired high-ranking hunters to defend their transports.

As one such hunter himself, Akira handled the giant bugs with finesse—dodging, blocking, and countering their attacks one after another. Occasionally, he launched himself into the air with suit-empowered kicks, avoiding enemy gunfire by dodging upward instead of just left and right, or generating force fields right above the pools of adhesive fluid on the roof to avoid stepping in them. As for the corrosive liquid, there was too much spraying everywhere for him to avoid, so he activated his force-field armor on his suit from the neck down and deployed a force-field shield around his head. In this way, he was able to protect himself from the countless drops of liquid that landed on him.

All the while, he kicked away any bugs that dive-bombed him, with a force that shattered their tough, car-sized exoskeletons and launched their bodies backward, knocking them into the insects behind them. And he never let up on his triggers even once, spraying far more huge bullets into the air than there were insects surrounding him. His shots knocked them out of the sky, filled them full of holes, or blew them to pieces.

Yet more and more kept pouring in, so he fired his AF laser cannon again. The wide beam engulfed the giant bugs, charring them black. Then, since he still had more ammo in the laser cannon, he fought with his LEOs once more while waiting to charge up a third shot. As he alternated between the guns and the laser cannon again and again, Akira’s surroundings became buried in insect corpses. Whenever their numbers made it too difficult for him to move around, he kicked them off the roof and far into the wasteland below, and kept fighting.

◆

Watching Akira’s stunning display of skill, Hikaru felt more frightened than overjoyed.

Then, out of the blue, Akira called her up. “Hikaru, you got a moment?”

“Huh?! Y-Yes, what is it?”

“Are you in the room right now? Can you bring me my spare backpack?”

“Wh-What?! Me?! Are you joking?! There’s no way I’m going up on that roof!” At the suggestion that she head into that hellish battlefield herself, she couldn’t help raising her voice.

“Nah, I’m not asking you to come up here. That’d be way too dangerous. Just leave it at the entrance and I’ll pick it up.”

“O-Oh. All right, I can do that.”

“Appreciate it.”

Akira ended the call, and Hikaru gave a heavy sigh. In all honesty, she didn’t want to do it—she’d rather not go anywhere near that carnage if she could help it. But she also knew she didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t let Akira come retrieve it himself, because that would leave a gap in the transport’s defenses. “I didn’t want to go near the battle on the roof” would be a poor excuse for making Akira leave the battlefield. He would have to retreat if he ran out of ammo, but for now he had an abundant supply. And she couldn’t ask one of the other teams to retrieve the backpack for him, because as a rule, hunter teams handled their own supplies. And Akira and Hikaru were a team. She might not be fighting alongside him, but she’d had to officially register as his teammate in order to travel on the Gigantas III with him in the first place, lest she be considered an illegal stowaway. So his ammo was their responsibility and no one else’s—she had to do her part.

“This sucks,” she muttered sourly. Nevertheless, she picked up the backpack—filled to the brim, thanks to her oversupplying Akira with ammo for his job—and grudgingly carried it out of the room.

The entrance to the roof was large and double-layered: a door on the inside of the transport led to a room with a hatch, and the hatch led up to the roof. Both the door and hatch were extremely sturdy, not to defend against the strong wind that resulted from the difference in atmospheric pressure between the inside and the outside, but to ensure that no monsters made it into the vehicle. After witnessing Akira’s battle, Hikaru felt like she understood the need for these defensive measures for the very first time. Trembling in fear, she entered the hatch room, set the backpack right in the center, and idly looked up at the ceiling—beyond that hatch, hell awaited. She shuddered at the thought, then left the room and shut the door.

“Okay, Akira, I brought it to you.”

“Roger that. Thanks.”

Hikaru opened the hatch remotely. A short time later, Akira spoke again.

“I got it. You can close the hatch now. I put the old backpack on the floor where the other one was. Take it back with you. Thanks again.”

Hikaru shut the hatch. She opened the door a crack and checked the room before entering, just to make sure no monsters had come through the hatch and were trapped inside.

It was safe.

She breathed a sigh of relief, opened the door—and then let out a yelp.

The hatch had only been open less than a minute—yet the battle above had left traces on the floor. A severed leg from one of the giant bugs had fallen through the hatch, and a dangerous-looking liquid was pooling on the ground where it lay—near the backpack Akira had set down.

Hikaru walked gingerly forward, made sure none of the strange liquid had gotten on the backpack, and picked it up. Then she carefully made her way back toward the door.

All at once, she heard a noise from under her feet. Though just barely, she’d accidentally stepped in the liquid. Her face contorted in terror.

“It sizzled when I touched it!” she wailed, practically in tears as she ran back into the transport’s interior as fast as she could.

◆

Now with a fresh backpack of ammo, Akira psyched himself up once again. All right! Looks like we’ve still got a while before this battle’s over. Let’s stay focused!

That’s the spirit! Keep that attitude up, and you’ll be done before you know it!

But his enthusiasm went to waste, because all of a sudden, the cloud of giant insects around him thinned out.

Huh? Seems like they decided to stop attacking me out of the blue. What’s going on?

He checked his overhead map. There were barely any enemy readings around his transport now, but they were still swarming around the rest of the area. In other words, they were deliberately avoiding Akira for some reason.

It looks like the pheromones they spread here grew too dense for them to stick around any longer, Alpha explained to Akira while he downed copious amounts of medicine. According to her, the corpses of the gargantuan insects had released pheromones into the air, luring more of them over. The more insects Akira had killed, the denser those pheromones had become, summoning ever tougher and larger ones to the scene. But as more large insects showed up, the smaller ones had become less inclined to come near, probably sensing that bombarding an enemy capable of luring such large insects would just be suicide.

Due to the nature of the pheromones, over the course of the battle, Akira had lured the majority of the swarm attacking the convoy to his transport. But as he’d continued to take them out, eventually the density of the surrounding pheromones had proven too overwhelming for the bugs to persist in challenging him.

Oh, I see. But wait, wouldn’t the wind scatter some of those pheromones?

Yes, that certainly reduces their density. But it doesn’t change the fact that the pheromones are densest around you now, does it?

Akira surveyed his surroundings. Mountains of corpses were piled up everywhere. Even the strong winds on the roof couldn’t do much to diminish the resulting pheromones. Yeah, point taken. In that case, guess I better kick some of these off the roof.

He stepped forward to do so when he received another order from the security team to reposition. This time, they wanted him to move to the transport just ahead, the third from the rear.

Looks like we’re one step closer to the lead transport now, Alpha said cheerfully. Shall we?

Let’s do it!

He was still far from Transport 10—far from matching the skills of the hunters there. Yet he was making progress, slowly but surely.

The distance between the second and third transports from the rear was temporarily reduced in order to let Akira cross over. But before the two vehicles even connected, Akira leaped from the front of the second transport and landed on the roof of the third.

Hikaru also received word of his reassignment to Transport 3. She sighed, deeply relieved. Moving regular passengers between transports was prohibited, as it was a security concern—now she wouldn’t have to bring Akira any more ammo.

Then the security team called again, telling her that she’d been given clearance to move to Transport 3 as well. Sagging her shoulders, she sighed again.

Meanwhile, the hunter team on Transport 3 switched places with Akira, crossing over to the Gigantas III via a temporary walkway that linked the vehicles. Upon reaching the roof, they looked around in bewilderment.

“What the heck? There aren’t any enemies here!”

“No, but they were here—a whole bunch of ’em. Look at all the dead ones around. There must’ve been a huge team working this transport before we got here. Guess they retreated—or considering all the corpses around, maybe they fought to a draw.”

“Whichever it was, they still managed to take all these out. For a team assigned to the second transport from the rear, that’s pretty impressive. Gotta admire their efforts.”

They were wrong, of course. There hadn’t been a team of hunters, just one person. He hadn’t retreated, nor had things ended in a draw—he’d achieved an overwhelming victory, the very success that had led to him taking their place. But none of them ever even imagined such a possibility as they followed their orders and took up new positions on the Gigantas.

◆

Now on the roof of Transport 3, Akira was once again fighting a swarm of giant bugs—that hadn’t changed. What had changed was their size: each was now as large as a bus.

Monsters usually grew in power with their size, and the same held true here as well. Akira fired both LEOs, sending a never-ending stream of bullets into the air. The shots pierced through the insects’ armor and ruptured their bodies, killing them instantly.

But Akira didn’t look relieved. Man, these guys are just as tough!

He was still able to defeat them, but taking down each one was requiring a great deal more ammo than those around the Gigantas III had.

Akira, I’m going to use the laser again.

Roger that!

While evading the enemy’s attacks, he propped up his laser cannon and held it steady. The beam swept across the swarm. This time, Alpha had set the angle of the blast much narrower, and a narrow ray of light erupted from the cannon. It bisected many of the insects in midair like a laser cutter, and their lifeless bodies fell to the ground. Others survived, not quite cut through, but were quickly destroyed once Akira switched back to his LEOs. His shots pierced through their natural force-field armor, already weakened from the beam’s damage, and blew them to smithereens.

Several insects dive-bombed him at once, not caring whether they would be shot in the process. Akira intercepted three of them and dodged the fourth’s body slam, but he couldn’t dodge the last one. Even so, its attack didn’t connect—because he kicked the bug away as hard as he could. The power of his new suit surpassed that of the average mech, so the force of his kick easily won out against the inertia of the insect propelling itself at him, crushing its exoskeleton and sending it sailing backward.

It still didn’t die, proof of the creature’s unnatural resilience. Nevertheless, it didn’t last long against a final barrage of C-bullets—that one kick had considerably weakened the monster—and it finally exploded into pieces.

Yet after all that, he had only exterminated one insect out of the entire swarm, and there was seemingly no end to them. Akira hardly had time to draw a breath as he fought.

Well, at least I’m winning, but they’re not going down easy, that’s for sure! he remarked with a grimace.

Oh? If it’s too tough for you to handle, wanna give up? Alpha said, smirking.

Yeah, right—good one, he said, forcing himself to grin. Let’s push through! However hard-fought the battle, Alpha didn’t look concerned, so he knew he could handle it.

That’s the spirit! Alpha said. Time to go all out!

Yeah! All fired up, Akira blasted through even more enemies. The corpses around him piled higher and higher, calling more, stronger foes to his area and making the fight even harder. Even so, he pressed on. His entire body screamed out in pain from the extreme physical burden, but he endured it through sheer force of will and copious amounts of medicine as the mountain of dead insects surrounding him grew ever larger. He had started his battle at the rear of Transport 3, the least difficult section of the roof, but had gradually moved forward as he fought and was now already nearing the front of the vehicle.

Hikaru waited on standby in Transport 3’s cafeteria for a while with Akira’s spare backpack on her back, waiting for his call. Eventually, he did request another ammo refill. Inwardly grumbling to herself, she reluctantly carried the pack to him for pickup.

Without Hikaru, Akira would have needed to head back inside the transport to retrieve his spare ammo himself. In that light, she was indeed helping him out quite a bit by accompanying him. But she would rather have just sent an assistant with him to do the job instead—then maybe she wouldn’t have had to endure this trauma!

She grimaced—she’d wanted Akira to work alone so that others wouldn’t drag him down, and this had completely backfired on her.

“Guess I made a wrong move at the very end,” she said aloud with a sigh.

She opened the door to the hatch room—and froze. A giant insect eyeball and fang were lying on the floor. The eye was larger than her head, the fang longer and thicker than her arm. Someone would come and clean the floor later, of course, but not until after the battle up top was finished. Until then, whatever monster parts landed on the ground would remain there. Somewhere in her mind, she’d assumed she wasn’t going to see anything like this at least until she returned to retrieve his used backpack, and this made her shock even worse.

She put a hand to her chest to calm her breathing and yelled, “For crying out loud! Enough is enough!”

◆

Resupplied, Akira fought on. The giant insects’ attacks were fierce, but Akira had an abundance of ammo to wipe them out with—he didn’t have an overwhelming advantage, but he definitely wasn’t losing to them. Hikaru had prepared his ammo, in terms of both quantity and quality, knowing he would need to make the round trip between Kugamayama and Zegelt. Akira, for his part, was burning through it with reckless abandon in this one fight, so the intensity of his assault was more than sufficient to push the insects back.

He created mountains of corpses, blew those mountains away to keep his path clear, then built the piles back up again—over and over, until he’d finally inched his way to the front of Transport 3. At this point, the insects around him were the size of double-decker buses. He felt that this was probably the greatest challenge he could rise to for the present—hopefully they wouldn’t order him to advance to Transport 4 after all this.

As Akira fought, the convoy made a detour to bypass all the insect corpses that littered the ground, reversing the order of the transports in the process. Now, rather than pushing through the swarm, the convoy was attempting to shake the enemies off. The immense swarm was the source of enemies, so as the convoy drew farther away from it, fewer reinforcements showed up, and the quantity of insects around Akira dwindled drastically.

Looks like there’s far fewer than before. Guess we should clean up the stragglers and call it a day?

It seems so. But just because you have fewer to deal with doesn’t mean you can slack off. Stay sharp!

Will do.

Though their numbers had been reduced, the enemies were still incredibly dangerous monsters that he couldn’t have finished off without Alpha’s support and an exorbitant supply of ammunition. Letting his guard down would be instantly fatal—but by the same token, as long as he stayed focused, he’d win. And in no time at all, he’d finished off the remaining insects.

As if on cue, right as he killed the last one, Hikaru’s voice came through his comms. “It looks like things have died down enough up there to take a breather. How are you holding up?”

“You just answered your own question. Well enough to take a breather, at least.”

She sighed. “I mean, what’s your condition? Are you tired? Hurt? Feel like you can’t go on any longer?”

It sounded to Akira like Hikaru was trying to probe him for information. “Nothing that a little medicine can’t cure,” he said a mite defensively. “Running out of ammo would keep me from fighting any more, but we’ve got plenty in reserve, right?”

“Y-Yes. You still have one backpack of spare ammo remaining.”

“So out with it. What do you really want to ask me?”

Hikaru hesitated for a moment, then answered, “A-Actually, I got a notice from the security team. They want you to move on ahead to Transport 4. I was just thinking that if I could tell them you’re tired or that you can’t go on any longer, we might be able to turn them down more easily.”

“Oh, that’s all? Well, if you want to turn them down, that’s fine, but do we have to?”

His nonchalant response startled Hikaru, who let out a cry of surprise from the other end of the line. “You want to go on? Seriously? The hunter team on that transport is requesting backup, which means even they can’t handle the monsters there! So you might even be facing monsters from around Transport 5! Are you sure you’re ready for that? Are you that confident?”

Akira thought about this for a moment, then decided he shouldn’t be the one to make the call. After all, he certainly hadn’t made it this far on his own merits. He had only managed to with Alpha’s help, so he wasn’t the one Hikaru should be asking. Alpha, think we can manage?

Well, that depends. Are you up for it? Alpha said with a smirk.

He nodded, then told Hikaru, “I’m at least confident I can make it back inside the transport if things get too hairy. That’s good enough to back up the team, right? I mean, I’ve got the ammo to spare.” He spoke in a roundabout way—he could certainly handle things, but only thanks to Alpha, so he didn’t want to explicitly say he could do everything on his own. “But if you tell me I shouldn’t do it, then I won’t. You have the final say—you’re my operator for this job, after all.”

Hikaru was torn over how to answer. On the one hand, she didn’t want to send him to his death, especially when Inabe might hold her accountable for it. On the other, if he really could defeat the monsters around Transport 5, why not let him? It would be a shame to let such an opportunity for glory go to waste.

She weighed the risks and returns, then made her decision. “All right, go ahead—but only if you’re sure.” The way she saw it, as she was already participating in a high-risk gamble, she might as well go all in. “And if you get to a point where you’re in over your head, don’t just grin and bear it—get out of there right away. That’s an order.”

“That goes without saying—you think I wanna die fighting these bugs? I’ll retreat the moment things get rough. All I ask is that you pass me that last backpack of spare ammo. If I’m gonna fight, I’d like to stay prepared.”

“No problem. I’ll be right there.”

Hikaru hung up. Akira headed over to the roof’s hatch to wait for Hikaru. As promised, it didn’t take long for her to show up.

“Here you go! Don’t forget, this is your last one,” she said as she handed him the backpack. “Speaking frankly, I know what I said, but I can’t believe you really ended up using all the ammo on this one fight. I was kind of hoping you’d save a little for an emergency or something.”

“You’re the one who told me I could. Sorry if my ammo expenses end up putting you guys in the red.”

“Ha, as if! I’ll make sure we turn a profit on this job. Just you wait.” She smirked, and he grinned back. Then Hikaru’s tone grew more serious. “Akira, be careful. And good luck.”

“I will. Just you wait,” he said with a grin, and returned to the roof.

Hikaru watched him go. “Oh, I’m not worried about that. I’m expecting a lot out of you.” Smiling to herself, she turned to head back into the transport.

◆

Akira waited at the edge of Transport 3 for the vehicle ahead to come close enough. He was already prepared for his next battle—now he just needed to jump aboard. Zooming in on Transport 4’s roof with his scanner, he could see six enormous insects were already in the middle of attacking the vehicle—and he was immediately taken aback.

“No way! What the hell is up with those things?!”

Each insect was well over forty meters tall.

Chapter 202: The High-Rankers

The reason Transport 4 had sent its urgent request for backup wasn’t because its hunters were dealing with more than they could handle—on the contrary, they were too skilled.

These guards formed part of a larger team that also included the people currently protecting Transport 10. Though their ranks were lower than those of the rest of the team—around the 40 to 50 range—they were by no means weak. Unskilled hunters would never have been allowed to guard intercity transports to begin with. Equipped as they were with extremely powerful gear, they were more than capable of eliminating a swarm of giant bugs.

The problem was that they’d been too successful. They’d killed so many bugs in such a short time that the dense pheromones from the piled-up corpses, blown the wrong way by the wind, had drawn even more formidable insects to their location. Despite their above-average skill, the rank 40 hunters had found themselves no match for the formidable newcomers and had been forced to retreat into the transport. Those closer to rank 50 had held their ground but found themselves hard-pressed in the absence of the rest of their team. Gradually, they had been beaten back until they’d been forced to call for assistance.

It would be too harsh to say the hunters had failed. The truth was that compared to Akira, they’d just been unlucky. Though Akira’s efforts on the Gigantas III had also released a mass of pheromones, the transport had carried more than enough firepower to beat back any giant bugs lured over as a result. This was partly because his prowess had been drastically underestimated, and partly because he and the hunters on Transport 3 had since traded places, leaving the Gigantas III well guarded. (It also helped that the transports kept their distance from each other precisely to ensure the monsters attacking them were spread out.)

The two men leading the embattled hunters on Transport 4 looked grim as they kept firing at the giant bugs swarming them. Both men were rank 60—indisputably high-rankers. As they fought, a call came in from one of their comrades.

“Sorry, this is too much for me to handle! I’m backing out!”

“Understood!” one leader replied. “Best not to overdo it! Fall back to guard the transport entrance! Or if that’s too much for you, head on into the vehicle!”

“S-Sorry, I’m heading inside!”

The man gave a heavy sigh. “You gotta be kidding me! Now it’s just us two in the vanguard!”

“Weren’t you just complaining earlier about having to babysit rank 50 hunters?” retorted his companion. “Now things are getting interesting, exactly as you wanted!”

“Well, yeah, but I never asked for this!”

As the two bantered back and forth, the swarm kept up its relentless offensive. The insects launched hardened liquid projectiles from gun-like organs. The smaller bugs on Akira’s transport had done something similar, but here, instead of bullets, the projectiles were the size of artillery shells and were far more devastating. The insects’ exoskeletons had also opened up, revealing organic missile pods. While the missiles were slower than a barrage of cannon fire, they also homed in on their targets with pinpoint accuracy.

The projectiles from just one insect alone could have wiped out an average team of hunters in an instant. At present, there were six such monstrosities attacking Transport 4, with no trace of fear or hesitation in their coordinated assault. In no time at all, their ceaseless barrage had transformed the roof of Transport 4 into a hellscape.

Yet even on that war-torn battlefield, the two men who fought together remained composed enough to converse with each other all the while. Without their combat expertise, the defensive line would have long since crumbled. Their team was divided into two groups: the rearguard, tasked with keeping the escape route clear and the roof’s exit protected with a temporary defensive wall, and the vanguard, fighting outside where the action was thickest. The vanguard had performed splendidly, having whittled the initial swarm of fifteen insects down to just six, largely thanks to their two leaders.

But even such talented hunters couldn’t turn back the tide in the face of such odds. One by one, their comrades had bowed out, and now they were the only ones left, so dire had things become on Transport 4.

“Real talk, though—with things this bad, you think we ought to retreat too while we still can? Given the two of us are the only ones left, we ought to have enough of an excuse.” Even if the entire security team evacuated, the force-field armor surrounding the transport would ensure that the vehicle wouldn’t be destroyed right away. On the other hand, it would obviously receive severe damage with no one left to defend it—maybe not enough to blow large holes in the transport itself, but certainly enough to require repairs. And the longer the monsters outside were left unchecked, the worse the damage that the vehicle would receive. Under heavy fire for a sufficiently long time, the vehicle could very well end up destroyed—this was why the transport companies hired hunters to defend their property in the first place. But even so, the vehicle wouldn’t be in immediate danger if they retreated, as far as the man could tell.

His comrade considered for a moment, then shook his head. “No thanks. Even in a losing battle, I’d rather go down fighting till the bitter end. But feel free to call it quits.”

“What’s that tone for? I was trying to be considerate of you, ya know!”

Grinning, they continued fighting. If their goal was to win, they’d already failed their mission. But they at least wanted to fight to a draw. And so, they kept their weapons trained on the insects, determined to stand their ground to the end.

But at that moment, one of the bugs shuddered under a laser cannon blast from afar. The beam pierced through its exoskeleton, though the bug didn’t die.

The men couldn’t help glancing in the direction the laser had come from. There stood Akira on the edge of the transport’s roof, AF laser cannon in hand. “So that’s our backup, eh? Wait, hold up—if he came from that direction, wasn’t he previously posted on Transport 3? Is he full of himself, or does he just have a death wish?”

“Actually, neither. Think about it,” said his companion. “Lasers lose power quickly over distance, especially in an area with so much damping. And yet, that blast still drilled right through the monster even from his position. So he’s got a pretty good weapon there, which makes me think either some unusual circumstances dictated he be put on Transport 3, or he’s a support hunter like us who was babysitting a lower-ranked transport before coming over here.”

“Oh yeah, that would make more sense.”

The wounded giant bug fired a cluster of missiles back at Akira. Switching targets, it flew off toward the boy.

“Well, he’s pretty useful as a decoy, at any rate.”

“You said it. Oh, um, you think we’ll get our asses chewed out for receiving aid from a hunter hired for a lower-ranked transport?”

“Oh, come on! Isn’t that the least of our concerns right now?”

“Point taken!”

Now their grins were a bit forced, though they faced the remaining swarm with no less enthusiasm or effort than before.

◆

Though such reassignments were atypical, Akira had moved up two transports and was now on Transport 4. But as he held the laser cannon he’d just fired, his expression looked grim.

That was a direct hit, yet the damage it inflicted was disappointing.

Even when the laser had been spread out over a wider area, it had incinerated the car-sized bugs. And a more concentrated beam had taken out one of the bus-sized ones. This time, Akira had fired his laser cannon at maximum intensity, expecting the beam to pierce right through as when he’d killed the octopharos. Even if the target was just as strong as one of the monsters swarming Transport 5, he’d figured the laser could kill it and was astonished to find otherwise.

Looks like these things are tougher than I thought, Alpha. What should we do? He’d been in high spirits when reassuring Hikaru he’d be fine, but if the AF laser cannon couldn’t defeat these insects, he couldn’t see any option beyond retreat.

That’s just because you were too far away, she said breezily. But now I’ve gotten a grasp of the degree of damping around here. You’ll need to get closer.

Will that really make a difference? he wondered.

It sure will. The secretions from these bugs generate a formidable damping effect, but if we get close enough and narrow the laser’s focus, the beam will be so powerful it won’t matter.

In addition to inhibiting the transmission of data—affecting scanners, comms, and the like—the colorless fog also impacted the accuracy and power of gunshots. The giant bugs here secreted a substance that worked similarly, causing the laser’s power to drop off as it traveled.

Akira nodded, then frowned. But wait. A while ago, the laser cannons mounted on our transport managed to kill some huge bugs. Were those lasers weakened as well?

They were. Know why those cannons are so large that you couldn’t possibly imagine them on any other vehicle? Because any smaller, less powerful ordnance would be utterly ineffective here.

Akira nodded again—that made a lot of sense to him. These mounted cannons were specialized for raw power, meaning that even their minimum output was extremely high—so high they couldn’t be used to shoot monsters near other vehicles, lest they blow up the vehicles too. One might think that the solution, then, would be to put a ton of smaller cannons on the roof instead—hunters were generally better off the more firepower they had—but this wouldn’t be useful or cost-effective in every situation. Smart hunters chose the right weapons for the occasion, and that was how they survived the day-to-day threats of the East.

It’s heading this way, Akira. Time to finish it!

Roger! He stowed away his laser cannon and switched back to his LEOs, then dashed toward the insect, shooting down its barrage of organic missiles before they could reach him. One after another, he knocked them off course, and they flew in random directions before detonating. Even with the damping, the air was filled with explosions—Akira had to intercept all the projectiles, as even a single one could prove fatal to him. Compared to cannon fire, the missiles were sluggish, but they homed in on their target with deadly accuracy. He couldn’t count on any of them missing him by chance.

These projectiles had stronger defenses than the insects he’d fought on Transport 2. A light spray of gunfire merely knocked them slightly off course, and as homing missiles, they corrected their courses almost immediately afterward. He was forced to keep both guns forward with their triggers held down, not letting up his fire for even a second. And as if that weren’t enough, not all of the missiles were airborne—some had sprouted legs and were sprinting at him across the roof, ducking behind insect corpses as needed to avoid Akira’s gunfire.

While Akira was busy dealing with the missiles, the giant bug circled around him and carefully took aim at his blind spots, launching shells. He couldn’t shoot these down in time, so he had no choice but to avoid them. One sailed through the air in an arc and pulverized an insect corpse lying nearby.

He continued dodging, shooting, and dodging some more. To gain the advantage over his enemy, he had to get in close. The gargantuan insect wasn’t actually that far away—using his powered suit, he could reach it in an instant. But to Akira, that distance seemed much farther: the enemy’s attacks were so overwhelming that he’d been forced to slow his sense of time to its absolute limit.

No way! I’m throwing everything I’ve got at just one enemy. What am I gonna do about the other five over there?!

I know things look rough, but you’ll manage with enough effort.

“Effort”?! Will that really be enough to get me through five more of these things?!

With enough skill, sure. I mean, you’re managing pretty well as we speak, aren’t you? Besides...

Besides?

Compared to the battle on Transport 10, this is child’s play!

Oh, right. Yeah, I guess so! If Akira wanted to reach the level of the hunters fighting up there, he couldn’t falter here. How could he have forgotten? He chided himself for his carelessness, then faced the enemy with renewed determination. Enthusiastically, he urged himself onward, and all traces of sluggishness vanished from his movements.

That’s the way! Alpha encouraged him. She looked pleased at his change of mindset. Even with a body that could endure endless training, a person would not benefit without a mind that could withstand the pain and agony of said training.

A suffocating wall of organic missiles continued to close around him through the air and from the ground directly ahead. But Akira didn’t let up on either trigger. He dodged the missiles he couldn’t shoot down, relying on Alpha’s support to predict their trajectories and dodge out of the way. Shells and missiles landed on countless insect corpses, blowing them to smithereens, but none of them hit the boy.

As he fired, he ran, pumping his legs with the astounding strength his powered suit granted him, and to dodge the incoming projectiles, he also occasionally leaped between temporary footholds he generated in the air. The force of his steps dented even the heavily armored transport roof, and he moved so fast that the wind pushed against his chest with greater force than the explosions at his back hurled him forward. But even at that speed, he felt slow, thanks to the world around him crawling at a snail’s pace.

Then he was within range of the insect at last.

All right, Akira! Time for the final blow!

Gladly!

He shot down another cluster of missiles heading his way before diving past the trajectory of the descending shells. Alpha had disengaged the safety lock that prevented him from charging the AF laser cannon while it was folded up on his back, so the weapon was already ready to fire. With precise timing, he let go of his LEOs the very moment the AF laser cannon extended above his shoulder, seized the weapon, and held it steady.

“You’re finished!”

The beam that erupted from the cannon’s muzzle was not a long-distance laser fired at maximum power—it was fired at close range with maximum power. The huge pillar of light streaked toward the forty-or-so-meter insect and bored straight through its body, tearing a gaping hole wider than Akira was tall. Even the flesh around the hole was charred black, weakening the structural integrity of the insect’s body until it was unable to withstand the violent explosions all around it. Eventually, it plummeted to the roof like a stone. Akira had single-handedly killed a type of monster that gave even rank 60 hunters trouble.

He ducked behind the corpse of the insect for cover, then breathed a deep sigh. “All right. That’s one down.”

Way to go, Akira! Feel free to take a breather for a while.

“But we’re not done yet, right?” He was grateful for Alpha’s praise, but only one insect had been defeated. The fight against the giant bug swarm was still ongoing—wasn’t it?

That’s right. But the end is in sight. Look!

Alpha pointed in the direction of the other five foes—and several incredibly powerful laser blasts incinerated all of the remaining insects near Transport 4.

◆

Thanks to Akira luring the one insect over to his location, the two-against-six battle over by the hunter pair had become two against five. They managed to take down one more after that, making it two versus four, but that was as far as they could go.

“Looks like our time’s up...” one muttered.

Seeing that the swarm’s ferocity raged on unabated, the hunters called it quits and sighed, having lost their will to fight any longer. The bugs didn’t miss their chance, diving at the exhausted hunters. But they weren’t quick enough: at the last moment, several high-powered laser beams blasted them, killing them all instantly.

Behind the lasers was the two men’s superior, a woman named Mercia. As a hunter, she was qualified to guard the lead transport in the convoy, and in no time at all, she laid waste to the bugs that had given Akira and her two subordinates so much trouble. Once she’d confirmed the bugs were finished off, she walked over to her men, who instantly snapped to attention. While the men knew deep down that it would have been impossible to wipe out the bugs on their own, they still felt a little frustrated that they hadn’t been able to finish before time was up—in other words, before Mercia arrived to bail them out.

She turned a grin on them. “Were there any casualties?”

“Quite a few were severely injured and have been transported to the infirmary,” the first hunter replied nervously. “I doubt they’ll recover in time to rejoin the vanguard before the job’s over.”

“Any deaths?”

“None at present,” said the second, looking just as tense. “And we haven’t received word of any complications setting in among the ones undergoing treatment in the infirmary.”

Mercia sighed, causing the pair’s anxiety to climb higher. But then her expression softened. “Well, as long as we didn’t lose anyone, I suppose I can just barely give you a passing grade. Tell me, though—why didn’t you contact me before the security team had to send backup?”

“S-Sorry, that was a bad call on our part. We didn’t think things had gotten bad enough to request help yet, and I guess the security team decided we were in deeper shit than we realized.”

“Well, think it through more carefully next time,” she told them. “If you even suspect you need help, call me right away. Forcing the hunters on other transports to come assist us is going to hurt our overall team evaluation. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Good. With that, I’m leaving the rest to you.” Mercia turned and walked off.

The pair shared a sigh of relief. According to Mercia, they just barely passed her evaluation—that is, they’d get to keep their heads for now.

Meanwhile, Akira was stunned into shock at what he’d just witnessed. The woman had taken out not one but four of those bugs—just like that!

“Holy shit...” he murmured in awe.

See? said Alpha. The hunters on Transport 10 have finished up their battle, so now they’re going around aiding the others. That means our fight here is over.

Even as she spoke, the hunters from Transport 10 were busy taking care of the bugs swarming Transports 9 through 7. But such capable fighters wouldn’t require too long to clear those transports of enemies either. Prioritizing her own team over the others, Mercia had headed alone to aid her teammates on Transport 4.

“So she was one of the hunters on Transport 10, huh?” Akira marveled. “And it took almost everything I had just to take down one! Talk about strong—and her gear looked superpowerful too! Hey Alpha, how much do you think she paid for that stuff?”

No paltry sum of money, that’s for certain.

Akira wanted to retort that he could already tell as much just by looking—but then he realized what she meant by a “paltry sum.” He recalled her telling him once that even ten billion aurum could be considered pocket change, simply because it was currency circulated by the governing corporations. In other words, equipment like Mercia’s would either have to cost in excess of ten billion aurum, or—more likely—could only be purchased with chrome.

“And that also means I bought my current gear with pocket change too,” he muttered. “No wonder I struggled so much with that insect just now.” Just how much money would he need to be able to afford outfitting himself like her? And what rank would he need to achieve merely for such equipment to be within his reach? Realizing he was woefully inadequate on both counts, Akira sighed.

Then you just need to buy the same level of gear as her, Alpha said with a smile. And you will be able to, in due time. Just be patient.

That put things in a more positive light for him, and he decided there was no use letting himself feel down in the dumps over this. “Yeah, you know what? You’re right,” he said, a grin coming to his lips. “I just gotta keep at it.” After all, his perseverance had certainly paid off up until now. Surely it would continue to pay off in the future. He had no concrete basis for thinking so—it was more or less blind optimism—but it was certainly better than beating himself up and getting all down in the dumps.

That’s the spirit! You’ll get there as long as you don’t give up.

Just then, Mercia approached Akira. “You’re one of the support hunters, I take it? Sorry you had to wipe my subordinates’ asses for them back there—I’ll take full responsibility for that. My name’s Mercia. What’s yours?”

“I’m, uh—”

Hikaru’s voice suddenly interjected through his comms. “Akira!” she hissed. “Quiet! Don’t give your name to her, whatever you do! Don’t say anything you shouldn’t!”

“Huh? Hikaru?”

“Please, I’m begging you—keep quiet! Do it for me! If you want to negotiate a favor in return later, I don’t mind! Just don’t tell her your name!”

She sounded unusually desperate, which bewildered him. Mercia noticed that Akira was hesitating to answer.

“Something wrong? Is there a reason you can’t tell me?” she asked.

“O-Oh, yeah, sorry. My operator just gave me an earful, saying I need to keep quiet. So I apologize, but I can’t answer.”

That earned a grin of amusement from Mercia. “Oh? Special circumstances, I take it?”

Akira didn’t respond. Had he answered, he probably would have said yes, but he kept quiet like Hikaru had requested. Even so, Mercia read the answer in his face.

“I see. Then out of consideration for your operator who’s obviously listening in, I’ll keep things short and sweet. We’ll take care of this transport—thanks for your help, and get some well-deserved rest. See you round!” She turned and walked away.

With that, both Akira and Hikaru understood that further assistance was no longer necessary. In his augmented vision, he could see Hikaru breathe an obvious sigh of relief.

“What’s up, Hikaru? Is there something suspicious about her?”

“Not suspicious, but, uh... Simply put, she belongs to a ridiculously skilled team of hunters, and well, she’s kind of a big deal.” She went on to explain that Mercia was the assistant commander of a large group of hunters known as Dragonriver, and that unlike her commander, who specialized in brawn, she was the brains of the operation and managed every aspect of the team. She was rank 75—strong enough to pose a threat to an average-sized city all by herself.

But unlike Hikaru, Akira couldn’t connect all the dots. “And?”

“And, well, when she came over to talk to you, I flew into a panic.”

“Oh, now I get it.” Akira reasoned she must not have wanted him to say anything rude to Mercia accidentally, since the woman was such an important figure. After all, Hikaru would be held responsible for anything stupid or thoughtless that he might say—not a baseless fear by any means, seeing as he hadn’t even understood the situation without her explanation.

Hikaru took a deep breath to regain her calm, then smiled at him. “Anyway, thanks for your hard work today. It was truly impressive. You definitely live up to my expectations.”

“Well, yeah. I mean, I told you I would.”

“In that case, may I count on you for other things as well? Like not causing any trouble, or not causing any trouble, or even not causing any trouble?”

Akira couldn’t help but grin at her remark. “Look, it’s not like I cause trouble on purpose. You’re my operator, right? You make sure I don’t get into trouble.”

“Very well, just leave it to me.”

“I’m counting on you, okay?” he insisted with a grin.

“Count on me all you want. I won’t let you down!” she teasingly rejoined. Certain that she’d just made Akira easier to keep in line, Hikaru was over the moon.

And Alpha was also smiling as she observed Hikaru’s expression.

Not long afterward, the high-ranking hunters eradicated the entire swarm of bugs attacking the transport.

◆

Akira relaxed in the bath in his room, soaking away the day’s fatigue. The luxurious, high-quality hot water soothed his exhausted mind and body. He even let out a moan of pleasure from the supreme bliss.

“Now that’s what I call a bath,” he mumbled with a grin. “Yep, I’m hooked. No way I can go back to a normal bath after this.”

Alpha, soaking in the water with him, grinned. Good thing your bathroom at home’s being remodeled as we speak, then, right?

“You said it! Otherwise, if I got used to fancy baths like this here, I would have had to go over to Sheryl’s every day to bathe. There’s a scary thought.”

It was easy for one to adjust to a higher standard of living, but hard to lower it again. Having grown up in the slums, Akira had once been ecstatic at the mere prospect of a hot bath, no matter how shabby. But now that he’d had a taste of incredibly luxurious baths, such was no longer the case.

After finishing his relaxing, rejuvenating, and pleasurable soak, Akira walked back into his room in good spirits. There, he donned some comfortable loungewear—essentially a T-shirt and boxers—and began his daily calisthenics. He adopted various exercise poses designed to increase his flexibility, such as standing on one leg while stretching the other straight up toward the ceiling and trying to maintain his balance.

As he was in the middle of this, Hikaru called out to him from across the room, “You’re awfully flexible, you know that?”

“Yeah, pretty impressive, huh? My body used to be pretty stiff, but look what I can do now!” Looking smug, he adopted a pose to show just how flexible he was.

“Wow, cool!” Hikaru said with mock astonishment.

Enjoying her praise, Akira did another pose.

“Yeah, yeah. Amazing.”

“I know, right?!”

As Hikaru looked at him, she only saw a child wanting approval. He definitely didn’t look like the kind of high-ranking hunter capable of the feats he’d pulled off earlier today. But she didn’t wonder which was the real Akira, the child before her or the hunter who’d been on the roof earlier today—they were both Akira, no doubt about it. The question was...which of them should she focus on? After a bit of thought, she decided to prioritize Akira the hunter.

“Akira, can I get you to look at this for a second?” She pointed to the large display on the wall. Reflected there was first-person video footage of Akira’s battle on the transport roofs.

He turned around and watched. Though the footage looked to Hikaru exactly like what she’d seen during the fight, Akira couldn’t make head or tail of what was going on even though it was his own battle—his sense of time had been warped during the battle itself. Everything on the screen was flying by far too fast.

She slowed the video down—not that its contents seemed any less impressive. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks to me here like you’re firing at enemies outside your field of vision. And here, you’re shooting at enemies behind you. How are you doing that?”

“I’m just aiming in the direction of the enemy readings on my scanner,” he answered.

“Well, yeah, I figured that much, but how do you know where they are when you can’t even see them?”

She could have understood had he just been firing at enemies whose signals appeared in his field of vision. But she could see no such markers in the footage from his perspective.

“Uh... Just by feel, I guess?” Because Akira really did scan for enemies as naturally as breathing by now, he couldn’t quite put into words how he did it, so that was all he could answer with.

But that was good enough for Hikaru. “Oh, right. You’ve probably augmented your senses, haven’t you? Well, as skilled as you are, I should have guessed as much.”

“R-Right! Yeah, that’s exactly it,” he answered, acting like he knew exactly what she was talking about. Alpha, what’s she talking about?

Augmented senses—in other words, adding an additional sense, an artificial sixth sense, if you will.

In the East, a “sixth sense” did not have any connection to the occult—it was the term commonly used to describe an artificial sensory organ that was added to the body to supplement the natural five senses. Originally, cyborgs had used the phrase to describe their internal scanning devices, which functioned just like sensory organs, but as technology had gotten more advanced and normal humans had gained access to the same abilities, the definition had expanded to include any sort of similar technology.

Now there were many kinds of “sixth senses.” One might allow a human to see ultraviolet and infrared light, granting them the power to see in the dark. Another could expand one’s field of vision to 360 degrees, letting them see directly behind them without turning around. Nor were sixth senses limited to just improving on existing faculties. There were thermal senses, for perceiving temperature and heat sources from far away; motion senses, which detected the movement of objects; spatial senses, which served as a kind of built-in radar; and magnetic senses, which could reveal the intensity and direction of a magnetic field.

However, these senses didn’t immediately become usable the moment they were added. Because their sensory data was something the human brain didn’t normally process, one also needed to add a brand-new sensation processor to their brain’s functionality. And of course, this procedure was much more involved and complex than adding on an extra arm or leg. Its failure rate was extremely high—in the worst cases, the brain’s inability to make sense of the unrecognized data could cause it to lose its ability to process senses entirely.

To reduce such risks as much as possible, it was recommended that the additional sense be put through basic training upon installation, so that the brain could gradually get used to processing the new sensory data. It was also common for sixth sense users to be unable to properly describe how the new sensation worked when they were not yet used to it, especially to people who had never felt such a sensation before. Instead, they would typically just say they did things “by feel.”

When Alpha explained this to Akira, he finally understood why Hikaru had accepted his answer. I see. So she’s under the mistaken impression I’ve got some additional way of perceiving that’s letting me perform in battle like that.

She’s not mistaken.

Wait, what?

Alpha moved and stood in front of Hikaru with her back to Akira. Then she pointed at the girl. You can see Hikaru here on the other side of me, can’t you?

For a moment, Akira looked like he didn’t understand her question. Yeah, of course I can... Then his eyes widened in surprise. Huh? But how?

“Akira, is something wrong?” Hikaru asked.

“O-Oh, no, nothing.”

Hikaru turned away from Akira and back to the monitor on the wall. Alpha continued to conceal Hikaru’s head movement from Akira’s augmented vision by standing in front of her. There was no way he should have been able to see Hikaru—and yet, he could perceive her perfectly, including her movements.

How is this possible, Alpha?!

Because you’re already using a sixth sense—subconsciously, anyway. In fact, you’re receiving three visual inputs at the same time—one from your naked eye, one from your scanner, and one from me.

Akira had been collectively perceiving all three together as his own vision, but his brain was actually processing each of them as separate inputs. So he could “see” Hikaru without physically seeing her.

And that’s not just true of visual data, Alpha continued. I’m receiving your scanner’s data through you, meaning your brain’s receiving said data as well. Thus, rather than having to look through your scanner to get that information, you receive it as another sense entirely. And you’ve unconsciously been training that sixth sense of yours all this time.

During the nationalist incident, Akira had lost Alpha’s support. Yet he’d been able to fight amazingly well thanks to that sixth sense of which he had been unaware. Even without his connection to Alpha, Akira was still an Old Domain User—thanks to which he’d accessed his scanner’s data through his sixth sense and upgraded his awareness to a higher resolution without even realizing he was doing so. Of course, that wasn’t the only reason he’d survived—his determination and grit had also played a role in helping him clinch that victory against nearly impossible odds. Still, without all of the training he’d unconsciously given his sixth sense, he would have died.

In case you were wondering, if I’d informed you about all this and made you aware of what you were unconsciously doing, it would have defeated the purpose of your training. So that’s why I’ve kept quiet up until now. But now that you’re able to control it to this degree, it’s probably safe to explain.

I see. So I’ve learned to do all that without even realizing it, huh? No wonder Hikaru’s so surprised.

In fact, however, this only accounted for about ten percent of Hikaru’s astonishment. Not everyone could have pulled off what Akira had, even with a sixth sense. The average person had a tough time hitting a stationary target, even if they calmed down and aimed as accurately as they could beforehand. But Akira was hitting multiple targets at breakneck speed, and with perfect accuracy to boot. On top of that, he was dodging all incoming attacks with precision—though a single hit could have easily finished him off.

That was what freaked Hikaru out.

As a trade-off for gaining more and more strength, Akira’s sensibilities were becoming even more and more divorced from those of the average person—like Hikaru. So he continued his training despite her presence in the room, completely oblivious to her feelings.

Hikaru decided to enter the bath and soak away her own fatigue—she’d accumulated quite a bit of it today. And even for a middle district resident working for the city’s General Administration Department, someone used to comfort, the bath was sufficiently relaxing.

Still, once she’d unwound enough to reflect on the day’s events, she gave a tired sigh. “What a day! And to think Kibayashi manages multiple hunters like that simultaneously! No wonder he’s got the authority he does.” Then she forced herself to grin, trying to pep herself up. “Well, I’m just as good as he is! I mean, I’ve already done a great job of reining Akira in. At this rate, Inabe will definitely recognize how talented I am. I can do this!”

Though she’d staked everything on a high-risk-high-return gamble, as long as she could keep Akira under control, she was guaranteed to win. Surely that wasn’t too much for her talents. Her enthusiasm skyrocketed at the mere thought.

By the time Hikaru returned to the bedroom, Akira was already asleep. On a whim, she glanced at his sleeping face.

“When he’s asleep like this, he looks so normal and harmless,” she said with a gentle smile. “Good night, Akira. Sleep tight!”

Hikaru climbed into her own bed, closed her eyes, and let drowsiness take her. She was asleep almost immediately.

While Akira and Hikaru slept, the Gigantas III continued to make its way across the East. They’d almost made it to their destination—Zegelt City.

Chapter 203: Zegelt City

The next day, Akira woke before dawn. He was always an early riser, but since he had the opportunity, he decided to head to the roof to watch the sun rise.

The wind on top of the Gigantas III was violent, and the roof certainly wasn’t a safe place to be in the dark. Normally, no one would risk going up there just to watch something as mundane as a sunrise. But for Akira, such danger was tranquility itself compared to the fierce battle he’d fought here yesterday. As far as he was concerned, this was an ideal setting to greet the morning in.

But not so for Hikaru.

“Akira! Don’t let go of me, okay?! Whatever you do, do not let go of me!”

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry, I’ve got you.”

Akira was hugging Hikaru tightly, and she was also clinging to him. From an outsider’s perspective, they would have looked like boyfriend and girlfriend—except that Akira looked exasperated and Hikaru absolutely petrified.

“If you’re really so scared, why’d you even ask to come along?”

Akira had originally wanted to go alone. But as he was getting dressed, Hikaru had woken up and voiced her desire to accompany him.

“I-I want to see the sunrise too, okay?! Is that a crime?!”

“Couldn’t you have just watched it from that monitor in the room or whatever?”

“Well, you’re the one who said that was too dull, weren’t you?! If it’s really as impressive as you say, I want to see it for myself!”

Akira realized she was raising her voice to distract herself from her terror. “All right, all right. I get it, so just calm down already. I’m holding on to you, so you’ll be safe.”

He squeezed her a little more tightly, hoping this would help her settle down. She didn’t say another word.

“Oh, looks like it’s almost time,” he said eagerly, gazing toward the horizon.

To keep up her pretense for coming up here, Hikaru also glanced in that direction, even though she couldn’t have cared less about the sunrise.

The real reason she’d accompanied Akira was to keep him in her sight. While there weren’t any monsters on the roof at the moment, there were still a decent number of hunters standing guard on the night shift. In order to prevent any possible confrontations or arguments, she wanted to stay by his side at all times. And so it was that she now found herself here, battered by the wind on top of a dangerous transport roof at the crack of dawn. She was so terrified she didn’t even have the capacity to feel embarrassed that she was desperately clinging to Akira.

At least there were no monsters around—she’d made sure to check before heading up here. But being up on the roof was still scary, and the moment Akira had his fill of the sunrise, she was determined to drag him back to his room. Her eyes were on the horizon, but her mind was focused on this plan.

Then, as she watched, the sky brightened, and the sun gradually began to climb up from the horizon. Its light purged the distant ruins of their darkness. Though these illuminated remains were now only husks of their former glory, the same sun lit them up that had once shone on the prosperous Old World, just as captivating to the people then as it was today.

Akira found himself glad that he’d made the trip to come up here and see it. Then he noticed the look on Hikaru’s face. There was no longer any trace of fear or apprehension present—her eyes were wide with awe. He was a little surprised but didn’t say a word, not wanting to ruin the moment for her.

Finally, the sun rose above the horizon, and the sky filled with normal daylight. The moving scene was over. Feeling she’d seen something truly incredible, Hikaru’s heart swelled with satisfaction.

Then she realized Akira was looking at her smugly, and she flushed with embarrassment. “W-Well, that wasn’t too bad, I suppose,” she announced. “I’m at least glad I got to see it in person, rather than on the screen.”

“See? I was right, wasn’t I?”

“A-Anyway, we’ve seen what we came here to see, so time to head back! Come on, Akira, let’s go!”

“Sure, sure.”

He didn’t sense any more fear from her at all. However, the wind was still blowing fiercely, so he continued to hug her tight as they made their way back into the vehicle.

Hikaru tried her best not to feel conscious of his embrace. As he held her close, the fear of being on the roof waned considerably, and the swell of satisfaction was also gone now that the sun had risen. All that remained within her was the embarrassment of being hugged by a boy who was not too far from her in age.

Even Hikaru, as capable as she was, couldn’t manage this emotion. And even once they were back in the room, her face remained beet red for some time.

◆

Akira was once again on the roof of the transport, assigned to security duty. He’d nearly used all of his ammo over the course of the previous day, but as he hadn’t quite emptied his backpacks before switching them out, he could still scrape together enough leftover shots to participate again.

Looking out over the wasteland while standing on the edge of the roof, Akira detected an enemy—a monster with a distorted, stumpy-looking cannon for a torso, with arms and legs like a cyborg grasshopper.

The creature’s cannon fired gigantic shells from its three-meter-tall muzzle, which exploded on impact as they struck the side of the Gigantas III. But because the transport was protected by such powerful force-field armor, it wasn’t even scratched. So the monster used its grasshopper legs to leap onto the roof, or at least it tried to—until it encountered a barrage of gunfire in midair from Akira and was blown to bits.

Akira looked puzzled. “That’s odd. The bugs from yesterday were definitely tougher.”

Monsters were stronger the farther east one went, and the Gigantas III had been traveling eastward all night, nonstop. So Akira had been expecting even more powerful monsters than the ones he’d been dealing with, and he was surprised at how weak they were proving to be.

That’s because we’re on the outskirts of a city, Alpha answered matter-of-factly. Any monsters that would have proven a threat to the city are already dead.

“Oh, that makes sense,” Akira said with a nod. At the same time, he was still surprised at just how strong this monster had been. Before Akira had become a hunter, when he’d been nothing more than a child of the slums, he had taken out a few monsters with a handgun. Those creatures had been so small that they posed no threat to the city and thus were permitted to draw breath on the Kugamayama outskirts.

The monsters left alive here were much stronger. If this was one of the smaller ones, then just how strong were those that were considered a threat?

Suddenly his kill a moment ago didn’t seem so impressive. He chided himself for his complacency.

“We’ve made it pretty far east, but we’re still not at the Front Line, are we? The world sure is vast.”

It certainly is. So let’s not get cocky about taking down one of the smaller beasts.

“All right,” he said with a sheepish smile.

After a while, Hikaru’s voice came through his comms. “Looks like your job’s over. Come back to the room right away. If you don’t return before we get to Zegelt, that might create some hassles.”

“All right, I’ll be right there,” he replied. Heading for the exit, he looked off past the front of the transport.

There, before his eyes, was his destination—an enormous domed city.

◆

The enormous dome covered Zegelt City completely. Its base served as a defensive wall, much like the one in Kugamayama, but this rose up into a hemisphere built with a thin exoskeletal framework underneath transparent, polyhedral planks. There was no district outside the walls like in Kugamayama—all of Zegelt lay underneath the dome.

As the convoy of transports approached, a portion of the defensive wall parted to allow it to enter. The Gigantas III, carrying Akira and Hikaru, drove up to a station platform so large it looked like it had been built for giants and rolled to a stop.

On the roof, Hikaru grinned at Akira. “Welcome to Zegelt City! As of this moment, we’re halfway done with your security mission here. First off, let me thank you for all your hard work until now.”

“Don’t mention it! So we’re at the midpoint now, huh? In that case, the rest probably won’t be too bad—provided my supply of ammo holds out.”

“Not to worry! I’m going to make sure you’re all resupplied before we head back out. You’ll have to work just as hard on the journey home, you know.”

All of Akira’s ammo—meant for his round-trip run to Zegelt City and back—was gone, spent on the first leg of the journey alone. To make sure he could continue helping with security rather than becoming just another dead-weight passenger—and more importantly, to make sure she wouldn’t have to trudge out and resupply him in the middle of combat—Hikaru was already planning to provide him with plenty of ammunition.

“We’ll be heading out tomorrow night,” she informed him. “Until then, you’re free to do whatever you want—but unfortunately, you’ll have to stay within the confines of your room. To be perfectly transparent, there’s been a hiccup regarding your entry into Zegelt City right now. But everything will be fine if you stay in the vehicle.”

She added that permission to enter one city’s defensive wall applied to any city with a defensive wall, as long as the person in question wasn’t hostile or had no business whatsoever being there. But Akira’s permission to enter Kugamayama’s inner city was only temporary. There was a chance Kugamayama could determine that Akira had exceeded his authority by using his clearance to enter Zegelt City as well, which could very well cause an intercity conflict.

“And so,” she finished, “I know it’s a bummer, but you can’t leave the vehicle while we’re here.”

Akira frowned. “Seriously? ‘Bummer’ is right. You sure there’s nothing you can do about this?”

“Possibly, but one thing’s for sure: if you were hoping to go around and do some sightseeing, forget it.”

In truth, getting Akira permission to enter Zegelt City wouldn’t have been as hard for her as she was letting on. Because Kugamayama’s lower district lay outside its walls—which ensured that hopefuls looking to enter the city had a place to stay even if they were denied entry—the security around its defensive wall was actually stricter than other cities. Zegelt, however, was entirely walled in: any hunter who was turned away at the gates would effectively be forced to camp out in the wasteland, exposed to the roaming monsters there. This would reflect poorly on the city, so as long as hunters weren’t known criminals, they could enter Zegelt City comparatively easily.

Hikaru deliberately kept that little detail from Akira because she wanted him to stay in the transport—she hadn’t even filled out his entry paperwork. At first, she had merely wanted to make sure he didn’t get so engrossed in sightseeing that he missed his ride back home, but now she also didn’t want him to run into anyone else and cause a scene.

But Akira had other things on his mind than sightseeing. “A-Actually, well... I was kinda hoping to shop around for a new bike.”

“A bike?”

“Yeah. Since we’re farther east now, I figured the motorbikes sold here would be better than those in Kugamayama.”

While Akira had a contract with Kiryou to only purchase powered suits from them, there was no such stipulation regarding where he had to buy his vehicles. Currently, he had no bike, since he’d lost it during the nationalist incident, and more than likely he wouldn’t travel this far east again for a while. Moreover, he knew that the monsters he’d be fighting would only get tougher as time went on. So he didn’t want to waste this opportunity.

A bike designed for the high-ranking hunters of Zegelt would be absurdly expensive, but he could probably afford one, at least. Thanks to Hikaru, he’d gotten his powered suit and other gear at virtually no charge, so he had the budget for it.

When Hikaru understood what he wanted, she found herself conflicted. She could have stopped him from sightseeing with the excuse that they weren’t here on vacation. But preventing him from procuring gear would cause trouble—and Inabe would definitely chew her out as well.

Then Akira had an inspiration. “Oh, but wait! You could act on my behalf, right? I mean, you’re my handler and all. Why don’t you go buy one for me?”

Now Hikaru was even more torn. His request was pragmatic, and she couldn’t find a good reason to turn him down. But if she left the transport without him, she wouldn’t be able to watch over him. And she wanted to monitor him as much as possible—after all, had she not intervened the previous day when Mercia had approached him, trouble could have arisen. There was also the possibility, however unlikely, of him encountering Udajima. Outside of combat or when she otherwise couldn’t be with him, she wanted to err on the side of caution by staying next to him.

“If that’s the case, maybe it’d just be better to take you with me,” she said. “That way, you’ll be able to test-drive the vehicle before you buy it and make sure it’s one you really want. I’ll see if I can get you clearance to enter the city.”

“Whoa, really?! That sounds like it’ll be a pain on your end, but I definitely appreciate it!”

“Don’t mention it! I’m your handler, after all. This is well within my scope,” she said proudly.

And so, in the end, Hikaru made arrangements for Akira to enter Zegelt City. While she was at it, she set up an appointment for the two of them at a motorbike shop the following day.

The next morning, Akira headed into the city with Hikaru bright and early to find a bike. As they sat opposite each other and rode through the city on an unmanned vehicle, Akira let out a murmur of fascination at the scenery surrounding him. “Wow, talk about impressive!”

By contrast, Hikaru didn’t look impressed at all. “Why? It’s nothing you didn’t see back in Kugamayama.”

“Are you sure? Kugamayama doesn’t have those.”

Self-driving vehicles were darting this way and that overhead. They had no feathers or wings on them he could see, nor were they traveling along some sort of invisible path. They were truly flying, just like the containers he’d seen in the Mihazono Town Ruins.

“Also,” he continued, “a dome this large has gotta be protected by unbelievably powerful force-field armor, right? I mean, with monsters like those gigantic bugs from yesterday flying outside, it would have to be.” The dome’s ceiling rose so high that there was ample room for even the tallest skyscrapers in the city. Zegelt didn’t feel like an enclosed space at all.

Futuristic cities. Old World cities. Walled cities. Cities where cars flew and buildings looked super cool. Perhaps even massive domes. Back when Akira had lived on the streets, this had been the larger world he’d envisioned. And now, seeing that Zegelt City was not too far off from the scenes he had imagined, he found himself a little giddy.

Hikaru, meanwhile, was growing increasingly unhappy. But as an employee of Kugamayama City, and as Akira’s handler, she couldn’t let her displeasure show, and she tried her best to maintain a cheerful smile. Still, she couldn’t conceal her true feelings entirely, and her smile appeared somewhat forced—enough for Akira to notice.

Say, Alpha, Hikaru doesn’t look too happy. Was it something I said?

She’s probably upset that you’re oohing and aahing over the scenery here but weren’t as impressed upon seeing Kugamayama’s middle district for the first time.

Oh, is that all? It’s not like that was my fault. I can’t help how I feel.

Well, we’re not here to sightsee anyway, so for now, maybe just stop gawking at everything before her mood gets even worse.

R-Right, good plan. Akira quit leaning against the car window and pressing his face to the glass in awe, instead sitting up straight in his seat.

When he did, Hikaru’s eyes met his.

“U-Um,” he stammered, “c-come to think of it, you’re right! Kugamayama’s middle district was just as impressive, wasn’t it?”

She broke into a smile. “Thanks, Akira. I appreciate that.” Even though she knew his words were just flattery, the fact that he was actively trying to improve her mood made her happy.

Akira said no more. He just turned his gaze away from her and toward the window—and this time, it wasn’t because he wanted to enjoy the view.

◆

Upon their arrival at the store, an employee greeted the two of them. As Hikaru had already made an appointment, the staff knew they were here to purchase a bike, and the employee guided them right to the bike display area. This store sold vehicles for hunters, and its wares were all kept in large showroom-like cases. They didn’t just sell cars and bikes—combat automobiles like tanks and mechs were also lined up on display. In other words, for the hunters in this area, tanks and mechs fell into the same category as cars and bikes. It wasn’t quite true that riding a tank was as commonplace as carrying a handgun, but Zegelt City at least came closer to that point than Kugamayama did.

Akira was expecting the bikes sold here to be more cutting-edge than the ones he was used to, so he was eager to see the selection. Finally, they reached a showroom where bikes the staff had hand-selected for him were all lined up.

“Mr. Akira, I’ve been informed your budget is somewhere around the three to four billion range, is that correct?” began the sales rep. “These are the products we’d recommend in that price range. Now, I’ll go over each of them in order, starting with this one right here.”

As Akira listened to the employee with great interest, Hikaru stared at the eight bikes lined up before her. So these bikes each cost three billion aurum or more? Now that I think about it, that’s ridiculously expensive. Do all high-ranking hunters regularly spend that kind of money?

As long as someone didn’t splurge or live an extravagant lifestyle, three billion aurum was more than enough for a person to live comfortably for the rest of their life, and certainly enough to convince the average citizen to retire from the daily grind. Yet high-rankers regularly spent more than that on just one gear upgrade—it was still a ton of money, but its value varied greatly depending on whether hunters or normal citizens were spending it.

Hikaru thought about the sheer amount of talent and luck combined required to earn the same amount while working a regular job or even owning a business. No wonder most people stood a better chance of earning such a sum by risking their lives and attempting to rise through the ranks as hunters. Guess that’s why there’s no shortage of hunter hopefuls despite more and more of them dying every year.

She also knew the ones who stood to gain the most profit from the hunter profession were not the people gathering relics and culling monsters out in the wasteland, but those who sold those hunters tools to do their jobs—like the employee delivering a sales pitch to her and Akira right then, for instance. Today, like every other day, many companies would profit from pricing their products far beyond what any normal citizen would earn in a lifetime, targeting the hunters who made enough money to afford them.

Akira listened as the employee went over the details of all eight bikes.

“So, do any of them strike your fancy?” the employee ended with a smile. “All eight come highly recommended, so you can’t go wrong with any of them.”

“Well, this might be a dumb question...”

“What is it? When it comes to a customer asking about one of our products, there are no dumb questions! Ask away!”

“These...” He gulped. “These are all bikes, right?”

“Indeed! Every single one is a motorcycle.”

“So they’re not aircraft that just resemble bikes? Because that’s what they look like to me.”

The employee immediately understood Akira’s doubt—of the eight recommended vehicles on display, four didn’t have wheels. “Well, they’re aircycles, to be precise, but here at our store, we put them in the motorcycle category. In addition, most of the two-wheeled motorcycles in this price range can also fly, and they are often used more in the air than on the ground anyway. So there’s not much difference between wheeled and wheelless motorcycles here.”

“Oh, gotcha. I guess that makes sense,” he said, then groaned inside. Alpha, what’s your opinion?

They all sound satisfactory to me.

R-Really?

Do you not like any of them, Akira?

It’s not really a question of like or dislike, it’s just... I thought I was coming here to buy a motorcycle, and they’re recommending me a bunch of bike-shaped flying devices. That just wasn’t what I expected, I guess.

Even the four bikes with wheels just looked to him like aircraft that could also run along the ground. Some of them even had simple wings attached.

But you can’t just walk away without buying anything at this point, Alpha reminded him. For one, this is a golden opportunity to purchase a high performance bike that you normally wouldn’t have access to in Kugamayama, and you don’t want to waste it. And for another, the ability to fly over the battleground will be indispensable in the fights ahead.

She added that while wheeled bikes were more energy-efficient when riding along the ground, trucks and cars were better for long distances anyway. Since he’d come here to buy a bike, he was better off purchasing a product with functionality that a car or truck didn’t already have.

In that case, Akira mused, I just need to pick from one of these eight, right? Let’s see... He still wasn’t entirely on board with these strange designs, but if he didn’t have a choice, there was no use complaining. So he took another look at the vehicles in front of him.

The employee couldn’t hear Akira and Alpha’s telepathic conversation, of course, but a career’s experience of selling to hunters kicked in, and the sales rep immediately realized why Akira looked so hesitant. “By the way, we do have a bike that’s designed specifically for ground travel, rather than in the air, and yet can still fly when needed. Does that sound more to your liking?”

“Oh? You have a bike like that?”

“We do indeed. However, it is a rather, shall we say, precarious model, so I can’t really recommend it. But if you’re dead set on a wheeled model primarily intended for use on the ground, I can let you try it out.”

“Um—yeah, that’d be great!”

“Very well, I’ll get it ready right away.” The employee bowed and got to work preparing for Akira’s test-drive.

The test-drive area inside the store was wide enough for a potential customer to try piloting a mech. It was still too narrow to put a three-billion-aurum-plus motorbike through its paces completely, but it sufficed for a light test run, at least.

Upon being led there, the first thing Akira tested was how one of the bikes without wheels felt to drive. When he mounted the vehicle and turned it on, it rose into the air and hovered—yet it didn’t sway at all, nor did it feel unsteady in the least. In fact, Akira decided he would be completely comfortable using it as a platform while aiming at an enemy.

He tried ascending. Experiencing the aircycle climb vertically up into the sky, a feat impossible for standard two-wheeled bikes, he let out a murmur of awe. Then he tried flying in different directions, navigating all around the test-drive airspace. Of course, as one might have guessed from the price, its assisted driving mode was also top-notch. Akira had no trouble whatsoever maneuvering despite never having ridden such a vehicle before.

After riding for about ten minutes, he returned to the ground, landing in front of the employee and Hikaru.

“So what did you think?” the employee asked. “As an aircycle, its design is fairly plain and inoffensive, but that also makes it a safer choice. As you can see, the frame has no sharp edges, and even though all of its stats are balanced across the board, I consider that more useful than having a vehicle extremely specialized in only one area. It’s also rather easy to drive, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, you’re right. Operating it was a breeze,” Akira agreed. “But it still didn’t feel like I was riding a bike, you know? So I think it’d probably take me some time to get used to it.”

“Well, that’s because it’s not your typical motorcycle—it’s an aircycle, after all,” the employee said matter-of-factly. “So it won’t feel like the type of bikes you’re used to. Now then, try this one next.”

The employee gestured over to a large white motorbike. “This is the Sylpheed A3. Its wheels can generate force-field armor beneath themselves, so the bike doesn’t fly through the sky so much as rides across it. As I mentioned before, it’s a little more extreme than the other models, but I do think this is more like the types of motorcycle you’re used to.”

Akira was already pleased with how much more like a typical bike this model looked. For one thing, its gigantic wheels were clearly necessary to propel the vehicle forward, rather than just an afterthought to let the bike drive on land.

He mounted the Sylpheed A3 and tested how it handled on the ground. No problems there—despite its size, it moved with astounding speed and precision. All of his previous bikes could have done that as well, however, so he wasn’t particularly impressed just yet.

Next, he tried riding it in the air.

The sensation didn’t surprise him—it left him absolutely stunned.

“Whoa!”

The bike’s wheels were generating a force-field track to ride upon, just as if they were on the ground. The fact that the bike was traveling horizontally, even in air, did indeed make it feel more like he was driving rather than flying. Akira had already experienced riding motorbikes straight up walls at ninety-degree angles, but even that had still been closer to riding along the ground, just tilted vertically. With the Sylpheed A3, he could actually ride in the air, and the sensation was still similar to maneuvering a motorcycle—when he turned, the bike adjusted the direction in which it generated its makeshift road, creating a very different sensation from that of flying the aircycle.

Even so, he struggled to keep from tipping over as he made his way back down to the ground. “Now I see what you meant by extreme,” he said with a sigh. “This thing’s not so easy to control, is it?” Thinking that maybe an aircycle would be the best option for him after all, he was about to announce that he was done test-driving when Alpha spoke up.

Mind if I give it a try?

Huh? Yeah, sure, go ahead.

All right. First, let’s try rising upward.

When Akira heard this, he assumed she meant riding perpendicularly up an invisible wall, as when he’d ridden up the sides of buildings. But the bike remained horizontal to the ground as it ascended, turning as if its wheels were proceeding up a spiral path.

“Whoa!”

Now I’m going to turn, she warned. Be sure not to fall off.

We’re already turning, though, Akira thought—and then the bike somersaulted, spinning with its front wheel as its axis. By creating force-field armor around the tire, Alpha had locked it in place, launching the bike upward. After about twenty revolutions, she did the same thing with the rear tire. As Akira yelled in surprise, the bike began to move as though driving around the inside of a large, invisible sphere.

Alpha! What the hell are you doing?!

Test-driving, of course.

This is your idea of a test-drive?!

As Akira continued to complain, the bike ran around the exterior of the invisible sphere, then came to a stop at its apex. Instantly, it plummeted straight to the ground—Alpha had disengaged the force-field armor that she’d generated beneath it. But before the bike collided with the ground, its control system wrapped a weaker force field around the tires, slowing the bike’s fall via friction and allowing Akira to land unharmed.

He breathed a sigh of relief. I don’t know what all that was about, but are you satisfied now?

Oh yes, I’m quite satisfied. You should buy this one, Akira.

Wait, seriously? He made a face, but from Alpha’s smile, it was clear he had no say in the matter.

The employee, not having noticed anything strange or unusual about Akira’s driving at all, came over. The Sylpheed A3 was extremely difficult to control in midair, so the employee assumed he’d accidentally hit a weird setting that had caused the bike to move as it had.

“Well, what did you think of that one? Because of its unique propulsion, it’s definitely an unusual model, but I still personally can’t recommend it. If you just want something that’ll go in the air, the aircycles are much cheaper, and they handle better. So I’d go with one of those if I were you.”

No customer who’d tried out both models had ever selected the Sylpheed over the aircycle—and because the bike was so unpopular, it had a no-refund policy attached to it. That’ll make it even easier to convince him to get the aircycle, the employee thought smugly.

“No, I’ll take the Sylpheed,” Akira declared.

“What?!” cried the salesperson in surprise, letting their professional demeanor slip for a moment.

Hikaru looked equally shocked by his decision.

Akira actually sympathized with them but grinned to disguise his feelings. “Yeah. Truth is, I like to live a little dangerously.”

That was a bald-faced lie. But since he couldn’t tell them about Alpha, making something up was the only way he could deflect suspicion.

The employee perked up. After all, since the customer had tried out the model and announced his intent to buy it, a sale was now guaranteed.

“I-I see. Very well. In that case, let me go over the optional add-ons you have for this model. First off...”

◆

Once they’d finished buying the bike, Akira and Hikaru headed back to the Gigantas III. They’d also purchased several add-ons; deciding on these had taken quite some time, and it was now already evening. The new Sylpheed A3 was currently in self-driving mode, dutifully following behind the car Akira and Hikaru were riding in.

Hikaru glanced back at the unmanned motorbike. “Hey Akira, do you really prefer dangerous models like that over the safer ones?”

“Uh... Y-Yeah.” He wanted to say no, but answering honestly wasn’t an option here.

“You do, huh? In that case, should I seek riskier gear that’s harder to handle next time you need a new set?”

“N-No, please don’t.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Yeah, no need to go out of your way or anything. I like that stuff and all, but it’s not like I hate safer options either.”

“Hmm. Well, all right. I’m not really sure I understand, but everyone’s got their preferences, I guess.”

“Y-Yes! That’s exactly right!” Akira didn’t really understand his own preferences either, since they weren’t his own but Alpha’s.

Say, Alpha, are you really sure I’ll be all right on that bike?

Positive, she said confidently. You’ve survived everything else I’ve recommended so far, haven’t you?

Well, yeah, I guess so.

Just like always, if Alpha said he’d be fine, he probably would be. Based on past experience, Akira had no reason not to trust her.

The employee couldn’t help thinking about the boy who’d bought the Sylpheed A3. None of the modifications Akira had chosen were out of the ordinary—a few support arms capable of holding smaller weapons, fasteners to keep cargo from flying off the bike, swapping the default energy tank out for one with enough capacity to supply energy to his guns and powered suit at the same time, and a large case to store extended magazines while on the go. Hunters often wanted these options, so nothing stuck out to the employee as strange.

But there was one thing the boy had requested that had seemed so out of left field that at first the employee had thought he was joking.

“Such a risky weapon on a dangerous bike, eh? That boy must be quite the daredevil.”

Though the vast majority of hunters in the East relied on ranged weapons to take down monsters, there were also those who chose to employ blades or martial arts instead. And among such wild types existed a handful whose skill even surpassed that of most hunters with ranged weapons.

These eccentrics, who purposely avoided the easy road, were thorny individuals. Sometimes their thorns would hurt people. Sometimes they’d break off. And sometimes they’d grow sharper and even more dangerous.

The employee couldn’t help but wonder: Just how sharp would that boy’s thorns eventually become?

Chapter 204: Sakashita Heavy Industries

Kuzusuhara’s Tsubakihara region was under scrupulous lockdown by Kugamayama’s defense force. The vigilant troops deployed there, as well as the high performance scouting devices set up all over the area, served as countermeasures against not just the monsters outside the barricade but also any hunters attempting to trespass into this restricted zone.

If a trespasser only entered the part of Tsubakihara that bordered the city highway, they were notified of their transgression, warned, and then restrained. But if they tried to go any farther, there were no more warnings. They were immediately dealt with—in other words, killed. As long as the city kept the body relatively intact, it could perform a routine investigation into the trespasser’s background. Using the death penalty as a first resort might have sounded extreme, but Tsubakihara’s safety was critical to Kugamayama.

Nor were the high-ranking hunters from farther east, whom Kugamayama had enlisted to help conquer Zone 2 in the Kuzusuhara depths, exempt from this punishment.

The Old World city Tsubaki oversaw, hidden beyond a defensive wall composed of unassuming abandoned buildings, had gone unnoticed for many years. But now, because of the nationalist incident, its existence was known far and wide.

As a stronghold of the Old World, it undoubtedly held a wealth of untold wisdom from its long-vanished denizens. Yes, Kugamayama had restricted access to it, but that was hardly enough to deter high-rankers who could threaten entire cities with their power. Money, standing, fame, authority, pure curiosity—these were common motivations among hunters, and Old World territories easily satisfied them all. In the eyes of the high-rankers, the prospect of entering such a place would certainly be worth the price of antagonizing a city owned by a mere mid-sized governing corporation.

To stop these hunters, the defense force needed firepower capable of killing them—in other words, firepower comparable to that of the troops guarding Kugamayama’s city walls. So the city had diligently bolstered its defense force, among other things purchasing more mechs that were suited for fighting at the forefront.

Naturally, this had been incredibly expensive—certainly way over the budget that was typically allotted to the defense force. In fact, the expense would have bankrupted the city under any other circumstances. But that was no longer a problem, thanks to Kugamayama’s—or more accurately, Yanagisawa’s—deal with Tsubaki. The city required payment from Tsubaki in aurum for guarding her territory, so she sold Old World relics to the city for aurum, then used the proceeds to pay the city back. And because Kugamayama wanted a vast quantity of relics from Tsubaki, they were desperate to charge her as much as they could. So they didn’t hesitate to upgrade every aspect of their defenses around Tsubakihara, dramatically increasing the level of security there.

In the end, the defense force had become much stronger, and the city’s economy was now flourishing. And because none of this would have happened without Yanagisawa, his influence and authority within Kugamayama had solidified even further.

One entrance to Tsubakihara from the city highway, designated Entrance S09, was so off-limits that Yanagisawa had even forbidden the defense force from passing through. At the moment, however, a large armored transport was approaching the barrier. Naturally, the defense force ordered it to stop—but once the vehicle had parked, the troops stationed there received a call on the comms. Their eyes bugged out in surprise, and they immediately set to work removing the barrier in a panic: one of the passengers on board had even higher authority than Yanagisawa.

As the transport passed through S09, one guard stared at the vehicle in awe. On its side was the company logo of one of the five major corporations that made up the Eastern League—Sakashita Heavy Industries.

Having cleared the barrier, the transport continued on across Zone 1. Inside were several Sakashita armed forces, Yanagisawa in his powered suit, and a man named Matsubara, the only one in formal business attire.

“Am I correct in my understanding that we’re now in her territory?” Matsubara asked Yanagisawa.

“That’s right. And she entrusted me with guarding it.” Since the nationalist incident, Tsubaki’s territory had expanded far beyond the wall of abandoned buildings. She now oversaw the entire Tsubakihara region.

“So does that mean we’re safe now?”

“No, no, no way! Absolutely not. It’s still wildly dangerous here,” Yanagisawa said with a grin.

Matsubara scowled at his informal, flippant attitude. “For you? Or for us?”

“Why, both, of course.”

“Uh-huh.”

One of the Sakashita troops, who were accompanying them as Matsubara’s security detail, spoke up. “Mr. Matsubara, there is a gigantic monster approaching ahead, about fifty meters tall. It is most likely targeting us. What do you want us to do?”

Matsubara glanced at Yanagisawa, who nodded.

“Kill it,” Matsubara answered.

“Understood, sir.”

The side door on the transport opened, providing the troops with a foothold from which to do battle. Riding the outside of the vehicle, they trained their weapons on the beast ahead, which was larger than any of the buildings in the area.

This monster was the ruined wreck of the last surviving colossus that had once served as a terminal for Tiol. After Tiol’s death, it had gone berserk and, unable to maintain a human form anymore, had mutated repeatedly until it had grown into an abomination with no resemblance to its former self. On top of that, it had been preying upon and absorbing everything it considered an enemy, which was why it now towered so high.

Monsters were typically stronger the larger they were, so this particular behemoth was likely deadlier than any of the giant bugs Akira had fought against. Such a powerful creature, in fact, should never have appeared in Zone 1. Yet for the troops of Sakashita Heavy Industries, it was but a trifle. With powerful, coordinated gunfire, they showed the creature the might of the Big Five, reducing it to mincemeat in the blink of an eye.

“Wow, now that’s impressive!” Yanagisawa remarked with a cheerful grin.

Matsubara ignored his cheap attempt at flattery. “I know I gave the order, but are you sure we won’t get in trouble for destroying this thing? What if that woman put it here for security reasons?”

“Don’t worry. ‘This thing’ and its companions she merely scattered here and there to serve as ground bait, pretty much. She has no more use for them, and she only lets them roam because it’d be a pain to go around and clean them all up. Look, I took out a few myself, and I didn’t get so much as a scolding.”

Though this area was technically now part of her territory, Tsubaki had no intention of managing it much herself, per Yanagisawa. As long as she had her walled city and a buffer zone between it and other regions, she was satisfied. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have left it in such a dilapidated state—she would have immediately started rebuilding all the Old World structures there. She also wouldn’t have let monsters roam around and continue to ruin the landscape, instead dispatching new security bots to clean it up. Nor would Tsubaki have ever let Kugamayama City’s defense force in if she had actually cared about it.

“So it’s all good,” finished Yanagisawa.

“I get the picture,” Matsubara said. Privately, however, he made a mental note to exercise more caution toward the city executive. Could he truly strike a deal with an AI overseer? And grasp the AI’s circumstances so easily? In that case, he’s even more formidable than I thought.

Only an exceedingly skilled negotiator could have successfully brokered an agreement with Tsubaki. Matsubara couldn’t help but acknowledge Yanagisawa’s capability in that regard—and identify it as a threat.

“Since we’re going to be negotiating with her ourselves shortly,” Matsubara said, “are there any points of caution we should especially watch out for?”

“Caution points? Hmm... Nope!”

Matsubara paused. “There’s got to be something, right?”

“Well, I mean, I already told you how dangerous it is to meet with her directly and advised against it, and you ignored me. So if you’re asking about caution now, I’m not sure what to tell you.”

“I apologize for brushing off your warning, but we at Sakashita have our own concerns that warrant it. If you don’t want to share what to watch out for, why not tell me how you accomplished what you did? If it’s so dangerous to meet her directly and yet you pulled it off, surely you must have used some sort of trick?”

He spoke casually enough, but he was clearly probing Yanagisawa for information. The city executive just grinned.

“Oh, you want me to show my hand? No problem!” he declared, looking proud. “First, I hit her with an antimatter warhead. Then I closed the distance to her in a flash and engaged her in close-quarters—”

Matsubara stopped him with a look of exasperation. “That’s enough. At least now I know I won’t learn anything from your experience.”

Yanagisawa looked a little disappointed at having his bragging interrupted, but his smile quickly returned. “Well, that said, I did everything I could to get Tsubaki to agree to meet you today. That’s why we’ve made it this far into her territory without getting killed, most likely. But I won’t be able to help you beyond that. Whether you survive the meeting and make it back alive depends entirely on your negotiation skills and what kind of mood she’s in.”

“Thanks for the advice,” Matsubara said dryly. On the verge of meeting with a managing AI of the Old World, he didn’t have to be told that his business acumen needed to be spot-on—especially since anyone who intruded onto this restricted zone was typically killed with no questions asked, let alone any chance to meet with her.

Yanagisawa went on regardless. “But if you change your mind and decide you’d rather not die after all, I’ll totally understand. It’s not too late to head back home, you know? Sure, Tsubaki’ll probably be upset if you stand her up at the last minute, but I can just slip her some plausible excuse, like you had severe stomach trouble or fell ill all of a sudden!”

“I appreciate your concern, but I’ll be fine.”

“You sure? You don’t have to hold back on my account or anything. But it’s your funeral, I suppose.”

They ran into another monster along the way, this one even larger at sixty meters high. But the Sakashita troops finished it off easily, and the transport continued forward.

Most of the relics Tsubaki was providing Kugamayama with were trash. She was essentially drip-feeding the city from her massive stock of junk relics in the Tsubakihara Building warehouse that Akira had seen during his visit. She also didn’t plan on allowing any of the city’s personnel into said warehouse like she had Akira, and she certainly wasn’t going to carry the relics right to their doorstep.

So she’d constructed a new warehouse, built into the wall of ruined buildings that surrounded and blocked off her city. She didn’t involve humans in the delivery process at all—her machines would automatically carry the relics from the Tsubakihara Building to the outer warehouse, then unmanned transports from Kugamayama would retrieve them and carry them to the city’s forward base in Kuzusuhara.

It was this new, deserted warehouse that Tsubaki had designated as their meeting spot. And once the meeting was over, the building would be deserted once more. Whether that was because the visitors left and returned home safely—or it became devoid of life for another, more gruesome reason—hinged entirely on the outcome of the upcoming negotiations.

Matsubara was present today as a representative of Sakashita. The troops accompanying him as his security detail all looked quite anxious. Even Yanagisawa’s flippant smile seemed tenser than usual.

“Five minutes until the scheduled meeting,” the commander of his security detail announced to Matsubara. “Good luck, Mr. Matsubara. Even though we’re here to guard you, we hope your negotiations prove favorable so that our services aren’t necessary.”

“As do I. I’ll do the best I can.”

The troops surrounded Matsubara in a circle, watching vigilantly as he walked forward.

No readings except their own showed up on any of the soldiers’ extremely advanced scanners.

“One minute remaining,” the commander declared, “and nothing else detected in the area yet. If the target doesn’t show up by the scheduled time, we’ll consider the situation abnormal. I recommend we discuss beforehand what course of action to take in that case.”

Matsubara’s gaze slid over to Yanagisawa, who shook his head as if to say, “Hey, it’s not my fault if she doesn’t show.” Correctly interpreting the meaning of his gesture, Matsubara made his decision.

“If nothing out of the ordinary happens by the time we’re supposed to meet, I’ll wait one more hour. She might be deliberately making us wait, but I can forgive a degree of impoliteness.”

“Understood, sir!”

Half an hour passed, and all was quiet. “Thirty more minutes,” the commander declared.

More time passed. Tsubaki had yet to show up even at the ten-second mark.

“Ten seconds remaining. Nine. Eight. Seven.”

By this point, the troops were almost entirely convinced she wasn’t coming, or at the very least would be late.

“Four. Three. Two. One. Zero— What?!”

The very instant the commander finished counting down, and defying all their expectations, Tsubaki appeared out of nowhere—directly in front of Matsubara, inside the circle of troops guarding him.

The Sakashita commander couldn’t believe his eyes. Ridiculous! How’d she make it past our encirclement?! Don’t tell me—has she been camouflaged here the entire time?! Impossible! There’s no way she could have concealed herself from us at such close range!

The scanners his team was equipped with were some of the most accurate on the market—they could detect virtually any presence through sound, light, or heat waves, or even the slightest change in airflow. Knowing this, the commander was speechless.

Even so, none of the troops pulled their weapons on her. They knew the moment someone did, battle would break out, and Matsubara’s negotiations with Tsubaki would be forfeit. Instead, they monitored the situation with bated breath.

Tsubaki glared at them coldly. “Which one of you will negotiate?”

“That would be me,” Matsubara answered. As tense as he was, he maintained a businesslike smile as he greeted Tsubaki and introduced himself. “I’m Matsubara, Sakashita Heavy Industries, and it’s a pleasure to meet you. First off, Ms. Tsubaki, I’d like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to you for allowing us this opportunity—”

But Tsubaki cut him off. “If you’re the only mediator, then these others are superfluous, are they not?”

Yanagisawa bolted, calling on every last dreg of his powered suit’s strength to flee as quickly as he could.

Behind him, the Sakashita troops turned to mincemeat—sturdy armor and soft flesh alike. Faced with an attack like Tsubaki’s, it didn’t matter how protected their bodies were—human limbs exploded into blood and guts, while artificial limbs and cyborg bodies were torn to shreds. Their deaths were instantaneous.

Only Matsubara, the negotiator, remained unharmed. Despite having seen for himself the gruesome scene the AI had created without so much as moving a finger, he didn’t tremble in fear. Only a bead of sweat trickled down his cheek. After a moment, he shot Tsubaki a look of mild anger.

“Those were my bodyguards, I’ll have you know.”

Tsubaki ignored him again. “State your terms. And keep it brief, please.”

Matsubara immediately sensed the hidden implication in her words—“If you can’t even do that, you have no business being here”—and moved on to his agenda without further ado. Suppressing his shock and indignation at having his bodyguards killed right in front of him, he spoke calmly.

“Very well, I’ll be as succinct as possible. We at Sakashita wish to renegotiate the terms of our agreement with you. First, let me explain why our current agreement is unsatisfactory as it stands.”

Tsubaki didn’t say a word, and her expression didn’t change.

“Our previous contract was forged nearly fifty years ago, and the situation has changed dramatically since then,” Matsubara went on. “It’s become increasingly difficult for both of us to abide by the terms and will only continue to do so as time goes by. Therefore, I believe it is in both of our best interests to forge a new agreement, don’t you?”

Then Matsubara carefully watched her reaction.

The response he received went far beyond a simple refusal. “I see. In that case, this discussion is over. You, too, are unnecessary.”

“W-Wait!”

Everything below Matsubara’s neck dissolved into shreds, just like his bodyguards had. His head, left intact, fell to the ground and rolled on the floor.

Tsubaki gave his head a last glance, filled with loathing.

Just then, Yanagisawa returned. He recoiled dramatically at the macabre scene around him. “Whoa, hey, hold up now! Couldn’t you have been a little more gentle?”

Tsubaki directed her icy glare at him and said in a tone that was just as frigid, “Consider this your final warning. The next time you bring someone here who pisses me off, your head will be on the chopping block.”

From the look in her eyes, Yanagisawa realized she saw absolutely no value in his existence. But he deliberately responded in jest.

“Hey now, I did my part, you know. I told him this was a bad idea. Repeatedly.”

“Which was just so you could cover your own ass, I’m sure.”

“All right, all right, fine. I’ll be more careful from now on.”

“I suggest you take a moment for some serious self-reflection and make certain it doesn’t happen again. For your own sake. Adieu.”

With that, Tsubaki vanished. The pool of blood on the ground beneath her rippled, but none of it adhered to her feet, nor were there any footprints where she’d stood.

Once he was sure she was finally gone, Yanagisawa breathed a deep sigh of relief. Then he quit playing the jester, and his expression became grim.

Shit! This is why management AIs are such a pain!

Grumbling to himself, he picked up Matsubara’s head and left the area. The warehouse lay deserted once more, but the scene of slaughter—an eloquent sign of how thorny it was to negotiate successfully with a being like Tsubaki—remained.

◆

Kugamayama City’s defensive wall separated the territory into the outer city and the inner city, but the inner city was subdivided even further into the middle district and the upper district. Those living inside the city walls were far better-off than those in the lower district and slums, but the residents of the middle district were essentially only middle-class.

Those living in the upper district, however, were different. They were the truly wealthy of Kugamayama, the ones who held the most power and influence within the city. Just as the denizens of the lower district dreamed of entering the city walls someday, the residents of the middle district yearned to join the elite in the upper district.

However, currently there was an even more elite area within the upper district, one that even the residents of that district couldn’t access so easily—the Special Rental Ward. This area was frequently rented out to important organizations from other cities who visited on critical business, and also contained lodgings for troops and other personnel accompanying such representatives. And right now, Sakashita Heavy Industries—one of the East’s Big Five—was borrowing the entire ward.

Even someone of Yanagisawa’s status would be killed if he intruded onto Sakashita territory without permission, notwithstanding that their occupation of the ward was temporary. And within that sanctum, there was a certain room with even heavier security around it. This office belonged to Sugadome, one of Sakashita Heavy Industries’ top brass. It was Sugadome who had ordered Matsubara to go negotiate with Tsubaki, and he was now awaiting the results.

Yanagisawa entered the room to make his report, carrying a cylindrical case. He approached the slightly larger than average desk that Sugadome was sitting at, then set the case on top of it. “I was originally planning to send you a detailed report of what happened, but given the circumstances, I thought it best to fill you in personally. Is now a good time?”

“You’re asking after you’ve already come in here?” Sugadome said gruffly. “Go ahead.”

“Very well.” Yanagisawa opened the case.

Inside was Matsubara’s severed head. His eyes were closed, and he wasn’t moving.

Sugadome tapped the desk lightly with his finger. Matsubara’s eyes snapped open. He seemed to recognize Sugadome, then sighed, his expression haggard.

Matsubara was fully human. However, his head had been fitted with a “life preserver,” similar to those in cyborgs. Thanks to that and Yanagisawa giving him emergency treatment during the car ride back, he’d survived even after having his whole body from the neck down pulverized. Still, he had sustained a critical injury, and if he didn’t get properly treated soon, he wouldn’t last long.

“I know you’ve been anticipating my report,” he grumbled, “but couldn’t it have waited until I got a new body?”

“Speak” was Sugadome’s reply.

“Very well,” Matsubara said with another sigh, then gravely gave his account of what happened. “And so,” he concluded, “negotiations were over before they began. I hate to say it, but at this rate, renegotiating our agreement with her will most likely be impossible.”

“Were the bodyguards a bad move, then?”

“No, as a matter of fact, it was thanks to their noble sacrifices that I was able to learn her stance on the issue. I believe she deliberately left me alive as a warning. If the security detail hadn’t been with me, I fear she would have made an example of me instead. The troops all performed their roles satisfactorily.”

“Then I’ll see to it they didn’t die in vain.”

Sometimes, a soldier’s only job was to die, and so Sugadome could forgive the Sakashita troops for losing their lives in combat. But he didn’t want them to have died without reason. He swore in his heart that he would give their deaths meaning by making his company flourish as much as he could. Such was his duty as a Sakashita leader, a posthumous show of gratitude to those who’d served him so loyally.

His gaze then slid over to Yanagisawa. “But the more I hear about this incident, the more impressed I am that you made a deal with her, Yanagisawa. Sure you don’t want to join our company? Just say the word, and I’ll prepare you a seat on our board that’ll make it worth your while.”

Yanagisawa was receiving an invitation from a representative of the Big Five—including a cushy position at the company, no less. Anyone else would have been rabid for that kind of opportunity. But Yanagisawa just shook his head with a cordial smile.

“I appreciate how highly you think of me, undeserving though I may be, but I’ll pass.”

“Which of our competitors has scouted you out? Tatsumori? Tsukisada? Or perhaps Senba?”

“No, that’s not the reason, I assure you.”

Sugadome stared hard at Yanagisawa, trying to get a read on him. But the city executive parried his attempt by flashing a bright smile.

“Well, I’m certainly not going to force you,” Sugadome said gruffly. “But if you ever change your mind, just let me know.”

“I appreciate that,” Yanagisawa said with a deep bow.

Once Yanagisawa had left, Matsubara wore a frown as he looked up at Sugadome. “Should you really be making such an offer? I won’t deny someone as skilled as him would be a great asset to the company, but isn’t he supposed to be awfully dangerous?”

Yanagisawa was talented, to be sure, but there had to be some reason he insisted on staying in Kugamayama City when he was capable of so much more. And from what they’d been able (and unable) to dig up on the man, he was clearly someone with many secrets. They’d found signs that his personal history had been falsified as well. Matsubara felt worried about the prospect of such an enigmatic man joining Sakashita.

“I’ve never met a capable man who could be considered safe,” Sugadome replied calmly. “Not once. It’s like Old World technology. We know it’s risky to use, but we can’t grow as a society without it, so we’ve got no choice but to use it wisely and responsibly. Otherwise, we’ll fall to ruin.”

“Ruin, sir?”

“That’s right.” From his expression as he spoke, he clearly wasn’t joking. His eyes glinted, reflecting his determination to uphold his duty as a key representative of one of the East’s rulers, Sakashita Heavy Industries—his duty to make the East prosper.

“We can’t let progress come to a standstill,” he said. “The moment we stop struggling—stop resisting—we’ll be the past. We’ll just be another decaying civilization that tried to conquer the Old World and failed.”

The Old World’s history was riddled with the attempts of cultures to prosper by gathering up the remnants of the once-flourishing civilizations of the past, only for them to fall and join those very ruins eventually. Countless repetitions of this cycle had led to the state of the East as it was known today.

But no more. Sugadome wouldn’t allow the cycle to repeat again. This time, humanity would succeed.

He was determined to make it happen.

“This time, we won’t lose. This time, we won’t let the past conquer us. I swear it.” His tone softened. “And that’s why I’m willing to run a few risks. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Does that answer satisfy you?”

Realizing anew that the man in front of him was indeed worthy of his exalted position, Matsubara looked at him with respect in his eyes. He was only a severed head, but from his expression and tone, the deference in his attitude was clear. “I understand, sir. I apologize for the needless comment.”

“No need. I have no use for a subordinate who just nods along to everything I say. If you ever have a question, ask.”

“Then I have one more question.”

“And what would that be?”

“Now that I’ve given you my report, can you arrange for my treatment? Preferably sooner than later.”

“Oh, right. I almost forgot.”

Sugadome quickly made the necessary arrangements.

After Matsubara had left—or more accurately, had been carried away in another cylindrical glass case—Sugadome received a call. The person on the other end informed him that there had been a significant delay in the Gigantas III’s scheduled departure from Zegelt City.

“And as a result,” his subordinate explained, “our company’s distribution schedule will also be affected. The transport company is expecting a weeklong delay for the Gigantas III. Will this present a problem? Or can we just wait it out?”

The reason for the delay, according to the underling, was that many of the hunters working security on the transport had dropped out during a battle with a swarm of giant bugs, and those in charge had deemed it too dangerous to continue with so few personnel remaining. They needed extra time to either reconsider the transport’s route or wait for reinforcements.

It was an entirely reasonable request, so the security team and the Sakashita subordinate both expected Sugadome to consent.

But Sugadome hesitated. “Give me a moment to consider it.” A multitude of documents and written reports popped up in his augmented vision. He perused them briefly, mulled it over, then came to a decision.

“No, that won’t work. Get them to stay on schedule. I don’t care how.”

“Uh... But sir, that’s going to be awfully difficult. If we send the transport out with lax security, we’ll receive a strong backlash from those on the field, not to mention we’ll be compromising the safety of the transport itself and its cargo.”

“Then we at Sakashita will provide the reinforcements. Prepare five times the amount of the current security team, or even larger, so that those on the transport will have no choice but to nod their heads in agreement. If there aren’t enough hunters on the scene to recruit, fill the roster out with our own troops.”

On the other end of the line, his subordinate was stunned into silence. But Sugadome wasn’t finished.

“Don’t worry about the cost or whether we have the budget for it. It doesn’t even matter whether the route gets changed and the transport arrives late at its destination. But the Gigantas III must depart on the scheduled day. That’s the only thing that matters.”

“U-Understood, sir. Um, may I ask why it matters?”

“If anyone asks, tell them we have cargo that needs to head out on that day. Be sure to emphasize that we’re prepared to provide the reinforcements ourselves. Time is of the essence, so hurry!”

“Yes, sir! Right away, sir!”

Having delivered his orders, Sugadome glanced back at the documents in his vision. Depicted there was a map of the wasteland, marking the route the Gigantas III had taken to Zegelt, the areas where the giant bugs had attacked the transport on the way, and the possible paths the transport could take on the way back.

Thanks to the swarm, we can’t return using route A anymore. If that’s not a coincidence, then we should use this route next.

Had the attack really been planned? That seemed unlikely. But he could no longer afford to take any chances.

◆

Once the convoy of intercity transports, including the Gigantas III, had arrived in Zegelt City, a meeting of the convoy’s leaders and those in charge of each transport took place to discuss how to proceed.

“What’s the damage report for the transports themselves?” one attendee began.

“Thanks to their force-field armor, all sustained only minor damage during the attack,” came the reply. “However, the force fields drained a ton of energy in exchange—around the same amount we’d use during an emergency, in fact.”

In case of an emergency situation, when an intercity transport was forced to stop in the wasteland for some reason or another, transports always carried enough reserve energy for the vehicle to operate for around a month while waiting for help to arrive. In other words, normally those running the transport didn’t need to worry about spending too much energy on the road—only when the job was done, when they were tallying up the costs. But this time, the onslaught of giant bugs had drained so much power that the leaders weren’t sure whether they’d have enough to make it back.

“Great, at least transport damage isn’t a problem. Then what condition are the hunters in?”

“That situation’s pretty rough. Forty percent of the teams have dropped out, and those that are left report they’ve lost a lot of their forces as well.”

Of course, even with their diminished numbers, the remaining hunters could easily flee into the transports for safety whenever the enemy threatened to overwhelm them. But so many had been seriously injured that the teams were dangerously thinned out. Though quite a few of the hunters were cyborgs, who could even survive as severed heads, they wouldn’t be able to fight immediately after switching to new bodies.

“Well, up against a swarm like that, I can’t call them cowards for fleeing—especially since such a large nest of giant bugs would normally never show up. What the hell was that, anyway? Isn’t it the culling team’s job to investigate and predict those encounters?”

“There was nothing written in their report about a potential insect swarm, at least. We can speculate as to whether they just missed it somehow or deliberately chose not to report it, but that doesn’t really matter anymore—what’s done is done. We just got unlucky this time. What we need to think about now is how to move forward. Any ideas?”

“Do we really have a choice? Without enough forces to move out, all we can do is postpone the departure from Zegelt, right?”

“Indeed. It’s a shame, but we can’t send the transports back into the wasteland with insufficient security personnel.”

“All right. Then let’s report this to our superiors and ask how long we can put it off.”

After some further discussion, they decided the intercity transports ought to depart from Zegelt after a week’s delay. But none of those present at the meeting had the authority to make that call—they would first have to clear it with their bosses who managed the distribution routes. Still, given the situation, all those present felt their proposal was entirely reasonable and expected the motion to be approved. Even if a week was deemed too long, the request for a delay would surely be approved, at least.

But then, because Sugadome had put his foot down, the reply came back that their petition was categorically denied. Cries of indignation rose up all around the meeting room.

“Sakashita’s saying they can’t let us change the departure date?! That’s bullshit! We won’t stand for this!”

“What if another one of those swarms attacks our current forces on the way back?! Then we’ll really be screwed!”

“We can’t force our personnel to participate in a suicide mission! Until we have enough defensive forces to move out, we are absolutely not letting those transports leave this city!” The individuals responsible for each of the transports were also responsible for the safety of their crew on board. Their sense of responsibility urged them to ignore the orders to move out as scheduled, even though said orders came from Sakashita Heavy Industries.

One of the distribution managers hurried to calm them down. “Now, now, let’s not be too hasty. Sakashita Heavy Industries has also stated they’re prepared to supply the required defensive forces themselves.”

A murmur of surprise spread through the meeting. The attendees received a document, which they looked over. There, in black-and-white, it was written that Sakashita would not only provide more manpower, it would send far more forces than the transport teams would have been able to procure in a week had the postponement gone through.

“You’re right, that’s what it says,” one attendee said with a puzzled look. “Indeed, in that case, there’s no problem. But why are they going so far? To be honest, looking at the size of the reinforcements they plan to send, I’m having a hard time believing it.”

“Apparently, Sakashita has assumed responsibility for the success of this distribution mission,” their boss said. “If I had to guess, they’re probably thinking a smooth cargo delivery on their watch will show the other corporations in the Big Five what kind of power and influence Sakashita has. Besides, unexpected developments are one thing, but it’ll reflect poorly on them if they can’t handle an incident they should have seen coming, like another swarm attack.”

“So it’s so the corporation can save face, huh?”

No one would hold Sakashita accountable for a delay caused by an unforeseen development after departure—unforeseen developments were, by their nature, extremely difficult to plan for. But if Sakashita couldn’t even get the transports to depart on schedule, it would earn a reputation as a frail business that couldn’t even resolve problems it had anticipated. The other four corporations would look at the way it had failed to handle a monster threat in its own territory and determine that Sakashita Heavy Industries was incapable of managing its own ecosystem of services and goods. So Sakashita couldn’t sign off on a delay in distribution—at least, that was what the boss suspected.

True, Sakashita was one of the Big Five corporations of the East, and like most anyone in power, those who ran the corporation could be arrogant and high-handed. But if they didn’t display enough power and influence to justify that attitude, their competitors would crush them. How smoothly Sakashita’s distribution operations functioned directly influenced the efficacy of its rule over the East—as well as that of the League as a whole. So that was probably why it wasn’t sparing any expense when it came to reinforcements.

Everyone else present at the meeting was now thinking along the same lines as well, and they decided to accept Sakashita’s decision.

“So now what?” one asked.

“What do you mean, ‘now what?’” another retorted. “The transports weren’t heavily damaged, and we’re getting the reinforcements we need, so isn’t the next step obvious? We’re departing on schedule. Provided that the reinforcements actually show up before the transports set off, that is.”

“Exactly. So now we ought to decide on what route to take. Route A is obviously out—there are too many insect corpses along the way, and there might be more nests of them out there.”

“Then Route B is a no-go too. It’s too close to where the attack happened, and we don’t know how far the nest’s influence spreads.”

“That leaves Routes C and D, but isn’t C too narrow for intercity transports to pass through?”

“That’s true, but D’s way too wide. With all that open space, the transports passing will attract all sorts of monsters, not just from the ground but from the sky as well. And both C and D were backup routes we didn’t plan on using, so the monsters on both haven’t been properly culled either.”

To ensure the highest possible degree of safety for the intercity transports and their passengers, their meeting continued for quite some time afterward.

Chapter 205: Shirou

After purchasing Akira’s bike, Akira and Hikaru returned to where the Gigantas III was parked. Night had already fallen, yet the personnel at the platform were still hard at work loading cargo onto the transport in order to make it in time for the scheduled departure. Individuals who couldn’t board through the Gigantas III’s normal entrances, like those piloting mechs and wearing bulky powered suits, were lined up to enter through its enormous cargo hold.

Because Akira needed to load his bike, he and Hikaru also had to use this entrance. And as he couldn’t carry the bike into his room, Hikaru had arranged to store it in the cargo hold.

“Great!” she said when they were done. “Now, with that taken care of, shall we head back to the room?”

Akira seemed hesitant. “Oh... You go on ahead. I’m gonna make some adjustments to my bike real quick, and then I’ll be in.”

“Then I’ll just wait for you,” she offered with a smile. She didn’t want to let Akira out of her sight for a split second.

Now the boy looked a little puzzled. “No, you really don’t have to. I’ll be fine, I promise.”

“Nah, I’ve got nothing better to do anyway. Besides, I’m your handler, so I ought to stay with you, right?”

“If you say so,” Akira said with a small smile.

Then he began making the adjustments to his bike—or more accurately, tested how the bike handled while Alpha busied herself taking over its control system. The Sylpheed A3 felt like an extension of his powered suit—the movement of its support arms, the precision of its steering, and the like seemed far more natural than on the last bike he’d had. Its scanner also linked seamlessly with Akira’s personal one, allowing him to perceive the world around him from both sources. And because he was an Old Domain User, the data from both scanners was transmitted directly to his brain, which promised to be quite helpful whenever he switched his awareness to high-definition mode. In addition, the bike came with a force-field shield generator, a feature his previous bikes had never had, and he could directly activate this shield with a thought rather than via a screen, which was another novelty he’d need some time to get used to.

Altogether, the bike and its add-ons had set him back 3.8 billion aurum. And Akira intended to train diligently until he learned to use the power of this extremely expensive vehicle to its full potential.

Hikaru, on the other hand, didn’t look too impressed. To her, he just seemed to be moving the bike’s support arms around here and there and turning a weak-looking shield on and off. She had to admit to herself that watching him was dreadfully boring. Hoping he would hurry and finish soon, she idly looked around the area.

At that moment, a group of heavily armed individuals entered from the cargo hold’s entrance. They were all wearing identical powered suits, almost resembling military uniforms. For that reason, Hikaru guessed they weren’t a team of hunters but a special army unit.

Among them, though, were two people dressed normally—a man in a business suit and a boy in a hoodie. The latter wore an amused smirk on his face as he surveyed his surroundings. Hikaru thought the pair looked extremely out of place, but she quickly lost interest and slid her gaze back over to Akira.

The armed entourage passed them, Hikaru still looking bored and Akira practicing how to use the features on his bike. And in that brief window of time it took for the other boy to pass, he stole a glance at them both.

The man in the business suit, named Harmers, noticed the hooded boy trying to sneak as subtle a glance as possible at Akira and Hikaru. “Is something the matter, Shirou?”

“Hmm? No, it’s nothing.”

“If it’s nothing, then don’t stare at people like that. It’s rude, and it could lead to unnecessary arguments.”

Though Shirou had tried to be as inconspicuous as he could, Harmers had caught him nonetheless. Secretly feeling that he ought to be more wary of the man, on the outside Shirou merely answered with a breezy grin. “Yeah, yeah, I know already. She was wearing a Kugamayama City uniform, so it just caught my eye, that’s all. Besides, if Kugamayama people are here, this area might be dangerous for us.”

“The city doesn’t know you’re headed there,” Harmers reminded him. “And since it didn’t look like those two recognized your face, they’re not a concern. I’ll take care of the scouting for you, so stop goggling at everything.”

“Come on, I’m not ‘goggling.’ It’s just been a while since I’ve gotten to visit another city, you know? Can’t you at least let me take in the sights a little?”

“This is a business trip, not a vacation. If you want to sightsee, you can do it all you want in VR.”

There were many tourist spots in the East that had been created back in the age of the Old World with advanced technology—the magnificent structures erected on top of the islands in the sky were among the most popular. But only a handful of people in the East had actually gone to visit these sites in person, even among the wealthiest. That was because monsters roamed the wasteland outside their cities’ walls, making it difficult even to travel to neighboring cities without paying an exorbitant sum. In the East, a “vacation” in the traditional sense was ridiculously expensive. So whenever the Easterners felt cooped up behind their sturdy defenses, it was far cheaper, and therefore more popular, to see these sights through virtual reality devices instead.

But Shirou shook his head with a smile. “You just don’t get it. That’s not good enough. To me, VR’s no different from looking at a postcard with a picture on it. No, don’t get me wrong—I’m not looking down on postcards or anything. The elegance of it, the feel of the paper in your hand—those are nice to experience too every now and then. But VR is a pale imitation of the real thing.”

“Then just increase the resolution on your device.”

“There’s a limit to that, and even if there weren’t, it still wouldn’t be good enough for me. It’d be different if I were a cyborg who’d swapped my sensory organs out for VR-compatible ones, but even then, it wouldn’t compare.”

“Really? I’ve heard even the low-end versions have gotten pretty good as of late.”

“No, no, they aren’t anywhere near as satisfying as experiencing the real thing. Well, for me, at least. And besides,” the boy added with a grin, “such cyborg parts are awfully risky. You’re basically asking to have your five senses taken over! Oh, and as for those people with their minds in the gutter who want to replace other parts of their body as well, that’s a terrible idea too. Even the most reputable companies can put out defective products, and accidents can happen at any time. Install one of those and you could fall unconscious, or even shuffle off this mortal coil if you’re not careful. If some pervert really wants the same type of experience as the real thing and wants to do it safely, they ought to buy another set of five senses and use those spares instead. Besides—”

It looked like Shirou had far more to say on the subject, but Harmers scowled at him and cut him off. “All right, that’s enough out of you.”

“Fine, fine.” The boy grinned and didn’t say anything further, satisfied now that Harmers had stopped questioning his furtive glance at Akira and Hikaru.

◆

Thanks to Sakashita’s reinforcements, the convoy ended up departing on schedule. There were four heavily armed mechs atop the Gigantas III’s roof as it embarked once more into the wasteland, all manned by hunters from Zegelt City and far more advanced than the mechs Akira had seen in Kugamayama. He’d once again come up here at the crack of dawn to see the sunrise, and now he looked up at the mechs in awe.

“Damn, those look superpowerful!”

Clinging to Akira for dear life, Hikaru agreed. “Naturally. They were purchased in Zegelt City, after all. In terms of both price and specs, they’re gonna be worlds apart from Yajima’s Shirousagi or Yoshioka’s Kokurou.”

“I guess I should have expected that. Hey, you know you don’t have to force yourself to come with me every morning, right?”

This was the second time she’d accompanied Akira to the roof, and though she was a little more used to it now, she still found being up here quite terrifying. She couldn’t even dispute his claim that she was forcing herself.

“Sh-Shouldn’t I be allowed to see the sunrise too if I want?!” she shouted, her face flushing a deep scarlet.

“Y-Yeah, sorry,” he said, and dropped the topic.

Just as before, Hikaru had joined Akira because she didn’t want to let him out of her sight. But this time, that was only part of the reason.

Akira had suggested she use his bike’s shield to guard against the extreme wind on the roof. But when she’d asked him how he planned to get the bike up there, and he’d answered that he’d just drive up the side of the Gigantas III to the roof, she’d immediately rejected that plan. And so, Akira and Hikaru were once again up here hugging each other like lovers.

At last, the sun rose. Hikaru slowly savored the scene until the sun separated from the horizon. She decided that just like last time, the sight had been worth coming up here for. In fact, she’d enjoyed it even more the second time around, since she was more accustomed to being on the roof.

But then someone showed up to interfere—Shirou. “Yo! So you two decided to come up and watch the sunrise too?”

The hooded boy appeared on the roof accompanied by Harmers. Both seemed to be wearing regular clothing, but judging from how they were walking along the roof as though the extreme winds were merely a calm spring breeze, their outfits were most likely powered suits designed to look like normal apparel. The alternative was that both of them had the physique to withstand the gusts without needing a powered suit.

This immediately put Hikaru on the alert. At the same time, she was glad she was here to help Akira deal with anything that might arise. She sent a message to Akira privately so that the others present wouldn’t hear. I’ll handle this, Akira, so you don’t have to say anything. If they ask you something directly, just say you’ve been told not to converse while you’re on the job.

All right.

Hikaru then turned to Shirou with a hint of suspicion in her eyes. “Yes, that’s right. Do you have some business with us?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that. As I said, I simply came up to see the sunrise, like you. Turns out I was right—there really is no substitute for seeing the real thing in person. This bozo next to me here was saying I should just watch it through the window in the room instead!” He threw Harmers a disparaging look. “He doesn’t get it! Besides, that’s not even an actual window—it’s merely a screen. No way can you get the same sensory input from an image on a display. That’s what it’s all about, you feel me?”

Hikaru didn’t really understand what he meant, but she did grasp that his argument resembled the one Akira had given her for seeing the sunrise in person, and she smiled in agreement. “Yes, I know exactly what you mean. Compared to the real sunrise, everything else just seems plain.”

“You do understand! That’s exactly why it’s worth coming up here to see it. You think so too, right?” he said, turning to Akira.

Akira did happen to agree, but he answered as Hikaru had ordered him to. “Sorry, but I’m forbidden to talk during work.”

“Ooooh, during work, huh?” Shirou said. “Looks to me more like you two are on a date, the way you’re joined at the hip like that.”

Akira couldn’t argue with that, but he still followed Hikaru’s directive and stayed silent. Hikaru also couldn’t blame Shirou for thinking so, but neither could she think of a good response. The hesitation made her even more conscious of Akira’s arms around her, causing her to blush again.

Harmers interjected, sounding put out. “Let’s go, Shirou. The sun is up now, so time to head back. Whether he’s on the job or on a date, we shouldn’t disturb them any longer. Come on already.”

“Aw, can’t we stay for five more minutes?”

“I’d head back while I still had the use of my legs if I were you,” the man threatened.

Well aware that Harmers wouldn’t hesitate to smash both of his legs and carry him back to the room if he had to, Shirou capitulated immediately. “Okay, okay, fine! Later, you two!” he said, maintaining his cheerful grin until he and Harmers were out of sight.

“Who the hell was that weirdo?” Akira asked.

“Beats me. Perhaps just a tourist who happened to be courageous enough to get up on the roof and watch the sunrise.”

“A tourist? I dunno...” That didn’t sound too plausible to Akira, but fortunately he did have someone else he could consult in times of doubt like this. Alpha, what do you think?

I think you’d be better off not worrying about it.

Okay, if you say so. Akira hadn’t been that concerned in the first place. Since Alpha was telling him he didn’t need to worry about it, then he could just forget it.

“Um... Akira... I think I’d like to go back to the room too,” Hikaru urged, her face tinged with scarlet. As if her self-consciousness following Shirou’s comment weren’t bad enough, she would have to continue clinging tightly to Akira as long as they were on the roof. To get her feelings back in order, she needed to descend first.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, that’s fine,” he said.

The two of them thus returned to their room. Completely oblivious to Hikaru’s feelings, Akira continued to embrace her firmly all the way to the roof’s exit to ensure the wind didn’t blow her off the transport.

◆

After returning to his heavily fortified, luxurious room—his prison—Shirou ate breakfast while thinking about Akira and Hikaru.

Which one of them is it? Her? Him? Both? Or am I just mistaken, and it’s neither?

Digging into a meal that would put any high-class restaurant to shame, he was smiling as if in good spirits, but his palate was already used to such fare, so it didn’t blow him away. Beneath his plastic smile, he was deep in thought.

Was the reaction signal in the cargo hold just a fluke, then? Is one of their terminals compatible with the Old Domain, and I just mistook it for a User’s signal? No, I’d never make an error like that. But then, if it wasn’t a fluke, and I wasn’t mistaken, I should have sensed it. There should have been another reaction!

The list of passengers on the Gigantas III was displayed in Shirou’s augmented vision, and Akira and Hikaru’s names were there. He glanced at the manifest again. A Kugamayama City employee, with a hunter working in Kugamayama—a hunter who was offered the job of defending this transport, no less.

Was it a coincidence they were fellow passengers with him? Or had this been planned? No matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t come to an answer.

Damn. I’d thought if Kugamayama City had found some way of getting a hold of my data and was discreetly trying to contact me, I could use those two to my advantage. Wait, no—maybe they just don’t know what I look like. Was that why there was no follow-up reaction?

He continued to turn over every single possibility in his mind. At any rate, now that I’ve finally made it outside, I can’t let this opportunity go to waste. I’ve got to accomplish my goal.

Shirou was aware of how privileged a status he held. He had unbelievably delicious food, a luxurious room, a powerful bodyguard, and the blessing of Sakashita Heavy Industries. An ordinary person could take risks their entire life and never attain this kind of treatment as long as they lived. But there was something he absolutely had to accomplish—something so important that he was willing to throw it all away.

He glanced over at Harmers. The man was strong enough that he had been assigned as Shirou’s bodyguard and monitor, so Shirou wouldn’t be able to do anything until he shook free of Harmers and escaped. But no plausible ideas for how to accomplish that were coming to mind. While Harmers still thought Shirou was giddy from being in the outside world for the first time in forever and merely wanted to sightsee, the boy idly hoped that some freak incident might occur which would allow him an opening to flee.

Harmers detected a minute change in Shirou’s expression. “Something the matter?”

“Hmm? No, why do you ask?”

Harmers grunted. “No reason. Just behave yourself, you hear?”

“Yeah, yeah. You don’t have to remind me.” Beneath a cheerful grin, Shirou successfully concealed his intentions from the man.

◆

Akira was working security again, but rather than heading to the hatch leading to the roof, this time he made his way to the transport’s cargo hold where his bike was stored. After getting everything ready to ride, he climbed onto it.

“All right, Hikaru, go ahead.”

Hikaru, who was accompanying him, pressed a button, and an exit opened up in the cargo hold’s wall. “Akira, I’m gonna ask one more time,” she said. “Are you really sure you’ll be all right?” Akira was about to ride a two-wheeled bike out of a moving vehicle, after all. Usually, such a feat would be suicide. Even though Hikaru knew Akira’s motorbike was capable of flight, she still couldn’t help but feel a little worried.

And seeing the concern on Hikaru’s face, Akira couldn’t help but feel a hint of anxiety as well. He decided to double-check with Alpha. Er, I will be all right, won’t I?

Oh, yes. You’ll be fine, don’t worry.

That was all he needed to hear. His concern vanishing, he answered Hikaru with a grin, “Yeah, it’s all good. I’ll be fine. See you later.”

She couldn’t detect any hint of nervousness in his smile, so she decided everything was well and relaxed. “All right, just wanted to make sure. Good luck out there today!”

As Hikaru saw him off, Akira accelerated forward on his bike and flew out of the cargo hold. A normal motorbike would have dropped to the ground and crashed onto the desolate landscape below, but not one endowed with the power of flight like the Sylpheed A3. Both tires spun madly over an invisible road of force-field armor, then gripped the surface, slinging the bike forward. The bike made a sharp turn in midair, tilting almost horizontally. As it whipped around, sparks of impact luminescence burst from where the spinning tires met the force field, then left glowing tire marks in the air as the bike swerved around and sped back toward the Gigantas III. Akira popped a wheelie and landed on the side of the transport—facing straight up.

Up the side of the vehicle he sped. As he cleared the edge of the roof, he raised his rear wheel as he slowed, so that only the front tire touched the edge. Then he proceeded carefully across the roof, still with only one wheel on the ground, until the other one had room to land as well.

Linked to Akira’s scanner, Hikaru witnessed the entire ride from Akira’s point of view. The entire time, she had but one thought—only a madman would attempt something so insane! She sighed, sincerely glad that she’d turned down his suggestion, earlier that morning, to give her a lift on the bike.

Akira’s shift on the roof passed without incident. Of course, monsters still attacked the transport, but thanks to the good offices of Sakashita’s reinforcements, this time incredibly powerful mechs stood in position all around the roof. Even though the Gigantas III was now right behind the lead transport in the convoy, none of the menacing creatures they ran into proved a threat, thanks to Sakashita’s support.

Akira spent most of his shift sitting on his bike, bored. With the LEOs attached to his bike’s support arms, he had ample time to aim and fire at every enemy that came near, well before they could reach the transport. His C-bullets, packed with more than enough energy thanks to the large tank on his bike, were further adjusted by Alpha to be even more devastating.

That said, while his task wasn’t exactly a challenge, the monsters kept him busy enough that he certainly couldn’t afford to kill time studying with Alpha like before, nor could he do any training since another swarm of giant bugs could attack at any time. While he had plenty of meds on hand, he didn’t want to rely on them now in case he’d have to fight again later.

In the end, his shift ended without him having to do much work at all. He called Hikaru and asked her to open the cargo hold again, then rode down the transport’s side and back into the vehicle the same way he had exited. After that, he and Hikaru, who was waiting for him in the hold, returned to their room together.

As the two of them enjoyed their dinner, their conversation ranged over a variety of topics. At some point, the discussion turned to the swarm of giant bugs that had attacked on the way to Zegelt City.

“Wait. So you’re telling me such large swarms aren’t normally supposed to be in that area?” Akira asked, looking incredulous.

“That’s right—according to what I heard, anyway. That was why we ended up suffering so many casualties. Apparently, quite a few of the hunters are in the infirmary right now. That’s probably also why they thought they needed to beef up their security for this trip back.”

“Oh, gotcha,” he said, wearing a slight frown.

“Something bothering you?” she asked.

“Nah, nothing too serious. It’s just... It always feels like I’m constantly running into unforeseen situations. Kind of like ‘Really? Again?’ That’s all.”

“Now that you mention it, the octopharos wasn’t supposed to be around there either, was it?”

“See what I mean?” He sighed. “Man... I guess I really am just unlucky.”

Hearing him sound a little down in the dumps, Hikaru searched for words to cheer him up. “Well, what if it’s less that you’re unlucky, and more that you’re just really strong?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way or anything,” she said, “but as much money as you hunters earn, death is often right around the corner. And yet you keep at it, even knowing the next job you go on could be your last.”

Hikaru wasn’t wrong. As long as they didn’t mind risking their lives, hunters could make a killing in their profession—that was why so many in the slums strove to become hunters as a means to escape poverty.

“But it’s not like hunters go on those jobs hoping to die,” she went on. “They probably at least take care to accept jobs they know they can return from alive. But some end up dying anyway—in other words, something most likely happened that they didn’t foresee.”

That wasn’t wrong either. While risking one’s life was part and parcel for a hunter, no one would sign up for a job in which they knew they were going to die. Thus, it followed that very few hunters died from things they were able to predict. Hunters wanted to survive, but the potential reward was so great that they felt it was worth the risks to keep hunting. Whether they’d still be alive to hunt ten years from now, they didn’t know; but they’d at least make it through tomorrow. Yet they had no concrete basis for thinking so except for the fact that they’d managed to survive up until now. So they would press forward—until they ran into the unforeseen incident that finally killed them.

“And you know, Akira, most hunters really end up experiencing one unforeseen event in their lifetime—you know, since they usually don’t survive it. So statistically, you could say unforeseen events are actually pretty rare for a hunter, right?”

This part of her argument was a bit of a stretch, and she knew it. Yet she went on. “But you’re different, Akira. You’ve survived because you’re strong, and you’ve experienced multiple unforeseen events as a result. That’s not something just anyone can say. And because those experiences left deep impressions on you, they remain vivid in your memory. That’s why it feels like you’re ‘always’ running into them, I bet, and why it feels like you’re ‘unlucky’ too.”

Whether her statistical claims were accurate didn’t matter to her. After all, her goal here was to cheer Akira up. And reminding herself of that made her feel less guilty about feeding him potentially untrue information.

Her efforts worked. “Really? Wow, I never thought of it like that,” Akira said with a smile. “Then maybe that’s how I should look at it instead. Even if I am unlucky, I was still strong enough to overcome my bad luck, wasn’t I?”

Since meeting Alpha, Akira had encountered one peculiar, harrowing twist after another and nearly died each time. Yet even if that was simply his misfortune at work, he’d beaten that misfortune again and again. And if he’d done so before, he could keep winning. He wouldn’t lose to his bad luck. Renewed determination filled his heart.

“Yeah, exactly! So cheer up, okay?” Seeing she’d succeeded in lifting Akira’s spirits, Hikaru also grinned cheerfully. Now even if another swarm of giant bugs did attack, a lack of enthusiasm wouldn’t get in the way of him fighting and racking up achievements. She was satisfied.

The next day, Akira was back on the roof atop his bike, on security duty. So far, things were going just as smoothly as ever. On a whim, he looked up.

Dense gray clouds massed above him, threatening to swallow up the entire sky.

◆

Above the convoy of transports, the sun was no longer visible. Thick gloom obscured it from view.

Rain in the East contained traces of colorless fog, so whenever it rained, scouting devices like scanners were severely impacted. And the clouds, the source of the rain, had the same effect. The weather forecast for that day had only predicted cloudy skies—there was little chance of it actually raining. Therefore, scouting wouldn’t be impeded on the ground level. A monster horde could appear on the horizon, and the powerful scanners on board the transport would quickly detect the enemy presence. Even if any flying creatures, like giant bugs, happened to be in the clouds, they couldn’t see what was on the ground and wouldn’t notice the convoy of transports passing below. And so, with no major enemies interfering, the transports were proceeding along their route as scheduled.

Above the thick and shadowy cloud cover, over a hundred mechs were flying through the sky. Even so, they were close enough to the ground that anyone keeping watch on the transport could have spotted them on a clear day. Each of the white mechs was over twenty meters tall, and all were heavily armed.

Just as monsters were typically more formidable the larger they were, so other things followed the same principle that size scaled with power. Phenomena like the East’s colorless fog and the astounding technology of the Old World could dramatically reduce the drawbacks that usually came with having a huge frame, meaning anything large was likely to be either extremely useful or incredibly powerful. Intercity transports were one example: in many aspects, their vast size made them far more efficient than a hundred semis, or even several thousand cars, for transporting goods and supplies across long distances.

The same applied to mechs as well. Most normal mechs, even the larger models, were only about ten meters tall, but a twenty-meter mech wasn’t just twice as threatening as an average one. Such a machine could reasonably be expected to pose a ridiculous threat in combat.

Now, before this force of a hundred or so twenty-meter mechs, a gargantuan monster well over a hundred meters in length hove into view. Sky fiends were known to be more dangerous the farther east and the higher up in the sky they were found, and the space through which this battalion of mechs was passing satisfied both conditions.

But even this soaring behemoth was eradicated in an instant. Such a unit of mechs could have wiped the floor with the swarm Akira had fought—a monster like this wasn’t going to set them back. Pierced full of holes beneath the mechs’ coordinated laser cannon offensive, the monster fell, sinking into the ashen gray clouds below.

Yet as powerful as the mechs were, they had clearly suffered varying degrees of damage. Some had even lost their weaponry along with all four of their limbs, relying solely on the propulsion device on their torsos to keep them aloft.

Without warning, one mech received a sudden, thick blast of powerful light, which pierced through its force-field armor like paper and vaporized around thirty percent of its body instantly. The mech’s scattered remains dropped and were swallowed up into the sea of clouds below. Another mech, this one especially large, found itself under assault from a black, disk-shaped robotic attack drone. This disk, spinning madly, was half as large in diameter as the mech was tall and had enormous blades attached to its edge. The blades gouged relentlessly into the mech’s armor as violent sparks scattered all over, cutting in deeper and deeper until the mech was sliced in half. Its severed left and right halves plummeted down into the clouds.

Nor was this mech alone. The black disks were everywhere, attacking any mech nearby.

Some of the mechs tried to come to the aid of their comrades who were being swarmed by multiple black disks at once. But in the process of taking out their enemies, they ended up eliminating their own allies as well. More motionless, destroyed mechs fell out of the sky toward the low-hanging clouds.

The unit came to a decision—to avoid suffering attacks above the clouds, they just needed to head inside them. Desperate to escape the onslaught, the white mechs swooped down into the dark sea of mist.

And a monstrous presence—the source of both the devastating blasts of light and the relentless attack drones—headed in after them.

Chapter 206: A Perpetual State of Emergency

As Akira continued his security work atop the Gigantas III, Hikaru phoned him.

“Akira, I’ve detected a number of objects falling from the sky toward the transport’s vicinity. Look sharp!”

“Got it!” He glanced up. “I can’t really see anything up there because of these clouds, though. Is there really something up beyond them? Thanks for the heads-up.”

The clouds were obstructing his view of the sky above. But Hikaru’s warning had sounded pretty minor, so whatever was falling toward him probably wasn’t anything too dangerous. Alpha, can you detect anything up there?

Yes, crystal clear.

So she was right! What can you tell me about it? Is it like those islands we saw on the way to Zegelt?

Be on your guard! she said sternly.

The boy was surprised to hear such a warning from her, but did as he was told and prepared to fight. The same Alpha who had been all smiles even while the giant insect swarm was attacking was not smiling now. Akira instantly realized the magnitude of the threat that was approaching.

“Hikaru! What else can you tell me?!”

“Huh? I just meant you should watch out for any objects falling from the sky, that’s all. Nothing to get all worked up over just yet— Hold on, strike that! Numerous readings are showing up overhead! And they’re coming your way!”

As an employee of Kugamayama City, Hikaru knew just how powerful and accurate the intercity transports’ onboard scanners were. Yet Akira had seemingly detected the incoming danger even faster. She mastered her surprise, then focused on one of the potentially hostile readings as it broke through the clouds.

It was a large white mech.

“That mech isn’t transmitting its ID code to us! Akira, you’re permitted to treat it as hostile!”

“Roger!”

The mech crashed onto the ground about two hundred meters away from the transport. In order to slow its fall as much as possible, its severely damaged propulsion device had been running at maximum output, which blasted the surrounding debris and ruined buildings high into the air as the mech landed. Though it avoided shattering against the ground at full force, the damage was too great for the machine to act right away after landing. By that time, Akira, the other hunters working security, and the mechs on the transport all had their weapons trained on it. Just the pull of a trigger stood between the white mech and total annihilation.

But before they could fire, something else attacked the white mech—countless black disks emerged from the sky, piercing through the clouds. Spinning rapidly, they made a beeline for their target one after another. Their blades tore the giant mech to shreds in no time at all.

Instantly, the black disks changed course and swooped toward their next victim—another white mech that had just emerged from the clouds and was still intact. More undamaged white mechs were descending from the sky all around the convoy, flying here and there while engaging the black disks in combat.

Akira watched it all with a grim look, unsure how to proceed. “Hey Hikaru, what should I do here? Should I shoot, and if so, which ones—the white guys, the black ones, or both?”

“Um, well, let’s see...” Hikaru couldn’t give an immediate answer. To a degree, hunters hired to guard transports were allowed to judge for themselves whether something was an enemy and when to engage in combat. These mysterious combatants had not only appeared out of the blue but had failed to transmit their ID codes to show they were friendly. No one would blame the hunters for opening fire at this point, even if the mysterious machines turned out to be Sakashita’s own forces.

But the white mechs weren’t attacking the transport or anyone on it, and the black disks were only targeting the white mechs. If the hunters carelessly entered the fray, they might make themselves a target as well, and it would turn into a three-sided struggle instead. So the hunters hesitated, holding their fire for now.

They would follow any orders to attack, of course. And the moment the enigmatic machines directed hostility their way, they would immediately counterattack. Yet neither was happening at the moment. So the hunters didn’t lower their weapons and kept them trained on the enemy, but they stayed their trigger fingers.

Like the hunters, the commander in charge of the transport convoy was also hesitating to give the order to attack. He’d already determined the safest course of action was to eliminate both the white and black forces, but it was clear at a glance that either side would be extremely difficult to take out. And at the moment, they were taking each other out, so wasn’t it wisest to let them fight and reduce each other’s forces for a little while longer before stepping in? Then his forces could just mop up whatever was left on both sides. So, judging this to be the most logical decision, he decided to wait things out.

By the time he realized it was a trap, it was too late.

A gargantuan shadow descended over the convoy.

Up until now, the area around Akira had still been well lit by the midday sun, despite the cloudy skies. But now, without warning, his surroundings were dimming. Confused, he looked up at the sky. Even though he was outdoors, he saw a ceiling looming above him.

“What the hell?!”

Set into the “ceiling” was an open hatch, from which countless black disks were pouring out rapidly. Now Akira guessed at what he was seeing—even though he sincerely hoped he was mistaken.

“Alpha, that’s not...actually a monster, right?” he asked, sincerely hoping she would deny it.

It is. A monster from the skies high above has descended to our level.

Hearing his fear confirmed so matter-of-factly, Akira made a face. But Alpha didn’t give him time to complain.

Get ready, Akira. We’re going to drive it away! she said.

Alpha was only an image in his augmented vision, so Akira was always careful not to look over at her in public, lest he look suspicious. But this time, he couldn’t help but goggle at her. What?! Nuh-uh! No way in hell is any amount of determination or resolve gonna help me take that down! he cried out telepathically, shaking his head vehemently.

Before him was an enemy large enough to blot out the sunlight, with a shadow massive enough to engulf the entire convoy of transports. Akira felt certain that killing something like this was far, far beyond what he could handle.

Though he’d forgotten not to look at Alpha when speaking to her, none of the hunters around paid him even the slightest attention. Even if they had, they probably would have thought he’d simply lost his composure at the sight of the impossibly enormous creature above them. After all, each of them was just as unnerved.

Alpha gave him a reassuring smile. Relax! That’s not the one we need to defeat.

Akira did indeed relax a little upon seeing her smile. And at that moment, a command came in from the security team. “All units, eliminate the strange mechs that have appeared! Give ’em every single bit of firepower you have! Whatever you do, make sure they don’t reach the transport! They’re drawing the fiend down from the skies!”

There you have it! Alpha said. Now, you heard the man. Let’s begin!

Roger! Akira immediately prepared for battle, erasing his anxiousness toward the looming threat above and focusing entirely on combat. He had two LEOs in his hands and two more attached to the support arms on his motorbike, making four in total. He targeted the white mechs and opened fire with all four at once.

The other hunters immediately followed suit. A barrage of bullets, shells, missiles, and lasers burst from the transport and blasted the white mechs. In response, the white mechs immediately turned on the convoy—they’d only refrained from attacking the transports until now so that they could lure the gigantic behemoth above to the ground without those aboard the transports catching on to what they were doing. But now, in addition to attacking the transports themselves, they flew closer to the convoy so that the attacks from above would hit the transports as well.

The black disks, chasing after the white mechs, streaked toward the convoy. Their only targets were the mechs, but of course that didn’t mean they’d courteously avoid things they weren’t targeting. And the hunters had the same mindset—they were aiming only for the mechs, but they wouldn’t go out of their way to avoid hitting the black disks either.

The battle had already been raging the moment the white mechs had appeared. Now, however, it became a three-sided struggle at last. The transport personnel and security fought against their attackers, while the gargantuan sky fiend bore down on everyone and everything below it.

◆

As a white mech rushed toward him and the transport, Akira opened fire. But flashes of light scattered from its armor—he didn’t make a dent.

Whoa, they’re tougher than I thought! I shot them with all four of my guns at once!

By now, Akira knew very well how powerful the LEO multifunction gun was. Not only had he hit this mech with four of them, his shots were all being enhanced with the extra power his new bike afforded him, while Alpha’s support granted him laser-like precision. And yet, to Akira’s shock and dismay, his gunfire didn’t even slow the mech’s advance.

Naturally—otherwise they wouldn’t have drawn the attention of a giant sky monster like the one above you, she explained matter-of-factly. But more importantly, dodge!

The white mech fired its laser cannon at Akira. A powerful energy beam erupted from the muzzle, scorching the air as it streaked directly toward the boy. Akira accelerated sharply: he bound his tires to the ground with force-field armor so that he wouldn’t be spinning his wheels in the air, poured energy into the wheels to make them rotate at high speed, then shot off at a velocity impossible for an aircycle. The dense beam of energy pierced the air a hair’s breadth off to his side.

Had he not been wearing his powered suit, the inertia from his sudden burst of speed would have crushed him. And if he hadn’t slowed his sense of time beforehand, he wouldn’t have been able to react. But as it was, Akira successfully avoided the enemy’s laser beam, countering with gunfire all the while. Though he was riding a speeding bike, his shots were as accurate as though he had a solid foundation underneath him, just as if he were firing at a stationary target and had ample time to line up each shot. And thanks to Alpha correcting his aim, each of his shots was far more devastating than normal.

And yet, such firepower still wasn’t enough to close the fundamental gap in strength between him and the mech. The other hunters beside Akira also attacked the hostile machine, visibly damaging it, but the mech ultimately landed on the roof of the Gigantas III, undeterred.

A firefight between one of the transport’s mechs and the newcomer then ensued. Giant bullets and lasers passed each other and struck their respective targets. Both units suffered significant damage but continued to exchange fire as they zipped back and forth across the transport’s giant roof. The more energy the white mech spent deploying its force-field armor, the less powerful its shots became, and before long they were weakened enough that the transport mech didn’t have to evade every shot and could focus on blocking instead.

As they fought, high-powered bullets, missiles, and lasers flew every which way all along the roof. And the leeway to focus on blocking instead of evading only applied to mechs—Akira still had to dodge every shot, lest he be instantly killed.

So even while desperately weaving through the hail of gunfire, he didn’t let up on his own shooting. His extended magazines ensured a continuous spray from four LEOs, all concentrated on a single point. Yet the mech’s armor continued to endure.

Damn, they just won’t budge! Is this even doing anything, Alpha?!

Of course it is. Just hang on a little longer!

As it was relentlessly pelted with bullets, the force-field armor surrounding the white mech gradually got weaker. Finally, it gave out, and the mech’s armor began to dent, throwing off the machine’s movements.

For the first time, Akira could visibly see that his shots were doing damage. But his expression remained grim—it had taken so much firepower to even put a dent in its armor, never mind destroy it. He began to feel quite concerned.

But Alpha flashed a smile. All right, that’s a wrap!

Huh? But...

Akira looked confused, but the next instant, a black disk whizzed past him. As though it had been waiting for its opportunity, it slammed into the white mech, blades spinning madly as it tore right through the machine’s body. The black attack drone then flew away, leaving only white remains behind as it made a beeline for its next target—slicing through the arm of a transport mech and an unfortunate hunter who happened to be in its path.

That’s one down! Alpha announced. And ninety-two to go!

Y-You don’t say? Akira grimaced. But having realized he’d end up like that hunter if he let one of those black disks hit him, he knew he needed to focus on the battle. He lurched forward sharply with his bike again to avoid another high-powered laser beam, which missed him by a hair. He automatically turned to look at his attacker—another white mech that had arrived on the edge of the roof, holding its laser cannon at the ready.

Looks like that’s your next target, Alpha said. We ought to hurry and take care of it.

Roger! He accelerated, closing the distance to the white mech in an instant while riding into the air to avoid its sweeping laser beam. He was about to train both LEOs in his hands on the mech when Alpha stopped him.

Wait—use your blade instead.

My blade? Oh, you mean this?

Yes, that’s right.

Okay, if you say so!

Akira put the gun in his right hand away and pulled out a weapon attached to the bike—a hilt with no blade. The hilt, so large that it needed to be held with both hands, had an energy cable extending from its base, the other end of which connected to the bike. He placed the upper side of the hilt into a slot on a box-shaped device attached to one of the bike’s support arms. When he drew the hilt back out, a liquid-metal blade formed above it.

The box itself was a liquid metal repository—in this case, essentially a blade generator. The sword that formed was thin, yet powerful, with an astoundingly sharp edge, and it could negate force-field armor. In terms of destructive capability, it rivaled that of an Old World blade. But as a trade-off, it required an inordinate amount of energy in order to maintain its form. So even though it was a melee weapon, it had to be connected to a large external energy source during use—like the tank on Akira’s bike, for instance. And the connection had to be wired, or the weapon wouldn’t receive energy quickly enough to remain stable—to be wielded effectively, the blade had to be connected to an energy cable, even if Akira was riding a truck or bike.

Such conditions weren’t exactly convenient. Though the weapon was extremely powerful, even among the most eccentric blade-wielding hunters in the East, very few deliberately chose to wield this weapon due to the challenging requirements. Even so, the blade had been developed and brought to market under the assumption that at least some high-ranking hunters would have the necessary resources and skill to use it. But the item had sold poorly—it was just too unique to be of any practical use.

However powerful an item, its market price would lower as long as it failed to sell. Even after it had reached the hundred-million-aurum range—practically bargain-bin pricing—no one had even given the weapon a passing glance, so its price had dropped even further. In fact, if Alpha hadn’t recommended it, Akira wouldn’t have purchased it either.

All this was to say that Akira now possessed an extremely powerful weapon that he never would have been able to afford at its original market price. Holding the weapon outstretched at his side, the blade longer than he was tall, he accelerated toward the mech. Alpha steered, taking full advantage of the vehicle’s ability to fly with sudden and erratic movements in every direction to throw off the enemy’s aim. The machine tried its best to target Akira, but it failed to get a bead on the boy. Powerful laser beams whizzed past him but only scorched either the roof or unlucky hunters nearby.

When Akira finally reached the mech, he rushed right on by. As he passed, he swung the blade with all his might, at the same height as the mech’s ankles. Just as he completed his swing, the pallid, luminescent blade returned to liquid and evaporated without a trace, unable to endure its own power.

Liquid-metal blades were single-use weapons to begin with, so Alpha hadn’t hesitated to maximize the blade’s sharpness as he’d swung. Though the combined might of four LEOs’ concentrated firepower had bounced off the mech’s armor, one swing from the unbelievably powerful, extremely sharp blade was all it took to sever the mech’s legs, leaving its feet floating in the air behind it. But that was far from a fatal blow. The mech stumbled for a moment, but its propulsion device righted it a moment later.

All right, Akira. Let’s use the AF cannon next.

The laser cannon had already finished charging, since Alpha had warmed it up beforehand, and it quickly unfolded itself from Akira’s back over his shoulder, primed to fire. Akira hurriedly switched weapons, grasping the cannon and training it on the white mech’s torso.

Fire!

The blast of energy hit the mech full force, and since the enemy was flying in the air, it knocked the machine back a little. But that was all—thanks to its resilient force-field armor, the mech was virtually unharmed.

No way! Even this close, that did nothing?! he cried, shocked at the enemy’s preposterous toughness.

Well, I adjusted the cannon’s power to knock the mech away rather than destroy it, for one, but the biggest factor is that these mechs are specifically designed to be resistant to energy-based attacks, Alpha calmly explained.

No wonder, then! Now realizing why she’d had him use his LEOs on the first hostile white mech, he nodded—then frowned. But why just push them away, if they’re going to come back? I mean, I know they said to make sure they don’t touch the transport, but still.

The AF laser cannon could only knock the enemy back, and even a frenzy of bullets from multiple LEOs would only damage it, not destroy it. The blade worked, but Akira couldn’t use it unless he got up close. So why was she deliberately pushing the enemy away?

When he asked, Alpha replied with a stern expression, Because we don’t need to take the enemy out ourselves. As long as we keep it away from the transport, it’ll get disposed of.

Oh, that tracks! He finally understood: defeating the mech wasn’t important in itself—the critical point was to make sure attacks the sky fiend above launched toward the mechs didn’t hit the convoy. And as long as we keep the mechs away, they’ll get defeated without us having to do anything else, right?

You got it! And it looks like we made it in time.

Alpha had configured the AF laser cannon’s blasts to prioritize conserving energy over dishing out damage so that Akira could continue to head off the enemy’s movements and keep them at bay. When Alpha said they had “made it in time,” Akira naturally assumed she meant the enemy would be defeated very shortly, and that wasn’t wrong. But he expected the black disks to finish the machine off, and this was where he was mistaken.

The next moment, a ridiculously thick beam of light engulfed the white mech from above. The outpouring of energy was so powerful that it vaporized the mech in the blink of an eye. Though it had been designed to resist energy-based attacks, there was nothing left.

An instant later, the beam touched the ground, generating an explosion so massive that it compressed the surrounding atmosphere. Just like when Yanagisawa had fired the warhead at Tsubaki, the extremely dense colorless fog in the air dampened the impact, and the earth around the beam was gouged out, forming a massive crater. The resulting shock waves struck the transports, jolting them violently.

Akira watched with astonishment, but quickly snapped back to his senses and looked up. There, directly underneath the “ceiling,” was a spherical floating cannon.

Did that blast just come from that thing?

Bingo. Good thing we made it in time, huh?

Finally, Akira realized the full import of her words. If they hadn’t pushed the mech away in time, the blast would have struck the Gigantas III directly. His face went pale.

No sooner than Alpha had spoken, a similar beam of light struck one of the other transports in the convoy, vaporizing it without a trace, despite the force-field armor protecting it with the strength of a city wall. The impact luminescence that filled the air could even be seen beyond the horizon.

And that one didn’t make it in time, it seems, she remarked with a smile.

Um, Alpha... How many of those enemy mechs are left now?

Seventy-eight.

That many?!

That’s why I told you before to hurry.

That’s what you meant?! he shouted.

Alpha turned to him with a serious look. Now that you understand, get to it—because I can’t guarantee we’ll be as fortunate next time.

All right, all right, I get it! Where’s the next one?!

Over there.

On it!

Akira sped forward, determined to make it in time once more.

◆

In the convoy’s control room, shouted sitreps and orders were flying every which way.

“Transport 4’s demolished! The damage is so severe it can no longer propel itself forward!”

“Then haul it along with Transport 5’s freight arm! Evacuate all passengers from the wreckage as fast as possible! Only once everyone’s out can we detach it and leave it behind!”

“But, sir, that thing overhead is targeting Transport 5 now! Even its force-field armor won’t protect the vehicle from a direct hit!”

“Then raise all transports’ force-field armor to max! Don’t worry about slowing the transports down or reducing the time the armor can stay active! Even at full speed, the transports can’t escape anyway, and what’s the point of conserving the armor’s power if it’s not going to protect us?! We’ll need every last ounce of power we’ve got to make it through this!”

“Transport 16 out of commission! Severe damage to 18 and 29!”

“That monster must be picking up the targeting system on our cannons! Stop using it! Whatever you do, make sure no one fires at the sky fiend! Anything it recognizes as hostile is done for!”

As the commander’s subordinates bustled around to carry out his orders, their faces grim, another panicked voice rang out. “Abnormality detected on Transport 2! The outer wall of hold A3 is open, and mechs are pouring out! We can’t stop them—the system’s been hacked!”

“What did you say?!”

The giant sky fiend was only targeting the white mechs, so the hunters had been driving them off to stay away from the monster’s attacks. But now they feared that enemy mechs had somehow gotten inside the transport already. There was nothing the hunters could do about this, and the enemy overhead would just blow away the transport along with its targets.

The control room reached a new level of panic.

Hikaru wanted to keep her eye on Akira whenever possible, so even after he’d sped out of the cargo hold and onto the roof, she’d stayed behind in the hold in order to be right there to accompany him when he returned. But after Akira told her about the situation outside, she started to worry that she ought to have just gone back to the room instead.

As she wavered, weighing her options, the entire transport jolted—one of the sky fiend’s lasers had just blasted the ground nearby. That was enough for Hikaru.

“Nope, nope, nope! That’s it, I’m definitely heading back!”

She spun on her heel to leave—just as Shirou and Harmers walked in.

Noticing Hikaru, Shirou looked amused. “Oh? Someone’s already here, it seems. We meet again, miss. What business do you have here in the cargo hold?”

A flicker of wariness crossed her face. “That’s what I’d like to ask you,” she retorted. “Isn’t this area supposed to be off-limits to regular passengers?”

“Oh, really?” said Shirou, pretending to look shocked. “My bad! Harmers, did you get permission before we came in here?”

“You already know I didn’t, so stop clowning around,” the man said with an exasperated sigh.

Hikaru tried to report Shirou and Harmers to security for trespassing—but found she couldn’t get through. “Wh-What’s going on?” she stammered, now fearful.

With a big smile, Shirou took a step toward her. “Now, now, let’s calm down a bit, shall we? It’s not like we’re doing anything suspicious, so there’s no need to report us, right? Oh... On second thought, I can’t blame you. We probably couldn’t seem any more suspicious right now, could we?”

Hikaru instinctively backed away from Shirou. She had tried contacting the security team through her AR interface—the boy shouldn’t have had any way of knowing what she was up to. And yet, somehow he had known this—and that she hadn’t succeeded. That could only mean one thing—the one interfering was none other than the person in front of her.

Her eyes narrowed. “Just who are you two, really? What do you want with me?”

Harmers sighed again. Then he took out his terminal and sent his personal info to Hikaru. “Name’s Harmers, Sakashita Heavy Industries defense force.”

The document before Hikaru indicated that the man before her was indeed employed by Sakashita. She immediately straightened up. “M-My apologies, sir! My name is Hikaru, and I belong to Kugamayama City’s General Administration Department!”

“And I’m—”

“Shut up,” Harmers snapped, cutting Shirou off, then jerked his chin over at the boy. “You don’t need to worry about who he is. Or rather, you’d be better off not knowing. And if I were you, I wouldn’t do any unnecessary snooping around. Understand?”

“Y-Yes, sir!”

“Great. Now run along—this place is dangerous. Oh, and we’ll discuss our trespassing with the security team ourselves. You don’t need to do anything, got it?”

“O-Okay. Th-Then, I’ll be going now...” Hikaru bowed deeply, then scurried out of there as fast as her legs would carry her. She couldn’t show insubordination toward someone from Sakashita, one of the Big Five. And Harmers was almost definitely Shirou’s bodyguard—in other words, Shirou was someone important enough to warrant security detail. Hikaru was always striving to improve her social standing, but she certainly didn’t have the guts to speak calmly and candidly to such a VIP, and she wanted to escape that situation as soon as possible.

Shirou watched her go with a smile, then turned back to his task. “Now then, shall we get to work?”

“Shirou, let me ask you once more: Are you really sure about this? However urgent the situation is, what you’re about to do is a crime.” Harmers gave him a blatantly disapproving look so that his own stance on the matter wasn’t in doubt.

“Nothing for it,” Shirou replied with a shrug. “It’s an emergency.”

“If all misdeeds could be excused with the words ‘it’s an emergency,’ law and order as we know it would crumble,” Harmers retorted with half-lidded eyes. “Rather, emergency situations are when law and order are most needed.”

“That doesn’t mean squat when the East is in a perpetual state of emergency,” Shirou said.

At that, Harmers gave an annoyed grimace, but he couldn’t really disagree.

As things stood, hunters were the ones supporting the East, yet from an Old World perspective, their actions were the work of vicious criminals: designating the creatures and security bots that belonged to the Old World as “monsters” and destroying them, calling its warehouses and stores “ruins” and vandalizing them, and labeling any goods and products on the shelves “relics” and looting them. Nor did they commit just the occasional crime—they acted frequently and relentlessly, and even in groups.

But no hunters were ever brought to justice, because the Eastern League didn’t acknowledge them as criminals for two reasons. First, the Old World was already in ruins; and second, the League had declared that the East was in a “state of emergency” and the hunters’ actions were therefore necessary. Thus, the hunters’ crimes against the Old World were judged to be ethical by the modern East—but in the end, the League had made these decisions unilaterally. So relations between the governing corporations and the AIs who ruled the Old World couldn’t be worse, making negotiations between the two nearly impossible.

As Sakashita was one of the Big Five, Shirou and Harmers were also affiliated with those who had justified transgressions toward the Old World by this arbitrary declaration of a state of emergency. So when Harmers harped on about the need for law and order, it did ring a bit hollow to Shirou.

So instead of a direct rebuttal, Harmers just growled, his eyes narrowing, “You’re criticizing the system now of all times?”

“No, no, perish the thought! Of course I realize the current arrangement’s necessary for us to survive in such a monster-infested region as the East. At this point, there’s no helping it. But there’s a matter of scale too, right? Compared to all the debauchery we’ve permitted as a society, surely something this minor can be excused. Yeah, we might see some casualties. But Sakashita’s big enough to just cover those losses later, right?”

“Well... I suppose,” Harmers conceded.

“Don’t get me wrong,” the boy continued. “It’s not like I feel good about having to do this either. But between dying and staying alive, my choice is obvious. Can you honestly say you’ll head out there and kick every single one of those monsters to the curb on your own? If so, then I’ll stop right here. What’s your call?”

With that, Harmers caved. Should he abandon his duty as Shirou’s monitor in order to assist outside, the threat would probably be quickly neutralized. But he knew that this was absolutely not an option. “All right, fine. Go ahead.”

“Okay! Just remember you gave me permission, all right?” Shirou said with glee, then got to work doing what he did best.

There were many mechs stored in the cargo hold. These were not intended for the convoy’s defense—rather, they were goods earmarked for Kugamayama City, purchased for the defense force’s vanguard with the money from their arrangement with Tsubaki. Naturally, these weren’t products just anyone could step in and pilot—for one, there were strict security measures in place to prevent unauthorized users from harnessing such powerful mechs. A lengthy and involved authentication process was required.

But Shirou bypassed all of it. Every mech in the cargo hold activated simultaneously. The outer wall, which could normally only be operated by approved personnel, also began to open. The mechs automatically equipped the weapons stored alongside them—and then the machines flew through the exit, one after another.

Meanwhile, pandemonium reigned in the control room. Not only had the cargo hold’s wall been hacked, the products stored inside were all leaving the hold on their own and flying outside! The commander looked grave, fearing the worst—most likely, enemy mechs had already infiltrated the hold.

Then a transmission from Harmers arrived. “This is Harmers, Sakashita Defense Force. The anomaly in the cargo hold is nothing to worry about. Please allow me to handle it.”

“Then, may I assume there aren’t any enemy mechs in the hold after all?”

“You may. Sakashita will take full responsibility for the cargo leaving on its own. We’ll also send the security team the authorization to command them and bring them back.”

“In that case, go ahead,” replied the commander. “I’m grateful for the assistance.”

The call ended. Shirou’s and Harmers’s actions were infringing on a number of transport security stipulations, but the commander chose to be lenient here. After all, the more responsibility Sakashita took for the incident, the less hot water he would find himself in.

After hanging up, Harmers glanced over at Shirou. The boy had already finished his task—he’d taken over every single mech, multilegged tank, and flying machine in the hold, all weapons intended for supporting Kugamayama’s defense force, and sent them outside. Witnessing such an extraordinary feat, Harmers couldn’t help but be reminded of just how talented Shirou was.

Neither the transport’s security system nor the strict authorization system on the vanguard-bound mechs presented an obstacle for the likes of him. Not to sing my own praises, but it’s no wonder the top brass assigned me to guard him.

Shirou was an Old Domain User who belonged to Sakashita Heavy Industries. The corporation had given him advanced, specialized training, and so his engineering skills and ability to manipulate data were second to none.

The data processing systems of the East were generally extremely secure, in part because many of them utilized Old World technology at their core. Authentication and encryption were all done through the communications network of the Old World, namely the Old Domain, so they were impossible to breach using modern tech. But against Old Domain Users, that security was extremely brittle—after all, it was based on the premise that New World citizens didn’t have access to the Old Domain. Against those who did, such security systems were full of holes, and to seal them up required technology as advanced as that of the Old World. However, current technology still had yet to progress to such a level.

Both Shirou’s ability to connect to the Old Domain and his grasp of engineering technology were extremely high, and his efforts had given Sakashita a considerable leg up in their data processing war with the other companies. Therefore, Sakashita hadn’t wanted someone as important as Shirou to take a single step outside of the facility where they kept him secure. They’d only made an exception this time because the corporation needed him off-site to perform a critical task for them, and had assigned Harmers to monitor and guard him while he was away.

A white mech made a beeline for the cargo hold’s outer wall, which had yet to fully close. Seeing the enemy attempting to enter, Harmers sighed in exasperation.

“Well, that’s not good,” Shirou remarked, expecting the mech to make it in.

But the next instant, Harmers had vanished from his sight. Before the white mech could even reach the closing door, a powerful kick connected, smashing nearly half of its frame to pieces. The mech was blasted so far backward they could no longer even see it.

Harmers watched the skies for a moment, his eyes half closed, in case any other units attempted to intrude, then urged Shirou, “Hurry and close up that wall!”

“Already on it! It’s almost shut now.”

After the wall had sealed completely, Harmers walked back over to Shirou. “Let’s err on the side of caution—erase the record of what I just did.”

“Sure thing. There, it’s gone.”

“Great. Now let’s get out of here.”

Monitoring the transport’s scanners, Shirou also knew what the situation outside was like and therefore how formidable the enemy mechs were. Yet he hadn’t even batted an eye at Harmers destroying that white mech in a single blow—he knew full well what the man was capable of.

Harmers was a superhuman. The business suit he had on was not a powered suit but sturdy protective wear, and it didn’t serve to protect him from his enemies’ attacks. It was to keep his body intact against his own incredible strength—the strength that allowed him, with only a single kick, to demolish the same kind of mech that Akira had struggled so much against.

Shirou hadn’t been joking when he said that if Harmers went out and destroyed all the enemies himself, Shirou wouldn’t go through with his own plan. But the boy had already known Harmers wouldn’t do such a thing. For one, that would mean abandoning his duty to guard Shirou, and for another, it would expose his identity as a superhuman. That was also precisely why Harmers had asked Shirou to erase the record of his feat just now—he valued being able to pass as a normal human, as it made it easier to protect a VIP at all times.

“Oh, right, Shirou. I have another request for you as well.”

“What is it?”

Harmers told him, and Shirou frowned slightly.

“You’re kidding, right? I know we have an emergency and all, but you want me to involve someone completely unrelated now? Weren’t you the one who said law and order exist to prevent that exact sort of thing?”

“And weren’t you the one who goaded me into giving you permission to do it?”

“Oh yeah, I guess I did do that, didn’t I?”

“Besides,” added Harmers, “you already put everyone here in danger the moment you showed up. It’s a little late to worry about involving one lone girl in this mess, isn’t it?”

Shirou could find no rebuttal. “All right, all right, I get it. But if something happens, you’d better be ready to have the company offer compensation.”

“Naturally,” Harmers replied calmly.

In the event the two of them did cause an accident or tragedy, they would compensate the victims, and the matter would be considered settled—or more accurately, the company would consider the matter settled. Shirou and Harmers could only converse as they did because of Sakashita Heavy Industries’ high-handedness as one of the Big Five, and their arrogance arose from the fact that Sakashita wielded a level of power and influence that allowed it to do whatever it wanted.

Yet though Shirou and Harmers were both from Sakashita, the company by no means treated them equally.

Now let’s just hope my preparations pay off, Shirou thought, continuing to stare at the now-closed wall.

◆

Outside, the fight around the transport raged on. Akira was riding his bike through the air, zipping to and fro in all directions as he faced off against another white mech.

He fired at the machine’s leg with all four of his LEOs at once. The impact from the cluster of C-bullets tore the limb right off. Next, he targeted the mech’s arm, which, along with the laser cannon it was holding, blew off with absolutely no resistance. Surprised at how easily this mech was taking damage compared to the others he’d fought, he laughed out loud. “Wow! This one’s super weak!”

Having lost two of its limbs, the damaged mech collapsed toward the ground. Akira moved to deliver the finishing blow, but before he could, a black disk flew in, tearing the white machine to shreds.

Next target! That one over there, Alpha said, pointing.

Got it!

Akira’s new opponent was struggling against another black disk and had already lost its laser cannon. However, now it was swinging around a giant laser blade instead, swatting at the black drone that persisted in attacking it.

Akira sped up and charged toward the mech. As he approached, he generated a four-meter-long liquid-metal blade from the hilt he was holding. Then, at the very moment he was passing the enemy, he swung with both hands. The pale blue blade flashed in the air as it severed the mech’s arm from its body.

Akira was surprised to see the liquid metal had yet to lose its form.

Hmm? Was my attack too weak?

Strike it once more, Akira!

Sure thing!

His bike made a sharp U-turn and sped back toward the one-armed mech. Without its arm, it was no longer able to repel the black disk’s incessant attacks, and the drone’s madly rotating blades buried themselves deep in its torso, gradually sawing through. Then Akira swung his blade at the mech from behind, finishing the job. The mech was sliced in two, and Akira’s blade finally lost its strength and dissipated.

But Akira was surprised. Even after losing an arm, the mech had still managed to endure the disk’s attacks for a while. Maybe that mech wasn’t as weak as I thought?

It still had some energy left, Alpha explained. With enough power, a mech could max out its force-field armor. But when its energy ran low, it had to pick and choose which parts of its armor to reinforce. Akira had managed to sever the mech’s arm so easily because the pilot had decided to prioritize the armor around the mech’s torso so as to defend against the black disk’s spinning blades, leaving the arms undefended.

Such was the abridged account Alpha gave to Akira. However, there had been quite a few other factors at play: for instance, the precision and perfect timing with which Akira’s blade had struck the nearly zero-millimeter-wide weak point formed when the mech had abruptly rerouted its force-field armor. In fact, there were so many minor yet high-level techniques that had factored into Akira’s sword swing alone that Alpha would have needed quite some time to describe them all. Every single one had been necessary for him to pull off what he had, but since they were in the middle of combat and she didn’t have the time to go over each one, she only gave him the most important information.

Also, don’t let your guard down thinking they’ll all drop as easily as that sorry excuse for a mech just now.

Uh, did you just say “sorry excuse”?

Well, to be accurate, it was only so pathetic because its energy had nearly dried up. In fact, it couldn’t even fly anymore—if it hadn’t been on the roof, it wouldn’t have been able to fight at all.

You’re kidding. So it was super weak compared to the others?

That’s right, she said, pointing to one mech that still had plenty of energy left. The white machine was near the outer wall of another transport, nimbly flying here and there at high speed to avoid the numerous black disks pursuing it. Its agile movements caused some of the drones to collide with the transport’s wall. At the same time, it was locked in fierce combat with the reinforcement mechs Shirou had sent out—and it was winning.

Seeing how much more formidable this specimen was than the one he’d just fought, Akira grimaced. Yeah, you’re right—the difference is like night and day.

Even as they chatted, Alpha was already showing Akira his next target. The boy flew through the air, fired his guns, and swung his blade, taking out several more units whose energy had been nearly depleted from their battle with the monster in the sky.

Now you get it. Well, perhaps rather than “sorry excuse,” I should have called it “wounded” instead. The ones you just defeated were once that powerful, but the battle with the sky fiend up there wore them out, you see.

How many are left, Alpha?

Fifty-two.

Still?! Well, that’s far fewer than before, at least, but jeez!

Complaining won’t reduce that number, Akira, she said with a grin.

At the start of the battle, Alpha’s expression had been stern, reflecting their dire situation. But now, she was all smiles again. So Akira reasoned he had nothing to worry about—he could finish this task.

All right! He grinned back at her to psych himself up. Even if she hadn’t been smiling, he reminded himself, he still had her full support. Compared to having to manage without her, this was nothing. He couldn’t allow himself to lose this time, when the heavens were actually on his side—even if the sky was currently obscured.

But more importantly, if he cowered before the enemy’s strength now, he’d end up depending on Alpha again. He accepted that he had to rely on her for the time being—he was still weak enough to need her help, after all—but he couldn’t let himself depend on her anymore. He would use her as a tool to gain strength, but he wouldn’t grow any stronger if he let her coddle him.

And he needed to become stronger—not with Alpha’s strength, but with his own. Thus inspired, he streaked through the air and aimed at his next target with renewed enthusiasm and determination.

Chapter 207: A Four-Way Struggle

The fierce battle between the convoy’s security team and the legion of white mechs continued, and Akira was giving his all in his battles, making use of every bit of the support Alpha offered. He might not have been strong enough yet to take out any mechs on his own, but with her aid, he brought down one hostile machine after another.

The other hunters watched his battle, astonished—not so much at Akira’s raw ability as that someone so capable had been stationed on Transport 2, rather than on the lead transport. But such a mismatch also revealed that Akira had performed well beyond the security team’s expectations.

For his part, Akira was also flabbergasted as he saw the other hunters fight. One had a battle suit that could fly, allowing them to dart to and fro through the air as they exchanged fire with a white mech wielding multiple laser cannons on its back. There was also a friendly mech engaged in battle with an entire group of enemy mechs at once; Akira witnessed the allied mech swing a blade longer than it was tall and sever the entire cluster of foes in one slice. And none that met their demise at that moment were weak like the ones Akira had fought—given how quickly they’d been zipping through the air, they’d clearly all been powerful machines with plenty of energy to spare.

No wonder these guys were assigned to Transport 10, he mused. In a situation like this, there was no longer any point in placing the strongest hunters only at the front of the convoy. So Transport 10’s hunters had been dispersed among all the transports, each engaging the white mechs at their respective stations. This arrangement prevented the convoy from being wiped out in its entirety.

Even so, the defenders couldn’t keep every transport intact. Two had already been struck by the powerful beams emanating from the cannon that floated directly underneath the vast “ceiling” obscuring the sky, and now another beam struck a third transport’s roof. The torrent of energy engulfed and vaporized an unlucky white mech in an instant, and a blinding flash swallowed the transport up.

Dammit! Again?! We lost ano— Huh? Certain that a third transport had just been destroyed, Akira began to worry whether the convoy still had a shot at victory. But when the light faded, he saw the vehicle was still completely intact. Oh, wow! It actually withstood the blast! Amazing!

The convoy leaders are channeling all the transports’ available energy into their force-field armor, which dramatically boosts their endurance, Alpha chimed in. Of course, there are consequences to doing so, but they don’t really have a choice—without a force field that powerful, they’ll never survive.

Consequences? Like what?

Sometimes, raising a force field’s output can block the transmission of data to whatever it’s protecting. That includes your connection to anything inside the transport. Look here—you’re not connected to Hikaru anymore.

Oh, you’re right! But can you really call that a consequence? It doesn’t sound like that big of a deal.

There are others. This should be obvious, but by pouring more energy into their armor, the transports will have less energy to move. You’ll see that their speed has reduced significantly.

With the energy previously allocated to engines now channeled into their armor, the transports were only moving forward thanks to inertia. Even now, their speed continued to decrease.

Again, that doesn’t sound like such a big—

And because of that, monsters that the transports could normally outpace are gathering around the convoy as we speak. She pointed to the wasteland ahead. On the horizon, he could see a massive haze of dust. Or rather, not just one—distant dust clouds were rising one after another all around him. At the base of each, of course, were countless monsters charging toward the convoy.

Larger monsters were generally stronger, but not necessarily faster—most relied on superior regeneration to stay alive. So it was far easier to escape from them, rendering it unnecessary to engage them in battle. That was why transports moved through the wasteland at such high speeds: though their very presence drew the attention of nearby monsters, the convoys could avoid the more dangerous ones. But now that the energy meant for traveling quickly was being used for defense, such sluggish, formidable monsters were starting to catch up—the transports could no longer outrun them.

Shit! As if we weren’t already busy enough! Akira spat. Before his eyes, gigantic insects came into view, with their bodies that resembled multilegged railway guns—and which fired just like them too, as ridiculously large shells packed with explosive organic material arced toward the convoy and landed nearby.

As their force-field armor could endure the sky fiend’s beams, the transports didn’t even receive a scratch from the exploding shells. Yet defending against the explosions used up even more of their energy.

Then one of the insects tilted its cannon up toward the sky, aiming at the ceiling above.

Just because both of these entities were monsters didn’t mean they were on the same side—such creatures attacked anything they recognized as hostile. And to the monsters on the ground, a laser capable of blasting their territory into oblivion was definitely a threat.

The insect’s artillery shell shot up into the air and struck the ceiling dead-on. But as the enormous explosion of smoke and flame cleared, it became clear that the ceiling had received no damage. The sky fiend was impervious to such weak ordnance. However, the attack had been no mere stray bullet either, and the sky fiend immediately categorized the monsters below as hostile. A beam from its floating cannon swept the ground, and a new swarm of black disks poured out from the ceiling’s open hatch, descending to attack the insects.

With the monsters on the ground joining the fracas, what had already been a three-way conflict between the transports, the white mechs, and the sky fiend was now a four-way struggle. Bullets and shells alike flew through the air in all directions, ravaging the battlefield. As Akira watched the hellscape unfold, he had a sudden thought.

Wait a sec, Alpha. Won’t this actually work out in our favor? With the white mechs being hit by stray gunfire from the monsters on the ground, and those monsters being targeted by the laser cannon above, Akira suspected the white mechs around the transport would be less likely to focus on him.

But Alpha shook her head. No, Akira. Quite the opposite, really.

But why?

Up until now, simply defeating all the white mechs would have made the sky fiend reascend back to its habitat. Now that it’s also targeting the monsters on the ground, we’re going to have to take care of those too.

But isn’t its laser less likely to hit the transports now?

For the time being, Alpha said, then pointed to the monsters on the ground again.

When Akira turned to look, he saw a new group of gigantic insects, each over a hundred meters tall, now charging in his direction.

Were these monsters just attacking from long range, you’d be correct, Alpha went on. But many of these larger foes are close-range fighters. And of course, they’re also going to become the sky fiend’s marks. That means more targets around the transport that the laser could strike.

It didn’t help, she concluded, that the transports were all moving slower than usual, meaning that even the slower—yet still fast for their size—monsters were able to join the horde, preparing to body-slam the massive transports. Once they reached the convoy, the transports would be caught in any laser blasts directed at them. To make matters even worse, such larger monsters would be harder to take out before they reached the convoy.

Finally grasping the situation, Akira grimaced and cursed again. Dammit! Like I said, as if we weren’t already busy enough!

The situation wasn’t in their favor after all—it was actually worse than before.

With the incoming beasts joining the fight, the carnage ballooned to a much vaster scale. Laser beams swept the wasteland in quick succession, each strike instantaneously reducing several hundred large monsters to ash and sending up massive explosions wherever they touched down. Meanwhile, countless black disks sliced more of the horde to pieces, scattering shreds of giant monster corpses all over the desolate landscape.

Even so, the monsters didn’t stop coming. More packs appeared from the horizon—enough to blanket the whole area. This was the consequence of the transports proceeding down a route where the monsters had not yet been properly culled, though such a decision had been necessary since the path they’d taken to Zegelt, and had planned to take back to Kugamayama, was now littered with giant insect corpses. Of course, the convoy leaders had known about the dangers, but they hadn’t expected any problems, given all the reinforcements that Sakashita had added to the convoy’s defenses. And had they only had to deal with the monsters on the ground, they would have been right.

The convoy’s security personnel hadn’t made the wrong choice—or at least, they could hardly have prepared and planned for an ambush from a legion of white mechs and a sky fiend. Akira, however, was used to such unforeseen events cropping up, and he fought as desperately to overcome this one as he always did. He blasted his AF laser cannon at one of the wasteland insects. The laser hadn’t been very effective against the white mechs, but against regular monsters, its power was devastating. The massive energy blew a gaping hole in the creature’s enormous body. He also pelted the smaller ones—around the size of a car—with continuous gunfire from his LEOs. The relentless storm of C-bullets tore them to shreds over a wide area.

Thus, in no time at all, Akira had taken out scores of monsters. The total was still only a fraction of the entire horde, but it was significant nonetheless—in part because Alpha was calculating exactly which enemies he’d needed to eliminate to most effectively delay the attackers’ advance. If he was unlucky and one managed to slip through his fire and slam into the transport, there was a good chance the vehicle would get caught up in a laser blast targeting the monster. So Alpha directed his every move in order to reduce such a chance as much as possible, and Akira made every effort to follow her orders.

No matter how many times he fired, the number of enemies never seemed to decrease—yet if he didn’t kill them, he’d have even more to deal with. As the ranks of monsters swelled ever greater, Akira had to keep shooting without pausing for a single second just to hold the line. He’d already used more bullets than he had fighting the giant bugs on the trip to Zegelt.

The only reason he hadn’t run out yet was thanks to Hikaru. During his previous fight with the giant bugs, she’d undergone the traumatic experience of carrying Akira’s backpacks of ammo to him. Determined to ensure she’d never have to go through that again, she’d procured so much ammo for the trip home that she hoped he wouldn’t need to ask for a restock.

The magazines she’d prepared for him on the way to Zegelt had all been high-capacity. But even so, they had still been purchased in Kugamayama and were only “high-capacity” by the standard of the hunters who worked in and around the center of the East. A hunter operating as far off as Zegelt City would have found them woefully insufficient. Of course, the hunters who’d been summoned from farther east to help with clearing out Zone 2 were using ammo that was high-capacity by their standards, despite being in Kugamayama, but those magazines had been specially prepared for them—Akira certainly wouldn’t have had access to them, and couldn’t have afforded them in any case. Hikaru was employed by the city, and with the city covering his ammo expenses, naturally she had wanted to keep Akira’s costs down.

But this time, her feelings had urged her to throw caution to the wind and shell out for premium goods. For one, she’d judged this a necessary expense if she wanted Akira to achieve even greater feats than eliminating so many giant bugs on the outbound journey. Telling herself that her preparations would lead to her superiors acknowledging her potential in the end, she’d gone ahead and purchased top-quality ammo for Akira, the total of which had gone way over her original budget.

Technically, Akira was now using those extremely high-capacity extended magazines to achieve astounding results, just as Hikaru had hoped. Had he been using standard extended magazines, he would have already run out of ammo, and in this situation, resupplying wouldn’t be easy. For one thing, it would require access to the inside of the transport, but merely opening the outer wall partway would reduce the effectiveness of the vehicle’s force-field armor. The others on the security team, including the hunters, also needed to be cautious about the timing with which they entered and exited the transport. Therefore, even though she hadn’t anticipated this ambush, Hikaru had ultimately provided Akira with the optimal support for the present situation anyway.

As he continued to fire both guns in his hands, Akira couldn’t help but wonder about this. Hey, Alpha, Hikaru gave me enough ammo for the fight on the way here, and now she’s provided me with so much that I don’t even need to ask for a resupply despite all the ammo I’m using. Do you think, maybe, she somehow knew the giant bug swarm and this ambush were going to happen?

But Alpha dispelled his suspicion with a shake of her head. No, that’s almost certainly just a coincidence. Had she known something like this was coming, I doubt she would have boarded this transport in the first place.

Yeah, I suppose so. I mean, even I wouldn’t have wanted to board if I’d known.

That said, she probably at least guessed you’d end up in some sort of situation where you’d need so much ammo. You said it yourself, right? You’re always running into unforeseen events like this. And lo and behold, look what we’re up against now! she teased.

Can’t argue with that! he said, grinning back at her. In which case, guess I just gotta prove I’m strong enough to win against my own bad luck!

That’s what I like to hear!

Zipping through the air on his bike, Akira kept firing a continuous stream of bullets from his LEOs. To anyone watching, the sheer amount of ammunition erupting from Akira’s guns wouldn’t have been merely astounding—it would have seemed downright inexplicable. Though the horde of monsters covered the landscape as far as his eyes could see, the boy fought on like always, determined to prove to the world he was stronger than his misfortune.

The battle raged on. No other transports had been lost, and the passengers, personnel, and cargo from those destroyed had been safely evacuated and recovered. In that sense, one could say the convoy was successfully maintaining the upper hand in the four-way struggle. And versus the white mechs, at least, it wasn’t hard to see why—it was just a matter of time before their forces would be completely eliminated. Counting the units they had remaining, anyone would have concluded they’d already lost and would have expected them to retreat at any given moment.

But the white mechs showed no sign of pulling back. Foolishly and earnestly, they continued fighting with just as much enthusiasm as before.

Having emptied yet another magazine, Akira switched it out for a new one. He might have had enough ammo to obviate the need for resupplying, but of course he still had to reload from time to time. He did so while dashing along the roof and trained his weapons on another enemy the moment he was done.

Alpha! What’s our situation now?

Twenty-three white mechs remain. As for the sky fiend... Well, it’s still in the sky.

Only twenty-three more, huh? Just one final push, then! Once the white mechs were no longer a threat, the sky fiend would focus solely on the strong yet sluggish land monsters. Then the hunters would simply have to keep the monsters at bay, while the transports could speed up and leave the larger, tougher ones in the dust. The convoy was almost out of the woods.

Or so Akira thought.

Suddenly, the laser beams that had been sweeping the ground abruptly glowed far brighter. The terror in the sky had increased the floating laser cannon’s power, and the beam engulfed a vast area as it touched down. A moment later, a massive explosion followed.

This was not a beam of concentrated energy focused on a single point, but energy dispersed in a wide line. It still wasn’t powerful enough to make the dense colorless fog react, but the massive explosions that followed were many times greater than before. Even monsters that weren’t close enough to get evaporated or carbonized on the spot were blasted high into the sky, though their bodies were the size of mansions.

Alpha?! What happened?!

Looks like the sky fiend realized the horde wasn’t thinning out and decided to fan out its attacks.

Seriously?! Dammit! The moment he’d thought victory was within their grasp if they could just hold on a little longer, they’d suffered an unexpected setback. He couldn’t help but feel frustrated.

Then Alpha accelerated his bike without warning. Akira was startled, but he didn’t need to ask why—a group of wingless insects over a hundred and fifty meters tall had been blasted in the air, and one was sailing in his direction. It was too large for him to intercept it in midair.

Driving at full speed, Akira barely managed to evade it. The insect’s body just missed him, slamming into the transport’s roof. But it was hardly alone—insects were crash-landing on and around the vehicle, one after another. The majority of them died on impact, but a significant number survived. The hunters nearby quickly moved to finish off the survivors.

One of these landed near Akira. Though it had avoided a direct hit from the sky fiend’s laser beam, the resulting explosion had knocked it into the air and onto the transport. Its injuries were severe, and its movements had become sluggish, but it was still alive.

Alpha’s smile suddenly vanished. Akira! Finish that monster off right this instant! If the laser targets it next, you’ll get blown up along with the transport!

On it!

Seeing her face, Akira also looked grim as he made a sharp U-turn. He fired at the monster with both the LEOs in his hands and those attached to his bike’s support arms. His guns, modded to be far more powerful than the off-the-shelf model, drew in so much energy they were on the verge of breaking, charging each C-bullet for as much damage as possible—enough to kill Akira instantly, should one have struck him. And thanks to his extended magazines, he kept up a rapid, continuous stream of them. Their devastating power shattered and pierced through the monster’s exoskeleton, but of course for a creature towering over 150 meters high, such wounds were far from fatal. Given time, he could defeat it—but time he did not have.

Seeing his attacks weren’t very effective, Akira’s face clouded over. At that moment, another swarm of black disks emerged from the hatch on the ceiling—the drones had also been freshly enhanced. And a portion of them headed in Akira’s direction.

Briefly, Akira was relieved—his attacks might have fallen short, but surely these black disks would finish the monster instead. All was well. But in the next instant, one disk tumbled out of the sky, pierced by a white mech’s laser. And even as Akira stood in shock, several more fell as well. At this, the other drones switched targets from the giant insect to the white mech. Had the black disks torn the white mech to shreds at this point, Akira would have welcomed it. But the mech adroitly zipped to and fro, always evading the disks’ spinning blades.

Goddammit! Alpha, any ideas?!

I suppose we don’t have any other option now. Yes, I have one, but it requires you to act quite recklessly. Are you okay with that?

If there’s no other option, then why even ask?

Alpha responded with a smirk, Well, technically there is one more. You could flee from here and leave everyone else to die. You’ve got a flying bike now, so escape is certainly feasible.

He realized from her expression that she was just teasing him, and his face lit up. Hmm, let me consider— Nah, don’t think so!

They grinned at each other, both in agreement, then turned to face the battle.

Let’s go, Akira!

Ready anytime!

His bike shot off, then launched into the air once more. It landed on the massive insect’s back, then made a one-eighty. By the time he’d finished turning, Akira had his AF laser cannon at the ready and fully charged. The beam was set as wide as possible, and he fired it straight at the white mech.

The laser cannon was connected to the bike’s power source via an energy cable. Drawing a vast quantity of power, the likes of which he would never have obtained from normal energy packs, and consisting of ammo from Zegelt City that Akira could never have found for purchase in Kugamayama, the light that blazed forth from the cannon swallowed up both the white mechs and the black disks surrounding it in an instant.

Yet the white mech received no damage. These mechs were designed to be resistant to energy-based attacks, and increasing the width of the beam had reduced the attack’s power. Nor did such an attack work on the black disks either—none of them were taken out. Still, the attack did serve one purpose—after being hit by the beam, the drones started targeting Akira instead of the mech. As soon as the pilot of the mech saw this, they aimed a laser cannon at the drones. As a result, the black disks flew back toward the mech.

But the next moment, a spray of countless bullets from Akira struck the mech’s laser cannon. Akira had timed his attack so that it struck just before the laser fired, at the instant when the force-field armor around the weapon had to be disengaged. The bullets had come from the LEO on his bike’s support arm, and Alpha had corrected their aim.

In the meantime, Akira swapped his AF laser cannon for two LEOs once more.

Hey Alpha, he asked, looking perturbed, I know it’s probably pointless to ask since I already fired and all, but should we really be shooting at these black things?

All is well. Those are ultimately just throwaway attack drones. The sky fiend won’t target you if you destroy them or anything.

Oh yeah? Well, that’s a relief. Once again, he chose to trust her words, and his anxiety over the possibility of being targeted by the floating cannon disappeared. He’d already started bending his sense of time, and the world around him was gradually slowing down. He could see the blades on the black attack drones as they spun toward him, and he could tell they’d slice him to ribbons if he allowed them to hit him. Even so, Akira grinned confidently.

Alpha spoke up. Now then, Akira! This is the moment that counts! Prepare yourself!

Yeah, I already have, he replied. Resolve is my burden, after all! Akira had suffered one misfortune after another since the battle had begun. So he steeled himself to overcome all that misfortune and kick it to the curb.

At that moment, Akira’s vision sharpened and became more vivid, like he’d entered another world entirely. The detail of the world around him abruptly and dramatically increased. He could clearly and accurately perceive the sharpness of each blade on each black disk as they crept along in slow motion. This time, there was no white around the edges of his vision like before. He had an unobscured, detailed, incredibly high-res view of his surroundings.

Thanks to Alpha’s support, the vividness of Akira’s perception had increased well beyond what he’d been able to accomplish without her help. But Alpha’s aid wasn’t the only factor—he’d also ingested a capsule that Tsubaki had given him back in the Kuzusuhara Town Ruins. The pill was Old World-manufactured medicine, thanks to which Akira had been able to recover from his near-death state enough to fight again. And the part of Akira that the capsule had affected most strongly was his brain.

Though Akira was an Old Domain User, his connection to the Old Domain had still been weak compared to that of an able-bodied resident of the Old World. The medicine from Tsubaki had recognized his weak connection as an “injury” by Old World standards, and so had “treated” it. That wasn’t to say it was up to Old World residents’ standards now, but his ability to communicate with the Old Domain was certainly much stronger. In fact, had Akira not turned down Tsubaki’s invitation, his newly enhanced bandwidth would have been quite useful in creating a secret communication channel between him and Tsubaki. But since he’d refused her, he had merely ended up with a stronger connection to the Old Domain that he could use for any general purpose. Thus, he was now able to endure his state of enhanced perception, though during his fight against the Old World automatons in Iida, having it active for less than a minute had left him unconscious for five days straight.

Even if someone attained the physical capabilities of a superhuman, such a change meant nothing if their senses remained those of a normal human. But Akira didn’t just have the enhanced physical performance from his powered suit—he could control his sense of time, and now he could heighten the resolution with which he perceived reality at will. His physical and mental capabilities were simultaneously approaching superhuman status.

The black disks were spinning toward Akira at impossibly high speeds—yet Akira easily read their trajectories. He kicked the empty air beside himself, bouncing off a force-field platform even as his suit generated it. The recoil tipped his bike ninety degrees sideways, allowing him to avoid the incoming disks. The drones that missed their target sped on to collide with and gouge deeply into the giant insect’s armored exoskeleton.

But the black attack drones weren’t finished. One by one, they flew back over to Akira and assaulted him. The boy fended off their attacks by riding up onto the giant insect and dodging while navigating across its body with agile, precise steering. Each time one of the disks missed, their gigantic high-speed blades tore into the insect’s armor. He ducked from a vertical spinning disk that charged at him from the front, just barely moving his bike to the side; and when a horizontal one followed, he rode up over it on an invisible force-field path. When they started swarming at him from all directions, he maneuvered each of his tires separately, his bike tracing a double helix. With the same degree of astonishing skill that he had shown at the test-drive in Zegelt City, Akira dodged every drone that came for him.

At the same time, he also kicked away some that passed him by. Of course, even with his powered suit’s strength, his kicks weren’t anywhere near powerful enough to destroy the drones, but he did knock them off course. These crashed into the giant insect, gashing the creature’s armor. By this point, countless disks were tearing into the bug’s exoskeleton. Akira glanced at it with a frown.

Hey Alpha, the monster’s not moving anymore. Is it dead?

No, it’s just immobile while maintaining a defensive state. It’s still alive.

Really? Damn, it’s sturdy!

Astonished by the insect’s resilience, Akira once again opened fire with the weapons in his hands. The guns on the bike’s support arms also swiveled to target the same enemy.

His focus was, once again, the white mech’s laser cannon. Just like before, he timed his shots to coincide with the exact moment the mech disengaged its force field to fire. Because the cannon was an accessory for the white mech, it was just as sturdy as the mech’s frame. But having had its weak point struck dead-on twice now, it wasn’t merely damaged—the cannon broke, no longer usable.

The white mech didn’t waste a second in tossing away its now-useless laser cannon and quickly drew a laser blade in its place. As black disks continued to swarm around and attack the mech, it stormed straight at Akira.

He managed to dodge both the mech’s assault and the black disks flying around it, but he still wore a grimace. So it’s charging me now, huh? What should I do, Alpha?

Akira had hoped the other hunters would take care of this mech while he was busy finishing off the giant insect—or at the very least, distract it enough to keep it away from him. Even without its laser cannon, a mech with the black disks swarming around it was still very much a threat—a threat he hadn’t wanted to approach him if he could help it.

Draw your blade as well. You’re going to duel this mech.

A duel?! With that thing?! A-All right, if you say so! The idea sounded preposterous to him at first, but he figured Alpha’s suggestion had to be his best option. He put his guns away and picked up the giant hilt with the thick energy cable, then inserted the hilt into the blade generator. The slot it slid into suddenly stretched to the left and right, and a brilliant light began to leak from the gap. Akira looked surprised—this was the first time the generator had displayed such behavior. As he pulled the hilt back, the device flew in the opposite direction, sculpting the new blade. As though he were drawing a sword from a large, invisible scabbard, a long liquid-metal blade formed in the air.

Once the generator had finished creating the blade, it shot back to the front of the bike as if someone had tugged on a wire to bring it back. And Akira held a ten-meter-long sword in his hand.

If you’re going to duel a mech like that, you’re going to need a blade of this length, at the very least, said Alpha with a smile. So I used all of the remaining liquid metal in the device for you. Now, Akira, let’s go!

Roger!

Straddling his bike, Akira held his blade at the ready and took off. At the same time, the mech swung its gleaming weapon—a mass of powerful energy solidified with a force field in the form of a sword—through the air toward Akira.

Though the mech stood around twenty meters tall, the amount of time it took to swing the laser blade was actually less than the time it would have taken a normal human to make the same motion. And yet, aided by Alpha’s expert bike maneuvering, Akira dodged it. The laser blade instead sliced into the giant insect’s exoskeleton and seared the creature’s innards.

A split second later, Akira swung his own silver blade, which emitted a pale blue light, as he channeled all the strength in his powered suit and the momentum from his bike’s inertia to strike the mech’s torso with all his might.

His blade bounced off.

Though only eighteen of the original legion of over a hundred white mechs remained, those which had been destroyed were the weaker ones with very little energy remaining—only the strongest with ample energy to spare were left. A single attack from Akira couldn’t penetrate the mech’s force field.

To make matters worse, the recoil struck Akira hard—so hard he nearly dropped his blade from the jarring sensation in his hands.

Akira! Don’t drop that blade, whatever you do!

I know!

In fact, it was his powered suit that had jarred. His hands within the suit were in an even worse state. Had the pressure of his suit’s inner wear not held his bones and flesh in place, his hands would have lost their original shape. But even this injury, as severe as it was, healed up quickly, thanks to the amount of recovery medicine the boy had ingested before and during the battle. This precaution was the only reason he was able to go on fighting.

His blade hadn’t shattered yet either, though part of it had broken off, and there were cracks forming all along its surface. Still, as it was made of liquid metal, he could swiftly liquefy and refashion it, drawing on the energy from his bike to do so. Minus the portion that had chipped off, the blade was reformed and ready for action again in no time.

Both his swing and the subsequent recoil had greatly compromised his balance—but the same applied to the white mech. The black disks sped toward them both, so as to not miss their chance. Despite the drones’ size, Akira somehow managed to avoid them. He was dodging while riding a large, unwieldy bike, but his vehicle had excellent mobility, and he had Alpha’s support on his side. Furthermore, being smaller than the white mech, he made a much harder target for them to hit and found it easier to slip past the large disks, and even repel some of their blades with his sword.

The white mech, however, failed to avoid the black attack drones. With impaired balance, it couldn’t move as agilely as before, and because its body was so large, there was very little room for it to avoid the disks in the first place. So it suffered direct hit after direct hit, and the whizzing blades tore into its armor.

Naturally, that wasn’t enough to destroy the mech. Otherwise, Akira’s slash would have already sliced it in two. The mech corrected its posture right away and swung its laser blade at Akira again.

Akira swung his own sword. The gigantic blades clashed, and impact luminescence from their force-field armor flew like sparks. Then, zipping to and fro atop the 150-meter-tall giant insect, they rapidly exchanged blows, swinging up and down, left and right, all while avoiding (or in the white mech’s case, trying unsuccessfully to avoid) the black disks swarming them both. The insect’s exoskeleton and the black disks alike were caught up in their strikes, and each time Akira’s blade cut something, it received a little more damage and gradually lost its volume, becoming shorter and shorter.

Eventually, the ten-meter blade had been whittled down to a mere seven meters in length.

He kept slashing, but the white mech didn’t fall. On the contrary, it sliced sharply at Akira even as the black disks cut into its armor. Unable to dodge, Akira managed to parry it, avoiding a direct hit. This was far too close of a call—were it not for the black disks disrupting the mech’s movements, that strike would have finished him.

Jeez, this thing’s tough! Am I really gonna finish it in time?!

If only he weren’t on a time limit and could fight a little more at his own pace! The black disks were only targeting the white mech and the insect, so he could have just run around and kept them both at bay. But under the present circumstances, he had to hurry. He had to destroy this giant insect and the white mech before the floating cannon decided to target one or both of them and fire, lest he end up blown away along with them.

Then something else happened that drove Akira into a panic. The floating cannon targeted another large monster that had appeared some ways away from the transport and fired. The massive beam tore the area asunder, and the shock waves from the subsequent explosion even assailed Akira and his enemies, knocking the black disks far away.

With the attack drones no longer a nuisance for the moment, the white mech’s behavior changed—it charged up to unleash an attack so sharp and swift as to be unthinkable for its size.

Dammit! Akira cursed. The beam from the heavens would most likely strike near him next, and if that wasn’t enough of a threat, the white mech was still coming at him as nimbly as ever.

The giant insect, which had been immobile all this time, chose that moment to awake without warning, springing up and throwing Akira and the mech off its back. Having lost consciousness after colliding against the transport’s roof with such force, the bug had instinctively gone into defense mode to preserve itself. But the moment it awoke, it attacked, hemolymph pouring from its wounds all the while. Raising its numerous clawed forelimbs high, it slashed at the mech and Akira.

The general principle that larger monsters were slower only applied to locomotion, not movement in place. The insect swung its legs astoundingly fast, rending the air like a gale as it attacked.

But Akira and the white mech both dodged. Flying off on his bike once more, the boy gave a grim look.

Wasn’t that thing supposed to be nearly dead?!

Emphasis on the “nearly,” said Alpha. As you can see, so long as it doesn’t die, it’s still quite agile.

When they said monsters were stronger out farther east, they weren’t kidding!

Several black disks that had been blasted back now reappeared, this time attacking Akira, the white mech, and the monster alike. One four-way battle among the transport team, the convoy’s attackers, the sky fiend, and the monsters on the ground had been going on for some time. But now, within that struggle, another four-way fracas unfolded—involving Akira, the white mech, the black disks, and the large insect rising up from the ground.

The four-way conflict raged on, but with his AF laser cannon in his right hand and his blade in his left, plus the LEOs attached to his bike, Akira endured. Fragments of black disks lay scattered all over the ground, along with one of the massive insect’s front legs. But drones were still flying around, and the insect had forelimbs to spare, so Akira was still under threat from both quarters.

Alpha, what’s the sitch?

Eleven white mechs remain. Quite a few terrestrial monsters have been defeated as well.

Does that mean the other hunters can jump in and help now?

Alas, I doubt it, she said.

Why not?

Because they’ve got it even worse than you do.

O-Oh, yeah, I guess so.

Akira had survived thus far fighting solo because his only opponents were the weakest of the remaining mechs and the giant insect. No other monsters had made it up onto the roof of the transport. Though he appreciated having an easier time than most of the other hunters, he couldn’t exactly call his present circumstances a stroke of good fortune either.

We don’t have much time left now, do we? he said with a grimace. That laser could fire again and hit us at any minute, right?

The floating cannon was prioritizing the horde of monsters for the time being, but the white mechs were also hostile to it. Once there were fewer land monsters around, the cannon might very well switch to eliminating the mechs instead—and the fewer remaining mechs, the more likely the one Akira was fighting could be the laser’s next target.

You’re not wrong. Guess we’ve got no choice. Akira, this might be a bit of a gamble. Feeling lucky? Alpha said, giving him a smirk.

Akira chuckled. When is it not a gamble? Just tell me what I need to do.

Of course, losing this bet would result in his death. But Akira was determined to prove he could conquer his miserable luck. Besides, he had Alpha’s word that there was no other option, that his demise was certain if he didn’t put everything on the line now. So he had no reason to hesitate.

Very well, she replied. Here we go!

His bike, traveling through midair, suddenly sped, flying straight toward the white mech. Up until now, he’d made close passes by the mech many times as he attacked it. But this time, his eyes went wide with shock—at this rate he’d collide with it head-on.

Uh, A-Alpha?!

Akira! Defend yourself!

As Akira entered attack range, the mech seized its chance and swung its laser blade down at him. Akira blocked with his own blade, an instant before the bike collided into the mech. His bike already had its force-field armor output at maximum, so slamming into an enemy at such high speeds would have smashed the average monster to pieces.

But Alpha had more up her sleeve. Even after the Sylpheed A3 had crashed into the white mech, she kept its rear tire spinning, propelling it over the force-field path even as it was created. Drawing on the full power of this bike that was worth over three billion aurum, she overcame the difference in mass between said bike and the twenty-meter white mech. The enemy machine was shoved backward even as it flew.

Such humanoid weapons could move through the air freely, but they did so fastest when traveling forward. They could slide to the left and right relatively quickly and were the slowest backward. This design made it convenient to attack enemies at a distance, but now the mech’s retreat speed, slower than Akira’s advance, meant it couldn’t escape him. Desperate, the pilot tried to tear the bike from its torso by force, using its laser blade and fists.

Keep focusing on defense! Don’t worry about attacking for now!

Yes, ma’am!

Akira’s silver liquid-metal blade was now down to only half its original size. He blocked and parried his opponent’s slashes with his sword and hit the mech’s fists with narrow, focused blasts from his laser cannon whenever the enemy tried to punch him. Neither sword nor laser was powerful enough to pierce the machine’s force-field armor, of course, but he succeeded in forcing the mech back.

After holding his ground like this for quite some time, he called out to Alpha, Okay, now what?! I’m not exactly doing any damage this way!

Just keep doing what you’re doing, and we’ll win.

Huh? How?

We’re going to have the monster finish this whole thing for us, she said, pointing straight ahead. She called up a semitransparent window on his AR HUD and there, behind the white mech, he saw the figure of the gigantic insect.

The white mech also noticed the creature behind it and tried even more desperately to free itself from Akira’s bike. But Akira blocked all its attempts. Even when it tried to jerk away to the left or right, Alpha’s expert maneuvering of the Sylpheed kept it locked down, forcing it back toward the monster all the while.

Look sharp, Akira! Now is the moment of truth!

All right!

At long last, Akira and the mech entered within range of the insect’s front legs. Its multijointed limbs suddenly grew larger, then shot out toward them with incredible force. But before they could connect, the two guns on the Sylpheed’s support arms targeted them and fired. The limbs, already weakened from the black disks’ assault, snapped off under the barrage of C-bullets.

Its first attempt thwarted, the insect opened its mouth so wide that its entire head twisted and deformed. Then the behemoth charged forward, aiming to crush Akira and the mech between its jaws, even as Akira kept fending off the mech’s attacks and pushing the machine forward into the monster’s gaping maw. The moment the boy and the mech were close enough for the monster to devour them, the insect clamped its jaws around them and squeezed, seeking to crush them between its mandibles. But only the mech was crushed—as it was much larger than Akira, the mandibles couldn’t reach him.

However, the mech wasn’t finished just yet. Though its head was crushed and both legs were broken, it was still active—still able to resist the monster by slashing its blade and gouging the inside of the mouth. Akira was forced to dodge its swings.

All right, it worked! he rejoiced. Now time to get outta here!

Alpha’s strategy of mutually assured destruction for their two enemies had succeeded. Now Akira just needed to escape the insect’s mouth before it crushed the mech entirely, while the jaws were still open wide enough for him to flee. Seeing victory in the offing, Akira couldn’t help but grin to himself—but then his smile stiffened.

Outside the monster’s mouth, black disks were swarming—so many that they blocked his view of the landscape.

The disks had been targeting Akira, the white mech, and the insectoid monster alike, and now that all three of them were in the same place, it was only natural that the drones would converge on their location. They now flew at high speed into the monster’s mouth, one after another, to assault the white mech. Having lost most of its energy defending against the monster’s powerful jaws, and finding itself unable to move, even an astoundingly capable machine like the white mech could not endure. The disks’ spinning blades sliced through its body, and the titanic jaws clamped down onto its severed remains.

With the white mech destroyed, the insect’s mouth slammed shut completely. But several black disks were already inside the monster’s body, their razor-sharp blades slicing into its flesh from within. Meanwhile, more disks cut their way in from the outside, slicing right through its mouth. Assaulted on both fronts, even the gigantic, ridiculously resilient insect couldn’t survive, and it crumpled to the ground, dead.

All of the black disks that had attacked were now trapped inside the corpse, and for a moment, all was calm on the transport’s roof. But the tranquility was suddenly shattered when a pale blue beam of light pierced the insect’s back, slicing a hole in its flesh. The liquid-metal blade that had inflicted the wound dissipated, and Akira burst from the hole, looking distraught.

Alpha, you there?! Did my connection to you cut out just now?!

It did indeed. I mentioned this would be a gamble, did I not? In all honesty, we were lucky to be disconnected for only a few seconds.

So that’s what you meant!

Akira drove his bike from the monster’s corpse onto the transport’s roof. For once, he was alone—the black disks did not follow. After all, slicing through a mech that tough had used up most of their energy. The insect’s flesh was also extremely solid, and unable to flee, many of the drones had found themselves doused in the insect’s corrosive bodily fluids. Thus, Akira had easily finished them all off before escaping, protected from the acid thanks to his bike’s force-field shield.

Just as Alpha had declared, the insectoid monster had indeed ended the entire battle for them. The white mech, the black disks, and the behemoth itself were all no more. Relieved, he heaved a sigh.

“Man, that was clo— Whoa! What’s that?!” Feeling a rumble underneath his feet, Akira was startled, but then realized the reason: the transport was moving forward once more.

Seems like all the white mechs have been taken care of, Alpha said.

Akira glanced up. Black disks were still emerging from the ceiling that blotted out the sky, but they were now targeting the land monsters in the distance rather than the area around the transports.

“It’s finally over,” he murmured. Just as he’d anticipated, now that the white mechs were gone, the transport’s speed was enough to distance them from the horde on the ground.

No, we’re not out of the woods yet. If we don’t take out the monsters running after the transport before it gains the speed it needs to lose them, we’re still in trouble.

Good point. Guess I can’t relax just yet.

Akira made his way to the edge of the roof and fired at the monsters in the distance with the LEOs he was holding. But when he tried to use the guns on his bike too, one of them failed.

Huh? Is this one out of ammo?

No. I’m sorry to say it’s broken.

Seriously? The guns in his hands were powered via energy packs, but those on his bike were connected to the onboard energy tank via support arm. C-bullets might be more powerful the more energy they were charged with, but this also took a greater toll on the gun firing them. Alpha’s fine-tuning of the bullets had kept the guns intact, but Akira had shot so many during this fight that this one had finally reached its limit, even as it destroyed the last black disk inside the monster.

And it was so expensive too... Well, I guess I should just be thankful it held out as long as it did.

Indeed. Think of it this way: such a loss is a small price for living to fight another day. And look—you won!

Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did! Reflecting that he’d overcome such formidable adversaries, as well as his personal rotten luck, he grinned to himself.

The convoy gained speed, distancing itself from the monster horde and eventually escaping from underneath the massive ceiling. After that, it continued through the wasteland with no further encounters. While the sky fiend continued to blast away at the terrestrial beasts, none pursued the convoy farther, and before long, they’d all disappeared beyond the horizon.

Phew, now it really is over. Man, I’m beat—I think I’m gonna head back inside. Let me just ask Hikaru to open the outer wall—oh, right, our connection’s still down. What a pain. Guess I’m just gonna have to wait after all.

Now that the transport was traveling faster again, the force-field armor protecting it was diminishing once more. Nevertheless, so strong had the transport security team made the force field during the battle that it would still take some time before he could communicate with the interior again.

I’ll try to restore your connection to Hikaru, Alpha announced. The transport’s exterior is continuing to block the transmission of data, but after a battle like that, a hole may have opened somewhere we can connect through.

All right, I’ll take a look around for one, said Akira.

He drove his bike aimlessly around the roof. And just as she’d suspected, he did find one large enough for a human to enter, through which he could see an inner corridor.

The signal’s weak, Alpha told him, but you should at least be able to communicate with her.

That’s fine, he replied. I just want to ask her to open up the wall, so a voice call is all I need. Connect me.

Alpha successfully did so.

“Akira? What’s the situation up there?” Hikaru asked.

“Oh, I finished up not long ago.”

“Ah, great. In that case, I hate to bother you, but could you come back to the room as soon as you can? I’m in a bit of a...pickle myself right now, you see.”

She wasn’t crying out in desperation—her voice was calm. But even so, Akira could tell she was in danger.

Thanks to the efforts of many hunters, including Akira, the danger outside the transport had been taken care of. But the threat inside the transport had yet to be resolved.

Chapter 208: Assailants

After fleeing from Shirou and Harmers, Hikaru was about to head back into her room when she received a call from the people in charge of the convoy’s operations. They had two important messages to relay to her: one, a fierce battle was taking place outside, and they wanted her to move to a room that was safer; and two, they were going to raise the transport’s defenses, preventing her from contacting anyone outside for a while.

Hikaru already knew about the battle via Akira’s scanner, so both messages made sense to her. She acknowledged receipt, and the convoy team then told her which room she’d be moving to—room 28—and sent her the authorization needed to access it.

When she saw the number, she froze on the spot. Room 28 was Udajima’s.

Wait, what?! That can’t be right! I mean, it’s probably because we’re both Kugamayama City officials, but isn’t this a really bad situation?! Uh... Hold on, what’s this? At first, she started to panic, but now that she was authorized to use the room, she could also see who else was assigned to it. And Hikaru was the only one listed. In other words, room 28 was unoccupied.

She sighed in relief. “Oh, now I get it. Well, with Akira here on the transport, of course Udajima wouldn’t stick around.” Even if the man had been aboard on the way to Zegelt City, someone on his side would have surely learned by now that Akira was also present and informed Udajima. Thus, the latter had most likely declined to board for the return trip, and since it was too short of notice for him to cancel his reservation and he’d already paid for the room, room 28 remained empty.

Now, since they were in the middle of an emergency and Udajima and Hikaru were both city officials, those in charge of the convoy had probably decided it would be fine to let her use the room temporarily. Surely this explained the current state of affairs.

And so, Hikaru headed to room 28 without any concern.

As befitted a room worthy of a city executive, the sturdiness of its walls and the extravagance of its interior surpassed even that of the room she and Akira had shared, up to and including a small bunker for emergencies. When transporting some item particularly important or valuable, it wasn’t uncommon for its handler—usually someone equally important and valuable—to be on board as well. And so the bunker had been added to ensure the safety of such VIPs.

When Hikaru entered the room, she looked around just to make sure that Udajima wasn’t there, then plunked down on the sofa with a sigh. “Nothing to do now but wait. Hope you’re doing okay up there, Akira.”

Her communications with Akira had already been severed—the transport team had raised the force-field armor’s output. From that alone, Hikaru could tell just how dire the situation outside was.

She set the large display screen in the room to play the footage she’d received from Akira’s scanner before the connection had been cut off. Then she saw the gigantic monster blotting out the sky, its shadow blanketing the entire convoy.

“Is that...a sky fiend? What the heck is that doing so close to the ground? I was prepared to expect the unexpected, but this is just ridiculous!”

She held her head in her hands and sighed. When it came to unlucky hunters who were known to frequently get involved in such unexpected situations, only one came to her mind.

“Akira,” she said with a wry smile, as though the boy was there beside her, “you’re pretty good at overcoming your bad luck, right? Well, you’d better show me you can do it this time too.”

Hikaru didn’t necessarily believe he was to blame for this incident. But if, by chance, he was responsible, she hoped he would take care of it.

She didn’t want to die here, after all.

◆

Time dragged on as Hikaru waited in room 28 for the fierce battle outside to conclude. With her comms offline, she couldn’t offer Akira her support like usual. In fact, right now Hikaru couldn’t do a thing to help. In a sense, that meant she was free to do whatever she wanted, but in a situation like this, she couldn’t possibly relax.

So she kept waiting.

Finally, the room gave a massive jolt—the sky fiend’s laser had touched down near the transport. Hikaru freaked out.

“Whoa! Oh man, gimme a break already! Am I really gonna survive this?!”

At that moment, the room’s intercom rang. The visitor’s timing could not have been worse, but she made her way to the door. A display screen covering the entire door pulled up a live camera feed of the hallway outside, creating the illusion that the door had become see-through. A man was standing there, wearing the uniform of the transport personnel. He wasn’t armed and didn’t look like he belonged to the security team.

The man, named Erde, wore a grim expression as he urged Hikaru to evacuate. “A monster from the sky is attacking us, and the transport can no longer run on its own power! There’s no telling how much longer the force-field armor can hold out! Please evacuate the vehicle immediately! Follow me—I’ll lead you to the bridge so you can board another transport!”

“Wha?! Are you serious?!” Hikaru instinctively reached for the panel that opened the door, but froze just before she touched it.

A monster from the sky? Hikaru already knew a sky fiend was attacking the convoy, but only because she’d been linked to Akira’s scanner—the transport’s security team hadn’t said anything about it.

That was her first clue that something was fishy. She also thought it strange that transport staff would come to her directly to tell her the vehicle could no longer operate. In such a dire situation, wouldn’t they have contacted her to tell her what was going on before coming in person and asking her to evacuate?

Of course, she could also think of several scenarios where they would have had no other choice. But nothing carried greater weight at that moment than her intuition, which was screaming at her that she absolutely should not open the door.

She looked at Erde again. Observing his grim face, she detected just the slightest hint that he was putting on an act, something only a skilled negotiator like herself could have picked up on. At that, she made her decision, touching the panel next to the door—not to open it, but to close herself in.

On the corridor side, a much thicker metallic door began descending over the usual thin, glass-like one.

Before it reached the floor, Erde realized what was happening and kicked the inner door with all his might. Even without the metallic reinforcement, however, the door, though seemingly made of glass, was quite sturdy—it was installed on an intercity transport, for a room designed to cater to bigwigs like city executives, so naturally it could withstand gunfire without a scratch. Yet with just a single kick from Erde, the door dented tremendously and broke, notwithstanding that he’d held back so that the door wouldn’t go flying and kill Hikaru on the other side.

He had expected that destroying the original door would keep the metallic one from coming down. But the fortified door hit the floor a moment later, shutting off room 28 from the corridor outside.

Inwardly praising herself for her swift judgment and accurate intuition, Hikaru sank down onto the floor. “What the hell was that about?” she murmured, completely dumbfounded.

Just then, an announcement came through from the security team—not directly to Hikaru, but over the intercom, addressed to everyone currently on Transport 2. The broadcast stated that a group of assailants had boarded the transport and were targeting the passenger assigned to room 28. These intruders were to be eliminated immediately. There was no need to try restraining them first—the passenger’s safety was the ultimate priority.

Hikaru didn’t know why, but someone obviously had it in for her. Beyond that, though, she was in the dark, and at the absurdity of it all, a shout escaped her lips.

“Excuse me?!”

Facing the sealed metal door, Erde dropped his act and clicked his tongue, scowling. “Shit! All that effort I put into my act—all for nothing.”

One of his subordinates, standing off to the side where Hikaru couldn’t have seen him, reassured him. “At least there was a chance she’d open the door, so your performance wasn’t for nothing. But stay sharp now—the security team’s onto us. The hunters on this transport are coming our way, and so are the Sakashita hires on Transport 3.”

“Them too? Then that basically confirms it—we’re in the right place. Though I suppose this could be a decoy to throw us off the trail... No, wait. What if both targets are legitimate, and one’s just more important than the other?” Erde hesitated for a moment, but quickly made his decision. “All right—Torpa, Saazalt, and I will stay on board. The rest of you work on securing the area. While you do, lure the Sakashita goons to you and take care of them. Once they’re out of the way, don’t come back here—move on to attacking Transport 3. We’re going with the original plan. Got it?”

“Yes, sir!” The subordinate, as well as his other armed colleagues, scurried away. Torpa and Saazalt, the only two who were unarmed like Erde, stayed behind as ordered.

“Do you need us to help you here, Commander Erde?” Torpa asked.

“No, I can handle this door on my own. I want you two to cover me.”

“Understood.”

Saazalt set the suitcase he was carrying down on the floor and opened it. A colorless gas immediately issued from the device inside. As the gas blanketed the area, Erde’s two subordinates stood guard on either side of him.

Meanwhile, Erde assumed a martial arts stance, then, taking a deep breath, he punched the door with all his might. The door was made of a special alloy even tougher than force-field armor, yet a crack formed on its surface. He then delivered a flurry of punches, each of which dented the door a little more.

His clothes fell apart before the door did. Erde was wearing a standard transport uniform—it was neither a powered suit nor body armor, so naturally it could hardly withstand a force powerful enough to tear a thick metal door off its hinges.

Underneath his torn clothing, thin inner wear could be seen. His hands were exposed—the worker’s gloves he’d been wearing had ripped to shreds along with his uniform. He was assaulting the door with his bare fists, indicating that his inner wear wasn’t some thin powered suit, just a layer of body armor. In short, he was breaking down the metal door with nothing but brute strength.

Erde was a superhuman. With his extraordinary strength, he could send a tank flying using only his fists or feet. The door shuddered under blow after blow—it was only a matter of time before it gave way.

In room 3 of the transport, Harmers gave Shirou a suspicious look. “Shirou, just what do you think you’re doing?”

“Oh, come on, it’ll be fine!” the boy said with a grin. “Besides, wouldn’t it be more appropriate for the Sakashita forces to come to her rescue than us?”

“Perhaps so, but that’s not the issue here.” Harmers understood what Shirou was getting at. But his plan would still reduce the number of eyes Sakashita had on Shirou, and as his monitor, Harmers couldn’t approve.

Seeing the frown on Harmers’s face, Shirou gave him an insolent grin. “Oh? When you assured the others that you alone would suffice to guard me, were you just all talk, perhaps? Uh-oh. In that case, I’m in danger! I’d better call the other guards back here before it’s too late. Think I should do that?”

Harmers knew full well that if Shirou did call for backup, the superhuman’s own competence would be called into question. With an exasperated sigh, he turned a blind eye to Shirou’s behavior.

Erde’s subordinates, having boarded the vehicle undetected by disguising themselves as transport employees, regular passengers, and other hunters, had already taken up various positions all around the transport. Each of them used the devices they were carrying to spread colorless gas throughout each section. In no time at all, the gas had engulfed every inch of the vehicle’s interior.

◆

As the four-way fight outside was approaching its end, Erde’s team was fending off the hunters and the security team inside Transport 2.

The hunters there were losing the battle. Assigned to Transport 2, they were among the weakest forces on the convoy, and many of the most capable ones, including Akira, were busy fighting outside. The only hunters to be found indoors were those who had been forced to drop out of the larger struggle. Erde’s team, however, consisted of individuals capable of infiltrating and attacking an intercity transport. The hunters found themselves without hope of victory, and one by one, they retreated to the vehicle’s control room.

Nevertheless, the invaders were at an impasse. As the hunters retreated, Sakashita’s forces joined the fight in their place, and the newcomers were quite capable of standing their ground. As they’d originally been dispatched to guard Shirou, they proved far more competent than even the average high-ranking hunter. Heavily armed and clad in powered suits, they made use of the wide corridors of the transport to advance, the vanguard serving as shields for their comrades as they covered the hallways in gunfire.

Erde’s forces kept trying to break through their lines. The Sakashita unit continued to counter them. In a battle where the slightest delay or error in judgment could decide the outcome, neither side budged for even an instant, so skilled were both teams.

Barrages of bullets came from both sides, streaking far down the large hallways. Some combatants wielded blades of light instead of ranged weapons, and the walls, floors, and ceilings became riddled with countless bullet holes and slash marks.

In the end, the battle taking place inside the transport was no less fierce than the one raging outside.

Under Erde’s assault, the metallic door was visibly denting. And the more it buckled, the more fraught with panic Hikaru’s expression grew. She still didn’t understand why this was happening, but she could tell the door was nearing its limit, and that she was the one the man was after. She couldn’t count on the hunters inside to help her—given that no one was impeding Erde, she surmised none of them could get close enough to aid her even if they tried. This thought distressed her even more, and she began to lose her composure.

Wh-What should I do?! She wanted to come up with a plan, but her fear kept her from thinking straight. Instead, she just kept repeating the same words in her head, over and over.

All at once, her communication with Akira was restored. The signal was still weak, but having the connection in place helped her come to her senses. After taking a deep breath, she contacted him. “Akira? What’s the situation up there?”

“Oh, I finished up not long ago.”

“Ah, great.” He sounded pretty calm, so Hikaru figured that the battle outside must be over and that Akira had made it through safely. “In that case, I hate to bother you, but could you come back to the room as soon as you can? I’m in a bit of a...pickle myself right now, you see.”

She spoke as calmly as she could in an effort to reassure herself, and even managed to force a smile. Nevertheless, Akira picked up on the fact that she was in danger, and he answered in a serious tone.

“Sure, I’ll be right there.”

“Excellent. I’m in room 28. Thanks in advance.” With that, she ended the call. After another deep sigh, she slapped the sides of her face, attempting to pep herself up. “All right. Now I’ve just got to do anything I can on my end to stall for time.”

But what could she do? As she looked around the room, a plan formed in her mind, and the prodigy who’d become a General Administration Department employee at such a young age went to work, certain this strategy would at least buy her time until Akira showed up.

◆

Akira entered the transport via the hatch in the roof, then hurried to Hikaru’s aid. He left his bike behind—it couldn’t fit through the hatch, and taking the route through the cargo hold’s wall would just waste time. So he could only hope his bike would be okay as he left it.

Alpha guided him to room 28. To travel as fast as possible, he leaped off floors, walls, and footholds in the air, dodging anything blocking his path as he raced through the transport’s hallways. Merely dashing at full strength in his suit would have sufficed to reach his goal immediately, were it not for certain obstacles strewn all over the corridors—countless corpses.

Hunters who’d been heading to room 28. Erde’s subordinates. Sakashita’s troops. Their dead bodies were left as a monument to the ruthless battle they’d fought.

Looking at their remains, as well as the shattered scraps of the bulky powered suits the Sakashita troops had been wearing, Akira grimaced. This sure doesn’t look like the work of a monster. Did someone attack the transport from within? While a sky fiend was outside wreaking havoc? What the hell were they thinking?

That’s exactly what they were thinking, Alpha answered. They struck while the security team had their hands full outdoors.

Shit... Are you suggesting the white mechs were just a diversion for this attack—and the sky fiend too? No, no way! That’d be ludicrous, right?! Even supposing the attackers were on board this whole time, that monster’s laser could have easily blown them up along with the transport!

They were most likely prepared for such an eventuality. At the very least, the pilots in the white mechs didn’t seem too attached to the idea of surviving.

Akira frowned. As a hypothesis, that did seem plausible. Was the same person who could engineer such a diversion now after Hikaru as well? Perhaps coming to her aid would not be as easy as he had thought.

Another thing, Alpha, he said. Is it just me, or has the accuracy of my scanner dropped? Looks like my comms are jammed too. What is this, jamming smoke?

Close. You’re seeing the effects of the augmented particles comprising this gas in the air.

Augmented particles? What’re those?

They’re special particles that enhance the physical characteristics of objects. I’ll spare you the detailed explanation for now, but what’s important is that given the enemy’s spreading them, they must be advantageous to our opponents somehow.

Oh. Great. Thinking to himself that his bad luck was especially strong that day, he continued onward.

With the superhuman strength his powered suit granted him, Akira moved so fast it felt like he was being carried by the wind, though there were no such air currents inside the transport. Akira was already familiar with this sensation. But now, he felt something else as well—resistance, like he was trying to run while underwater. It wasn’t so strong as to hinder his running, just enough for him to realize it wasn’t merely his imagination. As Alpha had just mentioned the augmented particles in the air, Akira assumed that what he was experiencing must have something to do with those, and he thought about it no further.

◆

The door to room 28 could finally endure Erde’s barrage of punches no longer and gave way, tearing off its hinges and landing on the floor. The colorless gas in the hallway immediately seeped into the room, engulfing it.

Erde was on the verge of entering the room when he stopped, instead glancing behind himself, down the corridor.

Someone’s coming. Alone. And the way they’re moving... A hunter from outside? Having already battled the hunters left inside the transport, Erde had a pretty good idea of their strength, and he found it hard to believe any of them would come after him without hesitation. Nor was it one of his subordinates, for among those who were drawing the Sakashita troops’ attention, there wasn’t a single one who would ever decide to retreat on their own. Perhaps someone from Sakashita’s forces had broken through his allies’ lines and was heading his way, but he didn’t think any of them would charge in alone. So Erde determined that the interloper was most likely one of the hunters who had been topside.

“Torpa! Saazalt! Someone’s coming this way. Intercept them, or at the very least, hold them off and stall for time.”

Even among the hunters outside, there was a stark difference in ability between one assigned, say, to Transport 2 and one assigned to Transport 10, and the individual approaching was more likely to be from the former. Given that these hunters were surely exhausted from fighting up top by now, Torpa and Saazalt should have been more than capable of defeating them. In the worst-case scenario that the hunter was from Transport 10, they’d at least buy Erde the time he needed. So he left the newcomer to his two subordinates, and after they acknowledged the order, he entered the room alone.

Erde looked around. Hikaru was nowhere to be seen—but he had a good clue as to where she was hiding. He could see the hem of a skirt peeking out from the door to the bunker.

Looks like she panicked and accidentally caught her skirt in the door when she was closing it. And I guess she didn’t have the courage to open the door back up.

A careless action by a terrified girl. Erde walked over to the door and attempted to pry it open. The door was tough enough to withstand gunfire, but naturally couldn’t endure the might of a superhuman who’d already broken down the fortified one. And so it bent and warped, succumbing to his strength. He couldn’t smash through the door like he had the previous one—the bunker was too small, so the force might accidentally kill the person inside. Instead, he employed a gentler approach, prying it open gradually.

The door finally came open—and Erde frowned. “What’s this?”

There was no one inside. Hikaru’s skirt hung on a hanger, its hem strategically positioned to catch in the door.

“Dammit—she got me! Where is she?!” He yanked the skirt out, tearing it as he whipped around and scanned the area again.

Then, underneath the bedroom door, he saw the sleeve of Hikaru’s shirt poking out.

Of course, he was almost certain it was another decoy, but he couldn’t discount the possibility that this was exactly what she wanted him to think, and that she really was inside. He figured he might as well check just to be sure—the door to the bedroom wasn’t anywhere near as sturdy as the bunker door, so breaking in wouldn’t take long.

He headed toward the bedroom to investigate.

◆

Only one final corner lay between Akira and room 28, and he had yet to encounter a single enemy. But he didn’t consider that a stroke of luck—rather, he saw it as a bad omen. Might the absence of enemies mean they’d already accomplished their goal and left? If so, it was hard to imagine Hikaru would still be safe. Fearing he was already too late, Akira rounded the bend.

Room 28 was near the end of the hallway, about thirty meters away from him, and there he could see two men waiting for him. Perhaps they were just transport staff, but his gut told him otherwise. And his gut turned out to be correct—they were Torpa and Saazalt, Erde’s subordinates.

Relieved to come across an enemy at last, Akira immediately turned both of his LEOs on the men. At the same time, Torpa and Saazalt swung knives in his direction. Of course, such blades would normally never have reached a target thirty meters away, but Akira was already used to melee weapons with decidedly nonmelee ranges, and he prepared to dodge. Then from the glowing knives extended long, shining blades—waves of light endowed with sharpness, which sliced through the air.

Akira estimated the trajectories of the absurdly long blades and leaped out of the way, firing a spray of countless bullets from both LEOs as he jumped. But none of them hit their targets. His mouth dropped open in shock.

What the hey?!

The C-bullets had erupted from his guns with such force as to distort the air, leaving visible trails in their wake. But after traveling several meters, they’d decelerated suddenly—almost as though they’d slammed through an invisible wall. The next wave of bullets collided into the first from behind, causing those in front to ricochet all over the hallway. More bullets struck these, flinging them chaotically throughout the corridor.

The hell?! Akira was so flabbergasted he started to panic.

It’s the augmented particles in the air, Alpha explained calmly. They’re generating a high-speed filter, causing the range of your bullets to decrease drastically.

Research on the colorless fog had paved the way for many technological breakthroughs. One negative effect of the fog was that it reduced the range of bullets. Studying this, scientists had been able to create particles with a physical idiosyncrasy that had the same effect, known as a high-speed filter. When an object near those particles reached a certain velocity, the particles reacted and generated a resistance proportional to said velocity.

Activation of a high-speed filter depended on the speed of the object traveling through the air and the density of the particles around it. The fact that Akira’s bullets had decelerated after only a few meters meant that the density there was quite high.

Alpha explained all this as briefly as possible, but Akira just looked confused. A particle that filters out high speeds? But then, how did those blades reach me after the enemy swung them so fast?!

Either the threshold for activating the filter is higher than the speed of the light waves their knives are emitting, or the augmented particles are of a type that only reacts to physical objects. Or maybe their weapons don’t compress the air in front of them like guns do, and the particles simply aren’t dense enough to reach the activation threshold on their own.

Anyhow, it sounds awfully convenient for the enemy! What’s our plan?

Akira had already begun slowing down his sense of time and kicked his awareness into high definition. He also had Alpha by his side. As the world around him crawled at a snail’s pace, it sharpened and became more vivid, and his speed, precision, and accuracy all improved. He knew that the swift, brilliant slashes could easily slice him and his powered suit in two, and the enemy attacks were coming one after another in rapid succession.

As Akira frantically dodged the flurry of glowing attacks, he continued to close in, using the wide hallway to his advantage to move erratically. He dashed and jumped along the corridor’s walls, ceiling, and floor—even someone with eyesight keen enough to track a speeding bullet from a handgun wouldn’t have been able to follow him.

But Torpa and Saazalt perceived his movements accurately, swinging their blades right into Akira’s trajectory. They coordinated their attacks to corner him, anticipating his attempts to evade. Just one false move would finish Akira for good—so he leaped harder and sped up. At every moment, he had few paths left that hadn’t been cut off, and whichever he took, he found a blade squarely in his path, heading toward him. Finally, when Akira decided he could no longer evade, he trained his guns on an incoming blade and fired. A barrage of bullets struck the undulating waves, reducing their sharpness. Akira couldn’t keep the attack from hitting him, but it was now weak enough for his powered suit to endure it. The deadly light dissipated upon striking his suit.

Successfully intercepting the blow had required an unimaginable, almost divine level of marksmanship. His guns now only had a range of several meters, and the swift blades could cover that distance in an instant. The timing of his fire and the precision of his shot had needed to be dead-on, only possible through his high-definition awareness and Alpha expertly guiding him.

And all the while, even after taking the hit, he kept moving toward his enemies.

Then he was upon Torpa and Saazalt. Only a few seconds had passed since the start of the battle, but the corridor was already riddled with slash marks from their innumerable flying blades. And yet Akira had dodged all but three, including two more which he’d weakened like the first. Now within firing range at last, Akira stood poised to unleash another hail of bullets at his enemies.

But before he fired, Torpa tossed his knife to Sazaalt and stepped forward. Immediately closing in on Akira, he knocked the boy’s guns to the side with his hands. Instead of hitting Torpa, the C-bullets ended up striking the wall. Then, without missing a beat, Torpa launched a powerful spear-hand strike. As Akira sought to dodge, his eyes widened in shock—the hands that had struck his guns hadn’t moved since.

Torpa was attacking with a third hand.

In his slowed sense of time, Akira could see the fingers heading toward him, aimed just slightly to the left of the center of his face. But Akira didn’t tilt his head to the right—he dodged into the attack.

Torpa’s hand pierced through Akira’s cranium.

But Akira was unharmed—the third hand had never been real in the first place.

A hologram! he realized.

At the same instant, another arm pierced the space immediately to his right.

And that arm...was camouflaged?!

Torpa’s attack had indeed combined a holographic arm and a camouflaged one. Had Akira fallen for the trick and dodged to the right, the hidden arm would have killed him. But Akira had seen through the deception and neutralized it—even though it had taken him completely by surprise.

A fourth arm struck at him, this time toward the center of the boy’s face. Once again, Akira didn’t dodge it, and it went straight through his head. Another camouflaged arm streaked past him. This time, the hidden arm had moved a moment after the hologram, rather than at the same moment. If Akira had reacted to the holographic arm, he wouldn’t have been able to evade the other.

Two deceptive attacks in a row, and Akira had avoided them both on sight. Torpa was astonished. In truth, Akira was just as shocked by what he’d just pulled off, but that didn’t stop him from moving—because Alpha took control of his suit and moved for him. Capitalizing on the momentum from dodging Torpa’s second attack, she made Akira deliver an upward kick at Torpa’s head. Torpa blocked with two arms, but the might of the kick sent the man crashing into the ceiling.

Before Torpa could rebound off the ceiling, launching himself back down to the ground faster than gravity alone could pull him, Akira aimed both LEOs at the ceiling. But Sazaalt interfered, slashing at Akira with both knives in his hands. Thinking that two glowing blades were flying toward him, Akira gave up on firing at Torpa and dodged instead.

But only the knives sliced through the air—no waves of light emanated from them. Akira had dodged for nothing, and before he knew it, Sazaalt had exploited his mistake to circle around behind him. Meanwhile, Torpa kicked off the ceiling, landed on the ground, and immediately moved in to attack Akira again.

A pincer attack! Akira aimed his guns at each man and fired. Both men were in range, so he could kill them as long as the bullets hit. And with them so close to him, there was no way they could dodge now—he was sure of it.

But in defiance of all his expectations, Torpa thrust his palm out and rushed straight at Akira’s weapon, while Sazaalt swung one knife sideways, briefly compressing the air in front of the gun barrel facing him. With the augmented particles now denser there, the threshold of the high-speed filter decreased, and Akira’s range of fire shrank further. The bullet he fired at Sazaalt immediately halted in midair.

Wha?! Akira looked startled that the man had neutralized his shot so quickly, but both Torpa’s fist and Saazalt’s knife were coming for him. He dodged, then kicked at both men. The pair dodged and struck back, and Akira countered.

Their fierce back-and-forth continued for some time. By this point, all three combatants were no longer just fighting from the ground—they flew off walls, ceilings, and even the air itself in a high-speed battle that defied the law of gravity. As time dragged on, Akira realized that Torpa and Sazaalt were even more formidable foes than the white mech and giant insect he’d fought outside.

Dammit! How are these two so strong?! And the way they’re fighting, they’re clearly used to battles with high-speed filters!

The pair of men weren’t dodging Akira’s gunfire, nor were they blocking it with force-field armor. Their fighting style consisted of closing in on the enemy immediately and neutralizing attacks before they were carried out. Akira couldn’t hide his astonishment.

Crap—this isn’t good! Can I really win this? he wondered. In the face of the enemy’s strength, and with the fatigue from his previous battle catching up with him, a shadow of doubt appeared in Akira’s heart.

Instead of wasting energy complaining, focus on the battle, Alpha told him. Sure, the high-speed filters might give the enemy an advantage, but there’s one thing in your favor.

What’s that?

Even though Hikaru’s their target, they’re probably here to restrain or abduct her rather than kill her. That’ll buy us a little more time to fight.

How can you tell they’re not here to kill her?

High-speed filters can also prevent accidentally shooting someone. When you shoot a gun at someone, there’s always a chance you’ll miss and hit someone else, or that the bullet might ricochet and hit an unintended victim. So when a close-quarters combat specialist is tasked with capturing a VIP alive, they might be required to use high-speed filters to avoid missing their target and hitting the VIP instead.

Makes sense! But then, why are they after Hikaru? From the fact that they were giving him such a challenge even though he had Alpha’s support, Akira was certain these two men had undergone extensive, high-level combat training. But try as he might, he couldn’t see any reason such men would target Hikaru, of all people.

Your guess is as good as mine, Alpha admitted. You’ll just have to ask her yourself once you rescue her!

Yeah, guess so! Akira immediately picked up on what Alpha was implying—to accomplish that, he first had to take care of this pair of enemies. And since Alpha was referring to Hikaru’s rescue like it was a foregone conclusion, he knew he could succeed. The slight bit of cowardice within him vanished, and a broad grin rose to his face as his spirits lifted.

But enthusiasm alone wouldn’t win the battle for him, so Akira’s struggle continued on.

Torpa continued to assault Akira with his four fists—natural, holographic, and camouflaged arms flew at the boy relentlessly and lightning swift. Akira had hardly an instant to determine which to dodge and then to do so, yet following his sixth sense and Alpha’s guidance, he was able to evade every punch.

Sazaalt swung both knives at him. Neither weapon had enough energy left to generate blades of light like before, but the knives themselves were as sharp as Old World swords—they could easily slice through Akira’s guns or suit.

But as Sazaalt swung, his arms moved oddly. It wasn’t just that his joints were bending backward or in odd directions—his entire limbs curved like the tentacle of an octopus. Their flexibility allowed him to attack Akira with his knives at complex yet precise angles, forcing the boy back. As the knives moved fluidly, their dying energy traced ribbons of light through the air.

Akira dodged desperately. Under no circumstances could he let those blades touch him, his guns, or the cannon on his back. Then Alpha seized control of his suit—it moved expertly and dodged the twin knives over and over, each time by a hair’s breadth. Well aware he would have died if Alpha hadn’t interfered, he let her guide his body, using the recoil from his shots to evade each slash in the relentless assault.

One slip in his timing meant failure—one false movement meant defeat. And anything less than perfection spelled death. So Akira gladly accepted Alpha’s support and continued to dodge with flawless timing and immaculate judgment. Yet even so, he was just barely an even match for Torpa and Saazalt.

However, his two adversaries found themselves in the same position. Try as they might, they couldn’t do more than keep pace with Akira. Though they outnumbered him two to one, and even with augmented particles that gave them a huge advantage filling the air, they were only as strong as he was.

And they began to worry.

He’s dangerous! Far more dangerous than any run-of-the-mill hunter, that’s for sure! Could he be the target’s bodyguard?! He must have been one of those fighting outside, who’s only returning now that it’s over!

We can’t let him get near Commander Erde! We need to stop him here, even at the cost of our lives!

In life, all things were relative, and one’s own life was no exception. When something more important came along, one could sacrifice their life for its sake. These two men were prepared to do exactly that. Without cowering or fleeing from their unyielding adversary, they gave it their all to defeat Akira, just like Akira was giving his all to crush them.

So intensely and ferociously did they clash that each instant could have meant death for either party ten times over.

And eventually, one side blundered.

The hallway’s floors, walls, and ceilings had been suffering severe damage from the battle all this time—so severe that had they fought inside a building, the entire structure would have collapsed ages ago. It was only because they were in a sturdy intercity transport that the corridor had merely received scrapes, cracks, and fissures; at the very least, there were no holes in the floors or walls.

Still, there was a limit to what the corridor could endure, and as Torpa stomped on the floor, intending to launch himself into the air once again, it gave way, compromising his balance ever so slightly. In a normal battle, something so minor never would have been the deciding factor—he could have just regained his footing in an instant and continued fighting.

But not here. Not in a battle where anything other than the optimal choice meant death. And Torpa had chosen poorly.

Seeing via Akira’s scanner, Alpha had accurately analyzed the condition of the floor and guessed—or more accurately foretold, given how dead-on her calculations were—that Torpa would lose his balance slightly with the next step he took. She guided Akira to exploit that gap in the man’s defenses with a perfectly executed, devastating kick to his abdomen. Such an attack on a firmly grounded enemy would have backfired—but the kick bent the man’s body at a forty-five-degree angle, knocking him off his feet.

Of course, a mere kick wasn’t going to finish Torpa, a man capable of infiltrating and threatening an intercity transport. But Akira’s strike decided the battle regardless. Since Torpa’s lack of balance prevented him from lashing out at Akira immediately, for a brief moment, the fight became one-on-one. And when two-on-one was an even match, such a mistake was fatal.

And with the momentum from his kick, Akira was suddenly in Sazaalt’s face. Though Sazaalt swung his knives with optimal precision, Akira had slipped past them. Then the boy pressed the barrels of his guns against Sazaalt’s head and torso. Instantly, fountains of bullets erupted from both weapons, pulverizing the man’s body. The shots to the head killed him instantly, but Akira blasted his torso as well, just in case the man could still move around and fight while headless. Sazaalt had proven challenging, and Akira knew by now that such opponents didn’t necessarily die immediately after having their heads blown off.

In that brief moment, Torpa regained his balance. But it was already too late—he couldn’t win against Akira on his own. Still, he could at least sacrifice himself to wound his opponent severely, and he stepped toward Akira, resolved to do so. The stims he was taking to enhance his body had lethal side effects when exceeding a certain dose. And he overdosed without hesitation—this fight would be his swan song.

Akira sensed the man was prepared to send them both to the grave. Rather than assuming he had the upper hand now, the boy didn’t let his guard down for an instant as he accepted Torpa’s challenge.

The battle was over in a second—no, less than a second. Yet within that extremely narrow slice of time were crammed so many close brushes with death that their breakneck battle felt like twenty minutes. What ultimately tipped the scales was a difference in experience—though Torpa had far more overall familiarity in combat than the boy, Akira had experienced slightly more near-death encounters. While Torpa certainly possessed the mental fortitude to suppress his fear of death, he couldn’t completely extinguish the anticipation and thrill he derived from such dangerous battles. These disrupted his movements just enough to slightly delay his next attack. On the other hand, Akira felt determined but was able to keep a lid on his emotions and remain calm—for, thanks to his many previous dances with death, the sensation was nothing new to him anymore.

So Akira executed his counterattack smoothly, intercepting and overpowering Torpa’s offensive. Targeting him with both guns, the boy opened fire, sending a barrage of C-bullets into Torpa at point-blank range. The man was blown to shreds instantaneously.

With Torpa and Sazaalt dead, Akira’s fight was over—or at least one fight was. But he didn’t have time to take a breather—he had to prepare himself to engage the next enemy. Maintaining his altered sense of time, he swapped out the energy packs on his suit and guns at the same speed he’d just been fighting. Then, after ingesting a handful of meds, he held both LEOs at the ready.

“All right, let’s do this!”

His clash with Torpa and Sazaalt had taken a toll on both his stamina and his gear. He knew that if he went on to the next battle without at least healing up and reloading, he would die; so he paused to prepare, even if doing so left him wide open. Had someone by chance attacked him at that instant, it would have spelled his demise. Relieved to be left in peace, he took a deep breath.

Well, Alpha? Do you think I made it in time?

Why ask me? Go check for yourself—it’ll be faster.

Point taken!

Akira made a beeline for room 28. If Hikaru was still alive, he’d rescue her—if not, he’d at least avenge her death.

Chapter 209: Superhuman

Having unsuccessfully searched all over room 28 for Hikaru, Erde put a hand to his head and groaned. “Where is she?! Why can’t I find her?!”

As large as the VIP room was, it still wasn’t vast enough to have hidden rooms like a mansion. So he’d expected that locating her would be quick and easy—he just needed to search every area in the room. But now that he’d done so, she was nowhere to be found. Naturally, he was starting to worry.

Typically, his next move would have been to use a high-powered scanner. He would have been able to spot her right away, even hiding behind one of the walls. But the air was currently filled with gas containing augmented particles that interfered with scanning, and besides, he possessed no such scanner in the first place—he much preferred to rely on his own senses.

All right, let’s calm down and think about this. There must be some place I haven’t checked yet, right? This suite has only one entrance, and Torpa and Saazalt are right outside, so she couldn’t have escaped. She has to be in here somewhere. Most likely, she’s in a place so obvious I just haven’t thought to check it. But where would that be?

Erde went over every option he could think of again in his head, then did another sweep of the room. His eyes fell on the bunker he’d checked first upon entering.

Don’t tell me... Is that what she did?!

He walked over to the bunker and reached for the dented door. Because it had warped and caught on its hinge when he’d pried it open, it was still partly closed. He now pried the door open fully.

And there he encountered Hikaru, hiding in the bunker.

When Erde started bashing the door to room 28, at first Hikaru thought of merely holing up in the bunker. But then she reconsidered—if he was powerful enough to break down the reinforced door to the room, the entrance to the bunker wouldn’t last long either. So rather than making the obvious choice of taking refuge in the safest place in the room, she decided to use it as a decoy to buy time.

First, she took off her skirt, hung it up, and closed the door on its hem, so that it would look like she had accidentally caught it in the door while hiding. Then she removed her shirt and placed it under the door to the bedroom at the back of the suite. Finally, she sneaked inside a locker near the bunker, held her breath, and waited.

Not even a minute later, the door gave way, and Erde burst into the room. From inside the locker, she watched him spot the skirt caught in the door to the bunker and begin to pry it open. Pleased with herself that her plan was working, she suppressed her impulse to tremble with nervousness, concealing her presence as she continued watching.

Erde finished prying the door open, only to find no Hikaru. She watched him look around the room with a scowl, then notice the shirt sleeve caught in the door to the bedroom and head over to check that room next.

Hikaru saw her chance. Summoning her courage, she opened the locker door, carefully tiptoed over to the bunker, and slipped inside without Erde noticing. Though luck had played a significant role here, her plan had succeeded. By making Erde think right off the bat that Hikaru was hiding in the bunker, she had ensured his carelessness in searching the room for her presence. Thus, he had never realized that she was in the locker so nearby. Next, she’d baited him into checking the bedroom. This was because the bedroom had the most hiding spots of anywhere else in room 28—like under the bed or inside the closet, for instance—and would therefore take the most time for him to investigate, giving Hikaru a wider window of time to sneak into the bunker. Carefully, silently, she’d managed to slip away without Erde noticing her.

Given the gas in the room, Erde could detect motion more accurately than even a scanner would have. In fact, Erde had been able to detect Akira through the particles in the air precisely because the boy was approaching so quickly. Had Hikaru let her fear conquer her and run from the locker to the bunker as fast as she could, Erde would have noticed right away. Of course, she’d had no guarantee he wouldn’t immediately realize where she was, so she’d been terrified the entire time, but she’d made every effort to stay calm and quiet.

A gamble it certainly was, but it had paid off, and she’d bought herself time like she wanted. She’d manipulated Erde into searching fruitlessly around the suite, delaying his discovery of her. But now, the jig was up—he’d found her. And because she’d used her clothes as decoys, she was wearing nothing but her underwear.

“Can you close the door, please?” she said with a stiff smile. “It’s rude to barge in on a lady when she’s not even dressed, you know.”

“My apologies—or so I’d like to say, but unfortunately, I’m in a hurry.” He grabbed her arm.

“You’re coming with me,” he told her. “Resist if you want, but I wouldn’t recommend it—unless you’d like me to carry you out as just a head attached to a life support device, that is.”

Hikaru feigned resignation with a dramatic sigh. “All right, all right, fine. But before we go, I have just one question. If you’re attacking an intercity transport, that means you’re a nationalist, right? Why are the nationalists after me, of all people?”

“Playing dumb, are we? Or are you just saying that to try and downplay your own value?”

“I would never downplay my own value,” she said confidently. “Sure, people tend to look down on me because I’m still young, but I always shut them up by showing them what I’m capable of. That’s how I got where I am now. Still, last I checked, I don’t have the kind of lofty status that would normally interest nationalists like yourselves.”

“Then we just see things differently. You yourself might not think much of the status you hold, but to us, you’re quite valuable indeed.”

“Huh? But I just said...”

The two of them seemed to be having entirely different conversations. Hikaru grasped this but chose not to resolve the misunderstanding—not just to stall for time, but in case he let more information slip in the process and to make sure he continued to see her as valuable. She didn’t know the reason, but she highly suspected he was mistaking her for someone else—someone he wanted to capture badly enough to go this far. In other words, as long as he thought she was that person, he probably wouldn’t kill her. On the other hand, if she tried to resolve the misunderstanding by explaining he had the wrong person, he might very well consider her worthless and kill her just for getting in his way. At any rate, she judged it best to keep talking for now.

But Erde caught on. He abruptly cut the conversation short and dragged her out of the bunker by the arm. “We’ll continue this conversation later. Time to move.”

Though she’d bought as much time as she possibly could, time was now up. I guess Akira didn’t make it here after all, she thought, looking miserable.

But at that moment, Erde whipped around to face the entrance—just as Akira burst into the room.

Erde had already sensed the battle out in the hallway while searching for Hikaru. But he hadn’t gone to his subordinates’ aid—after all, he’d been the one who’d ordered them to intercept the pursuer and stall for time, and besides, he’d trusted that together they could handle whoever it was on their own. He’d expected they would face a tough fight, but believed they’d win in the end.

The moment he spotted Hikaru, the signs of battle in the corridor vanished. He was a little surprised it had taken his right-hand men so long to finish off their opponent, but also relieved. Thanks to Torpa and Saazalt buying him time, he’d been able to locate their target. Now he just needed to rejoin them, and the three of them would make their escape.

At least, such was his plan. But then something unexpected happened—a presence from the corridor charged toward the room without warning. That wasn’t something either of his subordinates would do. Fearing the worst, Erde instinctively turned to face the door—and his fears were confirmed. The person who appeared in the doorway was not Torpa or Saazalt—it was Akira.

Hikaru was just a normal person and still had yet to realize Akira had shown up. But Erde, who could manipulate his sense of time as easily as breathing, clearly saw that the boy was getting ready to aim at him. With his focus honed to its utmost and the world around him at a standstill, Erde analyzed the situation.

Hold on. If he shoots from that angle, he’ll hit the girl too! Can he not see her? No—he definitely can. She’s right in his line of sight. Then, is he bluffing to goad me into avoiding his shot? Waiting for the moment I leap away from her to dodge, only to aim at me for real once she’s no longer in his line of fire? Or maybe he’s not planning to shoot at all?

Voicing all of these thoughts out loud would have taken quite a while, yet he only needed an instant to finish thinking and come to a decision.

No, he’s definitely going to shoot!

Erde immediately unleashed a roundhouse kick. It only grazed the air in front of him—it didn’t reach Akira. But the shock waves from the kick did. As if struck by a blow he couldn’t see, the boy went flying backward.

Erde seized that moment to shove Hikaru back in the bunker, then slammed the door shut. The door was already beaten up, and the force of his movement made it catch on the hinge so that it wouldn’t move. No one without superhuman strength could possibly open it.

Hikaru was trapped.

Charging into room 28, Akira aimed his guns at Erde. He noticed Hikaru also in his line of fire, but nonetheless didn’t hesitate.

However, the force from Erde’s roundhouse kick knocked him off his feet before he could shoot. The shock waves, released in a wide line, could have sliced a thick beam of steel apart. They even bent the wall next to the door inward, leaving a long mark there.

But Akira was unharmed. Alpha had analyzed Erde’s movements, anticipated the kick, and raised the output of Akira’s force-field armor the instant the shock waves had hit. She’d also helped him dodge as much as he could to lessen the blow. He couldn’t have avoided it completely, of course, and the impact threw him into the wall; but rather than slam against it, he landed on both feet—on the wall—maintaining his balance as much as he could. Then he dropped safely to the floor, still holding his weapons ready to fire.

Um, Alpha, quick question. Was that impact just now from his kick?

It was. He used the augmented particles in the air to increase the shock waves’ range, allowing him to hit you.

Seriously? Those particles can just do anything they want to screw me over, can’t they?! The same augmented particles stopped his own bullets after only a few meters, yet somehow let his enemy’s kick propel him out of range. He couldn’t help but smile wryly at the unfairness of it all.

Akira and Erde stood opposite each other. When Akira landed on the ground, he was in a position where his guns were lowered. This was immediately after Erde had slammed the door to the bunker and shut Hikaru inside. Neither were in a position to attack the other, which was why the fight didn’t start right away.

Erde gave Akira a condescending look. “You didn’t come to save her, did you? You came to kill her. Better a corpse than alive and in our clutches, huh? Just the kind of corporate logic I’d expect from your lot.”

Akira frowned. He could sense the sarcasm in the remark, but somehow got the feeling it was intended for someone other than himself. “Uh... Just for the record, I fired that shot so Hikaru wouldn’t die. Even if it blew off her arm or leg, I have meds I could give her, so she wouldn’t have died. And in a situation like this, I can’t imagine she was expecting to escape completely unscathed either.”

“Hmph. Sounds to me like you couldn’t care less if luck wasn’t on her side and she did die.”

Look, if you die trying to save her, that’ll be a problem, so I can’t say he’s wrong, Alpha chimed in cheerfully.

W-Well, yeah... Akira was prepared to do whatever it took to save Hikaru—almost. Alpha was right that this didn’t include sacrificing his own life for hers.

Hikaru overheard their disturbing conversation from inside the bunker. As thrilled as she was that Akira had come to rescue her, she didn’t exactly care to have one of her limbs blown off, let alone to die due to her savior’s carelessness. Someone give me a break already! she thought with a groan.

“Say, why are you after her, anyway?” Akira asked. “The commotion outside was just a distraction so you could kidnap her, right? But why go that far?”

“What are you trying to say?” Erde demanded. “That we were fools to make an enemy of Sakashita? Arrogant as always, the lot of you.”

As Sakashita had taken responsibility for the operation of this convoy, Erde’s attack had indeed antagonized the corporation—Akira understood that part. But the rest made no sense to him whatsoever.

Erde realized from his expression that the boy had no idea what he meant, and after a moment, it hit him.

“So that’s what’s going on. You’re not her bodyguard after all, are you? You’re just some unaffiliated hunter that came to rescue her because you were ordered to—just some acquaintance of hers.”

“Well, yeah, but...” Indeed, Akira had come to rescue her, and he wasn’t her bodyguard or anything. Still looking puzzled, he nodded.

With that, Erde’s suspicions were confirmed. “Aha! Since you were skilled enough to take Torpa and Saazalt out, I’d assumed you were her bodyguard and that you’d just temporarily headed outside to deal with the threat there. But it seems I was mistaken. You were just dispatched here without being told anything. In that case, let me fill you in.”

“Fill me in? On what?”

“That girl’s an Old Domain User. From Sakashita Heavy Industries.”

Akira was so shocked for a moment that he couldn’t speak. “Say what?” he finally managed.

“Like hell I am!” came Hikaru’s voice from the bunker. Though she had avoided clearing up the misunderstanding until now because she feared doing so might put her in danger, she was so surprised she cried out before she could stop herself.

Alpha, do you think that’s true?

Regardless of whether it is, the man’s not lying. He at least has reason to believe that Hikaru’s an Old Domain User.

Well, yeah, otherwise he wouldn’t have gone this far to target her. But Akira looked unconvinced. “She just said she wasn’t one,” he pointed out to Erde.

“To make you leave,” the man rejoined. “Your job’s to defend the transport, right? Not to protect an Sakashita Old Domain User. You have no responsibility to risk your life for her.”

Again, he was right. Akira wasn’t duty bound to save Hikaru.

Erde went on, “So here’s my proposal. Retreat, and I won’t fight you. As skilled as you are, I imagine you’ve already realized what I’m capable of.”

They had clashed for only an instant, but that was indeed enough for Akira to realize just how formidable Erde was.

“Look, you’re a hunter, so think of it this way,” the man said. “I’m here to capture a VIP from Sakashita. That means whoever hired me trusted I could get the job done. And FYI, I’m determined to complete this job even if I lose my life in the process. I don’t know who hired you, but I can tell you this for certain—whatever they’re offering you isn’t worth fighting me over.”

Hikaru started to panic. Risking one’s life was part and parcel of life for hunters. They made a living gambling with their lives on the line. Therefore, they constantly needed to make harsh, often callous judgments about whether the risk of continuing a job was still worth the reward. And the higher one’s rank, the stricter these decisions often became. The wasteland wasn’t so merciful as to let hunters return home alive just because they accepted a deadly job with very little pay out of the goodness of their hearts.

And Akira was a high-ranker as well. What if he decided rescuing Hikaru wasn’t worth it and left? She was so worried she ended up crying out. “Akira, wait! Don’t leave! Save me, please! I’ll do anything you want—just don’t leave me here!”

Should Akira abandon her, she would be captured by the nationalists. What fate would await her then, she didn’t know, but she was certain it wouldn’t be good. So she felt desperate to convince Akira to stay.

Akira, for his part, had no intention of abandoning Hikaru. He didn’t know whose bad luck was at fault for this unforeseen encounter. Perhaps it was his, perhaps hers, or maybe a little of both. But if he was going to have to fight an opponent this threatening, he at least wanted the reward to be worth it.

“Okay, but I’ll be expecting a big pay raise when this is over!”

“S-Sure, no problem!”

Akira now had a contractual duty to rescue Hikaru. He turned to Erde with a smirk. “Whatever they’re offering me isn’t worth it? Looks like it is now.”

“We’ll see about that. Die regretting your choice, I suppose.”

With that, Erde gave up trying to use words to persuade Akira to back away. Akira could sense his whole demeanor change.

Watch out! Alpha warned. That man is a superhuman.

A superhuman, huh? Guess that means he’ll be pretty tough.

“Superhuman”—having heard the term several times now, Akira was familiar with it. Or at least, he knew it referred to someone who was ridiculously, unbelievably strong. But this was his first time going up against one in battle.

I’m really on an unlucky streak today, he thought as he summoned the determination to best his misfortune once again.

Erde, meanwhile, was growing extremely impatient. He was facing just one hunter now, but more would surely show up if he didn’t hurry. He had to grab Hikaru and escape the transport before then. In fact, he shouldn’t have even been wasting time talking to Akira. But he’d judged that convincing Akira to back away without a fight would be time well spent. The boy had beaten Torpa and Sazaalt, so Erde could tell Akira was no pushover, and their lightning-fast clash just now had confirmed it. Not an unbeatable opponent for Erde, of course, but killing him would take time—time he didn’t have.

In the end, though, talking to the boy had been a waste. So now he had to make up for lost time by putting his life on the line to kill Akira as quickly as possible.

Erde launched himself forward.

Akira did the same. His enemy’s kicks were effectively long-range weapons, while he himself couldn’t use his guns, leaving him at a disadvantage. He couldn’t even begin to fight until he made it within melee range.

They streaked toward each other with all their might—on the one side, a superhuman, and on the other, a boy wearing a powered suit that rendered him nearly superhuman. In only an instant—an instant that felt a mere second to both of them, even with their altered senses of time—they were upon each other.

Akira fired. Erde threw a powerful punch. Fist and bullets collided, and the resulting shock waves thundered through the entire room.

Inside the bunker, Hikaru wrestled with her fear, trying to remain calm even as the walls shook violently from the fight taking place nearby. As grateful as she was to be in a sturdy, enclosed space right now, she couldn’t exactly relax. If she even dared to so much as peek underneath the door to check what was happening, the aftereffects from one of their attacks might kill her, so she couldn’t even get near the door. She could only cower in the back of the bunker and hope for salvation.

Not even a minute had passed since Akira and Erde started fighting, and the room was already in ruins. The lavish furniture was all smashed beyond recognition, and most of the room’s walls had been blown away, making their battle arena even larger. The only part of the original room that remained was wholly isolated—Hikaru’s bunker.

Her connection to Akira’s scanner had already been restored. The augmented particles in the air were still interfering with communications, but with Akira so close by, it didn’t matter. So even without peeking, she could get a vague sense of the state of the room outside. But she couldn’t tell how the battle was progressing—it was too fast-paced for a regular human like her to perceive. What she could sense, however, was a level of destruction taking place around her that she’d expect more from a fight between mechs than humans.

At long last, she truly understood what she’d signed up for when agreeing to become the handler of a high-ranking hunter. S-So managing a high-ranker isn’t just about tending to their needs. It’s also about making sure guys like this don’t slip the leash and run wild. Now I really understand why Kibayashi has the influence he has!

A hunter who did their job well could create a huge boost for the city’s economy. But one who went berserk could cause the city’s destruction. So it was only natural that the city would hold someone capable of keeping those hunters in line like Kibayashi in high regard—even if his personality left a lot to be desired.

For a regular girl like me, though, this is way too much! I should’ve thought things through a little more! The situation outside the bunker was far more than she could deal with. She wasn’t qualified to handle such a bomb—rather, Kibayashi was insane for gleefully flirting with disasters like this on a regular basis! She decided that if she made it out of this alive, she’d resign from serving as a handler for Akira, or any other high-ranker for that matter.

But first, she needed to survive. And for that, she needed Akira to win.

Erde swung his fist with superhuman strength and lightning speed, triggering the high-speed filter—it felt like colliding with an invisible wall. A bullet might have been able to pierce through, but it would have lost all momentum immediately afterward and dropped to the ground. But Erde, relying on the powerful muscles in his forearm, upper arm, shoulder, lumbar region, and legs, forced his fist through the filter, shattering the unseen barrier that tried to hold him back. The fist bored through the particle-laden air on its way to Akira.

Akira barely managed to dodge. He hadn’t even seen the attack coming. It took every ounce of his strength just to leap out of the way before he was pulverized. Even then, he couldn’t avoid the shock waves that radiated from Erde’s fist as it passed by. Compared to the force of being hit directly, it was merely a gust of wind—but still a gust powerful enough to tear his bones to pieces.

Akira weathered the blast, protected by his powered suit’s force-field armor. Then, in a desperate effort to prevent a follow-up attack, he fired at Erde from the side. Shooting at him from the front would have been useless—the superhuman’s swift movements were compressing the air there, lowering the threshold for the filter’s activation and reducing the range of Akira’s weapons. So all the boy could do right now was dodge as best he could, then counter with gunfire the moment an angle presented itself within range.

Even so, wounding Erde seriously wouldn’t suffice. The fundamental difference between his competence and Akira’s was just too great. The boy unloaded entire extended magazines at his opponent, and each of the countless C-bullets was packed with just the right amount of energy, the most that Alpha calculated they could handle without pushing his LEOs past their breaking points. Yet for all that, Akira only succeeded in inflicting him with flesh wounds—nothing remotely close to hampering his ability to fight—and even these healed immediately, thanks to the recovery medicine Erde had taken before the battle. The only sign Akira’s gunfire had even had any effect was the increased number of holes in the man’s body armor.

Erde launched another roundhouse kick at Akira. Well aware that such a strike could be fatal, Akira leaped out of the way with the speed of a bullet and landed on the ceiling, training his guns on Erde below as he did so. But before he could open fire, Erde unleashed another strike with his palm. The attack itself didn’t hit Akira, but the shock waves struck the ceiling, smashing a hand-shaped dent in it. Akira leaped to the side, dodging by a hair. The shock waves were more spread out than the attack itself and thus also less powerful, but that didn’t matter—they would have slammed him against the wall, allowing Erde to follow up and finish him in the brief moment he couldn’t move. Directly or indirectly, if Erde’s attack had connected, Akira would have died—the direct hit would have simply killed him quicker.

Akira let go of his guns as he slid across the ceiling’s surface. Even as he did so, the AF laser cannon on his back emerged over his shoulder, fully charged. He fired immediately. The beam of light streaked toward Erde in a straight line, scorching the augmented particles in its path. He scored a direct hit—but Erde blocked the beam with his hand. It seared the man’s palm, but that was all.

Akira grimaced. He’s that strong?! With just his raw physical strength?! Superhuman, no shit!

Erde had blocked the attack, but surely he’d taken some damage, right? Still, Akira wished he had a clearer indication that his attacks were working than merely the pained expression on his opponent’s face. And that was the third laser he’d hit Erde with since the fight began. If his laser and C-bullets weren’t doing the trick, how was he going to win? Was winning even possible?

Hey, Alpha! I am actually doing damage to him, right?!

Of course you are. Your C-bullets and lasers are both gradually chipping away at your opponent. Stop complaining and just be patient.

All right, if you say so! Akira returned his AF laser cannon to his back, then grabbed the airborne LEOs he’d momentarily let go of. He couldn’t fire multiple lasers continuously, so he had to go back to shooting bullets until the next laser was ready.

So Alpha said his attacks were damaging Erde? That was all he needed to know. His attacks had a purpose—there was no reason to hesitate. With renewed vigor, he assaulted the man with another barrage, even as Erde continued manipulating the high-speed filter to shield himself from the front.

But Erde had another trick up his sleeve. Poised to charge at Akira, he swung his arm in front of him like a sword. The sharpness of the resulting shock waves, transmitted via the augmented particles, assaulted the boy as though the slash had become an invisible projectile.

Akira couldn’t perceive the attack with his eyes, nor could he use his sixth sense to track it. But its trajectory was nonetheless clearly traced in his augmented vision, thanks to Alpha’s quick analysis.

Akira managed to avoid it, but only by darting forward so swiftly that he lost his balance. He wavered only for an instant—generating a quick foothold in the air, he immediately recovered. An instant was all the superhuman needed, though. By the time Akira had righted himself, Erde was already in front of him, pulling his arm back for another punch.

This one, Akira knew instinctively, would be impossible to dodge, so he chose the next best option. He aimed his gun at the man’s fist and completely emptied his remaining magazines into it. A barrage of C-bullets, powered by the impossibly large energy packs fitted into his LEOs, burst from the guns with an intensity that completely disregarded not just their integrity but the safety of their user.

Akira had pulled off a similar technique before, during his battles in the Kuzusuhara Town Ruins, but he’d only been using standard LEOs then. Now his guns were modded with advanced add-ons that boosted their base stats dramatically—not to mention support from Alpha, who had rewritten the weapons’ control systems to maximize their power.

And yet, even with all these advantages, Akira still couldn’t stop Erde’s fist. Though his bullets could pulverize a run-of-the-mill monster with a single shot, the spray of bullets simply bounced off the superhuman’s charging fist. The shock waves from his punch even smashed one of the guns to scraps as it plowed into Akira.

The impact threw Akira against the ceiling. He barely managed to land on his feet. His eyes reflected his thoughts: That was close! I nearly died just now!

Two things had saved him from being blown to pieces. Though the barrage hadn’t stopped Erde’s fist, it had helped to slow it down. And at the last moment, Akira had tossed aside the remains of his weapon and concentrated his force-field armor at the area of impending impact, right before the punch connected.

The arm with which he’d defended himself and the portion of the suit that protected it were broken but still attached to his body. He’d lost one LEO but still had one more. He also had his laser cannon. He could still fight—provided his will held out. And Akira’s resolve wasn’t so weak as to be broken that easily. Even as he watched for Erde’s next move, he used his good arm to force the bones on his broken arm back into place.

Good grief, talk about ridiculously tough! Alpha, any chance I can just distract him, grab Hikaru, and get out of here?

None whatsoever.

Figured as much! He hadn’t actually thought the opponent would be careless enough to let him get that far anyway—a vain hope. So he put as much distance between him and the superhuman as possible.

Erde didn’t chase him. Akira wasn’t sure why, but as he still had yet to fully recover from his last attack, he welcomed the respite all the same. All he had to do was bide his time and wait for the medicine in his system to take effect.

Chapter 210: The Merit of Your Name

Though he had destroyed one of Akira’s weapons, Erde stood in place, keeping his distance from Akira and wearing a scowl.

After all that effort, I only managed to take out one of his guns... I misjudged him.

Anyone worth their salt in combat in the East had to excel in sizing up their opponents. If they didn’t polish that skill, they’d eventually underestimate an opponent and die, no matter how strong they were.

Erde had been quite confident in his ability to assess others. Even after taking stock of Akira’s skill (and treating the boy as if he were slightly stronger, just to be safe), Erde had determined he could win with no problem.

But he’d been mistaken. He’d evaluated Akira’s personal competence accurately, but naturally he had no way of knowing about or accounting for Alpha helping the boy.

I already knew he was skilled when he defeated my subordinates, but I never realized just to what extent. Sorry, guys, for assuming you weren’t as strong as I’d thought. Instead of criticizing them for their swift failure, he should have been praising them for holding out as long as they had. Ashamed of his mistake, he couldn’t help but apologize to them both, though it was too late.

The best I can do for them now is to not let their deaths be in vain. That means I ought to prepare myself for death as well. For the sake of the cause, he didn’t mind laying down his life, much as he knew his comrades hadn’t minded. But there was a world of difference between sacrificing himself for a purpose and dying fruitlessly—he had to be careful about where and when he played his final card. Facing someone as strong as Akira had turned out to demand a whole new level of resolve.

His demeanor suddenly changed. The air around him started to vibrate and distort, as though he were a mech that had abruptly raised its energy output to the max with no regard for the integrity of the generator inside it or the power it was consuming. Or so it felt to Akira, even though he knew that had to be impossible.

Erde could generate his own force-field armor. This ability, normally only possible for monsters and machines, was one thing that defined him as superhuman—it completely ignored the laws of physics that regular humans had to adhere to. Much like Old Domain Users, this power was thought to be a product of the body modification technology that had been so prevalent in the Old World.

Naturally, Erde required a great deal of energy to raise his force-field armor’s intensity. Akira’s force-field armor came from his powered suit, which ran on the energy packs he fitted into it; thus, if his powered suit ran out of energy, he wouldn’t be able to move. However, the source of Erde’s force-field armor was Erde himself—if he ran out of energy, he’d die. Even a superhuman who was strong by Old World standards was just another corpse when dead, so it was imperative for them to manage their energy carefully.

Erde had already burned through much of his energy during the fight, hoping to finish quickly and escape with Hikaru before other hunters showed up. In fact, during the short time they’d been fighting, he’d already consumed enough energy to power him through several hours of a typical battle. He’d known this was terribly inefficient, but he had been desperate to end the battle right away.

And yet, despite this, Erde had failed to finish Akira off. The man was almost out of time—other hunters would show up any minute, he felt certain. And once they did, completing his mission would prove almost impossible.

He had to succeed. If he failed here, Torpa and Sazaalt would have died for nothing. He had to pull off a victory, no matter what. So he abandoned any hope of surviving. As long as he could hold out long enough to hand Hikaru over to his comrades, that would be enough. He forcibly activated cell autophagy within his body, devouring himself to eke out even more energy. He was literally exchanging his life for energy to power up his force-field armor.

He had to prevail—at any cost.

Sensing Erde’s massive power spike, Akira grimaced—and he wasn’t the only one worried.

Akira, I’m sorry to say you’ve bought all the time you can, said Alpha.

Buying time? Oh, so all I’ve been doing was only to buy time. Great.

That’s right. I was hoping we could hold out long enough for the other hunters to come and bail us out.

Akira hadn’t intended to buy time—he’d been fighting to win. But hearing that such had never been Alpha’s goal for him, he couldn’t help but frown. Moreover, he was startled to learn that even after all his acrobatics, his opponent was so formidable that all Akira had done was delay defeat.

And if we’re done trying to drag things out, I’ll have to fight even harder from now on, I assume? he asked with a wry smile. Can I even do that?

You don’t really have a choice, Alpha said, taunting him with a smirk. Therefore, it’s time to take a considerable gamble, Akira. Are you ready?

The last time Alpha said he needed to take a “bit of” a gamble, Akira had found himself slamming his bike into a white mech and pushing both it and him into the mouth of a gigantic bug. And once inside, he’d had to blast his way out to escape. What was more, he’d learned after the fact that he’d been disconnected from Alpha the entire time. If that was a “bit” of a gamble, then what counted as a “considerable” one?

He shuddered to imagine. But if he didn’t have the requisite resolve, he wouldn’t win—he knew that well by now.

So Akira steeled himself. He summoned more resolve, more strength of will, than he ever had before.

Now both Akira and Erde were prepared to battle all the way to victory—or die trying.

Erde sensed a change in Akira’s demeanor as well. Each knew the other was ready to fight with everything he had, that what followed was going to be their ultimate confrontation.

But as they stood poised on the edge of their final conflict, Erde spoke up. “I am Erde. State your name.”

“Come again?” said Akira, puzzled.

Erde took that to mean the boy was refusing to identify himself. “So you don’t want to tell me? Very well. I simply wished to offer your name up to my dead comrades’ graves, so that they would at least know who had killed them. But if you’d rather die anonymous, such is your choice—I’ll just lament that they were unfortunate enough to meet their demise at the hands of someone so worthless he didn’t even have a name to offer.” With that, Erde assumed a fighting stance.

“Akira. My name’s Akira.”

Now that his cells were devouring each other, Erde had little time left. He was trading his life for a great deal of energy and so could not afford to waste a single second. Thus, it was in his best interest to leap into battle right away. Taking those precious seconds to ask his opponent’s name could certainly have been considered a waste of time. And yet, he devoted those moments to his late comrades who had given their lives on his orders. So Akira had decided that if Erde was trying to pay his respects to his underlings, the least Akira could do was be courteous enough to answer.

Erde looked surprised, but only for a second. “Akira... I’ll remember that. The two subordinates of mine you killed were known as Torpa and Saazalt. Be sure to take their names with you to the afterlife.”

With that, a change came over their expressions. They still desired each other’s death, but the contempt on their faces was gone. Their momentary standoff ended, and their last duel began.

Erde swung his fist at Akira, sending shock waves through the air. The attack was intended to force Akira to dodge and thereby compromise his balance. Room 28 rippled under their impact. Frantically, the boy leaped out of the way as the waves streaked right past him and dented the wall horrendously.

Then Erde slashed his arm downward. The remaining wall, floor, and ceiling were bisected from top to bottom, and the resulting shock waves even blasted through the gap into the corridor and the other rooms nearby.

He followed up with a powerful roundhouse kick, generating even more shock waves, and in a wider range than would have been possible with his fist. The ceiling and floor warped as though a tsunami had struck the room. Then he threw another punch, this time bending his arm in an arc as he swung, so as to match the trajectory of the dispersing waves.

He executed these last three attacks—slash, kick, and punch—in an instant, one after another, with no lag between. The sheer intensity of the shock waves thus generated rent their entire battlefield—and not just room 28. The transport itself was now beginning to sustain heavy damage—from the attacks of a single individual.

Akira did his best to dodge them all, but with the shock waves spreading over such a wide range, he couldn’t completely evade them. He avoided dying, but that was the best he could hope for. The force of the waves could still have pulverized him beyond recognition, but he defended himself by powering up his force-field armor further—so high, in fact, that it threatened to crush him at the cellular level.

Akira had done something similar back in Kuzusuhara, while fighting the black mechs and the colossi. But there was a world of difference between the attacks he’d been facing then and this one. Even with a far more advanced powered suit than before, this defensive tactic alone wouldn’t cut it here.

There were three other reasons he hadn’t died. First, his powered suit was now charging off energy packs purchased in Zegelt City, products that were better suited to hunters working farther east, and thus closer to the Front Line. Of course, that also meant his suit came perilously close to crushing him; but thanks to the medicine he’d also procured from Zegelt City, capable of healing the body’s injuries and stress at the cellular level, Akira’s body didn’t break down, and he could continue fighting. And finally, unlike in Kugamayama’s Zone 1, this time he had Alpha’s support, without which he would have long since been obliterated.

Alpha had taken control of his powered suit and was operating it on his behalf, greatly boosting what it was capable of. She was also regulating its force-field armor with pinpoint accuracy, expertly straddling the line that protected him from the enemy without letting his powered suit kill him. And all the while, she was calculating the exact degree of temporal manipulation and high-definition perception that he could handle without overloading his brain.

The extreme burden these skills placed on his brain would still have killed him without Alpha’s support—notwithstanding Tsubaki’s powerful medicine, which had dramatically boosted his power as an Old Domain User, allowing him to spend far longer in HD mode during battle. But right now, both skills were active to the highest degree possible. The world around him appeared impossibly slow, yet strikingly sharp and vivid. If Alpha erred even a little in her calculations, Akira’s brain would die, overwhelmed. But her calculations were perfect—and though death was so close it was practically staring him in the face, Akira gained immense power as a trade-off.

And with that power, he continued to fend off the superhuman’s attacks and survive.

But merely defending gave him no opportunity to counterattack. Though his sense of time had already slowed so much that an object in free fall looked frozen in midair, his enemy’s invisible shock waves—which Alpha highlighted in red over his augmented vision—flew toward him like speeding bullets. As the surrounding suite collapsed under so much damage, Akira avoided them all by a hair.

Alpha! It kinda feels like I’ve been doing nothing but running around dodging for a while now! You do have a plan in mind to defeat him, right?!

Naturally. But it’s going to take another gamble.

You don’t say! By the way, this weird noise I hear coming from my back—is that part of the plan too?!

That’s right. I’ve charged your AF laser cannon far beyond the recommended limit, and the weapon’s starting to break down. What you’re hearing is a malfunction warning, to let you know that firing the gun in this state will definitely destroy it. But it’s not like we’re going to have a second chance to use it anyway, so you don’t mind, right?

Yeah, go ahead! If it’ll take this guy down, then by all means! Annihilating his weapons wasn’t anything new, after all. She’d had him sacrifice LEO guns for more power to defeat his enemies before—she was most likely doing the same thing here, just with his laser cannon this time. And indeed, he didn’t think he’d get another chance to hit Erde. This attack was his only hope of victory—he had to make sure he didn’t let his opportunity to fire slip away. So he continued his desperate dance with death.

Beside him, Alpha was smiling like always. She did so to motivate him, to raise his chances of victory, even if only by a little bit. What she didn’t realize was that at this point, Akira wouldn’t have lost heart, even if her expression had clouded over.

In other words, they were no longer entirely on the same page. But since their common goal at present was to win a fight to the death against a superhuman, both Alpha and Akira were far too preoccupied to notice.

Erde had used his trump card against Akira. So determined was he to win that he’d raised the stakes by wagering his own life. And yet, despite all his efforts, the boy was still alive. The superhuman couldn’t believe what he was seeing, but he kept his head enough to analyze the situation.

The boy’s movements seemed to be on an altogether different level than before. Most likely, he, too, had used some sort of trump card. Had Erde continued to fight without activating his autophagy, the boy would have successfully stalled for time.

That was close, the man thought. He sensed that Akira was approaching his limit. Before long, the boy would be unable to fight, and Erde could finish him off easily. Though Akira was fending off the superhuman’s attacks for now, he clearly wouldn’t be able to keep it up much longer. Erde’s victory was inevitable.

But Erde wasn’t sure whether that would come in the next second, or ten, or sixty, or perhaps even more time. His previous misjudgment had led him to hold off on using his trump card, when he ought to have played it right away. So now he hesitated to assume that Akira was on the ropes and rush in carelessly.

He could tell the boy was betting everything on his next attack. Sensing the energy radiating from Akira’s laser cannon, Erde also saw right through his plan—to overcharge the cannon and deliver one final, devastating blast at the cost of his weapon. Erde just needed to survive that strike, either by dodging or blocking, and Akira would be left defenseless. And in Erde’s current state, he was confident he could endure even if he took the full brunt of it.

So there was no need to hesitate anymore. Time to charge in. Every second was precious to him right now, and continuing to hold back would be pointless.

Erde knew all this—and yet, something bothered him.

At the end of the day, there was no guarantee he’d survive the laser blast, only the likelihood of it. And the boy had already far exceeded his expectations—who was to say the ace up his sleeve wouldn’t as well? In that case, if Erde ran right into the laser’s path, he might actually perish. After all, it had to be a powerful attack for Akira to bet on it as his last-ditch effort. Otherwise, why would he bother?

Cautiously, Erde continued to unleash shock wave after shock wave in order to keep Akira at bay, to prevent him from finding an opening to fire his laser. From this distance, Erde could easily dodge it, as Akira was surely aware. So the boy was waiting for a moment where Erde wouldn’t be able to dodge the laser—in other words, when Erde finally lost patience and rushed at him. So the man hung back, waiting until Akira lost his balance and left himself open.

But while he kept his distance, the laser cannon continued to charge—the longer he delayed, the more powerful the blast would be. Should he just bolt forward now, while he could still withstand the laser? Or was it already too late—had the laser already charged too much? In that case, should he focus all of his efforts on dodging the beam instead? He’d always made quick, accurate judgments with his previous opponents, no matter how strong they’d been. But against an unconventional opponent like this, who’d overturned his expectations and assumptions again and again, he found such calls tougher to make.

Finally, the wake of one shock wave hit Akira, compromising his balance. For only a split second, he stumbled, but because Erde had been agonizing so heavily over whether to stay back or charge in, this was more than enough to tip the scales in his mind. Calling on every bit of strength he’d gained in exchange for his dwindling life force, he rocketed forward, intending to close the distance between him and his opponent instantly.

But suddenly Akira moved too! Still slightly off-balance, he flung his remaining LEO at Erde with all his might. As it flew toward Erde, bullets exploded from its muzzle, overloading the gun with energy and destroying it. Then the weapon itself exploded, unleashing all the remaining energy in its energy pack. The blast blanketed the room with the contents of its extended magazine, inundating the arena in gunfire.

Of course, such an attack wasn’t enough to harm Erde in his current state—but it did deter him, precisely as Akira and Alpha had been hoping. Even someone as skilled at detecting the movements and positions of his opponents as Erde couldn’t possibly perceive Akira on the other side of a “smoke screen” of bullets ricocheting in every direction before his eyes, thanks to the high-speed filter that caused them to halt suddenly and crash into each other.

But Erde wasn’t surprised—he’d expected as much. In order to fire his AF laser cannon, Akira had to unfold it from his back. While that process was pretty much instantaneous, Akira and Erde were currently both experiencing time much slower than usual, so preparing the laser would leave Akira open. However, Akira couldn’t ready his cannon too soon—one of Erde’s shock waves would be more likely to smash it. And while it was in its folded state, he could shield the cannon with his own body. The only time he could afford to extend the cannon was right before firing the laser.

And therein lay the rub. If Akira waited for Erde to charge at him before unfolding the laser, it would be ready too late. The superhuman would be upon him before he’d have time to line up his shot and fire. Destroying his LEO and unleashing the C-bullets within as a veil would have allowed him to conceal himself long enough to unfold his cannon and just barely fire the laser in time. But then Akira had lost his balance—with the extra time needed to regain his posture, he couldn’t make it, couldn’t execute his last attack.

Erde had sealed his victory. He charged without hesitation, ready to deliver the coup de grâce.

And his analysis proved correct—Akira didn’t have the time he needed to fire his laser.

Erde broke through the barrage of ricocheting bullets, immediately locating the boy. The cannon was still on his back—he hadn’t even had time to deploy it yet. Even if he started unfolding it right now, there was no way he could fire in time.

But Erde’s face twisted in shock. Yes, the laser cannon was still stowed away. Yet rather than try to back away from Erde to give himself time to fire, the boy darted forward. Before Erde knew it, Akira was already next to him.

Alpha had deliberately made Akira lose his balance—a ruse to bait Erde into charging forward. This wasn’t an act, however—Akira’s posture really had been compromised, and he didn’t have time to deploy the cannon, exactly as Erde’s analysis had indicated.

But Alpha had never intended to fire the laser. She’d merely led Akira to believe that was her plan, withholding key details from him. His mistaken assumption had unconsciously made him prepare to deploy the laser cannon—and Erde, reading his movements, had made the same assumption.

Everything had gone just as Alpha had calculated.

After Akira threw his gun in Erde’s direction, Alpha took control of his suit and had him close the distance to Erde in a flash. Akira, still under the assumption that he was supposed to be distancing himself from Erde in order to fire his laser, was surprised to find himself doing precisely the opposite, but nonetheless aligned his movements to match his suit’s without missing a beat. From all his experience thus far, he knew now that regardless of what surprising or bizarre movements she made him do, cooperating with Alpha’s support was always going to be the best choice for him.

With his right hand, he yanked the laser cannon from his back; with his left, he seized his backpack. Then he threw both at Erde. His backpack could expand to accommodate greater amounts of ammo, but as he’d already used so much ammo during the fierce battle outside the transport, the pack was now much smaller than before. There were still a few energy packs left inside, though.

These packs each contained an abundance of energy in a small container, yet were normally extremely safe to use. Even if one was hit with gunfire or burned up, the energy inside wouldn’t usually combust and cause a giant explosion that destroyed everything in its radius. After all, these were meant for use against monsters, and no hunter cared to use a power source that would explode upon impact. But “safe” was a relative term. The blast from a normal attack certainly wouldn’t trigger an explosion on its own, but add intense pressure or an extremely powerful beam of energy into the equation, and a reaction would naturally occur.

The safety on the AF laser cannon didn’t allow the user to fire the weapon while it was still folded up—but Alpha had overwritten the cannon’s software, rendering it possible. In short, the AF laser cannon—still folded, yet charged with far more energy than it should have been able to endure even in its unfolded state—had become an energy bomb.

The cannon exploded, the force tearing right through the force-field armor protecting it. The explosion also struck the energy packs in Akira’s backpack—and one of them reacted. It immediately swelled up, catalyzing a chain reaction among the other packs and thereby generating an extraordinary amount of energy.

Neither Akira nor Erde were harmed. The reaction only produced a ball of light about fifty centimeters in diameter that didn’t spread any farther. But as the two combatants had raced toward each other at high speed, the air between them had compressed, along with the augmented particles filling it.

The first consequence of this was that it strengthened the explosion from the AF laser cannon. Had that energy diffused through the air, thereby weakening, the energy packs wouldn’t have reacted. The concentrated energy from the explosion had been necessary for the chain reaction to occur.

The second result was the behavior of the chain reaction itself. The detonation of the cannon would have sparked a much larger blast had it not, for the moment, been compressed into the ball of light. However, it would not retain this form for very long—a massive explosion was imminent. Even within the world of slowed time that Akira and Erde were inhabiting, it would probably only last a couple of seconds. Once the sphere of light collapsed, the energy would be released throughout the area, swallowing them both up. Akira, at least, would most certainly be vaporized out of existence.

But the boy was ready to bet his all. He charged at the ball of light, raised his fist, and swung.

The moment Akira threw the folded laser cannon at him, Erde realized what he was up to, even before Akira himself did. He’s willing to go that far?! Erde thought with surprise, but instantly raised his own fist and punched before the ball of energy could explode.

The shock wave from his fist transferred momentum to the energy inside the sphere. Now, the moment the sphere collapsed, all its energy would be released in the same direction. Erde was talented enough to pull off such a feat and was convinced that his opponent could do the same. He also knew he couldn’t afford to let Akira get the drop on him, as his body couldn’t withstand such a blast.

I’ve got to act before he does!

So with all his strength, Erde had swung his fist as fast as he could.

Their fists plowed into the sphere of light as one—but Erde’s made contact just the slightest bit sooner. The ball of light collapsed, dyeing the room in white light, and searing energy scorched the area immediately.

When the light faded, Akira was lying on the ground, burnt to a crisp. But he wasn’t dead—his powered suit’s force-field armor had saved him. For one thing, the light engulfing the room had only been the residual energy of the explosion—in other words, he’d only received a fraction of the full emission.

Erde, on the other hand, had received the brunt of it. His fist still thrust out, he stood there with the entire left half of his body missing.

He had indeed swung faster. But Alpha’s technique had won against Erde’s, the critical difference that had just barely clinched Akira’s victory.

The superhuman was still alive for now, but he’d suffered a fatal wound. On any other day, he could have shrugged off even an injury this dire—the meds he’d taken beforehand would have prolonged his life until he could receive treatment. But with the autophagy burning through his body, and since much of his remaining half was also severely damaged, he was already beyond saving.

“Well done,” he said with a small smile. Then, looking regretful, he slowly collapsed to the ground. “I’m sorry, Torpa, Saazalt... I couldn’t avenge you after all. Forgive...me...”

Torn between admiration for the boy who had overcome all odds to defeat him and sorrow at having failed his deceased comrades, Erde passed away.

Even though Akira lacked the strength to stand up, he did notice Erde fall to the ground. Alpha... He paused for breath. Did we win?

Yes. We won. She gave him a bright smile.

Great... I made it through in the end, then. A relieved sigh escaped him. By the way, what was that just now? Exactly what kind of dangerous stunt did you make me do there?

Akira had only been acting according to Alpha’s instructions. Unlike Erde, he had no idea how much danger he’d been in. Alpha had said he’d be making a “considerable” gamble, and he’d won. Now that it was over, he wanted to know the details.

I can tell you if you want, but it’ll take a long time to explain. Are you sure you want to hear it now?

You know, on second thought, let’s save it for later.

As Alpha’s attitude had made clear to him, the battle was over—this time, for real. Smiling weakly, he felt the fatigue that had been building throughout the day hit him all at once. He didn’t resist, and his consciousness drifted away.

Just before he fell asleep, however, Hikaru’s voice came through his comms. “Akira! What happened?! Are you all right?! Akira!”

Then he remembered Hikaru was still trapped in the bunker. Because she was inside such a sturdy room, and since Akira and Erde had both tried not to hit her while fighting, she was still safe and sound despite being so close to so much carnage.

She couldn’t get out on her own, though. Someone would have to open the door for her.

But Akira was too tired. “Hikaru... I’m really sorry, but can you just wait a little longer?”

“Excuse me?! Wait longer?! You’ve gotta be kidding me! You won, didn’t you?! Or wait—don’t tell me you lost! You didn’t, right?! Akira?! Akira, answer me!”

But right then, he didn’t want to move another muscle. He couldn’t even imagine trying to stand. So he allowed himself to drift off to sleep.

Hikaru’s panicked and angry shouts continued until the other hunters finally showed up.

Chapter 211: To the Victor Go the Spoils

In the transport’s hallway, which lay slathered in the blood of many corpses, Harmers, the lone survivor, sighed. “All right, that settles that. Took a little longer than I expected, to be honest.”

Had his foes heard him, they might well have taken pride in his words, a testament to the strength and skill they’d displayed while fighting him.

The corpses all belonged to what had been Erde’s forces. Indisputably talented, every one, they’d eliminated Sakashita’s troops and fought their way to the corridor in front of room 3. None of them had been on Erde’s level, of course, but taken as a whole, they had been stronger than Erde alone.

And Harmers had conquered them, all by himself. What was more, even though the corridor near room 3 was slightly damaged, it wasn’t anywhere near as ravaged as room 28 had become during Akira and Erde’s fight. For Harmers had finished off every opponent before their battle could even reach that stage, a feat only possible for a superhuman belonging to Sakashita Heavy Industries.

That said, Harmers had hardly escaped completely unscathed either—after all, there was a slight hint of fatigue on his face.

As he stood there, Harmers noticed Mercia approaching. “A support hunter, are you?” he said gruffly. “I don’t recall asking for any help here. Head on over to the control room or room 28, where you’re currently needed.”

“The control room’s already secure,” she said. “And my comrades are handling room 28. I just came over to check the situation here...” She glanced around. “But it looks like that wasn’t necessary.”

Harmers took a moment to confirm her words: the hunters who’d fallen back to the transport control room had already been rescued by those stationed outside, and Mercia’s team really was headed to room 28. Nevertheless, thinking of Shirou’s safety, Harmers barred Mercia from going any farther.

“Yeah, I’ve got things taken care of here, as you can see. Sakashita already has this area under control, so I’d head back if I were you.”

Mercia caved. “All right, all right, fine. You don’t need to threaten me. I’m turning back already.”

Even so, Harmers’s tone became one of warning. “Sorry, but with scoundrels coming out of the woodwork to attack our company, you understand we can’t be too careful.”

Mercia didn’t make another fuss and left obediently. When she was gone, Shirou opened the door to room 3 and poked his head out.

“Is it over? Whoa! Talk about a lot of blood!” Even seeing the grisly scene in the hallway, Shirou sounded no less cheery than usual.

Harmers sighed. “Shirou, get back in the room.”

Shirou ignored him and looked around. Then his gaze returned to Harmers. “You know, you’ve also got a lot of blood on you. Are you all right? Your face looks kinda pale too.”

“I’m fine. None of this blood is mine.”

“Really? Sure you’re not just tryin’ to act all tough? Are you really okay?”

“Shut up and get back in the room. Now’s not the time to joke around.”

Shirou’s smile vanished, and his tone changed. “I’m not joking, Harmers—I’m worried about you. Are you sure you’re not hurt? You’re my only bodyguard right now, you know. I need you to be in tip-top shape in case something else crazy happens. Don’t just take some half-assed meds and say you’re fine—head to the infirmary and get treated if you need it. After all, when you’re really trying to hide it, I can never tell whether you’re really fine or just putting up a good front.”

Harmers frowned. In truth, he would have liked to head to the infirmary to be on the safe side, just as Shirou had suggested. But he preferred not to take Shirou there with him.

“I can’t,” he finally answered. “I don’t want to let you out of my sight.”

“Then just bring me with you!”

“No. I can’t prove it, but my guess is that those assailants were on board the transport from the start. There’s a chance some are still left, disguised as regular passengers or hunters. I don’t want to put you in danger when they could be anywhere.”

“Well, I guess that makes sense. Oh! All right, then, how about this?!” he said smugly, as though he’d only just come up with a brilliant idea.

He pitched his proposal to Harmers, whose brow furrowed.

“No, that’s going a bit far, wouldn’t you say?” said the superhuman. “Doing so would expose your presence here. The fact you’re on board is supposed to be top secret, remember?”

“Oh, that hardly matters anymore, does it?” Shirou said blithely. “I mean, with everything going on, I’ve probably already been outed anyway. The moment I boarded this transport, I involved everyone else here, right? So why worry now?”

Such an argument Harmers found difficult to refute. After a moment’s hesitation, he came to a decision. “I can’t abandon my post as your bodyguard, even temporarily to get treatment. That’s not my decision to make. But I’ll talk to the higher-ups about it. Now get back in the room.”

“All right,” Shirou said, and headed back in without another word of complaint.

Once the door to the room had shut completely, Harmers contacted his superiors.

Before long, a group of hunters appeared to guard Shirou in Harmers’s place while he was in the infirmary for treatment. Shirou welcomed them with a big smile.

“Hey, guys! I’m Shirou! Thanks in advance for looking after me!”

The only response this earned was some irritated muttering and a “tsk” here and there.

Harmers sighed. In no way was that the attitude a hunter ought to be taking toward a Sakashita VIP. However, he couldn’t exactly criticize them—not when he was fully aware of what an annoying job he’d roped them into.

Lest any hunter be one of the assailants in disguise, Shirou had requested that all the individuals assigned to guard him while Harmers was away be cyborgs. Then he’d insisted on administrative authority over their systems. Now, there was no way they could attack him even if one of them was an enemy in disguise.

Naturally, the hunters weren’t so keen on handing over control of their bodies to someone else. They would normally have refused right away—after all, whoever had that authority would have life-or-death sway over them. The hunters themselves wouldn’t even have the liberty of controlling their own bodies, treated no differently than a criminal saddled with a serious debt.

Shirou had used Sakashita’s influence to get them to agree to the terms. If the hunters refused a direct request from Sakashita Heavy Industries, they might very well end up making an enemy of one of the Big Five. The hunters had no option but to accept. Of course, since they were being forced into an arrangement against their will, they would receive hefty financial compensation, and Sakashita would owe them a favor, which could benefit them in the future. But they were still dissatisfied, and it showed on their faces.

It was also clear from Harmers’s expression that he understood exactly how they felt. “While I’m gone, this brat will be in your care,” he told them. “As for you, Shirou, don’t you dare cause them any trouble.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Shirou said dismissively.

Harmers sighed one last time before making his way to the infirmary.

Willingly undertaken or not, a job was a job. And this one was at the behest of Sakashita, no less, so the hunters had to do their best, whether they wanted to or not. Each of them took their work seriously, diligently guarding Shirou around the clock.

As one hunter patrolled the hallway outside, he received a call from Shirou. Knowing he’d be in trouble if he ignored it, he answered, and Shirou’s image appeared in his augmented vision.

“What do you want?” the hunter said with a scowl.

“Oh, nothing much. I’m just pretty bored, cooped up in here all by myself. So I was wondering: Wanna play a game with me to pass the time? I can connect you to the console in my room. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure Harmers doesn’t find out.”

“I’ll pass.”

“Oh, c’mon, don’t be such a square! VR’s supposed to be better on cyborg hardware, right? You can eat meals and even do adult stuff! In fact, I’ve heard quite a few cyborgs who want to experience such superior realism for themselves allow VR programs administrative access to their bodies. That sort of thing has become a real problem, you know! Anyway, I hear ya: you feel like you shouldn’t have fun on the job. But wouldn’t this actually be a great time to enjoy yourself?”

Cyborgs required special care to satisfy their appetites for food and sex. For one, cyborg bodies designed for fighting weren’t equipped for such things, so in the middle of long operations, combat cyborgs found it especially difficult to satisfy those urges—hence the temptation to treat their admin rights carelessly despite the serious risk in doing so.

In fact, Shirou’s proposal did pique the man’s interest. But he was a high-ranking hunter, and work came first. “Get lost! I’m already being forced to guard you against my will, and now you’re going to get in my way on top of that?” he growled, glaring at the boy.

At that, Shirou’s attitude changed as well. “So that’s how it is, huh? All right, fine, I get it. Sorry for impeding your work or whatever.” He sighed. “Y’know, I only asked because I honestly felt guilty about you having to do this, but if you wanna be such a Goody Two-Shoes, be my guest. Oh, hey! In that case, let me show you something interesting. This is footage recorded around the time of the attack. The guy you’re replacing took out quite a few targets by himself. You might have to do that too, depending on how your luck shakes out! But hey, that’s part of the job, right? Be sure to watch it!”

With that, Shirou disappeared from the man’s vision. Shortly afterward, he sent the cyborg a link to the footage, as well as the authority to access it.

The man reasoned that if this was part of his job, he had no choice but to check it out. He also knew it was important to get an idea of the strength of the enemies he might find himself up against. With a small sigh, he opened the link.

Recorded footage of Erde’s subordinates and Sakashita’s troops popped up in his vision. In part because he’d handed control of his system over to Shirou, and in part because the recording was superimposed over the actual hallway he was standing in, he could hardly tell the difference between the footage and reality.

“Talk about strong,” he murmured. Even merely watching them fight, he could easily tell why those troops had been chosen by Sakashita for their personal forces—yet here they were getting massacred by Erde’s team. And with his real vision, he could see the bodies of Erde’s subordinates lying where they had fallen, yet to be cleared from the hallway.

“That one man...” His eyes widened in shock. “He killed them all on his own?”

Just then, Shirou called the hunter again. After apologizing for his earlier behavior, the boy gave him access to a VR meal to make amends. Enjoying women on company time was out of the question, but the man figured it was fine to at least have a snack. When he connected to the program, a soft drink and hamburger appeared before him in midair.

The man “took” the virtual burger in his hands and put it in his mouth. The flavor of the nonexistent sandwich filled his mouth, even though the latter hadn’t been equipped with a sense of taste.

“Delicious...” he moaned. The tastiness of the burger gradually improved his mood, and he continued to dig into the sandwich and sip his drink as he diligently kept watch.

◆

Akira woke up on top of a white bed. His powered suit had been removed, and someone had dressed him in simple clothes instead.

Alpha sat on the edge of the bed, smiling. Good morning, Akira! Did you sleep well?

Seeing her smile, Akira inferred that all was well and grinned back. Yeah. I feel like I had a good night’s rest. Where is this, anyway?

We’re in the transport’s infirmary.

After arriving at room 28, the reinforcement hunters had carried Akira from the demolished area to the infirmary, where he’d been given emergency treatment and then left alone on the bed to rest. According to Alpha, all they’d done was cram medicine in his mouth and call it a day—a pretty slapdash job. But the medicine on board intercity transports was especially potent, so it had saved his life.

There were two major reasons they hadn’t treated Akira fully. One, there were many other patients who needed attending to. And two, with his injuries, he would not be rejoining the security team anytime soon, so there was no urgent need to treat him right away. Hikaru had already made the arrangements to have Akira removed from the roster because of his condition.

Hikaru was seated in a chair next to Akira’s bed, hard at work. But when she noticed Akira had woken up, she stopped typing. “Oh, Akira! You’re finally awake! How do you feel? I had them give you basic treatment, at least, but was it enough?”

Akira rose from the bed and tried moving his body around. He didn’t feel any pain. Both of his arms were also still attached.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he answered.

“Really? Great! I’m so glad. Just to be on the safe side, I think it’d be best to admit you to the hospital in the city once we get back. But for now, just focus on resting.”

“All right, sounds good!”

Hikaru then gave Akira a rundown of their current situation. She told him he’d already been removed from the security team and was being treated as a passenger rather than part of the transport’s forces. Now he could just take things easy until they made it back to Kugamayama.

Hearing that, Akira let out a deep sigh of relief. His task was over—he didn’t have to work anymore. The mere thought caused him to relax. But then he saw the look on Hikaru’s face grow more anxious.

“What’s wrong?” he ventured.

“Oh, er, well, that is to say... First, Akira, I want to offer my thanks to you for coming to my rescue. Because of you, I survived.”

“Huh? All right... You’re welcome, I guess.” He was puzzled: Why would simply offering her gratitude to him make her nervous?

Of course, Hikaru wasn’t the type to get nervous over such a trifling matter. There was another reason. “And so, um... Y-You know how I told you before that I’d do whatever you wanted if you saved my life? And how you asked for a bigger payout? Well, I wanted to talk to you about that, actually... Wh-What exactly did you have in mind?”

Hikaru had said she’d do anything, but if Akira really took her literally, she would be in trouble. For instance, if he told her, “I want you to fight the ELGC alongside me,” she absolutely couldn’t fulfill his request. At the time, she’d gotten swept up in the moment and blurted something out, but she couldn’t take it back now. She’d promised him she’d do anything, and even a verbal contract was a contract. A deal was a deal. He’d risked his life and come out the victor, thereby earning the promised spoils.

What would happen if she broke her word? That she didn’t even want to imagine. Akira had overcome someone as powerful as Erde, and all for the sake of the blank check Hikaru had written him. If she backed down now, she might very well become his next target. So to keep her promise to him and to save her own skin, she needed to write a specific figure on that blank check—preferably something realistic.

The thought of having this talk with him filled her with dread, and she was reminded again just how much work being the handler for a high-ranker involved.

“S-So, when you said you wanted a bigger payout, what figure were you thinking?” Her first step was to lure him into thinking in terms of money, so she used the financial term “figure.” That way, she hoped, he wouldn’t think to ask for literally “anything” from her. And she didn’t expect Akira to ask for a ridiculous sum like one trillion aurum, so keeping their discussion within the realm of money seemed like a safe bet. Then, once she finagled an exact amount out of him, she could haggle it down to something she could actually manage but which would still leave him satisfied.

Then Alpha interjected, however. Akira, she promised she’d do anything you want, remember? This is a rare opportunity, and she’s a city official, so I’d milk it for all it’s worth if I were you. She has the connections to get you things the average person can’t.

Hmm, you’ve got a point! Akira groaned, mulling things over a bit before looking up at Hikaru again. “When you said you’d do anything, you really meant anything, right?”

“W-Well, first off, if you have something specific in mind, tell me.” Her smile slightly stiff, she avoided answering yes.

“Then, well, what about this? Since I’m already entrusting you with procuring my gear, for my next set I’d like something even better—if possible, something you might see on the Front Line.”

“F-Front Line gear, is it?” Was something like that even feasible? At the very least, she figured, obtaining it would be quite difficult. Her thoughts showed on her face.

Akira noticed and backpedaled. “Wait, hold on. I’m not actually asking you to get me Front Line gear. Just the most advanced set you can manage, is all.”

His current gear had cost five billion aurum—yet even with Alpha’s support, his victory over Erde had owed a lot to happenstance. He might fight the superhuman a hundred times and lose every time, so great had the difference in skill been between them. How could he make sure his luck wasn’t the only deciding factor in whether he survived? He needed better gear to make up for his lack of skill.

“It feels weird to say this myself,” he went on, “but right now I have a ton of money saved up. You can use however much of that you need—just get me the best gear you can. You promised, right? So do your best to come through for me.”

Do her best? That was about as realistic a request as she could hope for, so she grinned enthusiastically. “You got it! Just leave it to me! You saved my life, after all—I’ve gotta return the favor!”

“Sounds good. I’m counting on you!” With this, Akira’s next set of gear was guaranteed to be even more powerful than before. He grinned back at her, satisfied. “You know, things sure got a bit dicey back there, huh?”

“Yeah, you said it!”

Their voices sounded grave, but after some silence, Hikaru lightened the mood by teasing him.

“Honestly! I know you told me unexpected things happen wherever you go, but I didn’t think I was signing up for all this! You really are one unlucky kid.”

“Hey, wait a minute—you’re the one they were after! More like I got roped into your misfortune this time!”

“No way, can’t be! Fortune has always favored me. You, on the other hand...”

And so, with lighthearted jabs at each other, Akira and Hikaru bickered over whose bad luck had nearly been their demise. They’d survived the same ordeal in the same place, and the bond between the two of them had thus been strengthened even further by yet another strange coincidence.

◆

At the end of its arduous journey from Zegelt City, the Gigantas III arrived without further incident in Kugamayama City once more. After the vehicle had come to a complete stop, Akira and Hikaru alighted together.

“Looks like we made it back safely,” said Akira. “Well, maybe ‘safe’ isn’t the right word.”

“Yeah, I don’t think any of that was what I’d call safe. Speaking of which, are you sure you don’t need to go to the hospital?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. I’m more or less healed already.” Akira had spent the remainder of the journey resting in the infirmary, so apart from mental fatigue, he’d already nearly made a full recovery. And to soothe his tired mind, he had something waiting at home he’d much rather hurry back to than head to the hospital.

Hikaru escorted him from the middle district back to the Kugama Building. Then, in the first-floor lobby, they said their goodbyes.

“Well, this is as far as I go,” she said with a smile. “You’ll forgive me, but I believe I’ve had my fill of the world outside the city walls for a while.”

“Yeah, I’d imagine,” Akira replied with a small smirk.

“Once again, Akira, thanks for everything. You did great! Go home and get some rest. You’ve earned it!”

“Yeah, you too.”

With that, their eventful journey to the far East had ended. They waved goodbye to each other. Then Hikaru headed back toward the middle district, and Akira returned to the city outside the walls.

There was one other person who followed Akira outside—a boy wearing a hood over his head. After spending some time observing Akira with great interest, the figure disappeared into Kugamayama’s lower district and out of sight.

◆

Still in the transport’s infirmary, even after the Gigantas III had arrived in Kugamayama, Harmers sighed in relief. “Well, that was certainly a busy journey, but we made it here safe and sound.”

Even while getting treated, Harmers had been ready to head back to Shirou’s side at a moment’s notice if necessary. In the event of another emergency on the same scale as before, he suspected the hunters would at least buy enough time with their lives for him to get there before the worst happened; but as he wasn’t on-site, he couldn’t be confident that Shirou would be safe. So he was truly relieved that nothing else had happened after all.

He headed straight from the infirmary to room 3 to pick up Shirou. Upon entering, he thanked the hunters for their service. “Good work, folks. Your job’s over now, and you’re free to go.”

When they heard that, all the hunters were just as relieved as Harmers. Even for high-rankers like them, guarding a VIP from Sakashita was a big responsibility, and they’d been nervous the entire time that something might go awry. Knowing that they could leave was a huge load off their mind. Then they turned their gazes to Shirou, sitting on the sofa in front of them.

“Our gig’s over. Give us our admin access back.”

“Sure thing. There ya go!”

After confirming that they once again had authority over themselves, they finally relaxed. They stretched, tried opening and closing their hands, and tested their limbs until they felt like their bodies were their own again.

All at once, a look of doubt crossed Harmers’s face, then turned into a scowl. “Hold up! Where’d Shirou go?” he asked.

“What do you mean? He’s right there, isn’t he?” The hunters looked confused at Harmers’s question and pointed at the vacant sofa.

His expression darkening, Harmers immediately put on his glasses, which doubled as his data terminal. The superhuman wasn’t too fond of contacts or the idea of having his eyeballs directly modified, so this was the only way he could experience augmented vision. Through his lenses, he could see Shirou on the sofa, grinning with his hands together like he was apologizing.

Noticing the look on Harmers’s face, the hunters rushed to confirm Shirou’s presence for themselves. To their shock and dismay, they realized that the boy on the sofa they’d been watching over had been nothing but an image in their augmented vision all this time.

“An AR image?! Since when?!”

At that moment, a display covering one wall suddenly showed the view outside, almost as though the wall had suddenly become transparent. There, on the live feed, was a mech facing Harmers’s direction, waving. A moment later, Harmers received a transmission from the same mech.

“Sorry for this all of a sudden,” came Shirou’s voice, “but I’m going out for a bit! It’s been too long since I’ve been able to enjoy the outside world, so at least let me enjoy it a little longer! Oh, and those hunters didn’t do anything wrong, so don’t blame them, okay? Stripped of their authority, they had no way to defend themselves against my hacking! So they couldn’t have seen me leave! Besides, they were only hired to watch over me, not prevent me from escaping! Unlike you!”

As Harmers stood there, fuming, the mech gave one last wave before flying off toward the city walls. But the superhuman wasn’t about to let him get away.

“Not so fast!” he bellowed.

Harmers might have not been in perfect health, but he’d recovered enough that his condition wouldn’t hinder his ability to fight. With extraordinary strength, he leaped off the ground and dashed after the mech, smashing right through the wall display, the corridor beyond it, and the outer wall of the transport. Then he leaped into the sky, leaving behind only the hunters staring at the holes he’d blasted in the transport, their mouths agape.

The mech Shirou was piloting was one of those bound for the Front Line, part of the group that he’d sent out of the transport’s cargo hold during the attack. It wasn’t completely unharmed, but as it was designed for use on the Front Line, it was still more than capable of flying through the wasteland’s airspace at high speeds.

Harmers chased after the mech on foot. With his superhuman speed, he gradually closed in.

“Surrender now!” he yelled. “I won’t let you escape! If you give up right now, I’ll let you off the hook with just some confinement! Halt right this instant!”

The mech continued forward as though it hadn’t heard a word. Of course, Shirou wasn’t going to open fire on Harmers. But neither did he have any intention of stopping or of squandering a single precious second in which to make his escape.

In the end, Harmers finally caught up to the mech. He leaped up into the air and clung to its torso. Then, with a vicious grin, he tore open the door to the cockpit.

But no one was inside.

“What in the world?!”

Harmers had fallen completely for Shirou’s ploy. When the boy had sent the mechs out as reinforcements, he’d obtained the authorization to pilot them. Having admin access for his cyborg bodyguards had allowed him to distract them with an AR decoy of himself while he fled. He’d urged Harmers to go get treated for his wounds so the man would be out of the way, since that was the one person Shirou’s AR doppelgänger wouldn’t deceive. And finally, he’d goaded Harmers into chasing the unmanned mech so that Shirou could put some distance between them while he made his escape.

Had Shirou hidden himself with active camouflage or scrubbed his presence from the data of all monitoring devices, a superhuman like Harmers would probably still have noticed. The only way the boy could guarantee a successful escape was to run so far from Harmers that the latter couldn’t perceive him.

“Goddammit!” Harmers screamed, swinging his fist in rage—a punch that destroyed the mech from the inside. He fell through the air and landed on two feet without a sound, his expression livid. Then he took his data terminal out and contacted his men as he ran back toward the city.

“Emergency! Shirou has escaped! I failed to stop him! He’s probably still somewhere in Kugamayama City—he couldn’t have gotten far! Spread out at the city’s borders so that he doesn’t get away!”

Afterward, the Sakashita troops that had received Harmers’s orders quickly searched Kugamayama, both inside and outside the walls. But of Shirou they found no trace.

◆

In Kugamayama’s lower district was a cheap hotel that many hunters frequented. There, in a room, Shirou sat alone, wearing a grim expression that he would never have let Harmers see.

“All right! With this, I’ll be able to move freely at least for a little while. But I’m not gonna get an opportunity like this again, so how should I use it? Think, Shirou, think!”

Even Shirou didn’t expect he could evade the Sakashita authorities for very long. So he needed to make the most of the time he’d bought himself—to spend it the best way he could.

After all, he had to accomplish his goal, even if he had to flee from Sakashita and his critical role as their Old Domain User to do it.

◆

Upon returning home, Akira headed straight for the bath. The moment he laid eyes on his new bathroom, he let out a gasp of astonishment.

“Wow!”

The remodel had already been completed. It wasn’t anything ridiculously extravagant, but just one look at the refined, high-quality design of the interior told Akira it was a huge upgrade from his old bath. It was also sparkling clean.

And that was just its initial appearance. He knew that Alpha could make it look even nicer in its augmented vision if he asked. Excited to experience something he usually couldn’t with his naked eye, he merrily made preparations to bathe.

Finally, he submerged himself in the tub, all the way up to the neck. Right away, he could feel the difference that the new higher-quality hot water made.

“Oh man,” he moaned with bliss as he felt his fatigue melt away.

Alpha, who had joined him in the bath as usual, saw Akira’s expression and moved her face closer to him. What’s wrong, Akira? she teased. You look like you’re in the throes of pleasure.

“Yeah, this is the best! No way I can go back to a regular bath now.”

Even with Alpha’s naked body right in front of him, he showed absolutely no reaction toward her. He’d been able to feel her tantalizing, nonexistent body once via an artificial arm and had become a little more aware of her body as a result. But that awareness was nowhere to be found now, so deeply had the hot water taken hold of his soul.

Alpha gave a small sigh. You don’t say. Well, enjoy, then. You earned it.

“Oh, I will...”

Feeling like all of his stress, fatigue, and cares in the world were just sliding off his body and dissipating in the hot water, Akira enjoyed his bath for quite some time, grinning lazily all the while.

After his blissful bathing experience drew to a close, he felt so comfortable he headed straight to bed. Now that he’d enjoyed a bath, the rest of the day was for sleeping. As good as he felt now, he figured he probably wouldn’t have any trouble going right to sleep. He collapsed on the bed face down and closed his eyes. Sleep immediately took him.

Once he woke up, his life as a hunter would continue. He would face more misfortunes and come out the victor, win more dances with death, and seize the spoils his great risks merited. Then he’d bet everything he’d gained on his next gamble—again and again and again.

In short, business as usual.

And Alpha wouldn’t stop him—not until he completed the task she’d hired him for. That, too, was business as usual.

But whether he would fulfill her commission somewhere far down the line or in the very near future, neither of them knew.