Togami’s team finally finished gathering relics and left the building. Reina stretched out and said in a content tone.
“Although we didn’t get to find any old-world automata, I think we did get a good amount of worthwhile relics this time.”
They at least got some relics to bring back home, they were even able to fill up a couple of rucksacks with those relics.
Togami himself was relieved after finally getting out from the ruin. But after he saw Reina and noticed her putting down her guard, he then said to her, which also served as a warning to himself.
“We’re basically still in the middle of ruin exploration. So don’t relax until we reach the city. Being a full-fledged Hunter also means that we have to make sure we can exchange the relics for money afterwards.”
“I know, we’re technically still inside the ruin after all. Ah, right, Akira. Can we ask you to carry some of the relics…? Compared to your APC our vehicle is a little small after all.”
“Sure.”
“Thank you.”
With this, Reina shifted the relics which were a little embarrassing to carry around as she smiled happily, but of course, she hid that smile inside his heart.
They then quickly finished their preparation and got on their respective vehicles.
—*—*—*—
Kurosawa’s team somehow managed to destroy the remaining two old-world automata.
Although they got some of their team members injured, they quickly regrouped and focused their firepower to corner the automata to the point that their bullets literally formed a wall. They riddled the automata with bullets and pushed it to the wall in order to seal its movement.
While the other Hunters suppressed the automata’s movements, Kurosawa swapped his rifle to cannon mode. With the automata unable to move, it was quite easy to shoot a warhead that could even destroy a tank at them. The old-world automata were indeed smart and durable, but Kurosawa had prepared that warhead expecting a fight against old-world automata. And as expected, the automata could not stand a direct hit from that warhead and finally stopped moving.
Although they were destroyed, they still retained their original shape. From outside, they still looked like they could move. So just to be safe, Kurosawa shot them one more time before finally calming down.
“Damn it, I ended up having to use that expensive warhead. How’s the damage?”
“Four are badly wounded. I’m not sure if the automata did that intentionally to make others cover for them or simply because it only aimed to make them unable to fight and there was no need to kill them.”
“It doesn’t matter, get them treated now. Don’t let them die if we can save them. Check how much ammo you have. If some of you are low on ammo, get those who still have a lot of ammo left to share theirs.”
The Hunters immediately sprung into action. Kurosawa returned back to the entrance of the room to stand-watch, and one of the Hunters then approached him.
“What’s wrong? Is there a problem?”
“…Not really.”
“I can stand-watch here by myself, go get some rest with the others if you have nothing to do.”
But Kurosawa noticed that the guy still stood there looking at him, so he frowned and asked.
“What is it?”
“…Well, ahh… Sorry, we should have listened to you and destroyed the automata.”
“Don’t mention it. Choosing not to destroy them at that time was not the wrong decision. It’s just that you lost the coin toss, that was all there was to it.”
“But still…”
The guy still looked troubled, so Kurosawa looked at him with a serious face and said to him firmly.
“This is not the time to worry about that. We know that there are at least three active old-world automata out there. We have to somehow manage to hold out by ourselves until the specialists get here. So get a hold of yourself.”
That guy was obviously surprised.
“We were able to repel the one that attacked Rodin and the other two ran away, right?”
“Don’t forget they might come here again bringing more friends with them. Also, they might have just gone to get their weapons. We’re still not safe yet, if you want to lament your decision, at least wait until the specialists get here and we know for sure that we’re saved. Tell this to the others too.”
The guy’s apologetic face was replaced with a serious look. Kurosawa then sighed and mumbled.
“…Though, to be honest, they should be here anytime soon. I wonder if they got into some trouble or something? Good grief, just give me a break already…”
Kurosawa made sure not to let his team hear that since it might affect their morale. He also made sure not to let his team see him making a difficult face in such a precarious situation.
—*—*—*—
Togami’s team went from the centre of the Lida commercial district, through the gaps and valleys between the plant-covered buildings, and eventually reached the outskirts of the ruin where plants started to thin out.
Akira was driving with a rather content face.
“Well, I did get some good loot for today although I went out to the wasteland with no particular plan.”
Alpha who was sitting on the driver’s assistant seat smiled at him. There was a slight trace of exasperation in her smile.
“Akira, just to make sure that you understand, this doesn’t mean it is a good idea to keep exploring without a plan, you know?”
“I know, but it’s fine to celebrate for a bit since it has been quite a while since the last time I managed to do a successful ruin exploration, right? Ah, we’re still basically not done until we reached the city, huh.”
Akira was not that serious when he said that. But Alpha suddenly made a serious face, Akira who saw that immediately tensed up.
“Akira, be careful.”
“I know, there’s no need to make that face…”
“No, we have a company chasing from behind.”
Seeing Alpha making a serious face when she said that, Akira immediately switched to battle mode.
“Monsters?”
“It depends on what defines a monster. We have 2 humanoid signals, they’re closing in on us at a high speed, it’s as if they’re either cyborgs or using augmented suits. But if they are Hunters and they want to talk with us, they should at least send us something beforehand through close-range communication. So I don’t think they’re friendly.”
Akira left the wheel and let Alpha take control of the vehicle as he went to the back of the APC. He then took his equipment and checked their condition before opening the back door of the APC and sent a call to Reina.
As Akira opened the door, Reina’s vehicle came into his view. Reina who was driving the vehicle and Togami who was sitting next to her looked confusedly at him. Akira’s gaze shifted from Reina’s vehicle to behind it and focused his information terminal in that direction. He then could see a male and a female in an old-world style dress running at a high speed from behind Reina’s vehicle although the plants that covered the ruin made it difficult for them to even sprint.
“Togami, I don’t know what’s going on here but someone is chasing us from behind. Tell me what you want to- Watch out!!”
At the same time Akira shouted, Alpha suddenly accelerated the APC. His body obeyed the inertia and swayed. In the midst of the swaying vision, he could see the female carrying a cylindrical object in her hand and a blade of light extended from that object the moment she swung it.
A few minutes before Akira contacted Togami and Reina, Kanae also noticed that signal.
“Ane-san. Someone is chasing us.”
“…Indeed.”
Shiori tensed up while also impressed by how sensitive Kanae was as always. She then looked back to check what was chasing them.
“Not monsters…? People?”
“It seems to be people, but those are not Hunter equipment. At this rate, they’ll eventually catch up to us. They don’t look like the kind of people who would try to get something that we dropped by accident though…”
“Milady, there are-”
When Shiori was about to let Reina know, she could hear Akira’s voice shouting at them through the vehicle’s information terminal. Right at the next moment, Shiori grabbed Reina and Kanae grabbed Togami from behind and jumped off from their moving vehicle.
A split second after that, the light blade swung by the female chasing them split Reina’s vehicle cleanly into two. But even after it was split, both the right and the left sides of the vehicle that were separated from each other continued moving forward due to the inertia. It then rolled over a few times before finally stopping.
Both the male and the female humanoids chasing Togami’s team were old-world automata in butler and maid outfits. The female one once again swung its blade chasing after Shiori, while the male which was carrying a rifle went for Kanae. Shiori covered Reina as she repositioned herself for battle while Kanae signalled Togami to stand back as she focused her attention on the incoming automaton.
But suddenly, a storm of bullets swallowed both automata and threw their bodies back. It was Akira shooting at them with SSB rifles in both hands. The normal bullets were released at a mini-gun-like speed, emptying the magazine in a flash.
“Alpha! Did that do it?!”
“Unfortunately, that didn’t hurt them by much.”
Akira ejected the empty magazine, using his time compression, he let go of his rifles, reached for nearby magazines, threw them up in the air, grabbed his rifles back, agilely pushed them against the flying magazines, and finally completed the reload.
“I know they were just normal bullets, but that was a highly compressed barrage, you know?! What the heck is with them? Aren’t they just too durable?!”
“I bet they are old-world automata, and they’re high-quality automata on top of that.”
Akira then remembered back when he had to fight old-world automata in the Kuzusuhara ruin and could not help but nod with a rather conflicted face.
“That would explain their durability!! Are they here to get back the relics since we took too many of them?”
“Just keep shooting. If we can destroy them, we can bring them back as relics too.”
“Oh, that’s a good point!”
Akira reactivated his time compression. He thought back to how relaxed he was, and that ruin exploration was not over until he arrived safely back to the city. This made him believe that he might have jinxed it as he smiled bitterly.
Akira was successfully able to provide suppression and prevented the automata from making any complex manoeuvres, but that was not enough to destroy them.
Reina and Togami were so surprised that they were late to digest what just happened.
Shiori considered all her options there as she glanced at Akira. Akira was shouting something, although she could not hear anything from that distance, she judged that Akira was telling them to get to him as fast as they could. She then glanced at Kanae with a serious face, Kanae looked back at her and smiled.
“Milady! Excuse me!”
“Togami-boy!! Make sure not to bite your own tongue!!”
Shiori grabbed Reina while Kanae grabbed Togami. Then without any prior explanation and without asking for permission first, they threw Togami and Reina straight at Akira.
Reina and Togami were still having a hard time following what was going on when they were flying through the air. Akira realized what Shiori was trying to do, although he was surprised, he immediately stopped shooting and threw his rifles up. He then caught Togami with his right hand to make sure that he would not crash into the APC, while he caught Reina with his left hand in a gentler manner as if he was hugging her. He then quickly let both of them go and caught his rifles back.
Akira’s focus returned back to Shiori and Kanae who were facing the automata. Shiori and Kanae stayed behind to buy some time for Reina to get away, and now both of them were already approaching their respective opponent.
Akira understood that Shiori and Kanae were prioritizing on getting Reina to safety first. But he then looked back at Reina and Togami, thought for a bit, and walked past them toward his bike.
Reina, while still confused from being thrown, could not catch up with the information flooding her five senses.
When Akira walked past her, he was in a rush which caused her to follow him with her eyes. She saw him get on his bike and the next moment he had already jumped out of the APC, landing smoothly on the ground and blazed straight in Shiori and Kanae’s direction.
As the scene of Shiori and Kanae, who were left behind, got smaller and smaller with time, and the back of Akira who was riding his bike straight at them, made Reina feel like they were leaving her behind. It felt like she was running away while they were buying time for her. It replaced her confusion with frustration and hopelessness.
Reina, who was crushed under her emotions, stood up and walked as if to jump off the APC and rush towards Shiori and Kanae. Togami who noticed that flusteredly stopped her.
“Let me go!!”
“Wait!! What are you planning to do after you jump off?! Just calm down for now!!”
“Let me go!! Just let me go!! If I… If I run away here, then I… Again…”
With teary eyes, Reina flailed her arms to get away from Togami. Seeing that, Togami tried to stop her with a stern face.
Togami understood Reina’s feelings well. That day, back in Seranthal building, when he got a good view of how weak he was, he felt as if all that he had gone through to get stronger were in vain. It felt like all the hard training and achievements that he had gathered as a Hunter which supported his confidence were being shredded to pieces.
He thought that he had become strong, but it was nothing but his imagination. When push came to shove, he was still part of the group that was being protected. That feeling of hopelessness when he realized that he could do nothing to fight back against that fact was crushing his spirit even at this moment. Togami and Reina both felt the same right now.
The only reason why Togami was able to somehow get a hold of himself was simply because he thought that in the worst-case scenario, he should at least get Reina to safety. It was the least he could do as the team leader. His duty as the team leader was to somehow manage to prevent himself from being crushed by his hopelessness.
But for Reina, who did not have that responsibility, she had nothing to defend herself from her feeling. Shiori and Kanae stayed behind to buy her time, Akira also decided to join them, while she was the only one who stayed in safety. The merciless time did not stop as she was stuck in that situation where she did not have the power nor the skill to fight back. Even if she jumped off the vehicle, she could not provide any help at all against those automata. She would be nothing but dead weight, and she would pull Shiori down even more if she stood in a dangerous place thinking that it was safe. That truth was breaking her heart.
Togami was relieved that Reina had calmed down, but at the same time, the sight of Reina looking meek left a pang in his heart. But even so, he tried to think of a way to at least be useful in that situation. He tried to contact Akira to ask him about the APC that most likely was running on autopilot.
Akira picked up the call and said in a rather uninterested voice as if this was nothing but a normal occurrence to him.
“What is it? I’m sure you know that I’m busy now, right?”
Before Togami could answer that question, Reina yelled at the terminal first.
“Akira!! Why did you leave us behind!! Are you trying to say that we’re nothing but dead weight to you!? Are you telling us to just obediently run away!?”
That yelling was a small resistance against her hopelessness, it was a shout to help herself stop the surging self-depreciation. Either way, if Akira said yes there, it would have completely broken Reina’s heart.
But Akira replied with something that she did not expect at all. He replied back with a rather confused voice.
“To be honest, I was hoping that you can give me support fire from there though. Judging from your skill back when we were exploring the ruin, you should have no problem shooting from that distance, right?”
“…Eh?”
Reina paused for a bit after giving that short answer, which sounded as if she returned back to her confused state. Hearing that, Akira then said curtly.
“Don’t give me that ‘Eh?’, I’ve set the APC to just go around randomly after it gained some distance from me. If it got too far, give me a call and get on the wheel yourself. You can also use the gun on the APC, but I haven’t done any readjustment, so make sure not to shoot me by mistake.”
“Eh, ah, okay?”
“I know that you might not be happy after getting sent flying like that, but I bet Shiori and Kanae did that because, unlike both of them, you guys are nothing but dead weight in close range combat. If you have any complaints, you should voice that to them later. It’s not like I can do anything about it even if you vent that onto me, you know?”
“Ah, right, sorry.”
“You can use the ammo there too, I should still have quite a lot left over. So if you say that you’ll run away since you have no ammo left, I won’t accept that excuse, okay?!”
Reina immediately raised her voice.
“Who would say ‘I’ll run away’, huh?! Don’t look down on me!! I won’t run away, okay?!”
“Is that so? Well, then, I’m counting on your support.”
Akira then closed the call, Reina knew that he could no longer hear her as she shouted.
“‘I’m counting on you’, he said!!”
Reina hid her delight with that angry shout.
“Togami! We’re not running away, alright?!”
“Of course!!”
“Now you are talking!”
Strong will filled her body, she took in her surging resolve and let it course all the way to the very end of her limbs and hairs.
“Let’s show them what we are made of!!”
Seeing how Reina got back on her feet, Togami felt delighted and banished his own frustration from his mind.
The pillar of confidence that was about to break got even stronger than before. Although the situation had not changed at all, Reina and Togami no longer allowed themselves to be swept by the situation, they now stood to fight back against the flow.
Akira was riding on his bike with an SSB rifle in each of his hands. Alpha, who was floating beside him, looked a bit surprised and asked him.
“Akira, are you sure you’re okay with that?”
“I did fulfil my responsibility. If they decided to stay and join the fight then get killed by that, it’s not my fault. They didn’t pay me to be their bodyguard and I don’t remember ever accepting something like that, right?”
If he ran away from that place after leaving Shiori and Kanae as decoys, it meant that he would be indebted to them, and that was doubly true if Shiori or Kanae got killed because of that. At least, that was what he thought. But with this, even if Reina got killed because he went to help Shiori and Kanae, then it would not be his fault though Shiori and Kanae might get angry because of it. Or at least, it would not bother him as much. He followed that egocentric line of thinking as he jumped out of his APC on his bike.
Alpha let out a big sigh.
“So, how much support are you expecting from me this time?”
“Enough not to get me killed.”
“Roger that!”
Akira only gave a vague answer and Alpha did not ask for more than that.
Shiori activated her blade while she approached the female automaton. Her blade then started vibrating and gave off a dim glow, she gracefully and agilely swung that sword with her augmented physical ability thanks to her augmented suit. The swing sent out a wave of glowing particles which could cut any matter apart, it was as if she sent off a sharp blade flying.
It was actually a killing move since the average person would not be able to evade it and be sliced up by the wave. But the female automaton jumped away as if she knew the nature of that attack and used her own blade to block the wave and dispersed it.
The dispersed light particles shone on their faces. In contrast to Shiori, who had a rather grim expression, the automaton was emotionless as if she felt no danger from Shiori at all. The difference in their expression showed the gap between their strength.
The automaton swung her blade to counter, Shiori, who was using an accelerator drug with suppressed side-effects and prolonged effect duration in exchange for its power, saw the incoming blade. She aimed to throw the automaton off-balance by parrying its blade using the solid portion of her own blade. But the moment she realized the slight movement of the incoming blade, she immediately switched to completely avoiding it.
The automaton’s blade went through Shiori’s blade without any resistance and sliced everything beyond it. Although her blade was not damaged at all, that attack left a scorched slice marking on the ground and the plants that came in contact with it.
[That blade is the type that can alter its physical existence at will! This is getting troublesome…]
The blade that the automaton was using was a relic that was like a retractable baton. It was using the energy source from the automaton to overcharge its attacks. Because of that, it had enough slicing power even when in its retracted state.
The opponent was strong, she would not have enough leeway to fight such an opponent while protecting Reina, that was why she threw Reina to Akira’s APC. Then in order to prevent that automaton from destroying Akira’s APC, and in order to get Reina from that place safely, she decided to stay behind. She was relieved that it was the right choice, but at the same time, she was also hard-pressed since the automaton was stronger than she had expected and knitted her eyebrows.
Shiori and that Automaton exchanged slashes in an intense close-range combat. Every time they swung their blades, there was a trace of light in the air which demonstrated how intense their exchange was.
While on the other side, the male automaton took a kick from Kanae. But as that kick landed on its body, it also jumped backwards to reduce the damage from that kick. As the kick sent its body flying, it thrust its leg to the ground as a brake and drew a long straight line on the ground. When it finally stopped, it had fully recovered its balance and aimed its rifle at Kanae before releasing a few shots of beams at her.
Kanae accurately judged where it was aiming and blocked the beam with the forcefield armour erected from the equipment on her right hand. The beam was deflected by that force field armour and vanished into the wasteland along a straight line. The automaton then released 3 more shots. This time, Kanae blocked it with the forcefield armour on her left hand.
The automaton then stopped moving, still, there was no change in its emotionless face. In contrast to that, Kanae was smiling menacingly, but she suddenly sighed and mumbled.
“Ahh, this isn’t fun at all. Even if it’s a humanoid robot, fighting against a robot still feels like I’m just fighting against a punching bag…”
As her expectation that this might be fun melted from her mind, she let out a chilling cold aura and her smile faded from her face.
“I guess I’ll just break it and get this over with.”
Kanae said so with a cold emotionless intonation as she quickly closed the distance between them. Another beam was released at her, Kanae accurately predicted where it was aimed at, but unlike last time, she took the minimal move to evade it as if to intentionally graze the beam and closed the distance between them in an instant.
The moment she got close enough, Kanae released a punch with her right fist straight at the automaton’s torso. Since she no longer had any fun fighting that automaton, and she had lost any interest in it, that fist was purely aimed to break it. And as expected, it ripped through the durable old-world automaton’s torso, dealing significant damage.
