“Once we head in, we’ll secure an escape route and check the areas where hunters might be likely to have taken refuge. We’ll investigate the state of the ruin as we go, but rescuing missing people takes priority. I talked with the insurance company from our previous job, and they said they’ll pay us a bonus for any of their clients we end up rescuing on this trip as well. So if we focus primarily on rescuing, we can kill two birds with one stone.”

  As the team’s reconnaissance unit, Elena and Sara assumed the middle position. That left Akira and Shikarabe’s teams to divide the front and rear positions between them.

  “Shikarabe, which position do you want?” Elena asked.

  “Hmm...” The veteran looked over at Togami, who looked displeased but stayed silent. The Druncam hunters both knew what Elena was implicitly asking: Which place would make it easier for Shikarabe to cover for any errors Togami made?

  Shikarabe glanced at Akira—who just looked puzzled, as he had no idea what they all were getting at.

  “We’ll take the front,” Shikarabe said at last.

  “Okay, Akira and Carol, you two have the rear,” Elena said.

  “Roger,” Akira replied.

  Togami gritted his teeth in frustration, but after a long sigh he managed to calm down. He understood Shikarabe’s reasoning: it was better to have the deadweight (if Togami proved to be such) at the front, making it harder to go on, than at the back impeding their retreat.

  Once they were all in position, they checked to make sure that all their scanners were linked together and that they could reach each other via short-range comms. The factory district was currently experiencing a network disturbance—right now even getting in touch with the temporary base was difficult (a major factor in the low survival rate of those who went deeper into the ruin). Short-range communications used less bandwidth, however, and so were functioning just fine. To minimize the interference, Akira and the others set their comm devices to the shortest range possible.

  “Great, everything’s working fine,” Elena announced. “Are we all ready? Let’s go!”

  Akira hardly recognized the factory district from his last visit. Mechanical remains were scattered all over, sometimes even blocking off whole corridors. There was blood everywhere—what was left of the hunters who’d fought for their lives here. From the bloodstains smearing the walls and floors, as well as the sheer amount of machine scraps, Akira and the others could easily imagine how ferocious the battles in this area had been.

  Yet as they pressed on farther, they couldn’t find a single human body. Akira thought this strange, but assumed that previous rescue teams had already retrieved the corpses. He put the puzzle out of his mind.

  The exploration itself was going smoothly, largely thanks to Togami. Determined not to burden the rest of the team and to prove to himself what he was truly capable of, he was going all out. He quickly and accurately secured the rooms and corridors before them; if they encountered scanner-proof walls, he threw or launched small scanning devices ahead to get an accurate reading on what lay in wait.

  The weaker sentries he dispatched on his own, and even double-checked to make sure they were destroyed. As a team member, his performance was exemplary—even Shikarabe silently gave him a passing grade. If the veteran found anything to nitpick, it was that exerting so much energy and effort from the outset might tire the boy quickly, but otherwise the older hunter had no complaints. Nor did he warn Togami to slow down or let up on the gas a bit. In Shikarabe’s eyes, skill was also about being able to perform at your best for a long period of time. If Togami wore himself out too early and put the whole group at risk, then he had no business being here in the first place, and Shikarabe would have a reason to remove him from the team.

  Togami’s persistence drove him to move at a faster pace, which forced the rest of the team to hurry as well. Of course, this was a problem for the one member who was already struggling to keep up—Akira. Because he mostly worked and trained solo, he was having a hard time adjusting to a pace set by someone else.

  Sara saw the tension in Akira’s face and looked worried. “You okay? Do you want to take a break?”

  But Akira forced a smile and shook his head. “No, I’m good. Unless I’m holding everyone else back, that is.”

  “No, that wasn’t what I meant. Just, if you need a break, say so, okay?”

  “Sure. I will, don’t worry.”

  Akira sounded sincere, so Sara felt somewhat relieved. Still, she turned to Elena just in case.

  Shizuka had asked Elena to make sure Akira didn’t overexert himself. So, sensing Sara’s concern, she decided to test him and ordered Togami to go faster. When you forced yourself to keep up with everyone else, you often wore out quickly, impairing your response to anything unexpected. If Akira really was fine, speeding up a bit wouldn’t completely exhaust him—maybe just cause him to fall back a little. But if he was already pushing himself beyond his limits to keep up, he’d probably fall to his knees instead.

  As it turned out, Akira didn’t lag behind one bit. He still looked stressed, but no more than before.

  Seeing this, she had Togami speed up again. Now even Shikarabe wondered if they were going a mite too fast. But Akira still didn’t falter, nor did he miss a beat guarding the rear—he dealt swiftly and precisely with the monsters that appeared behind them.

  At his side, Carol looked astonished. “From the look on your face, I figured maybe you were having trouble, but I guess not.”

  Akira smiled wanly. “If I don’t work at least this hard, you’ll make off with our entire profits, right?”

  “Oh? If you’re tired, you can just take a break and leave it to me, you know.”

  “Yeah right. Why don’t you take a rest instead?”

  “Wishful thinking!”

  Elena and Sara watched their competitive banter and smiled at each other.

  “I think Akira’s probably fine,” Sara suggested.

  “You’re right. If we go any faster, we’ll be the ones struggling to keep up. Looks like I worried for nothing.” Every now and then Akira would show bizarre moments of weakness, it was true. But Elena reminded herself of how capable he’d been during the hypersynthetic snake hunt. There was probably just something about Akira’s character that made him occasionally seem weaker than he was, and if something like that had led both her and Sara to draw the wrong conclusion, then they themselves still had a long way to go as hunters. They had no reason to worry about Akira.

  In fact, however, their intuition had been right on the money—Akira was indeed already at his limit. Had he been relying only on his own strength, he would’ve fallen way behind by now. But when the team’s speed had picked up, Alpha had merely increased her level of support to match it. So from an outside perspective it appeared as though Akira wasn’t having any trouble.

  Meanwhile, someone else was getting the short end of the stick—Togami. He had already been putting forth his best effort, forging ahead at a clip that he would have thought outstanding. Yet twice now Elena had ordered him to speed up, and no one had raised a single complaint or objected—as if this pace were normal for them.

  So Togami concluded that he was the one dragging down the rest of the team—that he was the real burden. Even as such thoughts pained his heart, however, Togami didn’t falter.

  But after a while, Shikarabe spoke up at last. “All right, Togami, slow down.”

  “D-Don’t worry! I’ve got this!” the boy responded automatically. That was his remaining pride talking—even he could tell he was practically at his limit. He also knew that disobeying Shikarabe’s orders would only hurt him in the end. Nevertheless, the words were already out of his mouth—there was no taking them back now.

  Shikarabe glared at him. “I didn’t ask you if you could handle it. I told you to slow down. If you can’t follow orders, you’re off the team.”

  Realizing that Shikarabe’s command hadn’t been out of consideration or concern for him, Togami came to his senses and meekly complied.

  “What’s up?” Elena asked in surprise. “Something wrong?”

  “Scan the area up ahead, Elena,” Shikarabe said. “I’ve got a bad feeling, but at this distance my scanner can’t get an accurate reading.”

  “All right.” As the team’s intel person, Elena carried the best scanner. She’d been checking the area around the team this whole time to detect ambushes, but she now focused her device straight ahead. Then she frowned. “Numerous readings—and it looks like they’re headed this way. Maybe a bit more than we can handle.”

  Countless dots—most likely monsters—were coming toward them. Given how fast the dots were moving, Elena determined that it would be impossible to outrun them. But she didn’t panic. “Let’s fall back a bit and intercept them,” she ordered, and her attitude seemed to say, There are a bunch of enemies, but so what? We’ll get through this all right.

  Her composure reassured the rest of the team, and they got into position. Currently they were in a multilevel room that was just as wide as it was tall. Machinery lined the factory floor in rows, and here the team took cover as the monsters approached.

  Because Elena’s scanner was now directed in a straight line, its accuracy increased dramatically. Monsters were no longer vague dots, and their positions and shapes were clearly visible. Now that she knew what they looked like, she could guess what sort of weapons they might be holding and roughly estimate their range of fire, and she sent the results of her analysis to the rest of the team. With this, they had all the information they needed to intercept the horde.

  But suddenly a new group of enemies appeared from the back of the room—multilegged tanks nearly a meter tall, rolling along the ceiling rather than the floor as they approached.

  A dense hail of gunfire quickly halted their advance, however. The wave of gunshots blasted through the swarm, scattering countless machine parts into the air.

  These were small fry compared to the tanks Akira and the others had fought just the other day. Though their enemies covered the whole ceiling, the team’s combined firepower was more than enough to keep them at bay. Akira’s A4WM rapidly fired grenades into their midst—the ones that were directly hit exploded, while those nearby were blown off the ceiling. Once on the ground, in order to reach the humans, they had to dodge through the factory machinery that littered the floor, slowing their assault despite their many limbs.

  Some machines managed to avoid the grenades and remain on the ceiling, but these were summarily picked off by Sara’s thick gunfire. She was using extended magazines, and each of her bullets was more powerful than average—back at Shizuka’s shop, Akira had slipped her Kibayashi’s ID code so she could purchase stronger munitions.

  Still, some of the monsters were tougher than others. While all multilegged tanks were similar in appearance, their specifications varied. The more resilient ones charged through Akira and Sara’s combined fire. Yet even these were hardly a threat—Elena marked the tougher monsters for the rest of the team with her scanner, and Carol destroyed each with a single hit the moment they emerged unscathed from Akira and Sara’s onslaught. Her bullets had downed the giant tanks with ease, so they effortlessly pierced through even the toughest of these small ones.

  Even more tanks were rolling in along the walls, and others managed to evade all the obstacles on the floor. But the Druncam team took them out before they could attack. For someone of Shikarabe’s caliber this was no sweat, and Togami managed to put up a fight as well (although largely aided by his high performance gear). Thanks to their preparation and having the best position, which they’d secured at the outset, the team was able to maintain the upper hand.

  Chapter 116: The Survivor

  However, the fight dragged on. The team still had the advantage, but enemy reinforcements kept coming—seemingly endlessly. After a while, Akira began to get fed up. Alpha, when is this gonna end already?

  Even I can’t tell that much. I do know the storage rooms ahead can’t hold an infinite supply of sentries, so this force has got to dry up eventually. But if we happen to be near the factory where those sentries are actually manufactured, there might be an extraordinarily large supply of them. So it might be quite a while yet before they run out.

  Well, that would definitely explain why there are so many! Good thing this isn’t classified as a rescue job! The payouts for rescue jobs were usually fixed and awarded only once the rescue target had been recovered. No matter how many monsters you took out along the way, you wouldn’t receive any bonuses. The insurance companies listed these jobs and paid hunters for successful rescues, but that money came from the insurance fees they charged their clients. Even if a hunter tried to negotiate a higher pay on the grounds that he’d encountered more enemies than expected, and demanded compensation for expending extra ammo, the companies could only do so much in response.

  But it was the city that had tasked them with this job, and their main objective was to investigate the factory district. In order to quell the chaos there, they were actually encouraged to eliminate as many monsters as they could—and the city was prepared to pay big bonuses for their efforts. Without having to worry about taking a loss on ammo costs, Akira had been able to purchase extended magazines of grenades this time around. But with no end in sight to the flood of enemies, he still couldn’t help but groan.

  Had they been organic monsters instead, they could have gotten spooked and run away. But since his enemies were machines, they didn’t misfire in panic no matter how many of their brethren were slaughtered or how much damage their own bodies received. It looked like they really would have to fight up until all the sentries in the area were gone. Akira sighed.

  “We’re hardly making a dent in them—let’s fall back for now,” Elena announced at last. “We’ll head back to base and reevaluate the situation.”

  Shikarabe sounded doubtful. “You sure? We haven’t done much investigating yet, and we’ve still got plenty of ammo.”

  “When we get back, we’ll tell them that there were far more enemies than expected. That info alone should be enough to satisfy the city. As for the ammo, I’d rather retreat while we have some to spare. If we decide to turn back by the time we have less than half of our stock depleted, it’ll be too late.”

  “Fair point. All right, let’s head back.”

  “We’ll take our time retreating,” Elena instructed. “We still have the advantage for now, so let’s keep it that way. Don’t let up your fire—just calmly make your way to the exit.”

  Her decision was logical, but they were giving up all the same. So to avoid hurting the team’s morale, she tried to sound upbeat while giving her orders.

  But Togami’s face twisted in frustration—he had yet to perform at a level that satisfied him. In his mind, turning tail now would be tantamount to admitting he wasn’t good enough, and he was desperate to prove this wasn’t the case.

  Suddenly a new voice broke out over their comms. “Help me! Please!”

  Everyone else looked shocked, but Elena responded without missing a beat. “Who is this?! Where are you?! Our comms are set for short-range communication—are you somewhere in this building? Please give me some coordinates—it’ll be hard to find you as is.”

  “Y-Yes, I’ll send them right over! Just a second!” A moment later, Elena received a map with the sender’s location marked on it. The map itself was identical to the one the official at the base had provided Akira and the rest with, so the sender was likely another hunter who had been tasked with investigating the district.

  Elena studied the map, looking more and more serious. The hunter was just up ahead, in a room connected to another corridor through which the hunter had likely entered. And according to the data the hunter had sent along with the map, that corridor was now teeming with hostile machines. On the other side was the seemingly endless horde Akira and his team had been fighting. So the hunter was essentially cut off by enemies.

  If Akira’s team wanted to rescue the hunter, they’d have to break through the enemy lines. Though they had the upper hand for the moment, advancing would be far more dangerous than falling back. They’d have to abandon their advantageous position while facing such a large contingent of enemies that it had already convinced the hunters to retreat.

  Though she regretted it, Elena felt sure they would have to leave the hunter behind—a rescue just wasn’t feasible. She tried one more option: “If we back you up, could you somehow make it to us on your own? Right now it’s not looking like we’ll be able to break through to where you are.”

  “I-I can’t! I could hardly make it to this room...!”

  As if to give credence to the hunter’s claim, the sound of continuous gunfire rattled over the wireless. Elena felt torn. Rescuing hunters was also part of their job, and sometimes that meant heading into danger. But there was a limit to how much danger they could reasonably allow—and as the one responsible for her whole team’s safety, she couldn’t make this decision lightly.

  All at once, Togami announced, “I’m going in! Cover me!” At some unconscious level, he saw this as his last chance to determine how strong he truly was. Eager to prove himself, he was ready to charge in.

  Elena waited a single second. When Shikarabe didn’t intervene, she concluded Druncam was prepared to take full responsibility for Togami’s actions—and any consequences. She glanced over at Akira, who gave her a small nod.

  “All right, new plan!” Elena declared. “Everyone cover Togami! We’re cutting through the enemy to rescue a hunter in need! Togami, get in as quick as you can, but keep your cool! Is that clear?”

 

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