Chapter 216: Deathmatch

After Zalmo was blown away in his last exchange with Akira, he somehow landed safely and immediately scanned his surroundings. He was able to find the unconscious Akira from just a quick search.

The reason why he did not finish Akira off there and then, was simply because he was being extremely careful of the damage done to his body. Zalmo basically had lost one of his arms. The other parts of his body were also heavily damaged. Although he still could fight in that state, he could no longer fight the way he did before.

Normally, that level of exchange would not be able to cause that much damage to him. But in order to defend himself from Akira’s blade, he had to focus all the energy within his cyborg body to extend a forcefield armour to act as a shield, any part of his body exposed, was basically sacrificed.

Since the eastern district was dominated by rifles capable of long-range attacks, melee weapons sold in the eastern district had to have a certain edge to them. Something that would warrant its use in spite of the already powerful rifles. Something that would guarantee death once the enemy stepped into its reach. In order to answer this expectation, most of the melee weapons sold in the eastern district were extremely sharp.

Zalmo thought that Akira’s blade was also like that, after all, he decided to challenge Zalmo in melee range combat when they were stuck in an evenly matched battle. And Zalmo was right. If he had not used all of the energy within him, he would not have been able to defend himself against that attack.

In the end, Zalmo saw that against him, who had a rifle that could pierce through walls, Akira made a simple decision. To lure him to an open space without any walls. Akira’s sudden change in movement made him seem like a completely different person. That experience caused Zalmo to become overly cautious, he was suspicious of whether Akira was actually conscious or not.

It could be a scheme to lure him closer. Zalmo, who would be checking his surroundings with his information terminal before carefully approaching Akira, might get jumped on. Zalmo could easily foresee Akira suddenly springing up, taking out a concealed melee weapon to finish him after he got close enough. Otherwise, it was to lure Zalmo close enough, to ascertain Zalmo’s position and rifle’s condition before shooting.

Of course, with single doubt clouding his mind, Zalmo could not help but think of all kinds of possibilities. Naturally, none of which could be ignored. Back in the slum city and during their exchange just now, Akira was able to make a surprising move right when Zalmo thought that he had secured his victory. Thus, Zalmo had no wish to try his luck for the third time when his cyborg body was damaged. After deciding not to take that risk, Zalmo left that place in order to find something that could help ascertain his victory. His experience with Akira so far caused Zalmo’s decision-making skills to go south. It also saved Akira’s life.

And so, Zalmo was fighting Akira with a powered suit. Originally, Zalmo’s powered suit was prepared in order to cause chaos by attacking the city management’s squads, while also emitting friendly identification signals at the same time. But Zalmo was willing to risk being scolded by his boss later just to use it to eliminate Akira.

It might seem to be an excessive use of firepower. But to Zalmo, it was necessary. He already had seeds of fear planted within him. Seeds called Akira. He needed absolute, overwhelming firepower to kill him for certain. This time, he made sure of it. He removed any unlikely chance of Akira turning the tables on him. But now, even after using his powered suit, Akira was still alive. This further confirmed Zalmo’s paranoid decision as a correct one.

Akira continued fighting back desperately. He was standing on top of his APC as it drove haphazardly through the ruin. Nelia kept driving haphazardly in order to avoid the incoming bullets. The APC swayed violently, Akira was almost thrown off the vehicle each time it made a sharp turn. Akira was somehow able to fix his footing with the help of his augmented suit, but the incoming bullets from above made him frown as he kept shooting at the enemy’s powered suit.

Due to how fast the APC was going, the violent swaying, the distance to the target, and the speed of the enemy’s powered suit, Akira was not able to get a proper aim. The bullets that were able to properly reach their target were only the homing armour-piercing frag grenades. The explosions from those grenades then would throw the powered suit off-balance, interrupting its aiming. While at the same time, it also slowed down the powered suit’s movement. Akira then aimed for this opportunity to use his anti-forcefield armour bullets loaded SSB to snipe at that powered suit. Thus, further slowing down Zalmo and throwing off his aiming even further, allowing Akira’s APC to survive a few seconds more.

Akira compressed his time perception. Although he had another method to increase the accuracy of his sniping, he could not pick that option. After all, there was no guarantee that would kill the opponent. There was also a good chance he would not be able to take on the burden and it might outright knock him unconscious. He was certain that would happen so he was even limiting the density of his time perception compression.

He aimed for the moment when the enemy’s line of sight was blocked by a building before quickly returning back inside the APC. As the world ran at a slower pace, Akira wanted to quickly replace the energy packs in his rifles and coat before returning back to the top of the APC.

The swaying of the APC caused the supplies to be sent flying, but the time compression allowed Akira to follow the slowly flying objects around him. He would eject the magazines out of his rifles and would quickly take a new set of magazines floating in the air to replace them. He hardly had any leeway of returning back inside to replenish. So, he had no other choice but to get all the necessary supplies in the shortest time possible.

If Akira could not return back to the top of the APC before the opponent had a good line of sight to his vehicle, he would not be able to throw off Zalmo’s suppressive fire. Any more hits would quicken the death of his APC. In a situation where he had no support from Alpha, his only lifelines were his supplies. If he lost his APC, where he kept all of his supplies, he would no longer have any hope of surviving.

The raining bullets exchanged with the soaring ones. The difference in their firepower was obvious. Thanks to the forcefield armour of the powered suit, it did not sustain much damage even after getting hit. Although the energy conversion sapped its remaining energy, Akira had no way to measure how much the powered suit had left.

While the APC was able to survive thanks to its resilient armour plating, that was not the case for Akira. Even if he increased the forcefield armour output of his coat to its maximum, he could only take 1 shot at most, the second shot would definitely kill him. Although depending on how much energy he had left, he might still be able to avoid instant death. Nonetheless, there was no question that it would render him unfit to continue the fight. There was also a chance the first shot might even kill him outright. Akira was desperately trying to survive this battlefield under such harsh conditions.

He understood that he had no chance of winning, the most he could do there was to delay his imminent defeat. His only chance of survival was to keep delaying until his opponent faced the same issue. Forcing Zalmo to stop. Although the scale was completely different, Akira was no stranger to such fights, he had done it numerous times before he had met Alpha. Thus, Akira just kept on squeezing every last drop of strength he had to stay alive.

In the middle of that exchange, Zalmo had a grim expression on his face, hidden inside the augmented suit.

The homing armour piercing frag grenade ammo that Akira used was significantly slower than normal bullets, not to mention, Zalmo was moving relatively fast in the sky. But even so, Akira kept on accurately hitting his grenade ammo. The explosions threw Zalmo’s aiming off, thus significantly dropping his accuracy.

If Zalmo focused on aiming accurately, he would have to stop moving. This meant Akira would have a better chance of hitting him. If it came to that point, there was a good chance Akira would use an anti-forcefield round to snipe him using the small window of opportunity. Although the powered suit was strong enough to take a few anti-forcefield shots, an instantaneous barrage of a whole extended magazine would generate enough firepower to break the forcefield armour of his powered suit. Zalmo had no other choice but to keep moving in order to stay alive.

The powered suit was basically undamaged and it still had plenty of remaining energy. There was no question that Zalmo had the upper hand there. But Zalmo’s expression did not express any glee. Instead, it was the opposite. 

“…Are you kidding me? The heck is with that boy?! This powered suit has been designated to be used by the city defence squad as its next-generation powered suit, you know!? Why is it still not enough to kill him!?”

As Zalmo got more and more nervous, the powered suit’s control device notified him that the remaining energy had already gone below 50% and it was still falling fast.

Zalmo could still continue fighting in this state, but for some reason, Zalmo’s expression turned grimmer as he decided to bail out from the battle.

Zalmo thought that it was a bad idea to maintain this stalemate with little hope of immediately killing Akira. It would be horrendous if the powered suit no longer had enough remaining energy to expand its forcefield armour to the max the moment Akira launched a counter-attack. Furthermore, if he withdrew now, he could refill his energy packs as well as get anti-personnel weapons, which would give him a better chance of killing Akira. Once came to that conclusion, he decided to retreat.

The moment Zalmo left the battle, Akira also immediately stopped firing. For a split second there, Zalmo thought that Akira might have run out of ammo and that it was a mistake to leave the battle right now, but he then immediately shook his head and mumbled with a grim face.

“I know that it’s for a large scale expedition, but that armour plating and the amount of reserve ammo he has is simply overkill no matter how you look at it. I can understand if the expedition is close to the frontline, but that’s not the case here! Judging from his equipment, there’s a good chance that he was fully expecting to fight other Hunters… Wait, no way, don’t tell me he knew all along that this would happen right from the start…”

Zalmo voiced out his thoughts as he left the battlefield, but that only led him to more questions.

Akira’s gaze followed the retreating Zalmo as he had a rather surprised look on his face.

“Did he just run away?”

Nelia answered through the communication device.

“Akira, are you still alive?”

“Yeah, somehow.”

“Oh? That was impressive. So he didn’t leave because he got you, huh? Not bad.”

The first half of Nelia’s reply contained a surprise in its tone, while the latter half was more of amusement. Akira smiled wryly and dragged himself back inside the APC.

“Don’t just assume I’m dead like that. So then, where are we right now? Are we already close to the forward base?”

“Unfortunately, we’re even further than before.”

“The heck?”

In response to that rather sharp reply from Akira, Nelia replied with a rather sullen voice.

“That’s because I had to change the direction of the vehicle a few times to get away from all the bullets that guy shot, you know. Moreover, the route got closed by debris from that battle as well, so we can no longer use it to get back. Not only was I busy evading the incoming bullets, but I also had to take care of the monsters blocking our ways as well as avoiding the smaller paths to make sure that we won’t get stuck. I know that you were busy back then, but I was equally busy here as well, you know?”

“Is that so? I see. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome!”

As Akira just honestly thanked her, Nelia replied with a jovial voice.

“Sorry, but can you keep driving for the time being? I need to take a rest.”

“Sure, by the way, are you alright?”

“No idea. If I say no, are you going to help me?”

“Hm? I just need to adjust my plan like including the case if you get killed.”

“I see, I’m fine.”

“That’s good to hear.”

Akira smiled wryly as he relaxed.

Akira started by reloading and replacing his energy packs. He then took a good amount of medicine before sitting on the collapsible bed. His mind has been dulled since he had relaxed after such an intense fight. He looked around the inside of the APC, all the supplies that were once there had significantly reduced and it was easy to see just how discouraged Akira was from his expression.

The anti-forcefield bullet was better than the ones he had used in the past. Each one cost him 1000 Aurum per thanks to the discount. The homing armour-piercing frag grenades cartridges were even more expensive than the anti-forcefield bullets. The medicines had cost him 10 million Aurum a box. The energy packs were more costly now that he had better equipment on. All of these were the price of his survival without Alpha’s support. But he shook his head and banished that thought from his mind.

He had no leeway to tire himself with more things to worry about. Moreover, if he was able to survive that fight only by using this much, that in itself meant that he had become pretty strong. Akira told himself that as he lightly laughed, mocking the bad situation he was in.

The vehicle was shaking violently. Sounds of explosions could be heard outside. It was far from peaceful, but even so, it was precious resting time for Akira. He controlled his breathing to help him recover while making sure that he would not get thrown off from the bed.

But even that did not even last for 10 minutes.

“Akira, something is approaching us from behind. It is outside the shooting range of the machine gun and it’s pretty fast.”

“I know.”

Akira already noticed that signal from the APC’s sensor that was connected to his information terminal. He opened the back door and carefully checked the direction of the signal. The moment he did that, he could not hide his surprise. The signal came from 2 young female Hunters who were being thrown right into Akira’s APC.

Akira was judging what to do there, whether to shoot them down, deflect them away, or receive them. In the first place, he had no idea if they were friends or foes. While he was at loss on what to do, he was already too late. The two girls went past him right into the APC and crashed into the supply boxes.

Akira pulled out his rifles and aimed at them by pure reflex. But at the next moment, he realized the state of those two girls. He understood that it was useless to shoot them. One of the girls had her neck torn off while the other one had a large hole in her torso.

“Corpses?! What the hell is going on here?!”

Although Akira was even more confused than before, he immediately shoved that out of his head as he immediately returned his aim outside the APC and pulled the trigger. The person who threw those dead Hunters into Akira’s APC jumped away using his immense strength to avoid the incoming barrage before landing on top of the APC.

Akira jumped outside of the APC and made a flip, the moment he landed, he immediately aimed his rifles on top of his APC. Since forced himself to maintain his posture using his augmented suit, there was a line dug into the ground. However, his aim was still on target and did not meander away at all.

But the next second, Akira compressed his time perception and jumped out of the way since the guy had jumped off the APC and swung down a powerful kick aimed at him. The kick landed on the ground. But, Akira avoided it. The huge force from the kick was taken in by the ground, creating a huge crack.

While both of them were still off-balance, they raced each other, fixing their postures in order to get the first dip on the next attack. Both of them then immediately stopped. They raised their guards toward each other while searching for an opening. And so, they ended up standing still, staring at each other for a few seconds.

Akira’s expression turned grim the moment he got a good look on his opponent’s face.

“You…”

Tiol laughed like a mad man.

“Sorry for the wait! I’m here to kill you now!! Both you and that guy!!”

Akira then noticed that Tiol’s equipments were eerily similar to his. They were so similar that it was impossible to differentiate between them from afar.

“That guy? Who?”

The answer to that question quickly presented itself after that. Another vehicle appeared from behind. The upper part of the vehicle could be opened to make it easier for its passengers to fight, and the person peeking out from that vehicle was Katsuya.

The dead girls that Tiol threw into Akira’s APC were from Katsuya’s team. He went to attack Katsuya’s team, killed some of them, grabbed the badly wounded, and then went to look for Akira while maintaining his distance from Katsuya. He made sure that Katsuya would not lose sight of him. After finding Akira, Tiol then threw the badly wounded Hunters to Akira.

The transmitters in their augmented suits continuously sent signals to let others know the location of its users. Katsuya thought that he might be able to save them if they were still alive, that was why he continued to chase after those signals. Even after the signals told him that they were already dead, Katsuya still kept on chasing. However, this time, it was for the sake of revenge. He did not notice that Tiol deliberately maintained the distance between them in order to lure him.

The moment Katsuya caught Tiol in his sights, he immediately roared.

“There you are!! This is revenge for them!! I’ll kill you!! I’ll definitely kill you!!”

Katsuya could not differentiate between Akira and Tiol. But Katsuya no longer cared about that anymore. He blindly believed that the other guy was Tiol’s friend and that he would just need to kill them both.

Akira finally understood what was going on and sent a sharp glare at Tiol.

“You bastard…”

But Tiol did not seem shaken at all as he grinned and said.

“I’ll definitely kill both of you!! So you can go ahead and kill each other!! Both of you can just go to the afterlife!”

Akira immediately ran back to his APC and Tiol followed next to him. Not too long after that, Katsuya released a barrage of grenades. In a blink of an eye, the whole area was enveloped in explosions.

Akira and Tiol jumped out of the explosions, Akira was unharmed thanks to his coat while Tiol was able to quickly regenerate thanks to his abnormal vitality as a monster.

Akira and Tiol also exchanged shots while running side by side. They released their rounds at the same time and then jumped out of its way at the same time. It was as if they had prearranged their engagement beforehand. They blazed left and right through the ruin using their enhanced physical strength to evade their opponent’s bullets as well as the raining grenades. All of this was done as they kept releasing shots at each other, aiming to stop the other in their tracks. Both sides knew that the first person who stopped would be hit by the grenades and would be rendered unable to fight. So they were willing to take some hits and focused more on speed instead of evading the bullets.

But then, Tiol was able to go ahead of Akira. Tiol kept running in front of him as he aimed backwards without even looking. Although Tiol was aiming without looking while running at the same time, Akira understood that he was aiming properly at him since the internals of the muzzle of his rifle could be seen.

With Katsuya’s team chasing and shooting from behind them, Akira understood if he focused more on evading instead of moving forward, the attacks from both Katsuya and Tiol would kill him. Thus, in order to survive, Akira chose to risk it. He completely ignored the pain on his head as he gathered his focus, compressed his time perception, and retried bending reality with his will.

Akira’s vision once again distorted. As his perception of the world turned sharper, he charged straight toward the muzzle in front of him. The manoeuvre and increased output of his augmented suit were crushing his body. It was only thanks to the medicine that Akira took before jumping into action that helped maintain the shape of his body.

The expensive medicines had a strong healing effect and prolonged healing duration. Thus, it was able to quickly heal any small wounds. But of course, that did not make the body stronger. It was a forceful method to keep the performance of the body by relying on the healing power of the medicines through an endless cycle of breaking and healing the body on a cellular level. The moment the medicine’s effects ran out, or the moment the injuries were faster than the healing, Akira would instantly die.

In that situation where Akira himself was uncertain how close to death he was, he was able to accurately predict where Tiol was aiming as he kept accelerating forward. Akira only took the least necessary movements to evade the incoming bullets as they grazed and took a piece of flesh off his face. However, that kind of wound was far from dangerous. It was not even close to enough to shave off Akira’s fighting spirit. He rapidly closed the distance to Tiol with a grin, he then used the full power of his augmented suit to swing down his blade at Tiol.

Tiol did try to evade that attack but he was not able to completely get away from it either. The glowing blade completely cut off one of Tiol’s arms right from the shoulder down.

As Akira saw Tiol’s arm flying away slowly through the air, he thought that he had the upper hand now. He quickly changed posture in order to deliver the killing blow, but when he saw the severed arm move, he raised his eyebrows and jumped away. The severed arm suddenly folded its elbow to aim the rifle on its hand at Akira while still in mid-air.

The severed arm pulled the trigger, the bullets in its muzzle spewed out grazing Akira. The kickback from the shots caused the rifle to flail uncontrollably in the air. While still running, Tiol quickly grabbed the flailing arm that was flying at him from the recoil of the shots. He then placed it back onto the open surface wound, which was gushing out green blood. When both arm and shoulder touched, they somehow got reconnected.

Akira, who had already jumped away and opened some distance from Tiol, saw that and was astonished. He was surprised that Tiol was able to reconnect his severed arm, but more than that, he was surprised by the blood coming out from the wound.

[Green blood… No way, can it be that…?]

Akira remembered the massive humanoid monsters that he had fought in the past. As if he knew what Akira was thinking, Tiol laughed at him.

“So that monster was you, huh!? Didn’t I kill you back then? How the heck did you return back from death? I see now! In that case, I can just kill you again and again until you’re dead!”

“That’s right!! That was me!! But this time, I will be the one who wins!! You’ll be the one dead!!”

As Akira and Tiol ran side by side while widening the distance between them, they exchanged a grin, although they did not exchange words, both sides knew what the other sides were thinking about. They stopped momentarily shooting at each other because of their surprise as well as for the sake of healing their wounds. However, it did not take long before they immediately aimed their rifles at each other and were about to start exchanging bullets again.

That was when a vehicle suddenly went in and charged at them. Nelia’s voice could be heard from the communication device.

“Akira!! I’m coming there, so hop on!”

Nelia did not understand what was going on. But she understood that she could not afford to slow down nor to stop. She accelerated the APC forward as if to run over anything and anyone that got in its way.

The vehicle went past between Tiol and Akira. Akira quickly jumped and grabbed the side of the APC and Tiol did the same on the other side.

Katsuya’s team was still shooting at them from the front. The storm of bullets was intense. It came both from the machine gun of the vehicles as well as rifles from each Hunter. But that was not enough to stop Akira’s APC with Nelia continuing to go at full speed.

Nelia kept shooting at the machine guns in order to reduce the incoming bullets while she kept accelerating the APC. Akira had one hand holding onto one side of the APC while he was using his other free hand to shoot homing armour piercing frag grenades to clear the way forward. Tiol also did the same from the other side except he was aiming specifically at Katsuya’s team.

There was a difference in their shots, Nelia and Akira focused more on clearing obstacles while Tiol was clearly aiming to kill Katsuya’s team. Because of that, most of the obstacles removed were from Akira’s side. So Nelia directed the vehicle toward that opening, causing Tiol’s side to be more exposed.

Not only did this shield Akira from the enemy’s bullets, but it also made Tiol take on most of them.

The APC used all the build-up momentum to charge into a small opening within the enemy’s formation. The smaller vehicles could not withstand the power of Akira’s large APC and were sent flying.

Akira managed to hold on from getting thrown off the APC. It was thanks to his augmented suit that the shock from the collision did not knock him off. But that was not the case for Tiol. After taking in tons of bullets, he was weakened to the point that shock threw him off the APC. The collision shook some of the armour tiles off the APC, but with its superior horsepower and size, it successfully managed to force its way through the enemy’s formation.

Akira was breathing rapidly as he climbed up the APC. His first step after that was to use more medicine to heal his body before asking Nelia.

“…Nelia, thanks for the help. But like, could you have done it better?”

Nelia replied with an amused voice.

“Nope. As a matter of fact, you should be more thankful than that. After all, I came back for you.”

“Thank you very much!”

“You’re welcome. We’re allies for now after all. So I would at least do that much for you”

“Well, thanks.”

Akira smiled wryly and just spat out that reply. That was when Nelia warned him.

“Two signals from above!!”

Akira quickly aimed his rifles up but he did not make it in time, so he instead jumped out of the way. Right at the next moment. Those two signals landed simultaneously above the APC. The shock from Katsuya and Tiol landing on top of the APC shook it and caused the armour tiles where they landed to bend.

Tiol laughed like a mad man. Although his body was covered in his green blood from the bullets before, he had already healed up all of his wounds.

“Don’t think you can get away from me!!”

Katsuya’s expression was filled with hatred. That hatred caused him to throw caution into the wind as he did something as reckless as jumping onto the enemy’s APC.

“You won’t get away from me!! All of you will die here!!”

Akira frowned, but it was more because of an inconvenience rather than hatred.

“Just knock it off already, Katsuya, was it again? The object of your revenge is over there, not me.”

Akira said so and pointed at Tiol. But that did not soften the hatred from Katsuya’s eyes.

“You won’t trick me!! It’s both of you!! I’ll definitely avenge my friends’ death!!”

“I know that you’re misunderstanding this, but I’ll at least try to let you know that I’m not that guy’s friend!!”

“Like hell I would believe that!!”

“Then let’s do this instead, how about we work together until we get to kill that guy? We can try to kill each other after that.”

“You gotta be crazy to think that I would work with you!”

Akira did that knowing that it was highly unlikely for Katsuya to accept his offer, but even so, getting rejected still made him knit his eyebrows. That was when Tiol then mocked.

“In that case, Akira, how about you work with me instead?”

“Drop dead.”

Tiol laughed and shifted his gaze to Katsuya.

“How about you?”

“I’ll kill you!!”

Between the three of them, one thought that it was a huge inconvenience, one was laughing like a mad man, and one was glaring with intense hatred. All of them there already expected that no one would try to work with anyone, so after they confirmed that their guesses were correct, they then spoke as they jumped into action at the same time.

“Alright alright, then both of you can just die!”

“Get on with it already!! Kill each other!! Die!!”

“I’ll definitely kill both of you!!”

The intense three-way deathmatch started on top of the ‘narrow’ APC.

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