Rebuild World

as a hostage after all.”

“Even if you say so… He already killed so many of our team, you know.”

“That’s true, but still…”

Yumina could not tell Katsuya to believe Akira.
But Katsuya also could not say that it was an empty offer.
Both of them had mixed feelings regarding the matter, they could not force the matter to any direction.
It did not seem that they would be able to make a decision anytime soon.

As for Airi, she had nothing to complain about, no matter what might happen as long as Katsuya made the decision.
Her only thought was that she would simply follow Katsuya’s order.
But even so, she thought that it was a bad idea to waste time like this, so she interjected.

“Either way, for now, letting both of them battle it out is beneficial to us.
It’s better to use the time to watch how the situation will evolve while recovering the team members.
I want to bring them back even if they’re already dead.
Moreover, we might still be able to save some of them and the situation might change while we’re doing so, there’s no need to make a decision right away.”

Some of Katsuya’s team members were already placed under emergency life support system.
Some, but not all, due to the restraint on their budget, priority and what not. 

Many were so badly wounded that they would have died if they were common people.

Although they were not cyborgs, who could live with only their heads like Nelia, their lives were still somehow maintained. 

With Airi’s reminder that there might still be members who were still alive and savable, Katsuya could not refuse her advice.

“You’re right, okay then, I’ll take some people up with me.
Airi and Yumina, both of you stay here.“

But Yumina stopped Katsuya.

“No, you stay here.
Airi, I’m sorry but you should go instead, I won’t force you if you don’t want to.
And please return back immediately if things get dangerous.
So, please.”

“Okay, Yumina and Katsuya should stay here then.”

“I’m counting on you.”

Katsuya was rather shocked as he was watching that exchange between Airi and Yumina which was so casual as if it was completely normal.

“Eh? I can’t go too?”

“No.
If you go, I bet you will get ahead of yourself like always, right? So no, you absolutely can’t go.”

“Yeah.
You stay and take command from here.”

“No no no, it’ll be fine.
Both of you really don’t trust me, do you?”

“Absolutely!”

“That’s correct!”

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“Ah, I see.”

Katsuya was pushed back by Yumina and Airi’s pressure.
He was completely overwhelmed as he nodded obediently at them.

Airi took some of the team members to search the inside of the building.
Carrying back the injured team members that were left behind while retrieving those who were already killed.

Some of them might look dead when they were still savable, some might only look unconscious when actually already dead.
There was also the problem of whether the emergency life support system could properly sustain their life.
With so many uncertainties in place, Airi and her team mostly placed the bodies that they found in body bags.
After that, they took the bags back before going out again.

In the middle of that, Airi found something strange.
Although there was a pool of blood on the floor, the source of that blood was nowhere to be found.

[Judging from the amount of blood, this should be about four people’s worth.
But there are no bodies around.
It’s highly unlikely that the bodies moved somewhere on their own.
Is the cleaning drone of this building still active, and it has cleaned away their bodies? Or is it that there is a flesh-eating monster inside the building? Although I don’t know what happened, I know for sure that something has happened here…]

Airi frowned and said to the rest of the team.

“We’ll be heading back.
Stay alert.”

Although the order ultimately lacked any extra explanation, the rest of the team understood the meaning behind her words thanks to the local network.
They had the same thought, that they had to inform Katsuya and the others.
That there might be other enemies inside the building besides Akira and Tiol, and that enemies might be lurking somewhere nearby even now.
None of them doubted that possibility as they proceeded with caution with the assumption that the enemy was nearby.

Airi’s team carefully retreated just like that and returned downstairs toward where the rest of the team was.

While in another location inside the building, Tiol was aiming at Airi and her team while they were in the midst of their work.
As the multiple rifles on the end of his multiple arms were aimed at them, Tiol finally pulled the trigger.

But surprisingly enough, the trigger did not budge.
The aiming devices recognized Airi and her team as friendly entities, thus the trigger was locked as a part of the anti-friendly-fire safety function.

“The trigger won’t move… Why…?”

Tiol tilted his head and lowered his rifles, thus the trigger locks were immediately disengaged.

“I can’t use these, huh… Then how about from over there…?”

Tiol processed his current situation.
Attacking Airi’s team to get extra weapons.
But his current rifles could not be used on them.
So he changed his plan as he had no other target nearby other than Akira.

After Tiol’s brain reached that conclusion, he hesitated to make his decision.
After all, it was not what he wanted.
If he allowed the system to decide his course of action, he would attack Akira in order to get more weapons.
However, his original goal was to kill Akira.
Not to get more weapons.
The course of action dictated by the system did not have the goal to kill Akira.
As long as Akira no longer had his weapons, he might be left alone.
How could Tiol possibly accept such an outcome?

“…That’s right, I have to kill that guy.”

Tio, who has been rather emotionless up until now, finally showed some emotions and it only grew stronger.
His consciousness that had been leaning toward the system regained its sense of self and managed to wrestle control over his own mind from the system.

“If only I kill that guy!!!”

Now that Tiol had regained his sense of self, he quickly acted following his pure emotions.
At the moment, his emotions were the only thing that was controlling his action.
Without even realizing that he had lost a huge chunk of his individualism since the system had overwritten them, Tiol went straight towards Akira.

Tiol believed that everything would be alright as long as he could kill Akira.
He believed that and devoted himself to turning that into reality despite the fact that he no longer remembered what he was ultimately pursuing by killing Akira.

—*—*—*—

While in a room close to the roof of the building, Akira let out a sigh.
After reloading new magazines and energy packs into his equipment, the rucksack that Akira had been using to carry his supply reserve has been finally emptied.
Seeing the now empty rucksack, Akira just smiled bitterly and threw it away.

According to the deal with Yumina, Akira would kill Tiol.
But he had no wish to look for Tiol.
So he just waited there while taking a rest in a room.

[It would have been great if they kill each other, but as I thought, that’s highly unlikely, huh.]

Akira had a bad feeling that even after he distanced himself from Katsuya’s team to avoid fighting them, Tiol would still come to him instead of Katsuya’s team.
That was why he did not place any hope in that possibility.

The reason why Akira told Yumina that he would be the one to go to kill Tiol was simply to avoid having to fight Katsuya’s team while he was engaging with Tiol.
Regardless of whether he was able to make a deal with Katsuya’s team or not, he had decided to kill Tiol right from the start.

Akira already understood that Tiol did not come to this building simply by pure coincidence, Tiol came to that building knowing for certain that Akira was there and he lured Katsuya’s team here.
So unless Akira killed Tiol, Tiol would keep doing the same thing again and again.
Thus, Akira concluded that it would have been dangerous if he tried to escape the building in this kind of situation.

Akira’s plan was to kill Tiol and then Katsuya’s team after that.
And if it was possible, he wanted to only kill Tiol this time and push back on killing Katsuya’s team to another day.
Although he hoped so, he knew that would not happen.

[They just come at me at the same time no matter what for some reason.
I really hope they would come at me at different times.]

Normally, Alpha retrieved information from the information-gathering device via Akira.
So although Akira had lost Alpha’s support, information was still sent to him.
He processed that unprocessed data, which was closer to a meaningless information noise, using his intuition, which had regained its original sharpness.
In short, he was detecting hostile force only by relying on his intuition.

And that intuition was working perfectly fine.
Akira looked downward, to where his opponent was.

“He’s finally here…”

According to Akira’s intuition, it was not a group of people.
So it might be just Tiol alone.
Akira frowned and made a rather conflicted expression, but he immediately raised his eyebrows and leapt away.

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A moment later, a huge hole was blown open under the floor where Akira was standing just a moment ago and Tiol jumped out from that hole.
He had opened a huge hole from the lower floor using his large cannon.

[Why the heck do you have to come from there?! Can’t you at least use the stairs for God’s sake!?]

Akira, who had opened up a large distance between himself and Tiol, quickly turned around and shot out a few homing grenades toward Tiol’s direction using the SSB rifle.
Seeing the grenades flying toward him, Tiol used the multiple rifles that he had with his multiple arms to shoot them down, along with Akira.

Although Tiol was able to shoot down the grenades, Akira was too quick.
The grenades were already too close to him.
When the grenades exploded in an enclosed space, the shock wave from the explosions had nowhere to escape but to funnel outward, thus releasing a raging storm which rampaged on, as if trying to blow the whole room apart.

Although Akira had already evacuated from the room, he still could not escape the shock wave that leaked through the open door.
He was blown by the wind which smacked his back straight into the wall.

The wall was bent outwards and cracks ran across it from the force of the collision, but Akira did not allow his blood filled vomit to spill out and just swallowed it back into his system.
After all, that blood still contained the nanomachines from the medicines that he had consumed beforehand, which he could not afford to just vomit out in this situation.

The shock wave alone was that strong.
So Tiol who took that at point-blank range should not be able to get out unscathed.
As Akira hoped that would finish Tiol off, he fixed his gaze toward the direction of the hallway through the smoke and the dust.

[Did I do it?]

Right at the next moment, the answer showed itself.
Akira quickly jumped sideways, evading the hail of bullets and warheads that destroyed the wall which was behind him a moment ago.

“The heck is his vitality?! Is he really as strong as a powered suit?! Give me a break already!”

Akira inadvertently grimaced and spit out complaints as he took cover in the hallway’s intersection.

Of course, as expected, Tiol did not get away from that explosion unscathed.
As a matter of fact, that did deal quite a lot of damage to him.
His face was covered with blood and multiple arms were torn off.
He had also lost one of his legs.
His inner organ was in a mess from facing that explosion at such a close range.

But even so, his will to kill Akira did not waver at all.
Tiol quickly used the arms that were still functioning to shoot down Akira.
Although he ended up losing those arms as well from the kickback, he just ignored it and kept on shooting.

As Akira jumped out of his line of fire, the shooting ceased.
Tiol then used the new uninjured arm that just grew out from his shoulder to pick up his arms that were torn off.
He started to consume them, using the mouth on both his head and his arm.
More arms grew out from his shoulder.
Strange sounds came from inside his body as if gears were forced into places, it was the sound of his inner organ fixing itself.
And a leg that looked more like a rifle replaced the one he had lost.

When he had finished fixing his injuries, Tiol immediately went to chase after  Akira again.

Akira kept on running while always positioning himself strategically, maintaining an advantage against Tiol.
He used corners in the hallway as a cover and quickly moved to the next point the moment he felt that his position was compromised.

While on the other hand, in contrast to that, Tiol was charging recklessly toward Akira.
He ignored the bullets that were coming at him as if to say that they were nothing against his limitless restorative capability.
He then released a storm of bullets and warheads that could even destroy the corner that Akira was using as a cover.

The fierce exchange between Akira and Tiol blew walls into smithereens, riddling them with holes, destroying the walls that separated rooms and the hallway.
In the midst of battle, Akira, who was overwhelmed by Tiol’s firepower, had a grim look on his face and noticed something strange.

[That guy is fighting rather crudely this time.
I don’t know what exactly happened but he has multiple arms now, is that the reason why? Is he too preoccupied with controlling all the arms that he can’t properly strategize?]

Tiol’s movement right now was like a completely different person when Akira compared him to the person that he fought against on top of his APC with Katsuya.
That courage to charge straight at the bullet barrage and that vitality to take that barrage face on were both splendid, but as a strategy, it was the worst kind of strategy.

This was the price that Tiol had paid from forcibly taking over the system’s control.
As the system could not coexist with the sense of self as Tiol, the system could not properly give support to him.

Akira realized that he could win by continuing to open fire at Tiol while maintaining his distance.
However, that strategy would require him to have sufficient ammo.

[If I use everything here, will that be enough to kill him?]

Akira thought so for a split second but he immediately shot that idea down since there was another thing that he had to worry about later as he knitted his brows.

[No, I can’t do that.
Even if it’s enough to kill him, I still have to fight those guys who will come after him.
If I use all my ammo here, I would have to fight them without using my rifles.
Or more like, in the first place, there’s no guarantee that I can kill him even if I use all of my remaining ammo.]

At the moment, Akira was being pushed back by Tiol.
He needed to find a way to turn the table around.
So he banished that thought from his mind and focused on a way to turn the situation around.

An idea quickly popped up in his mind, but that idea only made Akira frown even more.

“…I guess I have no other choice but to do it, huh…”

Akira finally made his resolve.

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