might be just me. But I don’t think either of us said anything strange though.”

Elena also did not even try to hide her displeasure when she answered Sara’s question.

Lilina vented her anger and shouted as if she was close to exploding.

“Both of you!!”

Both Sara and Elena looked back at Lilina, who was glaring at both of them.

“I know it, you know!! Your duty was to protect us!! And your reward depends on how many of us survived that fight!! If only both of you properly did your job, there’s no need for them to die back then!!”

“About the details of our contract, due to non-disclosure agreement, I can’t really tell you though...”

Elena glanced at Mizuha when she said that, so Mizuha replied to Lilina in Elena’s place.

“They’re hired to increase the survival rate of the whole team and it’s true that in their contract, their reward depends on the resulting survival rate compared to the expected survival rate.”

“That means that I got it right, am I not?!”

After listening to Mizuha’s explanation, Lilina shouted at Elena again.

“Leaving aside why you even interpreted that, as your escort, we did our best to increase your survival rate during the fight, you know?”

“Save the bullshit! 8 people died in that fight! But even so, you are saying you did your best back there?! And now you’re saying that you’re going to leave the team midway?! What exactly is going on inside your heads?!”

historical

Elena could feel a slight headache, as she tried to understand what Lilina meant. As she dug deeper into Lilina’s way of thinking, her headache got even worse before she finally drew a conclusion and checked it with Lilina.

“So in short, you who believe that being able to return back alive is the most important thing as a Hunter, think that we abandoned our duty or at least not taking our duty seriously since we prioritized our survivability, huh? And you want to say that if only we followed Katsuya’s orders and did our job better, then no one would have died in that fight, right?”

“That’s right!! So how are you going to take responsibility for that?!”

Lilina shouted even louder than before.

Elena and Sara looked so exhausted as they let out a big sigh. Elena then replied as the representative of her team.

“If you want to complain, direct that to the people who hired us. I’m sure they’ll at least give you some answers. See you then.”

Elena only said that before she accelerated her vehicle.

Lilina saw them off as she shouted at them.

“Wait!! Are you running away now?!”

Elena did not slow down at all, in fact, she even paced her vehicle faster.

Lilina then went to Mizuha. Her expression was showing her anger and sadness for losing her friends.

“Mizuha-san!! Why would you even hire those people?!”

Mizuha looked apologetic as she said to Lilina.

“We hired them since Katsuya vouched for them. He said that they’re skilled Hunters, but it seems that I put too much trust in them. I’ll properly take care of the rest, so just calm down, okay?”

Mizuha tried to calm Lilina down with a gentle voice. Lilina somehow calmed down thanks to that, but she still sounded displeased as she said.

“...Alright, I’ll trust you on this.”

Lilina slightly bowed and returned back to preparing to leave that place.

Katsuya looked conflicted as he saw Elena and Sara off. He was so surprised that he missed his chance to say anything before Elena and Sara left.

Mizuha looked at his expression and frowned. Katsuya’s conflicted expression showed what he was feeling deep inside his heart, and that included a lingering affection toward Elena and Sara.

Mizuha tried to smile and spoke to Katsuya.

“Katsuya, you should finish your preparation to leave this place too.”

“...Understood.”

When Mizuha spoke to him, Katsuya remembered that he was the leader of his team. Although a lot of things were going through his mind right now, he still had to do his duty as the team leader at the moment.

Katsuya turned and started walking back to his team.

—*—*—*—

Elena and Sara were traversing through the wasteland in their vehicle.

Elena had set the vehicle on auto-pilot heading back to Kugamayama city. Since she left the driving to the control device, the vehicle was shaking more than before. If Elena was taking the wheel, she would have been able to adjust the acceleration and pick a better route, but Sara knew that Elena was also tired, thus she had no plans to blame her.

Elena and Sara were slouching on their seats. Since no one else was there, there was no need to keep up their appearances. It also showed just how exhausted they were. But they were at least rested enough to have a normal conversation.

Sara mumbled.

“Seriously though, that wasn’t easy at all.”

Elena couldn’t agree more with that.

“Yeah, you can say that again. That was really tiring in all sense.”

“Lilina, was it again? At first, she said that they don’t need us, then after that, she said we didn’t work hard enough. If they really could do that themselves, there was no need for our help, right? Do they even have any idea of how much you worked just to cover them?”

It was rare for Sara to sound so angry. It seemed that she did not like the fact that Elena was overburdened during the last fight.

Elena smiled bitterly.

“Looking at that, I feel like she’ll still have something to complain about even if we sacrifice ourselves to protect Katsuya’s team. Something like ‘these Hunters are pathetic to get killed by something like this’.”

Maybe it was because she was tired that Elena said something so mean that did not fit her character at all.

Sara just smiled bitterly to that rare side of Elena.

“I can see her doing something like that. Although she complained a lot about us being their escort, in the first place, she should realize the fact that they’re so weak to the point that they needed escorts in that battle. Or at least, the people in the upper echelon think that they’re not strong enough to go alone without an escort. It’s such a huge luxury to go hunting a bounty monster with escorts, you know? I wonder if she’s some kind of a rich lady who always has escort everywhere she goes since she was little, that might be why she thinks it’s normal to have escorts.”

As Elena listened to Sara’s mean joke, she remembered about a certain rumour within Drankam. It was about a rumour that there was a real rich lady in Drankam.

Up until now, Elena never took that rumour seriously, and even if it was true, it had nothing to do with her. That was why she did not care much about that rumour.

“Elena, what’s wrong?”

“Hm? It’s nothing. If it’s true that there’s a real rich lady in that gang, then the young Hunter preferential treatment program might have been created for that rich lady.”

“Ahhh, that does make sense. It might cause a problem if that rich lady alone got preferential treatment, that’s why they use that program as an excuse. That’s an interesting way of thinking, but... Isn’t that too much work to do just for the sake of one person?”

“I know, that’s just something that passed through my mind.”

Sara thought that Elena was joking as she lightly laughed, Elena also replied with a laugh.

Elena then continued.

“If this mysterious rich family is not supporting Drankam’s young Hunters, then all of those expensive equipment for the young Hunters would have to be paid by Drankam, you know. I don’t think that those young Hunters would do enough work to pay for those expensive equipment, which means that the more veteran Hunters would have to pay for them... I heard that there’s a gap growing between the young Hunters and the veteran Hunters, I guess I now know where’s that coming from.”

“Moreover, there are young Hunters who behave like that. It’s rather expected that a gap would grow.”

“The most important thing is not that there are young Hunters who behave like Lilina. With that many young Hunters in the gang, it’s to be expected to find at least one of them like her. The real problem is the fact that no one even tried to stop them. All of them agreed with her, although they didn’t express it, they at least agreed with what she said back there. I’m sure all of them back then at least agree with that girl to some degree, including that Drankam officer.”

“That basically means that most of the young Hunters in Drankam think like her, right?”

“Well, I at least don’t think that all of them think like her though.”

Both Elena and Sara thought of the same thing and took a deep breath. Sara then mumbled.

“I really really understand now why Shikarabe would complain about it.”

“Yeah, I totally agree.”

Elena just smiled bitterly when she said that.

***

The Hunter Office staff finished checking the dead corpse of the overgrown snake. It was also for the sake of transporting the snake, after all, it was hard to transport that snake without knowing its weight.

The staff looked a bit confused when he saw the result of his scanner. A fellow staff who noticed that asked him a question.

“What’s wrong?”

“About this though, look at this cross-section view of the inner part.”

“This is... Empty... Huh?”

There was a big long hollow cavity inside the snake. Both of the staff looked confused.

“It doesn’t seem like its digestive tract, nor does it seem like someone gouged it out. What is this, was there something inside that cavity before?”

“No idea, but one thing for sure, this is not a leftover body from moulting.”

The other staff replied to that joke with a laugh as he said.

“So you’re saying that this whole thing is just skin? That’s just impossible. Moreover, it has ‘snake’ in its name because it looks like a snake, it’s not like it’s really a snake, you know.”

“Yeah, if I’m not mistaken, it’s one of those monsters that evolve depending on what they eat, right? Well, anyways the real examination will be done by those researchers after we take this huge thing to the lab.”

They then laughed together as they continued their job.

Index