Hayato intermission [1]

Let's rewind the time a bit.

Hayato and his friends got into the truck after Bonza sounded the emergency. Hunter usually has an emergency frequency for their group. These are not uncommon among novice hunters and veterans.

"Why are you already in the car!?" Ezmo asked Bonza, but he already knew the answer, Bonza probably slept in the truck.

"Just get in! A ruin tracker is on the way! "

"Is Frankie's gang here yet? "

"We're here, just go!" Coal shouted as he ran up to the truck.

Seeing that, Ezmo gets in the driver's seat while Coal enters the back of the truck alone. Hayato stares at the newcomer with burning eyes. He didn't like this situation either, and Coal could sense that too.

"Where's the rest of your team?!"

"W... we encounter a monster in the ruins." I... I was the only one left!!"

Hayato didn't believe that one bit. He looks into an empty space and talks to someone. That short exchange with the air makes him furious.

"Tell me where you left them!"

This time, Hayato's eyes stare at Coal as if he knows the truth. Coal got pressured out and pointed in a random direction in the ruin. Hayato did not wait for confirmation and jumped off the truck in an attempt to help the workers.

"Hey! What are you doing?! We're about to leave, Get back in!!!" he didn't want to be responsible for abandoning one the Frankie's gang member.

"I'll go save Vero and his friend!"

"They will die either way! Just get back in the car! "

"But they can survive!!!"

"Kid! This is not worth the risk!!!"

Ezmo is stuck between a rock and a hard place. He values his life greatly and risking it away by helping a worthless worker is not a thing he wants to do. On the other hand, he can't leave this young hunter from Frenzy in the ruins. If he decides to leave without Hayato, he will sore his relationship with Frenzy, leading to a hard time in O'rumacity. But helping him is suicide.

As Ezmo was about to leave Hayato, a girl jumped after him.

"Hayato, please don't be too reckless."

"But...."

"There's no but, this time is really dangerous! You can't save everyone! "

"Chiyo...."

"If you can't let them go, just do it for me, OK? Think about the people that care about you. How sad would they be."

"..... Dammit"

Chiyo looks at Hayato with trembling eyes. She had broken down the stubborn personality, making him decide to go back in the truck. Ezmo sighs, starts the truck, and drives away from the Dumo ruin.

While leaving the Dumo ruins, the hunters constantly check if they're being followed. They're clear at the moment, The ruin tracker somehow lost track of the truck and they got off scotfree. Normally, this wouldn't happen.

It's not like Ezmo is going to complain. With his issue solved, he drives the truck back to the city while Bonza keeps watching on the car roof.

"Wow, I thought we were going to die there."

"Don't kid yourself; you'd have left that brat in a heartbeat if the girl hadn't stopped him."

"You know me too well, Bonza."

"5 years, dude. I have to pick up a thing or two about you in that time. "

"Yea you're right about that. Maybe I should change my personality sometime. "

"... to be like that Hayato kid?"

"That would be a nightmare."

BEEP

"We've got company. Southwest, heading here at high speed. " Ezmo relayed the information to Bonza, who'd been on top of the truck. Bonza then gets his binoculars and checks what's approaching them. secretly hoping that it's not what he thinks.

But the reality is not that kind.

"Ezmo, bad news..."

"It's the ruin tracker, right?"

"You got it"

"Dammit!"

The creature is quite far away at this point, but if it gets any closer, they won't have a way to deal with it. This was originally a safe mission where they escorted a bunch of kids to a safe ruin, so they didn't prepare to get ambushed by a ruin tracker.

A ruin tracker is a white creature rarely found in the wasteland. As the name implies, these monsters have been observed to have a liking for ruins. Their diet consists of any type of biomass and some old-world metals. The latter has not been confirmed because not all of them have this diet.

The ruins tracker is a menace to low-rank hunters and even veterans if they're not prepared. This creature can appear at anytime in a ruin exploration and cause that exploration to fail instantly. Because of their thick skin and speed, most amateur hunters don't have a reliable way to deal with them.

This also applied to the Hayato group and Ezmo. Both for different reasons, but now they are in the middle of the wasteland getting chased by a ruin tracker.

"Ezmo! Put out an SOS! request! "

"We'd be in big trouble if we did that!"

"Do you have a better idea in this situation then!?"

"Damit, can't we let the kids call in the Frenzy gangs?"

"That would be even worse. We would fail our safety contract with them. "

Ezmo reluctantly put out an SOS request. This will send a signal to nearby hunters to see if anyone wants to help them for a reward. Usually, if the reward is too low for the risk, hunters will often avoid this type of work.

Luckily for them, recently the hunter guild has been losing more hunters than they anticipated and has come up with a "hunters helping" policy. They would help soften the cost of putting up an SOS request and give additional rewards if they managed to complete the request.

This policy has been in place for some time now, and the results are good. With more hunters accepting SOS requests, the hunter guild would gain more benefits in the long run.

However, even with a lower cost, killing a ruin tracker isn't cheap. So Ezmo's hesitation is understandable.

The white creature closes in on their truck. Bonza tried shooting it with all he got, but all it did was slow the monster down. A normal bullet cannot penetrate a ruin tracker's skin. Only a high penetration bullet or a high-powered sniper could drill through its skin.