Rebuild World (WN)

ata.”

Akira rechecked the signal from his information-gathering device.
There was a contrast between the optical sensor and the heat and vibration sensor.
Thus, the display on his information-gathering device was telling him to be careful interpreting that data.

“I see.
So it’s basically produced by old-world technology, right?”

“Yep, that’s correct.”

If it was not real, then there was no meaning pointing his rifle at it, and of course, it was not like it could hurt him.
Thus Akira lowered his rifle.

That girl then walked toward Akira, she then greeted him and said.

“Dear customer.
The building is closed at the moment, so we can’t allow anyone without the proper authorization to enter.
So please leave the building.”

Akira could hear her words clearly.
He was surprised by that and asked Alpha.

“Alpha, I can hear her though, she’s definitely not real, right?”

“She only sounds like she’s talking to you up close, the sound itself is not originated from her.
It came from somewhere else and generated through a complex calculation to make it sound as if she’s close to you.”

Akira could see a big difference between the optical sensor and the sound sensor data in his information-gathering device.
Although it looked like that girl was talking to him, it seemed that was not exactly the case there.

Since that girl spoke to Akira, he thought that it might be possible to talk with her.
So he tried to say something to her.

“Uhhh, I’m actually heading to the 57th floor, you see…”

“Please allow me to repeat myself.
The building is closed at the moment.
Only the first floor is opened for the other customers who already made an appointment beforehand.
Normally, the whole building is closed including all the floors, so please leave the building.”

It seemed that he could indeed talk to her and it also seemed that she really wanted Akira to leave.

“How do I make an appointment?”

“During the time when the building is closed, each floor has its designated contact person who accepts appointment applications.
We on the first floor don’t accept a direct application.
So please leave the building.”

Akira tried to ask a lot of things to that hologram even after that, but all ended the same.
To put it simply, there was nothing he could do there and that he should leave the building.
He could not get any meaningful information out of it.

Alpha then told him to stop that meaningless negotiation.

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“Akira, let’s just ignore her and continue.
She’s only acting as a receptionist of this building.
There’s nothing you can accomplish by asking her.
Or is it that you want to leave the building?”

“You’re right, let’s go.”

Akira just ignored that hologram and decided to go deeper into the building.
As he peeked into the other hallways and was about to leave that place, that girl suddenly warned him.

“Warning! The facility is guarded by security allowed to kill in case of illegal intruders.
So please leave this place.”

Akira stopped.
He then turned to that girl and said with a stern face.

“If that’s the case, you should’ve said that before those monsters outside the building attacked me, you know?”

That girl did not say anything back, she just vanished.

Akira twitched, he understood that he was at fault there.
He was the one who forced his way into that building.
But this was a part of his job as a Hunter.
It’s all already in the past, he just shook it off and continued exploring the building.

Akira was humming in front of an elevator.
Although he found one, he could not use it.
Nothing happened even after he pressed the buttons on the panel nearby.

Although Akira hardly ever saw any elevators around the place where he lived, he understood how it worked.
To be more precise, he experienced using one when Shiori invited him for a meal in the high-class restaurant.
That restaurant was located in a high building where he got an amazing view from inside of that restaurant.

Akira pouted for a bit as he said to Alpha.

“Is it broken? Or is it that it won’t let me use it? Which one do you think it is?”

“Maybe the latter one.
Even if you can use it, I don’t think it’s a good idea to use it.
After all, it might just shut you inside to die after you enter, you know? And it seems that it’s not an easy thing to pry the door open even with your augmented suit.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t want that to happen.
It can’t be helped then, I guess there’s no other choice but to go with stairs.”

Akira gave up and headed to the stairs, he already knew where it was after glancing at the map of the first floor.

Akira hoped that he could just go climb the building through the stairs.
But it did not work out well for him.
After a few floors up, he found himself blocked by a reinforced door.
He might be able to force it open using his augmented suit or tear down the door using CWH special ammo.
But forcing his way up like that would cause him to spend more time and energy.
So he just gave up that idea and searched the floor for another staircase that he could use.

He did find another staircase on that floor, but just like last time, after a few floors up, he was greeted by another reinforced door.
Every time that happened, Akira would look for another staircase to climb the building.

Each floor had a different look.
Some of the floors were left ransacked as if Hunters had taken any and every relics out from that floor, while some of the floors looked brand new as if it was just opened recently.
Akira’s eyes sparkled when he saw the many relics in the well-maintained floors.
Every shop on those floors was filled with old-world relics.

“Lucky!! It was really worth all the hassle coming to this building! Alright then!! Let’s take them home!!”

Akira happily started working, he pulled out another rucksack from the one he had on his back.
He then happily stuffed all the relics on the shops’ displays into that rucksack.

From the other’s point of view, he looked like a robber robbing a shop.
And from the old-world point of view, there was no mistaking that Akira was an armed robber.
So it was only to be expected that the security drones would come and try to kill him.

Akira just smiled bitterly as he said.

“Well, it’s true that I’m just digging out and gathering relics to take them out from this ruin.
But this does feel like I’m robbing a shop.”

Alpha giggled.

“Well, you did force yourself in by destroying those autonomous weapons guarding this building, so you’re actually already robbing here.
But let’s just swear not to rob any shops that are still in business and just think of this as putting all of these products that no one would ever come to buy into good use.”

This_content is taken from lightnov‎elworld.c­om

“That in itself is an amazing excuse though.
But I guess there are a lot of Hunters who gather old-world relics with that excuse, so I can understand why they stationed those autonomous weapons to guard the relics.”

Akira, who was smiling bitterly when he said that, suddenly turned quiet.
His smile had vanished from his face and his hands that were putting relics into his rucksack suddenly stopped.
He then asked Alpha.

“Alpha, there’s something I want to ask.
It’s about the mechanical monsters that we’ve defeated outside.
Though I was able to defeat them thanks to your support, they’re actually strong monsters, right? Or at least, that’s what I thought about them.
After that first barrage, I even thought of pulling back, they’re at least that strong from my point of view.”

“Yep, they’re powerful autonomous monsters.
You have no winning chance against them without my support.
After all, although you did win, it was a rather fierce fight.
You do understand that too, right?”

“Yeah, I got that very well.
So like, why did you judge that I should be able to defeat those strong monsters? Well, it’s true that it did put me in more burden and I used more ammo than usual, but you predicted that, and we won as you predicted too.
Or at least that’s the vibe that I got back there.
So against such strong monsters, how did you judge and under what basis did you decide it was possible to win against them?”

“Oh my, that’s quite a question there.
Do you have anything you want to complain about my support? You can just say it and I’ll readjust.”

“No, that’s not what I meant.
There’s nothing that I want to complain about.
It’s just that… What can I say… You were smiling like usual during that fight, it feels like you know even if I did that 100 times, I’ll still win 100 times.
So like, I just want to know on what basis, or at least the reason, why you can be so sure.”

Akira seemed a bit hesitant when he said that, but he looked serious.

Alpha did not say anything for a while, she then smiled and asked him.

“You really want to know, don’t you?”

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It was her usual smile, but for some reason, Akira felt there was something else behind that smile.

“Yeah, I want to know.”

“It’ll take a very long time to explain it orally, you know…”

“In that case, make it short and you don’t need to tell me everything, just tell me enough to at least convince me.”

Alpha confirmed Akira’s expression and answer.
She then said.

“Very well, if I have to shorten my answer, it’s because they are mechanical monsters.
If they were biological monsters, I would have definitely stopped you.”

“Is it really that different, mechanical and biological monsters?”

“Yep, or at least, that’s the case for my support.
Moreover, those autonomous weapons were simple machines, they were made in accordance with their blueprints and they moved precisely as their original program.
There were no abnormalities in their bodies or behaviours, unlike those biological monsters which continuously mutate their bodies and change their judgement logic.
Thanks to that, it’s easy to predict their moves.
Because there’s no randomness in their patterns, I can easily make an accurate prediction just from a few observations.
And without randomness and arbitrary action that tends to happen with the biological monsters, the calculation becomes very easy.
That’s why, even if it seemed very dangerous in your point of view, it was a very safe situation and that fight was totally winnable from my point of view.”

Alpha then continued her explanation.
Due to his limited knowledge, Akira actually had some problems understanding her explanation.
But he at least more or less understood her reasoning.

As long as Alpha knew the original blueprint and the behaviour program of those monsters, she could get a highly accurate result by running simulations based on those information, and she would be able to accurately follow that simulation by controlling Akira’s augmented suit.
By splitting up the whole battle into smaller ones of highly accurate 2-player zero-sum game simulation, Alpha could map out the best decision to take during that fight.

Although it seemed that Akira fought that battle desperately, from Alpha’s point of view, it was more like following an already finished script.

It would be extremely difficult to do the same against biological monsters.
Due to the randomness of the biological monsters’ behaviours, Alpha could only make inaccurate predictions.

Akira tried to understand something outside that explanation as he asked Alpha.

“Uhhh, so basically, since you know the enemy’s weak point and behaviour well enough, it’s an easy thing to defeat them, huh?”

“More or less, yes.”

Akira seemed to be thinking about something else, so Alpha paused there before she asked him again.

“Was that explanation not enough? Do you want me to explain in more detail?”

Akira shook his head.

“No, that’s good enough.
At least now I understand that you didn’t judge I could win that fight out of some vague reasons.”

“Oh my, how rude.
There’s no way I would guarantee your safety out of some vague reasons, you know.”

“My bad.
I got to understand a lot of things since I started taking your lesson.
Just think of it as the result of my growth, you have my thanks.”

“Is that so? Well, I’m glad to hear that.
If you question my instruction, it would be troublesome during a dangerous situation, you see.”

“Yeah, I know.
I just got a little bit curious there.
Well, compared to this mountain of old-world relics, it doesn’t really matter though.
Although it was dangerous, it was worth the risk.”

“That’s true, let’s carry back as much as we can.”

“Yeah.”

Akira returned to his job stuffing old-world relics into his rucksack.

Akira’s question was not fully answered yet.
To be more precise, although his last question was answered, it only led to more questions that were still unanswered.
He understood the basis of Alpha’s judgement, but he still had no idea why she used those as the basis of her judgement.

The old-world factories that were considered as old-world relics were still producing autonomous weapons even right now.
Normally, the blueprints used to produce those monsters and the program installed inside their control units should be a secret.
There should not be that many people who had access to them even during the time when those factories were built, and of course, there should be even fewer people who knew those secrets now.

But for some reason, Alpha knew about them.
Akira thought that he should be able to know the reason if he just asked her, but he decided to hold himself back from asking that question.
It was because he felt that Alpha would not want him to ask that question.

Alpha did ask him for confirmation back then.
That was because she actually did not want Akira to ask that.

Alpha was actually under a leash.
There were things that she could not do without Akira’s permission, so it was only to be expected that she had other limitations too.
That might also be the reason why she could not say no when Akira asked her that question, she might only be able to give a vague answer to point out that he would regret knowing the answer to his question.

That was why Akira did not pursue any further.
He felt like if he asked that question, Alpha might turn hostile against him, that’s why he decided to just shelf that question.

All the questions that welled up thanks to his curiosity were starting to leak out.
Nonetheless, Akira continued to suppress them.
After all, compared to the usefulness of Alpha’s support, those questions were worth nothing to him.
Or at least, that was the case for now.

The real reason as to why Alpha told Akira to fight those autonomous monsters was simply to give Akira a good feel of how great her support was, it was to strengthen that impression on him.
Though, Akira did not realize that at all.

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