Apocalypse Hunter - Chapter 68

 

The punishment continued.

 

The leader did not easily die, even though all his limbs were crushed. The leader was not able to get up at all, and was simply begging Ramphil, “Please… please… spare my life…don’t kill me.”

 

“You know best how begging is meaningless.”

 

The leader had never shown mercy to the people who begged for their lives, and yet he was begging for his life. He continued to beg for mercy.

 

“I’m just curious. Did you come from the south?”

 

“Please… please… don’t kill me…”

 

“Were you part of the group from south back then? There might have been some survivors. And they might have built a Slaughterhouse in the north. And they might have been enjoying this hobby all over again. Am I thinking nonsense?”

 

“Ha… Ha… Mister, there must some confusion. I could not have possibly come from the south.”

 

“It looks like you are strongly denying that you came from the south. You gotta have come from the south.” Ramphil stared down at the leader with an evil smile.

 

“Do you remember me? I don’t quite remember your face.”

 

“I don’t know… Today’s the first time I’ve seen you… Please… let me go.”

 

“If you don’t know me, you should have at least looked at me and said that. You have not even giving me an eye contact and answering?”

 

—Pow! —

 

“Aaaaarrrrrrrrgh!”

 

Ramphil kicked the groin of the leader and busted his balls.

 

“Now, look at me closely!”

 

The leader was foaming at his mouth, and tried to focus in the middle of his excruciating pain. The leader’s eyes were out of focus, and he was barely able to look straight at Ramphil.

 

“Do you remember my face?”

 

“I… I don’t know… How could I know the face of a great Wargrave soldier… sir…”

 

The leader was trying his best to ease Ramphil’s wrath. The leader could have been one of the Reavers back when Ramphil was a prisoner in the Slaughterhouse. The leader could have been a survivor after the Slaughterhouse was destroyed. He could have moved up north. There was no way to verify this.

 

“Well. It really doesn’t matter.”

 

What mattered was that Ramphil finally remembered his horrible past as he watched the grisly scene of the arena. Ramphil stretched his hand out toward the eyes of the leader.

 

“Ah, arrr! Arrrgggh!”

 

—Bloob—

 

“G….arrgggh!”

 

Ramphil pushed his thumb against the right eye of the leader to inflict pain. At the sound of a ‘pop’, the eyeball of the leader burst and blood came gushing out from his eye.

 

“Gaaaaagggggh!”

 

“I was not in a great mood to begin with,” Ramphil murmured as he pushed his thumb against the other eyeball.

 

—Bloob! —

 

“You scumbags are like parasites living off the Wargrave. Our policy is to not interfere with outsiders, but that is just a policy. It is not an order.”

 

“Gyaaaarrg!”

 

Ramphil slowly stood up as he watched the leader was foaming at his mouth with his eyeballs burst.

 

“Sir, please stop… please stop and step away…”

 

“Mmm?”

 

One of the Reavers brought a rocket launcher and aimed at Ramphil. The Reaver looked very familiar to Ramphil.

 

“Please step away… I don’t want to shoot…”

 

He was the Reaver that came to the fortress and talked with Ramphil. He was shaking in fear and aiming the launcher at Ramphil. He had no will to attack. He was begging for mercy in terror.

 

Ramphil stared at the Reaver. All the other Reavers started to step back as they sensed that a fight was going to break out soon.

 

“Why, why are you doing this to us… Didn’t we agree to coexist in peace? We were going to help each other out… yes? If you find this arena fight unpleasant, we won’t hold it anymore… please… have mercy on us. In fact, we didn’t want to do it anyways. Right? Hey, guys! Isn’t that right, guys?”

 

As the Reaver shouted in terror, the other Reavers started nodding. They wanted to survive whether the soldier in front of them was crazy or not.

 

“So, so… as you just told us, Wargrave does not interfere with outsiders. So, I mean… you don’t have any reason to kill us, right? We won’t annoy you in the future… I’m so sorry… so please…”

 

The Reavers did not believe that they could overpower Ramphil. As Ramphil finished listening to the Reaver, he stepped on the head of the leader slowly.

 

—Pow! —

 

“!”

 

As Ramphil put some weight on his foot, the head of the leader was crushed like a watermelon, and the crushed brains spilled out onto the ground.

 

“Do I need a reason to clean out the trash?” Ramphil announced.

 

“It’s filthy. That’s a good enough reason.”

 

There was no reasoning needed to wipe out the trash. Ramphil did not feel the need to explain.

 

They were filthy, despicable, and menacing. There were plenty of reasons to rid the world of Reavers.

 

The time to make a decision arrived. The soldier in front of the Reavers made up his mind. The Reavers had to make a decision was as well. They were five hundred in number. The soldier was alone.

 

They were thinking about killing the soldier, and running away from the area on their junkwagons. There was no way Wargrave would be able to hunt all of them down.

 

The Slaughterhouse was a great base, but their survival was more important.

 

“There is no turning back! Da…”

 

—Kaboom! —

 

Before the Reaver could finish his sentence, a huge explosion occurred around him. One side of the cage was engulfed in flames. The explosion killed fifty some Reavers in a split second.

 

“There is another enemy!”

 

On top of the trash wall, Zin was staring down at them behind an RPG-7 launcher. Ramphil and Zin looked at each other. They didn’t talk to each other, but they knew what was going to happen shortly.

 

“Take out your tools!”

 

The Reavers started to spread out.

 

—Clack! —

 

Ramphil took out his laser shotgun.

 

—Snap, pop—

 

As the dawn came, the Slaughterhouse was in flames.

 

“Hey, I think it’s over now.” Zin yelled from the top of the trash wall, and Ramphil nodded as he looked up at Zin. The fierce battle lasted the whole night. Ramphil and Zin were not able to kill all the Reavers. Some of them took off on their junkwagons.

 

The pile of dead bodies in the Slaughterhouse was a grisly scene.

 

Zin held his position on top of the trash wall, and shot the Reavers on the ground. There were no other buildings taller than the trash wall, and the Reavers on the ground were at his mercy.

 

Some Reavers ran into the buildings and fired rifles and launchers at Ramphil. They were not prepared to counter Zin at all, and Zin sniped the Reavers at will.

 

Instead of charging inside the buildings to fight the Reavers, Ramphil changed the laser shotgun into a saber and cut the pillars of the buildings. The buildings collapsed in no time. The Reavers made the mistake of hiding inside the buildings, and were buried alive under the rubble. The other Reavers then ran out of the buildings to fight against Ramphil.

 

Even though the Reavers took cover to hide from Zin, Zin was able to walk around the trash wall in circles and snipe them down.

 

Zin sniped the Reavers from higher ground, and Ramphil searched and killed them at close range. As a result, the Slaughterhouse was full of corpses, with no Reavers left alive.

 

However, Ramphil was not in good condition.

 

Ramphil was struck with bullets a couple of times, and he was burned by the explosions from their grenades.

 

It was not simple for Ramphil to fight against five hundred armed Reavers.

 

His uniform became a rag, and there were many bullets stuck on his skin. His L-20 was not in good condition, either.

 

Zin did not get injured at all. There were many Reavers who tried to climb up the trash wall, but they were all shot in the head.

 

Zin kicked aside the dead Reavers on the stairs and walked down to the ground.

 

“You look like a bum.”

 

“I will take that over being dead.”

 

Ramphil and Zin overpowered the Slaughterhouse by themselves without critical injuries.

 

Zin would not have pulled it off by himself. And Ramphil would have been killed by grenade launchers if Zin hadn’t suppressed the movements of the Reavers by sniping them.

 

In the end, both of them were not invincible.

 

But they were able to create synergy by working together. Both of them executed their parts and exterminated the five hundred Reavers. They were able to accomplish it together.

 

They were just not the type of people who cheered and gave high fives to each other.

 

“Now, we’ve got nothing to loot here.”

 

All the buildings were destroyed, and it would take forever to dig through the rubble. Zin was able to find some ammunition and chipbusters. Ramphil slowly moved towards the prison of the arena where the prisoners were locked in. He didn’t destroy that building on purpose.

 

The prisoners were terrified, and when Ramphil opened the door, they started to walk out slowly.

 

They were astonished that all the Reavers were killed.

 

“Hunter. I have a request.”

 

“A request?”

 

“Can you leave this place untouched?” Ramphil asked Zin, who was checking the corpses. Ramphil pointed to the freed prisoners.

 

“Are you telling me to share resources with the prisoners?”

 

“They will need some weapons and chips to survive going forward.”

 

“I didn’t expect you to be such a gracious person.”

 

“Not really.” Ramphil staggered as he seemed to have problems with parts of his body. “I hope you have some compassion for them.”

 

As Ramphil smiled at Zin, Zin also smiled bitterly, and stood up. “I used up all my 7.62mm ammunition because of you.”

 

“…” Ramphil was out of words, while Zin was complaining about the consumption of the ammunition.

 

“If you let me use Wargrave’s production facilities, I will leave all this scrap metal untouched.”

 

“Phew…”

 

It was clear that Zin would come out better if he gave up the 400 chips promised by the Reavers and utilized the Wargrave production facility instead.

 

Zin always acted based on profitability.

 

Zin and Ramphil freed all the prisoners. The prisoners were free to live together or go their own ways. Zin and Ramphil did not provide anything more to them. The freedom that Zin and Ramphil gave to the prisoners was the most valuable gift given to them anyways.

 

Ramphil did not talk about what he remembered. Zin didn’t hear anything from Ramphil, but Zin had a good idea why Ramphil acted so irrationally.

 

The previous attack on the Reavers was out of character for Ramphil. It was not hard to figure out what his lost memories were about.

 

Ramphil was not feeling guilty. He was wondering how he could possibly forget about his past.

 

“Is arena fighting a common hobby for the Reavers?” Ramphil asked him, and Zin thought for a while.

 

“It’s not common, but not rare either.”

 

“I see.” They were not able to find out if the Reavers actually came from the south.

 

It was clear that Ramphil was engaged in a fight that was based on emotional revenge, not based on logic and profit.

 

Ramphil became confused. And for whatever reason, Ramphil started speaking about something that he did not have to.

 

“Hunter, I want to ask you a question.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

“I got an offer from the Warlord.”

 

Zin quietly listened, as Ramphil spoke while they walked. “The person who destroyed the northern Korea’s defense line was an undercover agent sent to the Central Asia Division. The undercover agent has some information that would cause a schism within Wargrave.”

 

Zin already knew about this, and Ramphil was talking to Zin about a subject that he shouldn’t be talking to others about.

 

“And so?”

 

“If I pursue the undercover agent instead of the devil, and kill the undercover agent, no battle will break out.”

 

Pursuing the undercover agent meant that that Ramphil could possibly prevent a war. But a war might eventually break out from the Central Asia Division anyways.

 

“I need to look for the witch that is hiding somewhere, or pursue the undercover agent.”

 

Ramphil had to make a choice. The witch was hiding somewhere, and Zin was acting as the devil hunter for Ramphil.

 

Ramphil realized that Zin was extremely skillful, based on the battles they had taken part in together. It was possible that the witch could be hunted by Zin alone. It meant that there was no reason for Ramphil to continue to hunt the witch. It might be a better for Ramphil to pursue the undercover agent.

 

“What would you do if you were in my shoes?”

 

“Hmm…” Zin remained silent for a time before he spoke again.