Star Rank Hunter

Original and most up to date translations are posted at volaretranslations.

Translator's Notes: Busy this week, the next and the next so my meme brain is about as dead as it gets.

Chapter 164: Blood Colored ‘Hell’ [Part 2]

Cillin frowned as he looked at Pillar lying on the ground.

Speaking of the one subordinate Pillar left behind on the spaceplane, he was one unlucky fellow. Like a mouse, he was toyed with by the gray cat until he was half dead. Lung only saw a hole on the spaceplane when he reached it. Its door was obviously locked behind multiple encryptions. Instead of wasting his energy decrypting them, he ordered his robot to cut it open directly by force. An ear-piercing alarm resounded on the spaceplane.

When Lung saw the gray cat and the last remaining person, said person was about to go insane. He shrank back into a corner and muttered gibberish non-stop.

Seeing that the gray cat had lost its interest, Lung ordered his robot to drag away that fellow and dispose of him. He then began to perform a search on the spaceplane.

“What are you looking for?” the gray cat crouched on the back of a chair, licked its paws and asked.

“I’m looking for some good stuff!”

“Good stuff?” the gray cat probed around once more, but there really wasn’t anything else worth its attention other than the energy blocks. However, even these energy blocks were just your average energy blocks and far incomparable to those special energy blocks the Sixth B Squadron found. Therefore, the gray cat simply let out a yawn and said lazily, “Well, good luck.”

When he heard the gray cat’s words, Lung came to a pause and looked at the gray cat walking away with a raised tail. He stopped looking and followed the gray cat’s exit.

“Why have you stopped looking?” the gray cat asked.

“There probably isn’t anything too valuable in there.”

When Lung and the gray cat returned to the control room, the men who had their blood sucked dry were shot out into space along with their isolating covers, followed up by a gorgeous explosion. However, Pillar’s dead body was left behind.

“What is it?” Lung asked. He had instructed his robot to dispose all of the bodies here. But why had they left Pillar behind?

“I told her not to dispose Pillar yet.” Cillin put down the object in his hands and walked over.

“What did you find out?”

“I don’t know. I just feel like there should be something to be gained.”

Cillin had just finished speaking when the gray cat let out an ‘Eh’ of surprise and went closer to Pillar, sniffing carefully, “There’s something in here!”

While speaking, the gray cat immediately plunged a paw into Pillar’s stomach and fished around. Then it took out a small, round black ball about the size of a dove egg.

“What is this thing?” Cillin asked.

“I don’t know.” Lung examined the object left and right and took out a scanner to give it a scan. The display indicated that it was a rock unique to Sector S. However, if it really was just a rock, then Pillar most definitely would not have acted so secretively. Could there be something inside it?

Lung grabbed over a table knife and attempted to cut it. There was not a single trace on the surface of the black round ball at all.

“It’s really tough!” Lung looked at the nick on the table knife and tossed it away. He was just about to get a high energy cutter when the gray cat scooped it over with a paw.

While bending the sole of its feet, the gray cat lifted the round ball to its mouth with its paws. It opened its mouth, and bit.

Crack!

The small round ball shattered following the sound.

A small fragment glowing with deep blue light fell out.

The gray cat’s nose moved. Now the scent had become even thicker than before. However, as long as it had memorised this scent, it would be much easier to find something similar in the future even if they were sealed behind stones are other objects. The reason the gray cat didn’t noticed it earlier was because it hadn’t been paying any attention at all to this scent.

“An Aurelio piece!” Lung exclaimed in surprise.

“Aurelio piece?”

Lung picked up the small fragment and gave it a look. Then he passed the object to Cillin, “Here you go. This is good stuff; it will be of great use to you when the time comes.”

Cillin looked at the small, blue fragment in his hand, “So this is the fabled Aurelio star map piece.” while saying this, he looked back at Lung and asked, “You don’t want it?”

Lung said carelessly, “This Aurelio star map piece is useless to me. Just don’t be stingy if you find a piece that I need in the future. I went through a lot of hardships looking for it, you know.”

“And the one you need is?”

“The ‘God’s Tear’ of the five Aurelios!” Lung’s eyes shone brightly.

Cillin did not know what the ‘God’s Tear’ Lung spoke of looked like, but obviously the piece in his hand was not ‘God’s Tear’. Otherwise, Lung would have paid it a lot more attention. It could not be the ‘White Night’s’ piece either, since ‘White Night’ had already been fully collected. The fragment in his hand must be one of the remaining three.

“Keep it. No matter what it is, it’ll be useful to you Hunters. We of the Andrea Family cared only for ‘God’s Tear’, and my old man said that we should not pay too much heed to the rest of the pieces. He said that if we could not find ‘God’s Tear’, then we should not bother with the remaining pieces. Plus, if you haven’t kept this big beard dude around, he would’ve been blasted to dust a long time ago.”

“Okay. I’ll keep this piece with me for now. If I find an Aurelio star map piece in the future, I’ll show it to you and see if it’s what you need.”

“Heh, my good bro!” Lung patted Cillin’s shoulders before instructing the robot to clean out Pillar on the floor.

He did not think that he would obtain an Aurelio star map piece so soon. With the flip of a hand, Cillin withdrew the piece into his leaf-shaped ring.

“Still, it would not be easy to collect the pieces of the star map you have, Cillin. Depending on the situation, there will probably be at least three pieces and may even reach up to five in total. It is definitely troublesome.” Lung said. Then he smiled and stretched out a fist, “I won’t release this news, but if I find other pieces in the future you’ll have to trade with me!”

“Alright!” Cillin raised his hand and matched fists with Lung.

Although Lung’s temper might appear very strange and unstable to outsiders, he treated those that he acknowledged and was willing to know very well such as Cillin, Knight and Ci Jincheng. Quoting a phrase from his old man, ‘The Andrea Family has its own brainless manner of conduct.”

Lung ran a check on the genetic information he collected from these people.

Pillar was a convict in the Sector S’s grade two prison, whereas his subordinates were all convicts in grade one prison.

“This truly is Sector S. Even convicts could become Hunters.” Lung joked.

Sector S’s prisons were divided into five grades. Grade one was where the most minor criminals were imprisoned, whereas grade five was almost completely filled up with influential and important figures. That level was the objective of many forces this time.

The large majority of places at Sector S forbad the public entry of Hunter regiments. However, it was in this small, free territories where a large group of valiant and ruthless Hunter regiments had appeared. Many of these Hunter regiments were tied to Sector S’ defense army and prison guards, and many of their members had served a sentence in the prisons of Sector S. There were even some low grade convicts who had not yet fully served their sentences among them.

In reality, no foreign Hunter regiments were allowed in this place. If you were to lodge an accusation towards a local Hunter regiment, they would simply say that they were on a prison reform exercise. This was a covert form of ignorance by the officials.

In order to fully utilise their resources, Cillin had modified Pillar’s spaceplane and fighters for a bit. This way, the spacecrafts would not look the same as when Pillar and his subordinates had piloted them earlier, and it made Cillin and Lung’s latter operations more convenient. Afterall, they could not possibly pilot their own starship and roam everywhere they wanted brazenly. Moreover, taking into consideration certain matters that required them to descent onto a planet, these local spaceplane and fighters were still the better choice. In comparison to Pillar and his subordinates’ spaceplanes and fighters, the spacecrafts equipped in this Andrea Family starship were pretty unconventional. It was best to be low-key.

Of course, they used some of the Andrea Family’s stealth equipment. They were top grade stuff after all, so it’d just be a waste not to use them.

After he was done with the modification, Cillin returned to the control room and laid down. Not long after, the system indicated a planet with a detailed label on its coordinates.

“It’s ‘Hell’!” Lung said excitedly.

The outer fringes of planet ‘Hell’ was surrounded by some gray, misty stuff and was obscured from view.

‘Hell’ was an abandoned planet. This planet wasn’t called ‘Hell’ at first, but a certain number of factors ultimately triggered a calamity and caused the planet’s crust to move actively. Extended stay on this planet was impossible.

“Legend says that ‘Hell’ is red in color; blood red!” Lung said in a strange voice.

“‘Poison Fang’s’ planet was also red in color.” the gray cat said with an unconvinced tone. Red colored planets did not seem like much to it.

“But Wheeze, this planet wasn’t red in color in the first place. It was dyed red in blood!” Lung continued to speak in a tone that suggested he was telling a ghost story.

The gray cat’s eyes slanted, “Do you seriously believe such a retarded saying?”

“I can’t help but believe it, for I heard that this planet had undergone an ‘apocalypse’. Since then the planet lost its former vitality once and for all and gradually turned into its current accursed appearance. You should know that this planet once boasted a Rank A planetary habitability! But now? It is looking to decline from Rank B to Rank C, and it may ultimately reach Rank D in the end.”

“How did it turn out like this?” the gray cat asked. Just how much did it take to plunge a planet from Rank A to Rank B, C and D?

“The reason this planet had turned out this way was all thanks to its inhabitants. Originally, there was a huge research institute on this planet; a research institute that specifically used convicts to conduct researches on the human body. Later on, the situation slowly went out of control, and the very planet itself seemed to have gotten ‘angry’. Earthquakes would happen frequently later on, and the mountain peak you see today may turn into a flat plain tomorrow.”

“It was that savage?!”

“Yeah, it was.” Lung wore an enigmatic smile, “Let me tell you a secret. According to my knowledge, there were hellhound guards inside ‘Hell’. I wonder if these hellhounds still exist to these day… are you interested to go take a look?”

“Of course!”

T/N: And now we know the collapse of planet Earth… JK.