Star Rank Hunter

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

Translator's Notes: You guys were expecting an epic battle, but no, it was just a lecturing session by your grandpa...

Chapter 177: Grim Reaper’s ‘Star Net’ [Part 2]

In reality, Jiada looked like he was just approaching middle age. Therefore, when he suddenly called them ‘little boys’ both Cillin and Lung felt a muscle cramp on their faces.

Suddenly, Cillin recalled his awkward teacher. Sir Mo had even called him a ‘child’ back then. Now that he thought about it, this person before him was probably over around a hundred years old, wasn’t he?

“Ahem. Hello, I am called Lung.” Lung bowed and saluted him. His usage of the etiquette Berzett taught him was pretty impressive; the form of his salutation was perfectly standard. He did not give out his surname directly since there were plenty of people who disliked a member of the Andrea Family.

“Judging from your salutation, you’re probably a member of a certain big family, aren’t you?” Jiada said. At the same time, he returned a corresponding salutation of his own, looking much more like a gentleman than Lung was.

Lung’s face cramped yet again. A single salutation had exposed his identity.

“Er, yeah. My full name is Andrea Lung.” he did not lie. Lung thought that he would absolutely be found out if he attempted to lie with his own abilities. The man before him was an old freak after all.

“Oh, so you’re the descendant of that old fox.”

Lung lamented inside his heart: Ah, my beloved grandfather, your title as a fox truly is widespread!

However, Lung did let out a sigh of relief on the inside when he heard Jiada’s answer. At the very least, Lung had not sensed any malice during the instant the other party heard the name Andrea.

“You’re okay. You have better prospects than your father.” Jiada commented before looking at Cillin.

“I am called Cillin Gen.” he did not salute like Lung did. He simply performed a very commonly seen salutation done when a junior Hunter encountered his elders.

Lung cast a glance and thought on the inside: since when are you called Gen again?

“You are a Hunter?” Jiada knew that Cillin was a Hunter the moment he saw the salutation he performed.

“Yes, I am.”

“Are you a solo Hunter? Or are you with a Hunter regiment?”

“I’m with a Hunter regiment; the Hunter regiment Vanguard.”

Jiada nodded. Nothing else could be seen from his countenance.

Jiada’s reaction made Cillin felt a small twinge of disappointment. He had purposed given out the surname ‘Gen’ to see if the man before him would react to it. The results however, were a little disappointing.

After looking at Cillin and Lung, Jiada waved a hand and shifted two large boxes containing energy blocks inside several meters away before Cillin and Lung. He said, “Take these two boxes with you. The rest is mine.”

Both Cillin and Lung sighed seeing that the other party did not plan to look into their intrusion any further. The fact that he gave them two boxes of energy blocks was respectful of him already.

After thanking Jiada, Lung then withdrew the two boxes of energy ores into the subspace container on his hand. Energy blocks could not be put inside subspace for a prolonged period of time, so he had to take them out the moment they returned to the starship to prevent the conflict between energies causing the subspace to destabilise and collapse.

“When you go back, do greet that old fox Fergus and that old man Ji Feng for me.” Jiada said.

Lung’s grandfather Fergus wielded great influence within GAL, his sphere of influence extending over to business, politics, military and so on. As for Ji Feng, he was the leader of Vanguard and one of the Six Stars of Hunt - a Star Rank Hunter!

If Jiada had only mentioned Fergus, Cillin and Lung would not have been as surprised. After all, Fergus’ activities span over to quite a number of places, not to mention that there were plenty of people who knew and dealt with Fergus. Ji Feng was different, however. If this man was able to say Ji Feng’s name directly and talk about a Star Rank Hunter with such a tone, then…

Jiada!

Cillin looked towards Jiada, “Are you the Hunting Blade Jiada, senior?”

The honorific used among Hunters was ‘senior’, and Jiada did not deny it either. He waved his hands and beckoned Cillin and Lung to leave, “You have one full hour of time left. ‘Grim Reaper’s’ ‘Star Net’ would be activated in one hour, and with your current level of strength, you won’t be able to survive it when that happens.”

“Star net?” they knew that the Grim Reapers are here, but what on earth was a ‘Star Net’?

Jiada did not give any additional explanation, “You will know when the time comes. This is an experiment to ‘Grim Reaper’.”

When he was finished, Jiada turned around and did not bother with Cillin and Lung any longer. He continued to open a new box and absorb the energy inside.

Cillin shot a glance at Lung to transmit the message that they should leave first before doing anything else.

After leaving the energy storage room, Cillin and Lung did not waste time entangling themselves with the unsolved mysteries and instead, rushed to where the gray cat was. According to their calculations, they should reach that warehouse in ten minutes time. After they had collected the food, they would then leave this place and return to the starship. If there were no mishaps, then they should have ample time.

This time, Cillin and Lung did not conceal their presences on purpose. Instead, they moved faster and hurried along the way. There weren’t many people left in the passage leading towards the food warehouse, and if Cillin and Lung were to spend time conducting an in-depth scan they would discover that there weren’t much people left inside the prison. Most of them had ran outside.

When they passed by a junction, Cillin saw a person leaning at that junction. Yes, he had definitely seen them. Cillin could see them him even though that person was obviously in a state of invisibility.

He couldn’t identify their face. There was just a blurry approximation where the face should be at.

The person simply looked at them and did not attack when Cillin and Lung ran past him. Even though they knew that Cillin could see them, they did not move and simply watched Cillin and Lung run right past him.

When Cillin and Lung had ran far away, that person let out a soft laugh, “This generation’s youngsters sure are interesting.”

As compared to that Ghost Butterfly Seventeen they encountered earlier, the person actually thought that these two young men were more interesting. Even though they obviously could see him, neither of them had actively attacked him like Ghost Butterfly Seventeen did. Their guards were pretty high too. They were guarding against them even though they had ran far, far away from them.

After they had gone far away from that junction, Lung said while running, “There was a person in that junction just now.”

“I know, but they did not look like they intended to attack us.”

“The person who wounded Ghost Butterfly Seventeen is them, isn’t it?”

“Even if they’re not, they are not allies.”

“A ‘Grim Reaper’. Thank goodness they did not have any intentions of attacking us, or neither of us would be having a good time now.”

Cillin and Lung were in a hurry right now, and leaving aside whether they could win against that person if they had actually fought, even if they could they would have wasted a lot of time. After listening to Jiada’s words, the duo simply wanted to get to the warehouse, store up some food and leave as soon as possible.

They did not know what the ‘Star Net’ was, but since the word came from Jiada both Cillin and Lung believed that it existed.

Along the way, they ran into convicts in groups of twos and threes. They were basically all in a confused state, and the second they saw Cillin and Lung they charged right at them. However, they were all quickly taken out by the duo.

When they arrived at the warehouse, they saw the gray cat hugging a fish and making loud crunching noises as it bit the fish head. The fish that was almost a hundred times bigger than the gray cat was eaten to the point where all that was left were bones.

Beside the gray cat, Scarlet Wind was chewing a beef jerky. The gray cat had told him to eat as much as he wanted, so he wasn’t giving any quarters either.

Cillin and Lung selectively collected some food supplies from the warehouse. They still had plenty of food on the starship, so their main priority right now was to find some fresh food supplies. The fresh food supplies around several other connected warehouses around here were all taken away by Cillin and Lung.

Cillin looked at the emptied warehouses and checked the time, “We still have forty minutes.”

“Let’s leave. We should hurry up.” Lung said.

“Time to go, gluttons!” Cillin turned around and called out to Scarlet Wind and the gray cat.

Seeing that Cillin, Lung and Scarlet Wind were heading outside, the gray cat held the fish head it had half consumed in its mouth and ran out. Even though half of the fish head had been consumed by the gray cat, it was still a lot larger than the gray cat’s current body size. In fact, the fish’s pharynx and the sharp teeth inside its mouth were all exposed because half its head had been chewed off. It was a rather ugly sight as the teeth swayed rhythmically as the gray cat held it in its mouth and ran.

There was nothing that impressed Cillin more than the glutton’s ability to eat while running. It ran and ran, and the half eaten fish head went into its stomach just like that.

Since Scarlet Wind wasn’t too familiar with running on two legs just yet, he dropped back on all four after taking for a few steps forward. He would not be able to catch up to the others otherwise.

The amount of people outside the prison had increased by a lot. When Cillin’s group ran out of the prison, they were met with a sizable amount of resistance. Some came from the prison guards, and some came from the convicts. When Scarlet Wind encountered these men who were obviously harboring malice and killing intent towards them, he had instantly transformed from an obedient darling into a wild animal just like how he originally was when he was hunting preys on his origin planet. The way his claws plunged deep into the enemies’ bodies and tore them apart directly with impressive brute force caused Lung’s stomach to churn.

The gray cat’s behavior was a lot more moderate, however. It had simply kicked and left deep hind claw marks on those people’s faces. After all, Cillin said that they were in a race against time, and it was feeling sleepy after eating till it was full.

Thankfully, the resistance hadn’t persisted the whole way. The firefights were mainly concentrated at the port where transports and spaceplanes were parked. The convicts wanted to snatch a ship and escaped this place, and the prison guards absolutely refused to let them succeed. Therefore, both parties were engaged in intense combat at that location.

The place Cillin’s group chose was far away from the port. After arriving at a temporarily empty location, Lung lifted his hand and popped out a dashboard from his wrist, performing a remote control. At the same time, the robots piloted the starship and flew it towards them. After the starship had locked onto their position, Cillin’s group then teleported back to the starship.

After returning to the starship, the starship did not depart from the planet immediately. Instead, it maintained its invisibility and watched from a nearby spot.

After putting the energy blocks into the storage room and the food into the warehouse, Cillin and Lung then watched the scenes unfolding on the control room’s displays.

Two minutes was left on the clock when they checked the time.

The lucky convicts managed to grab a spaceplane and flew out of the planet. The satellite defense network at the perimeter of the planet was paralysed since a long time ago, so these spaceplanes were able to leave as they pleased.

Perhaps these lucky convicts could not have imagined what was going to happen next on the planet?

When one hour was up, a web that looked very much like the light rays of electricity suddenly appeared outside the planet. It had enveloped the entire planet.

“Is this, ‘Star Net’?”