Star Rank Hunter

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

Translator's Notes: We are rapidly approaching the midpoint of Star Rank Hunter.

Try to hold onto your belts.

Chapter 214: Oskulos is Coming [Part 2]

Cillin continued to plot his latter actions while avoiding Oskulos’ attacks behind him.

Oskulos was simply getting some entertainment out of the pursuit because he was bored. He didn’t expect to be able to take down Cillin’s spaceplane with these attacks.

But although Oskulos wasn’t prepared to kill Cillin in space, he didn’t want him to run too far away either. He didn’t have that much patience to spare.

Oskulos glanced at Cillin’s spaceplane once before pressing a button.

Nine rivet-like projectiles were fired from his spaceplane in a row, and they were all high sensitivity homing projectiles. They flew straight towards Cillin’s spaceplane, and although he managed to avoid eight of them the last projectile still struck his vehicle.

The rivet-like projectile seemed capable of absorbing energy, and it was causing the energy on the shields to drain away faster than normal.

It would appear that Oskulos couldn’t wait any longer. He hadn’t been feeling too well because he was tied up by the military for a very long time.

Cillin looked at the falling line of the energy gauge and made more calculations inside his head. He dodged yet another round of fire behind him.

Finally, Cillin saw the planet he was heading to. He was just about to make his spaceplane land at the planned landing spot when two energy absorbing rivets suddenly struck his spaceplane with a boom once more.

At the rate his spaceplane was losing energy, there was no way he could reach his planned landing spot before it gave out.

He made his way down to a forest with great difficulty. The spaceplane broke god knows how many branches along the way, and the branches shook the spaceplane strongly before he finally landed.

Cillin didn’t wait for the spaceplane to come to a complete halt before he opened the emergency exit and ran inside the forest.

Meanwhile, Oskulos’ spaceplane descended steadily on the high ground next to the forest.

The hatch opened, and Oskulos walked out of the spaceplane. He was wearing the same outfit Cillin saw him in during their first meeting. He cast a glance at the forest and the spaceplane that just came to a halt and jumped down a cliff. Although the cliff was more than five hundred meters above the ground, Oskulos’ falling speed was different from one’s normal speed when free falling.

Oskulos cast a glance towards a particular direction in the forest before he waved a hand once and changed his footsteps. His speed hadn’t changed, but his direction did. The man began descending towards the direction where his feet were carrying him to.

While running, Cillin sensed a psychokinetic energy ripple charging towards him. He had only ever detected an energy ripple like this from Jiada.

Too fast. Cillin was moving at his top speed already, but the man behind him was rapidly shortening the distance between the two of them.

No wonder Jiada said that it wasn’t easy to escape from Oskulos’ grasp at all.

Sensing the rapidly shortening distance between the two of them, Cillin took out his gun. The gun barrel was crushed and snapped off before he could even turn it around, however.

Cillin felt like he was punched by a massive fist, and he slammed hard into the stone wall behind him. His entire body was sank inside the stone wall.

Before Cillin could recover his senses, a hand had already grabbed onto his neck and pulled him out of the wall. His feet couldn’t touch the ground.

Oskulos stared at Cillin’s bloodied head and torso while he was lifting him in mid air before saying slowly, “So sorry to have left you alive for so long.”

Bang!

Cillin was slammed against a hard object once more, but this time he was pressed into the ground instead.

Cillin’s constitution was pretty strong, and there were plenty of rank A combat personnel who couldn’t compare to him in terms of physical strength. However, bones in multiple parts of his body were crushed in just one smash, and he felt like his muscles were being torn apart by force.

Oskulos was obviously a man of great experience. He knew which bone he should crush to take out his prey’s mobility.

Jiada once said that Oskulos was a man who loves to torture his prey to death.

Cillin listened as his bones were being crushed by Oskulos, but he didn’t lose his train of thought to the waves of terrible pain. In reality, each time the chips activated the pain it was no less painful than having his bones crushed like this.

“It would seem that this level of pain is nothing to you,” Oskulos said slowly.

The fact that Cillin wasn’t screaming out in pain dissatisfied Oskulos greatly. A thin, long blade about the width of a person’s finger stretched out of Oskulos’ wrist.

“To tell you the truth, I hate Jiada a lot. He wanted to replace me so badly, but he always manipulated others to attack me instead of doing it himself. I don’t understand is why that fake medium is willing to spend energy on you though. How do you think I should repay you for all the woes I’ve suffered under the military’s supervision?”

Oskulos sounded like he was speaking with an old friend, but his blade was cutting towards Cillin’s direction.

Inside the Sixth B Squadron’s base.

The gray cat and Sigma was arguing over a design diagram, and Snowball butted into the conversation despite knowing nothing about designs. Czedow had no room to interrupt the conversation at all.

But every hair on the gray cat’s body suddenly stood on their end. Its eyes looked as deep as a whirlpool inside the sea.

Sigma quickly cut short its unceasing explanation of its reasoning after it noticed the gray cat’s abnormal reaction. Beside them, Dough and Snowball retreated in unison because the gray cat was giving off an extremely unpleasant feeling. They felt like the gray cat was going to kill someone in the next second.

Animals have extraordinary subconscious minds. The little Lovages who were originally fooling around the area went away in a flash to seek out their adults’ protection.

At the same time, Eudy’s starship finally returned to the base.

The alarm resounded inside the base, and everyone swiftly entered into a state of combat. This time however, the Lovages hadn’t come out. They were all hiding inside their nests. The little Lovages were shivering unconsciously even as they pushed themselves against the adult Lovages’ body as hard as they could. It was as if the action could give them some sense of safety.

Thanks to their earlier preparation, the squadron was currently operating at high efficiency. Shawton instructed his men to cover Eudy’s descent and attack the starship. The enemy absolutely mustn’t be allowed to descend on the planet.

Thankfully, the enemy starship didn’t look intent on forcing their way onto the planet. They were simply flying back and forth in space.

When Eudy and the others finally landed safely on the planet, Cary told Shawton everything about Cillin in a hurry.

“Please send someone to reinforce Cillin ASAP, commander! He’ll be in danger if he’s alone!” Cary volunteered himself to be part of the rescue team.

Shawton looked at Eudy, “What did Cillin tell you to do back then?”

Eudy sucked in a deep breath to calm himself down as much as possible, “He told me to leave first and get reinforcements later.”

Shawton obviously thought deeper into things than Cary did, “Who was the guy who chased after Cillin?”

“It… it's Oskulos…”

“Oskulos who?” Cary was a little puzzled by Eudy’s answer.

However, Shawton and the few A Squad members present in the meeting nearly jumped on their feet.

“What?! Oskulos? Are you sure? Is it really… that person?” Shawton pointed a finger above him. Everyone except Cary knew exactly who this ‘person’ Shawton was mentioning.

Eudy nodded, “That’s what Cillin said.”

“But why did Oskulos had his eyes on Cillin? It doesn’t make sense. Oskulos normally sets his bar pretty high…” An A Squad member muttered to himself.

When Eudy heard this, he wanted nothing more than to kick him out of the room.

“This isn’t the time for reactions, commander. Let us form the rescue team and save Cillin already. I’m worried that he won’t last long if we dally any longer,” Eudy urged.

“Hey, who on earth is this Oskulos that you guys are talking about?” Cary was still confused by Oskulos’ identity.

Another member of the A Squad explained, “Oskulos is Lone Wolf, the Hunter with the most twisted personality out of the Six Stars of Hunt.”

Cary would’ve thought of that unusual Star Rank Hunter if they had mentioned Lone Wolf’s title earlier. He just didn’t know about Lone Wolf’s true name.

“What!?” Cary was stunned for a second before he grabbed Eudy by the collar and lifted him into the air, yelling, “Why the f*ck didn’t you say this earlier? He’ll die!”

Both Cary and Eudy volunteered to join the rescue team, ignoring even the somewhat disdainful gazes the A Squad members were throwing their way. The problem was there were still a couple of old fools who were looking oh-so-serious as they began analysing the cause of the whole situation.

Motherf*cker, should we be looked down upon just because we’re not a member of the A Squadron?! These condescending old fools! Cut the nonsense and let’s save Cillin already!

Xiao Shang and more Sixth B Squadron members volunteered themselves to partake in the rescue team, but they were all turned down by Shawton. Their opponent was a Star Rank Hunter, so the best candidates of the rescue team was naturally the A Squad. The B Squad wouldn’t be able to help even if they all went there.

While Shawton was building a rescue team and instructing his men to attack the starship circling outside their planet, a loud noise suddenly erupted from the base’s direction.

At first Shawton thought that they were being attacked, but when he saw the gray cat in its metal form he immediately told his men to put their guns away.

The gray cat’s roar was so powerful that the surrounding people nearly fainted because of it. They should be thankful that the sound wave wasn’t directed at them, or they would’ve died a long time ago.

The gray cat was aiming its roar at the starship flying outside the planet. When the starship was struck by the gray cat’s sound wave attack, its monitors and displays all turned into static. The gray cat roared again when they had finally recovered from the attack, but this time a white beam was also fired from its mouth straight towards the starship.

The white beam actually punched a huge hole in the energy shield that was protecting the starship!

However, the gray cat obviously wasn’t planning to meddle with them for long.

An unmanned spaceplane flew out of the base automatically.

A figure dashed towards the spaceplane and reached it in just a couple of jumps. It wasn’t a jumping ability that any normal person could possess.

The gray cat jumped into the spaceplane too after Czedow had gone inside.