Star Rank Hunter

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

Chapter 215: Destination Reached, Operation Begin [Part 2]

While he was talking, Oskulos jabbed his blade into Cillin’s stomach again before slowly pulling it out. Blood dripped off the blade before it eventually became shiny and bloodless once more.

Cillin let out a loud cry of pain and began convulsing all over. By now his boy was scarred with dozens of knife wounds, and the ground was splattered with his blood. Although he wasn’t going to bleed to death from these wounds, it was still incredible pain.

It was probably time to disembowel his prey, wasn’t it?

Oskulos seemed to find the situation very amusing, so he jabbed his blade at Cillin for another two times.

Again, and again.

But just as Oskulos was jabbing downward once more, Cillin turned around in mid convulsion and caused Oskulos’ blade hit Cillin’s belly button instead.

Swoosh!

A clump of needles as thin as chicks’ feathers suddenly shot out of Cillin’s belly button straight towards Oskulos’ face.

Oskulos jumped back and swung his blade to block the needles.

While Oskulos was performing a block, metallic belts suddenly appeared and wrapped around Cillin’s body. Then, a flat board unfolded behind Cillin’s back and carried him away at tremendous speed.

Cillin had spent a lot of extremely rare materials and brain cells to develop this device. The tricks’ advantage lay in their advantage of surprise; if the enemy had noticed them beforehand then they would be of little use.

Cillin had been waiting for an opportunity like this all the while. From what he learned about Oskulos through Jiada, the Lone Wolf often bled and disembowel his enemies while he was torturing them. Killing his enemies immediately was not his style. That was why Cillin had set up the needle device on his stomach.

Considering how powerful Oskulos was, there was no way Cillin could use even a speck of psychokinetic power to trigger the trap. The same could be said about triggering the trap by hand either, which was why the best way to do this was to let Oskulos trigger the trap himself.

Cillin’s seemingly painful and uncontrollable wails of pain and convulsions were all but a performance to lull Oskulos into carelessness. Plus, Oskulos seriously didn’t consider Cillin to be an opponent worthy of his attention, not to mention that that he had crushed some of Cillin’s joints and drew a lot of wounds on Cillin’s body. Therefore, Oskulos was a little careless at the time.

When the blade was jabbed at his stomach, Cillin pretended to be turning away out of pain and panic, allowing the tip of Oskulos’ blade to touch the device’s trigger.

One of the most important things a human could do was to figure out their own limits.

Cillin knew that he would be caught by Oskulos, and that his only chance of hurting this Star Rank Hunter for real was to make the attempt when the distance between them was almost zero. Moreover, there was no way Oskulos would let down his guard unless he let him injure him for real.

Cillin was also certain that Oskulos wouldn’t injure an important part of the human body at the beginning of his torture. He was sure that he wouldn’t even hurt his internal organs, and at worst he would make Cillin bleed a little more than usual. After all, Oskulos’ singular hobby was torture.

The reason he endured all those knife wounds was to lower Oskulos’ guard as much as was possible. While Cillin allowed Oskulos to cut him up all he wanted, he was also waiting for the best timing to arrive.

Everything Cillin did and every stage of the trick had been planned carefully and practiced many times in Cillin’s own head.

While the metal board was carrying Cillin away from Oskulos at top speed, Oskulos noticed that there were many holes of corrosion on the ground and the edges of his clothes where the needles had brushed past. With a flick of his wrist, he cut the air twice and scattered the corrosive air around him. Then, he beckoned a hoverboard in the shape of a round disc to fly over and stop beside his legs with a hand wave.

Oskulos stepped on the hoverboard and chased down the direction Cillin was escaping to.

Cillin wasn’t idle while he was being flown away. He was looking at the surrounding environment, and when he saw a particular patch of forest delight lit up in his eyes. He was not far away from his premeditated landing spot.

Cillin took out an object from the leaf patterned ring and tossed it into the air. Then, he put on a gas mask.

The object exploded with a bang after it flew into the air.

In an instant, a smoke that covered one hundred thousand square kilometers* of the sky appeared, creating a haze that severely impacting visibility.

*I’m aware this number is way too big, but that’s what the author wrote. It maybe that he accidentally wrote ten square kilometers into one hundred thousand square kilometers. Please bear with it.

Oskulos obviously didn’t expect a trick like this when he was chasing Cillin from behind. Although he had encountered some small fries who used smoke bombs in the past, Cillin’s ‘smoke bomb’ was a little too big, wasn’t it?

If someone was looking from outside the planet right now, they would find that this entire region was completely covered in haze.

The haze was too widespread, and not even Oskulos could clear it out completely in a short time.

Oskulos stopped moving and probed the surroundings with his thought. The boy did well to hide his own presence, and Oskulos wasn’t able to detect him beyond a certain distance.

He checked his scanner, but the scanner was also affected by the haze. Although Oskulos had no idea how Cillin managed to create a haze weapon like this, he had to give it to Cillin and admit that he was a bit more capable than he expected. Not only did he possess a lot of devices, he also pulled out a huge trick like this one.

Oskulos wasn’t angry. In fact, he was overflowing with interest.

Interesting. This was the kind of hunt he enjoyed. A hunt where his prey just keeled over and died would’ve been too boring and dull, but if some twists and turns were mixed inside then it was a whole different story.

After the haze bomb had detonated, Cillin had tossed out a some small jars prior to making his way to his destination. The jars shattered after they hit the ground and sank into the soil along with their contents.

The needles, the haze bomb, these small jars and a couple more things were all life saving items that Cillin had researched and came up in a short time according to his analysis of Oskulos’ behavior and conduct. Reality had proven that his efforts were useful, although it was not without losing some blood and having his bones crushed. Still, they were small prices to pay compared the loss of one’s life.

Cillin’s chosen destination was no safe area. In fact, it was one of the most dangerous places that existed on this planet. This was due to a dangerous species that lived within this forest, the lizards.

Here in this forest, there were some big fellows about 1.5 meters long and more than 200 kg heavy. They sat at the absolute top of the food chain of this place, and they were the biggest poisonous animal to exist in this region. Even giant pythons had no choice but to make a detour when they ran into these lizards.

Despite their apparent sizes, these lizards pounce at their prey with extraordinary ferocity. They had extremely quick running speed too.

These giant lizards had a powerful neck and many sharp teeth, enabling them to unleash a series of fierce attacks. Their skin was thick and coarse, and there were a lot of bumps around their body. Its back had protruding thorns and gray black colored scales, and its mouth was grown full of huge and sharp teeth. These violent and ugly cold blooded animals sent shivers into every person who met them.

However, Cillin was absolutely thrilled when he finally saw them. Thank goodness these lizards haven’t scattered completely. As for their numbers… alright, it’s pretty impressive.

When Cillin saw the mountain behind these big lizards, he knew that he had reached his chosen destination.

These giant lizards weren’t the only things that Cillin had depended on. After all, these things were at best normal preys for Oskulos, and that man had the ability to come and go freely even if he were to face down an entire nest of lizards.

That was why Cillin was planning to give them some ‘help’.

Cillin had used almost all of his energy into recovering one arm. At this point, the arm he was recovering could hold a gun steadily already.

He took out a modified gun, controlled the board’s flying direction and fired the gun in his hand in bursts.

The first shot hit the side of a giant lizard’s mouth. The bullet blasted its thick skin into shreds, and a small amount of liquid flowed out of the shattered bullethead.

The giant lizard let out a strange respiratory noise angrily after he sensed that it was attacked by something.

The lizard’s cries were very hoarse and strange. It sent chills down people’s spine.

Cillin’s shot went wide since the wound on his arm was still affecting him. However, he quickly adjusted his aim and fired the second bullet straight into its crying mouth.

When the first giant lizard let out a furious cry, the rest of the giant lizards also opened their mouths and did the same. This was how this species interacted amongst themselves.

Cillin’s next few shots all went into the mouths of those crying lizards. However, there were two giant lizards that Cillin found no opportunity to shoot because they never opened their mouths.

The giant lizards chased after Cillin while making their odd cries. Some of them didn’t need to, because Cillin’s goal was the cave that was the giant lizards’ nest.

There were six to seven giant lizards lying at the cave entrance, and they were all staring at Cillin with icy and brutal eyes. Their tongues flicked against the air from time to time.

Cillin made sure to move the metallic board away from these giant lizards’ claws. If he was struck by these gigantic limbs then his life would definitely end here.

A huge claw swiped towards him, and Cillin maneuvered the metallic board out of the way. The giant claw only managed to catch the furthest edge of the board and drew a scratch on its surface.

Cillin had analysed the offensive power of these claws before, and he learned that they were pretty powerful. It was also one of the reasons he had chosen them in the first place.

The foul stench of the giant lizards’ mouths brushed past him with inches to spare as Cillin opened fire and maneuvered the metallic board to fly in between the two lizards guarding in front of the cave entrance, entering the lizards’ nest.

The moment he entered, Cillin immediately sprayed some chemicals onto his body. It could cover up his scent and make him smell very similar to the lizards around him. At the same time, Cillin had pressed a button on the metallic board that caused both Cillin and the board to vanish slowly into thin air.

Of course, he hadn’t actually vanished. It was the device distorting the surrounding air and disorienting the eye, turning him invisible. Moreover, Cillin lowered his body temperature until it was the same as the environment. This way, the lizards wouldn’t be able to discover him, the outsider, easily be it through heat or the reflection of light.

He had already sealed up his wounds earlier with liquid spray, so blood was no longer seeping out of them. Cillin remained quiet inside the lizard’s cave as he watched the lizards charging in furiously, searched around for a little and left. He breathed carefully through his face mask, because even one unusual huff of breath might cause these big fellows’ to grow alert.

Patter!

Pitter-patter!

The sound of rain striking against leaves rang from outside.

It was like the voice of heaven to Cillin’s ears right now.

The rain in this region was came and went unpredictably. A smile was drawn across Cillin’s lips as he stared at the rain falling outside right now, however.

Although he calculated that this region would rain everyday, he couldn’t estimate exactly when during a whole day it was going to rain.

What a timely rain this was!