There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL)
Chapter 228 - 221. Day of Contending Nerves (1)

Chapter 228: Chapter 221. Day of Contending Nerves (1)

"So, what exactly happened?"

The next morning, the executives had their separate breakfast--or rather, meeting with a meal. In which, Zein wasted no time asking Radia. He had wanted to ask that immediately yesterday, but alas, he had a puppy to be coddled.

All he found out from Bassena was merely the outbreak level, which was actually quite high. But the building belonged to the Association, so the walls and pillars were reinforced with resistant material, and there were more than enough espers to do containment. Not to mention Bassena was there to do crowd control.

It was almost silly, the outbreak. If it was meant to do some damage, they shouldn’t have done it in a building full of an esper with just that level of density. While the parking lot did get contaminated with miasma, it wasn’t anything that a good purification device couldn’t handle in a span of a day.

So, more than the outbreak, the surprising part was the attack on the vault room.

Radia, who was always quieter than usual in the morning, murmured while letting the smell of roasted coffee beans envelop him. "It seemed that they searched the whole building for more explosive sheets."

"Did they find any?" Rina asked. She had no idea what happened in the Association building since she was busy defending the channel connecting the basement of the building and the hotel.

"Some. They are still very secretive about where," Radia crossed his arms as he leaned back and closed his eyes. "I’m going over to find out more."

"It’s rare for you to not find out already," Bassena said, and Zein had to hold back on commenting that the Guildmaster might be busy last night.

Radia did not make any response, however, as if he couldn’t hear anything. He was tapping on his arms with knitted brows. They only heard him a few minutes later. "The sheet did not matter. The timing does."

The other three fell into silence then, eating their meal and sipping on their coffee in contemplation. Yes, among everything, that was still the biggest mystery.

"There’s no way it’s a coincidence, right?" Rina looked at the others.

"There’s a possibility that it was," Radia said. "At least, that would be the case if they only put the sheet in the vault room."

"Because then, we could chalk it up to a robbery attempt?"

"Or terrorism,"

"Either way," Radia straightened his back slightly then, "It makes sense to do that in the middle of an auction with the right timing," he paused to drink his coffee before continuing. "But putting them in other places of the building where there were barrier formation is risky without knowing the guards will be distracted."

"And so, the question becomes: how?" Bassena concluded.

Zein let out a quiet sigh. The probability of having someone--a human--knew when there would be an outbreak and used it for something despicable was...unnerving.

"The outbreak itself could not be random," Bassena muttered. "Even if it happened somewhere in the city--no, if it happened in the city, we would be getting even more distracted, because the containment would be harder, and we have to think about the civilian’s safety. And yet, it happened right where it could be handled easily."

Zein drummed on the table. He had been pondering the same question ever since he knew how fast it was for the espers to finish clearing the beasts. The one who provided the possibility, as always, was Radia.

"Rather than wanting to cause damage, it’s more like they wanted to say that they could do this deliberately," the Guildmaster said, stabbing his fork to a piece of fruit. "As if telling us that they could choose where and when they wanted to cause the outbreak."

This time, it wasn’t just Zein that was sighing. It seemed like things kept getting more and more complicated. If it was the same force that caused the last mass outbreak, it meant they got more proficient.

And to think someone from the human side might be able to ’cooperate’ with them?

"Well, let’s save our conjecture until we know more," Radia said. "We’ll still investigate on our own, but there’s no reason to work alone in this matter, since it concerned the whole nation."

And with that notion, Radia left to attend the emergency meeting after breakfast, with Rina in tow as his bodyguard. Bassena, meanwhile, received a call that asked him to give an account of yesterday’s event, since he was the first esper to arrive at the site of the outbreak.

Thanks to that, Zein was left alone in the suite. He had told the girls to have fun and toured the city today. Yesterday’s surprise event was enough to bring tension, so he wanted them to unwind on the last day of the year, buying new year gifts and such--just having fun, basically.

"Sir," Jock suddenly called to Zein when the guide was watching the city from the wide glass window. "Two people are heading here."

"Here as in to this room?" Zein arched his brow in surprise.

Every guest that wanted to meet him or other members of Trinity had to do it by the receptionist, who would then relay it to Jock as the head of security. In that case, the content would be ’someone asked to meet’, in which they would wait for the members’ agreement.

But ’heading here’ meant the people were already on their way up. Since they didn’t even bother with the protocol, they must have been people who had the ability to override it.

"The investigators?"

"Most likely," Jock nodded. "There was no official request for a meeting with you, however."

Radia was in the emergency meeting, and they had just called Bassena in for recounting the outbreak experience. It almost felt like they were taking advantage when the two weren’t here to approach Zein. With no appointment, no less.

"What would you like to do?" Jock asked, getting ready for the door. "Since there’s no official request before, you can reject them."

"We can’t do that," Zein sighed and left the window. "They could bring the ’official request’ now, and it’ll look bad for us if we avoid it."

"So we’ll let them in?" Jock asked, in time with the sound of the doorbell.

"It wasn’t like we had anything to hide," Zein shrugged.

Jock nodded briefly before heading to the door, while Zein took a seat on the couch, put on his mask, and proceeded to take out a book from his storage ring and lounging nonchalantly there as Jock’s voice could be heard from the foyer, greeting--or rather, questioning--the two guests.

"Sir, these gentlemen came from the Association," Jock came and told him, confirming their conjecture. "They are the investigators in charge of yesterday’s case."

"Investigators?" Zein arched his brow, looking up slightly from his book. "I don’t recall doing something that needed to be investigated?"

Without even waiting for permission, one of the men stepped forward and replied. "It’s only a small inquiry to anyone who was present on the site."

Zein looked up fully this time, staring at the two men--investigators. The one who was talking before seemed to be in charge, a man in his thirties with sharp eyes behind his glasses. The other one was younger, with a bit of a rebellious vibe around his slightly crooked collars.

"Now?" Zein asked dryly, brow arched in blatant annoyance.

He might be fine with proceeding, but that didn’t mean he had to take it quietly.

"Yes. We have a lot of people to be questioned today, so..."

And very conveniently, they came down to head over here just as soon as Bassena arrived at the Association building--based on Jock’s information. They could very easily choose to question other people first, including Celastrina who was basically on the same floor as him, but no--they chose to come here at the exact time when Radia and Bassena were absent.

Letting out an obvious sigh, Zein put down his book and gestured toward the chair across from his seat. "Sure," he said briefly, didn’t bother to cover the displeasure in his voice. It was easy, since he wasn’t necessarily ’acting’.

As they thanked him and took a seat, they glanced at Jock who positioned himself behind Zein’s couch; his standard procedure. But it was clear that the two were uncomfortable with it.

"Can we do this privately?" they asked, to which Zein responded with cold, narrowed eyes.

"Did you just ask a guide to be left alone with two high-star espers?"

The distrust was thick in his voice, but the younger investigator still put it into words. "Excuse me, were you trying to say you don’t trust us?"

The blue eyes shifted to the younger one with a piercing gaze, who unconsciously flinched. "Do I know you?"

"Well, we haven’t--"

"I don’t," Zein cut the man unhesitatingly.

"What we’re trying to say is that you can trust us. This is just regular--"

"Then why are you acting like it’s a highly sensitive, classified interrogation?" Zein leaned back against the backrest, arms crossed.

He had always been a stoic one, and had no problem expressing his dislike. The Association was one of them. Well, he basically disliked anyone who did nothing to help the red-zone but acted like they were curing the world.

And he especially hated the shady ones who acted sneaky like this.

Zein had learned how to soften his edge, and his edge did get softened naturally after he was in a relationship. But now, those sharp edges were brought to the surface, and it was coupled with his newfound worth as the patriarch of an Old House.

Tilting his head slightly, he stared into the investigator’s eyes with those thorns contained within. "Should I really trust people who deliberately come here when MY esper is somewhere else?"

People might not know their exact relationship, but they knew who it referred to. Being accused of sneakily avoiding Bassena’s presence to come to Zein, however, did not sit right with the younger investigator. "You can’t possibly think that--"

"You can’t possibly think that we don’t have eyes in our own hotel," Zein said in a nonchalant tone, but the coldness in his eyes only grew deeper.

"That’s--"

"That’s enough," the older investigator stopped his younger colleague. He looked at the blue eyes that had now turned into a blizzard and straightened his back. "My apologies, Sir. We are in the wrong, for coming with a false intention. Your guard may stay."

Zein scoffed harshly in response. "Of course, he may."

As if ignoring the spike in the guide’s voice, the older investigator fixed his glasses and took out a recording device. "Yes, well--shall we proceed?"

"The sooner the better."

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