There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL)
Chapter 266 - 259. Tomorrow

Chapter 266: Chapter 259. Tomorrow

"Huh..."

Zein watched the news without stopping his hand motion, putting food in his mouth as the newscaster talked about him being a member of an Old House.

"That’s unexpected," he muttered. "I didn’t think it’d go in this direction,"

"I don’t think anyone did," Bassena smiled wryly. This was why he looked confused earlier. He thought if there was more news about Zein, it would be about how he was spotted in the Temple.

And yes, there was news about that too, which gained traction while Zein and Bassena were frolicking in their bed, cutting themselves off from the world. But it was soon being replaced by another piece of news; this time about Zein’s parentage.

"Who’s this guy’s name again?" Zein tilted his head, looking strangely nonchalant about his identity being the talk of the nation.

"He’s someone from House Arok," Bassena answered while taking a light wine from the fridge--if Zein didn’t see it as a big deal, then it wasn’t a big deal. "Sol or something, I don’t know."

Ah...Zein vaguely recalled one of the ’princes’ he met in the Association, while he was trailing behind Radia.

It seemed that, as the news about Zein ’visiting’ the Temple spread out, there were people who questioned his eligibility to enter the inner sanctuary with Bassena. Moreover, no one even knew he was going in. This talk also happened somewhere in a club in Rexon, where people were talking about how a mere guide from the red-zone could enter the inner sanctuary, and this prince of House Arok suddenly lashed out at them, yelling about how Zein was a member of an Old House and he had every right to go to the Temple with his status.

Someone with a high status like him lashing out in a club, of course, was a feed for others. Some recorded this event and posted it on their social networking sites. By the morning, it spread far and wide, and by the afternoon, the news had covered it after conducting their own investigation about this claim.

"Well, we already know it would happen sooner or later the moment I signed those papers," Zein shrugged.

When he took his last name, he was ready for this fact to spread. Actually, it was a wonder that none of the reporters in the Association during the conference picked up on this. Perhaps because the journalist wasn’t allowed on the second floor where the ’royals’ gathered. Zein was also following Radia during that time, so they might think Zein was just there to be introduced as a rising star.

"Now they are wondering how the heir to an Old House ended up in the red-zone," Bassena stared at the wine glass he just emptied. "And as they investigate more..."

"Whoever behind the Golden Viper will catch on," Zein finished the thought. He observed the frown and palpable anxiety on the esper’s face and curled his lips. "But you’ll protect me, anyway. Right?"

Bassena raised his gaze and, as he looked at the beautiful smile in front of him, the knot in his brow unraveled. He chuckled and felt confidence filling him again from the trust in those blue eyes. "Don’t flirt with me in this serious atmosphere."

It wasn’t just about the trust; it was about how Zein felt secure enough to let someone else handle his survival. That calm countenance, even as something bad might befall him, just because his esper was there...

Bassena recalled how Zein refused to accept him as a ’guarantee’ for tomorrow. How the guide didn’t even think he had a tomorrow. But now he naturally thought that Bassena would be there to save that tomorrow, and be there inside that tomorrow.

Haa...it was as if Bassena hadn’t fallen in love enough.

This nice moment, which made Bassena wish time would just stop, was interrupted by another notification in Zein’s commlink. "They just don’t stop, what are they trying to ask me any--"

Zein paused, eyes fixed on the screen of the commlink. This time, it was from Han Shin.

"What does this guy want again?" Bassena sighed, but the healer said nothing in his message--which was actually quite uncharacteristic of him. There was only a compressed file containing several videos.

Zein clicked on the file, simply because it was rare for Han Shin to not blabber in his message. Even Bassena got curious and shifted closer to the guide so they could watch the video together.

"Damn..."

Bassena muttered as the first video played. Just from the first five seconds of footage alone, he knew it was a recording of a live streaming. It had been screen-recorded and cut into several parts. The first video showed them a familiar scenery of the inner sanctuary’s garden.

They immediately knew where this recording would go.

And sure enough, they watched the event they experienced in person yesterday through the screen. Starting from Bassena and Saintess talking, to Zein joining the fray, and ending with the attempted assault and the Medium coming from the other side of the garden. Since whoever recorded this scene did it from far away, the sound wasn’t very clear. But they still could catch the Saintess’s voice, since she was almost always yelling the moment Zein was there.

"This is...interesting?" Zein tilted his head. "Where is this coming from? How could this person sneak inside and make a recording?"

"That’s one thing, but..." Bassena took a new commlink that he used temporarily to replace the compromised one and browse through it. "It seems like these vids had been circulating for the past hour."

Curious, they tried to find the origin of these recordings, or where the live streaming came from. But after calling Han Shin for more information, the healer told them the life streaming seemed to happen inside the dark web. They couldn’t track who the infiltrator was, and the video had been deleted from the site.

But someone who watched the stream recorded it, and perhaps since the news was talking about Zein again, they felt it would be fun to release the footage. For the past hour, they released the footage--cut into several parts--one by one, every ten minutes.

With how the public had been paying attention to the elusive guide--no, to Luzein Ishtera, they ate that up. Because of that, the videos spread rapidly.

That in itself wasn’t something of concern, but...

"Without a clear sound, it almost looks like we ganged up on her," Bassena commented.

Of course, it was also clear that the Saintess was the one who attacked Zein, but without a clear context, it could easily be seen as an act of self-defense because she felt threatened by Zein and Bassena.

"Should we call Radia?" Bassena asked, but Zein had already pressed the call button ahead of him. They waited for a while, but unfortunately, the call didn’t get picked up. "Let’s try once again, but if he’s still not answering--oh?"

Before they could call again, a message from Radia came.

[don’t worry]

Short and concise, as if he already knew what they wanted to say. Ah, not ’as if’--he most definitely knew. And then another text came.

[sit back and enjoy]

Zein and Bassena looked at each other, and after a few seconds of silence, they shrugged.

"Well, if he said so..."

* * *

In a corner of an obscured dark web, there was a site where people could post an idea about some outrageous requests. People who visited the site could vote on which request they would like the admin to take by sending commission money. The request which came on top would become the mission for their ’agents’ to enact.

The newest mission was as such; live streaming the Mago Temple’s inner sanctuary.

An outrageous, but not unreasonable request.

A temple’s inner sanctuary wasn’t something forbidden per se, but the entry was limited to the high-level clients. Which means normal people wouldn’t be able to see what it was like. This kind of request to see the inside of certain places was among the most frequently requested, and with the rise of talk about that mysterious guide and his critique of the Temple, people easily got interested in this request.

And they voted like crazy, making the request easily reach the top spot. So the site dispatched one of its people who excelled at stealth operations.

[Sadeva] wasn’t very well known to the world, but in the underground scheme, people said his stealth skill was almost comparable to Mobius Captain, the Night Star Han Joon. He wasn’t much good in anything else, but infiltration was his playground.

And to his credit; he succeeded.

He sneaked inside, disguised as a tourist, right before twilight when the security around the inner sanctuary was at its lowest. Once inside, he started the live streaming, thinking he would just record the place and go. But lo and behold--he saw the Saintess and the Serpent Lord in the pavilion.

Juicy.

He knew there was a rumor about the Saintess’s favoritism toward Bassena Vaski, although it was quickly getting debunked by both the Temple and Trinity’s PR teams. But what if they actually had something going on? The chat watching the live stream on the hidden web was going wild. They pulled out discussion and debate about how the Serpent Lord had never visited the Temple again for months, and was supposedly enamored with Trinity’s infamous guide that had been the talk for the past couple of days.

The donations were coming in asking him to creep closer so they could hear the voices better. But before he could successfully do that, he saw another figure entering the garden, wearing a white robe and a black mask. The chat was filled with exclamation points.

This was the drama of the century.

He was elated. The viewers flood the stream with donations and further requests, and between that and the fifty percent he got from the commission’s total accumulated points, it would be his biggest earning yet. He even managed to get out of there safely despite the Serpent Lord seemingly finding him out. By the time he arrived at his home in the wee hour of the night, he already received the scrumptious payment from the site admin in his account.

His euphoria did not last long, however, because the next day--no, less than twelve hours later, he was sitting on his knees, scared shitless inside his own house.

No, it wasn’t the Temple. It wasn’t the government. It wasn’t even Bassena Vaski.

It was freaking Radia Mallarc in front of him.

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