There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL)
Chapter 421 - 414. Black Prison

Chapter 421: Chapter 414. Black Prison

The tea time was proven to be a good space to unwind for Bassena before the trial he had to endure inside the black marble. With the gentle Saintess, the quiet Medium, and the cheerful Elena, the afternoon passed in a peaceful bliss.

Bassena did not prolong their hospitality, however. Worried that the peace would make him complacent and lowering his guard, he determined to enter the hyperbolic time chamber right after the tea.

For the sake of secrecy, the procession was made in the lobby before the stairs leading to the Sky Garden--which was forbidden even for the Templars.

"Wish me luck,"

"You don’t need luck; you already have what you need," Zein patted the esper who started to look anxious again.

"I won’t have you inside," he puffed his cheeks; an act that would make even the members of Anzus’s jaws drop.

Zein muffled a laugh behind his fist before scolding the man. "Don’t be a child and show me what the future strongest esper could do."

Future strongest esper...Bassena’s face turned slack before grinning widely. He leaned forward and touched the guide’s forehead with his. "Can I get a kiss at least? One kiss, for me to take for...however long I would be there."

Zein smiled and grasped the esper’s cheek, stroking the black scales as he kissed Bassena gently, softly; full of affection and conviction that he would still be there no matter how long Bassena took inside. It was quite chaste, but it meant so much for Bassena. When their lips parted a few seconds later, his anxiety was gone.

Bassena glanced at the Saintess and the Templars. Yes; Zein would be safe here--at least from non-deity entities.

After putting his mind at ease, Bassena took out the black marble and put his mana inside. Waves of magic energy came out massively that the Templars had to shield the priests from the vibration alone. The marble kept on sucking the esper’s mana inside while Bassena slowly got swallowed by his shadow.

Zein didn’t show much in his face, but he felt his stomach churn when the darkness crept into his esper’s face. And when Bassena suddenly disappeared, only leaving a wisp of dark fog around the floating marble, he couldn’t hold the gasp as his heart stopped beating for a split second.

Fortunately, he didn’t forget to catch the vulnerable black marble that had become Bassena Vaski’s

prison.

He let out a long exhale that sounded heavy to whoever was hearing it. Zein didn’t realize it before, but perhaps, he too, was worried about the whole training thing.

Didn’t Bassena say there might be side effects from the time discrepancy between the two dimensions?

What if Bassena came out a different person--

"Zein?"

His negative thought was cut by Elena’s inquisitive voice and the tug on his pants by the white rabbit. Lips stretching into a subtle smile, he lifted the rabbit into his arms and walked toward the Saintess.

"Please take care of him," he said briefly before placing the black marble on the Saintess’s palm.

"By the Goddess’s name," she muttered and curled her fingers so the black marble couldn’t be seen again. "Please be at ease and have your audience."

Zein nodded and walked to the Medium, who was already standing on the lowest staircase, waiting for him. The young woman gestured quietly toward the entrance of the Sky Garden, before climbing the steps. When Zein followed her, he realized that no one was following them. The white rabbit was still in his arms, but Elena just waved at him with her usual wide grin.

"It’ll be just us," once the door of the Sky Garden closed, the Medium spoke.

No--Zein recognized right away that it was Frejya who spoke, even without seeing the Medium’s eyes.

While the Medium was rather recluse and quiet, her Goddess was talkative and sometimes cheeky--almost like Elena, in some way. Perhaps that was why the little girl was chosen as the next Saintess.

Zein wondered though, why it would be just them, but the Goddess already told him before he needed to ask. "I’m about to give you something, so it’s better that no one knows what it is, or some people might get jealous," the Goddess said with a wink that almost made Zein roll his eyes.

"Are we just going to talk? Or do I need to go to your altar again?" Zein asked, releasing Cloudy from his embrace. He watched the white rabbit hop around the Medium before scurrying to the other animals in the outer garden.

"You’ll have to go there to receive what I want to give you," the Goddess replied while continuing to walk toward the inner garden. "But we can do that later; why don’t we chat first?"

"Is there anything to chat about?"

Answering like this to a deity was probably a suicidal act, but Zein didn’t do it because he was trying to be rebellious. He just knew Frejya preferred to have a conversation without empty words. As proof, the Goddess was laughing instead.

"What? Are you saying you don’t have anything to ask me?" she looked at Zein with a smile, the Medium’s pale blue eyes curled into a pair of crescents.

Something to ask? Zein tilted his head while the Goddess took a seat on one of the boulders in front of a flowerbed. And then he remembered that the safe-zone was basically the Goddess’s territory, which meant she could probably hear almost anything that was spoken out loud in her land.

And he recalled a particular question he voiced out on the journey earlier. "Ah...about gathering the shards?"

The Goddess smiled and patted another boulder next to her. "Did you plan to gather the shards and combine them with the core?"

"That’s the most plausible answer, isn’t it?" Zein took a seat on the boulder and shrugged.

Sitting side by side with her reminded him of the last time he was conversing with Setnath, where they sat on the rooftop looking at a landscape from the deity’s original world.

Hmm...he already knew that there were a lot of different dimensions in this universe, but...he wondered how many of them had been destroyed because of the Celestial War. He wondered if his world were to fall...would they become one of the dungeons too? If what was written in the history book was true, it would mean there were other worlds with gates and dungeons connecting each other too. How many of them had a deity trying to take responsibility and give them the power to overcome the miasmic beasts?

If he saw it like this...perhaps Setnath wasn’t so bad after all.

Not that he could let the guy take his body.

"You’re thinking a lot," the Goddess, who had been observing Zein’s face, chuckled. "That’s good; you need to think if you want to survive. We’re giving you a tool here, but it’s up to you how to use it."

Zein glanced at the sudden solemn tone coming from the Goddess. "Did you hear about what happened in Eastern Federation?"

"Of course," her smile turned sharper this time. "My children here are quite active in the world. They need information and connection to the government if the policy they created is to be employed, right?"

Children. So she called the priest and the templars here Her children--Zein thought. Was that why Zein was called Freyja’s lost child?

"Hmm...so, you should also know that someone--some entity--is controlling the force of the Deathzone."

Zein said it with a casual accusation in his slightly sharp voice. The Goddess shook her head, however. "Not that much," she confessed. "I told you, we don’t have power outside of our territory--and we’re not that idle, you know; there are a lot of worlds out there. What I have is the information that my children get."

"How do you know about my mother’s situation then?" Zein frowned slightly.

"Isn’t she one of my children too?" the Goddess looked at the tree with a forlorn gaze. "She was supposed to be, just like you. I couldn’t see what those children of mine did outside of the Alliance, but..." she shifted her gaze toward Zein; soft and adoring. "Mothers could always feel their children."

Zein turned his face away, sighing inwardly. Goddesses were such sly creatures. One of them used him to play blame, and one of them used motherhood to weaken his heart.

But at least, Frejya had proven herself to be good for his cause.

"Thank you," Zein muttered. "I can find my mother’s remains because of your clue."

"I’m glad."

"My father’s too, in the end. I made them rest in the same place."

"As they should."

"But..." Zein turned to face the Goddess again, this time with a stern expression. "Are you telling me you knew nothing about the one residing in the Deathzone?"

The Goddess seemed like she was about to say ’no’, but she stopped and closed her parted lips again, suddenly falling into a deep ponder. "What those in the Federation foresaw was a force able to amplify the darkness. But they couldn’t see it in precision because, once again, their ’eyes’ could not penetrate the massive darkness over there."

"That’s why the ’order’ was only to eliminate the darkness?"

"Perhaps," the Goddess shrugged. After all, the ones who gave the ’prophecy’ to the government and the association were the patron deities of the Towers located in the Federation’s territory. She narrowed her eyes and looked at Zein with a stern gaze. "Did you perhaps... see it?"

"The entity? Well..."

Zein proceeded to tell the Goddess about his last vision; the one he saw through the shard’s memory. About the gigantic being with a huge white eye that seemed like it wanted to scorch him.

"Ah..." at the end of the story, the Goddess blinked and looked into the empty air, as if reading a display that only she could see.

"Do you know who that is?"

"Perhaps..." she muttered. "I wasn’t so sure, because it felt like a distant memory, but...if I’m not mistaken, then..." she glanced at Zein and smiled bitterly. "It’s probably one of the celestial beings we defeated during the war."