There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL)
Chapter 499 - 492. Surfacing

Chapter 499: Chapter 492. Surfacing

"Fuck..." one of the espers in the watch tower facing where the advancing squad left before muttered under their breath as they checked the guns once again.

Another esper who had been watching the area through the tower’s binoculars turned and whispered anxiously. "Is this really true? Are they really..."

"Sush--we don’t know," the Guard Division’s Captain, Savis, said quickly to reassure the other espers--but more importantly, to reassure himself. "We just know there’s an emergency, but that doesn’t mean they’re dead or anything."

"But--"

"No," Savis shook his head. "I don’t believe Sir Vaski would be defeated," he said while clenching his fists behind his back. "Not when he’s with Sir Zein."

"...yeah," the esper who was checking the gun nodded. "Yeah, you’re right."

That was what they needed to tell themselves. Because if they truly lost Bassena and Zein, there was no point in continuing this project anymore. There would be no hope of progressing further, even if they put their life on the line.

That being said, it had been fourteen hours after the start of the protocol, and there had been no further news from the advancing team. Naturally, people had been getting more and more tense. While they were watching the border with anxious hearts, the temporary Commander, Ashur Iddina, came to deliver some rations and check in on them.

"Anything to report?"

"No, Sir," the Guard Captain replied without taking his eyes off the monitor. "No movement or alert from the radar."

"Status?"

"Everyone is in their position; all turrets are in the ready,"

"The guides and supports are inside the stadium," Iore, who followed Ashur there, gave her report too.

"Good," Ashur nodded and left the watch tower with Iore to visit the other towers. They had been doing it every several hours, making sure everyone was ready for whatever they would face while they were waiting for more news. He could feel the increasing tension every time he checked on them, even though the base looked as peaceful as ever from the outside. Peaceful and quiet.

At this point, he didn’t even care whether it was good news or bad news, as long as there was one. He sighed inwardly and turned his head toward the spire above the stadium. "What about Chief Han’s deputy?"

"She’s--oh, there she is," Iore pointed at a healer who was running toward them. As Han Shin’s deputy, she was also in charge of most of the base’s devices, including the translation device.

"Sir!"

"Did you get something? Anything?" Ashur asked with renewed hope as she saw the healer’s animated face.

He had thought it wouldn’t take long to interpret the shard’s mana length. Unfortunately, the process involved assembling the interpretation device first. In the past three months, there had been no use of it because of Zein’s presence, so the device had been neglected. It took hours to assemble, and even then, the translation needed even more time.

The shards had been vibrating heavily and letting out mana wave after mana wave rapidly. Like hearing someone talking at high speed, the machine faced difficulty in capturing and interpreting the waves into decipherable context.

"This," the healer bent down with panting breath, reaching out her hand with several paper strips on it. "Here, this is all the machine could get."

Ashur took the strips of paper and read it from the top, brows furrowed at the limited, broken message. "Twins fine, twins fine, victory...wuuu?"

"...whoo~" the healer raised her hand and made a celebration pose, adding swiftly when Ashur and Iore looked at her with raised brows. "No, that’s just how the device interpreted it!"

"Alright, but...isn’t this a good thing? Then what..." Ashur looked at the next strip of paper and knitted his brows even more. "Wait--what is this? Oh, no...coming...below...below..."

The healer bit her lips and Iore took the next strip of paper, which only contained one word being repeated again and again in bold letters, as if screaming the urgency.

BELOW BELOW BELOW BELOW

Ashur ran abruptly toward the nearest tall building to take a vantage point while talking to his commlink through the open channel. "Guard Captain, direct all guns to the ground! Scout, watch the ground! Enemies will come from the ground--I repeat, enemies will come from the ground," his voice rang through the commlinks. "All stand-by espers to take a higher position!"

The base, which had been quiet and falsely peaceful for the whole day, stirred up immediately. The guns above the watch tower started to move, and the espers spreading around the base climbed the nearest building.

[Sir! Vibration coming from underneath section G-14] a report came from one of the scouts.

"Squad 1 and 2 to G-14," Ashur jumped from the building and ran along the rooftops of the tents on the eastern side of the base. "I repeat, Squad 1 and 2 to G--"

Suddenly, he could hear a thundering sound coming from where he was headed. The ground shook like an earthquake and exploded, sending rocks and dirt sprouting into the air like a fountain.

"What the hell--"

The same kind of exclamation came from everyone in the base. Wherever they were, they could see the figure shooting up from the ground like a grotesque, disgusting train. Ashur gritted his teeth and yelled to the commlink while channeling mana to his dimensional arsenal.

"Stone Eater! All lighting type esper, focus on the Stone Eater!" he summoned a blade in his hand as he saw espers rushing through rooftops and the ground toward the howling giant worm.

[Sir, radar is detecting several beasts from the hole where the Stone Eater came from]

"Guns to the hole!"

[Concentrated fire!] he heard the shout from the Guard Captain, and the eastern watch tower released a torrent of mana bullets toward the hole in the ground, blasting the crawling beasts.

Meanwhile, lightning flashed in the air from three different directions, striking the towering Stone Eater that was about to descend back down. The giant worm shrieked as it got paralyzed and slammed hard into the ground, crushing a building and several tents.

"Squad 3 and 4 on stand-by; keep a lookout for an ambush," Ashur gave his command as he jumped toward the thrashing worm. "The rest of you to the hole."

[Yes, Sir!]

Jumping high into the air, Ashur raised his hand and eight spears appeared above him. "Stop moving," he grunted, and the spears dropped into the worm’s wriggling body, nailing it to the ground. Another blade appeared in his other hand, and he rushed down. His figure blurred as he moved along the worm’s body, and when he stopped to land near the hole, the Stone Eater had been sliced to pieces.

The other espers had reached the hole and the guns stopped firing. Dead beasts sprawled around the hole, but more were crawling out. Naturally, the espers welcomed them with gleaming weapons and shining magics.

[Sir, might this be the ’emergency’?] Iore asked through a private channel.

"It might be," Ashur walked to the edge of the wide hole, twitching his fingers to recall the spears he used to impale the worm.

[But what happened to the others?]

"How would I--"

His words stopped as a familiar face peeked out from the end of the hole. Kei stared at Ashur and the other espers, letting out a breath of relief. "Oh, thank Gods you were ready!"

"Well, there they are..."

* * *

"Haa...why so stubborn?" Bassena stabbed the last wriggling tentacle with a spike, pressing the sole of his boot on the rattling dark purple crystal.

"Is it dead, now?" Zein walked closer after putting on his mask back, leaving the safety of the barrier.

"More or less," Bassena nodded. He bent down and coated his hands in hard black scale before taking the fragment from beneath his foot. "As long as we destroy the fragment."

It was twice bigger than the last fragment. Zein understood now why Bassena took a long time to kill this one. The bigger energy supply allowed the Fragment to keep regenerating and protecting the core. It even had enough energy to rebel, rattling in Bassena’s hand as if it wanted to try to escape still. It would be better to get rid of such an aggressive fragment soon, but...

"I don’t think we have the time for that now," Zein frowned, looking at the passage across the chamber.

"Yeah," Bassena nodded in agreement. "Let’s do it after we make sure the others are al--what the fu--Zein!"

As the esper rummaged through the dimensional storage to look for a tube, the Fallen Star’s fragment suddenly slipped out of Bassena’s hand and shot toward the guide. Fortunately, Zein was alert enough to catch the fragment in his hands instead of letting it slam into his body.

But the fragment let out a sharp hissing sound and a waft of black fog, causing the twin shards to scream and vibrate in panic.

"Ghh!" Zein clenched his jaw as he poured his mana and Setnath’s power into the fragment as fast as he could. Now that it came to this, there was no other choice than to destroy the fragment there and then.

"Zein!" Bassena grabbed the guide, but all Zein could feel was the burning of his hands. He grunted and hissed and poured everything he had on reserve, gripping the fragment tight as if he wanted to crush it entirely. "Gaaah!"

As the black fog enveloped him, his mind felt the familiar feeling of being sucked into another reality. Experiencing it so many times before, he wasn’t really alarmed. What surprised him was the presence of someone else beside him.

Feeling a warm hand on his, Zein turned his head to look at the equally confused esper beside him.

"...huh?" Bassena blinked, looking around in the strange dark space surrounding them.

"Well...this is a first."