There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL)
Chapter 505 - 498. More Reunion

Chapter 505: Chapter 498. More Reunion

"I heard a commotion," Zein turned toward the door, but a warm hand pulled his face and attention back.

"No alarm, no emergency--now focus on me, Honey."

Zein chuckled and pulled Bassena down for a kiss, arching his back as the esper entered him deeper. After his aggressive invitation a few days ago, Bassena had been asking him for some every day. Perhaps because for the past three months, they rarely did anything; both were too busy during the day and too tired during the night...well, Zein anyway.

But the last excursion was hard for both of them, and they needed more quality cuddle time, especially in the morning when their accumulated energy was begging to be released--even at the expense of Han Shin’s grumble. The guides like it though, since it means the morning exercise would get pushed to a later time and they could sleep in a bit more.

"Would it be that...provision Radia was talking abo--mmh!"

"Later--" Bassena inhaled, gripping the sheet beside the guide’s head. "Focus a bit more, honey."

"Just a bit?" Zein chuckled. But he did give the esper his undivided attention for the next ten minutes, until they heard someone--a few people, really--walked closer to their tent.

"Haa--fuck!" Bassena groaned and growled behind his clenched teeth. He moved harder and faster as if chasing something, and honestly...Zein liked that; it was rather thrilling, felt like they did some quicky in their office during peak business hours.

Bassena slammed the headboard as they came and Zein laughed between his moan. "Why are you..."

"It’s kind of fun," Zein whispered in an alluring, low voice that made Bassena groan for not being able to prolong the session.

He rolled from beneath the esper and entered the small bathroom their tent was equipped with, leaving Bassena to deal with whoever came to knock on their door. But the esper followed him inside to join him beneath the shower.

"Who was it?"

"Your pet--I mean, that magician girl," Bassena mumbled against the guide’s skin as he wrapped the man with his arms from behind.

"What? They’re back?" Zein turned his head in surprise. "How is--"

"They’re fine," Bassena grumbled. "They found the path and whatever, but did she really need to bother us right away?"

Zein laughed softly at the esper’s whine. It was funny that Bassena wouldn’t mind it if it wasn’t during their intimate moment, or if it wasn’t Senia. Well, he would indulge his esper for a bit so he would be less...spiky, toward Senia later.

"Oh, and the Borderland post told me the provisions and personnel that Radia sent are entering the Deathzone," Bassena added. "So we might see them in three days."

"Did you send someone?"

"I did," Bassena traveled his hand down. "Can’t we do it once more?"

Zein rolled his eyes, but did not reject the invitation. Thanks to that, the tracking group had to wait for a while more. Not that they were mind, since they couldn’t think of anything but a decent meal. After more than a week of expedition, they longed for this wide area safe zone with a bright light that made them feel like they had sunlight, almost. Even if they also have a cooked meal in their camp, it would never hold a candle to the full kitchen in the base that was run by a mana stone-fueled generator.

The only one who whined about it was Senia--who knew exactly why Bassena and Zein were running late after the Saint class greeted him with a bare chest full of kiss marks. She grumbled while shoving the food inside her mouth, which was quite funny for the others.

"Did you starve or something?" Bassena raised his brow when he approached the table, to which Senia responded with a glare.

Nothing more, though. The sensation of a proper meal was too good to be passed on and lessened her annoyance a bit more.

"I heard you found it?" Zein patted Dean’s shoulder, who looked fine although a bit rough and dirty.

It seemed that they all headed straight to the kitchen after arriving. Good thing that they returned when it was almost breakfast, so they had the first warm meal of the day already waiting for them.

"We haven’t exactly found it, but we did find a path leading beneath the mountain, and the compass was pointing further into the path," Senia said after swallowing the food in her mouth. "We can’t pass through though, no matter what we tried."

"Is there a barrier?"

"Something like that?" Senia shrugged before shoving in more food.

"It’s nothing like a solid barrier," Sierra took over the explanation since Senia seemed to be more interested in the food--despite criticizing how bad they were compared to her ’old’ meal. "It was like a fog that felt heavy in our body, like...a thick miasma but not dark?"

"It was like moving through...jelly, or...mudfield? Sometimes it felt like we were not moving at all," Dean added.

"And then the view got so obstructed that we couldn’t see our surroundings. We tried to cast a light spell, but it didn’t penetrate the fog. We tried to retrace our steps, but Ben couldn’t find it."

Ben, their scout, lifted his face from the bow of soup he just devoured to nod. "I made a lot of precautions, but all the marks I put were getting erased."

"We couldn’t slice through the fog, and even my spells disappeared like they were getting swallowed by the fog," Senia said with a deep frown.

"So you came back with Sierra’s mass teleportation?"

They all nodded, and Senia glanced at Zein cautiously. She had no idea whether this result could be said to be a success or a failure, and it gave her anxiety. It was her chance to truly gain the guide’s trust, so she didn’t want to mess it up.

"What do you think?" Bassena asked the contemplating guide.

"I think they started to put better defense around themselves," Zein tapped his chin, and a smile formed across his lips. "Good; we didn’t have to get too anxious about the fragment finding them quickly."

The fragment Bassena fought was a high-ranking one, seeing how the memory it bore was part of the core memory of the Fallen Star instead of the fragment’s memory born after the separation. It would explain how it could sense the shards’ communication signal. But even then, it couldn’t breach the barrier easily.

The shard that Senia and the other tracked seemed to put on an even more elaborate defense system, lying down a trap on the path leading to its position. If a high-rank esper like Senia couldn’t pass through, regular beasts or Fallen Star’s fragments also wouldn’t be able to.

The only one who could travel through the trap was probably its kin; another shard, or well...another fragment of Setnath.

"Good job," Zein nodded in satisfaction. They did all they could, and no one could approach the shard except him anyway--not even Bassena.

The team members perked up at the commissioner’s praise, and they dug into their food with even more gusto after the burden was lifted from their backs. Bassena chuckled and went to the kitchen to get him and Zein some breakfast, while Zein checked on Dean.

"How is it, being a sole guide for an expedition team?"

"Hmm...interesting?" Dean laughed. "You’re right, Captain; it’s important to know how to regulate the espers ourselves."

He recalled the first few days when he needed to yell at them, telling them he was nearing his limit so they needed to manage their skill usage better. There was a time when they had to stay in the camp for two nights because everyone had high-level corrosion and he needed to pace himself to guide all of them.

"It was hard, huh?" Zein smiled. "You must be wondering if the espers would get angry at you for ordering them around."

Dean scratched his cheek and smiled sheepishly. "Yeah..."

"But after some time, they realized how important it was to listen to the guide," Zein said, and Dean nodded in agreement. After the two-night delay, the espers did become more careful in their skill usage, and it drew better teamwork between them. "There’s a reason why the vanguard always listens to the healer, no matter how naggy they are."

After all, the most important members were the ones who could prolong their survival. And this was the thing that not every esper realized, much less the guide who rarely gets into emergency cases. Should both sides realize that they have an equally important role, the power dynamic would balance themselves.

That was one of the reasons why Zein was making the academy to produce more strike guides. He wanted more guides to be involved in the field, so the espers wouldn’t have any reason to dismiss the guides’ importance or snuff their opinion by saying the guides had no idea what it was like inside the dungeons.

Sadly, Zein was getting isolated in the Deathzone while his academy was still in the process of getting established. He did leave detailed instructions for the people in charge, but he couldn’t help but feel curious about the progress. It made him rethink his decision to stay here without any break until the end.

And it wasn’t just the academy; he had an orphanage and a whole clan in his mind, not to mention the agreement with the Temple about the changes he wanted them to make.

Such was the burden a Patriarch should bear.

But then, when the additional personnel and provisions finally came, they brought with them a whole box of reports.

"For your perusal," and it was brought through the hand of someone Zein had trusted for a long time; his former bodyguard.