There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL)
Chapter 526 - 519. Sleeping Beauty

Chapter 526: Chapter 519. Sleeping Beauty

The groaning sound of affected Specters almost put a grin on Kei’s face--but she held herself because she knew it wasn’t over. "All Specter teams who had received healing, go back and finish them off!"

[Yes Ma’am!]

"Phew...that was nervewracking," Kei allowed herself a relieved breath as the battlefield was no longer in chaos.

Well, not as chaotic as before, at least.

"Good job," Zein patted Senia’s back, who was slumping on the ground after finishing her task. She had depleted her mana, but thanks to Zein’s simultaneous guiding, her corrosion level was manageable.

"Did I?" Senia asked with bated breath and held expectation, staring at the guide with hopeful eyes. "Truly?"

Zein couldn’t help but smile behind his mask. It was getting cute seeing this girl looking for acknowledgment; and no matter who praised her, it wouldn’t mean anything if Zein didn’t say it.

"Yeah," this time, he patted the girl’s head--the way he did to the other guides. "You did good."

Senia pressed her lips and said nothing, unlike Dheera and the others who would grin proudly. But there was a sparkle in her eyes that made Zein feel it was the right decision for them to accept this girl back in the day.

Yeah--this one was just a lost soul that needed to be straightened out. He was glad Horin’s poison hadn’t seeped too deeply into her soul.

"Take a rest and regenerate your mana for now," Zein stood up again. "We still need you for the rest of the fragments. It’s getting hard for Zhan and Gus to do it just between them."

And Zein couldn’t afford to help too, because he wouldn’t just destroy the corporeal body, but also the fragment core itself if he were to infuse his mana.

"Oh, yeah..." Senia nodded, glancing at the fragment’s battlefield on the southeast. For some reason, she even looked rather concerned. "I’ll do it quickly."

She proceeded to take out mana regenerative serum and gulped the bitter concoction with a wince. Gus always said it tasted like alcohol, but if that was what alcohol tasted like, Senia was rather glad she never tasted the real thing. Ugh...must be nice to have such a huge mana pool like Bassena. It must have been rare for him to run out of mana and have to rely on a serum like this...

Talking about him though...

Senia narrowed her eyes to look at the distance fight; the gargantuan mess of eyes and tentacles with a fleeting armored knight bearing a scythe. Tsk--why did he have to look so cool? She wondered again if the elemental spirits could give her armor...

-Bzz-

"What, you can’t?" Senia pursed her lips. "Huh? Need to evolve? You guys can evolve?"

-BzzBzz-

"Oh, cool! Let’s try it after this whole shitshow end!"

But the question was...when would it end?

Senia looked around the battlefield; the Specter fight had resumed after the Stone Eater explosion, easier now since the Specters were getting weakened by the explosion and stuck in place by the hardening Stone Eater’s mucus raining on them during the explosion.

On the other side was the fragment’s battle, which was much harder. The four that were still holding on were the strong bunch, the big ones. Bassena had assigned two teams to fight each of them, but it still wasn’t enough. Even after the other team joined, it was still a hard battle. The only good thing was that they had more chances to roll their attack shift, allowing a team to get healed and guided while the other two were attacking.

But it was fine; it was doable. Kei was no longer clenching her fists tightly. The most anxious one among them was actually Zein.

Yeah. Since he had no idea how Bassena was doing right now.

The esper had been on mute since the time when he was yelling at Senia earlier. Understandably, it was so he could concentrate on the fight with the clone, but...

Zein couldn’t get rid of the coughing sound he heard the last time. A wet coughing sound. Now that he didn’t need two hands to guide anymore, the black dagger was back in his hand.

"Why do you keep fiddling with that?" Senia asked, pointing at the dagger. "You shouldn’t fight--that means the defense line is breached."

Zein wanted to chuckle. If it was Senia two years ago, she would argue that guides were too weak and had no place on the battlefield instead. Seemed like the little princess had grown up.

"So? Why are you so fidgety?"

"It’s a guarantee," Zein rubbed the hilt of the Black Pearl.

"For what?"

"For my future," Zein said cryptically, prompting Senia to purse her lips.

"Ugh--fine if you don’t want to tell me," the girl grumbled.

Zein merely smiled and turned his attention back to the fight in the distance. But honestly, it was hard; the tentacles kept slamming the ground and causing the dirt and sand to fly around like smoke, fogging the battlefield.

He did see Bassena’s figure sometimes, fleeting between the tentacles, slashing and piercing. Every time he heard a howling sound from the edge of the field, he knew that it came from a wound caused by the esper.

And it told him that Bassena was still alive, at least.

"Don’t worry," Kei glanced back with what seemed to be her first smile of the day. "More force is here."

Zein and Senia turned around, to see what seemed to be a ray of light. The hunting team one and Hagalaz, as well as the support sent for them, had finally arrived.

Unknowingly, Zein let out a relieved breath. If there were someone who could help Bassena face the clone, it would be Ashur. And Jock, with his skill, could provide communication even without a device, which would be great.

But just like anyone else, the first thing they noticed was the mountain of eyes in the distance.

"What the fuck is that?"

"The clone of our final boss," Zein told them. "Kei, can you put a team to assist Bas?"

"I’m on it," Kei nodded.

The guide turned to Mortix’s team leader then, asking quietly. "Jock, can you communicate with Bassena? He turned off his commlink."

"So he could concentrate?" the former bodyguard narrowed her eyes so he could see better. "Makes sense, looking at that thing. I’ll try for now, but I’m concerned about breaking his concentration."

"Just relay that we will send assistance."

"Roger that."

Ashur, meanwhile, swept his gaze across the battlefield with hardened eyes. The two Watchtowers were in shambles; the ground was split and erupted. There were four holes in the ground and a big crater caused by an explosion. The aid and guide stations were not in their place--meaning they were forced to move away for some reason.

"Casualties?" he asked Kei in a whisper.

"Just here? Two dead and one unknown," the scout glanced at the mercenary group. "I haven’t counted the wounded."

Ashur cursed under his breath. He thought it would be hard, but he didn’t think there would be death already.

On the other hand, people would say it was ’only’ that much, seeing that they had to face a horde of beasts, a group of Specters, and eight fragments just in this field, not to mention...

"That thing shoots out an almost invisible energy blast from its eyes," Kei told the other esper. "It caused the first fatality, and kept shooting out shit every half an hour. Commander had been taking the brunt of it so we could breathe more easily."

"So this won’t end unless we kill that thing, right?"

"I’m not sure if you can exactly kill it," Zein said. "But I think you can incapacitate it if you ’kill’ the eyes."

"Yeah, so I’m pulling Naoya," Kei said while pressing the button to call the people she put in the assist team. "It’ll be hard for any of you to get too close, so we’ll aim to destroy the eyes while it’s occupied by Commander."

Zein nodded in agreement, glancing at Jock who immediately relayed the intention to Bassena through his skill.

"So the time I used my ballistae is here," Ashur hummed, to which Senia raised her brow.

This guy had a long-range weapon too? Curiously, she watched as Ashur took out something from his storage, thinking it was the ballistae in question. Disappointingly, it was only a tube--no, two tubes--of fragment cores.

"Here’s the fragment we caught. I don’t feel at ease leaving it in the Castle, so we brought it here," he slammed the heavy, hissing tube to the ground. "What should we do with this?"

"Just put it over the--"

CLANK!

The sealed chest, which was used to store the fragment, suddenly shook and let out a hissing sound identical to the tubes in Ashur’s hands. A sinister sound of creaking and breaking could be heard, filling their back with chill.

"What is it now?!" Senia stood up with another mana serum in her hand, before gulping it agitatedly.

"Fuck--"

Ashur cursed as the hands holding the tubes started to feel hot as if burnt. He couldn’t help but let them go due to the sudden searing sensation, and the tubes rolled toward the chest, almost like they had a mind on their own.

"Fuck--are they trying to fuse?!"

"Cohen!"

"Not enough mana for Iron Sanctuary, Sir."

Zein gritted his teeth and cursed more. "Kei, get the defenders here!"

"They’re on the other fragments!"

Senia flicked her hand and used the ground to cover the rolling tubes, sealing them inside a sand dome. But after only two seconds, the tubes broke free, getting darker than before, filled completely with dark purple fog that seemed to be ready to burst any second.

With a grunt, Ashur ignored the melted skin of his palm and grabbed a claymore from his inventory, throwing it in the path of the rolling tubes. But the blades corroded and melted like his skin when the tubes were near, rendering the obstacle useless.

"Son of a--"

"Ugh--"

Ashur’s curse was cut by Zein’s grunt. Abruptly, the guide’s hand was raised on its own, not even with the owner’s permission. A storage ring, which was circling Zein’s thumb, vibrated.

"What..."

Before Zein could figure it out, a light burst out of his ring, and a shining barrier enclosed the area around the wriggling chest and the rolling tubes, sealing them in a strong, unpenetrable cage.

Sitting atop the shining cage, was a brilliant crystal that had been sleeping all along inside the ring.