There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL)
Chapter 547 - 540. Black Curtain

Chapter 547: Chapter 540. Black Curtain

The first thing Zein felt when he entered the fog was heaviness, like waddling through the mud.

And then, he took a breath.

And choked.

It felt like he was inhaling a thick smoke that prompted his body to stiffen. If he were to take off his mask at the edge of the Deathzone, it would feel like this. But he was wearing Mortix’s latest filtering mask; an advanced version that was specially created for the Deathzone.

Which meant it was bad. Really, really bad.

"Zein!"

"Young Master!"

Zein could hear people calling out to him, but he was too dizzy to respond. His legs felt weak and he thought he was falling for a second, before a sturdy and warm arm grabbed him tightly. In the next second, a faint warmth from his ear and his wrist traveled to his whole body, and in relief, he felt his mind calming from the initial panic of failing to breathe.

He lifted his head, and found that his goggles failed him this time, because he could only see dark figures and silhouettes. Not for long though, since everything became brighter as his body was pulled back from the fog.

Zein gasped, inhaling the filtered air to fill his lungs. He had thought that the Deathzone was dark enough but that place...to think he could call the Deathzone ’bright’ because of that place.

"Young Master!"

He heard the sound of a clanking shield, and Zein raised his hand. "...’m okay," he said after feeling his body return to normal. A beeping sound from his side was telling him that Bassena just scanned him for toxin exposure.

"He’s clear," Bassena said with a slightly trembling voice.

"I said I’m okay," Zein took another deep breath and got up despite Senan’s worried plea for him to stay still. "I just having difficulty breathing is all."

He patted his mask to check for damage, but the fact that he could breathe normally in the desert meant the mask worked just fine. Since he also felt like he couldn’t move, it was a matter of dense miasma more than anything.

"You’re sure you’re okay?" Bassena cupped the guide’s face and peered into the eyes behind the goggles.

"Yeah," Zein patted the esper’s hand in assurance. "I was just getting reminded that I’m not an esper."

Both Bassena and Senan let out a breath of relief. Their heart almost stopped when Zein suddenly choked and looked like he was about to collapse earlier. Due to this, they didn’t even manage to look around, because they immediately came out.

"But if this is hard for you..." Bassena narrowed his eyes.

"The other guides wouldn’t be able to do it," Zein nodded.

"Honestly though...it’s hard even for us esper," one of the scouts said. "It’s hard to move, as if we were in a high level of corrosion."

"And look," the other scout pointed a measuring device to themselves. It let out a higher beeping sound than the device Bassena used. "We only used our skill for a few seconds, but the corrosion spiked a level."

And if it increased that much just for scouting skills, it would increase even more for attacking skills.

"So, it’s impossible after all," Bassena stared at the void, feeling a bit relieved that he came here himself and not the others--who might just continue the exploration since they didn’t have decision-making power. "Did you see anything?"

"A little bit," the male scout nodded. "It’s a forest about two hundred meters forward, but I wasn’t sure what lays beyond."

"Ah...and I think the furthest point was a bit clearer," the female scouts added. "Perhaps the miasma density was thinner on the other side."

"So it’s more like a field?" Bassena frowned. "Well, let’s think about it on the way back."

He picked up his commlink and recorded their finding and decision to come back, before taking out a purification device.

"Let’s see if this can do anything..."

However, just as what happened with the tar-like fluid on the fifth lane, the purification device was not strong enough to get rid of the thick miasma. A section seemed to be getting a bit thinner, but only for a few seconds. Thus, they had no choice but to return.

"We still need to check if the miasma truly becomes thinner on the other side," Bassena said on the way back. "But we should prepare it thoroughly first."

"Even if the fog only persists for a few hundred meters, it will still be a challenge for the guides to pass through it," Zein muttered. "...I wondered if taking a shard would do anything..."

"We’ll try everything we can," Bassena replied, glancing at the void. "What do you think it is? Why is the field there?"

Zein looked at the black curtain that seemed to reject him strongly. It felt like a border...or an outer wall of a Castle. The way it made humans have a hard time crossing it felt like a defense mechanism, almost like...

"It feels like the opposite of our bases," Zein said. "A zone with the thickest miasma content that is safe for the beasts and paralyzes us."

"Right?" Bassena chuckled wryly.

"But if that’s really the case..." Zein stroked his chin in contemplation. "Perhaps there’s also something like a source there? Just like we get the light from the shard."

"Ah..."

Bassena’s eyes brightened at the notion of the possibility of getting rid of that ’zone’. The plan to just see how far the zone went just turned into a search for elimination.

"Be careful," Zein grabbed the esper’s jaw, turning Bassena to him. "If you go, you won’t be able to go with me. You need to be very, very careful of the corrosion level."

"You can stand by on the outside, right?" Bassena shrugged. "I’m not thinking of doing it all at once. More like...several short sprints. We’ll see how long we can endure the environment, and how much skill we can execute until the corrosion reaches a dangerous level. We’ll go back right away once it reaches a threshold, and then continue."

"That..."

"Sounds like a dungeon raid before we get the strike guide division? Because it is," Bassena winked.

Of course, Bassena himself rarely used it, but a method of hit and run back before hitting again was the common strategy used to this day. It started to change in the past year since guilds had been sending their guides to Zein’s academy. The curriculum allowed the students to be decent enough to join a dungeon raid in just six months, so more and more guild were sending their guides to the dungeon to increase the raiding efficiency.

"I see..." Zein nodded. "Sound plausible."

"We need to make a camp and build a watchtower near the border first, since we have no idea how long the process will take," Bassena said. "But well...we have to finish the one in the plains first."

There was a matter about the manpower for construction, but money was also the problem. Radia hated to admit it, but he was almost drained of funds at this point. Their prepared budget mainly got sucked up by the ship and the anti-fragment uniform.

Sure, he still had his unmoving assets, and hadn’t touched the clan’s capital, but that didn’t change the fact that he failed to calculate some unexpected stuff. It was a good thing that the Iron Mountain did not demand anything like the Eastern Sun, so he could concentrate the funds on the auction. Otherwise, Radia had to admit for the first time in his life that his account book was going red.

So, they couldn’t build things simultaneously like before, because Radia needed some revenue from Trinity and Mortix to come first.

"Still, having a plan is good," Zein shrugged as they reached the fifth lane. He raised his arms so Bassena could hold his waist and once again, they were jumping through the pit field. "For now, we also have the water route. Let’s hope the ship crew has something new to report once we return."

Zein was just saying it for the sake of increasing his own morale, but he didn’t think a significant report would already come a day after they came back from the desert.

[We reach a delta]

It was a short report, and Zein had no idea what a ’delta’ was. But there was a picture attached, and he understood then.

The picture looked like nothing but darkness at first, and Zein almost thought it was the picture of another void. He was disappointed for a second, thinking it was another dead end--until Lex increased the brightness of the picture, and they could see two different textures in the photograph.

Zein knew that; he had seen it a few times during his vacation in the southern kingdom;

A view of the sea at night, where the water and the sky looked like a blended spilled ink.