There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL)
Chapter 89 - 86. Trial Run

Chapter 89: Chapter 86. Trial Run

There was interesting scenery that the cameras caught from afar. It was slightly covered by the congregation of the espers and guild staff, but the keen reporters could see four figures somewhere near the gate.

Three guides in pristine-looking black uniforms with different colored lining and buttons in each person--red, blue, and green--stood in attention, hands behind their back, eyes focused on the rather tall masked man in front of them. Rather than guides, they looked more like privates in front of their drill sergeant.

"Mask."

The three moved in trained discipline, putting the choker-like device on their neck and pressing the button on the side. Now they were all protected by the filtering mask, and the guide captain told them to inhale and adjust their breathing.

"Shield."

This time, they put out their arms, clenched their fists, and shimmering mana shield deployed over their forearms.

"Potions."

The shields were deactivated and they took out regeneration ampoules from the small utility belt attached to their waist.

"Good. Always check on them before entry," the tall guide nodded in satisfaction as the three put the potions back inside their belt. There was also a small emergency flare and mini flash bomb there.

Unfortunately, the captain deemed they weren’t proficient enough to wield any additional equipment like weapons. He said it was more dangerous for a newbie to hold a weapon before they knew how to use it.

The guide captain clapped his hand, and the three immediately stood in attention again, like an instinctual reaction. It was quite fascinating to watch.

"Look at me," the tall guide stared at the three with deep blue eyes. "What are you going to do today?"

People might expect them to answer with ’guiding’, but the three guides replied with something else in a firm tone and steady gaze. "Survive!"

"Good. Remember that. You can only guide people if you survive."

"Yes, Sir!"

To the side, the espers watched them with curiosity and amusement. They had taken guides inside the dungeons with them before, but nothing like this.

The guides used to fidget uncomfortably near the gate because of the leaking miasma and eerie feeling. Some of the more obnoxious ones would even whine nonstop. They’d wince at the sight of the swirling ominous gate, and their palpable nervousness would make the squad feel uncomfortable too. The espers who were delegated to guard the guides especially hated it.

It wasn’t like they dislike the guides. They were actually pretty close with them, especially with the guides that usually got paired for their cleansing in the clinic. But inside the dungeons, the guides could become annoying, and their reactions might lower the group’s morale in dire situations.

Seeing the guides act steady and firm, looking prepared to face danger...it was actually quite a boost for them.

"Feels like a boot camp or something," they chuckled lightly, but there was no mockery in their comment. It still didn’t guarantee that the guides would be able to function inside the dungeon, but at least they didn’t fill the gate area with whining sounds and nervous fidgeting.

Florence, the squad captain, finally clapped her hands and announced the beginning of their raid. The three guides swiftly positioned themselves inside the formation, behind the support mages and in front of the rear guard tanker.

Zein, meanwhile, walked to the back, where Bassena was waiting for him with a smile. They were observers, overseers, and trainers, so they would be watching the raid from behind. Zein would give his instruction through the earpiece lodged in the guides’ ears, and Bassena wouldn’t move unless he needed to.

"It’s been a while," he muttered, as the gate rippled with the beginning of people’s entry.

The last gate he entered would be in the red-zone, almost five years ago. There were no gates in the borderland, just straight-up outbreaks filling out of the blackfield.

"Miss it?" Bassena asked playfully. But the guide tilted his head, and the blue eyes glint sharply along with a hidden smirk.

"Actually, yeah..."

Compared to the brutality of the Deathzone, dungeons were like an amusement park. Zein realized after living a month of peaceful life, that the calm and quiet made him quite restless. It might be the hard case of adjustment, but he couldn’t lie that this kind of thing, the thrill from dungeons, made him feel a bit more alive.

Bassena chuckled softly, before circling his arm around the guide’s shoulder. "Well...welcome back?"

With the increasing beat of his heart, Zein stepped into the swirling sunset-colored gate.

* * *

Among the eight initial applicants, the three guides listed on today’s raid were included. They were those who followed Zein’s hard training regime most enthusiastically, even while groaning and whining. They saw Zein not as a giant wall, but as a giant goal.

They were those who were among Zein’s priorities for development, and almost the fix candidates for the reclamation project. For the past week, Zein had been putting more focus on the three of them, giving them private training sessions, as well as booking more simulation chamber times.

The result was quite apparent inside the dungeon. It was a wide jungle field, and the atmosphere was quite heavy not only with miasma but also humidity--although it was nowhere as bad as the Deathzone jungle. But Zein had been focusing the simulation chamber on this exact situation, so the guides immediately calm down after taking a deep breath.

The squad marched forward with ease. Thanks to the physical training and the boost from the black uniform, the guides had no qualms following the espers’ movement. It also helped that most magician-types had low physical stats, so their pace was more or less the same. The squad was able to proceed without having to lower their speed or rest often. They also didn’t need to carry the guides like before.

Zein also told the guides to learn the Trinity’s hand signal that esper used inside the dungeon, so they could follow the vanguard’s order of stopping and going without delay.

Their first test, however, came when there was finally a signal of beast’s appearance. It came through the sound of whistling, and the vanguard scout gave a stop signal.

"Allen," Zein called out quietly through the earpiece, and the B-class guide flinched while crouching. "Identification."

The guide, which was trembling before, clutched his hands to focus on answering Zein’s command, mind searching the handbook he’d been reading before sleep for the past month, the many quizzes. He recalled the dungeon type, and listed the possible beast, narrowing to the whistling sound as a keyword. "N-number 42, Wailing Snake..."

"Trait,"

"Attacking from the weakest person,"

Thanks to the timely question, the man stopped trembling. He remembered what Zein said before--knowing the field and the enemy increased one’s chance of survival.

"Dheera, countermeasure."

The C-class girl shifted into a running position while answering. "Stick to someone stronger, better with shielding ability,"

Zein smiled, before calmly ordering. "Go."

At his command, the three guides immediately ran toward three different espers--a tanker, and two shield deployers. They kneeled behind the espers, who were startled at first, trying to compress their figure and masked their presence.

"’Scuse me~" Dheera ducked behind the shielder, just as the wailing snakes shoot up from their hiding place, clashing into the shield deployed by the esper in the air. "Whoo~"

The esper looked down with a raised brow, and Dheera greeted her with curled eyes. "Thanks, I’ll prioritize guiding you, Miss Stein!" she said with a thumbs-up.

"Focus," Zein warned the guides, as the esper started to get rid of the snakes. Zein himself was casually standing within the protection of Bassena’s child of darkness, eyes watching the three guides keenly. In the first place, the snakes wouldn’t come to him, who had been emanating magic energy.

"They’re cute," Bassena chuckled, propping his arm on Zein’s shoulder. "Seems satisfactory."

"So far," Zein tapped on his elbow. "The dungeon’s environment is quite tame."

"You’re right about that. It might be different if you came along with Hagalaz,"

"The one under Iddina?"

Bassena twitched--he’d been having a strange feeling that Ashur might have fallen for Zein these days. But he tried to feed his own confidence by remembering that soft kiss on his cheek. "Yeah...they specialized in harsh environmental dungeons. That’ll be the real test."

"Hmm..."

It didn’t take long for the espers to get rid of the snakes. There were quite a number of them, and each was almost as big as an anaconda. But targeting fleeting things was the magician’s specialty, so they didn’t really encounter a hard time. The guides stood up slowly when the call for clearance was made, looking at each other with twitching lips holding back their smile.

"Good job,"

It was only after Zein gave them his approval that they let out a smile, Dheera running toward Nadine for a high-five. Allen came toward them with a sigh of relief, and the girls patted his shoulder kindly.

The esper glanced at the cheery guides, and then toward each other, brows raised in pleasant surprise. They looked at the rear then, where Bassena and Zein watched the whole squad nonchalantly, as if they were just on a stroll.

Or a date--who knew.

The raid continued in higher spirit after that, perhaps because they were excited about the whole new concept. The espers were kind of curious too, about how the new division guides would fare from now on.

At any rate, it was quite clear that the new division had worked as intended.