There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL)-Chapter 456 - 449. Ticket

"Aah...that was nice," Zhan moved his head to loosen his neck, shaking his hands to shed the black blood splattered on him.

"The battle?" Banner raised his brow.

"Nah, the guiding," Zhan stretched his back next before putting his spear away. "The battle is mid--it’s just a newly evolved Cerberus anyway."

"But why did it suddenly evolve?" Gus smirked as he walked toward the severed head a few meters away from the giant body. "Look for its core while I check the head. Heads."

The swordsman severed the spot just above the neck, so the heads were rolling in three directions. He tilted them away with his boots and slashed each of the jaws, looking for anything that might be out of place.

"Found anything?" Bassena asked the swordsman.

"Hmm..." Gus cracked the jaw open with his boots and his scabbard, showing Bassena leftover dark purple shards at the roof of the middle head’s mouth. "Seems like it did eat something, just as you said."

"Shin!" Bassena called the healer, who jumped over dead hound bodies like a child doing skipping rope. No one needed healing, so the healer had nothing to do and was as fresh as he could be. "We have something for you to do."

The healer tilted his body to see the head beneath Gus’s foot. He crouched and put on surgical gloves, taking out a kit from his storage ring to take the shards and put them inside a sample tube.

"Done! We can’t do anything until we establish a camp, though," he stood up and looked at the other two espers. "What do you think it is?"

"Whatever it is, it was accelerating the hound’s growth," Bassena rubbed his chin. "We can’t make any conclusion since it’s only the first commander-type we came across, so let’s just proceed for now."

They looked toward the direction of the river and then at the field that was filled with the hound’s carcasses.

"Let’s get rid of this first for the guides," Bassena moved and used his body instead of his darkness now to make a path free of dead bodies. There would be another battle in the river, so he wanted to avoid using magic unless it was necessary, putting less burden on Zein.

Meanwhile, Zhan, who was already done with his sloppy autopsy, ran toward the rear group where the guide was with a core in his hand.

"Zein, Zein--that guide earlier was so different!" the spearman said excitedly.

"Is it better?"

"Much better!" the man laughed and tossed the Cerberus’s core to Kei, who was already waiting with a sealing container. "It’s not prickly anymore, it’s nice!"

Zein nodded in satisfaction. "That’s good then. I was trying something new." ƒreewebɳovel.com

And like any other experiment, it might result in the other direction. But it seemed like Zein just hadn’t found his usual system. He usually visualized water when he guided espers, but no matter what, he had no idea what manner of water he needed to imagine for a long-distance target.

But standing there in the darkness reminded him of the night sea. The vast, huge sea that spanned from island to island. And it just came to him; ah...his worldview was too narrow before.

Fortunately, his experiment worked well this time. The downside of it was just he exerted more energy than usual, which was normal, considering he was sending waves of guiding. But since he didn’t need hand movement anymore, he could even guide while holding his weapon or fighting.

You lose some, you gain some.

"I think, at this point...Captain is even better than the Saintess, isn’t he?" Dheera giggled while guiding Carra, who had been constantly giving the warriors her buff.

"If it’s not for this project, I think he might just take it," Ron said, to which Zein just replied with a chuckle.

"It’s not so bad there," he said. "It’s calm and surrounded by water--lots of cute animals too."

"Eeeh?"

"But a Saint can’t have a relationship," he shrugged, to which the people there responded with a small laugh.

And a Saint couldn’t be imprinted by an esper, Zein said inwardly, eyes staring at the diligent commander clearing the field. Dheera, who had done with her short guiding--just so Carra wouldn’t get too corroded for the next fight--followed the blue gaze and exclaimed softly as she recalled what had been bugging her from the start.

"I have a question!" she raised her arm as if she was still in one of Zein’s class sessions. "Why didn’t Sir Vaski just take care of everything? It seemed like it would be a breeze for him, but he barely moved earlier."

"Because you don’t drop a bomb to an ant nest, do you?" Kei answered with a laugh. "We save the bomb for the real monster."

"Oh..."

"In our language, guiding a bunch of four-stars is better than guiding a single Saint class," Zein patted the girl’s head. "Got that?"

"Oooh!" Dheera nodded. "So he’s like...the last option nuclear warhead!"

"Where do you even know that from?"

"What? I watched Old Age documentaries a lot," the girl shrugged.

Kei snorted. "Well, yeah. Using Commander for little things like this is a waste of resources. It’s fine in a dungeon that can be cleared in a day or two, but we’re doing a whole marathon here, so...we need to do things strategically."

"Understood!"

On the said, Ron shook his head and chuckled bitterly. Little things, huh? Getting rid of several dozens of miasmic hounds and a Cerberus was just a ’little thing’ for them. How many teams could say such a thing, exactly? He didn’t know if he should laugh or lament at the fact that it took hundreds of years before the thought of reclaiming the Deathzone even came to be.

If only...if only a few High Rankers cooperate to raid the Deathzone from the start, then perhaps...

Perhaps there would be no Deathzone. There would be no borderland, and...

His thought was interrupted by Zein’s gaze. As he looked at the blue eyes behind the goggles, Ron parted his lips slightly.

Ah...it was impossible anyway--he scoffed at himself. People might be able to fight the creatures here, and even slay that dying Fallen Star before it recovered too much. But who--who would be able to get rid of the darkness? Who would be able to find the shards and unite them?

No one but this man in front of him.

Ron patted the guide’s shoulder. "You’re my ticket to freedom."

Zein raised his brow, before his lips stretched into a smile. "Wasn’t that why you sent me out to gain freedom first?"

* * *

To prevent unwanted accidents, they decided to gather all of the carcasses, piled them, and burned them. In this kind of place, even a monster could be born from a dead body, so better safe than sorry. Besides, they needed to think about the team that would come after them.

As they crossed the now-empty field, Leehan asked why they didn’t set a camp there since it was a wide even ground. But the answer was simple; it was a location surrounded by potential ambush points, and the most important thing was the absence of water. While there was a river nearby, the purification device wouldn’t reach that river if they set it on this field.

There was also another thing;

"We still have a signal from the beacon here," Kei reported.

For efficiency, the range of two beacons needed to touch but not overlap so much. Planting the beacon here meant a waste of half a range that could be used to cover an even larger area.

And so, they continued their journey.

After the empty field, they came across a path that was enough for two wheelbarrows to come and go. It seemed like naturally made by the hounds and the big three-horned to make it easier for the journey toward the river.

Well, it was beneficial for them too.

At the end of the path, they came across a creek, and just like last year, they followed the direction against the stream, looking for a site or a clearing where they could build their first camp.

Of course, in the Deathzone, no area was free of dangers. The commotion with the hounds attracted even more beasts. From the air, the water, and even below the ground, they kept getting ambushed by beasts. Nothing as big as the hounds, and no commander-class beast too--but the number was rather annoying.

But with two scouts and Bassena, no ambush was really an ambush. Last year, the excursion team couldn’t see things underground, but now they had Kei and her [phantasm eyes], so even the ground vision was secured. The guides and the supports were adequately protected, even though Dheera and Leehan had to endure being surprised by sudden beasts’ appearance, or sudden activation of spells.

Things like that kept happening all the way, and little by little, Dheera and Leehan became used to it. By the time they finally reached a familiar clearing, they had stopped flinching when a new beast was suddenly attacking.

"This brings back memories," Bassena chuckled. It was the clearing where the excursion team had their first camp last year; a decent space of flat land in an elevated area overlooking the river. There was a ravine behind them, so the only ambush they needed to think about was the one coming from the sky.

Naturally, such a nice place was already occupied.

"Alright--it’s territory war now, people. It’ll be the place to put our second beacon, so let’s clean everything around here."