There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL)-Chapter 490 - 483. Old Habit Die Hard

When they first entered the Deathzone, they were greeted by thick jungle, black rivers, and cliff structures. The most ’open’ field they encountered was the wide clearing where they faced a horde of hounds on the first day. The marsh, although ’open’ in some locations, was also filled with tall, eerie trees jutting out of island formations here and there.

And so, when they faced this vast, vast field with nothing in between, they couldn’t help but stand there dumbfoundedly. There were no eerie trees or tall cliffs except those behind them. It was just a plain empty field as far as their eyes could reach. Far, far away on the other side was a dark void that even Bassena’s eyes couldn’t see. It was more than two kilometers too, so his children of darkness couldn’t try to see what was beyond.

On the left side, they could see the shadow of tall mountains far away, which, based on their calculation, was probably the mountain range where Senia’s team ventured to. On the far right was something that looked like a spread of huge boulders or the remains of an ancient civilization--the thick billowing miasma was too much for even a veteran scout like Kei to discern.

They would have traveled there had the compass’s arrow not pointed at the emptiness before them.

"Looks like a sea..." Zein muttered, recalling the ocean he saw at night from the balcony of their cruise ship’s cabin.

"More like a desert, isn’t it?" Han Shin tilted his head. "Or that dry plain before the Borderland--what is it...Red something?"

Ah...the place where Zein met Bassena for the first time. The guide nodded; the cracked red plain was also a spread of emptiness. But there, at least, they still met a few boulders that had been made into roadsigns so the trucks traveling through the plain didn’t get lost.

But here...

There was no boulder, much less roadsigns. No trees for bearings, or even uneven terrain.

"What do you think?"

They all looked at Bassena, who held the command stick. The Saint class stared at the empty field and the void on the horizon. He snapped his fingers and pointed at the field. Right away, several fleeting darkness shot out toward the field. Bassena himself, however, turned around and looked up at the cliff behind them.

"Let’s put a beacon up there while my kids probe for any anomaly."

They worked immediately; Kei, Naoya, and Julian climbed the cliff with Bassena’s platform while Gus and Zhan checked on their surroundings. The guides and the support espers used the chance to rest after the long walk. Looking at the empty field, they had a sense that they would have to walk even more, so there might be no better chance to rest leisurely than now.

Perhaps because of the weird feeling they had from the emptiness, or the uncertainty of what they might encounter after this, but there was a tension that made even the talkative Han Shin quiet down. Since no one was talking and no one needed guiding, Zein approached Bassena instead, who had been staring at the empty field.

"Find anything?"

"No," the esper shook his head. "I don’t find any barrier too."

"Hmm..." Zein stared at the compass and the arrow pointing forward. "Do you think it’s beyond that void? Looks like a curtain of miasma..."

"Maybe," Bassena exhaled slowly, closing his eyes in contemplation. "I’m wondering if we should just stop here for now and continue tomorrow."

Zein looked around; at the cliff behind and the dry field ahead. "There’s not much difference staying here or there, isn’t it?" Zein shrugged. "No source of water anyway."

"Are your kids alright?"

Zein glanced at Dheera and Leehan who were in the middle of talking in a whisper with Han Shin and Carra. They didn’t look stressed, and he could hear some giggling behind their mask. "They’ll be fine," he nodded. "I never let them stop their physical training."

Bassena chuckled, remembering how the guides--including the ones who only got there with the rest of the troops--ran around the track outside the stadium every day. In a way, the sound of their steps with a dash of whining and yawning became a substitute for the sun--a sign telling the espers that the morning had come outside the Deathzone.

"In that case, we’ll continue," Bassena nodded. "You want to continue, don’t you?"

Zein just nodded wordlessly. This weird situation made him even more restless, wondering where the two shards were. With the probability of the fallen star’s fragments hunting the shards, he felt like he was being chased to find them as soon as he could.

Being considerate, thus, wasn’t his priority.

"Oh..." Bassena exclaimed quietly all of a sudden.

"What? Did they find something?"

The amber eyes widened for a bit, before frowning in caution. "It’s a desert," he clicked his tongue. "After a kilometer or so...it’s nothing but sand."

* * *

"Have you fought in a desert before?" Leehan asked Julian, who was walking behind him.

"In a dungeon or two," the defender nodded. "But even those deserts didn’t look like this."

"Yeah--there were at least dunes, rocks...a plant or two, maybe an oasis," Hari tapped his staff on his shoulder as he recalled the good ’ol dungeon days. "And most of the time we can see the enemies."

They glanced around at the empty space that bore nothing but the spread of sand. They couldn’t feel any wind or hear any sound but their own; no rustling from the sneaking beasts along the ground and the belting of wings from above.

"I can’t believe there’ll come a day when I wish there’ll be miasmic beasts around me..." Hari chuckled wryly.

But even Naoya, who was the most vocal about not encountering too many beasts, felt the same. Too many was exhausting, but somehow, it was still better than nothing at all. Not in a place called the Deathzone.

And still, even in a place like this, someone opened their mouth recklessly. "Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if we suddenly get sucked by a quicksand or something?"

"Zhan!"

It was a collective shout that came even from the guides.

The spearman laughed sheepishly. "Hahaha--just kidding guys!"

Smack!

"Ouch? Hey, you hit me for real!" Zhan protested. They had been hitting him a lot, but none of them used any power.

This one, however, contained the full force of Naoya’s frustration. Thank Gods the man wasn’t a brawler.

"I told you to shut...up--" Naoya froze as he looked forward, and so did the rest of them.

Zhan, who was busy rubbing the back of his head, belatedly turned around after realizing the squad members’ strange expression. "What?"

And he was greeted by the view of billowing sand.

There was no wind, there were no beasts, there was nothing but tons of sand rising up as if the gravity had been reversed. Quickly, the pillar of sand became as high as the tower, and started to spin.

Toward them.

"Fuck--run!"

"Goddamnit, Zhan!"

"What?? It’s not a quicksand!"

"Shut up and focus!"

Bassena clicked his tongue. There was no sign of foul play, so it seemed to be a natural phenomenon of the black desert. "No wonder there’s no one around here," he hissed.

But then why did the compass tell them to go there? He couldn’t understand, but he also had no leeway to think about it.

"Barrier! Zhan, Gus--take the guides!"

"Roger!"

As the sand tornado came closer, they needed to run faster; and while the guides had the stamina, they didn’t have the speed of an esper. Gus dashed forward and scooped Dheera in his arms. "Excuse me, Missy."

The girl simply gave him a salute before holding onto his coat. Next to them, Zhan hauled Leehan on his shoulder just as mobile steel sheets were deployed around them.

"To the side, to the side!" Bassena instructed while taking Zein with one arm and using his other hand to control his children of darkness, countering the flying debris coming toward them. "Naoya!"

"I’m...trying!" Naoya groaned as he tried to steer out of the tornado’s path. But his body felt heavy as the wind tried to suck him into the tornado.

"Goddamnit!"

Zein patted Bassena’s shoulder. "I can go by myse--"

"No," Bassena replied curtly before Zein even finished, tightening his grip. He reached out his hand and used the children of darkness to pull the archer out of the tornado’s pull.

But just as he managed to yank Naoya out Kei was yelling out another predicament. "Commander, there’s more!"

"What--"

All of them almost froze as their eyes caught another storm coming at them from another direction. They were so fast that Bassena knew they would get swept in less than a minute no matter where they ran to.

Gritting his teeth, Bassena worked his brain to make a quick decision and stopped in his tracks. "Julian! Diamond Cocoon!"

It wasn’t just Julian who reacted. The rest of the espers stopped in their tracks and turned toward the defender.

"Gather quick!" Bassena yanked Naoya to him and put Zein down. "Zein, guide Julian now."

It was literally a blur right after; Zein guided Julian as the defender deployed his biggest skill--a thick barrier of mana that looked as if it was made of diamond, spreading around him in a big sphere. The sphere grew wider until it encompassed the whole squad member before he stopped.

"Carra, inject him with mana serum every twelve seconds," Bassena put a box on the support magician’s hands before coating the outside of the sphere with his darkness. "Brace for impact."

Zein gripped the defender’s shoulder tighter as he guided, just two seconds before their cocoon was hit by the force of two tornados. They got thrown and slammed everywhere like a giant pinball, all the while Julian gnashed his teeth to make sure his spell was still in place. Carra counted to twelve every time and injected the defender with more mana, even as they were bouncing around.

It felt endless; it felt forever--especially for Julian. In reality, it only went on for a few minutes, but at one point, Carra shouted at Bassena. "Commander, we can’t anymore or he’ll overdose!"

"Stop the serum. Julian, try to hold on as long as you can," Bassena said while summoning his giant serpent in the air. He raised his arm up before quickly dropping it, bringing the giant serpent crashing to the ground.

Between the sounds of shredding wind and collapsing ground, they looked down with widened eyes as a giant hole appeared on the sand where the giant Serpent struck.

"Down, Julian."

And then they dropped; free-falling to the gaping void.

"Hmm...this feels familiar," Zein muttered as he, once again, fell into a hole.