There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL)-Chapter 492 - 485. Fork Road

Zhan stared at a hole in the wall without blinking for ten seconds, before his eyes closed and his head nodded unconsciously. He flinched and raised his head again, staring into another hole for a few seconds, and then his eyelid lowered again.

"Hey," Bassena knocked the spearman’s drowsy head--gently, since the others had been hitting the poor man hard on his head. Couldn’t have one of his warriors turned stupid now, could he?

Zhan gasped and flinched, turning his head here and there in surprise. Bassena shook his head--how could someone guard a camp while being all sleepy?

"Why are you so sleepy? Have you been guarding all night? Alone?"

"Oh, Commander!" Zhan looked up at Bassena in a daze, but he had enough in him to grin at the Saint class. "Yeah, they told me to stand watch last night."

Baseena raised his brow and glanced at the quiet tents. "What--was it a punishment, or did you lose a game?"

"Both?" Zhan laughed in response.

Bassena chuckled in disbelief. "Just go to sleep now before we go again."

"Ooh--are you substituting for me, Commander?" the dulled eyes sparkled for a bit. "What is this? Are you feeling refreshed now? Had a great night?"

"I see that you want to continue on a watch for two ni--"

"I’m going to beeed!" Zhan stood up and immediately ran toward Gus’s tent, leaving Bassena shaking his head in exasperation.

The loud voice invited Zein to come out of the guiding tent where they ended up sleeping in, but all he could see was Bassena in the makeshift pantry, boiling some water. His commlink told him it was only dawn--outside anyway--so it made sense that everyone was still asleep.

"Coffee?" Bassena raised a mug.

"Sure," Zein stretched his body and looked around. Without his goggles though, he couldn’t see anything past the purification device’s light. "It’s been a while since we have a morning to ourselves."

Bassena smiled as he made the coffee, although he missed the coffee machine back home. In this uncharted land, they couldn’t help but use only instant stuff. That comment from Zein, however, made everything feel better. And indeed, it had been months since the last time they hung out in a kitchen, with him making something and Zein watching as usual. A simple thing that brought a sense of peace in the middle of this uncertain darkness.

"Oh, they had installed a beacon?" Zein glanced at the spot near the purification device.

"I told them to," Bassena looked up, at the hole that had completely shut now. "I wanted to try it, although I don’t think it works."

Zein looked at his commlink and tried to send a message to Senan, but as Bassena said, it didn’t get through. It seemed like the signal traveled by air, so the beacon would not work underground.

"Senan would be panicking," Zein chuckled. "I hope we can go out by tomorrow."

Ideally, the Iron Shield should come with them for Zein’s protection. But in this kind of excursion, Bassena didn’t like to go with too many people. Instead, Zein asked them to go scouting in a direction where another shard might be, to see if they could find anything--spotting a Specter or a fragment, for example.

Naturally, Senan pleaded for Zein to give them a regular update about their situation, and he had been doing it yesterday. But he had also told them he might not be able to if the terrain was too bad, so that should hold them back from doing anything rash for three days.

"Well," Bassena put a warm mug of sweet coffee in Zein’s hands and took a seat beside the guide. "Then we just need to find a way out by tomorrow."

The confidence in that voice made Zein chuckle. But just as he said last night, he had decided to trust his esper, so he leaned back relaxedly and enjoyed his morning coffee.

"How big do you think is this system?"

"We have a lot of breathable air," Bassena looked at his commlink, which had been measuring the oxygen level. "So it should be pretty big. My kids hadn’t been able to find the edge of the exit. If this place is as big as the desert above, we’ll have a whole lot of walking ahead of us."

"Nothing new," Zein shrugged. All they had been doing was walking anyway. "No beast?"

"The traces they found were old ones, so I guess we’re safe for the next two kilometers or so," Bassena nodded. "We’ll leave the beacon and the purification device here, in case we need a place to go back to. If..." Bassena paused, considering his next words. "If we can’t find the shards or an exit by tomorrow, we’ll go back here and surface through the same spot."

Zein glanced at the esper and smiled as he saw the slight wariness in the man’s face. He reached out and stroked the rough jaw that hadn’t met a razor this morning. "Sure, let’s do that."

Finding the shards was important, but keeping them safe was more important. After all, they wouldn’t be able to keep looking for the shards if they were trapped here forever.

"A fine sigh first thing in the morning," a chuckle greeted them from behind. "Reminding me of my nonexistent lover."

Bassena laughed and leaned to kiss Zein briefly before standing up. "That’s my cue to make a breakfast."

"What’s the plan for today, Commander?" Kei asked while helping herself to the leftover coffee in the kettle.

"Walk and more walk," Bassena shrugged. "And for you, it’s a massive mapping."

Kei looked around at the many holes around them and laughed wryly. "Well...that should be fun."

* * *

"I don’t care how expensive this thing is, we need more of this," Kei looked at the compass in her hand adoringly. Thanks to that tiny, expensive device, they didn’t need to walk in the blind because...

Gods--the system was even more complicated than they initially thought. The chamber where they started alone had twelve holes in total. From Bassena’s probing, three of those were nothing more than a short dead end, while seven ended up in other chambers that also had a lot of passages. Two paths were too long for the children of darkness to go through, and unfortunately, one of them was where the compass’s arrow pointed at.

If it wasn’t for the compass, honestly, they wouldn’t try taking the long path, so...hooray for money!

Bassena and Kei had tried their best to make a map of the system, but the more they made it, the more they felt dizzy. It was good that the passage was big enough for them to walk side by side relaxedly; otherwise, walking for hours in such a limited space would make them claustrophobic.

Dheera didn’t mind it much, however, since she was the smallest of them all. The lower probability of being attacked since she was in the middle made it all the more relaxing. "This is kind of feels like those videos I watched before--what is it called? Spanking?"

Leehan coughed and slapped the girl’s arm. "It’s spelunking."

"Yes, that!" Dheera laughed, before covering her mouth from the echoing effect.

"My, my--do you have an interest in being spanked, Missy?"

"I don’t mind if it’s Captain--"

"No!" Bassena turned and pointed at the girl. "That privilege is mine."

Han Shin kicked Bassena’s back. "Stop with your kinky shit and concentrate!" the healer hissed, holding tightly into Zein’s arms. "Get me out of here!"

"Aww, what are you so afraid of, Shin? It’s just a wittle womm~"

"It’s not ’little’ you piece of shit!" the healer snapped, no longer the cheery and talkative Han Shin--which was why Bassena had been having fun teasing the man.

But well, Shin was right; he needed to concentrate. They had gone past where his children of darkness could probe, and he couldn’t keep sending them out forever if he wanted to manage his corrosion level. So he decided to only send one to check the path ahead, and used natural detection to watch over the other paths.

Turned out, the path didn’t only forked out in a chamber. Another one could appear crossing an existing pathway. The terrain was also not always flat--sometimes it went down, and sometimes they had to hike. It made their journey much slower, and when they reached the next chamber, they had to stop to allow the guides and supports a much-needed rest.

"Wow...never thought this expedition would be beast-less," Zhan muttered while installing another purification device, even if they wouldn’t camp there. "N-not that I mind!" he added swiftly before someone could smack him again.

Or giving him another night watch duty. Damn--people did become sensitive fast in this kind of place.

But Kei mulled over Zhan’s words and approached Bassena carefully so as to not alert the others. "Commander, isn’t this a bit weird? Stone Eater’s tunnel would only empty if it’s new, since no beasts would want to cross paths with its maw. But..."

"The tunnel is not new," Bassena nodded, knocking on the hardened walls.

Stone Eater digested everything it ate and secreted it in the form of mucus that would coat the tunnel’s walls. The mucus would harden over time and support the tunnels from collapsing. Because of this, some beasts liked to use the hardened tunnel as their nest, since the Stone Eater would have gone away by the time the tunnel hardened.

And yet, they hadn’t seen any beasts--not even the underground kinds like moles and rats, or the smaller mutated worms.

"Maybe this is just an area where no beast is willing to run around?" Zein offered.

"But with the tornado up there, this is the only place the beasts could live, isn’t it?"

Bassena exhaled slowly. Indeed, that was--

He paused and stiffened, palpable enough for Kei and Zein to notice. "What? What did they find?"

"Traces," Bassena turned his head toward another hole--not far from the hole the compass was pointing at. "Traces of beasts--a lot of them."