The Guide is Actually a Body-Switching Esper [BL]
Chapter 341: Already Dived

Chapter 341: Already Dived

Once the door of the metal shed was open, giving them access to the inactive C-rank Gate, it didn’t take long to bring the situation under control. Although by then, almost the whole team was under hypnosis, leaving only Lane, Damien, and Ethan to try to rescue the rest, the difference in numbers between the rescuers and the rescued didn’t matter. The hypnotized people weren’t violent, and although they attempted to struggle a bit, trying to get to the lake, to their demise, to the monsters calling them, they didn’t put much power into their struggles. They were all dazed, all that the still-conscious trio had to do was to grab them well, and carry them to the Gate. Once they were tossed to the other side, they were outside of the monsters’ sphere of influence, and lost their will to walk toward the Lapis Lake.

As such, within only five minutes or less, everyone was safely stuffed into the Gate.

Ethan went inside as well at some point, to watch over the people inside, just in case. Eventually, only Damien and Lane remained.

With the rescue efforts completed, Damien took out his phone, quickly dialing Section Leader White. Although the team was temporarily out of danger... They were all trapped inside the dungeon! And once they attempted to leave, they would encounter the same problem again. Rather than for the two S-rankers and one ’A-ranker’, who were not affected by the monsters’ hypnosis ability, catching the team members and dragging them out of the Restricted Zone, it would be far more efficient to request some backups... Then, once the S-rank members of the Guilds came and cleared up the lake, Damien’s team would be able to leave the dungeon safely.

As Damien talked on the phone, discussing the situation with the Section Leader, Lane wandered around, his feet slowly bringing him to the edge of the lake. Not because of the hypnotic ability filling the air - he was too powerful to even be remotely affected... But simply out of curiosity. With no one but Damien around, he could activate his Mana Scan, and take a good look at what was going on...

There were indeed a lot of monsters hidden in the lake, so many that it was getting crowded. They were trashing around, agitated, perhaps hungry and angry that all the prey that they had sensed had gotten away...

And yet, the surface of the lake was oddly calm and serene, only slightly rippled by the gentle breeze. Looking at it, no one would have been able to guess what kind of chaos awaited them in the depths.

All of a sudden, a hand was placed on Lane’s shoulder, grasping him tightly.

"What are you doing?" Damien asked, his tone serious and somewhat strained.

"Hmm?" Lane lifted his brows, taken aback by the deep, dark frown on Damien’s face. "Nothing much, just looking..."

Lane was perfectly fine, of course. And yet, even though he had confirmed that, Damien’s hand on Lane’s shoulder only tightened.

It took a moment for Lane to realize why Damien was so anxious. After all, the man had once watched him - or, well, him possessing Noah - walk into the lake under ’hypnosis’ and get dragged underwater by the tentacles... For Lane, it was no big deal - he had already ’died’ so many times, that even when he visited his former ’death places’, his ’deaths’ weren’t something that he would immediately recall - but for Damien, it was probably still different.

Lane scratched his cheek, not knowing what to say for a moment. Obviously, he was still fine, but...

"Don’t worry," he eventually said. "Those monsters can’t possibly hurt me."

Damien gave him a long look, which clearly meant, ’How can you be so sure?’

And Lane explained without thinking it through, "I’ve already gone for a dive here in my real body, a few days after the initial dungeon break, I think. Those monsters are too slow to catch me, even underwater, and their poison doesn’t affect me either..."

It was the wrong answer. Damien wasn’t reassured in the slightest. Instead, he stared at Lane with horror.

"You went swimming here?" he asked. "Alone?"

"Well..." Lane averted his gaze. "I wasn’t exactly alone..."

"Then who were you with?" Damien pressed. Since it was in Lane’s real body, then... "With Ava Hill?"

That seemed to be the only reasonable answer. After all, back then, no one aside from Ava knew that Lane was a high-ranker.

However, Lane let out an awkward chuckle, still avoiding Damien’s gaze. "Ah, no... It was with Aidan..."

"Aidan?"

"Aidan Jenkins. I saw him run by the riverbank in the lockdown area, and noticed that he was on the verge of awakening. So, I decided to bring him to the lake to help him awaken faster... You know, since the presence of Mana is an important factor that can spark the Awakening."

Help him so that he could possess him, but Lane didn’t bother explaining that part. Not that there was a need for him to, as considering what happened to Aidan afterwards, Damien could easily guess this much.

It wasn’t what Damien focused on at the moment, though. He already knew that Lane had been stealing random people’s lives, so hearing about it once again... To say that it didn’t affect him at all wouldn’t be right, but he more or less learned to accept that. Or, at least, he could force himself to ignore that.

Especially since what he had just heard scared him even more. Lane might not have been alone... But the person he had with him was probably more of a burden than anything else!

And what, Lane said that he had been diving in the lake? What for, how? Was he perhaps diving together with hypnotized Aidan, to make sure that the man had soaked in the Mana well? It seemed like such an insane idea... But as he looked at his boyfriend, he thought that if it was Lane, then perhaps it wasn’t so unbelievable! The man was certainly capable of trying something like that!

Just then, as Lane was racking his brain, trying to come up with a way to resolve the situation, a head suddenly popped up out of the metal shed.

"Team Leader, is everything alright?"

As the two of them didn’t enter the dungeon for a while, Ethan got impatient and decided to check on them. He saw them standing by the lake...

And his eyes immediately narrowed, staring straight at Lane.

"How come you are still okay?"