There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL)
Chapter 123 - 119. Dark Horizon

Chapter 123: Chapter 119. Dark Horizon

"Well, this is...interesting," Zein commented as he stepped into the Chairman’s office in Mortix’s headquarters.

Which very much identical to the guildmaster’s office in Trinity, except for the growth of the potted plants in the corner. From the color and fabric of the sofas to the way things were arranged on the large desk, they were giving Zein a sense of deja vu.

"What is?" Radia asked behind a computer screen, peeking out to look at Zein.

"Just this place," the guide shrugged while walking toward the sofa. Since the place was identical to the guildmaster’s office, he did what he usually did there; making himself comfortable on the sofa. "It’s intentional, isn’t it?"

Radia hummed in confirmation, the crimson eyes still locked on the screen. "It’s easier to juggle between two offices if they feel the same, so I don’t need to waste time for adjustment."

"Why’d you do it then?" Zein muttered while sitting down. "Working two places like that."

Radia, finally removing his eyes from the desk and swiveling in his chair to face Zein, smiled deeply. "Because I can."

Of course, Zein rolled his eyes. "I didn’t know you’re smoking too," he shifted his gaze to the stick between the guildmaster’s fingers.

"It’s made of golden needle," he said in response. One of the products from their dungeon, the golden needle was a type of grass with mana veins on them. It could be steeped into a very fragrant and refreshing tea, but consuming it after being processed into a cigarette allowed the user to absorb the mana into themselves. "I’m just inhaling mana."

And expensive as fuck, Zein bet. That kind of product, which contained mana, had a high production cost. Just like those limited edition chocolate with mana powder in it, or the liquor brewed in mana stone, only the highly privileged could get a hand on them.

But this highly privileged man, who was now walking toward the sofa, needed to supply mana constantly to his summoned creature, so the luxury was probably a necessity for him. Although why Radia always used summons to do secretary jobs, Zein had no idea.

"You looked like you need this more than me, though," was the first thing Radia said after he sat down, before inhaling the golden needle. "Did you have a burnout?"

Hearing the question for the second time made Zein think that espers seemed to know more about it than a guide like him. "Why do you think that?"

"Your eyes are dull," the guildmaster said, staring keenly at the blue eyes. "They were the most striking part of you when you’re wearing your mask, so it’s noticeable."

"Ah..."

Was that why? Zein hadn’t looked in the mirror in forever, so he wouldn’t notice the difference himself. He stared at the shiny surface of the coffee table, trying to look into his eyes. It was blurry, but it was visible that he didn’t look as sharp as usual.

"So?" Radia asked with a tilted head, flicking his cigarette over the ashtray.

Zein shrugged casually. "I don’t know, I just got tired from touching the fragment."

Would it be considered burnout if the cause wasn’t guiding? He did feel as lethargic as when he had one before, in the morning after he did it with Bassena. The water and the food provide his body with energy, but the exhaustion of the mind wasn’t easy to recover from.

Radia paused for a bit before responding.

"...yeah, that’s a better reason. I had been thinking you were cleansing Bassena so much during your honeymoon," he chuckled, prompting Zein to frown at the word.

"What honeymoon?"

Radia just smiled teasingly, flicking a screen in front of Zein to showcase the many articles regarding his yacht ride with Bassena; from the one calling it a date, to a more daring one who called it a honeymoon. Zein looked at them wordlessly before smacking the screen away--he already knew people would talk about it, but calling it a honeymoon was a stretch, wasn’t it?

"Have you eaten a proper meal?" Radia asked while Zein was scoffing at those articles.

"I had burgers."

"That’s not a proper meal," the crimson eyes narrowed disapprovingly, just as he did when Zein took a lot of sugar for his coffee.

The guide shrugged at that and replied nonchalantly. "They had meat and bread," he said. It was practical too, since he could eat in on the way here. Like rations the borderline unit had, buy taste much much better. What’snottolike?

"...I’ll take you to lunch later," Radia said with a sigh after, and Zein just shrugged again.

Putting off his cigarette, Radia clapped his hand then. "So," the crimson eyes curled as he stared at Zein keenly. "Seems like a lot of things happened along the weekend."

"Nothing I planned of," Zein leaned back and crossed his arms.

"Give me a rundown."

And so Zein started to give his report about what transpired in the studio, including how Senia Azra approached him and the stunt pulled by Celestia during his restroom break. He also talked about the content of the topic being discussed during the talk show, as well as the incessant question about the guide division.

But it was all the things both Lex and Jock would have told Radia too, so Zein only give an abridged version with his commentary. They spent the longest hour talking about what transpired within the peak of the tower.

Zein would have found it difficult to talk about something like that before, but it became easier now. Especially because, like Bassena, Radia knew about him being a fragment, so he didn’t really have to speak carefully or hide too much of the conversation. Of course, Zein still only told Radia the important bit, especially about Bassena’s mission and the deity’s words regarding the increase of power within the Deathzone. He also told Radia about his thought regarding the connection between the increase of dungeon anomalies with that.

They were quiet for a while after Zein finished his retelling--Radia pondering while finishing his second stick, and Zein soothing his throat with water.

"Hmm...that’s quite ominous," Radia tapped on his temple as he leaned on his hand, brows furrowed slightly.

The reclamation project, more than Trinity, actually belonged to Mortix. The group had dabbled in recreating safe-zone efforts from when it was a mere company handling the dungeon’s materials. But it was so hard to do it that in the generations after, the project was shelved deep, until Radia dug it up when he was a child.

With the advancement of technology, they decided to awaken the project on the purifying device, and Radia started to calculate the feasibility of conquering new land for more resources in a place that other people had never touched. When Bassena told him about the mission from their patron deity, it felt like fate that they should pursue this seriously.

Bassena wasn’t given a specific time for his mission, so they weren’t really pressed for it, just carefully establishing a guild and foundation for the project to really kick on someday. But then, suddenly, they got a tip-off from Han Shin--who was eavesdropping on his father--and Radia got more detailed information from Han Joon--after a series of yelling and fighting and passionate exercising.

That a Reclamation Act was in the middle of brewing in the most secret part of the government, and it would be announced next year.

It felt like everything just falling into place back then. Radia did have his suspicion, but he didn’t think as far as the deities willed for everything to happen because of the looming danger. They always kind of thought of the Deathzone as a status quo--that it would never change, whether for the better or the worse.

"We do think there’s something going on with the Deathzone, based on the expedition you did," Radia rubbed his lips, recalling the content of the reports. "The reseach for the Specter’s cores are still ongoing now, but the fact that they could evolved and made the beast evolved already a sign that things weren’t stagnant in there."

"And we barely even touched the center of it," Zein chewed on the inside of his cheek. Even with two weeks of the expedition, they only reached as far as the ruined city--the first trace of old-age settlements they could find in the Deathzone.

"Right," Radia nodded in agreement. "That ruin wasn’t even a seaside city."

Calculating the distance they reached based on Ron’s mapping and comparing it to the whole Deathzone, they only reach about one-third of the way to the end of the Deathzone, which was the sea. Finding the fragment’s core location and marking it was actually a stroke of luck on their part.

"I’m getting concerned about ’swallowing the shard’ part," Zein said suddenly, tapping on his arm nervously with a frown on his face.

The success of this project lay heavily on those shards to be used as their base. And then, if Zein could figure it out, how to gather all the movable shards to the core and created a whole unified fragment. If they couldn’t gather all the shards, then there was a great possibility that the whole fragment couldn’t be constructed. In that case, they had to wait for the purifying device to get developed into a wider range and Radia would have to pour a huge amount of capital to create a lot of those devices so they could cover the whole Deathzone.

All in five years.

"Have you ever contacted your old unit since you arrive here?" Radia asked in the middle of Zein’s musing.

"No, we’re not really that great at correspondence," Zein widened his eyes a bit at Radia’s question, since it was something he just thought that weekend. "I’m thinking of sending them a letter, though..."

"Mm," Radia tapped on his lips in contemplation, before snapping his fingers at one of his summoned secretaries. "Tell me before you do. It’ll be faster to use Mortix’s transport van. I want to send something too."

"Send what?" Zein watched the summoned creature put a tablet in Radia’s hand. The crimson eyes darted along the screen as the man’s fingers nimbly tapped and swiped on the surface.

"Something that might be useful for detecting an anomaly," Radia explained. "We’ve been trying to develop something ever since we experience more anomaly years ago. It’s still a prototype, but researching Specter’s cores helped a lot with the development," he projected the tablet’s screen to holographic augmentation and sent it across the table.

Zein looked at the device’s blueprints and the little explanation below. Honestly, he understood nothing about what was written there, but he just nodded at Radia’s explanation. "That’s good."

Radia chuckled at Zein’s visible attempt at not reading the complicated stuff written there and pulled the visual back. "Well, let’s put it aside for now. There’s another thing I want to talk about today."

The blue eyes narrowed, and Zein felt like he knew this pattern before. Looking at the crimson eyes, Zein straightened his back suddenly, prompting a deep smile to surface on the older’s lips. Seeing the serious gaze in Zein’s eyes, Radia wasted no time with glib.

"We found a hint about your father."