There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL)
Chapter 135 - 130. The Thrill of Reprimand

Chapter 135: Chapter 130. The Thrill of Reprimand

"Did I not tell you about what I would do if I catch you not resting?"

What greeted Zein and Bassena once they stepped into the Chairman’s office was a reprimand. The crimson eyes stared at them sharply while they sat on the couch like two naughty kids having been caught playing out while they were sick.

"You said if you ’catch me in the guild’," Zein shrugged. "This is not the guild."

Technically, that was true, and Bassena grinned at that response.

"Wow, and here I thought you’re the sensible one, Luzein."

Oh...Zein blinked. So that was what it felt when someone berated you using your full name.

The guildmaster, sitting with crossed legs in front of them, cocked his index finger to beckon the guide, and Zein somehow felt it was thrilling to be scolded. So he uncharacteristically leaned forward over the table, until Radia could snatch his jaw and stared hard into the blue eyes.

"Hmm, this is..." Bassena rubbed his lips, somehow feeling anxious but also...excited.

"You, shut up."

Radia narrowed his eyes, and after observing the pair of sapphires for a while, he finally released the guide. "At least you’re better than yesterday."

Zein scooted back to his seat with a rare grin. "In my defense, it’s Bas who asked me out."

"Of course, it’s him," Radia clicked his tongue. "But it’s your job to reject him, Luzein."

"Wow, you’re really in a bad mood," Bassena chuckled slightly, before pressing his lips tight when the piercing crimson gaze landed on him.

"You--" Radia started, seemingly about to scold the esper this time, but decided that it was too exhausting dealing with the unruly kid. "You should know that you give me the most headache."

The man exhaled long then, leaning back and closing his eyes like an enervated man. Zein recognized this mood though, and dared himself to ask. "Did you two fight agai--okay," and immediately closed his mouth at the aggressive glare.

So Zein and Bassena ended up just sitting there quietly, sipping on the drink the summoned secretary gave them. Zein was certain that Radia and Joon were somehow arguing again, since there was nothing that could rile this man to this extent but the Mobius Captain.

Although Bassena had another idea. "Is the stock failing?"

Rather than answering himself, Radia snapped his hand, and one of the summoned secretaries--a woman with a short bob cut--stepped forward with a tablet in her hand.

"On the second day of the dungeon anomaly, October 17th, the stock prices started to go down significantly. It saw a downward trend and plummeted deep by more than fifteen percent during the hour the gate started to break,"

Zein leaned back and crossed his arms. He had no clue about the significance of those numbers, so he just thought about how the way she talked reminded him of Alice. By the way, he hadn’t talked with Alice after he woke up, how were the kids doing these days...

"...it slowly rose again after the successful raid, and climbing steadily after the news about no-casualty was released. It climbed over the original line after the press release about the role of the guides during the raid was out on the twenty-first, and as of this morning, it reached the highest point with the news of Sir Vaski’s record-breaking trial clear," the woman ended her deliberation by closing her tablet and stepped back.

Zein, whose mind was somewhere else, just kept his mouth closed. But Bassena immediately remarked with a protesting tone. "What? So we’re actually bringing you profit then!"

"It’s your shares too, Bas..."

"But why did you berate me so much, then?" the esper pursed his lips, feeling wronged from all the sharp glare he received since he stepped into this room.

Radia, still half laying on the couch, answered exasperatedly. "In the ten years I took over this Group, I had never been in so many meetings within a week. And I have to deal with government pressure too. And the fucking military. And your sudden disappearance right after the trial ended. And then you appeared here when you should have stayed put. My patience is so thin right now so you better not try me."

At Bassena’s flabbergasted expression, Zein leaned closer and whispered quietly. "He probably met Han Joon too,"

"Aah..."

"You too, Luzein."

With that stern warning, Zein made a rare ’oops’ response and got back to wondering about his kids. Were they coming at a bad time? Should he pursue what he was coming here for, or should they just postpone it? He glanced at the esper, who could only reply with a shrug.

But in the end, the one who spoke first was Radia. "So why are you here exactly?"

"To order some stuff in the next building," Bassena shrugged.

Since it was for the Bassena Vaski and his guide, the staff work more efficiently, even though the place wasn’t really their store. It didn’t take long for Zein to pick two toolbelts with storage magic about two meters cubic each--enough for the equipment which he ordered too; from winter coats to camping devices and survival tools.

And then they just casually stroll into Mortix Holdings and sauntered to the Chairman’s office. The front office or the secretaries did not even bother to stop them.

"I’m here to find out what happened during the raid," Zein added. Now that the conversation going in the direction of his objective, he straightened his back and put on his serious face back.

Again, Radia just snapped his fingers.

"Nyx, just give them some rundowns."

"Yes, Master."

The all-black ’butler’ faced Zein and Bassena then, and started to deliver what transpired during and after the five days dungeon anomaly.

From the surveyor’s recording, they concluded that the squad cleared the first dungeon normally, which took a whole day. From the time they were transported into the second ’dungeon’, the time dilation occurred. An hour there seemed to be a day in the outside world, which was why they ended up being in the dungeon for six days.

Black Gate, which was the highest rank for dungeons, wasn’t something that occurred a lot. Normally, it occurred when the mana in a certain place became too highly concentrated, and started to suck in the surrounding miasma. While the surrounding environment became cleansed, a black gate occurred as causality.

Of course, something like that rarely happened. At most, once a year even in the lower zone. In the green zone where the miasma concentration was low to begin with, a black gate occurring was something that couldn’t even be treated as bad luck.

Even throughout his eight years of career, Bassena never raided the black gate inside and around the green zone--because there was none. At most, the one appearing around the green zone was a red gate.

That was why people reacted so dramatically toward this black gate. They couldn’t just call it bad luck, as some even started to think that Trinity was cursed, and that was why Mortix, as its sponsor, received a hit.

Ironically, this thought that they were cursed, and being hit by tragedy, only played in Trinity and Mortix’s favor when the dungeon was cleared without casualty. The curse became a blessing, and the tragedy turned into an opportunity to prove their competence.

The more they got dragged down while being low, the more they got raised after coming back.

What the public didn’t know, however, was the fact that the black ’dungeon’ most likely wasn’t a dungeon.

"There’s only a Spectre and its minions," Bassena commented after finally watching the recording--the abridge and edited version for the archive.

"Hmm," Zein nodded, recalling the experience. "If it’s a real ’black dungeon’, it’ll take longer, and there’ll be casualties," he paused for a bit and frowned. "A lot of it."

Bassena watched the frowning guide for a while before asking. "You’ve gone into one?"

"Twice in the borderland," Zein replied affirmatively, with a hard gaze and gritted teeth. It was clear that the experience was not a pleasant one. And by the sound of it, resulting in a lot of casualties. He immediately changed the topic, as if he didn’t want to recall the past anymore. "This time, the gate was black simply because it’s located in the Deathzone, which contained dense miasma."

Since the gate’s colors were based on the amount of miasma inside said dungeon, Deathzone would always be black, just like how they looked on the map.

"Which begs a question," Radia finally spoke after letting his secretary do all the explaining. "Was it really a ’dungeon’?"

Zein nodded. That was what he wanted to know too. "I was sure we were in the Deathzone, but I had no idea if we were getting teleported to a place in the Deathzone, or we fell into a dungeon that got connected to the Deathzone," he turned toward Bassena then. "Like how you ended up in the Redridge mountain that time."

"Right," Bassena tapped on his elbow in contemplation. "I entered a dungeon in the yellow-zone, and got locked in an adjacent dungeon that led to the barren red-zone."

So both conjectures seemed possible. Unfortunately, they had no way to confirm which one was true, since the gate and thus the dungeon itself were destroyed. So Radia diverted the topic to something else.

"And the reason you’re sure you were in the Deathzone is..."

It didn’t need complex thinking to come to that conclusion, though, and the three of them answer it together;

"The shard."