There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL)
Chapter 166 - 161. Woe of Believers

Chapter 166: Chapter 161. Woe of Believers

When they stepped inside the factory complex, It was more ordinary than Zein thought.

Perhaps he was imagining some mysterious secret base like the one in the movie Han Shin gave him to watch when he got bored during Bassena’s absence. But this one had nothing of the dark-looking castle of halogen light along a technologically advanced building.

It was just...well, an office building.

They first stepped into the parking lot, and in front of them was a regular-looking management office. He could see the taller building of what he assumed to be a worker’s dorm, and the actual factory behind a steel fence.

A weapon factory. He found out before coming here that their base was a legit weapon factory. It wasn’t anything big like Mortix, of course, but they supplied low-budget weapons for espers in the lower zones. He found it kind of fitting, honestly, for a cult worshiping Setnath, since the deity was known to be proficient in handling all kinds of weapons.

"O-over here," the guard guiding them inside went through a small path next to the office, which bring them to the dorm building Zein could see from the outside.

But the guard didn’t stop or went to the dorm, but continued walking along the concrete path all the way to the back of the complex. Zein tried to recall the vision of the complex from the air, and remembered there was a separate two-story house in the corner of the factory complex.

It was a plain-looking residential house that didn’t match the factory complex. It wasn’t luxurious, but it was big enough to hold a big family meeting, the kind of house that had a lot of rooms and one big living room combined with a dining room. There was a small, empty lot of garden beside the house, which Zein easily imagined would be filled with vegetable seeds once spring came. The rest of the lawn was filled with trees that had started to lose their leaves.

While Zein was busy observing the vicinity, he suddenly heard a commotion from the house. The voice traveled from a slightly opened door, and he stopped in his track.

"You can’t even walk well, old man, let’s just be patient. They’ll arrive soon!" a youngish voice came from inside, followed by a spiky older voice.

"You imbecile! How dare you make him come to us?! I’m the one who should run to him!"

"Say that after your legs stop trembling!"

Zein raised his brow and turned to look at Bassena, who tilted his head and shrugged in response.

"Should we hurry...?"

"Umm...y-yes, please," the guard, who had been stuttering since earlier, scrambled toward the front porch. Zein had no idea which one the man was afraid of; Bassena or him.

He followed the man and climbed the front step. The voice from inside grew louder as they get closer and the guard opened the door wider. But as the door made a creaking sound, the voice suddenly disappear, and only the sounds of two pairs of shoes could be heard against the hardwood floor.

After he crossed the entrance’s threshold, Zein stopped and properly take a look at the great hall where he ended up in. The first thing he noticed was an old man, probably well over seventy, with a cane in his hand and looking at Zein with widened eyes. The old man was being supported by a middle-aged man and the policeman from Neyta. Around the rather spacious hall, there were about nine other people; four of which Zein recognized from the investigation. All of them were espers, with various degrees of mana-core level. They were all looking at him, frozen, so quiet that it seemed like no one was even breathing.

When Zein wondered what he should do or say, the old man suddenly jerked, as if something struck him, and he surged forward, getting away from the two men holding him.

"Elder!"

Startled, Zein almost stepped forward to catch the stumbled old man, but thankfully, the men were quick to catch the old man again. But the grey eyes were already transfixed toward Zein, and with trembling lips, the old man spoke.

"May...may I see your face?"

Zein stood there and stared at the old man for a while. Of all the things, he didn’t expect them to ask for his face first. He thought it would be about his mother, or the stigma in his nape. But Zein looked at the shaking eyes and trembling limbs and...damn, he was weak to kids and the elderly in the first place.

"Alright," he said finally, but of course, the esper tailing him wouldn’t like it.

"Zein--"

"It’s fine," Zein raised his arm, and then glanced toward the frowning esper. "It’s fine. You’re here, aren’t you?"

"Not fair..." Bassena grumbled, but he just clicked his tongue and chose to observe the other people instead.

With his raised hand, Zein pressed the button on his neck to retrieve the mask back, revealing his face to the occupants of the hall.

Zein was used to people gasping at his face when he took off his mask, but it was the first time he found someone crying at it. The old man, who seemed to never blink as he stared at Zein, started to drip tears after heartbreaking tears from his blurry grey eyes.

"Oh..." the sound of weeping filled the hall as the old man kneeled on the ground, and it was because the middle-aged man who was holding him was too stunned and shook to keep supporting the old man.

Zein, of course, frowned at this, unconsciously stepping back from the teary elderly. He felt Bassena protectively held into his waist, whispering in concern. "Isn’t this a bit too dramatic?"

A bit? Zein almost shuddered at the two men’s reaction. He thought he would just go away a little bit and let Bassena handle the interrogation or whatever before coming back, because it certainly felt like a shady cult behavior and he wasn’t here for this.

But then, the weeping old man muttered with a trembling voice, that got Zein’s heart almost stopped beating. "Oh...Young Master," the old man put his head on the ground, wetting the hard floor with his tears. But even the middle-aged man, who seemed to be the most reasonable, ended up on his knees beside the old man, as they called out a name. "Young Master Ishtera!"

At that one name, the other ten people there suddenly got on their knees too, almost as if they had been programmed to do so. Zein blinked, couldn’t really decide whether he felt confused or frightened by this until Bassena nudged his arm softly and pointed somewhere with a chin.

"Zein," the esper called out softly, and Zein followed the gaze of the amber eyes, toward a space on the wall atop the winding double stairs at the edge of the hall.

There, mounted on the wall in a silver frame, was a portrait of someone who bore so much resemblance with him it was as if he looked into a mirror. Beneath the portrait, a name was carved on a silver plaque; Alteroan Ishtera.

For the first time, Zein found out the name of his father.

* * *

"I never thought the last blood of Ishtera would stand side by side with a Vaski," the middle-aged man, who was already regaining his composure, stared at Bassena after they moved to a sitting room.

Zein had acted horrified at these people’s act of kneeling in unison that he told them he would go home if they continued. He told the old man he wanted to talk, and asked if there was somewhere more suitable for that. Bassena thought it was just because the guide didn’t want to look at that portrait of Alteroan Ishtera any longer, but he said nothing as the old man lead them into the sitting room with an almost worrying degree of enthusiasm.

And as the old man tried to gather his breath and calmness--which involved the use of a nebulizer--the second most senior member filled the silence with a sudden jab.

Ah, right--technically, it was the Vaskis who obliterated this clan in the past. But the Vaski in question just tilted his head with a smirk on his face. "This Vaski is the one who finished off all the other Vaskis, though," the amber eyes curled as the esper smiled charmingly. "Unlike you."

"You--"

"And this Vaski is the one chasing your Young Master to the borderland," there was almost a snarl in Bassena’s smirk. "Unlike you."

"Bas..." Zein tapped on the esper’s thigh, sending him a stern look. "Enough."

The amber eyes squinted before Bassena turned his face away, grumbling softly. "Fine," and then, a little bit clearer. "Sorry..."

Zein tapped on the esper’s knee again, before looking back at the middle-aged man, who introduced himself as Senan. The man was frowning, but not in anger--it was regret and guilt. He suddenly bowed his head again, speaking with clenched teeth.

"Forgive me, Young Master," there was a tremble in his subdued voice. "We should have tried harder to find your whereabouts."

It must have been because Bassena was talking about the borderland. Although, it was also something that could be found through an intensive search on the link’s network. It wouldn’t, however, get them any info regarding Zein’s life before then. Bassena was tempted to see what their reaction would be when he knew that Zein had lived in the red-zone until his early twenties.

But he had promised to behave, so Bassena just pressed his lips and swallowed his jab.

"Forget about that," Zein shifted his gaze toward the rest of the people, who situated themselves in various parts of the room; the corner couch, the windowsill, just leaning to the wall. Since it was well in the middle of November, most of them wore long sleeves, but there were some who weren’t, or had their sleeves rolled to their elbow, showing the inked insignia on their arms. Including the one stamped on the man in front of him.

Zein pointed at the glaring ten-pointed star while looking back at the middle-aged man. "I’m here to ask about that."

Senan looked down at the insignia on his arm, which was visibly older than the others. The man must have been in his twenties when the whole fight with Arja Vaski happened twenty-eight years ago. "Yes, I realized you’ve found out about us," the man smiled bitterly. "You found us even before we were able to find you. I’m ashamed."

"So it’s true, you are the one called the Templar of Arms Master?" Zein asked. At this point, he still had no idea what he felt about this organization. So far, he only knew that the Elder was crying because he was the spitting image of his father, who was supposed to be the head of the clan that was the pillar of the Templar.

But since they at least treated him like the son of their deceased leader instead of a second coming of a God, he didn’t feel as negatively as before.

At least for now.

"Yes, that is true," the middle-aged man nodded.

Bassena, in his persistent bitter pettiness of being lumped together with the people who killed Zein’s father, spoke with a little bit of a sneer. "A cult of Setnath’s worshipper, huh?"

"That is not true!"

The collective, enraged reaction made even Bassena blink in surprise. There was even someone who slammed a table from someplace, and Zein was sure a few took a fighting stance as if defending their organization’s honor came with battling the Serpent Lord.

But the biggest reaction certainly came from the old man, the Elder, who ripped off his nebulizer and yelled with a hoarse throat. "That is a misconception!" the old man even stood up to stress his point. "The House of Ishtera was--is--not, any God’s cult!"

Well...this was different.