There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL) novel Chapter 19

Chapter 19: Chapter 18. A Sea of Darkness

Every guide had their own way to visualize an esper's corrosion. Some saw it like a billowing smoke, and visualize their guiding like an exhaust that sucked the smoke away. Some use a rusty sword as a visual and imagined themselves chipping at the rust. It was one of the first lesson guides would receive on their training course.

But Zein never received a proper training course.

Zein didn't see the corrosion inside the esper through analogical visualization. He looked straight into the root of an esper's system; their mana core. In the first place, corrosion didn't happen all over an esper body, it happened on their core, taking root like a disgusting black vein coiling up their soul. It was probably why he had such an effective guiding, because rather than taking a roundabout technique like visualization, he attacked the roots of the problem.

It wasn't that the teaching was wrong. It was just that most guides could not sense this mana core. Zein, thanks to his stigma, could sense his own core and with time and hard practice, managed to sense other people's core too, provided that he had access to their system through guiding.

But it was also wrong to say Zein didn't visualize. What he visualize, however, was the esper's mana core. And he always saw them as a body of water.

Body of water that was full of mud. It was this mud that he would wash over with his guiding.

Depending on an esper's core strength and mana quantity, the visualization ranged from a mere puddle to a pond. He had once guided a 5-star esper that felt like a lake during his first year in the borderland.

But Bassena Vaski was...

A sea.

A sea of darkness.

It was like he had dipped himself inside a pool of black ink that swirled ominously. At first, he thought it was the corrosion, but if that was the case, then it would mean the esper was on the verge of eruption already.

No, the corrosion was not the darkness, but the chains that were swimming inside the sea, like slithering snakes.

"Ha...haha..." Zein chuckled. If the whole sea was drowned in these chains...for the first time in a decade, Zein felt his confidence in handling an esper's corrosion faltered. The last time he felt like this was during a dungeon raid, although his dwindling confidence was caused by the monsters then.

It wasn't that he didn't think he wouldn't be able to handle it, but drastic measures might...

Drastic...measure...?

Again, that sense of deja vu.

But before he could properly dig into his poor memory, a husky voice shattered his daze. "Hey, are you alright?"

Zein blinked. He'd been staring blankly at Bassena for a while after throwing the question about the esper's mana pool. Or sea, rather.

"Did you say something?" he asked, rather dazedly.

Bassena tilted his head, observing the guide blank's eyes that slowly regained focus. Only after making sure that Zein had come back did he ask. "You can sense other's mana pool?"

"Ah...yes," Zein had never told anyone about this, for a good reason.

Normally, people couldn't see or measure others' core. What they could do was measure aura—the magic energy esper emitted outside. But it was different than seeing the whole capacity of one's magical reserve. It was akin to taking a peek into someone's financial savings. While some might proudly brag about it, most would be miffed.

But there was nothing Zein could do about it. As soon as he was connected to an esper, he could see it. And it was because he could see it that his guiding was so on point.

Zein observed Bassena's face, trying to see if the esper felt upset about it. But rather than looking angry, Bassena looked intrigued instead.

"How is it?" he asked.

Zein blinked. How...was what?

"How's my mana pool?" he repeated the question with a smile.

Zein had yet to decipher what kind of smile was that, but he decided to answer truthfully, like usual. "It's like a sea..." although Zein obviously had never seen a sea before. He just attached the name of the largest body of water he knew, because that was how Bassena's mana pool was. The largest he saw.

"So it's big?" the man smirked, and Zein would roll his eyes any other time, commenting about how esper was always obsessed with size.

But not today. Because even 'big' felt inadequate to describe it. "It's massive," he said instead, and the smirk stretched wider.

The smirk, however, vanished with Zein's next words. "And it's dark..." Zein closed his eyes, peering into the sea of darkness once again, since Bassena didn't seem to mind it.

Darkness...and chains...

The longer he spent inside the darkness, the more he felt familiar with it. It wasn't the kind of darkness that scared him, like an abyss. Rather, it was the type of darkness that he felt when he closed his eyes and fell asleep. It was the kind of darkness that enveloped him and made him float.

And it was the chain that disturbed the soft, smooth darkness. Zein looked at the chain with annoyance, like mosquitoes that disturbed his sleep. He looked at the chains with disdain and sent a torrent of water to wash away the chains.

Hmm...

He felt like he experienced this before. But it was heavier, more hectic, and he felt like the space wasn't this big...

"You're going to crash into me, you know," Bassena kindly informed the guide, whose body was leaning closer and closer to him. The hand that grabbed him had also tightened, reminding Bassena of how the guide grabbed his arm agitatedly yesterday.

But instead of pulling himself back, Zein brought his other hand up and covered Bassena's mouth. "Sush, I'm thinking."

And with that short order, Zein actually leaned his head to the esper's chest, eyes closed, breathing slowed.

Where is it? This nagging feeling of familiarity? It tickled him so much he started to feel itchy.

In the end, though, he still couldn't remember, and he lifted his face with a frown. "Ah, damnit!" he cursed in a low voice, to Bassena's bewilderment. He stared into the amber eyes with an even deeper frown, and started to open his mouth. "Hey, where exactly—"

"Hey, love birds, can we start the real briefing now?" Han Shin clapped his hand, and both the esper and the guide turned their head with a frown and click of a tongue. "What? Just get a room if you want to be private!"

Without feeling any remorse—or rather, with a feeling of accomplishment for disturbing his friend's moment—the healer waved his hand while pointing to the screen across the table. Soon, the Unit's record on the Deathzone was displayed on the screen, and Zein started to focus on the briefing with a professional mentality, even while he dutifully proceed with the pre-cleansing.

The question about where they met before was shoved far in the back of his mind.

* * *

"There are three main entrances that we usually take, depending on what kind of sample we need to gather," Ron explained the three dots along the black jungle of Section 04-2. "The furthest one opened up to a plateau, the closest one leads to a cliff, so we will need to either go around or climb it, which I don't think is possible with the researchers. So our best bet is to go through the middle one."

The male scientist, Eugene, looked at the compiled report the Unit made overnight for their perusal and nodded. "Yes, I think that should be the best option. You mentioned about a brook here, too, so that will be ideal for our objective."

"Are we going to move alongside the brook?" Ron asked while making a note on his map.

"It's better if we can go all the way to the source of water," this time, it was Anise that remarked.

At this, the scout frowned and tapped on his map anxiously. Zein knew all too well about the source of the man's difficult expression. His hand was tightening too, prompting Bassena to turn his head and looked at the guide.

"What is it?" he asked in a soft voice. The esper had slouched on the chair, perching his long legs into another chair like an impromptu guide's lounge.

He rubbed the hand guiding him with his thumb, eyes never leaving Zein's face until the guide answered in a whisper to not disturb the meeting. "We don't have any map further than a kilometer along the brook. The last time we tried to venture deeper, two died. So, looking for the source of water is..."

Zein stopped and turned to look at Bassena, who sat languidly while receiving his guiding. He recalled the vastness of the core inside the esper and thought maybe the man wasn't bluffing about protecting them.