There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL) novel Chapter 228

Chapter 228: Chapter 221. Day of Contending Nerves (1)

"So, what exactly happened?" _{ƒreewebɳovel.com}

The next morning, the executives had their separate breakfast--or rather, meeting with a meal. In which, Zein wasted no time asking Radia. He had wanted to ask that immediately yesterday, but alas, he had a puppy to be coddled.

All he found out from Bassena was merely the outbreak level, which was actually quite high. But the building belonged to the Association, so the walls and pillars were reinforced with resistant material, and there were more than enough espers to do containment. Not to mention Bassena was there to do crowd control.

It was almost silly, the outbreak. If it was meant to do some damage, they shouldn’t have done it in a building full of an esper with just that level of density. While the parking lot did get contaminated with miasma, it wasn’t anything that a good purification device couldn’t handle in a span of a day.

So, more than the outbreak, the surprising part was the attack on the vault room.

Radia, who was always quieter than usual in the morning, murmured while letting the smell of roasted coffee beans envelop him. "It seemed that they searched the whole building for more explosive sheets."

"Did they find any?" Rina asked. She had no idea what happened in the Association building since she was busy defending the channel connecting the basement of the building and the hotel.

"Some. They are still very secretive about where," Radia crossed his arms as he leaned back and closed his eyes. "I’m going over to find out more."

"It’s rare for you to not find out already," Bassena said, and Zein had to hold back on commenting that the Guildmaster might be busy last night.

Radia did not make any response, however, as if he couldn’t hear anything. He was tapping on his arms with knitted brows. They only heard him a few minutes later. "The sheet did not matter. The timing does."

The other three fell into silence then, eating their meal and sipping on their coffee in contemplation. Yes, among everything, that was still the biggest mystery.

"There’s no way it’s a coincidence, right?" Rina looked at the others.

"There’s a possibility that it was," Radia said. "At least, that would be the case if they only put the sheet in the vault room."

"Because then, we could chalk it up to a robbery attempt?"

"Or terrorism,"

"Either way," Radia straightened his back slightly then, "It makes sense to do that in the middle of an auction with the right timing," he paused to drink his coffee before continuing. "But putting them in other places of the building where there were barrier formation is risky without knowing the guards will be distracted."

"And so, the question becomes: how?" Bassena concluded.

Zein let out a quiet sigh. The probability of having someone--a human--knew when there would be an outbreak and used it for something despicable was...unnerving.

"The outbreak itself could not be random," Bassena muttered. "Even if it happened somewhere in the city--no, if it happened in the city, we would be getting even more distracted, because the containment would be harder, and we have to think about the civilian’s safety. And yet, it happened right where it could be handled easily."

Zein drummed on the table. He had been pondering the same question ever since he knew how fast it was for the espers to finish clearing the beasts. The one who provided the possibility, as always, was Radia.

"Rather than wanting to cause damage, it’s more like they wanted to say that they could do this deliberately," the Guildmaster said, stabbing his fork to a piece of fruit. "As if telling us that they could choose where and when they wanted to cause the outbreak."

This time, it wasn’t just Zein that was sighing. It seemed like things kept getting more and more complicated. If it was the same force that caused the last mass outbreak, it meant they got more proficient.

And to think someone from the human side might be able to ’cooperate’ with them?

"Well, let’s save our conjecture until we know more," Radia said. "We’ll still investigate on our own, but there’s no reason to work alone in this matter, since it concerned the whole nation."

And with that notion, Radia left to attend the emergency meeting after breakfast, with Rina in tow as his bodyguard. Bassena, meanwhile, received a call that asked him to give an account of yesterday’s event, since he was the first esper to arrive at the site of the outbreak.

Thanks to that, Zein was left alone in the suite. He had told the girls to have fun and toured the city today. Yesterday’s surprise event was enough to bring tension, so he wanted them to unwind on the last day of the year, buying new year gifts and such--just having fun, basically.

"Sir," Jock suddenly called to Zein when the guide was watching the city from the wide glass window. "Two people are heading here."

"Here as in to this room?" Zein arched his brow in surprise.

Every guest that wanted to meet him or other members of Trinity had to do it by the receptionist, who would then relay it to Jock as the head of security. In that case, the content would be ’someone asked to meet’, in which they would wait for the members’ agreement.

But ’heading here’ meant the people were already on their way up. Since they didn’t even bother with the protocol, they must have been people who had the ability to override it.

"The investigators?"

"Most likely," Jock nodded. "There was no official request for a meeting with you, however."

Radia was in the emergency meeting, and they had just called Bassena in for recounting the outbreak experience. It almost felt like they were taking advantage when the two weren’t here to approach Zein. With no appointment, no less.