There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL) novel Chapter 247

Chapter 247: Chapter 240. Vanity and Ability

"Pfft--" Bassena leaned on the railing, letting off the last of his laughter as the AR field was turned off and the applicants were gasping for breath down there.

A staff came up to lead them down to another room where they would receive refreshments and guiding from the twenty guides. Alice went to the guides to collect their first sheet and lead them to the same room the esper went to, along with Abel. Both division heads would rotate between each batch to provide supervision and assessment. Of course, a few Trinity guides had already been stationed there to continue the guiding after the ten minutes of assessment that the guides needed to do.

They waved to Abel as the man went down, and Bassena continued to speak. "Actually, we do," he said while glancing at Zein with a smirk.

"Huh?"

"We accept people with good skills and good appearance," Bassena said, shifting his gaze to the applicants that had started to move toward another room.

It was hard for guides to not be good-looking due to their natural trait, but it was different with espers. They were people who regularly needed to face extreme dungeon environments and did physical training--not to mention being prone to injuries and scars. That being said, Trinity had succeeded in gathering at least decent-looking people, who managed to look even better after they joined the guild and enjoyed the many facilities here--including the spa and sauna that Rina vehemently requested from the management. Being regularly guided well also contributed to the espers looking brighter and healthier, on top of doing regular medical check-ups in Mortix’s affiliated hospital.

Zein did not pick it up until a few weeks later, even though Han Shin had already mentioned it before. And he only realized how many members were involved in showbiz after he started watching television shows because of Bassena. Most of them were modeling for clothing lines or taking advertising gigs, while some took acting or singing careers on the side. He found out that some of the members were already in the entertainment industry before getting scouted or registering with Trinity after they earned their esper licenses.

It wasn’t like Trinity opened the recruitment by saying it was an audition for entertainment talents, but after four years of being known as that kind of guild, people who registered this year were usually quite confident in their looks.

"It’s nothing uncommon; guilds--or, hell...any working place--chose people in their own category all the time," Rina shrugged.

"Like Glasswing?" Zein tilted his head, and the others snapped their fingers in affirmation.

"Like Glasswing," Bassena nodded. "There’s a guild that only chose orphans, guilds that are established based on skin color, and even guilds that only allow people from a certain academy," a corner of his lips lifted a bit while he made notes on his evaluation sheet for the first batch. "It’s kind of ridiculous to judge a guild based on their way of choosing members instead of their performance."

Zein mulled over Bassena’s words while looking at his own work; the guide applicants’ answer sheet. After having fun reading them--and yes, there was someone who wrote ’this esper is my type’ as their reasoning--he turned to look at Bassena again. "Hmm...perhaps because they see it as you only chasing as much profit as possible?"

Trinity’s revenue, after all, not only came from dungeon materials and security works, but also from the esper’s entertainment gigs and other commercial appearances. The guild had been cementing itself as having the highest revenue among all medium-sized guilds in the Eastern Federation. A lot of critiques actually came from the group of people who thought espers should only work in dungeon-related fields, and accused the members of ’stealing’ other people’s opportunities.

Quite frankly, the guild did not care for such sentiment.

Bassena laughed before replying. "People might say it in spite, but it’s true that we are a guild that chases profit," he looked down at the Arena and spread his hands, before speaking with a deep smile. "Because you know what makes all these good equipment and facilities?"

Zein replied easily. "Money."

"Money," Bassena snapped his fingers and winked playfully. "People spat on profit-seeking guilds as if we were monsters of society, but the equipment doesn’t just magically grow on trees, and espers still need to put food on the table. How can we expect Espers to focus on their work if they have to constantly think about their family’s meals back home?"

Ashur and Ulysses, who was actually the sole providers of their family, smirked in response. Florence and Sierra also came from guilds that were having a hard time with their finance and ended up overworking most of their members.

"This is work, this is not charity. You can’t expect someone to do a life-threatening job without ample compensation," Bassena crossed his arms, chuckled amusedly like every time he heard about people criticizing them for being like an agency or corporation.

Well, guilds were indeed a corporation. It was a company where people worked and expected to get paid for their services. It wasn’t different from private security companies who dealt with providing bodyguards for high-profile people.

"In an ideal world, people would pay good money for espers,"

"But the world is not ideal," Zein remarked.

Bassena chuckled in agreement. "The citizens are not the ones who paid for Espers and Guides’s services, unless they belonged to government agency and military. Espers got their money from selling dungeon materials, and guides got their money from Espers who got cleansed,"

"And both also pay taxes to the government," Rina added with a sarcastic laugh. "Just like the protesting civilians."