There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL) novel Chapter 500

Chapter 500: Chapter 493. Garden of Stars

"Is this...a vision?" Bassena looked around the place. It was dark, with only a few specks of light in the distance.

"Yeah," Zein looked down. Seemed like the vision was a big one, if he had his full consciousness. He couldn’t walk around, however, so it wasn’t at the level of what Setnath’s fragment could do.

But then again, it wasn’t like the Fallen Star gave away its existence like Setnath did. In terms of potency, the Fallen Star’s Fragment was more like a shard.

Zein turned toward Bassena in confusion, then. "But...why are you here?"

It was one thing if they were getting transferred somewhere, but together inside a vision was completely new and bizarre.

"How would I know?" Bassena shrugged, and then raised their intertwined hands. "Maybe because I was holding you?"

"You did the last time," Zein reminded him.

"Oh, right," Bassena tilted his head with a frown. "Hmm...was it because I spent so much time with that bastard? Or..."

He looked around again. Something about this place seemed familiar to him. No--not because it felt like his mana core somehow. The specks of light in the distance, the slight pressure all over his body, and the feeling like he was hovering in emptiness...

"...maybe because I experienced this before?"

"You mean the scenery?" Zein raised his brows. His mind churned to where Bassena might experience a vision or a memory like this. It didn’t take long, however, since the memory was rather new. "...the Celestial War?"

Bassena nodded. "It looks kind of similar."

"It is?"

"Mm," the esper tapped on his chin while looking around again. "This is the space, right?"

Zein tilted his head. "Space?"

"Ah, hmm..." Bassena forgot sometimes that Zein didn’t have the same education other children got outside of the red-zone. "You know that Earth is just a planet, right? The place outside this planet supposedly looks like this."

Supposedly; since Bassena had never seen it himself. All of the information about this ’space’ thing came from Old Age knowledge and most of it had gotten buried during the apocalypse--just like everything. Most survivors of that era, like Althrea Mallarc or the first generation of Ishtera, didn’t have the necessary knowledge to resurrect most lost technologies, so they depended heavily on what source of information still available after the world stabilized enough for the civilization to start again.

Zein raised his brows at Bassena’s explanation and looked around. "This darkness?"

"Yeah, I heard people can’t live here too--well, humans anyway," Bassena continued. "Before the apocalypse, they said people could go to the space."

"...doing what?"

Bassena shrugged, chuckling at Zein’s flabbergasted expression. "Exploration? Curiosity? The thrill of the unknown? The thirst for knowledge?"

"With the Celestial Beings and all other hazards?"

"Well, they didn’t know about all of that before, after all."

"Ah..."

Zein nodded. He read somewhere--or did the twins tell him?--that before the apocalypse, people thought these deities were just myths. It was only after the towers and the temples descended that they knew the existence of these Celestial Beings.

Still, he wondered how the humans never encountered one of them, or stumbled upon the other creatures like the ones from the dungeons, during their space excursion. Perhaps this planet was located in such a backwater place...

Or perhaps, initially, there was none of them in the universe where Earth was. But then the Celestial War happened and the gate to the more dangerous worlds opened.

"I heard the Western Republic has been trying to make a vehicle that could bring humans to space. Spaceship? Yeah, I think they call it a spaceship."

"I see..."

Zein fell quiet as he suddenly recalled something he saw in his dream just before they had their Southern Kingdom vacation. A weird dream about a kid standing inside a room looking out into this kind of place...

Bassena tilted his head to look at Zein, feeling worried at the sudden silence. "Why? What’s wrong?"

"No, I just..." Zein shook his head slightly before adding in a doubtful, vague voice. "I think I saw this kind of place once in a dream."