There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL) novel Chapter 503

Chapter 503: Chapter 496. Spoil of War

"Captain!"

"Stop," Zein raised his palm, prompting the guides to freeze in their place. "I have no energy right now, so you have to do it gently."

Only then did he spread his arms and let the guides hug him. He had to explain to them that he was fine and merely tired from destroying the fragment. After making sure everyone was alright, he gave them the impending work of guiding those who were fighting earlier, including the ones from Anzus since he couldn’t afford to guide anyone at that time.

When he went to the outside command tent, which was in front of the armory instead of the stadium, he passed through the team that was in the middle of extracting the dead worm’s mucus to be used on their stone wall outside the safe zone.

...which seemed to no longer be safe anymore.

"...they’re pretty clever," Zein heard Bassena’s voice the moment he entered the command room. "They targeted the border between two purification devices’ range where it’s the weakest."

"Like a red-zone?" Zein commented as he took a seat on the couch where Han Shin was covering his ears and eyes with a pillow while muttering I didn’t see it, I didn’t see it...

Bassena nodded. "I have no idea if they planned it precisely, or if the Stone Eater just went by instinct."

"It was going around outside the chamber when we arrived, so maybe the worm was looking for a weak link?" Kei suggested.

"Perhaps," Bassena shrugged, crossing his arms as he watched the recording of the fight he didn’t partake in. "The question now is what to do with this passage--no; what to do with the whole system."

"Should we create a team of scouts to map the place?" Kei tapped on her lips in contemplation. It would be a hard work, and a complicated one. But honestly, finding a new place to explore was pretty thrilling. "We can just map the one connected to the main passage we took, and sealed the rest."

"Wouldn’t that make our force quite thin?" Ashur frowned slightly.

Bassena closed his eyes and held his sigh. It didn’t seem so before, but this time, they realized how important numbers were. The Deathzone was truly vast and treacherous; not only should they think about the surface, but they also had to consider what was underground. Even if they used the mercenary, their total personnel would still be less than two hundred.

Before, they thought it would be enough to defend the base with a few people while spreading the other to the secondary base and the other outpost. But after the breach today, they had to re-evaluate their plan.

"Why the long sigh when everything went well?"

Suddenly, they heard the familiar voice that triggered their instinctive reaction to straighten their back and focus their mind. Except for Zein and Han Shin, as well as Bassena who was already standing, the rest of them stood up in attention, looking at the deep red hair and the pair of crimson eyes of the man entering the tent.

"Guildmaster!"

"Huh?" Bassena raised his brow in surprise. "How are you here already?"

"Because I can," Radia shrugged and sat down naturally on a chair that Kei politely took out for him. "Fill me in."

In a true Radia fashion, they didn’t even bother to do any greeting or warming up to each other. Bassena, Kei, and Ashur made their respective report one by one about the finding of the shards, the fight with the Specter, and the battle on the surface. Zein also listened to the report keenly since he wasn’t there when they were exchanging stories earlier.

After listening to them, Radia leaned his head back and closed his eyes while tapping the armrest slowly. Ah...it had been a while since Zein saw Radia do that, and for some unknown reason, it gave him a sense of ease and peacefulness.

"We need to find a new way to communicate," Radia said after a while. "A system we can use even without a link signal. Obviously, something more elaborate than a burning paper."

"Any idea, Boss?"

"Obviously not," Radia replied with a smirk while taking the cup of coffee that his secretary provided out of nowhere. "Maybe the military has something. I’ll ask him next time."

Han Shin, who had become a half-zombie from the dreadful encounter with the giant worm, suddenly lifted his face. "Did you talk to hyung? How?"

"Money is always an answer," Basena replied instead as Radia only sipped his coffee with a smile.

"...how much?"