There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL)-Chapter 70 - 69. Project Fragment

When Zein was still drowned in the nostalgic pulsing of the shard, the tinted glass suddenly turned transparent, giving the guide a clear view of the wide space behind it.

"Here, you can see it better this way," Eugene said from the said, hands on a button beside the glass wall. "Well, although you’ll be going there shortly."

Inside the room was an apparatus that held the transparent tube where the shard was floating inside it, glowing bright like always. It was connected to various reading devices that Zein couldn’t really understand.

But he did understand that the shard was responding to his presence. As if proving his conjecture, the door to the adjacent room was flung open, and an older female researcher spoke with a surprised face.

"The mana wave is fluctuating!" she informed them with a voice filled with urgency, confusion, and joy all mixed into one.

She didn’t seem to know Zein was there before, and paused as her eyes land on the guide’s figure. "Huh? Who is this?"

"Probably the one who drag out that mana wave," Anise responded with a shrug.

The female researcher blinked repeatedly, before replying dumbly with a blank look. "Huh?"

"Ah, geez, Chief!" Eugene almost yelled in exasperation. "Have you forgotten already that we have a new team member from now on?" when the female Chief only tilted her head with a raised brows, he added with a sigh. "This is Guide Zein, the one who found the shard for us."

"Huuh?" this time, the sound didn’t come out in a daze, but in a high-pitch, surprised tone and face. "Huuuuh?"

In a flash, she was already running toward Zein, looking up at the masked guide with a fervent look. Immediately, Zein felt like her eyes were shining in the same way Reina looked at him during the fitting.

"Oh my God! Can I touch your hand? Can I look at your body? No—can I look at your brain wave? Your vessel core? Can I measure your—umfff!" both Eugene and Anise clamped the Chief’s mouth with their hands, pressing their lips tightly and dragging the gagged researcher away from Zein—whose eye already twitched in tension.

"Alright, alright, let’s get inside first," the pacifist guard, Balduz, ushered them all inside the next room from which the researchers came earlier, before Zein turned on his violence button.

While the earlier room functioned more like a viewing room for guests, the next room felt more like a research facility. It was filled with screens and papers showing off data and formulas, as well as boards with messy scribbles. Coffee mugs, energy bars, and boxed meals were piling up in one corner, showing off how busy the occupants were.

Busy with stressing failure, Zein thought as he looked at the sleep-deprived faces of people who he presumed to be the three main researchers’ assistants. There were four of them—five if he counted the one who stayed in the viewing room.

While Anise was seating the Chief and pressed her hands over the Chief’s shoulder to restrain her, Eugene tried to make room atop the table for the coffee Balduz was making for them. This room too, had a reinforced glass wall to observe the shard. Zein realized how many layers of protection magic were cast upon the shard room when he observed it closely.

"Aaah...it’s so nice to finally see some changes!" the Chief finally no longer gawking at Zein and instead put her focus on the string of fluctuation inside the mana reading device.

Both Eugene and Anise joined the Chief to look at the reading too, saving the data and making notes on their logs.

"Was there none during the last two months?" Zein walked toward the table then, since Balduz had finished making his coffee.

Eugene sighed as an answer. "Not that it was none, but it’s quite weak, and not enough for further data," he looked as disheartened as he was during that lunch on Friday.

"We’ve tried a lot of things to provoke it, but it’s not easy to move that out," Anise chimed in, pointing toward the shard.

It was something they had been hiding even from the government, and made the effort to hide it deep within their base with layers upon layers of protection. Bringing it outside, of course, would expose the shard, including the eyes on the towers and the temples.

"And it’s not easy to bring something that might provoke it inside," the Chief shrugged with a weary smile.

"Provoke it..."

"You know, something that was filled with miasma, like beasts from the dungeons," Eugene explained further. "We’ve been trying to get a corrupted mana stone big enough to mimic the presence of a beast too, but there had been nothing so far, since people tend to destroy it as soon as they find one."

Aside from the beneficial mana stones that became the main source of energy these days, there was also a rare mana stone that stored condensed miasma. When a dungeon contained such stone, the beats would get strengthened from the foul energy inside that stone.

And that also meant, such stone would be dangerous for the outside world. There was a case when someone sneaked it out of the dungeons, and it became a catastrophe where the land turned corrupted and the normal animals got berserk like miasmic beasts. Some organized crime and terrorist groups also used it for malicious intentions, so it became a norm to immediately destroyed a corrupted mana stone upon sight.

"Won’t it be dangerous too, using that kind of thing?" Zein tilted his head. Not to mention, it was probably illegal too.

That being said, Zein had seen some of those stones firsthand when he was still in Umbra, although it was only a tiny one. They would use it to threaten people or something like that.

"Well, I’m sure Sir Radia has a way," Eugene shrugged and gave Zein a wide smile. "At least, we have you for now, Mister Zein!"

"Just Zein," the guide said before sipping on his coffee. He stared at the shard again as his mouth savored the bittersweet coffee. "What kind of result do we actually want?"

Eugene sat across from Zein and stretched his body, taking on another cup of coffee waiting on the table before answering with a shrug. "Well, for now, we just want to see a stronger, more constant activity so we can derive some sort of data."

"Mana length, frequency, consistency, shape..." Anise trailed a list while taking a seat too, eyes still on her notes.

The Chief, whose name was still a mystery to Zein, shoved the notebook away to look at the guide. Thankfully, she no longer looked at him like a mad scientist who wanted to dissect a new specimen.

"We’ve been imitating the guide’s system for our purification device, but..." she leaned down and tilted her head toward Zein. "You would know what’s that system’s weakness, right, since you’re a guide?"

"Capacity,"

"Bingo!" she gave Zein a finger gun with a wink. "We tried to emulate the guide’s vessel using mana stones, but like any other vessel, it had limited capacity," her serious tone deflated then, just like her body which slumped down over the table. "That’s why we’ve been stuck with only ten, twenty meters radius of effectiveness..."

A collective sigh from the three researchers could be heard then, as well as a forlorn look from their assistant. Zein didn’t know much, but he deduced that it was these people who were at the helm of the purification device’s creation.

"If we want to create something more potent, we need to figure out how the fragment of Setnath works," they all looked toward the shard floating inside the tube. "Well, we only got a shard for now, but..."

"It’s a start," Zein finished the sentence, to the researchers’ smiles.

"Yes, it’s a start."

The Chief looked at the screen in front of her again then, and glanced toward Zein. "Anyway, If it’s already giving out this kind of reaction with you standing outside..."

"Well, what are we waiting for, then?" Anise stood up abruptly, as usual only being energetic if it was about the progression of her research.

It was a sentiment that was shared among all of the staff involved—even Balduz. "Let’s go, let’s go!" their depressed, sleep-deprived faces brightened up suddenly.

"...You’re all so energetic," Zein muttered. Not that he hated it—he let out a subtle smile as he stood up.

Time to meet an old friend.

* * *

There were a lot of gazes observing Zein from behind the glass. Balduz had come inside with him to prevent any unsavory mishap from happening, although Zein didn’t think it was necessary.

"I’m opening it," Eugene’s voice flew from the speaker on the wall, and Zein could sense a slight tremble there, signaling the excitement mixed with anxiety.

This researcher must have been desperate for some results for the past two months. Their mind might be full of expectations, as well as the fear that those expectations wouldn’t be met.

Zein didn’t really care about meeting their expectation though, so none of those gazes bothered him. He just wanted to see if he could see something again; another memory, or conversing with the leftover consciousness of Setnath’s soul.

The moment the transparent tube opened, Zein was blasted by the same welcoming pulse as that time in the Deathzone. Balduz stomped his feet and strengthened his legs with mana to not get blown to the wall. Thankfully, it seemed to only be guarded against sentient beings, so the blast did not affect the equipment.

"You’re okay?" Zein asked the tanker, glancing briefly at the wobbling man. Balduz nodded firmly, although his feet were obviously trembling. He touched the shard boldly, and the blasting energy died down, only swirling thinly around the tube.

Zein tilted his head slightly, thinking whether it was possible to ask the shard to stop going wild from now on. At least so the researcher could enter this room more comfortably without having to rely on the protection of the tube.

"Are you okay?" he heard Eugene’s voice again.

Zein just raised his free hand nonchalantly, eyes still on the pulsing shard. He put both hands on the shard then, and was about to close his eyes and sent his consciousness inside when he suddenly felt a trace of hesitation.

Why? Zein blinked in wonder. He looked down in contemplation, and then looked around. As his eyes fell on Balduz, he realized it then.

Ah, there was something missing from the two times he did it before. The presence of a strong, solid wall and warm ambers.

There was no Bassena guarding him from behind.

Zein didn’t realize until now, how reassuring that imposing figure was, how safe that man made him feel in a risky situation. Although there was no immediate danger here, he became slightly dependent on that guarding shadow.

’Have I...becoming this weak?’

Zein frowned and shook his head to stave off his hesitation. Pressing his lips, he focused himself on the shard again and before that hesitation came back, dove into the shard’s consciousness.

Immediately, he came into another sea of white. But it didn’t take a second before the whiteness melted into another scenery.

A ruined city, a slowly blackened land, a cloudy and depressing sky—and then, curious eyes of people staring at him.

It was another memory. This time, from the point of view of the shard itself.