There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL)-Chapter 457 - 450. Link of Communication

"Phwaa...I’m not the one fighting, but I felt exhausted," Dheera let out a long sigh of relief the moment she could sit down and take off her mask once the safe zone was established.

It had been battle after battle, and if they weren’t fighting, they were walking and climbing. Both the fighting and the walking they did that day were more than any dungeons they had experienced before. They had no idea whether it was true or because everything happened in the dark and under the heavy pressure of the miasma things felt so much longer. There was one thing they knew for sure, however;

All of the running and stamina training Zein made them do until they were whining and crying was for this moment. It made them kind of embarrassed from all the groaning and protesting they had done before.

"What are you talking about? Guides fighting by guiding the espera, aren’t they?" Carra said with a smile.

It was true, but Dheera still sighed. "All I did was do short guiding, though."

"But it helped a lot," the support magician insisted. "It makes a huge difference that I can constantly stay below orange no matter how many spells I cast. It’s very difficult you know, casting a spell or moving around when our mental disturbance is high."

Dheera blinked and scratched her neck bashfully. "Hehe...I’m glad I can be of help."

Carra laughed softly and patted the guide’s arm. "Aren’t we a team, after all?"

The girl giggled, and Ron looked at the guides amusedly, wondering what Zein had done up there that he could shape a bunch of green-zone guides into tough combatants who could still laugh inside the Deathzone.

"You are better than the Unit’s guides," Ron chuckled, which prompted Dheera and Leehan to widen their eyes in surprise.

"What do you mean, Sir Ron?" Leehan blinked. "Shouldn’t the guides in the Unit go to the Deathzone often?"

It was Ron who was surprised this time. "Who said that?" he raised his brow.

"Uhh..." Dheera tilted her head. "No one, but...looking at Captain..."

Ron laughed at that. "Zein is an exception. Sure, we will take some guides to missions and they have shifts in the outpost, but no one does it willingly," he explained. "Zein used to take all the dangerous missions by himself, even substituting other guides’ shifts."

"R-really?"

"You have no idea how devastated our guides were when Zein left last year," Ron chuckled. "They practically held onto his legs when he was walking out."

Dheera parted her lips and clasped her cheeks. "I feel scammed!"

"What do you mean you feel scammed? Unlike those guides, we’re under contract to be in the Deathzone, so we still have to do all those training regardless," Leehan smacked the girl’s head slightly with a bottle of water he took out for her.

Dheera giggled again for being dramatic, and Ron laughed even more. "See? I don’t think other guides would have the mood to joke around and laugh after a whole day of walking, fighting, and guiding like you guys."

"Hehe...we’re rather good, aren’t we?"

"Yes, you are."

Dheera hiccuped when she heard Zein’s voice behind her, and before she could look up, she felt a hand patting her head.

"You did good," Zein said. "Have some rest for now, since you still need to cleanse the esper later tonight."

"Yessir!" the two guides straightened their back like trained soldiers and saluted, although with a grin.

"Drink water regularly, and refill it once the water here is safe enough."

"Yessir!"

Zein patted Leehan once too for fairness before walking away toward the group of damage dealers who were in the middle of setting up the second beacon and testing it.

Dheera watched the sturdy back walk away before her lips stretched into a wide, sloppy smile. "Hehe...he praised me, hehe..." she clasped her cheeks again. "Hey, I feel better than when I graduated from the academy, haha!"

"That’s because you like Captain more than your academy instructor," Leehan laughed.

"That’s true!" Dheera clapped her hands. "Oh! We should do that now before we forget!"

"Ah, right."

Ron and the supports curiously watched as the guides activated their commlink and made a note in a tracking app with serious faces. "What are you doing?" Hari asked curiously.

"Oh, we’re tracking our guide to calculate how much we can still go on," Dheera said while still putting in her own data. "Captain told us to do it because we still can’t track it by instinct like him."

Leehan let out a sigh as he looked up blankly. "It makes me think how privileged we are," he said. "They taught us about this in school, but we never really used it because the school did the calculation for us doing training, and the guild did it for us once we started working. But here..." he looked around at the dark surroundings outside the boundary of the safe zone. "No one will do it for us here, and I guess...no one do it for the guides in the lower zones."

Ron gave an affirmative nod. "We don’t have the human resources or the system in place," he shrugged. "Everything’s done like a patchwork here."

"And...Captain never even learned it in school," Dheera glanced at the older guide over on the other side again.

"That’s right," Ron smiled. "Everything he taught you is the wisdom of eighteen years of career, so embrace it. No guides in the Unit had as much working experience as him."

Again, Dheera and Leehan let out a sigh. "He’s such a tall wall."

Ron laughed and shook his head. "You shouldn’t look at a tall wall too much, it’ll hurt your neck instead. People like Zein or your Commander are already special from the start, so it’ll only be harder for you to chase them."

"I don’t know if you’re realistic or pessimistic," Hari chuckled.

"Pessimistic is looking at them and feeling like we’ll never be good enough because we can never be them, and then stopped doing anything altogether," Ron shrugged. "Being realistic is knowing your limit and trying your best to overcome your limit just enough. Getting too caught up in catching up to special cases like them might just burn you out."

"In other words; just accept that you’re not special?" Hari grinned.

"Aren’t we?" Ron smirked. "For non-special people like us, it’s enough to just try our best to be able to stand with those special powers and work together with them," he turned toward the two guides. "Just know that you’re already exceptional by most standards."

"Hmm..." Dheera leaned back on her folding chair, eyes still fixed on that tall wall. Well...she was just a C-class, so of course she knew it was impossible to hold herself to the same standard as a Saint candidate with extra blessings. Still...

"It’s enough to make him proud of you as his disciple," Ron said again, as if reading the girl’s thought. "And in the future, you can pass the knowledge you gained from him to next-generation guides."

Dheera blinked at that word; disciple. Contractually, she was Zein’s subordinate, but...since she was being taught by him about everything, wouldn’t that mean Zein was her teacher?

She glanced at Leehan, and the moment they caught each other’s eyes, they laughed in tacit understanding and determined gaze.

Yep. The least they could do was not disappoint that tall wall that had provided them shade and wisdom.

That tall wall, meanwhile, was hunching over the tablet in Kei’s hand with the other espers. They had finished installing and configuring their beacon. Now, they would try to see how well it worked by sending a short report to the headquarters.

Funnily enough, they were way more nervous at this point than any time they faced the Deathzone’s creatures. They were even more nervous than the time they were about to embark earlier that morning.

Kei, who was usually the most calm and collected among them, had her finger trembling above the ’send’ button. They tested the system of communication between their commlink, and everything was smooth. But that only proved the beacon worked locally. Whether or not this beacon could bypass the Deathzone’s wall of darkness to reach the one in the marsh, and continue it to the one in the headquarters, would be tested with this.

"H-hurry up! I feel like I’m having a heart attack here!" Zhan hissed at the scout. If the beacon failed here, they would have to think of another way to establish a link of communication.

And that would mean another setback because there was no way they could reclaim the whole of Deathzone, which encompassed a land almost as wide as an entire coded area--around one-seventh of the Eastern Federation--without any means of communication.

It was like reliving the story of how hard it was for their ancestors to hold on to their respective fort before the Towers and Temples came down.

Kei took a deep breath and closed her eyes as she pressed the send button. All of them, including Bassena and Zein, were waiting with bated breath as they watched the loading icon go round and round.

They still held their breath even after a checkmark appeared on the data they had just sent. Everything was only proven after they received a reply.

A minute passed by, and Han Shin was almost running out of air, when they heard a soft ping sound.

[Received. Good job]

The cheer that erupted from the group felt as if they had just defeated a boss monster.