Chapter 44 - 43. Where the Journey End
When Zein came out of the shower, the tent was already vacant. There was a trace of someone tidying it up, an old sheet heaped in the corner, and a new one already being placed—a little crooked, but still decent. New shirt laid down atop the bed, along with his neatly folded jacket.
He could see two bottles of water on top of the bedside cabinet, alongside some energy bars that espers usually used for provisions inside the dungeons.
Zein stared at everything in silence, standing still for a while before walking listlessly into the bed, chucking his old, dirty shirt and donning the new one. He slumped into the bed after, drained.
He shouldn’t have moved around after emptying his mental energy like that, but he really needed to be alone and drowned in the sound of water, digging himself back out of the deep sea of darkness.
How ironic. He was brimming with so much magic energy he could probably take down a high-class mob beast on his own. But no matter how much mana he had, it could do nothing to his empty mental energy reserve.
This was why burnout was the biggest enemy of guides.
With the last drop of willpower that he had, Zein grabbed the water bottle and the energy bars. In his state, these two were better than a full-course meal, since he doubt he could chew or digest things properly.
Seemed like Bassena had a decent understanding of a guide’s burnout at least, and made a proper follow-up. Well, seeing how big his capacity was, the esper probably drained a lot of guides throughout his career.
Bassena...
Zein stared at his commlink; a string of messages from the esper was already there, waiting for him to open it.
[I’m sorry]