There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL)

"It’s not our monthly assembly yet, but let me hear what has been happening in my absence," Zein wasted no time inside the conference room.

Thanks to the guildmaster, he was banned from receiving any news related to work, and whether his account was banned temporarily, or the guildmaster told Alice not to contact him, Zein’s commlink had been quiet.

Rather than making him calm, however, it made him anxious to know nothing about the state of his division after leaving it for more than a week. With six days in the dungeon, and three he used to rest, Zein had left the guild tower for almost ten days. It was good that he had a reliable assistant like Alice, but this unexpected incident made him realize he needed to establish some kind of emergency procedure.

This was no longer the end-zone, and he was no longer a lone guide that only needed to care for himself. He was a leader of a division inside a guild; he had a responsibility toward the people who paid him and the kids who worked under him. With his position, and the unique situation he was facing, there were bound to be more unexpected situations in the future, so he needed to make a contingency plan in advance.

Well, that could wait. For now, he needed to catch up with the situation at hand.

Not every guide from his division was present, but the available ones should be enough to give him an update. It didn’t show blatantly, but he could feel a bit of tension in the air when he stepped inside the seventh floor earlier. And there was something more within the joy and relief that the kids showed him that wasn’t just caused by him surviving the black gate.

"Hmm, nothing much..." Dheera, who seemed to finally regain her composure, answer him with a rather annoyed tone. "Just that some kids from the regular division talked shit about us when you’re not here, Captain."

At her prompt, the other guides made uncomfortable expressions, and Zein finally found out the source of the tension. He wasn’t really surprised though--he knew conflict would surface eventually. He was actually more surprised that it only happened now, although he supposed Abel must have done something about it.

But Zein being trapped and presumed dead inside a black gate changed things, it seemed.

"Yeah, nothing much," Brisk, who had been always quick to whine, responded swiftly in a sneering tone. "Just a bunch of people who were supposed to be worried about their colleagues but chose to be salty instead!"

Perhaps because he was also part of the people getting trapped inside the life-and-death situation of the black gate anomaly, his bitterness was rather stronger than the others. He had heard about it from other guides and had been in a sour mood ever since. This response, in turn, created a string of debates.