There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL)

"What kind of place is this?" Bassena looked around the area that was filled with tall walls. It had decayed slightly and crawled by black ivies, but the basic structure still remained.

"Looks like a castle from the Old Age," Kei pulled up some pictures from the commlink. "Anyway, I can’t sense anything around here."

"But the fact that the structure still standing meant a certain power was preserving this place," Bassena hummed before turning around. "What do you think Ze--where is he?"

Gus pointed at a pillar and a black-haired guide perched on top of it. Zein had jumped there when the others were busy looking around the ruin. As if realizing people were looking at him, the guide spoke. "It used to be here; the shard," he said before standing up, almost making Bassena’s heart drop in the process. "But it moved."

"Y-young Master?" it wasn’t just Bassena who got a heart attack.

"H-honey, can you get down now?" Bassena swallowed nervously.

Zein glanced down and smirked. "No," he said teasingly, before jumping to a wall near the pillar and keeping on moving as if following something on the ground. "It’s faint, but I can sense the leftover trace," he said as he ran above the wall. "Better follow it quickly."

Of course, the squad members followed him immediately, especially Bassena and Senan. They didn’t even look at the field and just kept their eyes on the guide. It was good that both of them were espers with high combat instincts, or they would have kept stumbling through the bricks and thwarting roots.

The others watched them amusedly, especially the other guides. In their eyes, Zein was the peak of existence; a guide who could do what an esper did to some extent. It used to be their routine to see Zein doing obstacles in the arena and dodging all kinds of projectiles. Jumping and running were hardly dangerous for him.

And yet, those two looked at Zein as if the man was a fragile glass.

"That’s what love does, huh?" Julian chuckled as he grabbed Dheera and Leehan so they could move through the castle too. "They’ll feel protective no matter what."