There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL) novel Chapter 121

Chapter 121: Chapter 117. Celestial Voice

Just like the rest of the environment, the path Zein walked on was also dark. But along the path, there were glints of greenish light that made it seem like a metallic surface.

While Zein felt like he was climbing up, the path also felt winding down, curving left and right, and overall making him confused. He got that the platforms were sending the espers to pocket dimensions for their customized trials. But what about this path? Where was he headed to, exactly?

Zein thought he was going to the peak, where the fragment was. But this path...it didn’t feel like a stairway to the top.

In fact, he felt like he was walking in a circle--well, not exactly a circle, but like a figure 8, with an upward and downward road. If he had to liken it to something...

Yes--it felt like walking on top of a coiling giant snake.

Zein looked down then, at the pattern of lights beneath his feet. Hmm...yes, even those looked like scales.

After walking on an empty road for a long time, Zein didn’t look for a door anymore. He just walked forward while staring at the pattern on the path, until suddenly he felt the air change, and the next thing he knew, he was already in a room.

Blinking at the sudden brightness, Zein lifted his head to look at his surrounding. It was a circular room with a high ceiling, supported by pillars upon pillars, sleek black in color. The tall glass window showed him not of the safe zone’s scenery, but of the night sky and glittering stars--although Zein was pretty sure it was still daylight when he came inside.

But the black room wasn’t dark like the pathway. Across from where Zein stood, hovering above a rising pedestal, was a pulsing sphere with an undulating bright glow. The sphere let out a pillar of light shooting out through the ceiling, to a contraption at the highest peak of the tower.

Zein stared at the sphere, feeling his heart pulsing in tandem with the wave it created, as if they were resonating. Alone in the room, Zein couldn’t help but walk forward to the inviting sphere.

While walking, Zein was thinking that he might not suppose to do this, that it might be considered rude to just approach the core of the tower without permission. But the pulsing wave was calling him, and before he could decide to step back, his hand already reaching out and touching the bright light.

And just like that, once again, he was getting sucked inside an infinite world.

It was the same darkness he felt along the path. It was quiet and isolated, a little bit cold too--for that, it was different from the feeling he got from Bassena’s core. Since there was no path, he just stood there wordlessly.

He waited, but after what felt like a few minutes already, there was nothing but the emptiness that he grew annoyed. So he plopped down on the ground--if it could be called that--and just say crossed legs, crossing his arms too while at it, and continued waiting.

Just then, a laughing sound resounded within the darkness. There was no figure to be seen, but Zein felt like he was being observed from somewhere.

"You’re not Setnath," he said, flinching for a bit from hearing his own voice. He could never speak out loud in this setting before. Maybe because unlike before, he could feel his own body and move as he like.

--I’m not

The voice was crisp and clear, although sounding rather heavy too. There was a certain rattling--no, slithering sound of rubbing scales as it surrounded Zein.

--The fragment is used to manifest part of my consciousness, so the original ego is no more

"So there’s no vestige left in there?" Zein raised his brow. The two shard fragments always gave him part of Setnath’s memories, even addressing him.

But he also remembered the space where Setnath’s ego still remained was a white world, not this darkness.

--Some memories remain, I made it so

The voice told him. There was a slight pause before it continued.

--Setnath was a friend of mine

Zein narrowed his eyes, and asked in a rather sharp tone. "Is that why you invite me here?"

--That

The voice chuckled, before adding.

--And because you’re someone special for my favorite child

"Hmm,"

His favorite child must have referred to Bassena. Zein fiddled with his hand while mulling about it. There was an uncomfortable feeling in his gut about being called for his connection to Setnath and Bassena.

Not because it was him.

The mongering fear in the back of his head, about losing his sense of self along the way as a vessel, gnawed at him.

--And you, the voice said, in a deeper but softer tone.

--You’re also a special one

"...because I’m a fragment of Setnath," Zein frowned, acting unusually sulky. Perhaps because the one he talked to was a being with no constraint of time, a being that much older than him, perhaps much older than this world.

Because there was no one else here, he could act as childish as he liked.

--Do you not like it?

"No," Zein replied flatly with pursed lips.

Immediately, a laughing sound louder than before reverberated inside the space, until Zein felt like the space was vibrating. He waited in silence for the laughter to recede, thinking that unlike the administrators below, the patron deity was pretty expressive and...could he say easygoing?

Zein had been talking casually, but the voice did not berate him for being impudent. Even now, he had to listen to the deity’s cackling voice in the background.

When the laughing voice was finally gone, Zein asked then. "So you just want to see me? Or do you have any other business?"

--No, after a brief pause, the reply came back to Zein in a question.

--Isn’t it you who want to come here?

Zein froze at that response. Well...he did want to come here--not just to the tower, but to the room where the fragment was. He had resigned to the hard fact that he wouldn’t be able to, since he wasn’t an esper. But then...

--I called you here because you want to see the fragment

Oh...Zein pressed his lips. So it really was for his sake? Could the Celestial Being probe one’s mind?

--It’s resonating with you, is it not?

Zein clenched his fist. Yes, it was, so much that he walked straight toward it like a man in a trance. That even while his mind rang a warning alarm, his body couldn’t manage to comply.

It made him scared, like he was trapped inside his own body, reminded of his recurring nightmare. What if it was his future; being trapped inside his mind while his body was used by someone else? By another entity.

Just a mere vessel.

--Child, you are filled with heavy thoughts

Zein closed his eyes, mind replaying his conversation with Bassena last night. When the esper asked about what his core felt like to Zein, it got him thinking about what his own core was like.

Was it empty, just like the blank world that greeted him every time he came inside the shard’s consciousness?

--I know what it is you’re afraid of

--Let me ask you something

--Do you want to be his vessel?

--Then don’t, the voice replied easily, to Zein’s astonishment.

--If you can make that decision yourself, that means you have your own ego

--The fact that you are referring to Setnath as someone else...isn’t that already telling you that you are your own person?

--If that brat comes and demands your body, just kick him out and give him the finger!

--Child, thinking deeply is good, I like that kind of human, the voice came back to sound gentle and benevolent, as if the cackling form before was a lie.

--But thinking too much could lead one astray

--Is it about my favorite child?

--Ask, Child