Chapter 1. The Red in the Red-Zone

Zen had thought he was already desensitized to destruction.

From the day Umbra got him his fake license with a new name ZEN written on it, he had come into countless dungeons and massacres. He had guided espers in the middle of blood and miasma.

He thought nothing would faze him anymore.

But as he stared at the smoke and fire and the cloud of miasma behind the barricade, he was frozen. He was reminded of the first time Umbra brought him inside the dungeon. He was thirteen. He came inside with a clean uniform. He came out drenched in blood.

He remembered the dread and fear gripping him from the four-days excursion. The many nights he spent in nightmares, how much stomach content he threw up across the week, how much beating he received for failing to do any guiding during the next month.

What he felt right now was very close to that time.

As he stood there, he remembered the event four days ago, when one of Umbra's executives came to him, asking—hiring—him to go to the dungeon. Zen had refused then; he was just freed from the suffocating contract, and he wasn't about to waste it on another job right away.

Now, seeing the fleeting shadow of rampaging beasts inside the emergency barricade, Zen couldn't help but think...if he came to the dungeon, would it be different?

He was but a mere guide, but a guide could make the difference between esper's availability to keep fighting. It was conceited to think one guide like him could make a difference, but there was a thought, guilt, a wish that maybe...just maybe...the outcome would be different.

That the destruction in front of him could be avoided.

With that though, he walked dazedly towards the barricade. But before he could even touch the fence, his shoulder was grabbed strongly, and he was yanked back.

"Who are you? You can't go in there if you're not Esper. It's too dangerous now!"

Zen turned his head at the voice. It was a man wearing an Esper Agency uniform. There was no government bureau in the red-zone, so the man must come from the orange-zone.

Good, then it meant Espers were being dispatched. Of course they would be, otherwise, the miasmic beasts would cross over to the safer zone to look for another victim.

Zen wanted to breathe a relieved sigh, but he couldn't. The sounds coming out behind the barricade were telling him that the situation was fierce and chaotic.

"The resident..." there was only one thing he needed to know right now.

The man loosened up his grip on Zen's shoulder. It seemed that he inferred Zen's hastiness as someone whose family members were exposed to danger, so he could understand it somewhat.

The Esper looked grim, and spoke in a heavy tone. "There are some that were able to evacuate. Perhaps yours were—"

Before the man could finish his explanation, there was a loud dull sound against the barricade. They watched as a man—an Esper—crashed into the barrier before deftly rolling on the ground. About twenty meters ahead, a miasmic beast was swaying before falling to the ground with a sword sticking out of his chest.

"Sir Bellum!" the agency's worker ran toward the crashing Esper, helping the man up.

Steel Blood Askan Bellum was a 3-star Esper that was only there accidentally. He just finished solo raiding a dungeon on the orange-zone when an emergency alert of a dungeon break sounded. He was immediately requested to deal with the break that already breaching the residential area of the red-zone.

It was a stroke of bad luck. People didn't really care about a break happening in a red-zone. But since the beasts breached the residential area bordering the orange-zone, there was a fear of border crossing.

Managing a dungeon break was the responsibility of the guild involved. But the guild seemed to be wiping their hands off, so the government had to step in. Unfortunately, the Espers working around this remote, desolate area was the one who wasn't good enough to work in a better place, so Askan had to bear the brunt of stepping in. He also couldn't hope for a good reinforcement, since guild Espers didn't like to work without good payment.

Askan sighed, dusting the dirt from his clothes. 'I don't mind working pro-bono, but...' he lamented inwardly. He came here straight from the dungeon, and he felt the heaviness inside his body. It wasn't the problem with stamina, but the accumulation of miasma from the previous dungeon.

He looked at the chaotic residential area—or what it was supposed to be. It was now a trampled ruin, more or less. He heard the red-zone mercenary groups were moving to help, but the real problem wasn't with the number of Espers.

'We don't have enough guide...'

Just then, as he was about to walk away, his hand was grabbed by someone.

"Hey, what are you doing?! I told you not to come he—" the agency worker was shouting, but Askan held his palm up to stop the man. He looked at the one grabbing his hand instead.

It was a man—a young man it seemed—with pitch black hair and deep blue eyes that reminded Askan of the ocean. That was the extent of the things he could see, because the man wore a filtering mask and an outfit that covered the rest of his skin. Just one glance and Askan knew the man lived in the deepest part of the red-zone, hence the appearance.

What stopped him from snatching his hand off was because immediately, he felt the heaviness in his body being lifted. He looked at the blue eyes that getting lighter, from the deep ocean into a serene lake. "Are you...a guide?"

There was no answer, but he didn't need confirmation either. The feeling of miasma getting flushed out of his system was palpable.

Askan was astonished. He had been an active Espers for ten years, and had received various guiding. But it was the first time he felt such a calm and refreshing guiding. It was as if there was a spring flowing inside his system, cleaning him up thoroughly.

'There's such a good Guide in a red-zone?' he was so flabbergasted that he ended up just staring dumbly at the Guide

And not just that, the process was fast. As a veteran, Askan knew how much corrosion accumulated inside his system. By his estimation, to get him into a yellow level safety would take a B-class guide for about fifteen minutes. But this guide did it in a mere five minutes, and he still went on.

"That's enough," Askan grabbed the guide's arm to stop the guiding. "I can make do with this. If you can still go, you should use it for the other espers in the emergency base."

But the guide still gripped his hand tightly, even though the guiding had stopped. A low voice, muffled by the mask, flowed into him. "My brothers..."

Ah. Askan caught the gaze of the eyes that had turned deep blue again. He knew that gaze, he saw it often during dungeon break.

Desperation. Fear.

What should he say? He already saw the situation inside. There was only one word to describe it: destruction. With a decade of experience in dealing with such situations, however, there was only one thing he could say.

"I'll try my best."

It was empty words, he knew. And the Guide also knew, he could see it from the look on that deep blue eyes. In the first place, he didn't even know this guide's brothers, so how could he save them?

But it was also possible that the brothers had evacuated before the beasts arrived. With one last firm look, the Guide released his hold on Askan's hand, and the Esper ran back into the ruined town.

"Hey, sorry about earlier, I didn't know you're a guide," the agency worker spoke sheepishly, carefully staring at Zen that still had his gaze on the town. "Do you want to go to the emergency base? I'll show you the way."

Zen clenched his hand and threw one last look into the town. The nearest building was engulfed in fire, and the emergency alarm still blazing from the community sirens. The lamp sent out blinking light, dyeing the walls and the road in reddish hue.

The sky, the ground, the building, the road.

Today, everything inside the red-zone was painted red.

* * *

The emergency base was set on the hill right at the border between the red and orange-zone. It was a good location overlooking the residential area, so the agency and the espers could plan their advance and regulate the manpower accordingly.

It was also a place for the evacuated residents to take shelter while waiting for their fate. Would they stay there, would they move? Would the orange-zone allow them to take refuge? Or should they scatter to different parts of the red-zone in the other area?

Zen looked over the confused and panicked faces of these people, but he couldn't find the faces that he wanted to see. Not only his brothers, but he also couldn't even find anyone from their building. Whether it was the nagging uncle from the first floor or the unfriendly lady across the hall.

He had hoped. He had prayed. But he realized that the one who managed to evacuate was the ones who lived on the southern side, the furthest from the breach, nowhere near where his brothers lived.

He turned his head to look at the flat field on the right side. Agency workers were walking about and carrying bodies. Corpses. Laid them down on the dry and cracked ground. There weren't many of those bodies...yet.

He knew the battle still ensued, and people were still trapped inside the town. Living people. Dead people.

Zen took a deep breath and walked toward the tent where the espers and the central commando were located.

For now, it was enough that his brothers weren't among the corpses.

He couldn't march into the barricaded town since he wasn't an esper. But at the very least, he could make sure that the espers could keep functioning until all the beasts were subjugated. It was the only way he could still hope for his brothers' survival.

"I was told you need a Guide," Zen wasted no time or explanation.

As it was, the subjugation force was in no condition to care about reasons. They just needed manpower. They didn't even ask for his license, just pointed Zen towards the place where espers with corrosion gathered.

There were only three guides there; two wearing agency uniforms, and one Zen knew was from a mercenary group. And by the looks of it, they were only C-class or below Guides. Zen had no idea how many espers they handled so far, but the three were already quite pale and drenched in sweat.

Guides worked in a simple way; they absorbed the miasma inside Esper's body into their own, to be broken down and purified. But that absorption power was not infinite. Guides were vessels, they could only absorb miasma as much as their capacity allowed, after which they had to take a rest as the miasma was being purified and their vessel had room to absorb more. This capacity was what was being used to determine their classes.

Medium and low-class guides—the C-class and below, only had so much capacity to help small strike squad. And that was if the strike squad was being deployed to the dungeon. In that case, the guides only need to do guiding for maybe one or two espers per battle.

But in this instance, when the espers' corrosion keep piling up and the turnover rate was high, the guides would succumb to overload sooner than later. There was, of course, medicine or artifact that could be used to fasten the purification process. But that kinds of tools wouldn't appear in this part of the world, since they belonged to the upper class.

Wordlessly, Zen tapped on the mercenary guide's shoulder who was already panting heavily. The woman, who wore a mask like Zen, widened her eyes at the sight of him. He signaled for her to move away, and she stood up obediently.

She knew Zen and his reputation, and she had no qualm about being given a chance for rest. But she did frown for a bit, perhaps wondering why Zen was there instead of running away with the rest of Umbra. Just like Alma, most people didn't know about the end of his contract.

Zen didn't really care either way. He just grabbed the hand of the esper in front of him. The deep blue eyes lightened up, and the esper blinked in a daze, as he felt like he was being washed gently by clear water. It felt nice and comforting that he forgot about the battle for a while, and just closed his eyes in pure bliss.

But just after three seconds of closing his eyes and swimming inside the serene lake, the sensation stopped and his hand was released. The esper opened his eyes in bewilderment, but was only met by a pair of deep blue eyes.

An agency worker, which was tasked with measuring the esper's corrosion level, spoke in a stuttering voice. "Uh...g-green..." the worker's voice trailed in a daze.

"Eh?" the esper blinked again. "So fast?"

Ignoring the bewilderment of both the esper and the worker, Zen just spoke with his muffled, low voice. "Next."

And just like that, at a speed incomparable to the other guides, Zen absorbed corrosion after corrosion, miraculously never seeming to get tired or full. Even as the three guides took their rest and all espers had to come to Zen, he never faltered.

He worked faster than the three guides combined that at some point, the guiding tent was empty. The guides and the agency worker just stared at him dumbfoundedly.

"Excuse me, but what is your class?" one of the agency guides asked.

At that, Zen just shrugged. He had a fake license stating that he was a C-class, but in actuality, Zen had never officially measured. He hadn't really thought about it before, but today he realized that he was probably more than a C-class.

His seemingly endless absorption ability, however, had nothing to do with his capacity.

It had something to do with his unique trait.

The agency guide seemed like he was about to ask him another question, but an angry shout beat him to it.

"Why is there an Umbra's dog here?!"