Ball of Nothing

Ruth was hallucinating. He must be. Beelzebub didn't look too bothered but the vampire was already calculating if his reaction time could surpass the spider demon's own. Between a warrior and an assassin, it would be a close match. He might have sworn servitude to Zero but this was going too far.

"Here we are," Sekkin told them. Beelzebub surveyed the barren landscape without much interest. All he knew was that Lucifer will grant him pardon for all classes if he aces the test results after completing this mission. Ruth didn't share the same enthusiasm for obvious reasons. Miasma tasted vile. It didn't matter what kind of seasoning they used, the aftertaste would linger for days. If he knew the taste test yesterday was going to lead to this, Ruth wouldn't have done it. Blame it on his naivety and now the vampire has to pay the price for being too trusting.

"Alright, when do we start and how will Zero contact us?" Beelzebub went straight to the point. All he wanted to do now was eat everything he needed to and head back to the dormitory for his well-deserved rest.

Sekkin fumbled a little, trying to contact Zero through the party call.

"Is everyone in position?" the young doctor asked through the mental link. Ruth found comfort when Baal complained about the arrangement to the brunet.

"I promise, I'll be fine. You don't have to do this..."

Zero didn't take no for an answer. In fact, Baal's continuous denial made the apprentice more determined to carry on as planned.

"Before we start, can I have some taste numbing potion?" Ruth blurted out much to Sekkin's surprise. The vampire was silent throughout the journey so he didn't think that Ruth would have something to say.

It took a while before Zero could give Ruth a bottle of milky looking liquid. "That's something Hua Tuo made last night, we do not have extras so use it sparingly."

Ruth was rather startled to see a hand appear from a vortex in front of him with a bottle. Although he knew how to use magic, seeing Zero's void magic speciality was unnerving. Already, Zero's unofficial combat teacher was thinking of innovative ways Zero could incorporate that into his fights. Imagine opening a gate to teleport the enemy's lower body into some other dimension and closing the gate. Instant human sushi! It would be both a terrifying and overpowering method of fighting. If Zero wanted to, he could probably take on a country full of enemies using this insane technique. The only concern would be mana but they could always work the details out.

He accepted the potion and downed the first mouthful. The effect was almost immediate. An icy coolness spread throughout his mouth and his tongue felt heavy in it. Ruth knew it was working when he inhaled the thick miasma and swallowed it. Normally, vampires avoided breathing in miasma as it poisoned the blood. If they didn't have to recover mana, they wouldn't do so. Now that he had Strong Stomach, the miasma only provided energy and Ruth was able to fully absorb the remaining mana in the air.

Beelzebub took Ruth's enthusiasm as his cue to start. Inhaling miasma and eating dirt was almost the same thing. The only difference for him would be the lack of satisfaction to crunch on something.

Sekkin was impressed. The miasma around Amon's territory was always thick and menacing as there were many leaks from the void after Amon's vigorous training. Many old training grounds were considered unsafe due to the hazardous amounts of miasma, this was one of them. Although Sekkin was strong, he had to bring along an amulet charged with mana just in case he was unable to resist it. Right now, the spider demon felt as if he would be fine even if he lost that amulet. The dark fog became lighter with each long inhale. Through the party call, Sekkin asked if it was working.

"Hmm, it is working but not fast enough. We need to open the gate once in the next fifteen minutes. Is there a faster way to do this?"

"Like I said," Baal sighed from the Spring of Vitality. "I can handle it."

Zero muted the Demon Lord much to Sekkin's amusement.

"Do you think your webs can soak up miasma?" Zero asked after a while.

"I've never tried it before. What do you plan to do if they can?"

Zero's gleeful humming over the party call made everyone curious. "Wouldn't it be faster to eat webs soaked in miasma than inhaling air? Besides, it would be more efficient to have the webs soak up miasma from different locations and bring them to a central point."

The assassin took his hat off to Zero for the unorthodox idea. It wasn't a pleasant thing to do but it may work. "I'll try my best. Also, more of that taste numbing potion may be required."

"On it!" the young doctor sang and left them to do what they have to.

Ruth made a tortured face and Sekkin could only try to comfort him. "If it makes you feel any better, I can make webs that are tasteless in nature. Whatever flavour the miasma decides to turn it to would be beyond my control."

Beelzebub coughed after eating too much miasma. "Water."

Hearing the Lord of Gluttony's demand, Sekkin got to work immediately and served him water. Ruth watched how the Demon Lord inhaled cloud after cloud of awful tasting miasma without a single word of complaint. He felt ashamed as a warrior and toughened his resolution. Beelzebub was a man amongst men if he could eat something worse than vomit while maintaining a straight face.

***

"Zero, the halls are full now. How long more till they can open the gate?" King Yama asked. Presently, there were at least six hundred demons waiting in the hall while stuffing their faces with food. Gabriel thought that now would be a great time to do some marketing and offered free divine bread for anyone who wishes to work in the Heaven administration department. There were many who judged his shamelessness but nobody stopped his advertising.

"If Sekkin manages to pull it off successfully, we can open it within the next fifteen minutes. How is Buddha coping?"

Enma looked over to the end of the line. The Sage God could not be seen but he saw how his employees were guiding the demons who finished their desserts and signing the magic contract to the queue. They downsized the gate to approximately three by five metres wide to cater for all sorts of demons.

"He's recruiting cultivators in their next lives, they don't seem to know or mind the blessing that Buddha gives. The crowd seems entertained for now with his sermons about enlightenment and the way of dao."

Zero nodded and looked at the numbers on his status screen. The screen duplicated and Mii helped him to customise the statistics he required. Currently, the mana required to open the gate per minute would take 100,000 mana. That's about 1,000 sins absorbed and converted. If he added the mana gained from converting the chaos energy at the rate of 1:5, Zero would be able to open the gate for about five minutes but no more than that.

The apprentice sighed. How could he gather a lot of mana to help Baal open the gate without risking anything? Ruth and Beelzebub were too slow. Absorbing the sins of the demons who came for Redemption only provided so much. He couldn't possibly ask those redeemed demons to go around committing more sins so that he could open the gate for longer, right? It didn't make sense.

"Zero it worked!" Sekkin reported with glee. Although Ruth had a terrible expression on his face after slurping web threads like noodles, Zero's plan worked. The assassin borrowed the vampire's speed and travelled to all of Lord Amon's abandoned training grounds. They managed to stick a few threads into the cracks where miasma was being produced. Using that, Sekkin was able to weave a formation that allows Ruth and Beelzebub to eat the miasma soaked threads that fell off from the main miasma web. The spider demon's main task was to continuously maintain that fragile web by sticking on layers after layers of new thread while the old ones fell away after being soaked.

"Who knew that threads were considered dead cells?" Ruth mused in the party call while he busied his mouth.

Zero smiled. Learning new things was good. At least he now knew two things. The first was that his idea worked and the second was that Sekkin's threads could very well create a magic puppet seeing that it was considered a dead living thing. Zero didn't know how necromancy worked, that was something Soon knew better, but it was an idea worth experimenting in the future.

Using the basic Mathematics that was taught to him, Zero started calculating the rate of mana generated by the two hardworking miasma eaters. "Mii, is there a faster way of doing this? I can see that the mana converted from chaos energy is now three times faster than what it was before. Why can't we simply go to the void and harvest what we need from it?"

The strawcherry fairy materialised. "Zero, if they could enter the void, don't you think people wouldn't be so paranoid about the miasma?"

The brunet blinked. He'd forgotten that it wasn't normal for anyone to be in the void. "I can go to the void on their behalf I suppose..."

Mii sighed and raised a brow. "The void is a place that doesn't have anything. It would be useless for you to go there. Miasma is a byproduct of what's going on in the void, the void doesn't actually have any energy in it that you can use. Time doesn't exist there, life doesn't exist there... chaos energy is a by-product of that plane crashing against another plane that possesses life and mana. Buddha's domain is slightly different but that's a story for another time. In any case, patience is the key here."

Zero pouted. Mii was right. There was literally nothing he could do while he was stuck here.

"Instead of wasting time thinking about how to open the gate for a longer period of time, you should be thinking about how to send those demons through it in a shorter frame of time," Mii suggested.

Zero face brightened. "That's a brilliant idea! You're a genius, Mii! Thank you. I'll see what I can do..."

Mii didn't say anything and chose to dematerialise. In Zero's mindscape, Bob and the strawcherry fairy watched as their master brainstormed with himself about the best way to send the redeemed demons off.

"I don't think you should have done that, Hell would be turned upside down now," Bob frowned.

Mii shrugged. "It's not that bad. I mean, what can he possibly do? Other than getting them to be organised, there isn't much to think abou-"

The words died halfway as they watched their master summon Robo Mike. They exchanged words and Mii took her words back. She regretted everything.

"See what I mean? Things aren't as easy with our young master. However, you are right. Diverting his attention to something less dangerous is a good plan. Pity, now someone has to clean up after Zero's mess. I can't imagine it to be a pleasant surprise to see ice travelators to be something very comforting to walk on."

They continued to observe a little more and paled when Zero brought out the big ones.

"Uh... should we stop him?" the dragon asked worriedly. Robo Mike was now the unfortunate test subject for Zero's ideas and they winced when the golem crashed into the expensive looking window. Mammon was not going to be happy.

"Maybe. However, I'm curious to know how that ice slide and carpet will work."

Bob didn't argue and they watched in silence at another one of Zero's failures. Although the young doctor was creating a huge mess, they were like proud parents watching him grow day by day. Making mistakes is the mother for all successes. It might look like a terrible headstart but in due time, Mii had faith that Zero could exceed Solo's expectations.

He had to.