Ball of Nothing

Zero knew what he promised Mammon. In return for the Demon Lord's help on multiple occasions, the teen was happy that he could finally repay that kindness. However, this was a little overboard even in Zero's dictionary.

"You want me to clean the entire store?" he asked for the fifth time.

Mammon's expression didn't change and he nodded. "Yes, the entire store. I don't want any items left uncategorised. Those items with less than six months worth of expiry, please dispose of them using your absorption ability. We cannot risk throwing them out into the wilderness with so much miasma polluting the air."

Zero felt sick on the inside. The store that Mammon referred to was a huge underground basement with several levels all stacked with aisles of boxes and containers with odd items for the auction house. If Zero had to sort everything out and check their expiry dates for all five levels, who knows how long he would take?!

Still, a promise was a promise and Zero didn't want to back out on his word.

"I understand, I'll do it."

Knowing that Zero would keep his word, Mammon left and reminded his assistants to bring lunch for the teen. Although Zero was hardworking, he had a terrible habit of forgetting about everything around him once he was engrossed. Mammon heard from Hua Tuo about how Zero would often starve and forget to eat when he was working on something. If not for the physician and the villagers, Zero might have collapsed from hunger when he was still apprenticing before Count Carrabas' attack.

Zero decided to start from top to bottom. It was easier that way.

The teen got to work quickly with his grappling ability and scrambled to the top, checking the contents of the first container. Mammon's assistant gave him a brief explanation that the less hazardous and dangerous items were kept on the upper floors while the more unstable and questionable items were kept on the lower floors.

The first box contained some dried up flowers. Zero didn't know the expiration date for things like that. There were no tags but the assistant had given Zero a thick guidebook about the different expiration dates and lifespan for all recorded items. The box was labelled with the date of storage so Zero started flipping through the thick manual.

Mii decided to help Zero and told the boy to scan the pages into the reading device so she could help him search for the information quicker. The duo spent a good half an hour suspended in the middle of the air scanning the book before starting any actual work. The auction house assistants who walked in could be found staring at the strange boy swinging from a vine extended from his waist that was attached to a top-shelf. They took a few seconds to relish in the unusual sight before remembering their original purpose of visit. Mammon couldn't really blame them. Zero was distracting for most people in the abyss with his human-like appearance, not to mention, he was cute.

"What's the first item?" Mii asked.

Zero scanned an image of the flower and the strawcherry fairy checked it against the scanned manual. "Blood Eating Scarlet flowers."

Mii flipped the index until she found it. "Expiry is within three hell months."

Zero took a look at the date and groaned. He hated Math. Thankfully, he had a reliable strawcherry fairy who excelled at that. However, the second problem surfaced. Mammon told him to get rid of anything with less than six months of shelf life but the flower didn't even have six months worth of shelf life to begin with. Should he get rid of it?

"How about calling him?" Bob suggested and Zero gladly listened to the advice.

Mammon had just started his work when Zero intruded on his privacy once more with a party call.

"What is it?"

Zero babbled away quickly explaining the problem. Mammon didn't get everything the boy said but he got the gist of it. Truth be told, he knew that there were some consumables with less than six months worth of shelf life. However, most of those were herbs that he wanted Zero to have. As the owner of the auction house, how could he not know such items existed?

"I don't care about them. Do as you deem fit. However, if they expire, I don't want to see them taking up space in my storeroom."

Mammon's ambiguous answer only made Zero more confused. Did that mean it was ok to take whatever that has less than six months of expiry? Zero knew what the flowers did. They were actually medicinal plants and were valuable.

"Do you think Mammon will mind if I pinch some of these herbs for Half Moon Village?" he asked Bob after the call ended.

The Eternal Dragon shrugged. "Might as well since he doesn't care. Still, it would be alright to leave some for the auction. These are rare items after all."

Zero agreed and the trio agreed on leaving any item that has at least half a month's worth of shelf life for the auctions.

The first level consisted mostly of plants and herbs that Zero thoroughly enjoyed studying. He stored away a good number of them for growing them on the farm. There were just so many things he could use them for and it would be a waste to throw them out. Hua Tuo might be interested in a few too because of their unique uses. Clone Shrooms were one of Zero's best finds.

As most of the herbs were magical plants apart from their medicinal property, Zero enjoyed restocking his mana reserves after absorbing the expired goods. Who knew that working for Mammon turned in Zero's favour? Despite being treated as a convenient biohazard waste disposal ground, Zero actually enjoyed the feeling of a buffet.

The second level was slightly more unbearable with animal products. Some of them stank so badly that Mii offered to work from the mindscape. Bob had completely gone offline, traumatised by the rotting scent in the air. Zero held his breath and worked silently on this level. While working, he discovered that some products had already gone bad even when they had not reached their expiry date. Once more, Zero contacted the Demon Lord.

Mammon picked up the party call again. It was now lunch break for many. Why was Zero still working?

"Hello?"

"Mammon! I'm now on the second level. There are some animal products that are rotten even though the expiry date hasn't arrived. Do you want me to dispose of them?"

Mammon deadpanned. Some of his items were only valuable when they were rotten. "Don't touch them. Only dispose of those that are expired or have less than six months worth of shelf life. Also, stop working. It's time for lunch. If I hear that you start working before the one hour break is up, I will get you to sort through my document archive."

That threat was very effective and Zero ended the call meekly.

After eating and an hour's worth of nap, Zero was back to rummaging through boxes. Mii was less confident now with the guide becoming less useful. Not everything they found could be easily identified and recorded. Hence, Zero decided to ask for help from the next staff he saw coming through.

It didn't take very long before he spotted a bunny demon.

"Excuse me!" Zero called out and stopped the man. "Could you tell me how I can know the expiry date of all these items? It's not in the guidebook..."

The bunny demon laughed when Zero explained how he was still using the guidebook to determine the date of expiry. "That's an old method that's ineffective. For all the regular items and old items before the last two hundred years, they can be found in the guidebook. However, ever since the expansion of the auction house's operations, we now colour code all new unrecorded items."

Zero looked at the colour code that the staff was referring too and felt slightly foolish for not noticing how the containers had different coloured lids on them or some sort of sticker on the larger boxes.

"You can tell the length of the expiry from the colours," he explained. "Anything that has no expiry or can last for more than a hundred years will be black. Anything that lasts from five to ten years is blue. Anything that is from two to three years will be green. Yellow is for anything that has more than six months of expiry but less than a year and white is for those that are below three months of shelf life. You won't see many white or yellow lids from the third level downwards."

With a better explanation, Zero thanked the helpful storeman and got to work immediately. Mii didn't have to flip the books any longer and they worked quickly to clear the first aisle without needing to open most boxes.

The boxes that were expired or close to expiring were emptied by Zero who chose to convert them into energy immediately because animal parts didn't give him any other benefits like medicinal herbs or mana. Still, Zero was happy to absorb anything he could. Some of the animal parts gave him very useful abilities like dark vision.

The third floor was full of items found from ruins of ancient civilisations. Zero also spied several objects that he recognised from Earth. These demons really liked collecting oddities so Zero left most of them alone. These objects didn't really need sorting out and the expiry for them were very long. Someone must have cleaned the third level before Zero because there weren't many things that needed disposing of.

As Zero progressed down the levels, he found himself inspecting the boxes with more interest and less actual work done. Despite the dustiness that Zero cleaned away, the lower levels held things like soul fragments, memory stones, rare artefacts and historical texts. Sure, Zero might have cleaned away one or two occasional book bugs while working on them but there wasn't much he could do to clean the lower levels.

"Finally, the last level," Zero groaned after completing his thorough scan of the boxes on the fifth level.

As they descended the stairs, Zero felt something prickling against his skin. The sixth level felt completely different from the first five levels. It felt more sinister and Zero wasn't too alarmed when there was no light in the level. He summoned several light wisps to brighten up the place but they were quickly snuffed out.

for the third time that day, Zero called Mammon.

"Yes?"

"Mammon... I'm at the sixth level now. There's something strange about this level... I can't summon light wisps and there are no torches. It also feels creepy here. How can I clean the place out?"

Mammon smirked. So Zero has finally reached the forbidden level.

"Just absorb everything in that area. I don't need anything that's left in it but be sure to clean it out thoroughly. I want to renovate that place into something else."

With that, the Demon Lord ended the call and left Zero to panic alone in the huge room.

"What did he say?" Mii asked.

Zero gulped and felt something brush past him behind. "Mammon said to clean it out entirely, he doesn't want a single thing left behind because he wants to renovate it."

Mii nodded. "Sounds easy enough. You'll just have to suck everything into the void and convert them into energy."

Zero nodded and stretched both arms outwards. The dark shadows couldn't escape Zero's powerful suction and vanished into his palms, turning into energy and sin points for Zero. The brunet was surprised when he saw how many sins he was accumulating here but was delighted when it showed no signs of stopping.

Feeling more confident, Zero increased the absorption rate and started to hear wails as the invisible things in the room started to disappear. It became easier to breathe and as the air cleared, Zero found the creepy feeling diminishing more and more.

The last level took Zero the longest to clean up. The young doctor estimated that it took him about two hours to finish cleaning the room up. To make things better for Mammon, Zero created some magic lanterns with trapped light wisps to light the room up.

Without the aisles of boxes, this room looked huge. Zero wondered what Mammon wanted to do with this big empty room but decided to end his day and head to the office to report it.

Mammon was pleased when Zero concluded his report. It was a job well done and better than he expected. For many years, the memories of the exiled demons were kept in that place, putting a huge strain on Mammon even after they died. By cleaning everything out, Mammon immediately felt a huge weight lifted from his shoulders. Who knew that Zero's ability to absorb sins would be so handy for things like that?

"Good job, I believe you need a good rest. The next time you owe me a favour, I would have to trouble you with sorting through my file archive. There are way too documents that need scanning into the system that Lucifer introduced. I'm short-handed as it is."

Zero paled and laughed nervously. Cleaning out the storeroom was tiring enough. The thought of battling a mountain of documents scared Zero very badly.

Mammon smirked when the teen made up a random excuse to run away. What a flaky intern! Thankfully, Zero chose to walk the path of a doctor and not a banker. He would make the teen suffer more if he wanted to work under him seriously. During the early days, he made Schaf pull out records of sales from all his businesses over the last hundred years to give him a trend analysis report. It took the poor manager weeks to do it and Mammon laughed at the mental image of Zero sobbing over not knowing how to read numbers by the end of it all.

back in his room, Zero sneezed. He never wanted to intern under Mammon ever again, favour or not.