Ball of Nothing

With the combined efforts of the servants in the castle, the array was drawn within fifteen minutes. Zero felt bad that it still took fifteen minutes. The food was getting cold and he was disrespecting the efforts of the cooks for working so hard to make a delicious meal. Once it was done, Zero thanked everyone and had them leave the room.

One Zero was alone, he set up a magic barrier as a precaution so that nobody would be able to enter or peek. When he was ready, he activated the array and opened the link to Freya who was caught off guard. The prayers were overwhelming and it took a good five minutes before the glowing light stopped. Once Zero was sure that Freya had received them, he started to store the food in his inventory and was careful not to include the cutlery. What were the kitchen staff going to do without plates to place the dishes on?

Still, Zero had about twenty minutes before his supposed ritual was done. He wondered if he should go with his original plan of introducing only ten cure potions or going with hundred after seeing the sincerity that the giants showed. The offering that he received was certainly enough to last Zero for a few good months, it was probably better than any monetary rewards for his efforts.

After much deliberation, Zero decided to give the giants thirty cure potions for the first round of offering after seeing that they were not expecting much from it. Still, Zero wanted to make his message clear. The giants shouldn't offer more than what they could afford. There was no use in curing the plague and facing a famine right after. It made no sense. Hence, Zero started planning for his speech to 'convey the goddess' words' after receiving their prayers.

Back in Valhalla, Freya was suffering a slight high after receiving a huge surge in prayers. She tried contacting Zero but the doctor wasn't picking up his communicator. Perhaps he was busy. The Goddess of Beauty and War started to look into what Zero was doing and visited the library to find out more about Magnus Hilda on Earth. With this amount of devotion to faith, Freya might be able to restore Valhalla to its former glory in a few centuries. The boy really did find her a gold mine.

Back in the dining hall, Zero was discussing a serious matter with Zoe and Wii.

"I want to create a kitchen dimension in the mindscape to store all the food I will be receiving as an offering. Also, because the food comes from giants, the size portion is a little extra. Can I borrow a few helping hands to manage my instance? I just need one assistant here to help me press a few function buttons when I need them. Also, please keep this from Truen! He wasn't very happy when I told him I want to use the system to create a separate dimension for a kitchen. I still think this is very useful. The kitchen can not only store food but also process them. I can portion them out differently when needed or disassemble them into their raw ingredients as required. If there ever is a famine, I can probably use this to help."

Wii didn't look too certain and Zoe offered to be the assistant so that Zero could save his PMs for better uses in future. Zero sighed. He already had over four hundred PMs. Training parallel minds by controlling thirty golems proved to be difficult and tricky at first but it was showing good results. Zero was finally able to break through the bottleneck of creating more Parallel Minds after the high-level arithmetic training stopped working. The doctor even found out that at higher levels, Parallel Minds can only be created by pushing all his existing PMs to their limits. It works very much like cell division. If there isn't enough, they will create more. It could be said that it was more beneficial for Zero to abuse his PMs as much as possible in order to force them to grow.

"Don't worry too much about it," he told the zashikiwarashi. Zoe was really hardworking and Zero wondered why the ghost was still single. She easily made for a good wife and mother. There was nothing to dislike about her.

Wii listened to Zero's logic about expanding his PMs by overclocking their capacity and frowned. She couldn't deny that Zero's method was working but the eggplant fairy was still worried. "What if Solo attacks or if you suddenly need the PMs on short notice?"

Zero smiled. "That's when you step in as the system administrator. You get to really everything and divert it to where it is most needed. Of course, that's at level red emergency protocol. Your primary job is simply to monitor the growth of PMs and assist me with ad-hoc projects using PMs. Dedicating PMs will be your task for now. I know that maintaining a dimension requires a lot of PMs but we have just enough to support one more dimension, don't we?"

Wii sighed. It was true that she was Zero's resource manager. The dimension can be created by the system but it still has to be managed by Zero and his PMs behind the scenes. "I understand. We will make that kitchen. Is there anything else?"

Zero thought about it for a while. "For now, I'm happy with how things are. I will leave the sorting out of my inventory to you, it is almost time to exit from my ritual. I'll catch you later."

Wii smiled and waved goodbye to her master before getting back to work. Zoe couldn't help but be curious as to why Zero needed a kitchen dimension but she shook her head. It was no use thinking about it, she will soon find out. Zero did mention that he wanted Zoe to be the recipe keeper and update the recipe library so the ghost decided to organise her schedule and set aside about an hour each day to do that. As a household ghost, she had been cooking for a long time and experimenting with thousands of dishes. Recently, her repertoire had expanded thanks to the addition of new villagers and frequent visitors from the abyss and from Heaven.

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When Zero finally emerged from the dining room, he told someone to collect the cure potions. The potions looked small in the hands of giants. For the bigger giants like Lawrence, it was only the size of his pinky even if the vial itself was half of Zero's height. Instead of looking sceptical, Lawrence cried tears of gratefulness and fell to his knees to worship the invisible goddess that Zero spoke about.

Zero didn't know how to react when everyone else did the same. There were only thirty potions but it gave them hope that they've never known before. In order to break the awkward atmosphere and tears, Zero told them to try it out on someone else instead just to make sure that his goddess wasn't playing a trick. Lawrence didn't think that the merciful goddess would do such a thing but after Zero insisted, they took it to an elderly maidservant who had fallen into a coma about six months ago.

Zero was nervous when they fed the cure potion to the elderly maidservant. At first, the maid showed no signs of waking up and Zero worried. Did he make the dosage wrongly? The doctor only tested it on animals. Could he be wrong? Did the cure potion need adjustment? Gants didn't have magic resistance and were big in size. Was this an overdose or underdose? Zero was suddenly very afraid. He should have done better testing than to just make claims so easily.

He did find out about medicine dosages from the medicine lady in town and followed according to it but the plague is something different. Without another word, Zero jumped off Lawrence's palm and hopped onto the bedside. He took the old giantess' pulse and noticed that it was normal. The paralysis antidote should be working but the old lady was still not moving. What was wrong? He could feel her muscles twitching underneath as if she was trying to move but there was something stopping it from happening.

"Something's not right," Zero said and shooed everyone out. Lawrence didn't even have a chance to protest before he was kicked out. When he was alone, Zero studied the vital signs of the old lady. The cure potion was working against the paralysis spores but the spore poisoning wasn't removed from her body. Zero bit his fingernail in nervousness. What could be wrong? He thought back about the results his Talia golems reported.

When the poisoned animals fall into a paralysis state, they stop moving. After taking the cure potion, it will take about a minute for the potion to take effect. There were three stages of recovery. The first is a sign of movement from the victim. The movement can be in the form of twitching or violent convulsion as a rejection of the paralysis spores. The second was vomiting or intense sweating for the body to get rid of the spores and the third was regaining consciousness.

Three minutes had passed and the old lady wasn't showing signs of twitching. Zero monitored her vital signs. The blood was definitely flowing faster now and her heart rate was increasing steadily but still, the old maid didn't move. Could it be that the time it takes for the victim to move differs from their period of paralysis? Zero could tell that the effect of the potion was taking place. Already, the maid was beginning to sweat profusely. Yet, there were no signs of movement apart from the rolling of her eyeballs beneath her eyelids.

Then, it happened. The old maid started to twitch and spasm violently on the bed. One of her arms lashed out towards Zero and the doctor put up a protective mana barrier instinctively and braced for impact.

Outside, Lawrence and the medical team rushed in when they heard the healer's scream. The sight they saw terrified them. The old maid suddenly started dry heaving and twitched uncontrollably as if she was possessed.

"Hold her down! The doctor commanded but Zero stopped him.

"No! Help her sit up but restrain her. Also, prepare lots of fluid, she needs to drink and throw up everything to purge the spores in her body to recover."

Without questions, the doctor listened to Zero's advice and prepared everything accordingly. The scene was shocking and nobody knew how to deal with the old maid falling in and out of consciousness. Each time she regained consciousness, she would spasm and throw up. Zero worked hard and cast a gentle healing spell whenever the lady fell unconscious. He explained this as a method of purging.

"To be honest, it would be better to do this submerged in a bath. The patient can recover faster if she soaked in ginger and cinnamon bath. The water has to be hot but not scalding. The easiest way for her to recover is to sweat it all out and replenish the lost fluids after. The signs of purging show that she is recovering."

The royal doctor immediately ordered for the bath Zero requested to be made while they tended to the old lady. Lawrence looked worried. Was this why Zero insisted on giving the first cure to a weak and elderly person who had been in a coma for a long time? The goddess' cure might work but it wasn't an easy process to recover from. Thinking about the thirty cures they received from that offering, the head butler wondered if they would be able to manage this all by themselves with the healer around to guide them.

Then, an understanding reached him. Zero was teaching them how to cope with the situation through practical examples using a weak elderly and the hardest possible patient as hands-on training for their inexperienced medical team. Suddenly, the butler had a new-found respect for the healer with mysterious backgrounds. She truly was godsent!

Zero wasn't paying much attention to anyone else apart from the patient. At the back of his mind, the doctor was wondering what went wrong. The cure potions worked as it should and there wasn't anything wrong with the dosage. Could he really have underestimated the effects of the poison on a person over a long period of time? Once this maid recovered, he would have to put her under observation for a week to find out more before they could treat the king.