Ball of Nothing

The discovery of their first desert poppy made Zero and his group overjoyed. Indeed, the desert poppy was a dangerous flower as it almost turned Jermine into a seedbed. The party quickly gathered all the flowers in sight, thanked the village, taught them how to grow mushrooms and left quickly.

It has been two weeks since they left the cacti-folks and Zero would always make it rain in a five-mile radius whenever they stopped to set up camp. Truen didn't say anything about it. In fact, it was probably a good idea. After analysing many of the flowers they collected, Mii and Wii stated that every petal of those flowers could be used to make high-grade mana elixir or a very potent medicine. Zero wanted more of them because he had no intentions of ever returning to such a boring place which Truen fully supported. Hence, this became their new routine for two weeks.

"What's wrong?" Truen asked. Zero looked slightly out of it this morning at breakfast. The normal Zero would be very thrilled about planning a good breakfast menu, claiming that it was the most important meal of the day but this morning, he finally ran out of seawater to make rain. There was no more need to collect flowers and Zero was feeling restless.

"I've been thinking," Zero started. "It's been two weeks since we left that village to travel west. When was the last time we've been attacked by monsters?"

Now that Zero mentioned it, all three pairs of eyes looked at him. Zero might have been too preoccupied earlier to bring this up because he was overly excited about his flower haul but these people should have noticed it.

"Now that you mentioned it..." Jermine began. "Ever since last week, they stopped appearing."

Truen paled. He hasn't realised it at all, the archer blamed himself for being too relaxed. Then again, they hadn't seen any sinkholes around. Could it be a false alarm? No, it was better to still check and be sure before leaving the area.

"My apologies," Truen said. "I didn't realise it until you brought it up. We'll start searching for a possible sinkhole in the area."

Bob shared the same guilt that Truen did. He was far too busy dismantling beetle corpses to even realise that they weren't getting attacked. "I'll help, master."

Zero shook his head. "No need, there should be an easier way. This is a mana hotspot, there should be spirits nearby that I can summon for questioning. Truen, I need you to shoot them with the truth arrows while I trap them. Bob, you do the interrogation in your dragon form. We'll be able to get the exact location soon enough. No more delaying, it has been almost two months since we left Rockett Mountain if not more."

Jermine was excited when she heard that. Now that the desert poppy was found, the only remaining objective was to find gnomes and bring them back to Rocket Mountain.

After breakfast, Zero tried to find a good spot for the summoning. Everyone followed him until Zero settled in the valley of two huge sand dunes. There were a few palm trees but no signs of water. There must be a hidden oasis nearby and Zero nodded. This was it.

"Let's settle here for now. It might take a few attempts to get one who knows the answer so we might be here for hours to days."

Since the leader said so, Bob and Jermine started putting up tents and digging underground. Truen and Zero dismounted the sand walkers and left feeding them to the other two children while they prepared for the first summoning.

The first spirit that they summoned was a low-level sand sprite who was aggressive and stubborn to walk with. Zero had to subdue it with dominance and scare it into compliance with raw magic pressure that inadvertently made Jermine feel sick. The doctor felt apologetic but there really wasn't any other means.

Truen shot the sand sprite with Seraph's Command and started questioning this tamed sprite. For low-level summons, they didn't need Bob to interfere. After five minutes of interrogation, Truen managed to confirm that this was indeed a hidden oasis with water underground. There would be mid and high-tier spirits to summon and the boss of this oasis was a young djinn.

"We want to summon that young djinn," Zero told Truen who agreed.

"I don't think it's going to be that simple, there are too many spirits. It's better if we can locate the artefact the djinn is tied to."

Zero nodded. "Jermine! We need you to help us locate something..."

Jermine was more than happy to have something to do now that the tent was set up. Anything that wasn't dismantling beetle corpses was a good distraction for her.

"There's a young djinn in the area," Zero explained. "Help us search for the artefact? Once you find it, don't touch it. Let us know."

"Understood!" the mole girl grinned and drilled into the sand, disappearing quickly. Zero left Jermine to the task and summoned a new creature, this time, a mid-level water sprite.

"Seraph's Command!" Truen shot the creature with his spell and Bob stood before the trembling creature.

"Now speak," Bob transformed his pupils into his dragon ones. "Where is the gnome settlement?"

The water sprite shook its head and Bob growled. "Where is the djinn in charge of this area?"

This time, they received an answer and Zero nodded, releasing the summoning spell. Bob left to find Jermine and let her know the location of the artefact. Zero waited and meditated to recover the mana used. This was a good mana hotspot and it was time to recharge all the used mana over the last two weeks. Rain summoning depleted a huge portion of his reserved mana so Zero decided that he was in no hurry to summon the djinn. For now, they could afford to take it easy. The long search for the gnome settlement was finally coming to an end. They could return to Rocket Mountain soon.