Ball of Nothing

The return to Half Moon Village gave Zero some mixed feelings. So many things have changed about this place since he first visited it. Many things happened and as the leader, he felt slightly guilty for neglecting many of his duties. Sure, there were many talented individuals to manage domestic matters on his behalf. However, that didn't mean that Zero felt as if he wasn't doing enough for them.

The village was definitely expanding very quickly. With the six new gnomes, he could already see how much they were contributing to the various projects. Cleo was impressed by the gardening technology Olive introduced. Pumps that helped with water and an automatic sprinkler system made Cleo's job a lot easier. The Melissa golems only had to weed and plant or harvest crops that Cleo grew. In fact, with Olive's foresight, the agricultural team's efforts were reduced by half. Crop rotation was a thing and after Olive explained the concept, the villagers were able to work more efficiently to cope with Hua Tuo and Zero's medical orders.

Welsey followed Lovina to Arabesque and Merlin was extremely impressed by the alchemic breakthrough from a gnome who didn't have any mana. Likewise, Wiser learnt a lot from Wesley and Pepper who taught him the link between magic and science. The bottleneck in Raj and Wiser's miasma converter project was finally resolved and they were making speedy progress. Zero estimated that they would be done with the prototype by the end of the year.

Seff was finally schooling under Pepper's tutelage in the abyss and Ruth had more time to manage his domain. Business was booming in the Garden of Roth with Lucifer and Michael signing an agreement for a truce in order to supply Half Moon Village with materials it needed for the massive building project. For starters, they sent an equal amount of representatives from Heaven and Hell to help Raj with the massive construction works. Ruth had to oversee logistic movements at Ten-Path Crossway and approve visas for travellers more stringently to prevent anyone from abusing the system.

Turmeric and Ginger were escorted to Mitchnew by Roovan and Zero hadn't heard from them. However, he had a feeling that Mitchnew might want them to be part of Jermine's escort company to Lycantopia. Monoman and Dwayne made contact so the logistic deals were in negotiation. At the same time, Desert Lily and Mitchnew met up for the first time to discuss in lengths about the slavery deals. Zero didn't know the details because Truen refused to tell him everything but he trusted his friend in those matters.

"I'll go to Rocket Mountain alone," he told Truen over dinner. Hua Tuo decided to finally return to his hospital after confirming that Zero was in a good condition.

Truen was slightly startled. "Alone?" he asked.

Zero blinked. "Not really alone. Bob will be coming with me. However, I think you still require more time to settle your business with Deadman Town, New Moon Village and Mitchnew. I'm just heading over to Rocket Mountain to turn in the desert Poppy to Axel and bring Thomas with me to repair Dorgon's Crafting Suit. It will take some time so I will also check on Princess Dorothy's progress with Fae King Vivian."

Naturally, Truen wasn't too happy about the arrangement. His job was to travel alongside Zero and protect him from harm. He barely fulfilled his duty at Derby Desert. Zero was still hurt by the nova canon even if Truen did his best. The Great Gods didn't hold it against him because he was going up against a God-killing weapon. Until now, Isis and Freya were still investigating the mastermind. Hades led the investigations but they still had no idea who that mysterious person was who taught Thomas how to build it. The lost knowledge should have died with the destruction of the previous Earth.

"I don't like it," Truen admitted. "You're strong but after the nova cannon incident, I'm very afraid of leaving you alone."

Zero didn't need to be reminded about that. He understood Truen's fear and concerns. Similarly, Zero was concerned about Truen. He might have lost all his mana reserves and had a hard time recovering his vessel but Truen was no different. While the wood elf spirit might be able to harvest mana from the surroundings to recuperate at a faster rate due to the less complex nature of his vessel, it still caused him a lot of pain to fully recover.

"If you're worried about what Sedna and the rest of the Great Gods might say, let me handle them."

Truen shook his head. "It's not just that. I'm genuinely terrified for you. You're still unable to keep your alternative appearance. How will you travel and keep appearances up or an extended period of time?"

Zero nodded. Indeed, he wasn't able to manipulate his vessel at ease even with Mii and his mindscape assistants online. In fact, opening access to the shared inventory was taking up quite a bit of effort on his part. Thankfully, the Mind's Eye system used the food offering as a way to keep the channel open for important functions such as portals and offline communications. Wii was still hibernating because Zero didn't have enough mana to sustain the parallel mind function yet and Mii was reverted back to system text administrator. Lily temporarily returned to Gaia and Zoe couldn't access anything from the system.

For the next few hours, Zero tried to convince the Great Gods to allow him to travel without Truen. He found himself repeating the story several times to his teachers, to the Great Gods, the Enma, to the Demon Lords and to Buddha before he received a long list of conditions that he had to agree to before they allowed him to travel.

Truen wasn't very assured about Zero's solo travelling adventures but after Zero showed him the list of things he had to agree to before he was allowed to travel without his best friend, the archer relaxed a little.

"Be sure to follow them," he told Zero. It was already late and Zero wanted to set off the next morning.

"I will," Zero yawned.

He quickly let Zoe know about the arrangements and the zashikiwarashi hurried to inform Thomas about his travels. Bob also received the message and told his master that he would meet him in the village square at dawn tomorrow after bidding Kerberos goodbye. As it turned out, Bob and Kerberos were still unable to decide who was stronger so they wanted to settle it tonight before Bob had to leave. Zero wasn't too bothered about his summon's rivalry with the hellhound.

"Don't be late," he told Bob and turned in early.

Truen didn't sleep immediately. Instead, he was busy writing letters to a few people he needed to meet and talk to. He didn't know how long Zero would remain at Rocket Mountain and Magnus Hilda but he needed to resolve the pending matters before Zero left Magnus Hilda. The more pressing issue would be settling New Moon Village and sending Jermine back to her family. In addition, Zero wanted the slavery matter to be improved. Truen had to ensure that it was cleaned up before his friend visited Smargdas. For that, he would require the close cooperation of Mitchnew and Deadman Town.

It wasn't easy and Truen had a tight timeline to work with but as Zero's bodyguard, guardian and best friend, he had to do his best. Ever since finding the Red Phoenix's Pearl, Zero's mind had been focussed on getting to Whiskeria. The Red Phoenix's Pearl turned out to be something that fell from space and while Zero didn't know how it was going to be used, he had a feeling that the hint was here on Earth. Shittomi hasn't gotten any new clues so Zero has to find a way to travel to Whiskeria from Earth. The lack of mana meant that he wasn't able to open infinite wormholes. There was no shortcut to finding Nel.

Truen felt the lull of sleep with many thoughts buzzing in his head and eventually succumbed to them. Zero waited until Truen's breaths were evened out to wake up and leave his sleeping friend. He still had one more thing to do before he left for Rocket Mountain tomorrow.

Sneaking out, Zero retrieved the whistle for the first time from his inventory. Climbing to a secluded spot on the highest point of this hill near Hua Tuo's hut, Zero blew the whistle hard for as long as he could in one breath and waited.

At first, nothing happened. However, after a minute, Zero heard the fluttering of a creature accompanied by the sound of hooves. He looked up to see a magical trail of dust particles from the sky as pegasus descended.

He grinned like a child who received an early Christmas present and couldn't wait to pat the beautiful horse. Pegasus neighed when he landed and Zero stoked its nose lovingly. After losing the sand walkers, Zero needed a new mount but Half Moon Village didn't have any. Hence, Zero thought about borrowing one that he conveniently had. Riding on Pegasus didn't require any mana and he could carry both Bob and Thomas along with him to save on travel time. He didn't want to walk all the way back to Rocket Mountain. Pegasus was the fastest steed known to Zero and the doctor wondered if it was easier to fly there instead of run because this horse had wings.

"I'll be in your care for the next few days," Zero told the beautiful horse who neighed happily. Zero tried to mount it for a trial run. He didn't learn how to ride horses properly and Pegasus didn't have a saddle which made him nervous. If he wanted to ride a horse in the sky, he had to first be sure that he had some skills to stay on its back.

Not even three meters into the air, Zero found himself slipping and with a yelp, he fell off Pegasus' back and onto the grass. Yupp, this is going to take him all night to master. He was glad Truen went to sleep early so that he didn't see Zero embarrassing himself.