Ball of Nothing

Leading Zero and Truen to where the twin magicians were kept, Sylvia stiffened. It wasn't a pretty sight and Zero wouldn't be pleased to find that she had been mistreating them for the sake of her experiments.

Mistreating would be putting it lightly. The state that Zero found the twins in could be said to be at the borderline between life and death. They were in a much worse condition when compared with some of the other slaves and Zero was silent for a very long time, unmoving at the door. Truen was nervous and Sylvia was slightly frightened because Zero wasn't doing anything. The tension was so thick that it felt suffocating.

Then, slowly, Zero approached them. He really shouldn't be surprised to see them in such a bad condition but he had been hopeful. The image of the twins in his mind before they parted ways was a very huge contrast to how Zero found them now. Back then, they meekly asked for permission to leave the village with sad smiles as they reassured him that they would be fine even if they knew it wasn't the case.

Zero could see that his protection spell was left unactivated. These children called Sylvia their grandmother... would any grandmother or creator treat their children like this? Zero was regretting his decision to not look more into the matter before he left the village with Camie. If he knew that this would happen, he wouldn't have spent more than half a year away doing other things. The fact that his spell wasn't activated meant that they weren't attacked or harmed externally. However, these mangled lumps of flesh lying on the experimental lab bed told Zero that they've experienced something far worse than an attack.

Yxaan was still breathing and Zero could see her exposed organs quivering with every effort to get air into her. Her brother was worse, he no longer had working organs. Xvyal's body was beside Yxaan but the soul residing in his body was still trapped in a complex alchemic array, supported by Sylvia's magic. Xvyal's soul was forcefully bound to his deceased body to prevent it from rotting away.

Their bodies were cut open and there were many tubes, pumping all sorts of liquid into them to force them to remain unconscious for the inhumane experiment. Zero didn't need to look too closely in the magic circles written in blood to know what they were for. Yxaan laid in one circle and Xvyal laid in the other circle with that trapped soul in his dead body. Whatever wounds Xvyal sustained, Yxaan's body was used to repair it with hers. The regeneration was powered by Xvyal's soul and while it would have made them immortal, the problem lies with the foreign soul trapped in Xvyal's dead body. The rejection of the soul to Xvyal's body is causing the twins' regeneration and immortal bodies to be unable to keep up with the damage received.

Zero was about to remove the soul when he heard Sylvia scream from behind him. The Great Sylph didn't care if she was violating the magic contract. She felt the pain grip her soul when she flung an air blast towards Zero in an attempt to stop him. Truen reacted quicker and countered her attack, pinning her down quickly. The Great Sylph didn't stop struggling against Truen or the magic contract binding her.

"No! Stop! Don't harm my baby!" she cried and Zero ignored her.

The soul wavered at first as Zero neared but reacted violently when Zero tried to separate it from Xvyal's body with his magic. Upon closer inspection, Zero realised that this soul had been corrupted. Being on the wrong plane for too long, it missed the chance to return to the cycle. The false power holding it back in its alchemic array was supported by Sylvia's mana and life force. While it helped to anchor the soul's presence in the world and stops it from disintegrating, it couldn't stop the soul from absorbing other impurities.

Truen had to take Sureshot out and imprison Sylvia in the Pagoda Prison because the Great Sylph was too out of control for even him to subdue. Her cries could be heard even from the golden pagoda prison and Truen cringed at a particularly shrill cry when Zero undid the binding spell, removing her child's soul from Xvyal's body.

"Truen, help me out. Hold onto this soul."

The archer did as he was told and Zero turned his full focus on the twin magicians' bodies. Yxaan was going to slip away at any moment now. She was far too weak and even Xvyal was hanging on by a thread. Their souls were already fragmented and Zero looked at their bodies. While Zero knew how to repair their bodies, he didn't know much about restoring souls. According to Tanya, soul fragments can be fused together to restore damaged souls but they have to be of a similar kind.

Not daring to think too far ahead of himself, Zero started to mend the flesh wounds. He took samples of their mana and cells before he started enhancing rapid cell growth to restore and regrow missing parts in the same way he regrew Amaraline's eyes previously.

Sylvia who was hysterical moments ago started to calm down when she witnessed the complicated magic Zero was using. It wasn't just simple healing magic. His knowledge of anatomy far surpassed hers and the way he was able to make clones of the same cell structure to regrow missing parts of the body made her rethink her choices. If she remained on Zero's good side, would it be possible for him to help her create a vessel that her child's soul wouldn't reject?

Truen held onto the strange soul carefully and kept a constant eye on Sylvia who had gone quiet. She looked strangely focussed on Zero's actions while the doctor fixed Yxaan and Xvyal's body. Even after training with Freya for a good amount of time and witnessing many of Merlin's insane spells, Truen never knew that magic was capable of being used in such a manner. The more Zero repaired Yxaan's body, the more Xvyal's body restored itself.

Zero kept an eye on both souls while he repaired their vessels. It took him several hours to fully repair both bodies to how he remembered them to be. Then, he took a quick look at the covenant bond mark on their backs.

"Sylvia," Zero called out to the quiet Great Sylph. "I want to undo the covenant bond. They are my villagers. Can you undo them?"

Sylvia hesitated. "I can. However, I have a request. In return for removing the covenant bonds and giving my position up to Jynx and all the things that you want, can you create a vessel for my child without the soul rejecting it?"

Truen was half expecting Zero to give her a positive answer but Zero didn't do that. Instead, he looked at her coldly.

"After what you did, I don't think you're in any position to make demands. Either you undo them and make things easy for me or you can say goodbye to the soul in Truen's hands. I'm a magician taught by Merlin himself. If you don't want to find out exactly how creative I can get, I suggest you do as told."

Hearing that her precious child was in danger, Sylvia quickly agreed and begged them not to harm her child. The covenant bond was undone and Zero quickly removed the spell to strengthen the bond between body and soul. He had many questions about how homunculus souls were created but he could find that out later. Right now, both their souls were very weak and a little damaged. Zero decided to nourish them using qi even if he knew it wasn't a permanent solution. To fully repair their souls, Zero would have to collect compatible soul fragments to fuse them in the Natural Plane.

"This should do for now," Zero announced an hour later. Yxaan and Xvyal look like they were merely sleeping now. The worst was finally over.

"Tell Bob to send them back to Half Moon Village," he told Truen. "I will ask for advice on how to repair souls. They will not be waking up until their souls have been repaired but I cannot do it now. There are more urgent things to handle. Oh, tell Cleo to put them in the mixed pool with my clone when they arrive. As for Misana, I'll leave her to Zoe. She will be fine as long as she eats healthy and regains her strength."

He took the soul from Truen and asked for Sylvia to be released from the Pagoda Prison so that they could have a proper conversation. The archer didn't hesitate to quickly carry the twins out of the room to look for Bob.

Before he left, he shot Sylvia a glare. "Try anything funny and don't say that I didn't warn you. Divine Retribution will come for you if you cause harm to the chosen one."

Zero waited for his friend to leave before sitting on Sylvia's chair. He looked at the soul in the array and back to Sylvia.

"Now that the urgent matters are settled, let's talk."