Ball of Nothing

Truen and Bob returned to find Zero holed up in the guest room. The doctor had dark circles under his eyes and it took Bob to physically remove his master from the room and Truen's spell to put Zero to sleep. Sylvia wasn't doing any better and the dragon threatened the Great Sylph to rest up or the purification process will not go right if she fails to maintain a steady flow of mana which was an obvious lie.

Once their job was done here, Truen visited Jynx to talk about business while Bob held onto Zero's i-communicator to coordinate the different projects on behalf of his resting master. Gaia sent news that they were able to successfully cross-pollinate the two world trees. The Tree of Life was now focussed on growing a new fruit from the cross-pollination. As the growth of the fruit was exceptionally quick, they only had about a week before it fully m.a.t.u.r.ed.

"The soul has to be fused with the fruit while it is still growing or the new world tree will develop a consciousness of its own after it m.a.t.u.r.es. Zero needs to do it quickly and while we don't know how exactly souls can be fused with world trees, the Tree of Life said that the chaos fragments can be used to stabilise the soul. Zero might want to try that out but be very careful. If handled wrongly, it could turn into chaos energy again to destroy the soul Zero wants to repair."

Bob thanked Gaia for the advice and wrote it down quickly so that he wouldn't forget. He looked over at his exhausted master and sighed. In this world, he never knew anyone who was so determined to go so far. It was such a feeble soul with no connections to his master. Why did Zero always make other people's business his own problems to solve? As it is, according to Isis, Zero still has plenty of things to worry about. Getting the four keys to activate the portal to Whiskeria and finding Nel is only the beginning of Zero's long journey. If Zero was so worn and ragged at the beginning of it all, what would happen as they progress?

It was useless to think so far ahead. He might be an Eternal Dragon but he was still far too dumb when compared to the Gods who have lived through the birth of the world and the end of planets. Instead of wasting time here, Bob decided to meditate and enter the mindscape to lend Mii a hand. There were still several books that needed translating and Mii couldn't possibly handle everything alone. Soul cultivation was something the dragon wasn't familiar with but at the very least, he could summarise the key points that Zero would need.

Half a day later, Zero woke up feeling fully rested. He meditated to recover his energy and filled his stomach while Bob gave him the recount of what Gaia said. Mii had retired for the day after summarising the notes Zero wanted while he slept and the doctor reminded himself to get the hardworking strawcherry fairy something as a gift of appreciation. While he often gifted things to his friends, he hardly gave gifts to his mindscape assistants or villagers. That was something that needed rectifying.

"Chaos fragments?" he withdrew some from his inventory.

Weren't these the byproducts that were left behind after chaos energy was converted into miasma and usable mana? The Tree of Life also had some of this crystal stuff after purifying chaos energy from the void. If there was enough of it, it could be made into a Solo's Sanity Orb. While Zero knew it had the limited power of creation which included making an artificial soul, he didn't know the adverse reactions it would have on a crumbling soul.

"Understood. Please help me call Tanya and cover my whereabouts for a few hours. I need to take a trip to the Natural Plane to test something out."

Bob didn't have time to refuse when Zero sat cross-legged and meditated. His mind was quickly linked to the Dryad Queen as he explained his urgent situation. With only a week at most, Zero was in great haste to find a solution. Combined with the summarised notes about soul nourishment techniques using qi, Zero wanted to find out if repairing a soul was possible and how he could fuse unattached souls into ready vessels that weren't assigned reincarnated souls yet.

"It's lovely to see you again," Tanya admitted. "However, we have to keep conversations short because you are in a rush. My sisters here have gathered some souls similar to the one you described. Although they are not wandering Gods, these souls are on the verge of crumbling away into the void because we have not been able to find matching parts for fusing."

Zero nodded thankfully and got straight to business. He experimented with the chaos fragments and confirmed that qi does contain them but mana makes them corrupted. It was best for them to be contained in a zero mana environment while Zero ran his experiments.

"Can these souls be taken out of the Natural plane?" he asked and Tanya shook her head.

"Too fragile. Will shatter if they leave, this place is full of life and it is what holds them together.

Zero thought for a long time before he had an idea. If he used Sylvia's soul containment array, he might just be able to transport these souls to the mindscape where he can run his tests successfully and adjust the flow of time accordingly so that he could maximise the one week he had.

"Give me a moment," Zero told Tanya. "I need to get something, I'll be right back!"

Tanya didn't have time to respond and Zero had already left to do what he needed to do. Seeing Zero so busy made the Dryad Queen wonder what he was up to. Gaia did inform her about the possibility of a new world tree and a new spriggan but as the Queen of Dryads, she had never heard of such a thing. Everything that Zero was doing and suggesting was new to her and in the few thousand years of existing, Tanya felt that life was starting to be interesting again ever since that awful war that killed many Gods.

Not even ten minutes in, Zero was back and this time, he had some interesting looking tools. "I'm back!" he grinned.

Tanya watched him trap the souls in canister looking lanterns with many magic circles and arrays. Then, she watched him weave new spells and chant in an unheard-of language. Slowly but surely, the souls were put to sleep and vibrated lightly in their new prison. Zero repeated this process to the other souls and Tanya watched with interest. The souls didn't look like they were struggling any longer and she was curious what Zero did.

"What kind of magic was that?"

Zero grinned. "Not magic. Just soul nourishment to make them stable while I bring them back to apply some soul glue. If this works, I know exactly what has to be done. Oh, I hope they don't mind becoming plants if I succeed. I might be able to fuse souls to seeds but I don't know if I can remove them later. The glue should stick really well after all."

Tanya laughed. "I don't think they have an opinion. If you really do succeed, please give them to me. We welcome plants here in the Natural plane. I will treat them well."

Zero thanked Tanya and her sprite sisters before storing the imprisoned souls into his inventory and returning back to his body and escaping into Zeus' lamp so that he can adjust the time flow and run his experiments in the mindscape. As an ambitious person, Zero intended to complete testing all in a day so that they didn't have to delay saving Baku's soul.