Ball of Nothing

Zero felt apologetic about the two chosen souls from his testing samples. The successful soul that was now a special kind of mana lotus had been given a place in New Moon Village. Zoe and Cleo offered to check on it often enough. With the strange mana and qi producing lotus plant in New Moon Village, Zero thought that it could become a great source of influence and protector. Some effects noticed over time were the calming of the mind, better health and unleashing of dormant innate talents. There wouldn't be immediate effects but Zero knew there would be improvements that would be observed over time with the new addition.

"Is that plant a magical plant?" Wii asked when Zero handed it over to Lily for delivery to Zoe. She'd never seen such a unique mana lotus before.

Zero hummed. "It could be called a magical plant but I think it's more unique than that. It produces qi as well. So far, there aren't many things in this world that can simultaneously wield mana and qi. Apart from me, that plant is probably the only one who would benefit from the unique healing bath in Half Moon Village. Trigression Falls and the Spring of Vitality helps to boost mana and qi recovery so I told Cleo to water it with that unique bathwater daily."

Wii made a strange face. The idea of growing something using bathwater made the eggplant fairy pause but Zero knew what he was doing so it should be alright. Instead of worrying about the strange plant, Wii was more curious about Zero's next experiment. After his talk with Hades, Zero pulled out a new stack of books to read. Wii was also given the task to analyse the captive souls and find two most compatible souls.

In other words, Wii had to play matchmaker for a little while. Most of these souls were peaceful people so they got along really well and it wasn't easy for Wii to identify the most compatible pair so she introduced continuous tests to see which two souls would go out of their way to help another soul if they were ever in trouble. In some ways, this was a social experiment more than a medical or magical one but the eggplant fairy preferred it over dissecting bodies.

While Wii ran social experiments to decide on the souls, the doctor read up on soul reforging techniques as well as a bunch of other reforging techniques in blacksmithing. He figured that they must be similar in some ways. Solo was able to create everything out of nothing and Zero didn't have any memories of that ability. The only clue he had was these chaos fragments that he asked Axel and the Tree of Life to produce more of. If he was going to try and repair broken souls and recast them into new ones, he was going to need a lot of materials.

Joining two souls to reforge it into a new one was similar to mixing two kinds of metals. They wouldn't take to each other immediately and something external was needed to act as a catalyst to speed that process of warming up to each other. The 'thoughts' used to make the soul take shape after they were removed of their differences was a non-metal substance used to act as a buffer in between all these pieces and hold them together like glue once it has been reforged. In some ways, a reforged soul was stronger than a non-reforged soul that was born from the continuous collection of energy in the Natural Plane. However, there was also a danger that Zero had to consider.

Reforged Souls could become unreceptive to growth, unlike Natural Souls. They no longer become affected by different external stimuli. An example would be having no elemental affinity despite having a high mana capacity. Instead, they would be given access to their special innate abilities. The example Tanya gave him was the reforged souls for the Gemini Star descendant twins Xvyal and Yxaan. They have elemental bodies and have fixed potentials based on the vessels Sylvia created them in. However, their souls were special and had the ability to anchor each other down. Any damage done to one party will be received by the other. Likewise, healing abilities are shared. If one was an 'input' the other would be an 'output'. If one died, the other would be able to revive its sibling's soul into a new vessel or share the same vessel with it.

"So it wasn't the alchemy or unique combination of body parts that made Yxaan and Xvyal special, it was their souls."

"Yes," Tanya confirmed. "Reforged souls are rather resilient and they do not often follow the regular reincarnation cycles. Many are immortals and the judgement for their sins and virtues are usually not handled according to the normal Purgatory laws. King Yama has to judge them individually and throwing them into the reincarnation cycle for a new vessel doesn't usually work well because they are not very compatible with organic vessels in an established world."

The more Zero learned about reforged souls, the more confident he felt about his plan. If Tanya said that reforged souls were usually given bodies that had a blessing of Gods, does that mean that the capacity of a vessel doesn't matter as much as the possible lifespan of a vessel?

"Correct," Tanya agreed. "Most times, reforged souls are given potentially immortal bodies. Examples of potentially good vessels for reforged souls would be dragons, vampires, spriggans, sea monsters or even demigods."

With this new information, Zero was extremely positive that the reforged soul of Sylvia and Baku will make a good spriggan. Baku's original but damaged soul can be fixed to be slowly repaired overtime after Zero successfully fused the wandering God's soul to the new world tree. In fact, Zero had no problems thinking of a 'thought' for the reforged soul or the Tree of Fertility. He even had an idea of where to plant it.

"Thanks, Tanya. I'll continue looking into it now, I hope En doesn't get angry if I told him I wanted to borrow a plot in the Purgatory for long-term leasing."

Tanya laughed. "All the best, Zero. I'm sure King Yama would be happy to help."

Zero wasn't too sure about that. The Purgatory was a very gloomy place where souls wander aimlessly. Planting the shining Tree of Fertility there would change the landscape drastically and Enam may not like it. Regardless, he would only talk to the workaholic King of Trials once his experiment proved successful.