Ball of Nothing

Chapter 315 Blessing of Acceptance and Trus

Merlin forgot all about his grief when Zero completed his grimoire. The teen had been very proud with his worn-out grimoire and Merlin grounded Zero from doing any more designs or work for a week until he reflected on his reckless actions once more.

\"Ancient magic should not be used carelessly!\" Merlin yelled and Zero had a difficult time understanding why his teacher was so angry. Wasn’t he the one who told Zero to find him in three days after binding his grimoire and creating the spells he wanted to add to his grimoire?

None of Zero’s mindscape assistants wanted to help Zero and Origin only laughed at their master. Merlin was very strict when he said Zero wasn’t allowed to do anything magic related. The wizard would often send Bib after Zero whenever he caught the teen trying to read or draw something. In the end, Zero was reduced to working in the kitchen and in the garden. The young doctor could only do so much farming and cooking before he was bored out of his mind. He still didn’t understand why Merlin was so mad even after meditating for three days and napping a lot.

Unable to stand the gloominess of the tower, Zero left for the main town in Arabesque, hoping to entertain himself. It was fun for a few hours and Zero wiped himself out by playing games at every stall to his heart’s content. However, by the end of the few hours, not only was he feeling tired, Zero felt extremely emotionally drained. It used to be so easy to be happy in the past. Why was it so difficult today? Zero suddenly found that nothing he did could lift his spirits. The truth came as a huge shock for Zero. In the past, he would find everything amazing. Zero remembered being amazed by the creation of each individual leaf and how it was always different from the others. Now, he couldn’t even pretend to be interested in games, not to mention leaves.

His feet took him to a quieter spot in Arabesque and Zero’s eyes landed on the words in the sky that Truen left for him. The young doctor wondered what his busy friend was up to at this moment. While Truen was working hard, Zero felt guilty about getting grounded. He was so close too! Once he finished the grimoire and the spells, Zero didn’t think that there would be any reason Merlin had to delay him from completing the last quest and graduating him. Thanks to so many people’s help, Zero only took four months to get to where he was.

\"Zero...\"

The young doctor frowned. What could he do now that he wasn’t allowed to practise magic? Maybe he could start working on his fighting style since Merlin didn’t say anything about not cultivating. Also, his pill supplies were running low. It might be a good time to restock while he was at it. The garden project is coming along gre-

\"Zero.\"

\"Gah!\" the young doctor jumped when someone breathed into his ear. Too lost in his thoughts, the teen didn’t notice the two divine sisters standing beside him.

With a nervous laugh a shy apology, Zero greeted them. \"Law, Isaben, how can I help you?\"

The divine sisters giggled at Zero’s sloppiness. It should have been the other way around.

\"We’re here to give you our blessings before we become a part of you. That tri-cloured petal artefact mark we left on you is currently sealing an important ability. It shall be unlocked once you’re found Nel but we can still give you our individual blessings,\" Law explained.

Isaben smiled. \"Zero, I will give you the blessing of Trust as a passive skill that will let you know when someone is lying. It’s similar to the feeling of something bad happening with your Intuition skill but less intense.\"

The young doctor was slightly surprised when the lady bent down to give him a gentle kiss on one cheek.

Law smiled. \"I will give you the blessing of Acceptance. It is also a passive skill to help you regulate your emotions if they fluctuate to an extreme point. It will not affect your thoughts, just help to calm you down and facilitate better thinking so that you wouldn’t make rash decisions that you might regret.\"

Again, Zero was kissed on the cheek and the two ladies smiled at him. \"We will become part of Mind’s Eye system now. Once you complete Murvin’s quest, you’d be able to unlock more functions of the Mind’s Eye system including customising your vessel and mindscape.\"

The young doctor didn’t have time to say anything before the ladies disappeared. True to their words, Zero inspected his status and found two more new passive skills. Mii could not find a way to deactivate them but Zero didn’t mind. They weren’t going to do him harm so the young doctor left it. Instead, he was more curious about the other things he had since it had been a while since he last saw his status.

[Titles]

Inheritor of Sins

Effect: Allows title holder to absorb all sins and convert them to a form of consumable power

Savior of the Abyss

Effect: Is naturally liked by demons and monsters, increases charisma points when dealing with demon races

Member of the White Wings Alliance

Effect: Free entry pass to Heaven that doesn’t expire

Tea Lover

Effect: Increase familiarity between Zero and tea brewer every time tea is drunk.

[Skills]

Grapple

Intuition

Colour-changing

Dark-vision

Echolocation

Observation

Underwater Breathing

Lie Detector

Calm Mind

[Quests]

1. Gorgon’s Grief

2. Finding Nel

3. Retrieving Duu

4. Venn’s Regret

5. Retail Therapy

[Status]

Sins: 50,000

Qi: 300,000

Mana: 9,685,000

Energy: 388,502

Miasma: 3,000

Chaos: 50

Zero paused at that screen and scrolled no further. Miasma? Chaos energy? How did he manage to absorb those? Also, should chaos energy make him tired? He could understand having a high amount of sins, qi and mana. After working at Hope Clinic for so long, Zero had absorbed a number of sins from some of his patients who wanted to be redeemed. The qi was from hanging out in Nirvana for a while. Mana was constantly being absorbed from Arabesque’s air. Lily took it upon herself to watch the levels of every energy type and convert them into energy if they are in excess.

Zero could make some guesses about where the miasma came from. After being exposed to the abyss on so many occasions, it would be odd not to be affected by it. However, he had no idea where the fifty units of chaos energy came from.

Just when Zero scrolled up to check on other things and scrolled back down to confirm the numbers, it changed again.

[Status]

Sins: 50,000

Qi: 300,000

Mana: 9,685,000

Energy: 388,501

Miasma: 2,500

Chaos: 51

Zero blinked. He wasn’t seeing things, right? The energy went down by one unit while the miasma went down by a lot and the chaos energy increased by one.

To confirm his fears, Zero stared at the numbers unblinking. After about a minute, the numbers jumped again and Zero freaked out.

\"Mii!\"

The strawcherry fairy who was working on something else jolted up in fright at Zero’s sudden scream.

\"What is it?\" she snapped and materialised, not pleased that her master interrupted her work.

\"Look at this,\" he urged and the strawcherry fairy frowned. She squinted at the numbers on the screen and noticed something odd with the description.

\"Chaos energy?\" she asked and Zero nodded. \"I didn’t know I could control chaos energy too. The last time we tried to absorb it, I became very sleepy. You told me the system rejected it. Why do I have fifty-one units and it is still being constantly produced as we speak.\"

Mii watched the numbers change again and frowned. With her advanced arithmetics, it wasn’t difficult for the strawcherry fairy to figure out what changed and how much. The duo stayed on the viewing deck for a little longer to observe what would happen once the miasma empties out.

[Status]

Sins: 50,000

Qi: 300,000

Mana: 9,685,000

Energy: 388,496

Miasma: 0

Chaos: 56

\"Is it going to do anything else?\" Zero asked and Mii shushed him.

[Status]

Sins: 45,000

Qi: 295,000

Mana: 9,685,000

Energy: 388,496

Miasma: 10,000

Chaos: 56

Zero’s jaw fell when he saw that. For some reason, he was producing chaos energy by using sins and qi. \"Wii! Lily! Meeting, now.\"

Mii didn’t argue and disappeared into the mindscape, waiting for her sister and the other fairy to gather. This was a serious discovery. Everyone sat at a table in the library and waited for Zero to start the meeting.

The young doctor went straight to the point and informed everyone about the strange thing going on in the Mind’s Eye system status report.

\"Lily, Wii, are you doing anything to create chaos energy in the back end?\"

Both fairies looked confused and Zero looked troubled. Mii didn’t know what to do either but she advised Zero against informing the Great Gods. If anything, she thought that Zero should keep this low profile and only inform Merlin his theory about creating chaos energy so that the wizard could run some experiments for them to understand why Zero’s system was manufacturing chaos energy.

\"If chaos energy could be manufactured, we might be able to better understand its nature and find out if this can be used to counter Solo’s chaos energy!\" Wii exclaimed.

Zero nodded numbly. He didn’t think that he would be able to produce chaos energy either but he hoped it would be different from the ones attacking the planes. The only limiting factor was that producing chaos energy took a lot of resources. It took an equal number of sin and qi to create miasma. From that miasma, it took one unit of energy to convert five hundred units of miasma into one unit of chaos energy. It was an extremely ineffective rate.

\"Do you think I should try and summon the chaos energy created?\" Zero asked and the mindscape assistants took a vote that Zero shouldn’t do it without Merlin’s input and other people on standby just in case something went wrong. The fairies agreed that Buddha must be there and Hua Tuo if possible.

\"I want to try absorbing miasma from the abyss to see if it can be used to convert into chaos energy,\" Zero said and this time, all three fairies agreed.

Zero grinned. He finally had something to do and decided to leave a note for his teacher before leaving Arabesque for Garden of Roth.