Ball of Nothing

Two days. Zero took longer than he expected to create the world flower guardian. The first two souls were destroyed in the process in an unfortunate accident. Zero misjudged the number of chaos fragments used and the experiment went south when he added his 'thoughts' to the unstable mixture.

Then, after adjustment and calculating the right amount of chaos fragments that a regular soul can take, he realised that he had been doing it wrong. While the proportion was now correct, the souls still disintegrated because they couldn't accept the burden of the 'thought' in the reforge.

After consulting several experts, Zero finally understood why he failed. The souls had to undergo enough torture and pain to toughen enough so that they wouldn't crumble under the pressure of the thought's responsibility. Not every soul can accept the position of the world flower's guardian and the duties that came with it.

Sadly, not every soul in Zero's possession had enough reincarnations and life experiences to deal with that kind of pressure. Hence, he had to compress that experience in the shortest time frame possible through a series of simulations and scenarios to train these weak souls while nurturing them using qi.

He also used more than two souls for the experiment simply because he needed more 'pieces' to reforge the world flower guardian's soul. Gaia offered to create the vessel and Zero was reassured that the vessel would be of premium quality. He wasn't disappointed when Swift sent the vessel over. It was created from Gaia's branch and a petal of the world flower that Gaia dubbed as the Flower of Enlightenment after Buddha texted in the group chat that it originated from his mana lotus.

Eventually, after many long hours of continuous testing and tweaking, Hana the first flower spriggan was born.

Tanya, Cleo and Gaia couldn't help but act like mothers to the precious newborn and Zero left the Flower of Enlightenment with its new guardian in their care. He had more important things to do in the U.N.U. before the Tree of Fertility's seed was ready.

Sylvia listened patiently to Zero's explanation and the doctor struggled to phrase it in a way that doesn't sound so harsh. He failed miserably and cringed at how it came out. Yet, the Great Sylph didn't feel offended after he'd blatantly suggested that she forfeited her current life and that her child was going to become a tree stuck in the gloomy Purgatory for however long eternity lasted.

"That..." Sylvia trembled. "Thank you very much!"

The Great Sylph sobbed and held onto both of Zero's hands, bowing her head in gratitude when Zero was expecting her to curse him. Then, she asked him when they were going to start the procedure of transforming her into a spriggan.

"Not until I successfully fuse Baku's soul with the Tree of Fertility. Today, I will only be doing the purification process because I need to tamper and nourish Baku's soul fragments before it is ready for its new vessel. Are the preparations ready?"

Sylvia nodded. "Follow me."

The room that Sylvia prepared was sufficient for the purification process. She must have worked really hard because there were no traces of dark magic present and all the magic circles were drawn beautifully. It was very detailed and should have taken a lot of effort to maintain. The barriers were set up around the room so that there will be no external disturbance and most importantly, there was actual food offering items.

"This is perfect, thank you. Where is Baku?"

The Great Sylph went to retrieve her precious child and Zero gave her time to say her goodbyes. Even if he reassured her that it was going to be a simple process, a mother's worries will never end. He couldn't imagine her reaction after he told her he was going to have to take Baku's purified soul to Hell for the transfer to their new vessel. It wouldn't be as simple as air kisses and lots of self-reassurance like now.

Once the door closed, Zero put Baku's soul in the centre and looked at the corrupted parts. He had another soul containment array ready for the separated corrupted pieces. Lily materialised along with Wii and Mii.

"Are we ready?" he asked his assistants.

The three fairies quickly got into position. Zero took a deep breath. It was going to take a while but they'd practised this enough to know how it works.

The first stage was to nourish Baku's weak soul. Over the few days that Zero was gone, Baku took in the qi he left behind on his last visit and was looking visibly better. The idea was to help Baku's soul to recover and push the corruption to a very small part of its fractured soul using its personal powers. The lesser Zero had to remove from this soul, the better it was.

Lily took out pot after pot of mana lotus and Wii kept the soul array steady while Zero focussed on providing Baku with qi. Mii made herself useful by offering prayers and sacrificing the food offerings to Baku's name before she took a sleeping pill with the intention to dream about anything at all. Zero said that if Baku was able to activate its natural abilities to eat dreams, it had reached a stage of recovery that meant its soul was stable.

Baku was too weak to absorb the qi fed to it unlike the Flower of Enlightenment's soul that s.u.c.k.e.d everything up greedily. Zero had to go the extra step and circulate the qi around Baku's soul in the containment so that the soul could 'soak' in the qi to benefit from it. The process of steeping Baku's soul in a dense fog of qi was extremely time consuming but it eventually paid off when Zero saw the timing it took Baku's soul to fully devour the qi mist in the array.

Once Baku's soul was repairing itself healthily with the qi, Zero decided to introduce the chaos fragment. It was just one very tiny grain but it had a huge impact on the soul that looked as if it was threatening to explode. Zero and Wii quickly shrank the array down to contain the violent movements. Zero used small amounts of qi to help the soul adapt to the new energy source and after the first fusion of chaos fragment, Baku's soul started to respond to Zero's qi.

By now, everyone was hungry and tired so Zero told his assistants to take turns resting while he snacked on something and drank rejuvenation potions. Baku's soul started to fight back with the corruption after about six hours of efforts to strengthen it and Zero smiled. It wouldn't be long before the corruption consolidated at one point.

Two days later, Zero emerged with Baku's lively and responsive soul. It was still getting treatment but it was no longer in danger of disintegrating. Zero fed it more chaos fragments than he did with the Flower of Enlightenment. Thankfully, it paid off and Zero looked at the soul of a wandering god. It was very different from an ordinary soul and Zero had no doubts that once it fused with the Tree of Fertility, it would slowly regain its purification powers.

After Zero left the Great Sylph with her child to celebrate Baku's purification success, the doctor immediately stole the chance to fall asleep before the big events began.