Ball of Nothing 354 Scamming to Save Lives

In the last two days he spent in Magnus Hilda, Zero hadn't been slacking off. Now that he had a shared inventory with Truen, Zero started storing more items that he thought they would need in it. Some of the items included Zero's pills and recovery potions. He made many pill supplements and mana recovery potions just in case Truen required it. Among the items, Zero also copied a lot of charms and talismans for future uses. He didn't like the idea of Truen staying up to watch the camp whenever they had to camp outdoors. Hence, Zero created hundreds of array copies on the talismans that were single uses. This should be able to last them a whole year even if they camped out every night.

The one thing Zero was very proud of was his new pharmacy dimension. Taking a book from Arabesque, Zero linked all his golems to his inventory. While they worked as garden assistants and medical assistants, Zero didn't tell anyone else a sneaky little function he included. All thirty golems were actually power generators for Zero. They had the ability to collect payment of siphon energy from where they were working constantly. The golems charged their internal crystals first and the surplus goes to Zero. Even if Zero is naturally unable to produce mana or qi, he had no problems now with thirty golems doing it for him. The doctor still understood the risks and was careful about splurging the precious energy collected in his reserves.

The one thing that Zero was worried about was his financial status. making money and keeping it was trickier than Zero thought it would be. Back in Half Moon village, Zero didn't have to worry about such things. There wasn't really a need for Zero to earn any money at all previously. When he trained with his shifu, they would grow their own herbs. When he was in Heaven, the Great Gods took care of him. When he was in Nirvana, everything was on Buddha. When he was with Merlin, the wizard provided everything Zero could possibly need. If he was ever starving, there was the free meal ticket he had valid for a year. Sadly, that ticket expired.

Zero looked at the money he earned from selling things to those merchants. He received a lot of other essential travel items required for travellers that came in handy but Zero wondered if they'd been ripped off somehow. Six hundred binnites sounded like a lot of money but if Zero thought about it logically, that wasn't a lot. According to Freya, a regular pork sandwich on Earth costs about 10 innites. 1 binnite could buy ten pork sandwiches and 600 binnite could only buy six thousand pork sandwiches. If Zero really wanted to, six thousand pork sandwiches wouldn't even last him a day. Not to mention money for food, where was Zero going to find so much money to buy all the precious ingredients needed to make potions for close to seven thousand coma patients?

Honestly speaking, Zero wasn't resource poor. He had four farms and could build more if he really needed it. Zero tested out many methods that could be used to get rid of the mushrooms. Like Joseph said, fire really didn't do anything to them. Zero's appraisal level wasn't high enough to identify their weakness so he could only experiment. The Talia golems worked hard and found that the mushrooms had magic resistance to fire but were weak to heat. Cleo also mentioned that acid worked very well on the mushrooms. Unfortunately for Zero, he didn't have many acid-producing resources so that wasn't a good idea. Fortunately, cinnamon powder worked against the mushrooms but it wasn't as effective. The doctor sighed. There had to be a better alternative.

Bob wasn't travelling with them to Magnus Hilda but at this point, Zero really thought that having the dragon here would be a good thing. Zero could simply feed the dragon a ton of hunger-inducing potion and extract the acid from his stomach to distribute it to the garrison to spray on the annoying paralysing mushrooms. Alternatively, Zero could cast a large area of heat magic on Magnus Hilda to dehydrate every single annoying fungi and turn them into mushroom powder for paralysing potions to sell to the guilds for a handsome profit. However, Zero promised Truen not to use any overpowered magic and keep a low profile.

The doctor sighed. How was he going to keep a low profile when he had to convince Queen Rosalind to change Magnus Hilda's faith into worshipping only Freya? Then again, Truen did say that he was free to use aliases whenever he needed. Maybe now he was the wandering healer who listened to voices of wandering gods and a lady healer. After he leaves, he could be a magician scholar who is collecting research throughout the land. 

Zero groaned. Who was he kidding? He would eventually run out of fake identities and Zero didn't think it was a permanent solution. The cure for paralysis was easily made. In his pharmacy dimension, he had ten thousand paralysis cure potions waiting. The issue wasn't mass producing potions. It was explaining them.

Why did curing a plague suddenly sound like a huge scam job? Zero couldn't understand. The old him would have easily tossed the potions, wished the folks good day and be out of the way. However, now that his eyes were opened to something called consequences, Zero couldn't be so irresponsible. he wondered what Hua Tuo would have done in his shoes but knowing his shifu's temperament, the physician would have told Zero to close his eyes to the things he couldn't handle and leave the rest to fate.

To help him gather his thoughts better, Zero wrote down what he needed.

1. Get rid of mushrooms.

2. Convince Queen Rosalind to build a Freya shrine and worship her from now on.

3. Distribute the uses for coma patients without alerting others of my mass-producing abilities.

"Mii, are there any monsters or creatures on Earth that actually use acid to attack? The nearer they are to Magnus Hilda, the better."

The strawcherry fairy groaned. "Zero, what are you doing up so late at night? Shouldn't you be sleeping?"

Zero sighed and explained his problem. "I don't want to involve Truen in this if I can. Also, has Bob contacted any of you recently? He said that he still needed to train a little more before he could join us."

Mii smiled. "He says that he is almost there. He can hold his human transformation for more than four hours now. Give him a month or so and you'll have a dragon travelling companion. So, what's the problem? You sound like you have the plague all figured out."

Zero sulked. "Truen told me to keep a low profile. I can't just waltz into the castle after having an audience with the queen and dump ten thousand potions at her telling her that I came up with a cure in merely three days of my arrival, can I? Not to mention, I cannot force them to worship Freya when the goddess who founded Magnus Hilda is Hyndla. Also, casting magic with the range as wide as Magnus Hilda's territory to rid it of mushrooms isn't a good idea. It consumes too much mana and attracts too much attention. I'm not even registered with any guilds, it's going to be troublesome explaining my way out of it."

Mii flew and sat on the troubled doctor's head. "Welcome to the world of adults where worries are the only constant. Still, I don't think you should mind too much about what other people want. This is your adventure even if you made promises to stay out of trouble. I have a feeling after you see the queen tomorrow, you will be able to come up with a satisfactory solution. The only thing you need to remember is to be able to explain your actions in a way that people can believe them."

Zero frowned. "What does that mean?"

Mii shrugged. "Think of it this way. Would you rather believe that a ten-year-old beggar saved a man dying from a cardiac arrest or a doctor who has twenty years of experience?"

Zero answered without hesitation, "The doctor."

Mii smiled. "There you have it. Ordinary people cannot choose to be a doctor with twenty years of experience or a ten-year-old beggar when they are faced with a situation that is difficult. They have to confront the difficulties they face as themselves. You have the ability to transform and do a lot more than ordinary people so start exercising your wits more than your abilities when you travel. Not everything can be resolved with power or abilities. The hearts of humans can sometimes be more complicated than a god's."

The strawcherry assistant yawned. "Anything else?"

Zero shook his head and bade Mii goodnight. The strawcherry assistant gave Zero a stern look and advised that he went back to bed instead of worrying about the future. Zero didn't agree but he smiled and waved till Mii vanished. Mii didn't answer Zero's questions about acid-spitting creatures near Magnus Hilda so the doctor decided to take matters in his hands. Zero didn't know much about giants but he knew that people often appreciated something more when they had to work hard for it.

Zero couldn't let the giants have salvation too easily or they will forget about the seriousness of the issue and treat it lightly. While the situation isn't as dire as Zero thought it was, to a regular doctor, the plague was unstoppable. If he truly wanted to help Magnus Hilda, he would have to solve the root of it all and see the queen tomorrow. He couldn't be thinking up solutions for them and gathering resources to spoon-feed the giants. They had to work for themselves.

Zero looked at the list of things and hesitated for a while before he burnt it with fire magic, leaving nothing but ashes behind. If the giants wanted to be saved, they needed to work for salvation. Zero couldn't do charity, this was business. Tonight he would get a good rest and prepare for the meeting with Queen Rosalind tomorrow. From the stories Joseph told them about the giantess queen, Zero didn't think she would be the kind of person who believed too much in superstition. Zero would need to come up with some sort of evidence in order to convince her to see it his way.

"Would it be a true miracle if Freya could appear to her people once? I would need to ask for permission to use high-level illusion magic and borrow her name for my objective. Surely she wouldn't mind."

Happy at that, Zero plotted the rest of his 'demonstration' for the queen tomorrow. He had all the items ready but had to practise the magic trick of summoning items from his inventory in the middle of the air by opening a space crack while maintaining a low-level light flash bomb each time he 'received' the goddess' miracle.

Zero shuddered when he listened to how devious his plans were. He was truly becoming a scam artist even if his intentions were for the greater good. Still, if he didn't do this, nobody would believe him, right?

"Oh, better to prepare some heat talismans to sell. I doubt the giants can gather so many acid-spitting beasts on short notice. They don't seem to have many magicians as well and employing them will be tricky. What else would be good? Maybe the magic filter charms to place on their masks would sell. That way I don't have to worry about labour storage. If they lack manpower, I can always 'pray' more and introduce more cure potions and demand more offerings at the same time. Let's see... What should I demand as an offering? Food is expensive so I guess I should ask for lots of food that I can store away in my inventory and exchange them for the cure potions. I better ask Truen what kind of food I should accept for the offering..."

Chapter end