316 Mystery of Miasma 1 (1/2)

First stop, Hell! Zero flew through the portals so quickly that nobody realised the young doctor was leaving for the wilderness. Zero definitely sprinted at top speed to get out of the protected zone. On the way, he passed by Beelzebub's farms and wondered if it would be bad to completely clean the air of miasma if this worked out. He could only imagine the rich bank of chaos energy if the miasma from the abyss was convertible.

If there was a speed limit in the wilderness, Mii was very certainly that Zero was travelling way past it. Sadly, there weren't many rules in the abyss, especially the wilderness. Zero used the map to seek for the area with the least number of monsters because it meant that the density of the miasma in the area was too thick to support any form of life.

Once Zero reached a good spot, he noticed how the miasma's fog was so thick that he couldn't even see the tip of his fingers when he stretched his arm out. Wii quickly got into position and created a few Parallel Minds so that she could monitor Zero's status and cast recovery spells if needed. Mii also stationed herself in the control room with Lily to monitor the situation. Of all three fairies, she was the most experienced.

Zero inhaled deeply and almost choked on the disgusting air. The miasma didn't taste or smell any better than he remembered it to be. Choosing not to breathe it in, Zero opened his mouth wide and sucked everything in using absorption. The numbers on his status screen could barely be seen so Zero listened closely to what his assistants told him.

The numbers increased steadily as he absorbed miasma and Zero asked if the use of converted miasma could be halted. He wanted to know if normal miasma from the abyss could be used instead. Lily didn't know what perimeters to search for in the system so Mii took over while the flower fairy took care of commentary.

Zero decided to stop when his miasma units hit the hundred thousand mark. While doing that, he asked Wii to help him analyse the samples of the miasma absorbed and the samples of miasma converted using the system. For some reason, Zero felt as if the miasma he was absorbing from the abyss felt slightly different.

\”Of course,\” Mii scoffed. \”The miasma from the abyss is created by chaos energy that was attacking the plane and the combination of mana demons. It's a by-product, remember? There will surely be impurities in it.\”

Zero nodded. \”How do we get rid of the impurities? Also, wasn't the production formula qi and sins? Why is it chaos energy and mana now?\”

Wii quickly got to work and experimented on both formulas. In fact, thanks to her quick thinking, Zero got the full report of what exactly helps to create miasma.

Wii's explanation clarified many doubts. Zero was starting to understand why chaos energy could weaken him so much even if it couldn't harm him. Zero didn't produce mana or qi of his own to counter with chaos energy whose nature is to remove life. If something that doesn't possess life is filled with negative energy, they could only become puppets for the chaos energy to control. Unfortunately, Zero's true nature isn't his vessel but the void. It's the reason why he was only put to sleep and not manipulated.

\”We're closing into the hundred thousand units,\” Lily told Zero who prepared to slow down and stop.

The miasma around Zero isn't as thick anymore after absorbing so much and Zero wondered if it was a good thing. With the plane's cracks and holes plugged by the Tree of Life, the chaos energy can no longer attack the broken off plane directly. The amount of miasma produced in the abyss is also significantly reduced. Given enough time, Zero thinks that it would stop entirely. He also hoped that by the time Baal wakes up, Hell would be transformed into a beautiful garden much like Heaven. The terraforming project will help ensure that no demons would starve. Food supplies will be secured if they have enough mana and good air. Wilderness monsters created from miasma poisoning wouldn't happen, clans like the Roth vampires wouldn't be wiped out, not everybody had to hide in towns of Demon Lord domains if they didn't want to without miasma, it would be a great place to be at.

Zero could now see his status as he stopped absorbing miasma. Mii had just finished implementing the new rules to the setting from the system's back end and told Zero that she was going to manually synthesize chaos energy using the miasma Zero just absorbed.

\”I'm also going to cancel the auto-manufacturing function that was previously on. I don't know what changed or when the system had an update but this function wasn't here previously,\” she told Zero who nodded.

\”It could be unlocked after Law and Isaben merged with the system. I think we need to thoroughly go through the system's function list after this to know what's going on,\” he told his assistants who agreed.

Without delaying the experiment further, Zero told Mii and Lily to start the synthesizing. The trio in the mindscape worked hard trying to stabilise the shaking from the system's overwork. Zero didn't know if he should add more qi or mana to stop the miasma from threatening to explode. Mii apologised profusely and wanted to cry. How could she make such a mistake?

\”Thousand apologies, Zero! I forgot to set the unit of conversion back to normal after disabling the auto manufacture option!\”

Wii quickly calculated the required mana and qi required to appease the miasma and told Lily to convert some energy to supplement the insufficient qi.

\”Use sins if there isn't enough,\” she told the panicking flower fairy who was close to tears.

\”Not enough!\” Lily cried out even after converting the required amount of energy Wii told her to.

Wii started to panic when the calculations failed her. In theory, according to what they worked out earlier, this amount of energy and qi should be sufficient to deal with the miasma. What went wrong?

Mii shoved both fairies aside and took over the system's controls. She didn't really think too much and converted a quarter of the energy reserves into qi and another quarter into mana to suppress the violent miasma thrashing around in Zero's inventory.

Experience certainly contributed a lot when unexpected situations arose. Mii's quick action helped to settle the miasma's volatile reaction within the span of a few breaths, much to everyone's relief. Zero praised Mii about it and the strawcherry fairy blushed so much that she had to hide away in the library.