462 Pegasus Rider (1/2)
The village was definitely expanding very quickly. With the six new gnomes, he could already see how much they were contributing to the various projects. Cleo was impressed by the gardening technology Olive introduced. Pumps that helped with water and an automatic sprinkler system made Cleo's job a lot easier. The Melissa golems only had to weed and plant or harvest crops that Cleo grew. In fact, with Olive's foresight, the agricultural team's efforts were reduced by half. Crop rotation was a thing and after Olive explained the concept, the villagers were able to work more efficiently to cope with Hua Tuo and Zero's medical orders.
Welsey followed Lovina to Arabesque and Merlin was extremely impressed by the alchemic breakthrough from a gnome who didn't have any mana. Likewise, Wiser learnt a lot from Wesley and Pepper who taught him the link between magic and science. The bottleneck in Raj and Wiser's miasma converter project was finally resolved and they were making speedy progress. Zero estimated that they would be done with the prototype by the end of the year.
Seff was finally schooling under Pepper's tutelage in the abyss and Ruth had more time to manage his domain. Business was booming in the Garden of Roth with Lucifer and Michael signing an agreement for a truce in order to supply Half Moon Village with materials it needed for the massive building project. For starters, they sent an equal amount of representatives from Heaven and Hell to help Raj with the massive construction works. Ruth had to oversee logistic movements at Ten-Path Crossway and approve visas for travellers more stringently to prevent anyone from abusing the system.
Turmeric and Ginger were escorted to Mitchnew by Roovan and Zero hadn't heard from them. However, he had a feeling that Mitchnew might want them to be part of Jermine's escort company to Lycantopia. Monoman and Dwayne made contact so the logistic deals were in negotiation. At the same time, Desert Lily and Mitchnew met up for the first time to discuss in lengths about the slavery deals. Zero didn't know the details because Truen refused to tell him everything but he trusted his friend in those matters.
”I'll go to Rocket Mountain alone,” he told Truen over dinner. Hua Tuo decided to finally return to his hospital after confirming that Zero was in a good condition.
Truen was slightly startled. ”Alone?” he asked.
Naturally, Truen wasn't too happy about the arrangement. His job was to travel alongside Zero and protect him from harm. He barely fulfilled his duty at Derby Desert. Zero was still hurt by the nova canon even if Truen did his best. The Great Gods didn't hold it against him because he was going up against a God-killing weapon. Until now, Isis and Freya were still investigating the mastermind. Hades led the investigations but they still had no idea who that mysterious person was who taught Thomas how to build it. The lost knowledge should have died with the destruction of the previous Earth.
”I don't like it,” Truen admitted. ”You're strong but after the nova cannon incident, I'm very afraid of leaving you alone.”
Zero didn't need to be reminded about that. He understood Truen's fear and concerns. Similarly, Zero was concerned about Truen. He might have lost all his mana reserves and had a hard time recovering his vessel but Truen was no different. While the wood elf spirit might be able to harvest mana from the surroundings to recuperate at a faster rate due to the less complex nature of his vessel, it still caused him a lot of pain to fully recover.
”If you're worried about what Sedna and the rest of the Great Gods might say, let me handle them.”
Truen shook his head. ”It's not just that. I'm genuinely terrified for you. You're still unable to keep your alternative appearance. How will you travel and keep appearances up or an extended period of time?”
Zero nodded. Indeed, he wasn't able to manipulate his vessel at ease even with Mii and his mindscape assistants online. In fact, opening access to the shared inventory was taking up quite a bit of effort on his part. Thankfully, the Mind's Eye system used the food offering as a way to keep the channel open for important functions such as portals and offline communications. Wii was still hibernating because Zero didn't have enough mana to sustain the parallel mind function yet and Mii was reverted back to system text administrator. Lily temporarily returned to Gaia and Zoe couldn't access anything from the system.
For the next few hours, Zero tried to convince the Great Gods to allow him to travel without Truen. He found himself repeating the story several times to his teachers, to the Great Gods, the Enma, to the Demon Lords and to Buddha before he received a long list of conditions that he had to agree to before they allowed him to travel.