Ball of Nothing

Chapter 293 Reading Marathon

Immediately after the lunch meeting, Zero and Merlin travelled back to the tower quickly, eager to continue their work. Zero quickly picked up books and activated golems while going into his meditative mood. Merlin decided to catch up on his reading as well. Zero’s spare golems had written a pile of notes regarding the boy’s understanding of qi and chaos energy. Both master and student worked hard trying to catch up to each other.

Merlin didn’t let Zero idle and taught Zero the sequence of books he had to read. Zero glanced over some of the books and asked Merlin if they were already scanned into the reading device’s library. Some of the titles looked similar.

The wizard god couldn’t be sure of it. Steve did give him the option to convert all his tomes into a more convenient format but after converting a hundred or so books, the magician decided to abandon the project. He still preferred the feel of bound paper in his hands.

\"I’ll leave the task of updating them into the library to you,\" Merlin said and Zero agreed.

The young doctor had another task that he wanted to do simultaneously while reading the library. He has five spare golems stationed in Merlin’s tower library and another five working on the books in the forbidden library. In the mindscape, the information overload was real.

\"Pass the pen, stack those books on the third shelf. No, We need to expand the section, move!\" Mii hollered from her desk. Zero was doing everything he could as Mii’s assistant while coping with the strange feeling of having new knowledge pour into his brain every second. Wii was also given her personal office to help coordinate the other Parallel Minds that were working hard at information gathering.

Thanks to Merlin’s tips, Zero discovered that Wii can level up without going through the quest system that Mii was limited to. The eggplant fairy simply had to continuously perform arithmetic of increasing difficulty to increase her mental power and ability to control her duplicates. Right now, Wii was able to control up to twenty duplicates but Zero didn’t want to use all twenty duplicates to gather information in the real world. He had ten doing that by possessing the spare golems, five working on Arithmetic with Wii and coordinating the information collected while the other five acted as Mii’s assistants alongside Zero who was still getting the hang of it.

Zero’s aim was to create ideas for the grimoire that Merlin wanted him to make. It has to be a magic that was unique only for him. A grimoire was every magician’s lifeline. Once that grimoire is destroyed, the magician loses all their powerful spells. Some grimoires are tied to their owner’s soul, others are tied to their owner’s hearts. Most grimoires that weren’t created by humans belonged to a demon who would reap the summoner’s soul as offering or feed on their life energy in exchange for lending them power.

\"I don’t have anything to offer to a grimoire to give it power,\" Zero sighed. His research in the mindscape wasn’t progressing well at all. Mii and Wii’s yelling didn’t help him concentrate either.

\"Ugh!\" Zero groaned as another sharp pain pierced his mind. With Wii’s help, the work is definitely progressing smoother on Mii’s end. Unfortunately, there was only one Zero and having so many tomes crammed into his head at the same time often caused the teen to be rendered paralysed for a while. The pain of having so much new information entering his head within such a short period of time can be hard to cope with.

\"Are you ok?\" Wii asked from the third floor.

\"What’s the pain like from the scale of one to ten? One like a paper cut and ten having an arm cut off?\" Mii asked.

Zero groaned and tried to lift his head from his desk with much difficulty. \"Eight... what did you girls do?\"

Wii looked sorry and Mii felt guilty. \"Sorry, we simply synced all the newly scanned books from the reading device to your library. It’s faster this way. Wii can work on processing the information at leisure and you can recall anything that needs recalling. We prioritised grimoire-making materials.\"

Zero groaned again, the headache still not leaving him. It was true. The girls really added the entire reading device’s content into his head and information just couldn’t stop flooding into his mind. Unable to move, Zero could only lay there in pain and wait for the overload of information to complete. Unknown to him, the amount of information input wasn’t stopping. When ten books were synced, Zero’s mind was made to process a hundred more.

In the forbidden library, Merlin had created a spell to help his student read faster. All spare golems were equipped with a speed reading spell similar to his famous speed-reading glasses. They now scanned things faster too and Merlin welcomed the abuse of mana in his tower. These golems were really handy and Merlin couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have ten more household golems like Bib to maintain his library, lab and business.

Zero found it odd. He was beginning to see many new things despite the splitting headache. Suddenly, he knew things he never knew before. Each minute that passed made him wonder if it would ever stop. From necromancy to summoning, the subjects of his studies were making no sense. Even if Zero was able to understand the contents of whatever that had been scanned and read, he was still struggling to know how they can be applied to grimoire-making.

Wii and Mii gasped in horror as the books started piling on the floor.

\"What’s going on?\" Wii asked her older sister.

The strawcherry fairy didn’t have time to respond. In order to prevent an accident, she had turned to Wii with seriousness in her eyes.\"I’m going to find Lily and take over the system for a while. It looks like three floors won’t be enough. Make sure that the books don’t fall on Zero before I’m back!\"

Wii didn’t have any time to react before her sister disappeared. From the first floor, she could hear her master groan in pain. At the same time, she could feel that something was wrong with the other cloned libraries. Perhaps it was better to stop for a while and consolidate all their materials before continuing. At this rate, there wouldn’t be enough space to put all these copied books in Zero’s mindscape!

\"Dispel clones! Parallel Minds, gather!\"

The ten cloned librarians stopped working and gathered at the office that Wii’s original self was at in order to help with the administrative matters that were starting to pile badly from the syncing of all ten libraries.

Mii hurried over to where Lily was and demanded to create ten floors for Zero’s mindscape library. At the rate that Zero was learning, they needed a lot of room. Zero wasn’t even done with a third of Merlin’s books. They wouldn’t survive it without enough space.

\"Sorry, Mii. The system says that Zero’s current capacity is five floors,\" the flower fairy apologised and Mii cursed.

\"Let’s make it five floors then. Once there are enough resources to expand the library in size or height, let me know. I’ll head back now!\"

Lily assured the busy assistant that she will look after Zero’s mental state from the back end and Mii left in a hurry.

Wii was relieved to see that there were two additional floors to sort the books out. She got to work immediately without waiting for her sister. It didn’t matter if the categorisation was wrong, right now, it was more important to get all the books off the floors and onto shelves. the clones worked efficiently and with the books put away, the cloned libraries were able to slowly disappear.

Mii returned to find everything returning back to order with the exception of Zero who was still clutching his head in pain with a huge frown. The teen groaned again when Wii’s clones started shelving a new stack of books. Mii felt sorry for the young doctor. Every book that they shelved in the mindscape library was directly linked to Zero’s mind. With Wii’s rate of processing books from the Parallel Minds and copying them over to Zero’s main mind, the stress was more than enough to cripple an ordinary person. Wii wasn’t merciful with shelving the copied books either. Each cloned librarian assistant threw in at least three books at a time and there were at least ten working on shelving the pile of books that had been transcribed into a common language for Zero’s easier reference. Mii still hasn’t gotten to sorting the books by categories or making notes for Zero’seasier understanding and reference.

\"Astrology?\" Zero groaned in pain. \"Why is there astrology in Merlin’s library? Mii, Wii... what are both of you reading?\"

Mii didn’t answer Zero, too busy organising the new books while Wii smiled in apology. \"It’s something from the reading device and not Merlin’s library. It appears as if your mind is also syncing the entire library from your reading device as we speak.\"

Zero paled. \"Re-reading device? Steve said that there were at least a million books in there from stories to research journals... you’re not serious, right?\"

Mii dropped the book she was holding. \"What?\"

Wii stared at both of them with a confused look. \"Was I not supposed to sync that? We finally found a way to sync the books to the reading device. I thought that if we were going to go for a reading marathon, we might as well do it thoroughly now before the training ends. Besides, master could take some inspiration from other materials to create his very own unique magic and grimoire.\"

Mii couldn’t fault Wii for her analysis but did she have to do it now? Zero’s mindscape wouldn’t hold a few million books at this stage, they were going to be in trouble.

\"Can you cancel the syncing of the reading device’s library and solely focus on the books in Merlin’s library for now? Lily told me that the system couldn’t make more than five floors worth of shelving space.\"

Zero let out a sharp scream as a new genre entered his mind.

\"Folk tales and music? Why is this here...? Mii! Wii! Do something!\"

Panicked, Wii immediately got to work and tried to stop the syncing of Zero’s mind with the magic device.

\"I’m so sorry, master! I’m afraid it’s too late... the syncing cannot be cancelled at this point. I have stopped the spare golem from reading anything more, everything else that is being processed now is from the reading device... Thousand apologies!\"

Mii inhaled deeply and closed her eyes, trying to find inner peace in the chaos of Zero’s writhing and Wii’s tears.

\"There’s no helping it. Wii, gather your assistants and help me search for the books with memory increasing functions. We need to prioritise learning those first to help Lily increase the system’s capacity to expand the mindscape. After that, search for ways to borrow the void to throw all the unprocessed books for a while. We need to get through Merlin’s library first. The rest can be sorted through later.\"

Wii obeyed quickly and gathered all but five of her assistants who were in charge of shelving new books. They searched through quickly the job queues for anything related to memory increasing techniques and worked on them. Under Mii’s careful guidance, the headache lessened and Zero was finally able to focus.

\"Wait, what? Mythical creatures and where to find them? Why’s this even a subject?!\" Zero yelled when the colourful images of rainbows and gory pictures of severed human limbs dangling from a beast’s jaw startled him from his thoughts.

\"Sorry master!\" Wii’s clone shouted from the seventh floor now. \"It’s one of the books we’re still shelving.\"

Zero sighed. With so much reading to do, how could he make any progress with his magic and grimoire?

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