Chapter 34: So Many Zeroes

"Good Goblins! What did you do? Roll in a pie?"

Sedna grimaced and Freya chuckled nervously. Grem was certainly not pleased with the state of the borrowed shirt. Isis looked apologetic and Gaia apologised profusely. That did nothing to appease the furious half-gnome.

Zero looked on in amazement at how Grem's bushy orange eyebrow twitched. Even if the master tailor appeared calm outwardly, his restless eyebrow gave it away.

Feeling bad, Sedna offered to pay for the shirt and its cleaning fees. Grem jumped straight into merchant mode after hearing about payment. His eyes sparkled strangely as he worked on something that Freya explained was a calculator. It made strange chime sounds as Grem typed. The device was a mix of magic and technology and was one of the many common devices used throughout the multiverse.

Zero blinked as Grem told Sedna the cost of the shirt. The other goddesses paled similarly.

"What does 5 cinnites mean?"

Freya took Zero to a side to answer the child's questions as Isis haggled away to lower the price. After all 5 cinnites was a considerable amount to the goddesses who did nothing to accumulate material wealth.

After five minutes of explaining the concept of math and money to Zero, the young boy summarised that money worked this way:

100 innite = 1 binnite (lowest payout amount possible is 5 innite)

1,000 binnite = 1 cinnite

10,000 cinnite = 1 dinnite (dinnite is often only used by legendary merchants and royalty)

To allow Zero a better understanding of how money works, Freya used the food as an example. The cheapest was Jen's dew tea which cost about 25 innites. The brownies were about 1 binnite and 50 innites each. Of course, there were less expensive food like a regular pork sandwich on Earth. The regular pork sandwich was a common food ration amongst adventurers as it gave +1 energy, +0.5 healing and cost only 10 innites per sandwich.

For the ruined shirt, it cost way more than that. Zero did the math and realised that the shirt was worth 50,000 regular pork sandwiches! Imagine all that energy and healing points he could have gotten with 5 cinnites...

"I will do with a goddess teardrop instead," Grem huffed. Isis looked slightly defeated as she agreed. Zero titled his head in confusion. Goddess Teardrop?

Instead of seeing any of the goddesses crying, Gaia calmly pulled a flower from her vine-like hair. That flower shrank and transformed into a stone that glowed green. Using Mind's Eye, Zero saw that it was indeed the goddess' teardrop!

Gaia's Teardrop [Mythical Grade]

A precious teardrop from the Goddess of Nature. Can cure any illness and cancel any curse effects.

Effects: Curse Cancellation (infinite), Cure +1,000,000, Heal +1,000,000

At this point, Zero had his jaw agape. What is with that ridiculous number? How much would he have to absorb to reach that number? On the other hand, a random flower on Gaia's hair could turn into such a frightening stone. Was this why Gods and Goddesses were powerful? Zero couldn't believe that his past self created such powerful beings. From the very start, these gods and goddesses had been babying him so he never knew how important they were. Watching Gaia part with the stone made Zero's respect for these goddesses increase.

While the goddesses were busy settling their purchase and orders, Zero reviewed Freya's quick lesson. Humans have given the numbers 0 to 9 a meaning. 1 to 9 were very easy to understand but Zero liked the number 0 the best as they shared a common name although the presence of the number was questionable. Now that Zero knew math, he understood that Mind's Eye was actually a very powerful system. With only 2 energy and 1 calming point, it could remove Egui's 5 points of weakness status. If he added the math correctly, that was 2 points lesser than the strength of the weakness effect.

[Correction, the weakness effect was equal to the points of energy and calming spent. As a ghost and spirit's constitution is weaker than a human's the points you see reflected on their status is measured in their strength. For convenience, any inanimate object will be measured using a non-combatant human's standard. All else will follow the standard for species being inspected.]

Way to go Mind's Eye... Zero sulked. How would he know which species was stronger or weaker than humans?

[Answering the question, with enough experience points it is possible to unlock new features with Mind's Eye to inspect with more detail including species strength, dimension of origin etc]

Oh? How does one gain experience points, the young boy wondered as the goddesses haggled with the short shop owner. Now that Zero knew what Mind's Eye could do, he couldn't wait. Who knew what kind of information he would get with a better Mind's Eye system and Buddha's blessing?