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Between trying to help people out of the city and all the meetings where his presence was requested, Hector didn’t find much time for sleeping or even eating--though the latter wasn’t so much of an issue after the first day, because the Moabanis just started giving him food. They were rather enthusiastic about it as well, even getting into arguments over it.

Apparently, word about the young black lord from a foreign land had gotten around, and now he couldn’t go anywhere without people recognizing him. It was even worse than back home. At least in Gray Rock, his skin color didn’t immediately give away who he was. Hector wasn’t sure he’d seen even just one other black person since he’d arrived in this country. There had to have been someone in the Golden Fort, though, he figured. That place was packed.

Still, at least all the attention wasn’t negative. As painfully embarrassing, uncomfortable, and distracting as it all was, it did feel pretty nice, at times. He just wished that he could hide in his armor again. That would have made it a little more bearable.

He’d been hoping that his materialization would just snap back to how it was before, but so far, no such luck. It didn’t seem to matter how hard he concentrated; at the moment, all he could produce was a bit of powder.

When he’d been in Ivan’s presence, he could have attributed the sudden weakness of his materialization to the Salesman’s insanely oppressive soul power, but that couldn’t be the explanation now. Garovel didn’t have any relevant knowledge on the subject either, sadly, which only made Hector even more convinced that this was Rasalased’s doing. To what end, remained to be seen, but Hector was trying to give the ancient Sandlord the benefit of the doubt. Surely, this was as intended. Rasalased wouldn’t have screwed him over like this... probably.

He tried not to dwell on it too much. Time would tell. Or at least, that’s what Garovel told him.