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‘Oh, hey, I’m familiar with that technique,’ said Garovel. ‘Even non-servants can do it, to an extent, no?’

“What?” said Hector. “Really?”

“Yes,” said Asad.

‘Speaking is a good example,’ said Garovel. ‘Normally, it requires active concentration, but it’s certainly possible to hone one’s ability to speak without thinking. Rote memorization is one way to accomplish it, but you can also learn to just babble words generically while thinking about completely unrelated things or nothing at all.’

“Wow,” said Asad. “You explained it better than I was going to.”

‘Heh heh.’

“I wish you wouldn’t boost his ego like that,” said Hector.

‘Oh, come on, I haven’t gotten to explain anything this whole time.’

Beyond that, Zeff and Asad also lectured him on a few things he already knew about. Temperature manipulation, visualization, position and velocity states--the fundamentals, they called them. He didn’t mind listening to their perspectives. If anything, it helped reinforce a few things in his head.

They made him practice, too. That was probably the part that he enjoyed the least, and the part that they clearly enjoyed the most. They made him try his hand at a suspended iron cube, using layers like Zeff had described, but it quickly descended into a jiggling mess that could scarcely stay afloat, let alone hold its shape.

After laughing at him vengefully, however, they were courteous enough to teach him an easier method of accomplishing a similar feat. Rather than using layers, he could simply create an object in midair, and then “grow it” straight upward at a speed equivalent to the acceleration of gravity. From there, he needed only keep annihilating it from the bottom while continuing to grow it from the top.