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When he had first met him, if Asad was being brutally honest, he hadn't thought much of the boy. A mere child, tagging along because of a tangentially-related reaper.

But now?

Now Asad found himself wondering if Hector might just be the most formidable of all his allies.

He knew how young the boy really was, but perhaps that didn't matter as much as he had previously thought. Hector's list of accomplishments spoke for itself. At Marshrock. At Dunehall. At Babbadelo. And apparently also at Himmekel and Capaporo, too. Even now, he still wasn’t sure he believed half of what he had been told about those last two.

The accomplishment that was occupying Asad’s thoughts the most, however, was the one that occurred at Babbadelo. Others who recounted the young lord's exploits might not even mention it, but to Asad's mind, the invention of that orbital materialization technique was no minor thing.

That technique had been bothering him ever since Hector first explained it to him and Zeff, but he had never been quite sure why. There was just something about it. Something subtle, yet still somehow fundamental, perhaps.

With everything else going on lately and all his other concerns weighing on him, Asad hadn’t been able to give that technique the amount of analytical consideration that he wanted--the amount that it probably deserved. He’d discussed it a bit with Zeff, but the man had probably been even more distracted than he was.

But here and now, as he held his hand out in front of his face and practiced the technique for himself, watching a pair of quartz cubes float around his open palm, Asad finally had the opportunity to really stop and dwell on it for a while.

And after a time, to his own surprise, he began to gain an inkling of what his problem with it might be.

So it was extra unfortunate that Qorvass phased through the wall and interrupted his train of thought. ‘Hey, Haqq wants to talk to you,’ the reaper said in Valgan.