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Hector was sighing again. Exasperated, no doubt.

Understandable. A part of Abbas sympathized. Related, even. A shadow of a memory tickled the back of his mind. Time spent with his mentors. They’d often behaved unreasonably in his presence. Been too caught up in their work to pay much attention to anything else. Dolf, in particular.

So perhaps that shadow of memory should have given him pause. Made him reevaluate his current actions. Made him hesitant.

But it didn’t. He gave it almost no consideration at all.

Instead, perhaps there was something ever so slightly invigorating about it. A whisper of nostalgia.

A fondness for those eccentric masters of old.

He could feel, in some small way, a kinship with them. Many times over the course of his life, he had struggled hard in his studies and his work just for the mere opportunity to feel that way. To feel a modicum of worthiness when comparing himself against their incredible legacies.

They’d simply been too great. Too brilliant.

But here and now, despite barely even being able to acknowledge it, he did feel it. Perhaps more strongly than ever, in fact.

The feeling that he was ready. Finally. To match them. To make them proud.

By the time he made it to the tree, he was raring to go. He had a preliminary overview of the suit’s working condition already in his head, in accordance with his last memory of its operation. True, that had been a few days ago, but it was still quite clear to him. As long as nothing had changed with it while he’d been unconscious, everything should have been fine.

Overgrown branches were indeed all over the place, but Abbas just pushed through them without hesitation. Was Worwal enhancing his strength? He wasn’t even sure. Didn’t matter. He reached the armor quickly and set about entering it.

In the past, that had been a point of great difficulty. Laborious and time-consuming. But efficiency had become a priority of late, and in just the past few weeks, he had managed to improve his speed putting it on by over fifty percent.

Hector offered to help him with it, but Abbas refused. It would have been a needless distraction and probably made things go slower.

The donning of the helmet was done last. Allowing it to drill through his skull and into his brain was a sometimes-risky endeavor, rendering him briefly unconscious if he messed it up. Thankfully, that hadn’t happened in a while.