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"I thought it was the same for all of you, but apparently not." Lynnette held up her half-gauntled hand, though it was currently somewhat concealed beneath a glove. "I can only imagine that this thing somehow interfered with Hanton's abilities."

Hector stared at her in disbelief.

Everyone else was apparently speechless as well.

She took the opening to keep talking. "Honestly, is it so difficult to believe? This is Hector we're talking about. Do you think he'd make something like that up?"

Diego tried to scratch his neck, but his armor was in the way. "Er... hmm."

Hector was grateful for his own armor as he felt his face grow hot with embarrassment.

"In that case, I should very much like to meet Hanton again," said King William. As he spoke, however, his gaze continued to search up and down at his own armor. He hadn't actually mentioned anything about it yet, but he seemed somewhat transfixed by the suit Hector had made for him.

"Well, he said he would drop by Warrenhold soon," said Hector.

The King perked up at that. "Ah, is that so? Then perhaps I have reason to extend my stay again!"

Hector could hear Lynn sighing inside her helmet.


Chapter Two Hundred Fifteen: 'O, flittering interloper...'
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It felt good to fly. The wind beneath her wings was the most natural thing in the world. She could hardly believe that her siblings used to fear this so much when they were younger. Birds afraid of flying? How absurd.

No doubt, it had been due to the consistently terrifying stories that their father used to tell them about... well, everything. He'd obviously been trying to instill a wariness of the outside world in his children.

And Pauline Gaolanet couldn't help resenting him a little for that. He'd always made her out to be the troublemaker of the group, but to her mind, she was the only normal one in the family. Living in constant fear--that was abnormal.

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Perhaps it would be best to recall that team and send them somewhere else. It was a shame that so much time will have been wasted, but it was better safe than sorry.

The biggest worry of all was no doubt if Atreya would somehow get drawn into this larger conflict. At the moment, that didn't seem likely, since there were only nine nations involved in total, but Hector had a feeling that more would be joining in soon. He didn't consider himself to be very knowledgeable when it came to geopolitics, but he doubted that all the other countries in each region were just going to sit back and watch.

'...H-Hector?' came a silent and familiar voice.

'Garovel,' he said calmly. 'Welcome back.'

'What... what the hell happened?'

Before Hector could even answer, the others all began to stir as well. He didn't annihilate all of his iron immediately, but he did bring the orbiting to an end and made holes for the reapers to let them out. He wasn't sure if they would feel safer inside their iron confines, so he felt that this was a decent compromise.

As expected, everyone was terribly confused.

And Hector, being the only one who could explain, did not have a very easy time of it.

"What in lakefire are you talking about?" said Diego Redwater.

"Check your phones. News of the war is all over the internet."

"H-hold on," said Diego. "I mean, that's--agh, that's insane, too, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around the part where you met a giant telepathic bird."

Hector sighed. "I know how it sounds. But that's why you have a gap in your memories, and that's why you're wearing armor, right now. I made it and infused it with my soul in order to shield your minds from him. The effects took a while to wear off."

'And where is this Sparrow now?' said Diego's reaper, Yangèra.

Hector did his best to explain again.

This continued for a bit longer, with even the reapers apparently having trouble understanding what he was saying, until at length, Lynnette chimed in.

"He's telling the truth," she said. "I remember as well. I couldn't speak or move, but I saw and heard everything just as Hector did."

Wait, what?

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The Sunsmith. The most powerful man in Sair now. Hector had briefly met him, of course, having witnessed him take down the Salesman of Death single-handedly with that crazy suit of mechanized armor.

Was Abolish really attacking again so soon, though? Even after losing Ivan?

Oh, wait, perhaps it was precisely because they'd lost Ivan. They probably wanted to get him back, didn't they? And it certainly made sense to attack while the Rainlords were gone.

Aw, fuck, Ivan being set free was the last thing he wanted to imagine, right now. The conversation he'd had with the Salesman of Death was still burned into his mind, and somehow, he doubted that Ivan would just forget about him and leave him alone.

Hector had already intended to keep a close eye on Sair moving forward, but now that seemed more important than ever.

Honestly, though, after what he'd seen Abbas do, Hector was fairly confident that the Sandlords would kick the shit out of Abolish. And with the Vanguard there as well? According to Asad, the one they called Iceheart was in charge of operations in Sair right now, and while Hector didn't know much about him, he knew that the guy was a Field Marshal.

Hector might've liked to meet him, but supposedly he was some kind of ultra hardass. What would you expect from someone named Iceheart, though?

As he mulled the news over again in his head, he began to wonder if he shouldn't actually be more concerned about the war between Vantalay and Czacoa.

One of the treasure hunting teams that they'd dispatched from Warrenhold had been sent to Ridgemark, a coastal city in Vantalay. According to their early reports, they hadn't made any progress in tracking their target artifact down, and a war certainly wasn't going to make it any easier for them.