Sobon was ripped from his med­ical bed in or­der to watch an ex­e­cu­tion. It was, to his dis­ap­point­ment, ex­act­ly two ex­e­cu­tions, and nei­ther of them re­spon­si­ble for his mis­ery. It was, ap­par­ent­ly, the cheer­ful guard, and the man in charge of Bar­racks 3 who had sug­gest­ed Sobon be thrown in the pit in­stead of dy­ing wound­ed in the fields. The for­mer was ac­cused of ly­ing, and the lat­ter of dis­obey­ing or­ders.

Af­ter that came a whip­ping "for in­com­pe­tence," of the scribe who had de­scribed him as a bronze half-star, and the oth­er guard who had car­ried him in. The whip­ping was vi­o­lent enough to spray blood into the air so thick­ly as to be vis­i­ble from a dis­tance, and the two were al­lowed to scream un­til they fell un­con­scious. It took a dis­turbing­ly long time to end, even af­ter they clear­ly couldn't feel the wounds any­more.

"Let this be a les­son to you all," the Base Com­man­der said, when the whip­ping was done. Sobon re­al­ized, with a start, that near­ly the whole base had been turned out to watch the dis­ci­pline. "Your lives be­long to the Czar and the Di­a­mond Lord. Dis­ap­point them, or me, at your per­il."

The spir­i­tu­al pres­sure that ac­com­pa­nied his words was, Sobon re­al­ized, its own form of spell, a com­plex cast­ing that wove en­er­gy mixed with emo­tion­al vi­o­lence into the peo­ple who heard it. He re­sist­ed it, flood­ing what lit­tle right-hand aether he had built up through his body, but he could only lessen the im­pact of it.

Then he was picked up and cart­ed back off to the med­ical build­ing, where he was prompt­ly ig­nored for the rest of the day.

To be fair, the med­ical staff were not shirk­ing their du­ties; the bed he had been placed in was in­scribed with a num­ber of glyphs, ones he were sure formed a spell, though he didn't know how to read them. While in the bed, his body healed up far faster than it should have, though it left a sour feel­ing through his spir­it, like the med­ical en­er­gy was also mild­ly tox­ic.

Twice through the rest of the day, Sobon built up enough en­er­gy in his right-hand dy­namo to flood his body and dis­lodge some of the sticky, sick­ly med­ical en­er­gy, but even with that, he felt like it was clog­ging up his spir­it.

At the end the day, fi­nal­ly, an or­der­ly came by and de­ac­ti­vat­ed the field. He stud­ied Sobon, then sniffed, and said, "You'll do." He opened a sack at­tached to his hip, pulled out a mid-size pale root of some kind, and jammed it into Sobon's face, say­ing, "Eat this." And then he van­ished, leav­ing Sobon with the first food he had seen since wak­ing up in this world.

Sobon stud­ied it, de­cid­ed it would prob­a­bly taste aw­ful, and be­gan to slow­ly gnaw on it. He wasn't wrong; it was bit­ter, with a sour­ness to it that al­most seemed metal­lic, and it made him re­gret hav­ing an or­gan­ic body all over again. Still, he ate it, and some of his dizzi­ness went away.

Not long af­ter he fin­ished chew­ing the last of the sour white root, two large sol­diers with spears--both the more pop­u­lous lo­cals--ap­peared in the door and stud­ied him. There was a long awk­ward mo­ment be­fore one guard turned to the oth­er and sim­ply said, with a snarl, "What a mess."

The oth­er guard nod­ded, but slammed the butt of his spear onto the floor. "On your feet," he snarled, and Sobon com­plied. He was pleased to find that the mo­tion didn't leave him feel­ing like any­thing was tear­ing or bleed­ing, or like he was about to fall over, but there was still a per­va­sive feel­ing of weak­ness, a weak­ness that he fig­ured was some com­bi­na­tion of be­ing com­plete­ly out of shape, be­ing near­ly starved, and spend­ing all his his time re­cov­er­ing from be­ing wound­ed.

"Al­right, ro­dent," the more au­thor­i­ta­tive guard said, some­how spit­ting the word, de­spite a lack of hiss­ing sounds. "You're luck­i­er than you de­serve by far. In­stead of be­ing shipped out right away, you'll get a chance to re­cov­er and train. That's in spite of hav­ing near­ly killed off our best sup­ply of meat in this rot­ten town, which if I were in charge, would have had you dis­em­bow­eled alive be­fore be­ing thrown right back in that stink­ing pit."

"Now I may not be in charge of your puny slum-rat arse," he said, step­ping for­ward, and low­er­ing the point of his spear for em­pha­sis, "but I can tell you the train­ers here are every bit as dis­pleased to have the djiang pulling rank and telling us how to deal with our own dis­ci­pline prob­lems, so I'd rec­om­mend you do every­thing in your pa­thet­ic shriv­eled ass's lim­it­ed ca­pa­bil­i­ties to give them no rea­son to even re­mem­ber you ex­ist."

He stepped clos­er, his mouth open­ing in a snarl, and Sobon not­ed ab­sent­ly that his teeth were ugly and rot­ting in his mouth and his breath was hor­ren­dous, black­ened cav­i­ties ob­vi­ous even on the front sur­faces, but he kept tight con­trol, old Ma­rine in­stincts keep­ing him locked up tight.

"Do that, and you might sur­vive to stand in be­tween one of your bet­ters and a star­beast, and maybe die to save the life of some­one ac­tu­al­ly mean­ing­ful to this blight­ed world, or at least save a few of the bloat­ed sheep hud­dled be­hind this ugly wart of a city's walls. Don't... and I promise you I'll be watch­ing as your corpse is fed to the bar­gles. I'll even stab it a few times to make dou­ble sure it's dead."

With that, the sol­dier stepped back­wards, slammed his spear into the ground again, turned, and start­ed to march out. The oth­er sol­dier wait­ed, ges­tur­ing with his spear for Sobon to go ahead of him, and he did, im­me­di­ate­ly hur­ry­ing to march a re­spect­ful dis­tance be­hind the first, and matched his pace.

The med­ical wing was in an un­fa­mil­iar part of the mil­i­tary camp, and Sobon wasn't led any­where fa­mil­iar. In­stead, he was led through a rel­a­tive­ly thin in­ner wall into a sep­a­rate court­yard, where a man with messy short black hair and long black mut­ton chops, and big tufts of hair sprout­ing from his ears, stood at at­ten­tion, wait­ing for him.

Sobon not­ed that the sol­dier in the lead stepped to the left and stopped a good dis­tance away, so he con­tin­ued straight but stopped in line with him. As he sus­pect­ed, the man be­hind him soon ap­peared on his right, also in line.

"This is the blight­ed re­cruit, sar."

Mut­ton­chops' eyes flicked back and forth be­tween the two sol­diers, but then only stared at Sobon for a mo­ment be­fore tak­ing two steps up to the sol­dier in the lead and deck­ing him in the face. Sobon flinched, but wait­ed, and a mo­ment lat­er, in his pe­riph­ery, he not­ed the sol­dier back in line al­most ex­act­ly where he'd been.

"All you lot are in­com­pe­tent," Mut­ton­chops said, sourly. "Garbage, you are, every last one of you. Ought to have you flayed along­side those oth­er bug­gers for it, if I had my way, but they don't let Bil­gs like us de­cide that, do they?" He snort­ed, then looked at the oth­er sol­dier. "Giv­ing you one chance not to get beat­en like your mo­ron friend. What's wrong with this pic­ture, Mukkin?"

The sol­dier on his right tensed, and clear­ly turned to look--if only briefly--but just as Mut­ton­chops start­ed to move, he spit out, al­most at a yell, "Sir, he fell in line... with­out be­ing told, sir?"

"Right, you're in charge of the dis­ci­pline squad for now. Well done." Mut­ton­chops moved di­rect­ly up to Sobon, sneer­ing, and Sobon could smell sev­er­al dif­fer­ent kinds of aw­ful stench soaked into his hair and clothes. "Not met a sin­gle re­cruit, not a one, who didn't think to ei­ther step back or for­ward, out of fear or hate, not save ones who was told what to do by some­one. All I've been told says you're a street rat worth noth­in' and that step up was too de­lib­er­ate to be chance. So tell me," he said, his eyes nar­row­ing into a dan­ger­ous glare, "where'd you learn pro­to­col like that?"

That was a ques­tion Sobon couldn't eas­i­ly an­swer, but he had an in­stinc­tu­al fear that not an­swer­ing--or giv­ing the wrong an­swer--would have him killed as a spy. He felt his body start to stut­ter, and clamped down on his jaw, re­fus­ing to talk un­til he had a thought. The only lie he had, he spat out, not hid­ing his ner­vous­ness. "My mas­ter taught me," he said, still un­sure what that would even im­ply to these peo­ple.

Mut­ton­chops snarled, but stepped back. "Right, pull the oth­er one," he said, sourly. "You're in too poor a shape to have a mas­ter. Ba­sic train­ing will put an­oth­er fifty pounds of mus­cle on you, to say noth­ing of a prop­er diet."

Sobon's thoughts sort­ed through what he'd heard up un­til now. The... guards had said some­thing about learn­ing by be­ing around star beasts, what­ev­er those were, right? That im­plied peo­ple used Aether to learn, more broad­ly, even if he wasn't yet clear on how. "Ah, sir, he just... waved his hand at me, and I knew it. And oth­er things." Mut­ton­chops' eyes nar­rowed, and Sobon con­tin­ued, try­ing to me­thod­i­cal­ly in­vent a plau­si­ble sto­ry. "He seemed sick­ly at the time, and wan­dered off not long af­ter, sir. I can't say I know much about him, or where he is, or why, but it changed a lot of things, sir."

Mut­ton­chops glanced from him to the sol­diers, but his lips curled into a snarl. "So you don't think he's com­ing for you."

"Could hope, sir," Sobon lied, and re­fused to say more.

"Right then, mys­te­ri­ous great mas­ter or what­ev­er, none of my busi­ness, then." Mut­ton­chops con­tin­ued on, look­ing like he was un­af­fect­ed, though Sobon doubt­ed he re­al­ly was. "I'll beat you into shape, and if some crazy old man shows up and pays your ran­som, he'll get a re­cruit with a few mus­cles on him at least. And if not, we'll find some use for you against star­beasts."

"In the mean­time, I only have one oth­er ques­tion for you, re­cruit, and you'd best an­swer prop­er­ly un­less you want to be put through hell for it." Mut­ton­chops fo­cused on him, and he could see a sort of glee­ful in­ten­si­ty in those eyes. "How much con­trol over your qi do you have, and what do you know how to do with it?"

Sobon hes­i­tat­ed. "I have a spe­cial tech­nique, sir," he said, "but I don't un­der­stand it very well."

Mut­ton­chops slipped eas­i­ly back into an at­ten­tion stance and re­mained with his eyes locked on Sobon's. "Show me."

Sobon kept his dy­namos most­ly con­cealed in his spir­it; he didn't trust that a more at­ten­tive qi user wouldn't even­tu­al­ly fig­ure out what he was do­ing. His left and right spikes, though, he man­i­fest­ed in his hands, and he spun the dy­namos slight­ly.

Mut­ton­chops, at least, did fo­cus im­me­di­ate­ly on his hands. "And what do you know how to do with those?"

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"The left one hurts oth­ers, sir, and the right one helps me." That was safe to say.

Mut­ton­chops failed to hide a look of sur­prise, and again, he threw a with­er­ing look at the sol­dier to Sobon's left. "Two forms, then," he said, re­main­ing busi­nesslike. "That's good. Once you have enough of your pos­i­tive qi, it will help with your sta­mi­na train­ing, and we'll work on weaponiz­ing that neg­a­tive qi lat­er on."

"For now, I ex­pect you to run laps around this court­yard un­til you faint. Stop even long enough to breathe or take a piss, and I'll beat you un­con­scious my­self. If I hear a word of com­plaint, I'll beat you. Get in any­one's way, I'll beat you. Feign un­con­scious­ness, and I'll beat you. You do what I say un­til you die." Mut­ton­chops gave him a with­er­ing glare. "Go."

Sobon, af­ter only a mo­ment's hes­i­ta­tion, turned and ran. Mut­ton­chops watched him for only a mo­ment, then be­gan yelling at the sol­diers that had led him here. Sobon was half-in­ter­est­ed in hear­ing them get chewed out, but very quick­ly was forced back to think­ing about his cur­rent predica­ment.

He wasn't dy­ing, now, but this was also def­i­nite­ly the sort of train­ing the Mixed Marines didn't do, be­cause it had long-term costs. Giv­en the train­ing he al­ready had, he could force him­self to do what the train­ing of­fi­cer had told him--he had al­ready done worse to his body when it was more in­jured.

The prob­lem was, the meth­ods were in­tend­ed to in­doc­tri­nate peo­ple--to prove that the train­er knew him bet­ter than he knew him­self. It wasn't on a phys­i­cal or even a psy­cho­log­i­cal lev­el, but a spir­i­tu­al one; if he re­sist­ed the train­ing but thrived, his body would trust the train­ing more than it trust­ed him. For most peo­ple, that was a net pos­i­tive; the train­er re­al­ly did know what peo­ple could take, es­pe­cial­ly paired with a re­gen­er­a­tion bed like he'd just got­ten off of, bet­ter than any com­mon, un­trained per­son.

But Sobon was a Mixed Ma­rine, and these ass­holes didn't even know his name, let alone know what he knew about bi­ol­o­gy, spir­i­tu­al con­va­les­cence, aether dy­nam­ics, or any­thing else. Heck, they hadn't even asked just what oth­er knowl­edge the 'mys­te­ri­ous Great Mas­ter' had giv­en him.

Over and over, though, he just kept com­ing back to the same thought: no­body had asked his name. Not once. Not the pig­head­ed bas­tards that kid­napped him, not the brain­less twat that record­ed his re­cruit­ment, not the Base Com­man­der when he re­al­ized what a mess had come from un­der­es­ti­mat­ing him, not the heal­er, not the guards, and not Mut­ton­chops the train­er. Did they all just as­sume he didn't have one? Or did they not care? Even then, wouldn't they as­sign him one so that he knew when he was be­ing spo­ken to?

Sobon had al­ready made a lap around the court­yard, and all of his limbs were burn­ing, though this time it was less from in­jury and more from ex­haus­tion. He knew that Mut­ton­chops was ex­pect­ing him to stum­ble and fall so he could show up and beat him, just to prove that the next time around, with the fear of abuse haunt­ing his foot­steps, Sobon could go fur­ther.

The prob­lem was, Sobon knew he could go fur­ther. What he need­ed now wasn't for some­one else to take cred­it for prov­ing that; he need­ed to re­build his strength enough to be able to ac­tu­al­ly do this kind of train­ing with­out de­stroy­ing him­self. As it was, Sobon knew his legs would give out be­fore he made an­oth­er two laps, and if he pushed it as hard as the in­struc­tor told him to--in or­der to prove the bas­tard wrong--he might se­ri­ous­ly dam­age some­thing.

Sobon took half a lap to think about it, but de­cid­ed at that point that ma­li­cious com­pli­ance was the only op­tion he re­al­ly had. The in­struc­tor's meth­ods would work if he didn't; he would come to feel like this dis­gust­ing, cor­rupt, evil place was the place that had made him strong, in­stead of the place that had done every­thing in its pow­er to weak­en and de­stroy him.

Do­ing what they said and let­ting it con­tin­ue to de­stroy him would teach his body what he al­ready knew--that he knew bet­ter.

So he ran, and ran. Start­ing af­ter two more laps, his mus­cle fa­tigue be­came al­most too bad to work around, but he fo­cused on oth­er mus­cle groups, fo­cused on breath­ing, changed his pac­ing and his strides, every­thing he had to do in or­der to keep on his feet un­til he ran out of en­er­gy. Five laps af­ter that, Sobon could bare­ly see, the dark­ness creep­ing up around every edge of his con­scious­ness, but since he hadn't passed out, he con­tin­ued to run.

Two laps af­ter that, he had an out of body ex­pe­ri­ence, his spir­it open­ing to the vast and ugly ocean of qi that was the world, and yet some­how, he forced his body not to col­lapse, even as he be­came un­able to see with his eyes or hear with his ears, and he could only bare­ly feel the burn­ing shad­ow of his body as it ran into a wall, legs still pump­ing and arms still swing­ing.

He stared at that ugly qi ocean, and stared, and stared, and he re­al­ized that some­where in­side him, he un­der­stood it. It was a twist­ed form of aether, a mix of sta­t­ic, of left and right spins, and of in and out spins, but noth­ing high­er--at least, noth­ing close enough for him to see. There were strange ed­dies, that might have been resid­ual high­er-di­men­sion­al flows, but noth­ing that looked de­lib­er­ate.

He could do bet­ter. He could form a dy­namo that was at least five-di­men­sion­al, con­sum­ing in and out aether to pro­duce... Sobon couldn't quite place the name of the next spin di­rec­tions. In­verse and be­yond? It didn't mat­ter. He still re­mem­bered vi­su­al­iz­ing five-di­men­sion­al dy­namos, and he was sure he could build one in time.

The vi­sion fad­ed from him, and he saw Mut­ton­chops look­ing down on him, so Sobon strug­gled to his feet, bare­ly able to per­ceive any­thing ex­cept the ring­ing in his ears and the dull out­lines of things in the world around him.

A slap at­tempt­ed to bring him to his sens­es, and Sobon turned to look at Mut­ton­chops, who was glar­ing at him.

He had to read the man's lips, which was dif­fi­cult when he could bare­ly see. "What are you do­ing?" he thought the man said.

"Or­ders," Sobon said, still half-deliri­ous from the hal­lu­ci­na­tion. "I'll be pun­ished if I don't do the wrong thing, so I have to do what I'm told no mat­ter what's right. Train­er's or­ders." And with that, he turned and con­tin­ued run­ning, a glee­ful shiv­er run­ning through his body as it, on a spir­i­tu­al lev­el, ac­cept­ed what he'd said over the un­bear­able non­sense the trai­tor want­ed him to be­lieve.

For whichev­er rea­son, Mut­ton­chops let him go. Sobon didn't so much as turn his head to look, not that he could see much even right in front of him.

The min­utes that passed didn't make sense to Sobon, ei­ther at the time, or when he tried to look back on them. He drift­ed in and out of be­ing able to sense the world's qi sev­er­al times, and he sev­er­al times slammed into the wall, but it made no sense. All he could think about was that he'd said it, and meant it. His body res­onat­ed with that truth, and it echoed through his spir­it.

He'd told the psy­chot­ic mon­ster that he was wrong, and not been beat­en. Mut­ton­chops had thought he was done, but Sobon knew is body bet­ter than the man did. Every­one who was look­ing at him knew it--they didn't un­der­stand how he could do more. He could feel that, when­ev­er his spir­it opened up again.

Idly, Sobon tried to spin up his aether dy­namos just a lit­tle bit faster, only to find that they had be­gun spin­ning on their own. In fact, when he tried to touch them, they burned his mind and slowed, as if his mind was sud­den­ly far too slow to keep up with them.

Was he burn­ing qi--or aether--right now? Or both? He had to be, didn't he? Sobon couldn't think straight, but tried to gath­er his aether, only to find that the two spikes were flares of light, one ra­di­at­ing out­wards from his body, one ra­di­at­ing in­wards, keep­ing him go­ing. Sobon con­sid­ered them as he jogged; that was right, wasn't it? Left aether to pro­tect him, right aether to fuel him.

As he con­tin­ued on, a fig­ure ap­peared in front of him. He al­most dodged out of the way, but then he could see the man in the aether--a shad­ow of a man, over­shad­owed by a large shin­ing spike of what must have been qi, qi that was sil­very but flow­ing, like mer­cury. Sobon squint­ed, try­ing to make out the dy­namo that must have been pow­er­ing that spike, but be­fore he could re­solve any of the de­tails, a hand came out and grabbed him by the face.

"This is the sec­ond time you've been brought to my at­ten­tion, boy," the voice of the Base Com­man­der rat­tled through his spir­it. "And it's be­gin­ning..."

There was a sud­den stretch of si­lence.

"What are you do­ing, boy?"

Sobon, of course, had not been able to move since he had been grabbed, and so the ques­tion made no sense for a long mo­ment.

"You--your spir­it is prepar­ing to break through to Five Bronze Stars lev­el. This..." there was a hiss. "If you do not pre­pare for this break­through, it will de­stroy you. And yet, you should not be at this lev­el. I know you were only at Two Bronze Stars."

Stars this, stars that. Sobon des­per­ate­ly want­ed to sim­ply fall un­con­scious, and he knew that his face must have been twist­ed with dis­gust and rage, but he glanced up one more time at the Com­man­der's own dy­namo, or what­ev­er prim­i­tive thing they had in this world that did the job of one.

It was strange­ly twist­ed, he not­ed. The same dy­namo had parts of it that were left- or right-hand spun, but chaot­i­cal­ly; he was fa­mil­iar with the odd pat­terns of a high­er-di­men­sion­al dy­namo, cy­cling through three-di­men­sion­al space in a way that only looked im­pos­si­ble, but this was noth­ing like that. Per­haps the flows twist­ed through high­er di­men­sions in or­der to have both left- and right-hand twists on the same sin­gle loop of thread, but he couldn't grasp how. Above all, in­stead of a cir­cle, his dy­namo was a four-lobed knot, and Sobon briefly glanced, men­tal­ly, at his own body, in or­der to com­pare the Com­man­der's qi to his own.

He was as­ton­ished to find that his own body had a sim­i­lar knot; in struc­ture, it ap­peared al­most iden­ti­cal, with four twist­ed lobes, though the col­or, tex­ture, and mo­tion of the knots were very dif­fer­ent. As he watched, his own surged re­peat­ed­ly, as though try­ing to twist it­self out of ex­is­tence, the four lobes vi­brat­ing un­nat­u­ral­ly.

His thoughts were too tired and too... fleshy to un­der­stand for a long mo­ment, and it ir­ri­tat­ed him. He knew that he was smarter than this, but the ex­haus­tion, or... some­thing was in­ter­fer­ing. Was it the knot? He doubt­ed it, con­sid­er­ing how hard he'd just been push­ing him­self. He fo­cused on his right-hand aether, press­ing it into his mind to clear his thoughts.

The knot re­belled against the push, and be­gan to desta­bi­lize again.

Oh, I see. It doesn't want to take any more aether. But shouldn't I be out of aether? If I've been us­ing it to keep go­ing?

Sobon was sur­prised when the spir­i­tu­al voice of his pre­de­ces­sor in­ter­rupt­ed, though he hadn't known much on the sub­ject be­fore.

[ Sir... ] It flinched back when his at­ten­tion fo­cused on it. [ Sir, please, the body... qi is not just the pow­er that you wield, but also your abil­i­ty to use it. When you add more, it can de­stroy you. I know I've heard peo­ple say that. ]

Aether was the abil­i­ty to use aether? That didn't mesh with Sobon's un­der­stand­ing, but then, per­haps aether and qi were dif­fer­ent af­ter all. If he sim­ply added aether, then was he adding the abil­i­ty to use more lat­er?

He closed his mind to the out­side world and con­sid­ered the four-lobed knot, and what he knew about aether. It was dif­fi­cult, as he was very near­ly ex­haust­ed, but he knew that there had to be an an­swer. The frus­trat­ing part was, geom­e­try didn't seem to be the an­swer; the knot made no sense to him what­so­ev­er. And the Base Com­man­der... said some­thing about five stars? So he was at four stars now, try­ing to reach five?

Five out of how many max­i­mum? The bas­tard in front of him also had four, so the num­ber couldn't even be all that im­por­tant. It was all so stu­pid. If it had de­vel­oped from two lobes to four, then cer­tain­ly it could just add more lobes around the edges. Maybe it need­ed to be­come four around a cen­tral loop?

In his mind, he worked out the math, and pulled the strands into the right align­ment. For a mo­ment, he thought it felt in­tu­itive­ly right, but then the odd spins of the knot be­gan to fray around one an­oth­er. He pushed and prod­ded at it, try­ing to ad­just where and how the knot dipped into high­er di­men­sions, but they re­sist­ed him.

Come on, he urged his own spir­it, tired­ly. I've al­ready proven I know what I'm do­ing, haven't I?

There was an­oth­er mo­ment of hes­i­ta­tion, and then the knot re­lent­ed, and the four-lobed knot snapped into five lobes. When it did, he felt the cen­tral lobe be­gin to spin, and he grasped it, try­ing to in­tu­itive­ly de­ter­mine which way it was spin­ning and what that would mean.

Be­fore he could de­ter­mine any­thing use­ful, though, the cop­pery col­or of his spir­it sud­den­ly shift­ed to a dull grey, and the knot col­lapsed into a sin­gle loop. Then, sud­den­ly, the loop split in two, start­ed to go fur­ther, and col­lapsed back into two.

"He did it," he heard some­one say, al­though he couldn't tell who or where they were stand­ing, as a wave of ex­haus­tion made it vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble to fo­cus. "And not just five stars. One... no, two Iron stars. How is this pos­si­ble?"

In his mind, Sobon smirked, think­ing that this world had no un­der­stand­ing at all of what was pos­si­ble, be­fore he fi­nal­ly, bless­ed­ly, passed out.