Hector did not become friends with Miriam and Liam. As days become weeks, they began to avoid him. He didn't mind the ostracism. Though he respected the fact that the Arahant Savants were fighting for the same cause as him, he wasn't interested in participating in the nihilistic sarcasm they used as a coping mechanism.

Besides, he had plenty to do during his down time. He was training his aura obsessively. Doing it for shorter five minute sessions reduced the strain enough that he didn't have to worry about being too sore to use it as a barrier. The Reverse Priming Technique didn't waste cosmic energy, so it was free to train from that perspective.

He continued his frustrating efforts with the sensitization training as well. There were actually signs that it might be helping him. So far those positive developments were in the form of increasing the range he could sense. That was good and should be celebrated, even if his main goal had been to get better at zooming in to observe on a finer scale. So far he could see no improvement in that aspect.

When they reached the end of the coastal towns, the platoon turned inland. Their troop transport, until now put to work ferrying ammunition and wounded soldiers, began carrying them to hot spots where they would clear out infestations.

The Jinn didn't socialize with Hector, but he noticed that they gave him subdued nods of respect in the line for chow or when they would sleep in shifts. They weren't effusive in expressing their appreciation, but their restraint made the gestures more meaningful. Hector returned the respect in kind, finding an unspoken bond forming with the men and women whose names he never bothered to learn.

Towards the end of their time on that world, Hector witnessed an awe-inspiring sight.

War Barge Elliott floated near an immense, angry red rift and fired a blinding white schism beam. Monsters contacted by that beam ripped apart. Owing to the way that the rotating beam of spacetime pulled things towards its line, there were a great many monsters brought in contact with it. It was like a black hole had been stretched out into a long line and then had its color inverted.

Where it came in contact with the rift, space reasserted itself in a messy battle that erased the rift from existence. A riot of colors and textures assaulted the eyes of witnesses as each pass of the schism beam broke the rift into smaller and smaller segments. Until space healed itself by squeezing shut the gashes leading to primordial chaos.

Hector returned to serving under the Lord General not long after that as it was time to move on. A world had been saved from what command rated a class three incursion. The specifics of the Jinn rating system weren't clear to anyone Hector spoke to, but apparently three was more than most unempowered worlds could handle without outside assistance. They had literally saved a world. Though his contributions hadn't been large in the scope of the overall operation, Hector felt inordinately satisfied to have been a part of it.

The Lord General only commented that there had been no noteworthy battles before turning towards his next favorite topic: training. "I'm going to have you follow Elliott to our next destination in your transit sphere. One of my porters will go with you to make sure you don't get lost."

The woman assigned gave him more information. "Jinn are easy to follow. They stretch space through the primordial. It's like a giant needle between two universes. The Lord General might have you follow an Arahant gate some day. Those are a lot harder."

While the fleet of Jinn vessels was crowding into Elliott's singularity, Hector left in his transit sphere. As he'd read in the manual written by the Lord General, Hector took a few minutes to acclimate to the new environment before moving. Detecting the path of Elliott was not hard in the least. Once his externality grew accustomed to the sensations, like eyes adjusting to the dark, he realized he was quite close to an unusual structure that appeared alien to everything else.

"Wow, that is really obvious. What stops miasma from attacking the singularity?"

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The woman in his sphere with him didn't have an answer. "Do I look like a Jinn lover to you?"

"It's dark in here, so I'm not sure."

"I'm not a Jinn lover."

It took a moment for him to figure out the direction of travel. The rather simple trick of it was to not go to the world he'd just left. Fortunately he worked that out before needing to ask his grumpy passenger a dumb question. They appeared not far from the exit point of the singularity.

That would have been much more impressive if Jinn vessels didn't make their path between universes from the vacuum of space. The opening of his weld evacuated all the air from his sphere and the only reason they weren't shot free was because they both instinctively used their domains to steady themselves. Hector felt his breath escape his lungs as the brilliant light of a sun unfiltered by atmosphere blinded him. The porter assigned to him was jerking about in a panic as if she was dying. Hector would have made a snarky comment about her being a baby if he could speak.

Instead he looped a cable around the woman to prevent her from floating away and summoned his sphere again. They did a quick hop down to the surface. The opening of his weld blasted them with air. The porter glared at him. "Are you stupid?"

"If the Jinn can survive coming out there, why couldn't we?"

The woman ground her teeth but didn't give a response. She'd been defeated by an appeal to her own bigotry. It was a satisfying victory for Hector. Though other Xian mocked him as 'the space porter' for a few days afterwards, so maybe the woman assumed herself vindicated.

The technology level on this world was non-existent. The locals were using knapped rocks as knives and literally worshiped the Coalition Army as gods. Ironically, this primitive world faced a far worse incursion. Instead of a geographically isolated event, rifts tore open around the entire globe. The Lord General assigned Hector to work with a team headed by a level nine subordinate of his.

Serving as that team's porter, Hector saw very little combat. Well, he saw a lot of combat. He didn't have a chance to participate. Chaos bolts demonstrated their combat superiority once more. Though he wished to be more actively contributing to the cause, Hector took comfort in the fact that his team was ridiculously good at killing monsters.

His ample free time was put towards his training. Hector managed to cultivate enough energy while watching his team in action to justify a single session of the Sweaty Fire Technique a day. Otherwise, he focused on training his aura and mental sense.

After two weeks the Jinn bombed that world out of existence with antimatter munitions. They'd won every individual battle until the war was lost. As Hector watched the destruction of a pristine planet from above, he hoped for a better outcome on the next world. The Xian descended to the surface while War Barge Elliott left through a singularity.

The Lord General stared at the wall of clouds in the distance that would be heralding a nuclear winter for anything that hadn't already been killed by the initial blasts or release of radiation. "It's hard to accept that the Jinn can kill entire worlds while we cannot," he finally said.

Hector gave some inane words of lackluster agreement. He often forgot who Thrakkar Shaocheth really was. The man might currently be a benefactor and mentor, but he was a man who did not understand the distinction between good and evil. For the Lord General, might was good and weakness was bad. The only evil that existed was whatever he declared his enemy.

At this point in time, the Lord General's enemies were monsters. That didn't mean he became a good man. He was still the creature who would invade worlds for fun and castrate babies to punish parents. His viciousness was only momentarily pointed in an acceptable direction.

How the hell had Zara come from such a horrible human being?

The Lord General had everyone enter his sphere and they began their journey to the next world. Not long into their journey, however, something happened. Hector couldn't know what transpired from within someone else's sphere, but the Lord General had begun to curse, his voice holding an edge of panic that caused everyone close to stiffen.

As they entered a new world, a sweat-covered Thrakkar Shaocheth collapsed to his knees.

None of his retinue seemed inclined to push for answers, so Hector stepped up. "Master Thrakkar? What happened?"

The Lord General shook his head. "I hardly know, Hector. If I didn't know better, I would swear that a new unempowered world spawned into existence as we passed by. What I can tell you is that all of us are lucky to still live."

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