A world in which things could make themselves be forgotten out of existence. It was as fascinating as it was terrifying. Through the scrolls he read, Dallion became fully aware of the real difference between nobility and the normal awakened. Based on Earth’s history, he had assumed nobility to be a status granting them power. In effect it was very much the opposite—the title was a representation of the person’s power. Being a count pretty much guaranteed the person was the strongest in the county and, more importantly, controlled the entire area.

The entire reason Aspion had become chief of Dallion’s village was because he was the strongest awakened there after Dallion’s grandfather—a fact that would have been nice to know before Dallion actually challenged him. Looking back, Dallion had been extremely lucky since he had gotten the village chief angry, to the point of making a mistake. Under normal circumstances the fight would have been a foregone conclusion and Dallion’s awakened powers would have been sealed.

Nerosal, as Dallion had learned from the library echo, was controlled by Countess Priscord herself, despite not being the province capital. That meant that most of the day-to-day activities had been delegated to the City’s Lord—Baron Melias the Third. It could be assumed that he was the one who determined the rules of the city area, although couldn’t go overboard less it be seen as a challenge to the countess.

“What about houses?” Dallion asked. “Can their owners affect everything inside?”

The echo looked at Dallion, his expression overflowing with disappointment, then just sighed.

“Yes, that’s where the phrase ‘king of my castle’ comes from. That is your area and as long as you don’t create too much chaos, you’ll be allowed to do whatever you want. However—” the echo went up to Dallion and tidies the books on the desk— “it’s a bit early to think about area effects. As tempting as it is, it’s never a good idea to start running before you can walk. You’ve been extremely lucky so far, but luck never lasts. The trick is to obtain enough experience before your luck runs out.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Dallion nodded. “So what do you recommend I read now? I finished the Treatment of the Seven Moons… as much as I could read of it, anyway.” It would have been more correct to name the scroll the “Treatment of the Five Moons and a mention of two more.”

“You did ask to learn the basics of attack, guard, and music skills.” The echo looked at the many tomes gathered on the desk. “Or did you change your mind again?”

“That’s true, but I wanted to know your thoughts. What do you think I should continue with? Gaps in knowledge, remember?”

“Oh, err…” The echo paused, almost uncertain of the request. Dallion was getting the feeling that, despite his previous experience, echoes were more like assistants. This one, despite having the knowledge of a guild captain, acted very much like an English butler. “I’m glad that you would ask. To be honest, your choices aren’t all bad. The best way to learn to use your skills is to read up on them, however, there is one step that awakened consistently skip, to their downfall, in my opinion.”

“Please, tell me.” Dallion smiled.

Part of him hoped that the echo would reveal some ancient forgotten secret that would give him a vast advantage. Instead, Nil went off to a section of the library, then returned with another scroll, this one much thinner than the first. Looking at the ribbon wrapping the scroll, Dallion could read “House of the Twelve Suns.”

“What’s this?” Dallion asked. It sounded somewhat similar to the name of the first scroll.

“As you’ve already seen, the Seven Moons’ influence every aspect of life and society in this world and all awakened realms. However, there’s another factor of vital importance. The twelve suns, as they were sometimes referred to, aren’t deities, nor do they have such an impact as the moons, yet for the awakened they are no less vital.”

Dallion kept nodding, waiting for the echo to get to the good part. In terms of presentation, the old man definitely had him hooked. At the same time, the echo kept looking expectantly at Dallion.

“Can you venture a guess?” Nil asked at last.

“Err… zodiac signs?” Dallion suggested. After all, suns were stars and stars formed zodiac signs, and at least on Earth there were twelve zodiac signs.

The echo didn’t say a word. For several seconds he stood there speechless, then crossed his arms.

“You surprise me, Dal. All this time, I thought you were a muscle head and then you suddenly surprise me with such insight. Yes, you are correct, the twelve suns are also represented by the constellations, although they were originally called suns. Some philosophers and theologists even speculate that all stars we see today originated from these twelve suns. However, that’s a discussion for another time.” The echo waved his hand. “What’s relevant for you is that the twelve suns represent the twelve skill groups an awakened could have.”

Wow, Dallion thought. This definitely was big. Back in the village, his grandfather had told him that there were a number of skills, some rarer than others. Up to now Dallion thought that there were dozens of skills, if not hundreds. Learning that there were twelve was both fascinating and anticlimactic.

“Only twelve skills?” he asked, somewhat disappointed.

“Twelve skill groups,” the echo corrected. “There are only twenty-seven letters in the alphabet. Is that any indication how many words exist?”

“I guess not…”

Still, twelve skills sounded ridiculously low. That means that Dallion had already learned a quarter of all known skills. Well, granted that his mastery of music wasn’t particularly good, and he had only learned how to use two weapons and a half.

“Take your harpsisword, for example,” Nil went on. “Have you mastered it? You have capped your attack skills, haven’t you? In that case, why can’t you take full advantage of it in battle? Same goes for your dartbow.”

“So you’re saying each skill has hundreds of subskills?”

The echo rolled his eyes.

“And just when I was thinking you were showing progress…” he sighed. “No, the skills are what grants you the ability to learn faster. That’s why they are called “suns”—like the moons, only less impactful. You don’t have to be an awakened to learn how to use a sword. The difference is that it will take you decades to achieve what an awakened can in days, and I’m not talking about real world time. The markers, the flexibility granted to your body, all that comes from the skills.”

Interesting premise. Dallion had never thought about it. Good thing he had asked the echo for his advice. As game skill trees had taught Dallion, it was always better to have the full picture before spending skills points. From what he had seen so far, acquiring skills in this world as an extremely difficult process, it would be wise to know what to take once he got the opportunity. Before he could open the scroll, Dallion’s stomach gurgled.

Immediately Dallion straightened up. Despite being alone with an echo, this felt as embarrassing as farting in public.

“Another piece of advice, you’re free to ignore, is not to spend all your time here. While real time is frozen, your hunger isn’t. Often the body can’t tell the difference.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” As tempted as Dallion was to crack the scroll open, that could wait a bit. “I’ll be back later.”

“Very well. And one last piece of advice, before you go. Don’t spend all your time locked up here. It’s friends and acquaintances that drive us to greatness. Neglect them too much and they’ll let you down when you need them the most.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.” Dallion left the library ring.

Next thing he knew, he was back in his room at the inn. He felt quite exhausted. The hours spent in the trial and the ones in the library had drained him so much that he could barely keep his eyes open.

I really need to find a better schedule, Dallion told himself. Maybe once he finished the scroll of the suns, he’d asl Nil for some life coach guides.

With a yawn, Dallion dragged himself a few steps forward, then collapsed on the bed.

Just a few minutes, he told himself. After that I’ll go down and have a second breakfast. A moment later he opened his eyes again to see a very annoyed Hannah standing over him.

“You’re finally awake,” she said, letting go of his shoulders.

“What happened?” Dallion jumped up.

“Lunch started ten minutes ago. That happened!” the woman snapped at him. “Around here punctuality is a must, not a nice to have.” Hannah gave him a critical look. “And you slept in your clothes, too. Better mend them into shape.”

“Huh?”

“The wrinkles. You’re not serving customers looking like that! Go ahead, fix them.”

That was among the most unusual requests Dallion had heard, but seeing the vein bulging on the side of Hannah’s forehead, he decided it wasn’t a good idea to argue. He stood up, then one by one awakened and straightened all his clothes.

That turned out to be surprisingly efficient. If he had that back home, he wouldn’t have had to learn to iron—he could have just used the clothes’ labyrinths to remove all wrinkles. A pity the same didn’t work on washing.

“Better,” Hannah said once he had finished. “Now, I’m aware this was a traumatic day for you, but that can’t be an excuse to not do your job.”

Traumatic? Word of his failure had definitely spread fast. With so many eyes on him, it could be no different. Hopefully, Vend was right and this would allow him to step out of the limelight somewhat.

“It won’t happen again,” Dallion said in his practiced Earth acquired routine. “I’ll be more responsible from now on.”

Back on Earth, his mother would laugh at such a claim. Hannah, though, looked at him with a serious expression and nodded. Were people in this world so trusting? From what he had seen, it was entirely possible. After all, awakened had little use of lying—they had a variety of means to achieve the outcome they wanted without resorting to lies.

“Well, come along, then.” Hannah urged. “There’s a crowd waiting downstairs. Also, Aspan has some food for you. Mend a few things, then dig in. I’ve already told him to have seconds ready.”

It turned out that Hannah wasn’t exaggerating. The place was practically packed. A lot of the faces Dallion recognized from a few days ago. Quite a few were new and, thankfully, there weren’t any awakened he could spot.

Flashing his best smile, Dallion started going about. The mending instances had drastically gone down since yesterday, while the improvement requests had increased. Hannah quickly made it known that he would only be doing three at most—which was a lot, considering six improvements had been his daily limit until this morning. Still, it was good practice, and good money, so he got to it.

First, he started with the mending. With two exceptions, most requests were of items the patrons had brought with them. From what he managed to learn from Hannah, having a registered awakened on staff allowed the inn to perform minor external mending and improvements as long as they didn’t go over certain limits.

Nearly always, the issue was a minor crack or scar of a valued item—things too insignificant to go to a mending store and impossible to fix otherwise. After mending two pen knives, one chipped vase, and two torn books, Dallion took a pause to have some food. Aspan, the inn’s resident cook, had outdone himself as always. The dish tasted more than wonderful and was enough to fill Dallion up in a few minutes. Unfortunately, Jiroh’s absence also meant that once he had finished eating he had to help out with serving food as well.

A few hours later, lunch was over. The majority of the crowd had gone off, leaving only a few regulars behind, and Dallion could enjoy his second meal, this time accompanied by Hannah. All in all, he had mended over thirty items and improved three, thus maxing out his music skills.

“By the way,” Dallion said between bites. “Am I the only one staying here? So far I haven’t seen any other guests.”

“It’s not the season. And since I’m not near the main gates, I have to make a living by selling food.”

That was a somewhat questionable business plan, but Dallion wasn’t a business guru, either. What he could see was that he had increased the money flow quite a lot since coming here. No wonder Hannah had hired him so readily once he had passed her test.

“Jiroh lives here as well, just not in the guest area,” the woman said after a while.

“Same arrangement as me?”

“Something like that.” Hannah allowed herself a faint smile. “The first decent employee I got.”

“And not me?” Dallion laughed. Originally, he meant it as a joke, but judging by Hannah’s sobering expression, she had taken it seriously.

“You’re an awakened. People like you come and go without warning. I’ve had temps who are now knights. That’s the nature of things. You come here when you need a place to stay, then when you get what life offers, you move on leaving the inn behind. The same will happen to you.”

“That’s a dark way to look at things.”

“It always happens. Sooner or later, you’ll have the power of the universe within grasp. Do you think a simple tavern will be able to hold you then?”

Dallion didn’t answer.