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For this reason, Raul was about ten months older than his brothers as a servant. Considerable time had been needed for him to not only manifest his ability, but also to develop it to a perceptible and manipulable degree, because for quite a while, Raul's ability to alter friction had been extremely weak and difficult to use.

And living a life of relative isolation in Luzo, not venturing out into the world very often at all, Raul had thus far found no opportunities to achieve emergence. He couldn't even imagine what that might feel like.

But in the end, the elders of House Blackburn agreed that this could one day become a remarkable power. It was an alteration-type, after all.

Unfortunately, even now, Raul wasn't sure when that day would be. The rarity of this power meant that no one in the House could instruct them in its usage. Alteration-types were usually like that, apparently. Unless you had a teacher with the same or very similar ability, learning to hone it was quite a slow process. In fact, for those first few years, some debate persisted among the House's reapers about whether their ability truly was friction and not something else, like particle vibrations or pressure manipulation or even gravity control.

This was also why the Triplets had been able to go on that camping trip with Ismael. Raul hadn't realized until relatively recently just how much special treatment he and his brothers had been given over the years. Even this very mission, dangerous though it was, might qualify as an example.

It seemed clear to him now why there had been tension between Ismael and his father Lucio--as well as between Lucio and some of the House's other non-servant parents. The man had been sandwiched between abnormally high expectations from his elders and quiet resentment from his peers.

No doubt, that turmoil had influenced how Lucio had treated his sons.