Samuel Barker was a solo Tier 10 delver on The Path. He was only a few years older than them, and intended to participate in the same tournament they were going to.
For a normal Pather team, delving up a single Tier wasn’t unusual. Samuel was a solo delver though, which made things more interesting.
He and Matt met by chance at a tactics class, and they learned that they had quite a few similarities. A friendship quickly blossomed. Both were tragically orphaned by rift breaks, though Samuel’s planet managed to handle the situation after the first break. The local noble also stepped up to ensure that the orphaned survivors were well taken care of.
Unlike Matt, he had been scouted for his Talent, which let him turn most skills into variant summons.
Both he and Liz were fascinated by the
