Bruzigan held up his hand before I could interject. “You probably want to ask, why you. The answer is related to the nature of the Sanctuaries. As you know, each Sanctuary exemplifies a single element or force. Only a challenger with great skill and strength in that element or force can hope to even enter a Sanctuary.

And even if more than one such person is found, only one person can enter a Sanctuary to activate or shut it down. Lheticus, you’ve proven yourself repeatedly as the best among us at operating alone. Not to mention, you already possess a Memory Gem.”

I nodded in realization. “You want me to be the vanguard of our efforts to reactivate the Sanctuaries. To give the Federation a positive result, something for them to point to to say ‘hey look, we’re getting the situation under control, the safe zones are going to come back!’ and to give the rest of the team critical intel on what the process of restoring a Sanctuary is really like.”

“Exactly. Hopefully this way, we can placate the masses and buy us more time as well as information, which we can use to improve our preparations for the rest of the Sanctuaries.

I won’t lie to you, Lheticus. I don’t think the danger I’m asking you to head into will be ordinary, even compared to Extreme Floor missions. It would be beyond the pale to order you to do this.

But sticking to the original plan will be risky, too. So I’ll ask you: will you accept this mission, Lheticus?”

I stood there, silent. I didn’t know for how long. What Bruzigan was asking me to do definitely scared me. I weighed the options, and spoke.

“I told you guys from the start that I didn’t join to play superhero.” I looked at each one of them in turn, until I landed back on Bruzigan. “I told you just lately that I trust this team with my life, but that I’d still need to trust you more to discuss certain things. The significance isn’t lost on me that leaving a mission like this to me fits the bill of you trusting me with more than your life.

And it does strike me that we’ll have a much better chance of success if not all of us go into the Sanctuaries blind.

I accept.”

Bruzigan held out his hand for me to shake...which turned out to be a fakeout, as he pulled me in closer and gave me a hearty slap on the back instead. “Dude, what the heck?!” I exclaimed—only out of reflex, though. My Resilience was high enough now that I didn’t actually get hurt or even get shoved forward.

He laughed. “Now get out of here and start up the totem, then come straight back. We still have a lot to cover for the 6th Floor before we can even reach the 7th.”

He wasn’t kidding. The whole team’s training regimen reached truly intense levels once again—we had to adjust and expand almost everything about how we fought as a team, based on Mewi’s new abilities. Not to mention, Edwin sounded like he was going to have a heart attack when he learned about all the new spells Mewi would need.

On top of that, it seemed like the 6th Floor was going to be way worse than the 5th. That Floor had been pretty nice until it wasn’t. This one looked like it was going be basically hell all the way through.

It was also the Tower’s introduction to scenarios in which challengers would be placed on opposing sides in a large-scale war. Challengers would enter as members of one of three nations, a trio with a rivalry going back centuries that erupted into war quite often.

And this time, challengers would only have 3 days before it erupted once again. Beyond that, there wasn’t a lot you could determine before you actually entered the Floor—which side started the war and why was random, as were a great number of small details, and of course, once things moved along enough that the challengers started genuinely affecting things, which usually didn’t take long, it got even messier.

And of course on top of a much stricter Floor preparation regimen than last month, I had more spell grinding, profession training, Power of Imagination experiments in successfully turning Lesser Immolate into this “pseudo-spell” thing (not that Anna, who joined me for those, knew they were Power of Imagination experiments,) and of course as many liberation missions as the Firebrand’s fleet could fit in, my memories of having free time once again began to feel like they’d been a fever dream.

Of course, when I finally succeeded, after countless tweaks of the ratio of mana to actual flame, it turned out very worth it.

[Congratulations. You have made an exceptional achievement.]

Description: Created a pseudo-spell without assistance.

+10 AP

You can now cast 2nd Circle spell: Immolate

Level 1

Searing flames form directly on the target, engulfing a human-sized enemy in fire, dealing (1,154 + 10% Magic Power) damage. The flames persist after casting, dealing (190 + 5% Magic Power) damage/s for 3 seconds.

Upgrade of 1st Circle Fire Spell: Lesser Immolate

Casting Time: 11 seconds

Duration: 3 seconds

Cooldown: 33 seconds

Mana Cost: 671

“What’s wrong? We did it, Anna! I thought you’d be more excited. I mean,” I said, getting a little worried as she was clearly now making an effort to seem happier, “this is a big deal, not a single spell book exists in the Area for spells other than 1st Circle.”

“I know, I know, it’s just...strange. I wanted to do this because at one point, I asked my father for more details about the family’s founder. One of the things he said was that no one was really sure how creating the pseudo-spell allowed him to do so many other incredible things with magic after. But in an old journal of his first son’s, his inheritor, it mentioned that when his son asked him the same thing, all he would say was that the Tower’s reward for making his pseudo-spell was very special.

But here we actually managed to duplicate his feat, and all you got was a few AP and the proper version of the spell. It doesn’t make any sense. I really hoped to discover the founder’s secret...”

“Huh, you’re right, that is weird.” I felt like something wasn’t clicking, but I ignored it. “I guess for the rest of this session I’ll get to know the new spell, then focus on leveling it up in the next few such grinding sessions—”

And then it clicked. Could it be that thing?