In the time between Floors, the Firebrand made steady progress further toward the outer reaches of Area 1—and closer toward the planet of the Fire Sanctuary.

Of course, although our Floor training was decreased, giving Mewi and I precious time to spend with each other in the virtual space, we both had plenty keeping us busy even aside from the liberation missions. We continued our profession training, Mewi successfully gaining the Tactician profession and advancing his Alchemist profession alongside it, while I was making good progress toward becoming a Grade 3 Chef.

We also kept up with leveling spells. Mewi continued to refine his inclusion of Wind and Space spells in his battle style, while getting those spells up to par with his Water spells. I, on the other hand, partnered with Anna to continue to experiment on how my Qualification might somehow empower my spellcasting on top of also increasing my spells’ levels.

And then of course, there were the continuing public appearances. In stark contrast to me, Mewi had practically become an overnight media darling. And since I was now no longer shirking the same responsibility, we’d concluded together that it wouldn’t be long before enough rumors of our affection for each other would be flying that we wouldn’t take on much additional risk by simply admitting it now. “And I know you want people to stop shipping you with Anna and other such things,” he’d said.

So, we’d each agreed to a tell-all—I went first, giving a one-on-one exclusive interview where I told the whole story. Mewi then appeared on, of all things, the Federation’s currently most popular talk show, giving confirmation and some details from his point of view.

He later explained that he had originally planned to just do an interview as well, but that the show had offered an obscene amount of money to go on with them instead. He wasn’t hurting for money of course, but it had still seemed like a good opportunity, he’d said. And I had to admit, it was definitely in keeping with his burgeoning image as the most personable member of the team.

Just like that, we became Area 1’s premiere power couple. While even in Mewi’s case, people who invited us to fancy parties and things like that accomplished nothing but outing themselves as clueless about the gravity of the situation their Federation was still in, sometimes to the actual detriment of their own clout, the popularity of the Federation Alliance team had substantially increased.

The AFL had gone quiet—a substantial slice of Area 1 had become effectively under their governance by now, and they needed to consolidate their gains.

Of the Rainbow Mage, there was as much sign as there ever was—that is to say, very little. Presumably, he was still working to drive the Kinetice out of the entire Zone containing Erkolls-13 like he claimed. That was more than most knew about his whereabouts. I had to wonder how he went apparently wherever he liked without a trace in such a huge ship.

Less than ten days before we would be able to enter the 7th Floor, Mewi spoke up while we were playing an online multiplayer racing game together. He always smoked me whenever we played any Mario Kart game, and it had turned out the situation with the Tower’s similar racing games was no different. I could still end up at least in the middle of the field most of the time, though, and it was fun to sort of cheer him on from behind.

“It’s coming up on 9 months since you first came to the Tower, right Lheticus?”

“Yeah?”

“Pretty soon another group of people from Earth will arrive from the Tutorial.”

“Well, the Rainbow Mage is there to protect them.”

“No, I mean...do you think anyone we know from back home will arrive at the Tower?”

I exhaled audibly. “I reckon there’s almost no chance. According to the Federation, there are close to 310 million people from Earth in the Tower. Only eight Sectors on Erkolls-13 are ones that Earth humans exit from, that’s 800,000 people every three months. It’s also estimated that...that 75% to 80% of New Summoned from our world die without clearing the Tutorial.

Even if we assume that people we know will be among the survivors, we don’t even know if the Tower will summon the entire population of Earth. Even if it does, by the time I was summoned, it had only worked through about 20% of our full population based on those numbers, and that was in three weeks. When the next group arrives, only four and a half hours will have passed on Earth. The five years we’re contracted to fight and work for Grosstin amounts to barely more than a full day back home. Our Tower-listed lifespans will probably run out before it goes through half.”

I shook my head, no longer able to concentrate on the game. “Of course, it’s possible that another planet will start admitting Earth humans to the Area, maybe another 8 full Sectors. Maybe even more. But even if the Tower does speed up its intake of our population, how will we find out about that?

It’s already a miracle that I entered the Tower just two disappearance cycles after you did, let alone that I was able to find you so quickly. Although, if someone who knows us does want to find us, that fact that we’re so famous in Area 1 should probably help. All we can really do is wait and hope someone reaches out to us.

And I gotta be honest Mewi...I don’t think it’s bloody likely.”

“Hmm...I guess so,” was all Mewi could say.

With three days to go before we were to enter the 7th Floor for the first time, I made a breakthrough in spell research. Early on, Anna had the idea that I should try to genuinely read one of my spell books so that I fully understood the spell, to see if that did anything. This turned out to be much easier said than done, more so than Anna had even expected. I had been rather surprised that the contents of spell books weren’t actually meaningless gibberish in the first place—they were actually sort of like diagrams, of mana lines and pathways through one’s network, things like that.

But in this period of time, I was able to comprehend the spell model for the simplest spell I’d ever owned—Heat Object, the spell that required a single point of Intuition to learn. And when I did, the message I received from the Tower astonished us both:

[Through tireless effort, you have comprehended the spell formula .]

[Congratulations. You have made an exceptional achievement.]

Learned an official spell through one’s own efforts.

+25 AP

Unlimited Spell

Anna was beside herself. She had also been studying an extremely low Intuition spell herself, so that she’d act as a control for the experiment. As we’d suspected, even when she felt she understood the spell fully, she did not achieve the same result, not even gaining the Creation achievement.

We both decided to leave it there for the time being, but after our first visit to the 7th Floor, I’d start learning which only required 2 Intuition, and that I’d also raised to Level 10, to see if Unlimited meant I could raise the level further on top of being able to completely control the Mana cost and intensity of an Unlimited spell.

Bruzigan, Ri’legh, and Arvallei’s time over the month seemed to have been fruitful as well, since the entire team was in high spirits as we met up once more at a Dimensional Gate to enter the 7th Floor.