I explained to him about the egg, how it shouldn’t be allowed to languish in my storage for long. “...I see,” said Edwin, “I’ll make the arrangements as soon as I’m able. There should be a suitably equipped facility in the HQ. As soon as I’m done with the press, I’ll head straight there to oversee this personally—forget what I said about a handler. Now get to the HQ and lay low.”

Edwin paused for a moment more. “And...Lheticus?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for everything you’ve done. Let alone I, the entire Federation owes you a great deal of thanks. If you and Mewi hadn’t showed up, it’s doubtful the elite alliance team would have even gotten off the ground, let alone been able to form liberation fleets and begin restoring the Sanctuaries so quickly.”

“Yeah, funny that,” I said, thinking once again of the fact that it was really the Rainbow Mage who motivated me to reach the heights I had.

And that in another timeline, another lifetime, Edwin’s speculation was likely cold, cruel fact.

“Anyway, I need to update the general. We’ll speak again soon.”

“Indeed. Thank you once again, Lheticus.”

I contacted Karl again, telling him I got through to Edwin and would be laying low per his orders. “And what’s next for the fleet?” he asked, “We’ve completed our primary mission, but there’s still a lot of Kinetice out there, not to mention the AFL.”

“Of course, we’ll continue liberation missions,” I said, thinking, “but otherwise...it’d be an idea to plot our route to eventually rendezvous with another Liberation Fleet. I have to think the Federation took a lot of casualties getting me to Magnos’ surface, even with Marshal Varstithon backing us up.”

“The Firebrand’s firepower, not to mention your own, would certainly be of help for the next such mission. Very well, I’ll see to it.”

“I’ll contact you again to let you know when I’m returning to the fleet.”

“Understood, sir. Was there anything else?”

“Only...thank you for everything you and the fleet have done. Edwin said the entire Federation owes me gratitude—I can’t imagine that not applying to you too.”

Karl only grunted. “Lheticus out.”

The elevator was located on the only side of the inner square that didn’t lead to another room with statues. There was no floor selection screen inside. Instead, when I got in, once the doors closed it moved smoothly enough that I couldn’t tell whether it was going up or down. I had to assume it went down though, because I emerged from one of the only technically not innumerable elevators in the Pantheon’s Outer Atrium.

The Outer Atrium wasn’t a proper atrium at all—rather it was the much less high-ceilinged, yet not much less large area just inside the Pantheon. It encircled a cavernous space, at the epicenter of which was the tower that was the Floor Exit of Area 1, known as the Inner Atrium.

And everywhere all around, not just on this ground floor but throughout the entire, massive Pantheon, were statues of challengers past, and people of prominence, or at least importance, in various factions and Federation government offices. It was as though the Pantheon itself was its own city, a habitat where statue-people and people made of flesh and bone peacefully coexisted.

Mostly because it was apparently impossible to damage or even move the statues, and it wasn’t as though the statues could do anything to the people. But it was still quite a sight—one that I’d never really stopped and taken in at all before. I’d always had my mind on the next step of training, the preparations for the next Floor mission, the next set of experiments with my own abilities that I wanted to run, Power of Imagination or otherwise, the next system the fleet was slated to liberate.

Actually, finally restoring the Fire Sanctuary had seemed so far off in the future. And with the sheer hours I’d put in in the virtual space under x20 time dilation, in a very real way it had been an incredibly long time since the safe zones had first disappeared. But in Area 1 time, it hadn’t even been a year.

All at once, the sheer gravity of everything I’d accomplished so far finally hit me, leaving me stock still for a minute. But as I started attracting stares, being the only non-statue nearby who wasn’t on the move, they brought me back to reality. If I gave anyone long enough to figure out who I was, there would be no end of trouble.

After a few minutes of blending myself in better to the continuous throng, I realized that I didn’t actually know where Grosstin’s offices were. As their representative in the elite alliance team, I’d have automatic access to at least the overall HQ without ever having been there, but again—I hadn’t ever been.

Eventually, my wanderings brought me near to one of the ten evenly spaced main entrances to the pantheon—and I was grateful to spot what appeared at distance to be information terminal kiosks. A minute later, I confirmed my speculation and quickly worked out how to run a search for Grosstin’s office:

“Okay, so they’re basically all of Section 26, and this is...Section 70. Oh my gosh, it’s almost at the exact opposite side of the Pantheon...”

Thankfully, also at each main entrance were stations for automated tram services. The service had 2 lines: One that ran to and from the base of the Floor Exit to the ten entrances, and one that circumnavigated the Outer Atrium.

I had only ever rode the Pantheon trams once—when I had left the 1st Floor and gone with Edwin to Dille’s Garden, an encounter that had since led to so much. Every other time, I had left the Pantheon on foot, mostly due to impatience. That line was packed every single hour, day and night, with victorious, exhausted challengers returning from the Floor Exit. The process of getting a ticket to go from the Floor Exit to a Pantheon Entrance was less a line and more of a continual auction. Often there was a line to get into the auction where tickets were actually sold. As the leader of one of the most prominent factions in the Area, Edwin could of course skip the process, but even though I could have won through that process fairly easily, being able to count myself among the Area’s affluent challengers even as early as my clearing the 2nd Floor, but after learning much more about the prices on Satslik as a whole, I still considered the price I’d need to pay ridiculous, not even considering the hassle I’d have to go through, when I could, even if sometimes with difficulty, simply walk out.

In this case, not only was the distance I needed to cover a lot longer, but the hassle was also a lot less—tickets for the circumnavigating line could simply be bought from kiosks at each station.

They were even more expensive than the tickets for the exit line usually went for, because the majority of clientele who used them were the highly paid faction and government officials who worked in the upper levels of the Outer Atrium. But even not counting however highly valued the crystals the Tower awarded to me turned out to be, I could easily afford it...and I needed some time to sit and think.