“

“We still have a lot to talk about. Meet me in the virtual space as soon as you can, okay?”

“Yeah,” said Mewi, and once again we parted.

The third system on the Firebrand’s starting itinerary was the last located in the same Zone as Satslik, and it was also the largest system of the seven, containing 20 planets. After this liberation, we’d leave Zone 1 and cross three more Zones to reach Zone 327, where the Erkolls system was located, liberating two more systems on the way.

The Zone system was like a macro version of the District system in cities. Other than the Kinetice Hive-Worlds and the secret Sanctuary planets, Area 1 contained exactly 1,000,000 habitable worlds, arranged in a series of star systems that, if you zoomed out to view the entire Area, gave away Area 1’s overall shape as an overall cylindrical shape that was much wider than it was high. The worlds were grouped into 1,000 Zones of equal volume that reached from the bottom to the top of the Area. each contained exactly 1,000 planets in its systems. The number of actual systems, as well as the number of planets in each, was variable within a certain respective range, usually between 50 and 60 systems or “stars” though the suns Tower systems orbited weren’t stars as my old universe understood them.

Zone 1 formed the epicenter of the Tower Area, with the remaining 999 Zones radiating outward from it in concentric circles. The outer perimeter held exactly 100 zones, #901 to #1000.

Since there would be only two days of travel to my third system liberation mission, but a total of 10 days (two anticipated to resupply, then eight to reach the next system) to reach the fourth, I wanted to hold off a little on discussing anything major with Mewi, but he wouldn’t have it. I understood why before he even started speaking, when he took an ornate golden key from his spatial storage ring.

“This is the last reward I got from the 3rd Floor,” he said, “I didn’t mention it before because I thought Edwin or someone might want to get someone to steal it to use on you.”

“Use it on me?”

I Identified it...

[Lumis’s Key of Truth]

Silver Grade Consumable (3 uses)

Reveals all status details of the target without fail, no matter what blocking, obscuration, illusion, denial, or other methods of preventing access to status details are used. Press the tip against the forehead/foreskin near brain area of the target, and rotate item 90 degrees counter-clockwise to use.

I whistled. “This thing gets around Ogilvy’s Obscurer. Someone would have to completely paralyze my body in order to use it, though.”

“I’m sure there are other items that could do that,” said Mewi, “this is definitely something to watch out for. I didn’t want anyone else to get ahold of it.”

“Thanks a lot, Mewi. I don’t have anything to tell you that’s so urgent, so...”

“There’s something else I wanted to tell you. Nothing dangerous but I wanted you to know first.

I’ve finally decided on my Profession. I want to be an Alchemist. I’d been thinking about it for a while, actually, but if stuff like the Potion of Agility can be made at just Rank 3, I really want to try it.

The team doesn’t have an Alchemist yet. Bruzigan said Anna can do magic arrays, but she didn’t have enough talent for Alchemy and besides, she’s already used up 2 out of her 3 slots.”

“Did you do the talent test thing?”

“Yeah. I got green, same as you for Chef.”

“Then that sounds great! I tell you, I’m going to tear through the 4th Floor when I can. Just one more, and we finally get to take on a Floor together.”

“Yeah.”

The 20 planet system was one that held a substantial amount of growing and manufacturing, both for the Federation government and several pro-Federation factions, including Grosston. Because of the larger number of planets, the full liberation operation took over 24 hours. I was far from the only one looking forward to an 8 day transit after that. I resumed my schedule of 12 in-pod hours of training alternating with an equal amount of relaxing, gaming, and chatting and doing things with Mewi.

Once I was off planet, I looked up Mewi’s key and the Magical Map in the Grosstin database. The entry for the Key of Truth didn’t contain much new information save for a confirmation that no method existed in Area 1 that Grosstin knew of could thwart it.

The entry on the Magical Map, on the other hand, was a lot more interesting:

[Magical Map]

White Grade consumable

Generates a map of the surrounding area in the user’s Tower Menu.

Notes: When used in a Floor world, the map generated encompasses a rectangular area 15 miles long and 25 miles wide, and provides accurate topographical information, and precise locations of towns/cities/other settlements, landmarks, and roads. However, when used in a dungeon-like setting, such as those that are common on the 8th Floor, the item provides a detailed map of up to 5 dungeon levels, including any secret passages and with a number of symbols that indicate many useful or hazardous things.

Huh. Well, I had to guess that these had dropped, at least partially, to compensate for a proportionately better drop in the Floor rewards they appeared in. Still, was that all? Why specifically this item, twice now?

I also told Mewi about the visions I had during that time. Only the two I’d had so far weren’t enough to go on, though. He didn’t have any clue what this bizarro, seemingly not useful Evolving Trait’s deal was any more than I did.

After the fourth liberation, Bruzigan called Mewi and me to meet with him. Anna and Arvallei had apparently been called too.

“Effective immediately,” he began, “I’m starting all three of you on preparing for the 4th Floor. However, I’ll only be taking Mewi and Anna. Lheticus, you’ll work with Arvallei.”

“Just me, with him? Oh...you did say something about someone on the team finding the same hidden route I had.”

“Yeah,” said Arvallei, “and in my case, I had no way to turn the situation around. But you performed better on the 3rd Floor than I did. Not only did you refuse AzurePrincess’ help, you kept your entire team alive, and even ranked a lot higher than I did—I ranked just outside the 150s. You might not even have to deal with being placed in the Safehold Islands.”

The Safehold Islands was a certain starting point in the final round of the survival game. Bruzigan had already told me the story of how Arvallei (not mentioning his name at the time) had been placed there as a result of AzurePrincess’ influence. There were a few starting territories like that in the final survival game—starting points that weren’t worth attacking hardly at all, but were extremely difficult to expand from. The “princess” had explained that surviving to this point was one thing, but the showrunners would never suffer a human, or Avini, or an insert-challenger's-race here, to actually so much as come close to one of the winning places. The Safehold Islands were a perfect solution for ensuring her new acquisition would live through the final round, but not make too big a splash.

However, a challenger on this route had no choice to subvert that expectation. Something I hadn’t been aware of was that if you decreased your difficulty on further rounds of the survival game, the “story” would reset even if the new difficulty still forced you to pass to the next round. Of course, this applied to the 4th Floor as well. And AzurePrincess only showed up on Extreme difficulty, and only on the 1st Floor, and only for a moment. If you decreased your difficulty on the 4th Floor, even if you had cleared Extreme on all three previous floors, it would be as though you’d never met her.

The result was an incredibly annoying slog where you could just barely fulfill the mission by the skin of your teeth—especially if you’d lost team members on the previous Floor, as Arvallei had, because then you were subject to a special rule that you had to unite all 10 Safehold Islands before you could expand to the nearby mainland.

“So, that’s why Bruzigan told me it was vital that all ten team members survive,” I said after Arvallei’s explanation.

“Exactly,” said Arvallei, “so here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to teach you the mechanics of the final game until we’re both blue in the face and you know them perfectly. Then, we’re going to put our heads together and map out a way to thrash this game, even if AzurePrincess interferes. Then you’re going to go in there and do it, and prove that there really was a way.”

“You really took it personal, didn’t you?”

“Sort of. I figure if I can figure out a way for you to succeed with flying colors where I barely scraped by, it’ll prove that I’ve improved beyond how reckless and careless I was before.”

“You want to be stronger, to leave old weakness behind,” I mused, “I can understand that. When the Rainbow Mage shattered my ignorance of my own weakness, my own complacency, I felt that with a burning passion too.”

“For the sake of your partner?”

“Yeah. He was brought to the Tower before I was, remember. I thought I’d lost him forever. But now, I won’t let anyone or anything take him from me again.”

“And that’s where you find the will to gain your power...”

“So what about you?”

“That’s a story for another day. Now listen up, we’ve got work to do.”