Telling Karl wasn’t as simple as deciding to do it, then having him meet me in my quarters or something. The location of the Fire Sanctuary, and the very nature of the Sanctuaries existence, was still the Federation’s equivalent of nuclear secrets back on Earth. Without documented authorization from Marshal Varstithon, well...the Federation probably wouldn’t actually hunt me down like a dog but I’d be more likely to get reprimands than accolades.

Fortunately, Varstithon sent me the authorization, once I’d requested it through the chain of command (meaning I asked Bruizgan to forward the request) very quickly. Not that I had expected much delay, since Bruzigan had first proposed to him, and he’d approved the idea, that I take on a Sanctuary before we’d cleared the 9th Floor in the first place.

And then I asked Karl to meet me in my quarters.

“I’ve called you here because we—meaning Marshal Varstithon, Admiral Bruzigan and myself—have determined that now is the time to begin final preparations for the Firebrand Liberation Fleet’s primary mission. This document,” I said, retrieving it, “is a notice of authorization for you to share part or all of what I’m about to tell you with those among the crew who need to know.”

From there, I gave a similar overview of the Sanctuaries that Varstithon had given us back when the Liberation Fleets had first launched. “Which brings me to our particular role.”

I went to the desk and retrieved the dossier from its hidden compartment. I had already unsealed it some time ago, to learn the coordinates of the Fire Sanctuary. However, I’d been a little surprised at some other things that had been contained in it. “Our ultimate destination is a small planetoid at the outer bounds of Zone 942. It is not part of any Area 1 system, rather it is believed that it, along with the other nine Sanctuary worlds, slowly orbits the Area itself with a cycle of 100,000 years.”

I gave Karl the coordinate document to look over. “These coordinates...you really meant it’s at the outer bounds of the Area. It’s practically within spitting distance of the Tower Wall.

We’ll need a great deal more supplies. I’ll also write up a formal request for more fleets to reinforce us for you to pass up the chain of command. I’m sure it didn’t escape your notice either that there’s practically an entire system of Hive Worlds preventing direct warp to the target.

I nodded as he handed the paper back to me. “That’s hardly going to be the half of the operation, I’m afraid. The world itself, designated by the Tower as ‘Magnos’ isn’t what you’d call hospitable. Superheated clouds of noxious or explosive gas surround it at all but a single point. Your objective is to get the Firebrand to a suitable point to launch a special, one man lander pod through that point. The pod was incorporated into the Firebrand’s design in secret—even I didn’t know about it until I opened the dossier. Once the approach begins, it’ll be up to me to guide it down to the surface.”

“And what happens then?”

“According to the Federation’s file, I’ll need to traverse a route full of dangers to reach the Sanctuary, then overcome a number of challenges and puzzles inside to reach the Sanctuary Core. Then, I’ll need to recharge the depleted core with a great deal of Fire mana.

After that...it seems that is information the Federation does not possess. It’s possible that the extreme conditions on Magnos will decrease, enabling my retrieval. Or I could be transported off Magnos to somewhere else in the Area by the Tower. I’ve already taken care of requisitioning comm devices with Area-wide range for that contingency.”

“So if I understand you correctly sir,” he said, looking over the other materials now, “you don’t want us sticking around once you reach the surface of Magnos.”

“It would complicate things way too much for the fleet to have to fend off that many Kinetice for that long. I’m sure you’d advise such a course of action if I didn’t.”

“I appreciate your concern for the safety of the fleet, sir. Although if it was necessary, I think there are few in it who would balk at risking their lives, considering it’s for the cause of restoring the Safe Zones to the Area.”

I was a bit speechless at that. I hadn’t really considered much what I’d be responsible for, when I took on this mission. Heck, I hadn’t really been given a choice about becoming one of the Federation’s chosen champions to reactivate a Sanctuary, so as far as I was concerned, I didn’t need to stress over the implications. That kind of thing was for people who give orders, not those who follow them.

But it really was that kind of situation, wasn’t it? How many crewmen, bridge officers, and what have you in this fleet had families, friends who had been placed in grave danger because of the disappearance of the safe zones? Our mission was a just one, there wasn’t much room to question that.

If I died trying on my first attempt at the Fire Sanctuary, how much of the fleet, how many lives would be lost to make a second? Would I be willing to risk it a second time at all? ...Would I even be able to stand the thought of Mewi doing the same?

More than ever, I needed to play to win with this mission. I had been ignoring way too much potential of my Power of Imagination way too long—the encounter with the wolf man on the 7th Floor had made that crystal clear.

That potential had only grown. In the aftermath of the battle, I discovered that Power of Imagination had leveled up from 2 to 3. I trained it hard in the month between trips to the 7th Floor, testing new ideas and narrowing down the ins and outs of the ability.

I quickly discovered a new hard rule of the power: it was easier to use it to destroy than to create. Small mundane objects were no problem, as I’d first found in the Tutorial, and if I was willing to spend a lot more effort, I could call simple structures into existence and even strengthen the material they were made of. But making a wall vanish was still easier than building one—that is, if the wall was an ordinary one. When I experimented on doing the same thing to a wall in a simulation of an 8th Floor dungeon, it still worked, but took a huge chunk of Stamina compared to before.

I conjectured that it wouldn’t even succeed if I tried it on a Sanctuary wall. According to the Federation’s dossier, the structure itself and the route to it were made indestructible by the Tower itself. The Tower had given me this power, so it wasn’t a stretch to think that it would disallow its use where and when suited it.

As for creating just about anything that could be recognized as an item by the Tower, that particular experiment failed, but in an interesting way. When I tried, something would pop into existence that looked like the item, but it would have no helpful properties. Imagined potions would be vials of colored water, spell formulas would be pieces of paper with gibberish and lorem ipsum text scribbled on, and weapons would have about as much quality as Medigoron’s Giant’s Knife.

The sole exception was when I tried to duplicate the Heat Object spellbook in simulation. It consumed over 500 Stamina when I tried...but it worked.

The logical conclusion was that I could only use the power to create things as a shortcut. I knew every page of that spellbook inside and out, but I didn’t know how to make a good sword or potion. So if a Tower item was something I could theoretically craft anyway, it was fair game.

I could also duplicate things like ordinary food items—but if it was something I hadn’t tried before, they wouldn’t have any taste. Attempting to duplicate crafting ingredients like magic herbs also produced mere facsimiles. At Mewi’s suggestion, I studied the genuine articles microscopically, but that wasn’t enough to give me a real understanding of what gave the ingredients their special properties. So, I abandoned that line of thinking for now.

I spent much more time devising ways to use my power in combat. At Level 3, enhancing myself was now easier.

My first new idea was to try to affect my enemies. That worked decently, but once again there were limitations. In the case of an adversary even halfway to capable of meaningfully harming me with an attack, I couldn’t just banish them. I could hold them in place, but against someone or something evenly matched in strength, it took vast stamina and all my concentration.

On the other hand, the trick that I had pulled by instinct, while it had drained an extreme amount of stamina at the time, now that my trait's level was 3, that cost had reduced enough to be a viable desperation measure, though it still sucked away more stamina than anything else I’d successfully tried. I dubbed it the Invincibility Frames cheat, and started practicing enabling it and canceling it extremely quickly, though for the moment I didn’t have many chances, figuring this particular aspect of my power was too risky to practice in the virtual space.

By far the most cost-effective thing I found was to use it to weaken or vanish enemy attacks and spells. As for actually damaging them, just using the Tower magic attacks was vastly more effective than trying it with Imagination.

I also spent a great deal of time manually learning Lesser Fireball and continuing to level up my other spells. The month before the second trip to the 7th Floor was only enough to get Lesser Incendiary Mine to Level 4, though.

Overall, coming up with new ways to use the Power of Imagination was harder than I’d thought. Apparently, a power that could do anything extended to doing a lot of ineffective things.