"this is not a place of honor"
Don't you have chills now?
*BEWARE* Spoilers spoilers spoilers if you didn't read A Glitch in Time yet! But probably you did, so... go ahead*
clears throat. Ehm ehm. We were saying... don't you have chills now?
They're all Long-term nuclear waste warning messages.
I believe he's right. No scepter, no relics: they all think that this powerful "energy" comes from emotions, but there IS something under their feet, an energy, that may be the source of all the ghost energy, that created the entire ghost zone… and it's dangerous. And he should not try to search it.
Even the parallel with Steven Universe... the glowing butterfly.
In Steven Universe, the butterfly appears two times: one to symbolize distressing thoughts and the other... on a radioactive field. With giant strawberries. Of course in Danny Phantom it can symbolize both things at the same time...
This is what the "center of power" is, the ultimate weapon that Vlad was looking for.
This is what created the Ghost Zone. Danny, Sam and Tucker, in that scene, are standing on a nuclear waste repository.