The situation with our initial supplies wasn’t good, not that I expected it to be. “Three cold weather hazard suits, three emergency power units, thirty ration boxes...and that’s it.”

“If we aim to keep the entire group alive, that’s barely enough for one meal for three days for each of us,” said Darrin, “not good.”

“On the bright side, there’s enough cold protection suits for you, me, and Barnett to launch an expedition today. The three of us should be able to find enough treasure to stabilize our situation.”

“You think so?” said Barnett.

“Hey, maybe you two aren’t up to my level, but you’re way tougher than the average contestant, even at this stage. We can do this.”

“I hope you’re right.”

One by one, I visited each facility to learn (so it seemed to the others, but really to confirm) what each task entailed. None of them required high technical knowledge, and there shouldn’t be a chance that any task should go wrong enough to say, break vital equipment, but neither were any easy physically or quick to complete.

And right now, everything needed doing. Not counting my own task, which was to file a report at the end of every day in the Captain’s Office, there were six maintenance tasks in all. According to my briefings, other than the first day, only four would actually need to be performed each day unless audience members voted for certain events. The seven Throskarts besides Darrin and Barnett drew lots to see who would get to do nothing today.

Then, I did my best to quickly determine assignments while not sticking anyone with a job they hated. I ended up putting my foot down when one in particular started acting too picky. Once all the assignments were entered in the Captain’s Office, including myself, Barnett, and Darrin as the exploration team, we immediately donned the environmental suits and headed out.

After, that is, I used one more feature of the terminal in the office. The base was equipped with a “metallurgical scanner” that detected treasure near the outpost. Right now, it was what the game called Grade White, and could be upgraded in the outpost shop. Once it was Grade Red or higher, it’s normal scan radius increased, and it could also be set to remote scan a smaller sized area, which could be set at a much greater distance from the outpost.

The normal scan always completed in seconds, but the remote scan took considerably longer. Grade Red took 6 hours to scan a pretty small area. The radius and duration of the remote scan also improved with the Grade, up to 20 minutes and a radius that covered an area that could encompass every outpost in the area with Grade Purple. Upgrading it that much was way too expensive to be a winning proposition, though.

There were three cave locations near us. I memorized their rough positions, donned my own environmental suit, and headed out with Darrin and Barnett.

The monsters for this round were hulking white furry things that reminded me of the wampa in The Empire Strikes Back. My helmet’s HUD said they were resistant to flame, but it didn’t really show—I was just too powerful.

Once we cleared out the first cave, we reached a small chamber at its deepest point with a small, plain white chest. Inside was a number of disturbingly familiar looking coins.

“Ugh, haven’t I chased after these once already?” But this time, there was no mechanic that powered me up from taking them. They didn’t simply vanish into a game inventory, either. Good thing I had my spatial storage ring.

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That chest, and the next white chest, had between 50 and 100 single-value coins. But when we reached the third location...

“Damn, I’m lucky. I wasn’t actually expecting to get a red chest.”

The red chest contained a bit under 500 coins worth of treasure. More than I expected—as I’d said aloud, my weird luck had come through for me again. This called for an accelerated gameplan.

Of course, since absolutely nothing about this place was allowed to be convenient, I had to physically deposit the coins in the vault before they could be used. Then, I browsed what supplies were available with the Office terminal. I decided on a x100 pack of rations, for 150 coins, and spent another 250 on upgrading the Scanner from Grade White to Grade Red. I could have also bought the lowest quality Grade White portable map device, but that wasn’t a good idea. I needed a Grade Orange at least.

I finalized the purchases, and the screen displayed the message, [Allocations complete. Your supplies will be delivered the next morning. Thank you for your patronage.] After that, I figured it was a good time for us to have a meal. At least getting the food was simple enough—leader or another team member with Vault access that day takes ration boxes to the Cafeteria facility, where there was a weird machine. You put a ration box into one end of the machine, and a plate of hot, prepared food came out the other end. Too bad the place had a communal cafeteria table. As my “lieutenants,” Darrin, Barnett, and Caleb sat nearest me.

“You know though,” I said, halfway through the meal, “I think I’ve finally worked out part of what this game’s deal is.”

“Hmm?” said Darrin—the others didn’t seem interested.

“Every round so far has painted a certain form of government in an extremely bad light. The first round was anarchy, or possibly tribalism. The second round, they made fun of capitalism. Now this, with how absurdly inefficient and unfair while pretending to be fair this whole setup is, I have to think it’s making fun of communism, especially with what the announcer called this game.”

“Seriously,” said, to my slight surprise, Caleb, looking up, “why make such a show of us all being equal, then give one out of every group of ten absolute control over the team’s resources and overall decisions? Your idea is as good an explanation as any.”

After the meal, it was time to complete the report. On the form, there was a checklist of tasks—I had to mark what had been done, what hadn’t needed to be done, and anything left undone—and I also had to mark how many chests we’d opened, how much treasure had been brought back as well as how much I’d spent on supplies, and how much supplies had been expended or lost. And if I put in the slightest inaccuracy, the team would be fined. “Communism and bureaucracy, more like,” I muttered as I put on the finishing touches. I fed the paper into a slot, and a few seconds later a message appeared on the screen of the office terminal.

[Report submitted. Number of inaccuracies: 0. Keep up the good work.]

With one final roll of my eyes, I left the Office for the day.

Wow, how long has it been since I’ve actually slept, rather than having my body rest in a virtual space pod while I train, or play video games, or whatnot? This might actually be nice.

As night fell, winds howled outside the outpost’s protective dome. You’d probably be shredded to pieces before the cold itself got you, geeze.

There were five dwellings total. I picked Darrin for my roommate, on the sensible bases that a) he was the one I minded talking to the least and b) he wasn’t stealthy enough to plausibly assassinate me, unlike possibly Caleb. Darrin was becoming something of a confidant, to be honest.

That wasn’t really a good thing. The last thing I needed was to get attached to a Floor denizen.

Between the protective dome and the walls of my quarters, the sound of the howling winds outside was near-totally blocked off, becoming almost soothing. And even though I hadn’t actually slept in so long, my body apparently remember how just fine, such that I drifted off in minutes...

The masked, caped figure stood on a barren planet’s surface. The mask was similar to, but not really like, my Amplifier Helm. They blasted spell after fiery spell as legions of Kinetice that surrounded him closed in. They died by the droves, but they closed ranks, heedless of their own dead, and at last reached him. Even as they pierced his body again and again he slew them by the hundreds, but finally his body went slack, and crumpled when released by his final attacker.