On Day 5, it was time to roll the dice. Since I'd upgraded the scanner every day, our outpost was capable of Remote Scanning a radius of 5 miles up to 30 miles away, completing in 45 minutes. I also knew that the numbering system of the outposts meant that there was only one outpost to the west of us—and beyond that was the no-mans-land where Green chests would be.

Everyone who hadn’t already known or figured this out and was still alive would also know this the day after tomorrow. Also at that time, staying at our starting Outpost #17 would no longer be optimal. If I was going to score any Green chests, it needed to be today.

I set the Remote Scan to a point that would center 11 miles west of the lone neighbor in that direction, then set off alone. First, I once again hit the four Yellow chest caves. Then, it was finally time to turn my attention to the 8 surrounding outposts themselves.

Using the hacking multitool, I entered them one by one. In some of them, I simply killed everyone inside, but when I could, I took a more subtle approach. This entailed going straight to their outpost’s vault, and incinerating all their cold protection suits after looting all their points. The idea was that if they couldn’t leave their outposts, they were removed as a threat. I wasn’t worried about them attacking me of course. What I needed was for Team Firebrand to sustain no losses, to better set up for the 4th Floor.

Apparently, by this point most if not all the other teams had figured out the trick with the Yellow treasure spots, because other than two teams that had almost no points and were not going to live much longer anyway, the others on the local leaderboard all had over 10,000 points. One of them even had just over 30,000.

Once I was done, I contacted Darril. “I’m on the way back.”

“About time,” said Darril, “you’re late for distributing rations. Betty’s been complaining.”

“She seems to enjoy that,” I said, “never mind I bought us enough rations to sustain 2 meals a day for the rest of the game and that I let her sit on her ass every other day.”

“Are you positive we shouldn’t just get rid of her?”

“Not yet. She hasn’t been dumb enough to shirk when she has a task, and other than that she’s in no position to be a meaningful liability. I’ll have a little chat with her around say, Day 12, about her behavior going into the next round.”

“If you say so, boss.”

After the meal, I was finally able to check the results of the remote scan—and I’d hit the jackpot. Two Green sites were detected—one so far out in no-mans-land that the scan radius nearly hadn’t reached it, and another southeast of it.

I made sure to accurately record the points deposited and headed off after them. This was the most I’d been outside of an outpost in a day, so the cold was starting to get to me. I’d make this as quick as I could.

Over 20 of the snow beast monsters were waiting for me at each treasure cave. The first took way too long to deal with, so at the second, I activated Explosive Overclocking for the first time. They went down rather more quickly after that.

The day’s take made for a huge pile of coins in the vault—several times more points than we’d made in the first three days altogether. I let everyone see just how much I’d accomplished today, and Betty seemed noticeably disinclined to run her mouth after that.

The next day, another team finally tried to attack us. I had Barnett, Caleb, and Darril all on guard at the airlock, and the other team was a desperate bunch who had only sent 3 of their members, and into the blizzard no less, so it resulted in no casualties even though I’d been away, collecting from the Green treasure sites again. I’d scanned again before leaving this time, and found a 3rd site far south of the previous two. After the attack, I stayed behind on guard, and the trio went after the now uncontested Yellow sites.

Day 7 arrived. Now, over 20 of the 50 local ranks displayed [ELIMINATED], with a dozen more having scores so low that they’d either be bunkering down and settling for living through the round, if they’d managed to buy enough rations and had enough people alive to complete the needed tasks for survival, or desperately trying to cling to life for the remainder of the 15 days. Very few teams were able to truly compete anymore, and fewer still would be willing to pick a fight with those who remained.

Of course, it was within that set of teams that the best entertainment for the viewers would be found, though no doubt many would still tune in to the hapless ones as they went to pieces. It was practically the round’s purpose to create as much internal strife between the forced-together teams as possible.

[1st: Outpost #1, Team MacIlister: 2,052,540]

[2nd: Outpost #17, Team Firebrand: 580,894]

[3rd: Outpost #49, Team Magicka: 365,427]

[4th: Outpost #22, 43, Team Crusher: 320,013]

[5th: Outpost #6, Team Tidal Wave: 88,657]

[Team Firebrand Game Rank: 329th]

Between Days 5 and 6, thanks to the heavy raiding and the Green treasure sites, we’d cleared a half million points, making up drastically for only gaining about 40,000 on Day 4.

No sooner had I confirmed the team’s new standing than an announcement came. [Welcome to Period 3 of the Elimination Round. From now on, all players will be able to access a map of their total playing field. This map will include all 50 of the outposts in the area, as well as their current scores and current number of members remaining alive. Happy hunting!]

Barring lucking into finding them nearby, this was the moment I was waiting for. Outpost #1’s location was now available.

It wasn’t great news—they were in the south perimeter, five miles past Outpost #46. That was more than 25 miles away. It wasn’t a problem for me with my superhuman stats, but bringing teammates along would be an effort.

The other two major teams left—Team Crusher and Team Magicka—were closer than I was. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. According to the new map, Crusher had lost two of its members, while Magicka was still at full compliment. Probably they’d tried to attack Magicka but were beaten back. They couldn’t afford another reckless strike, but Magicka might try for the MacIlister fortune. What I needed was not to get entangled with both teams at once.

For now, I took Caleb and Barnett, leaving Darril behind for defense, with me to the Green sites this time. I wanted to get an idea of if they’d be able to handle gathering from those, once we controlled the Blue site as well. From that “practice” I gained confidence in having the 3 of them together handle it later on. Tomorrow, I intended to lead the trio in the attack on the MacIlisters. They balked a little bit, but I used my eloquence and mind-affecting skills to paint a vivid picture of them not only surviving the end of the game, but gaining accolades and lavish rewards with the result they’d get, in spite of being led by a human.

However, the audience had other ideas.