This would require me to dip into my potions quite a bit. And I’d need to act fast. I got ahead of the herd, then ran ahead of them still further. Then, I started setting fires. With my Power of Imagination, I willed them to keep burning much longer than they ordinarily would.

It was harder than I thought. I had to keep getting more and more of the forest burning, constantly changing course as the herd’s audience members did the same as the audience warned them about what I was doing. But little by little, I hemmed them in. I wasn’t able to make the actual area of flames very thick, but the heat in the area of encirclement rose steadily as I contracted it.

I was getting really nervous now. This was the most dangerous part of my plan, because by now, the audience would realize that this herd wouldn’t be surviving. Their next move then, would most likely be to alert the next nearest group to punish me, or at least ensure they got their hands on the hapless group’s coins before I did.

And sure enough, I heard a group approaching, one that was clearly way too large for me to deal with. In fact, they were too close. Maybe I could still run away now, but there was a good chance I’d be caught by enough of them to pin me down so that I'd be overwhelmed by reinforcements, and there was no way I’d get at any of the coins that dropped.

I did have one idea. And considering how much I’d been strengthened from the large number of points I’d collected, I figured it’d have a good chance. The only problem was, you’d have to be absolutely crazy to try it.

Well, that was the same as a plan with no problems, really. After all, I’d long since put my tick in the box marked “CRAZY”.

I waved my hand like I did whenever I cast a spell (to give the moment gravitas for the viewers and much more importantly, help sell the illusion to them that this was some kind of magical form of control over fire, rather than trash-tier reality warping) and willed a section of fire wide enough for me to pass through to snuff out. Then, I charged straight into the inferno.

I hadn’t quite anticipated, even with my resistance to heat and flames and things as a Pyromancer, how much it would still hurt like hell. I very nearly abandoned the plan. But through the pain, I still noticed that my HP wasn’t dropping fast enough that this would kill me, as long as I was quick about it.

Still, the prospect of touching metal coins to collect them in this inferno made me hesitate. In the end, I didn’t end up getting every coin pile in the place—I was still in a hurry, because if I took too long to be thorough, the new enemies could still catch up to me.

I ended up with, as far as I could tell, about 2/3rds of the coins, so 5/6ths of the total points. Waving my hand and willing open another “gate” at the far end of my flame encirclement, I noped out of there like the Road Runner, pausing briefly one more time to orient myself with another arrow from the shop.

As I went, I opened the screen again. “Heh, let’s see what they thought of THAT.”

Most of the comments were as I expected, but one caught my eye.

[This one’s no ordinary fire caster, is he...and he’s got style. Seems almost a shame for him to die, even if he is a human. I wonder if he’d agree to be my bodyguard?]

[Ahahahaha, she’s at it again, just like every time...]

[Dude, do you seriously want to piss HER off?]

[It’s the magic net and we all have Anonymous on, she has no idea who I am lol]

The wheels in my head started turning. The thing about the 1st Floor’s challenge that Mewi had most easily turned up was that its scenario extended all the way through the 4th Floor—each Floor being a round of this exaggerated dystopian survival game. This was also why Team Missions didn’t start until the 5th.

And every time, no matter what difficulty level you challenged each floor on, you’d have the playing field stacked against you. That was self-evident from the description at the beginning stating that challengers participated in the game as an enemy.

But what if, hidden in the scenario, there were ways to level that playing field? From the majority of talk about the 1st Floor, the results from previous floors wouldn’t carry over to further rounds of the deadly game. However…

Conjecture #8: If Extreme difficulty, which was the only mission that required challengers to qualify for the next round, was an exception to that, then maybe leveling the playing field was possible.