When I woke, I was rattled by both the dream and the loud klaxon that acted as the outpost’s alarm clock, so that I was halfway to the Captain’s Office to assign tasks before I remembered about that trait:

Evolving Trait | White

When sleeping, occasionally experience dreams that show visions of a certain time. You will always remember these dreams perfectly upon waking.

Upgrade Criteria: Experience all available visions. Current progress: 1/?

So, it had finally kicked in. Technically, on the first try. I couldn’t make heads or tails of the dream I’d had, nor was I at all sure what the description meant by the visions being of “a certain future.”

Now wasn’t the time to worry about that. This game advanced in three-day periods. Every day, all of the treasure chests would replenish themselves. After every 3 days, the showrunners would add a new wrinkle to the game. Also every 3 days, the store prices on most goods would increase.

It was after the first period, the start of the fourth day, with the first wrinkle they added, that @#$% would really hit the fan. If I was going to clear the mission and get this bunch into the top 10% of the teams that qualified, I needed to hit the ground running, and I was still a long way from being ready.

After setting outpost tasks for the day, I took Barnett and Caleb with me into the cold. I’d also set a remote scan for a point beyond the Red treasure we’d found yesterday. On the way to collect the treasure from that point again, I went over Bruzigan’s advice:

*****

“All right, let’s go over it one more time you two,” said Bruzigan. Mewi and I were seated at virtual renditions of school desks for this aspect of training to enter the 3rd Floor. We nodded, determined not to miss a single detail this time. “The outposts on the 3rd Floor are arranged in a series of grids, spaced 100 miles apart from one another, to prevent anyone from raiding an outpost outside their own grid. Within each grid, there are 50 of the 10,000 outposts in the game. The grids are 7x7, each outpost within 5 miles of its neighbors to the north, south, east, and west. The 50th outpost is placed randomly within 5 miles of the grid’s perimeter. This outpost is important because...?”

“That outpost always has a Blue chest near it,” we both recited.

“Good. There are 200 grids, each with just one blue chest, and the Extreme difficulty mission is to finish in the top 200 places. Anyone ought to be able to do that math. That cave, and that outpost’s treasure, is your main objective.

Now, when you first get started, what does it mean if you have nothing but White areas on the first scan?”

“We’re at or near the center,” I said.

“Correct. And if there’s a Red?”

“It’s pointing in the direction of the closest edge of the grid,” said Mewi.

“Right. You can find Orange as you get further away from your outpost, until you start getting closer to another one. There will always be a Yellow at the center point of four outposts as well. But you might want to scan aways outside the grid as well, to try for Green. If you get the location of the Lead Outpost early that way, it’s a bonus.

Now, we’ll go over the shop again...”

*****

My objective today would be to find at least one Orange treasure. Until I had a mapping device, it’d be too risky to go after the four closest Yellow treasures. The showrunners had been very careful to ensure contestants didn’t have any other way to orient themselves on their own outpost.

The sun moving across the sky couldn’t be trusted, and since going out at night was out of the question, so was navigating by the stars (not that I could have done that anyway.) There weren’t even any irregular features you could use as landmarks.

On a clear day, you could see the outpost from a good distance away. This early I had to rely either on that, or keeping close track of the direction I had come from in relation to a cave’s entrance, and that got very risky after about a mile or so.

However, every third day, there would be a blizzard. Not only would it be even colder than clear days (though still not the instantly lethal cold of nights,) visibility would be slim to none. To make matters even worse, the White and Red grade Mapping Devices wouldn’t be able to withstand the strong weather forces and would be rendered useless if someone tried to take them into the blizzard. The Orange grade had a protective casing that would prevent this, so that level of quality was not optional.

First, we retrieved the regenerated treasure from the Red chest we’d found yesterday. After that, we ventured further to search for a cave hopefully containing an Orange chest, being careful not to let our outpost out of sight.

We found three more caves with Red chests, and a half-dozen White, but no Orange. 1,500 might be enough to make do with, as long as I hit the four close Yellow caves before the teams surrounding us could, but it was cause for concern.

When we got back, Darril had more unwelcome news. The audience had hit us with an event called [Misfortune Event! Hoarding Penalty!] which prevented me from buying more ration packs for the rest of the period. The negative events started out not so bad like that, but by Day 10 there would be options available like preventing any exploration that day, or locking me out of the whole shop for a day or even an entire cycle. At least AzurePrincess was keeping her word about not acting to prevent such events.

When the Remote Scan completed, it gave much better news. It had picked up on two more Red treasure deposits, and an Orange. After they expressed confidence in being able to handle the enemies in the two Red locations, I had Barnett and Darril join me this time, each of us heading to a different treasure spot.

Half a dozen of the tall furry monsters were near to the Orange rated cave. That took me a little while longer than fights before, but it still couldn’t really be called a fight.

The Orange chest contained 2,112 points in all. The total of roughly 5,000 between it and the Red chests covered today meant I was right on track.

That evening, I ordered:

[Scanner Upgrade: Orange—700] (I could only order one of these upgrades per day, and must be done in sequence)

Orange Grade Portable Mapping Device: 500

Red Grade Outpost to Field Communicator: 500

[Allocations complete. Your supplies will be delivered the next morning. Thank you for your patronage.]

After that was the daily report. This time, I had to accurately input the starting and ending balances of treasure for the day as well as the amounts gathered and spent. Once again, the system reported no errors.

After that, I had the Useful Trio gather for a meeting. “I think,” I began, “it’s time to go over my plan to win this game.”