Betty looked the most serious I’d ever seen her. “You are right, of course,” she said, “after all, I entered into the survival game as one of the ‘popular ones.’ Obviously, that’s not enough to become someone who the gamemakers intend to win. But I guess you could call me advantaged.

Before entering the game, I was an arena fighter. My domineering fighting style got me a lot of fans, including some in fairly secure places in Throskart society.

But I hated it. I hated having to fight for my livelihood, and...certain other things I had to do to keep some of my wealthier fans happy. So, when the last survival game ended, I announced that I would join this one. I held multiple crowdfunding events and also funneled what little I could from my own pocket into a special ‘war chest’ account that I gave to a person I trusted to use it on what I wanted when I wanted. So, I went into the start of the game with high hopes. Other than those spider monsters in the desert, I’ve done my best to win through without fighting at all.”

“And then you got lumped in with me in the third round,” I said, not quite bothering to keep my face and tone neutral.

“And then I ended up in the same group as a human, yes. And I took out my frustration at such placement on you quite a bit.” Betty did keep her face and tone neutral. “I don’t know why you’re insisting on trying to win, when in all likelihood the game makers will see it as an affront and simply kill you once the game is over, and I suspect I don’t want to know. But I will try to win too, and that means making use of the resources I’ve been holding back.

I assume you need to factor this into your plans.”

“Very much so,” I said, “I’ll be telling Darril about this since I’m having him help me. But I can already say that now that I’m not the only one fighting, the current top priority is to level up the gold mines of the team’s four pillars—myself, Darril, Barnett, and Caleb, as much as possible. That includes having the three of them acquire more gold mines in addition to leveling them up.”

“You’re thinking that far ahead? Seems I’m in good hands.”

She turned away from me. “I need to keep bringing my viewers around to this turn of events. You’d better get on with your strategy meeting.”

“Yes ma’am,” I said sardonically. I warped directly to Darril’s castle from Betty’s. We went to a room in his castle where we could sit to discuss. I gave him my best stare.

“Okay, Darril. Let’s see how smart you really are, shall we? You correctly guessed my first strategic goal in this game. Now, it is true that I have a thing against abandoning my allies, even uncooperative allies of circumstance. Or well, killing someone or letting someone die when I don’t have to, really.

But as you alluded to in your speech—which, you really did surprise me with, by the way—there were practical reasons too. Once I finished coming up with my plan, it ended up having three stages. This was because, within this final game, there are three major threats that, if unchecked, make my victory is impossible.

So, we’ll start with an easy one. My goal with stage 1 of my plan was to expand my territory and gain the ability to protect the rest of your territories, and yourselves, from attack. What does this counter?”

Darril was silent for a few minutes. Then he cleared his throat. “Being surrounded. If our team had been unlucky enough to become the targets of early aggression, and everyone but you were eliminated, enough players could combine a huge enough force to theoretically overwhelm even you.”

I nodded. “Correct. Actually, even in such a situation, I can’t say I couldn’t possibly turn it around, but if I hadn’t guarded against such a scenario, I would need to enact such a massacre to do so that it would make what I did in the first round look like a minor incident.” If I let things get that bad in this game, I doubt I’d beat the Mission Rating Arvallei got even if I did clear it.

Darril shivered. Of course, he had seen that massacre on the pre-game clip show. “Next question. What’s the second thing that’s going to make it all but impossible for me to win this game?”

This time, he didn’t take nearly so long to answer. “The popular players. The ones who can pump their fans for money to buy extra resources at a rate we can’t possibly match.”

“And why does that make them the next threat?”

Darril’s voice went quiet. “Turn 16. The higher half of the game’s noble titles.”

“Bingo. This game is the only round of the survival game that isn’t switched out, so anyone who’s ever watched it would know about that little wrinkle. I don’t have that particular benefit, so tell me. Do they explain the costs of those titles on the show?”

“They don’t,” said Darril, “the show focuses on the action. All the mechanics are to test the players’ ability to think as well as fight. So it’s claimed, anyway.”

“Then I’ll paint you a picture. The 5th tier, Duke, costs 25,000 coins, right? The 6th is ten times that.” Darril’s eyes widened as I went on, “and after that, it gets into the millions. But a player with access to the advanced resource nodes that the 6th tier gives has an absolute advantage over a player who doesn’t.

I held back on having you launch an attack because I wasn’t sure of anyone’s strength yet. If I needed to bail Barnett or Caleb out against ordinary finalists, it’d be too risky. The four of us need to focus hugely on upgrading our gold. We need lots of gold mines, high level ones, to have any hope of standing against what players with rich backers will be doing once the real Noble Titles appear in the 2nd half of the game. Compared to the last round, there are a lot more players who can get you guys killed one-on-one.”

“Then the three of us need to start practicing fighting as a single unit. If we’re going for tier 6 anyway, getting Ally Teleport will be a matter of course--”

He stopped short when he said that. “You see the problem,” I said, “since I’ve proven to be able to play aggressively and expand my territory, the closest contender teams are likely waiting till the second half of the game, thinking that the upgraded troopers have a better chance to have an effect on me. Such opponents will also have Ally Teleport as a matter of course. They’ll also have more team members on offense, since they’ll be getting more resources from fan donations than we are.”

“But probably not all ten on offense,” Darril countered, “not that that helps much. The key right now is for us to expand our territory and resources as much as we can before that happens.”

“Precisely. We need as many high level gold mines as possible before Day 16. Thanks to Betty’s own resources though, we can lower the other types on the priority list—though the defending players should still follow the resource plan I laid out. As for our current offense, I’ll stand by to assist any of you in case you run into an opponent you can’t handle or players using Ally Teleport.”

“You need to expand too, though. It’d be foolish not to take advantage of the fact that you can take on 11 more territories now.”

“I can attack more quickly than you can—I can traverse enemy territory faster than the game’s travel system allows. I’ve been holding back that particular card so far for exactly this purpose. And if enemies try to swoop in and take the territories I take, so much the better for me. I’ll attack first, as soon as we end this meeting. Once I take enough for today, the three of you will start attacking.”

Darril nodded. “Let’s do this.”

For now, I took 3 more territories, purposely targeting teams other than the one who had benefitted from me before. Their gold mines were already level 5, so the finalists playing defense had advanced to Viscount, and the ones I was worried about had almost certainly reached at least Earl—unless they were soliciting donations at this stage, in which case they could easily be at Marquess or even Duke. The closest enemy with more than the starting territories probably hadn’t gotten further than Earl though—I'd be taking them down starting tomorrow.

Then it was time for the trio to attack. Using the game’s travel system, it took one hour to reach an enemy castle from an adjacent castle. By turn’s end, all three of them controlled 4 territories each. Surprisingly, none of them needed my help. In fact, it seemed as though they were stronger than they’d been on the previous floors. With a little of Betty’s help, they raised all of their gold mines to Level 6.