All the while returning to the apartment, I couldn’t help but fixate on one thing...

Just from my impression of him, Otto was much stronger still than his teammates. In fact, he was probably to them like they were to me. Despite being teenage just like his teammates...

Otto was a monster among monsters. I didn’t know why he helped me, but I absolutely had to stay away from him from now on.

That was only one of many things I now realized I desperately needed, too. I needed more training, to widen the number of possible threats to myself and Mewi that I could handle, and I needed powerful backing, to either hide me from or handle what I still couldn’t alone. Before meeting Otto, my heart was set on staying away from all the factions and groups and things, but I didn’t think that was a viable option now.

By the time I returned home, I had already come up with a plan.

I planned to take Otto’s advice and increase my ability to fight through truly extreme training, then take on the highest difficulty level as soon as I managed to complete what I had in mind. If that ended up not being enough and I lost a life as a result...well, me and Mewi would be even, and I’d have a year or more to do whatever it took to strengthen myself still further to overcome the penalty.

It was one thing I learned, in the Area 1 Primer class in the Beginner’s Course that covered Satslik. Anyone who cleared a floor would potentially have recruiters after them once they emerged at the Pantheon, even if they only cleared Basic difficulty, but those people wouldn’t get very good offers, or attract attention from more than minor factions. Coming out of the section where those who cleared High difficulty did, I might be able to find a powerful faction, but it was doubtful I’d be able to dictate the terms I had in mind to them.

Even clearing Very High wouldn’t guarantee that I could get the arrangement I wanted. I had to go all the way. And to have a chance to clear an Extreme difficulty floor, I needed to arrange for truly extreme training.

Mewi was surprised at first at my pronouncement that we should join a faction, then he tried to talk me out of going to such extreme lengths. He only relented after I promised that if it seemed like I’d never be satisfied with my progress in training, or at least felt that it would take way too long, I’d back off and go for a lower difficulty for Floor 1. I gave myself one month real time, or a year and eight months in the pod, to fully clear the training program I had designed in virtual space. As a further concession to Mewi, I promised to leave the pod for an hour per day to update him and spend time with him.

It began. Like before, I was in an arena, though one much more ornate and massive. Just outside the arena, towering above it like skyscrapers, were four statues in each compass direction—one each of my opponents from before, wearing those pitying or disdainful looks on their faces.

The stands were packed, too, but there were no cheers. These spectators didn’t want to cheer me on...they were there to see me suffer. My job was not to let them.

I wasn’t torturing myself just for kicks, of course. The environment was all about training my anger. Repeatedly, the description of the traits of the Psionic Pyromancer mentioned emotions improving my attack, and especially anger. I hadn’t exactly been slow to anger in my life outside the Tower, but weaponizing it—keeping it inside and then bringing it out in battle at will—was a whole other level. I wanted to use this environment to get so familiar with my anger that I could call on it on cue—kind of like the opposite of an actor that can cry on cue.

From the start, it worked very well. I had given myself—with some help from the virtual world’s system—ten levels of increasing difficulty, each consisting of a series of fights against one or more opponents ending with a fight against a simulation one of the four, randomly selected. And if I lost even once, I had to start the level over again.

It was well known that the virtual realm was totally unable to reproduce the full extent of the abilities of a highly skilled challenger. On top of that, for the lower levels, I intentionally programmed the scenario to dumb down the “boss battles” even further, gradually ramping them up to the full extent of the capacity of the simulation as I advanced the difficulty level. Even so, it was two weeks of fighting before I managed to clear Level 1. I decided to take the agreed-upon hour for the day then, to give Mewi a positive update.

After a while, things started to click a lot more for me. I started anticipating the flaws in my battle that the training program analyzed and reported to me, and correcting them faster. On the 5th day of the real-time month of training, I cleared the 4th and 5th levels of my program without a single loss.

One thing in particular I’d come up with was using my Power of Imagination together with my Lesser Telekinesis and Heat Object spells. I conjured sharp bits of metal with my power, then used the spells to turn them into an attack. It wasn’t a very damaging one, but it was excellent at disrupting the enemies’ tempo. In particular, I never would have overcome the simulated Elliott, with the Water spells that were the paper to my rock, without this tactic.

In almost 3 weeks, or a bit over a year in the simulation, I reached Level 10 and the sky around the arena darkened. At this point, the only opponents were Otto’s 4 teammates, and just like in the “training exercise” back then, they fought me one after another, this time with the simulation not holding back at all, though they were still much weaker than the real thing. In three more simulated days, Jason was the first simulation I vanquished, then after that, the others weren’t nearly so impossible to deal with.

One on one, at least. With each victory, a bolt of lightning shot from the heavens and obliterated that person’s statue. When all four were destroyed, the sky turned red, the spectators vanished, and more lightning struck the stands, turning the stadium into a ruin. It was time for the final boss—for all four of them to attack me at once.

It took reaching my next 1 hour break and returning to the final boss with a freshened perspective for me to finally break through. Jeremy was the first to go—I had finally gotten used to his natural stealthiness, and able to anticipate his moves enough to ambush the ambusher. Next was Jason—couldn't let his summons stick around the battlefield. Jessica and Elliott did their utmost to hold on, Jessica protecting him in the front line. We went back and forth for a while, and I came close to losing at least a dozen times, but I finally took her down. By then, Elliott had nearly run out of mana...it was the simplest I’d ever finished him in the whole training.

If Extreme mode is still too much for me after THAT, there’ll be nothing to do but admit defeat.

I exited the virtual realm and told Mewi the good news. He was happy for me, but still warned me to be careful. I think he’d been looking in on my training though, because he didn’t seem worried that I’d fail and die, and he’d even done some research on quite a few major factions that might end up making an offer once I cleared Extreme, as well as gathering information on the 1st Floor’s challenge itself. During one of my hour breaks, I’d also asked him to buy mana, stamina, and health potions to put in my Compression Pack. It’d be expensive to take along, since the Tower required money to bring a compressed inventory based on volume, but I could afford it. I should even be able to do so again if I needed to retry...probably. I brought roughly 1,000 in total, between the 3 types.

My attributes had also slightly improved, from a total of over 2 time-compressed years spent in the pod.

Health: 221/221 (0.13/min)

Stamina: 284/284 (1.3/min)

Mana: 315/315 (0.3/min)

The points of the associated stats themselves hadn’t changed, but I put that down to my status not displaying fractions of a point.

I took a hovercab to the central square of the District. Every District had a place like this, usually having shops, sometimes containing nothing much, but always housing a portal for transporting challengers to their current Floor.

I steeled myself. From what Mewi had found, this time would be a hundred times worse than the Tutorial—and I was going to jump up two difficulty levels, an act that was considered folly by the vast majority of Area 1’s residents.

But I had to do it. I needed the power to protect Mewi from anyone, and this was how to start getting it.

Before entering the portal, I sent Mewi a message, letting him know I was about to begin. All Floor challenges took place over exactly an hour in Area 1, no matter how much time passed on the floor. One more thing I’d promised to do was contact him within half an hour after that time, win or lose.

All right, I was out of ways to put this off. I entered the portal.