“Special rule set in play. All members of Team Tunnel Rat have their death penalty fees removed. Any opposed team member killed by Team Tunnel Rat will incur a 10x multiplier on their death penalty costs." Juana looked up from the rule set, blinking. "That's insane," she said, her expression almost blank. "Do you have any idea how fast the death penalty costs add up? And then a 10x multiplier on top of that? If we kill….” Her lips moved silently. “Thirteen members of the same team, their cost per resurrection will be in the hundreds of thousands of soul coins. And it just keeps going up!”

"Keep reading," I advised.

"All Soul Coin death costs assessed will be forfeit to the Reality Engine. However, members of Team Tunnel Rat may hire unaffiliated mercenaries as privateers. Privateers will receive 3% of the death penalty in Soul Coins as a reward."

"The Grignarians are going to love that," I commented. "They're about to make a fortune off of our opponents. Not just that, but we should look for others we could hire."

"I'm not sure anyone's going to want to get involved with us," Juana said. "But it's worth a shot. Let's see what happens if we put out some feelers. I'll have Mama and Ames start asking around."

We were all seated at one of the long tables in the command center. Grandpa at the head, me sitting backwards on a chair, Sage plowing through Mama Grace’s muffin basket. Juana had somehow printed out hard copies of the new rule set and spread them across the table.

Arjun was scrutinizing an image hovering in midair of Castle Byalgrad and its underground passages. As soon as I had selected Team Tunnel Rat, the underground passages appeared on our map. They were color-coded and led off in all sorts of directions. "Let's scope out the problem," he said.

He sat in the midst of us, his hands steepled in front of him. He wasn't usually this comfortable in a crowd, but now his eyes were focused on a point just past Juana's head as he spoke.

"There are 86 other instances. Our informants have been feeding information to me. While the theme of every instance is different, the basic setup is similar. There are freestanding bosses, which have mostly been conquered by now, like Podaga and Baba Yaga here. After that comes a guardian.”

“Thirty percent of teams are weeded out by the guardian. That’s a huge advantage for us,” I said. “It means at most we’ve got to stop, uh —”

“602, plus the teams who already entered Castle Byalgrad,” Arjun said.

Juana rolled her eyes. “Oh, well, that’s much more manageable. Piece of cake.”

“Once the teams reach the inner sanctum, there are between 5 and 9 themed bosses. Each team has to defeat all the bosses and collect a token to progress further. Nobody's got past more than one so far. But some of the big teams are steamrolling through pretty hard.”

Juana nodded. “We're going to be playing defense. We have to triage our biggest threats, make sure nobody gets all the way through their keep.”

“There’s a 24 hour cooldown between boss attempts. If they wipe, they have to wait a whole day,” I said. “Meanwhile, we can run from boss to boss, knocking people out. It’s do-able.”

“They only have to kill each boss once, while we have to force the teams to drop out,” Dwight pointed out. “That sounds impossible. They can just keep trying until they get past us.”

"Not once we start getting their death penalties high enough," I said. “We hit them where it hurts. They’re here to make money off us. We bleed them. We make them pay.”

“He’s right. This ruleset also imposes a 1000 Soul Coin per day Outpost Upkeep cost,” Juana said, reading farther down. “For us too, but we should be able to afford that pretty easily. If they fail to pay the bill, they lose their outpost and are done. So they can’t just sit around and let their accounts dwindle away, they have to be spending coins.”

“We need a priority list. Anytime it looks like a team is getting close to killing all the bosses in their instance, we need to focus and take them out. Until then, I think we should be looking for opportune targets," Arjun said.

Juana was making notes. "I see an upside," she said. "It doesn't cost anything for us to respawn now. That goes for our farmers, too. We need to get everyone into one of these instances."

I saw what she was driving at right away. “Of course! Now that we have access to the rats in the walls perk, we can walk into any of the 87 themed zones. That means all of our allies can come in and farm with impunity.”

“Even if they're killed, it doesn't cost them anything to respawn. And they'll be able to gather intel for us," Sage said brightly.

I wish I could say I’d spotted that before joining the Tunnel Rats, but I hadn’t. This was looking up. We might not win, but we could make a fortune. Those Soul Coins would go into a fund to buy out people’s contracts at the end of this exploit, so they couldn’t be shipped off to some other star system at the whims of our alien masters.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“We need every warm body we can get," I said. "I suppose we'll all have to join our coalition in order to be flagged as part of the Tunnel Rats faction. I'm going to tell Ames to do another recruiting drive in the Lotus Eater level. Sage, you might have to go play recruiter. We need everyone. I'm not going to accept any excuses. It doesn't cost them anything to help out now. The more mats we get, the more we can increase our economic stranglehold."

"Exactly," Dwight said happily. "The aliens are not going to be happy about being forced to buy their consumables from us, but they're not going to have a choice. We might stand a chance at buying out most of our contracts before the end of this."

"That's the goal," I said, tapping the papers in front of us. "Whatever happens with this crazy business, I want to get as many of our people free and clear as I possibly can."

Juana was making notes. "Alright, we need farmers everywhere. I may have to break into what remains of our reserves to get some of them outfitted. The Lotus Eaters who went in there early on probably have nothing but their starter gear. Arjun, can you contact your fellows and work on building farming teams for us?"

Arjun nodded. "We were born for this," he said, smiling. His class, [Mycroft], involved the ability to remember and process a huge amount of data about the other human miners in our reality engine exploit. It had come in handy many times. He'd leveled up to five just based on his contributions to our team. Now he had an ability called [It’s Elementary School Dodgeball Time], which let him assemble teams of compatible skill sets based on very little data.

"We're all going to have marks on our heads," Grandpa warned.

"We already did," Frank said. He turned to us. "Colonel, Captain, I'm back ready for combat. Put me where you need me. I'm in this to win this."

I grinned and nodded. "Thanks, Frank, but don't be so formal or I'll have to start calling you Sheriff."

He snorted. "That ain't real. That's just from the engine fooling around. Your promotions matter."

"Sure, but this is bigger than the United States," I said. "We're not throwing those titles around unless it helps, and right here, it doesn't help.”

Juana tapped the table. “Back on topic. We've got another hour of our downtime before combat opens up again, and I want to make sure we take advantage of that. Explain to me our strategy.”

I rubbed my chin. “It seems like what would make the most sense is to target the teams that are the farthest ahead and try to force them out of the game. Leave the ones who are struggling with their first boss for later."

Allison, at the end of the table, shook her head. She started to speak, then caught herself. "May I?"

I nodded. "Yes, please, go ahead." I wasn't used to her being part of our strategy yet, but she did have the most relevant experience, and I wanted to know what she had to say.

"This is my experience from progression raiding in World of Fantasy Legends. I think it's going to hold here. The top teams, we called them 'progression raiders' usually. They were the ones going for world firsts, trying to take down a new encounter as soon as possible before anyone else could. They had to treat it like a second job, or in some cases, a first job."

She looked flustered. Sage hopped up and brought the rapidly diminishing plate of muffins down to her.

"Here," she said kindly. "Have a muffin."

"Thanks.“ Allison looked them over and selected a banana nut muffin. She took a bite, blinked in surprise, and looked down at it. "These are really good," she said around a mouthful.

Sage nodded. "Mama Grace has all sorts of skills in her cooking. These muffins that she bakes for our strategy meetings have all sorts of bonuses. They relax you and make you better spoken and more willing to talk. At least, that's what they're supposed to do, but I don't think they work on Shad."

I glared at her. Allison took another bite of the muffin, set it down, licked her fingers, and continued.

"The key for a progression raid was having people supporting you. Other members of the guild who were willing to farm mats to help make potions and make sure you had everything you need. Or to bring their less geared characters to try a fight so that you could see how a strategy went. A progression team might have 10, 15, even 25 people on it, but the guild would have two or three times as many supporting them. I think that's probably supposed to happen here. Some of the lesser teams are in these instances to farm mats. If we can knock them out, then our farmers have an open path and the top raids have to come to us for what they need.

Juana was nodding. "An economic win. I like it."

"It's clear that the only way we're going to win is by hitting them in the pocketbook," Allison said. "We have to make this so expensive they can't carry on. Nothing else is going to work. It's not like we can really kill them."

I had a horrible thought occur to me. We’d changed the ruleset once; who said it couldn’t be changed again, to bring real death back into the equation? I wasn't sure I wanted to pursue that thought. Fortunately, it didn’t seem to have occurred to anyone else.

"This is where it would be really helpful if Veda was returning our phone calls," Grandpa said. "She might be able to help us know where to start."

"No need for Veda," Kirin said. She tapped her ear. "I'm coordinating with Arjun's friends and we're collating all the information we've been gathering off of our crafters and Mama Grace's people. I should have a target list for you shortly of the most vulnerable.”

"As for the rest," Juana said brightly, "I've been going through the information that the system is now providing us. I've got a list of the 27 teams who made it past the guardian and took down one of the first bosses in their roster.” She frowned. "What do you call the inside part after the Guardian, like Castle Byalgrad is for us?"

"Raid, usually," Allison said. "But we could call it anything you like."

"Let's stick to what you know," Grandpa said. "It's a raid. So those are our top threats right now. We'll monitor all of them."

I stood up. "Alright," I said. "We've got another 30 minutes before the action starts up again. You guys stay here and keep strategizing. That's what you do best. Me? I want to round up some hotheads and go do what I do best."

"And what's that?" Allison asked hesitantly when no one else spoke up.

"I'm going to cause trouble," I said. I picked my coat up off the back of my chair and shrugged into it. "Sage, want to come with me?"

She bounced out of her chair. “Heck yeah, I do!"

Grandpa eyed me. "Got a plan?"

“Yep,” I said, grinning. "I'm making a recruiting video."