I rode an eight-headed Hydra as it fought and flailed against a group of orcs. Sage sat atop the neck of the head beside me, and six more of our team were mounted on the beast as well, one per neck. From our perches, we rained death down on the orcs.

It was a little disorienting every time my head leaned down into the raid to pluck up one of the orcs. Sage laughed as her hydra head bit down over top of an orc caster woman. The head reared back, the orc's legs flailing wildly as it tossed the orc back and forth like a dog worrying a rat.

I used Trick Shot and selected one of the orc healers thirty feet away, concealed behind a rock that jutted up out of the Hydra's swamp. I fired a concussive round. The healer lurched backward and fell into the muck.

"Who's keeping score?" I bellowed.

"We're up to 42 kills. They just keep coming," Frank yelled.

"Great!"

This was supposedly one of Proxima's crack teams. They had two bosses left to go in their own instance, but they had come over into an ally's raid and were helping down the third boss in a Labors of Hercules-themed raid. From what I could tell, the system rewarded each downed boss with a huge surplus of soul coins. That a successful raid team had abandoned its own progression attempts in order to down what was presumably a much easier boss was surprising. Made me think they were starting to have some pocketbook issues.

With any luck, we'd be able to help them with that.

That's when the system message boomed out. [Attention all miners! There has been an adjustment to the rule set based on a petition from Companies Avert Forest, Higeonori, Lostaril Associates, Green Promise, Vek’nar Realities, and Sicaris, et al., presented to a panel consisting of this System, Patriarch Kabaltash, and three neutral judges.

The petition sought to repeal outpost immunity for Phase Three. The panel reviewed the petition, counterpetitions, and all evidence presented, as well as any comments during the period of open commentary.

This petition has been granted. Starting immediately, outposts may now be attacked.]

Sage whooped. "Yes! They took the bait!”

Everyone in position? I asked in the command chat. All our defenses online?

I'm recalling all of our farmers to help repel the attack we're sure is coming, Juana reported. Everyone who isn't already assigned to Operation Trojan Horse, you guys better get in position.

Right, we were just farming kills. I've got this, I said.

I pulled the stun grenade out of my inventory, waited for an opportune moment, and lobbed it into the heart of the orc raid. Most of their miners froze immediately. We dropped in and slaughtered most of them in seconds.

The system announced, [Failure! Team DarkStar has failed to defeat the Lernean Hydra. Better luck next time. This boss will reset in 24 standard hours.]

The Hydra dissolved away. I dropped down into the muck, landing on my feet. Sage grinned at me. Her face was covered in Hydra blood and mud.

"Let's go," she said. “Bet I can get more kills than you!”

“You’re on!”

We raced back into the tunnels and then through the secret corridors, emerging into another raid. I checked quickly as we entered. This was a Journey to the West themed raid. I'd been here a couple of times before. We'd taken out two of the seven teams to have progressed past the Gatekeeper boss. None of the other five rated very high in our threat pool. They'd been sticking close to home and mostly farming for valuable materials. With luck, they would think our indifference meant they were safe.

Sage and I took half the team as Frank led the other half. We headed for the nearest camp. This outpost was a charming little Bavarian village filled with animalkin, mostly rabbits and badgers, with a couple of pert-eared foxes thrown in.

We watched from the cover of a nearby Buddhist temple that had been the home of one of the exterior bosses of this instance, now defeated.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

You in position yet? I asked Frank.

Almost.

Let us know. I waited, feeling antsy. The faster we cleared out this, the sooner we could be on to another instance. Our enemies had their own plans. I was worried about what was happening back at our outpost, but I had to trust our team.

We had been planning this for weeks. I knew that our constant harassment would become too much of a threat for the corporate Galactics to stand. Sooner or later, they would want to attack us head on.

The best way to do that was to disable outpost immunity. They would assume they could send in a huge number of their miners, all well-equipped, and overrun us, forcing us out of the game. That's why our lawyers hadn't put up more than a token fuss at the motion to remove outpost immunity. In reality, we'd been prepping for this for ages.

I started getting reports in. We've overrun the Orc camp at Troy, moving on to the Dwarf encampment on the seashore.

Burned out the weird, tall, green humans in the Last Days of Machu Picchu scenario.

Taken their outpost stone. Don't know how long it'll take them to respawn, but it's gonna cost a good bit.

We're in position, Frank reported.

I peered over the wall of the monastery at the animalkin town to our north. Something had spooked them. They were running about carrying laser rifles. I guessed that word of our assaults had reached them.

Go now, I told Frank, and “go!” to my team.

We sprinted out from the monastery. As we approached the village, I eyed the wooden stockade around it and the fortified gate. If everything went right, we were still a quarter mile out when the gate exploded into shrapnel.

Nice job, Mitch, I sent.

Which one? he asked.

A Tyrolean village full of animals in Journey to the West.

Oh yeah, excellent. That's fourteen out of sixteen reporting success.

Mitch had been the head of a band of saboteurs that had snuck up and undermined the defenses of a bunch of enemy camps, planting mines at the gates, digging tunnels and filling them with explosives under walls, setting traps up for when this day would come.

I put on a burst of speed as the smoke began to thin a bit. The miners at the settlement must have figured out they were under attack. Two rows of them stood in the ruined gateway, their guns out facing us. They began to fire as we approached. Perfect.

I engaged Fastest Gun in the West, sprinting into their midst and following it up with Call 'em Out. The enemy turned to keep their fire on me, exposing their backs to the rest of my team.

Sage whooped and Tamed a fox at the end of the line. She had him begin firing into their own lines. Lara lobbed a few orange grenades. Clouds of thick orange smoke filled the air. There was shouting and confusion everywhere. I felt Call 'em Out wear off. I darted to the side, dropped to the ground, drew my weapon, and began firing. In seconds we wiped out the force at the gate.

"Further in," I shouted.

We sprinted through the outpost. They had only a handful of automated defenses. They must just not have bothered to deploy them after the end of Phase Two. I was getting reports from several of our offensive teams that the outposts they were attacking had been similarly incautious. After this initial assault, I was sure they would fortify up. That's why we were trying to take out as many as possible in our first blitz.

The village defenders began to respawn, mixed in with a bunch of creep. Clearly, whoever was running this outpost had just triggered a big creep wave to spawn, but we had plans for dealing with that.

Sage unleashed the squads of deployable pirate skeletons that she'd picked up in Phase Two. They weren't much good against miners, but they were extremely effective against creep, especially because our own creep had multiple stacked buffs at this point. Just being members of Team Tunnel Rat meant that any NPCs fighting on our side were automatically 50% stronger, and that was leaving aside all of the items' buffs we had picked up in Phase Two.

Our skeletons cut swaths through the local creep, and we hosed down the animalkin as they respawned. We were fighting our way forward up to their central nexus, which meant it was a shorter and shorter time period between their deaths and their respawns.

"Keep them locked down," I snapped. "As long as they're respawning, slaughter them."

I kept an eye on chat. Frank reported he was in a similar position to us, farming lots of kills. After a couple of minutes, the respawns slowed and then stopped.

"All right, they figured it out," I shouted. "Take down the node."

Sage stepped forward. She pulled a cudgel out of her inventory and swung it hard at the nexus. In this little village, it was a glowing green crystal atop a small white pylon about four and a half feet off the ground. Sage smashed the crystal, knocking it from its post. It chipped and shattered. Shards flew everywhere.

[Node taken. The Hyborian Vegetarians' Communal Association has lost their outpost to Misfits Guild.

Misfits Guild, if you wish to claim this outpost, you may begin the 24-hour claiming ritual.

Do you wish to claim this outpost?]

I selected no.

[Very well. Do you wish to offer this outpost back to the original owners? You may set the ransom according to the following scale. If they refuse to pay the ransom, the outpost will be sacked.]

It offered me several options. I selected the 400,000 soul coin option.

If they refused to pay, the outpost would burn, damaging many of their turrets and fortifications. Those could be repaired, but it would cost them time and money.

Between this and the resurrection bill we had just given them, these guys were going to be tapped out unless they got one of the big corporate sponsors to back them so they could continue. I didn't think that was likely, but if it was, so much the better. I wanted to drain Proxima and those other blood-sucking bean counters dry.