BK 2 Chapter 1 - The Crush_George Knows Best [Mud Wizard LitRPG]

Book 2 - Idol Worship

Bob was your ordinary bloke. He worked a crappy job and lived in a crappy apartment and ate crappy store-bought meals. After a long day at his crappy job, he'd come back to his crappy apartment, shovel a crappy meal into his mouth and ask himself in all seriousness if modern society allowed a man some way of preserving his human dignity. A rich and complex internal discussion would follow, finally terminating at the familiar conclusion: No. No, it did not.

And at those times, thank the heavens, a wet, brown nose would prod itself against his hand and a warm, furry creature would jump up on his knees, doing its best to run a rough tongue across every inch of his face. His golden retriever, Sir George, would have sensed the bleeding of his master's soul and roused himself from the perpetual nap to succor his lord. Bob would throw up his hands and acknowledge melancholy defeated. It was hard to argue with a dog.

Weary after long struggles, Bob would shelter in the last refuge of the strong, that final beacon of hope and joy, that lighthouse on the far horizon with its beckoning, golden flames: litrpg. Bob would sink into a hot bath's inviting embrace, crack open the latest novel and lose himself in a world beyond his own. You know the life of the everyman. The grand struggle against The Crush. The story so universal and everlasting that it is never told and never shall be.

So, would someone care to explain how our everyman, Robert Brown, ended up here: standing at the edge of a forest as twilight deepened and rain sheeted down, the system-anointed Heaven's Fool, wearing a mantle of living mud, the bodies of three dead men he'd killed six feet under, a dog on his right side barking his head off and a beautiful woman lying on the ground cursing his immortal soul. While there, in the distance, a giant slime monster sailed towards his position and hosts of badger-sized, horned beetles scattered in every direction. Honestly a two word summary would be really helpful. Because there must be a hell of story in there somewhere, something with a moral, and a few strong themes, and a good dollop of character growth. Maybe Bob would look for them once he found the time to relax and introspect.

But Bob aren't you forgetting something? Probably. What level are you on? "@#$% ^&*() !!## @@!! %%^^ &&." Bob shook his fist at the sky. "Why... !!@@##$$ ^^&& (]]**!" %$%$" Were those real words? Bob panted, hands on his knees. He was a gentleman. He'd spoken his truth. He'd said his piece. Sophie looked up from the ground with a mixture of horror and respect. Bob nodded at her and flashed her a roguish smile. She turned her head away and tried to hide blushing cheeks. What could he say? He appreciated a women who could appreciate a choice sequence of swear words.

What level was Bob? What level was Bob? Only level 9.99. Why don't you just round that up to ten? You... You making fun of me? You want to go? I just killed three men in cold blood. You think I won't. Bob had been sitting at level 9.99 for the past hour or so. He'd killed numerous monsters and three sentients and nothing had moved the dial. The whole while he'd been being jerked around by a sick system that wouldn't stop laughing at him. And now the answer appeared, divine inspiration in globular form:

> Der Glibbermeister (level 10)

You want to be level 10? Why didn't you say so? All you have to do is kill a level 10 monster. Obvious as pie. You really needed someone to explain that to you? Strength in the interverse is a zero-sum game. You want something somebody else has. Well take it from them. And so the gargantuan slime approached.

It was first time Bob had set his eyes on a level 10 monster. Level 10, Rank D, an evolved monster. He'd faced his share of enemies. He'd battled the whole creepy-crawler all-star lineup: giant spiders, reaper-insects, unicorn beetles. He'd fought King Arthur, Lord of the Grassland Beetles, Wielder of the Mighty Excaliborn. He'd challenged Arthur to single-combat and emerged victorious. But this... this monstrosity... this Glibbermeister was a creature on a different plain.

How would Bob describe Der Glibbermeister? Goo Worm? Blubber Basilisk? The Oozing Death? That doesn't paint a picture for you? Okay, listen up. Are you listening? Good. So imagine a long, roughly cylindrical body, divided into segments (a worm's probably your best comparison). Except with a three meter diameter and fifty meters long. No eyes, no mouth, no visible internal organs. The whole body is a neon-green goop that emits a ghostly luminosity like some creature of the deep sea.

Der Glibbermeister had just launched itself off the nearest hilltop. Time seemed to freeze as the animal floated through the air, a magnificent, green blur, like the aurora had solidified into jello. The worm crested, gracefully arching and then it savaged down, straight into the midst of the beetle procession.

"No," Bob called out, but it was too late. The core group, the captain and his chosen litter-bearers, couldn't get out of the way in time. The slime splashed down, breaking apart and coming over them as a great, green wave.

"Arthur!"

His friend, his noble battle-companion, King Arthur, lord of the grasslands, arrayed in state, surrounded by his honor guard, on the slow road to his final resting place, was swept under the green sea and melted away.

Bob watched in horror. The slime goo was some manner of deadly acid. Everything it made contact with dissolved in a hiss of rancid steam. Bob watched as the bravest and noblest sons of the emerald city went up in smoke. And it was not only the beetles, the grass, the flowers of the grass, the little saplings, the shrubbery, all evaporated in a hiss and crackle, melted down into their base components and diffused across the monster. The monster was destruction incarnate. Its wake was a black line of devastation painted across the green and peaceful landscape (sound familiar?).

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But wait, the monster was a puddle of formless acid, without shape or coherence. Maybe it had destroyed itself by that reckless jump? The general of excellence chooses the site and character of his battleground. A wise general can defeat his enemy using only the landscape. Bob looked at George.

"You saw what I did there."

And then, of course, the slime started to reassemble; the green tide swept up and the scattered waves were pulled back. The green worm rebuilt itself up like an ice cube melting out in reverse, piling goo on goo and freezing it into position. The Blubber Basilisk started oozing forward.

How did it move? Its movement pattern was rather hypnotic. It sort of shuffled forward, in these wobbling, jiggling strides, like a wave propagating at quarter-speed. Don't ask me how, but something like surface tension kept the slime juice from spilling outside the creature's form. It didn't start fast. The head had to sit and wait for the wave to roll up the fifty meters from the tail. Picture a slime glacier falling towards you. You're afraid for your life and paradoxically you're sort of bored. But even as Bob watched, the creature began to speed up, slowly mind; it had some trick for stacking momentum, starting a new wave before the last one had finished, so that gradually there were more and more of them.

It ticked forward, directing itself bang on their position and nothing seemed able to hinder it. Stones, water, dirt, other inorganic objects floated unharmed through the slime and were gently ejected out its side or back. Its advance had a sense of inevitability to it. The monster shuddered forward in a straight, unflinching line, displacing any geography that happened to interrupt its passage. It was coming for them.

Bob was terrified. And then he was angry. And then he grew a little impatient. Truly Death approaches at his own leisure and on his own time. And then Bob remembered he'd dropped Sophie, whoops, and he was suddenly afraid again. It hadn't been anything personal, just a natural human reaction to the sudden shock. She'd see past that right? She was a woman who could acknowledge extenuating circumstance. Surely she couldn't hold a small thing like that against him.

He crouched down and stretched out a hand to her, a sorry-about-that half-grin on his face. She slapped his hand away. So she hadn't forgiven him then. Instead she shimmed up to her feet using a tree for support. She continued to hold on to the tree, even after making it to her feet, obviously not quite trusting her balance.

"Sophie, I'm sorry. It was a honest mistake."