Fear advised Bob to trek northward towards the great mountain forests. Anyone would have a hell of time tracking them through dense woodland. That would be the safest course of action. Fear had begged and pleaded. Fear had taken to whispering the word "tortoise" in his ear.
Greed advised Bob to stay within the pylon's range of influence. Pylon shipping was a miracle of system engineering. Something even amazon would envy. A hundred times cheaper folks. We're not talking some token 15% discount. A hundred times. Greed had promised Bob a grand and glorious future.
Bob was proud and a little conflicted to say that greed won out. That didn't meant he'd thrown out all fear. No, fear continued on in an advisory role. Fear had told him he needed a secret base. Fear had led him to this little depression between three hills with good cover in all directions. Fear had persuaded him that "secret" meant "underground" and put a shovel in his hand. Fear had pointed him at the hillside and told him to dig.
That was where he now stood, at the bottom of the little depression, shovel in hand, wiping away muddy streaks of sweat and looking disappointedly at his so-called tunnel.
The enterprise had started marvelously. He'd found himself a nice starter hole. Clearly another creature had had the wit to see the attraction of the place. Some rabbit or badger had already prepared the ground. The hard part was done for him. He just had to widen the entry point.
Bob had thrown himself into the task with unusual determination and energy. Thirty seconds later he'd descended to his baseline languid and complaining pace. It was surprisingly hard work when all was said and done. Dirt was heavier than you might expect. And there was so much of it to move. And it was hot work. You started to sweat. And it was dirty work. There was no way to prevent the soil from getting here, there and everywhere. Forty-five minutes and the hole's was barely any wider than it had been at the beginning.
Bob rounded on his Fear. This tunnel idea of yours is a complete bust. I'll be at all night and most of tomorrow. Bob's Fear had the discourtesy to talk back, claiming Bob was just being lazy and fatalistic, and just see how much the badger had managed.
Bob sighed. Now if only he were a wizard, this would have be a right stitch. He could have had it all done in five minutes flat. He'd muddify the hole with some water and then levitate it all out. He'd even smooth the tunnel walls to make it homely and respectable.
Dammit, he was a wizard. He reached out for the mud at the entrance where some of yesterday's rainfall lay puddled. He summoned up the familiar, desired end state, mud floating in the air, and commanded the mud to obey. Well we all know nothing happened.
Bob was annoyed at this further failure in magical mud craft. Bob was annoyed at the stupid tunnel. Bob was annoyed at this wretched shovel that had started giving him blisters. Bob swung the shovel as hard as he could at the tunnel entrance. The blow collided, the shovel shuddered painfully in Bob's hand and he was forced to drop it. The tunnel was silent. Wait, the tunnel was trembling. Bob was knocked over and backwards in a cloud of black dust as the gravity of the hillside reasserted itself and the tunnel caved in.
"Dammit all!" Bob surveyed the work of his hands. A rough pile of mixed soil and stones, together with a haze of dust that was only just beginning to settle. The tunnel was no more. Bob was a lot stronger than he looked, that or his amateur shoveling had structurally comprised the tunnel. On second thought, it was a good thing that they'd have never actually camped inside.
Bob stood up and dusted himself off. "Well, nothing to it," Bob acted nonchalant, as though the past hour of mindless labor had not been proved utterly fruitless. No plan ever survived first impact with the enemy. Who was the enemy? The mud of course.
“George, what’d you think about a tent? A tent would hit the spot nicely no?”
The dog barked.
“You got it George. And I’m only agreeing because you asked, mind.”
Bob dragged the tent out of his pack and tried laying it out in a few different position. It wouldn't be that obvious would it? Bob had purchased a bright blue, tall and spacious tent. Something comfortable and airy. He wanted to be able to stand up inside.
Was Bob on holiday or trying to avoid detection here? He wondered whether the system accepted returns. No, no, it did not, just like the system that, face the consequences of your stupid decisions. He'd have to purchase himself another tent and this time one more suited to his current situation.
But hang on a second, why was Bob even bothering with this right now? It was only late morning. What the hell was he putting up a tent for now? It would just make it easier for people to discover their camping spot. Bob instead purchased a camping chair. He put it together, sat down and leaned back. It was surprisingly comfortable given its price and portability.
Bob leaned back. He was exhausted. He had been mugged by three's company, been chased up and down hills, been psychologically scarred by a tortoise and been made to do manual labour. He deserved a little break. Nobody could possible deny Bob that. And he knew exactly what he wanted to do. A little litRPG binge would go long way towards curing his blues.
> Quest: Sky's the limit (Personal)
>
>
> Count to 1,001 out loudd without misisng a numper (max interval 2 seconds).
>
> Optional challenge: count backwards
>
>
> Reward: (hidden)
>
> Optional Reward: Jonny the Man - The Kiwi Warriors
It was a weird quest. Bob didn't see the point. Nor did he understand why the system had suddenly got so sloppy as regards spelling and grammar. Bob didn't care though. That optional reward was something worth sacrificing for.
Bob prepared himself for the attempt. He took a long swig of water, gurgled it around a little bit, and spat it out. He followed that up with few small sips (wet the throat and all). Good, he was ready. A quest firmly within his level of power and skill. Bob had been counting since primary school. The whole shebang should only take 15 minutes and then he'd have his long-wished-for Jonny the Man copy. No time like the present: A thousand and one, a thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine.
Bob started well, motivated and interested. This was easy. Bob was a counting machine, he was an abacus for hell's sake. He steamed through the nine hundreds, the eight hundreds, the seven hundreds; he was the god of counting, start him going and he'd never stop.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
His momentum started to flag around the six hundreds. Six hundred and forty two, six hundred and forty one, six hundred and forty... There were so many numbers. It was like they were endless. Who came up with them all? Who made the numbers? The figures started to blur together in Bob's mind. His thoughts wanted to drift, to wander, to play. The counting itself had become routine. It didn't occupy enough brain cpu. His brain cylinders span wildly without biting into anything. He needed something to think about. And the system provided:
> Grace Period ended;
>
> Happy Hunting.
What could that mean Bob wondered? But Bob was known for his iron concentration and priority management. Five hundred and fifty five, five hundred and fifty four, five hundred and fifty three... Bob felt his hand itch. No, he was focused. He would itch when he was done. Five hundred and thirty four, five hundred and thirty three, five hundred and thirty two... His hand was really itchy. He'd just scratch it. He could scratch and count.
"What the..."
Bob failed his quest. But he was worrying about that right now. He was worrying about the green thing wriggling up his arm. It was a butterfly, no, a caterpillar, something in between? The system helpfully annotated:
> Raupenflieger (lvl 1)
George had also noticed the creature and was barking loudly to alert Bob to the situation which Bob was already fully aware of it. It was his hand after all.
The monster was a finger-sized, green caterpillar, bulbous and cylindrical. So far so normal, except out of its back grew butterfly wings, really beautiful butterfly wings, a breathtaking, abstract pattern of red and black. Bob stared happily at the pretty wings.
The creature started inching its way slowly up Bob's arm. Bob suddenly felt a lot less well-inclined towards to the insect. He reacted instinctively, flicking his arm out in an attempt to catapult the creature away from him.
The caterpillar was affected, but not in the way Bob might have wished. It lost its grip with the front of its body, but somehow managed to maintain contact with its back. It hung there, swinging wildly around, as Bob jumped up and danced around, trying to get the damn thing off him.
The Raupenflieger fought valiantly on its part not to lose its tenuous grip. Why it didn't just fly off with those pretty wings was quite beyond Bob? It reached a point where Bob's inherent squeamishness was overcome by fear and desperation; Bob brought a flat hand down on top of the creature.
The Raupenflieger exploded. Green pus flew everywhere. Bob's hands and arms, the tip of his nose, a bit on his neck, everywhere unprotected by his cloak. "Disgusting..." He began wiping away the slime. And that was when the pus started to burn. Burn and itch. "Crap, crap..." Bob accelerated his cleaning efforts.
It was too little, too late. Any skin that had come into contact with the pus was an angry, jarring red. It stung like the devil and yet was somehow incredibly itchy at the same time. But itching the sensitive, red skin was its own torture. Bob's arm and hand were the worst affected. Bob fished out a water bottle and poured cold water over the arm. It didn't help. No wonder the creature had been so utterly fearless. Who in their right mind would splatter such a creature?
All that was left of the creature were the beautiful wings, paper thin with a powdery, sparkly look to them, floating on top of a puddle of green sludge.
"George, no!"
It was too late. The dog, ever curious and without fear, had decided to investigate the green puddle. George brought his nose a little too close to the strange liquid. Now the dog was whining and rubbing his nose with his paw. His bright red nose.
"Dammit George. Why you gone and done that?"
Bob was in a good deal of pain himself and not quite in the mood for doggish antics.
Bob finally recovered himself enough to remember that money solves all problems. He quickly pulled up the system interface, offering a silent prayer of gratitude that he could manipulate it with his mind and didn't have to use his swollen monstrosity of a hand.
He picked out the first cream that was supposed to work on raupenflieger toxin. A tube appeared in the air and dropped down to the ground. Bob knelt down and picked it up: "Raupenflieger Squasher." Was the cream making fun of him?
An enjoyable two minutes passed as Bob tried to leverage the cap off with his wrists. You'd think they make these things easier to access. Finally, the lid was off and he started liberally applying it to his hands, arms, nose, neck. Bob sighed in blissful relief. The cream's effect was dramatic and immediate.
"George, George, come here boy."
George had curled up into a ball. He was whimpering quietly. It looked like he'd manage to transfer some of the acid to both paws and several other unreasonable places. The dog really didn't learn, did he? Bob went over.
"Hold still now."
He dabbed a fat splotch of cream on the dog's nose. George immediately tried to lick it off. "George, dah," Bob grabbed the dog's mouth and held the jaw shut. There's no way that cream would be good for a dog's stomach. It didn't seem toxic, but better safe than sorry.
With his other hand, Bob applied cream to George's paws and wherever else the dog had managed to spread the acid. Bob sat with the dog like this for five minutes letting the medicine work, before scrapping away any of the cream that hadn't dissolved in to the skin. George was still bound to lick some of it off, but Bob could at least minimize the damage.
Naturally, the moment Bob released George, the dog immediately started to lick his nose and then his paws and then every other spot Bob had spread the cream. "It's your funeral..."
Well now they knew what the grace period had been about: monsters. The Russian Tortoise had been a sentient. Earth based trap ability and shark denture companion object. That chimerical cater-fly, on the other hand, was clearly a monster. It had no ability to speak of and the system had annotated its name and level.
So the system had given them twelve hours to prepare themselves before populating monsters across the earth. And now their time was up. Was Bob prepared for the monster invasion? No, Bob was not prepared. He was a magic-less, unfit human without combat experience.
Maybe they could turtle up (poor choice of expression)? Bob eyed their position wearily. The slopes on either side were relatively steep. They would be a difficult approach. Behind them was a long gradual slope. This was the path Bob and George had descended by. However the path sort of rolled up and then down, giving poor visibility into the depression. You'd already have to know exactly where their camp was. You couldn't stumble upon it that way.
In front of them, however, was a narrow channel. Bob didn't like the look of it. This evidently was where yesterday's rainwater had drained away. It was narrow, but not narrow enough to prevent someone or something climbing up it. Bob could just imagine monsters wandering up the channel and attacking them in their sleep. If only he could block it off somehow...
But was turtling really the right strategy? Even if the monsters didn't find them, Chad, Rad and Lad probably would. Lad, at least, had seemed very confident in his ability to track down Bob. A confrontation was inevitable. And it wouldn't just be three's company, other "interested" parties would be looking for Bob Brown, Lord of Earth, and the little, consolation prize of 1,000,000 credits awarded to his murderer. No, Bob's only real chance was to level up. Bob's pulled up his status screen:
> Name: Robert Brown
>
> Race: Human (lesser)
>
> Class: Heaven's Fool
>
> Level: 1 (17%)
>
> Rank: E
>
> Wealth: 4,893,300 credits
Well that pretty much confirmed system's level up mechanics. Those video game makers sure were prophetic. The more living things you kill the stronger you get. Sure, the truth can be a little dark. But we all know the way to the top is over a mountain of corpses. Before and after the system. Athletic competition, academic competition, university admissions, job hunting, for every winner there are scores of nameless defeated.
Bob's job was to avoid becoming one more of the nameless dead. It was a hard job. And it'd grow even harder if he couldn't figure out some way to defend himself. Thankfully, Bob had an idea. A very capitalistic idea. He opened up the system shop and navigated to the categories page. There were mostly normal, boring departments: arts & crafts, automotive, baby, beauty, computers, books, music, ah here we go: weapons. That looked more promising.