Bob was on to something. He didn't know what it was, or whether it had any combat utility (that was after all the point of this MQA session), but he was on to something. When Bob closed his eyes and focused on the space around him, he received a curious feedback. He could feel something out there.

Bob could say definitively that he'd never felt anything like it before the system integration. It had to be connected with his new powers, with his magic. And hopefully it would turn out to be something wildly powerful that would solve all of Bob's problems and require low to zero effort. Bob's dreams of high-level, pure mud manipulation had crashed and burned after all. Bob didn't have any other baskets. He was betting all the eggs.

Still, he wished he could somehow get a clearer picture of the energy field. It was so vague and cloudy, impossible to unravel and examine. Was there anything he could do to sharpen his senses? He looked down at his brown, wizard's cloak. "Maybe this old thing is getting in the way and blocking my signal." It was an easy thing to test. Bob quickly derobed and was struck by a sudden wave of weakness. He swayed in place. He felt tired. His vision flickered a little. He steadied himself against the camp chair and waited for the moment to pass.

What had just happened? As soon as he'd taken off the cloak... Ah, the mud monster bonus. He pulled up the achievement:

> Achievement: Mud Monster

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> More mud than man

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> Achieve 100% (rounded) mud coverage of total body surface area.

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> Effect: A minor percentage bonus to base stats when covered in mud

That is always the way isn't it? You don't feel the gains until they are taken away from you. He hadn't noticed how much lighter and quicker he'd felt. But now every movement felt sluggish and unnaturally slow. His mental processing speed seemed to have fallen by half. Wow, so he'd been even weaker and stupider than this before the initiation. Nothing like a charitable thought.

"Well let's get this over with then." Bob folded up the cloak and sat down a little distance away. It took him a bit longer to reach the quiet, meditative state necessary to perceive the supposed energy field (he missed mud monster already). And when he found the quiet place, the sensation had... disappeared. Bob wrinkled his brow and rubbed his chin. Maybe that bonus had a bigger effect than Bob had initially guessed. Did you have to be beyond some threshold in intelligence or wisdom to see the energy?

Bob tried again, sitting longer than before, pushing his perception further and further, until he found something... There was a concentration of the energy somewhere behind him. Had it been there the whole time? He'd never really checked. Bob carefully rose to his feet, eyes still closed. He edged towards the energy source, keeping all of his attention on his inner sense.

The energy was low down, pooled on the ground in front of him. He reached out for it and his hand made contact. What? He'd been expecting his hand to pass right through. And yet the energy was soft and smooth. He ran his fingers through it and he saw the energy shift and respond. He opened his eyes and there it was. "I'm such an idiot sometimes," Bob shook his head and sighed to himself. In his hand was the familiar brown cloak, the mantle of the mud magician.

Bob swept the cloak up on himself and relaxed as the warmth of system-bestowed strength and intelligence flowed into him. He'd been sensing his cloak this whole time. It was blindly obvious when he stopped to think about it. An energy field that "surrounded" him. Something that swayed and flowed "like cloth". Mysteriously absent from "his face and hands and feet." Well as long as we end up at the truth...

> Companion Object: The Mud Magician's Mantle

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> A cloak of woven, living mud.

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> Effect: Equipping the cloak counts as covering the entire body with mud

Another classically understated and cryptic system description. Would it really hurt the heavens to be a little more helpful and detailed in their explanations? One expects most world religions could really get behind such an attitude. We all just want something to agree on.

The mantle of the mud magician. He rubbed it between his fingers and it felt like cloth, warm and easy on the skin. But what had the description said: "woven of living mud". This cloak too was mud.

Bob had remembered the line; he had known the fact in his head, but a part of him hadn’t believed it. The fundamental properties of his element were entirely altered. Where was its wet, slimy character, its seeping, half-liquid consistency? Was a thing still itself when stripped of all the attributes that made it that thing?

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The cloak was a masterwork, what else could Bob say. He played the material through his fingers, letting it flow through and fall down. Would he one day reach such heights, would he one day be able to craft such a mantle? Something to aspire to. Something for Bob Magus, for Bob the Wandering Sage.

For now though, Bob would have been happy if he could have just levitated a mud ball off the ground for half a second. Divine mud artistry could wait. We scale our dreams to ourselves. But if the cloak was made of mud, Bob should be able to feel it through his mud sense. And indeed he could. Indeed he'd been sensing the cloak the whole time. He'd just long gotten used to the double feedback sensation and never considered it particularly important. When he drilled into the feeling, it was obvious at once that his mud sense was behind the sensation.

However, that alone was not explanation enough. Bob, sitting all the way over here, had been able to sense the cloak, all the way over there. There had been at least five feet of distance between himself and the cloak. And yet, he had, without fail, with his eyes closed no less, picked out the cloak's mud signature and navigated to it. His paper experiment had demonstrated (most dishearteningly) that his mud sense could only sense things he was in direct contact with. He couldn't sense mud at a distance and yet he could sense his cloak at a distance. How was Bob supposed to square this triangle?

Bob's cloak must be special somehow. The system had described it as "living mud". Maybe that allowed the mud cloak to contact him. Or maybe his mud sense could perceive living mud more clearly, like the way a bright light can be seen over vast distances. Or perhaps it was because the cloak was his companion object. Maybe everybody was able to sense their companion objects. Companion objects might work something like soulbound items.

There was a lot going for that idea. For one, his mud cloak was plainly not some random object. It was custom made to synergise with his achievement and abilities. It was on theme. Even if another could somehow utilize the cloak, the object would be practically worthless to them. No, the mud cloak existed just for Bob.

For another, Bob guessed companion objects disappeared on their owner's death. Rad, Chad and Lad had definitely not been carrying fifteen sentients' worth of companion objects. Since companion objects were all potentially extremely powerful, there's no way they simply left them behind. The objects themselves must have disappeared. Conclusion: companion objects were intimately linked to their owner. So it would make sense if their owner could somehow perceive them even at a distance.

Now if only he had another sentient he could ask on the topic... Bob gave George a sharp look. The dog was chewing on a stick. Wait a moment. That stick. The same one George had given Bob twice now. How was the dog pulling that off? George had definitely not had the stick on him when they arrived at camp.

Bob snuck over. George was too busy viciously chewing on the hard object to notice. Bob came up behind the dog and flicked open his red satchel. "Aha!" Bob's dramatic interjection of discovery soon faded into a disappointed oh... The satchel was completely empty. George continued chewing unconcernedly. "I'll get you one of these days..." Bob mumbled to himself.

No, George was not going to provide Bob with any insight on the topic. Intelligible conversation on complex topics was beyond George's capacity. Bob sat down to puzzle over the question on his lonesome.

It only took a few minutes for Bob to decide he wasn't going to discover anything further. Why questions are notoriously difficult to answer satisfactorily. And MQA didn't care about whys. That was for spell engineers and magic developers to figure out. MQA cared about the how and the what. And Bob had answered them both. Bob could sense the mud cloak at a distance. And if Bob could sense the cloak, and the cloak was made of mud, Bob ought to have power over the cloak no?

Mud Magician Take 2. Bob let his eyes sink shut and felt out for the cloak. It was easy. It was stupidly easy. The cloak was right there. It shone loudly in his mind's eyes. It wasn’t just that he knew what he was looking for. There was more to it than that. The cloak itself was involved. It felt closer, more receptive, almost like it was aware of his gaze, like it saw him looking.

No ordinary mud ball had given him comparable impressions. He'd connected to them sure. He felt inside them and through them. But they'd felt like stone statutes, silent and still, unliving and unresponsive. But the cloak, the cloak was listening, waiting for him to speak, to ask. And so he did, imagining the cloak’s hood sweeping up and coming over his head.

What the… Bob almost fell over as something attacked him from behind. He twisted, trying to get eyes on the attacker, fumbling for a weapon, but… there was nothing there. Bob wiped himself off and sat himself back down. So much for self-confidence. So much for self-belief. He really hadn’t thought he had a chance in hell had he? A lifetime of disappointment leaves a stamp on the soul, doesn't it?

But hold your horses, there, hold your horses. Bob had just cast magic hadn't he? He'd just done the impossible? He imagined the cloak's hook swinging up and it had happened. "I'm a magician," he shouted. A little too loudly if George's startled reaction was anything to go by. But Bob was just getting started. Bob jumped to his feet and started fist pumping aggressively.

Bob had kept a stiff upper lip, but the truth was it had been eating away at him. For Bob alone to have no magical powers... It had been beyond cruel. And if he hadn't had George there to look after and a stubborn, defiant streak that made him unwilling to show weakness in front of the system, he'd probably have had to spend a good amount of time sulking in his bathroom.

Now he had joined the magical party. All praise to the society of MQA. MQA for life! Bob was a bona fide magician. Bob was a wizard. Bob reached out for the cloak again. He kept his mind on the intangible, invisible connection between himself and the cloth. He wanted to do something dramatic, something irrefutably magically, something a wizard would do.

Bob cast his features into a steely, unflinching expression and suddenly turned to the side, twisting his body as his cloak started to flicker up about him—only to lose will half-way through and peter out.

Shucks...The cloak had been supposed to billow up behind him in great rippling waves like a enormous gust had blown through. Obviously that hadn't happened. It had looked more like the cloak had tripped over something and barely kept its footing. Bob frowned at the cloak. They'd have to work on that. Time for a little magic practice.