"Why is my power such absolute horseshit," Bob yelled, as the spider exploded forward, using its back legs to propel itself at Bob like a pistol shot. Bob was bowled over, coming down backwards onto the muddy ground, the tutorial knife flying clean out of his hand and landing with a plop in the mud.

The damn thing was on top of him, its black hairy legs pawing over him, rubbing him up and down, stroking his face with its fine, surprisingly soft and delicate black hair. The spider’s face hovered just above Bob’s own as it struggled to gain enough leverage for a final, killing-bite.

Bob was disorientated, half-blinded, his mind in a fuzzy, blurred state, the strangest thoughts rushing through his head; he had noticed a little growth of hair above the spider’s mouth and somehow it made him think of a toothbrush mustache; Bob started laughing madly, the resemblance was just uncanny; he couldn’t help himself. It looked so ridiculous and yet it oddly suited the spider; it gave the monster a sort of crisp, business-man spider look. You know, I think, more spiders should try growing facial hair—what the hell was wrong with him?

By all rights the spider should have put the poor man out of his misery long ago, except Bob’s mud cloak was wriggling and shifting all by itself, working hard to keep the spider off balance. A witness might have testified that the spider was aggressively dancing on top of the man. Every time the monster made to bite down, it would find itself sliding and stumbling off, all eight legs barely enough to maintain its position on top of Bob.

Bob snapped back to himself. “George, help, get it off me, get it off me,” he screamed at the top of his lungs, the picture of the cool, calm and collected hero.

The spider was swiping at the air, its jaw clattering up and down in an eager attempt to sink its teeth into poor, helpless Bobby-boy. George was running circles around the pair of them, barking loudly, but without providing any tangible assistance. Dammit, Bob thought, he’ll bring a swarm down on us.

“George, help! I’m getting eaten alive here.” The dog’s barks loudened but he didn’t move to help his master. What’s wrong with the animal? George looked confused, and what was that, a little jealous. The mutt thinks the spider and I are playing together. What on earth gave him that impression? Wait wasn’t I laughing earlier. Bob, I’m going to kill you later.

Bob caught sight of the dagger, lying a few paces away in a patch of mud, just out of reach. Dammit, dammit, dammit... He closed his eyes. Better to die with your eyes closed anyway. A wind shock hit him in the face, he flinched, but didn't open his eyes. He felt the mud under him, further, further, using the mud itself as a medium, he expanded his awareness, there, something hard and cold, something not mud: the dagger.

This was his only chance. While his cloak was still buying him time. It had to work. He focused. He imagined. He designed the spell. Now! The mud around the dagger exploded up, it had worked... except, well, naturally the heavy dagger had just slipped through the semi-liquid mud and thumped down to the ground. So much for catapulting the dagger into the spider’s side... The mud though had flown straight into the spider's open mouth and the spider was not enjoying the experience.

Bob, ever the master of improvisation, knew how to take a cue. He shifted tactics and just tried to shove as much mud as he could into the spider’s mouth. The move was surprisingly effective. The spider seemed to have an uphill battle intaking sufficient oxygen as wave after wave of mud flew into his open mouth. Those beady black eyes over a toothbrush mustache creased in frustration and anger.

The beast was half-choking, spitting out or swallowing down buckets of mud as it struggled to keep Bob pinned to the ground. The mud barrage wasn’t about to kill the beast, but it sure annoyed the hell out of the creature. And that made Bob feel a little warm and fuzzy inside. So everyone’s a winner.

Unfortunately, the spider was a smart cookie. It only needed three seconds to figure out that the relentless stream of mud was Bob’s doing and, therefore, finishing Bob would simultaneously stop the mud. Two birds one Bob. So mud drooling out of its mouth, it renewed the assault against Bob’s exposed neck. It had also learned not to stand directly on top of Bob and his bucking mud cloak, and was repositioning its feet onto stabler ground. Time was short.

“George, here boy, here boy,” Bob called out in as cheerful and inviting a voice as he could manage present circumstances considering. Bob had given up on difficult, high-level concepts like “help” or “get him off me.” He needed a clear, simple command that George would respond to instinctually.

Sure enough, these five words cut through George’s indecision and had him bounding over. The dog collided head on with the spider as the dog did his best to mob poor Bob lying on the ground. The impact and ensuing distraction gave Bob just enough time to roll away from the spider and struggle up to his feet.

Both parties froze, looking at each other across a few yards of crumbled and muddy grass. Bob braced himself expecting another lightning spring from the spider. But George was the first to act. He bounced happily forward and sniffed curiously at the creature. The spider hesitated, not sensing any animosity from the dog.

Bob knew George could one-shot the monster whenever he wanted. Problem was George was a friendly-as-pie, wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly, the world-is-sunshine-and-rainbows golden retriever. And he was just as likely to roll over and present his belly for scratching, as he was to put down the dangerous spider who'd been trying to kill Bob. Bob would have to take matters into his own hands.

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“George, fire!” Bob shouted. George turned and looked confusedly at his master. Bob groaned to himself. And the spider looked uncertainly between the pair, raising its two front legs defensively.

The dog is going to make me do the whole bloody ritual. Thankfully we've practiced this. The spider leaned back, winding up those back legs as though preparing for another lunge. "Sit! Shake! Lie Down!" Bob called out in quick succession, gaze glued on the level 5 monstrosity in front of them, ignoring George's smooth and practiced transition between the steps.

The spider was at a complete loss. Was this an attack? A ploy? Some kind of deep ambush. Its prey didn’t usually walk nonchalantly up to it, wagging its tail playfully and then drop into a series of meaningless tricks. The spider turned towards George. It stepped cautiously forward.

Bob gasped, forgetting his commands, "George, get out of there!" George licked the spider’s face. The spider froze where it stood. Bob facepalmed in the background. George coughed; he must have gotten some of that mustache hair caught in the throat; the dog stepped back, looking like he was about to sneeze. “Fire, George, fire that motherfucker down.” Out billowed a wave of concentrated fire.

Smoke, the smell of burnt hair and melting flesh. When the air cleared, the spider was curled up on the ground, its legs wrapped defensively around itself, absolutely and utterly dead. Its toothbrush mustache incinerated down to the last hair. The corpse smoldered with black, stinging smoke. George had obliterated the creature.

Bob let himself crumble down onto the grass land, his hands stretched out behind him, panting and grinning. Thank god he’d brought George with him. The encounter might have gone pear-shaped fast without the dog to back him up. That dog's power was horrifying. Terrifying on a carnal, primal level. It was the sort of thing that should have come out of the mouth of a battleship-sized red dragon and not a smaller-than-average golden retriever.

But the two were going to have to work on their teamwork. It'd sure help if George learned to recognize a monster as a threat and not as a potential playmate. Still they’d done it, hadn’t they? He was flushed with exhilaration and adrenaline. Touch and go to be sure. But it was their first time and they’d get better. Results are what's important.

A loud, popping sound dragged Bob’s attention back to the scene in front of them. The spider’s carcass had disappeared. All right. That meant loot, didn’t it? Bob got to his feet and searched the scorched earth around where the spider had lain. He couldn’t find anything. And rummaging through the ground, he felt like he put his hand through some things he wished he hadn’t. George could liquify stone couldn’t he? Spider fat—that was child’s play to him.

Bob frowned and looked over at the dog. “You find anything George.”

The dog had a guilty look on his face. Bob recognized it from when George used to miss the toilet sheet and urinate on the bathroom floor.

“George, you did something, didn’t you?”

The dog whined and backed away. Bob stalked forward.

“George. I’m going to find out eventually. Best come clean now.”

The dog looked down at the ground and then sadly up at Bob.

“George, I’m warning you.”

The dog, responding to Bob’s tone, came up into a neat sitting position and gazed blankly into the distance.

“You’re not fooling anyone with your ‘I’m a good boy act.’”

Bob looked inside George’s red satchel, but the bag was just as empty as before. Had the dog swallowed something he shouldn’t? Bob knelt down and tried to get a look between the dog’s teeth. George kept his jaw clamped firmly shut.

“You’ve got something in there don’t you. Spit it out, boy. Spit it out.” Pop, the smoldering carcass reappeared centimeters from Bob’s face. Then the rank smell hit him and he went green in the face, before stumbling back a few steps to the cleaner air.

Bob looked wild-eyed at the dog. “George, how did you do that?” George barked and looked like he was twisting his neck to point at something. The dog’s anatomy didn’t quite let him achieve his intention. But Bob got the message. “The backpack? Your companion object?”

Bob approached gingerly, taking a circuitous route to maintain distance between himself and the dead body. “You can store things?” George barked. But Bob knew that was probably just a sound and not an answer. “It works like an inventory system I suppose. You pop things in and can pull them out again later.”

Bob was thinking back over their experiences. He nodded to himself, understanding at last. “So that’s how you pulled off that magical branch switching, is it? You picked the branch up again before we left camp. Then when you couldn’t find the one I threw. You just spat out the old one and brought it back instead.” Bob nodded to himself. “Intriguing. And I won’t point out what that says about your moral character. Half-assing the true goal and then handing in a substitute.”

Pop. “You didn’t George?” George had. He had once more stored up the spider corpse in his personal space.

“George, what do you want with the thing? It stinks worse than the bins after I forget to take the rubbish. Spit it out. Come on. Spit it out.”

This time George was less amenable.

“Come on George, old buddy boy, look I’ll give you a treat when we get home, let’s just leave the thing here.”

The prospect of a far-off, speculative treat that Bob was just as likely to forget as to remember was not temptation enough for George. The dog turned away and started sniffing through the burnt wreckage.

“Fine, George, have it your way. Sometimes I don’t know who’s the master and who’s the dog. But I’m warning you. If you spit that corpse out in my room later, you are going to get it hot. Capisce.”

George happily ignored Bob’s ramblings. Bob had a long-habit of talking to himself and George had divined the art of knowing when and when not to listen.

Bob grumbled to himself a little longer: "Stupid dog better not make a habit of this, imagine waking up in the middle of the night to find that abomination in your bed and still warm I bet, and what the hell, personal storage, an inter-dimensional space that he can access at will? I’ve got a raggedy, old cloak made of mud. System playing favorites again. Make a fool out of me will you." He shook his fist at the omnipresent system.

But wait a moment, he and George, two level ones had just brought down a level five. That meant experience. That meant level ups. Isn’t that why the two of them were risking their lives on this crazyhouse hunting expedition? Bob pulled up his status.