> Name: Robert Brown

>

> Race: Human (lesser)

>

> Class: Heaven's Fool

>

> Level: 1 (17%)

>

> Rank: E

>

> Wealth: 4,893,300 credits

"Level 1 (17%)." Now if Bob remembered correctly that was exactly where his level percentage had stood before the fight. In other words, the system in its infinite wisdom had judged Bob’s contribution to the fight at a big, fat zero. Basically it wouldn’t have mattered whether Bob was there or not.

Bob wanted to disagree. He’d done lots of things. He’d spattered the monster with a mud missile; he’d half-drowned the animal in a stream of mud; he’d given the final word of command that ended the beast. No experience? Hadn’t he looked a turkey-sized spider eye-to-eye, hadn’t he felt its leg hair against its face, hadn’t he endured an eight-legged creature waltzing on top of him? Those all sounded like experiences, didn’t they?

But had he made a difference? Had he really made a difference? Bob gritted his teeth. Harsh but fair. There was no denying that the only punch that mattered had been thrown by the dog.

“George, did you level up?”

Ruff!

Why did that sound suspiciously like a yes. Bob thought he remembered a few moments where the dog had gone glassy-eyed after killing the spider. Well, at least the xp hadn’t been wasted.

“Congrats boy. I helped didn’t I?”

George barked indulgently.

“Thanks mate. You’d think they might have given me a little assist bonus.”

Bob was having a hard time accepting the zero. Sure mud to the mouth might not constitute physical damage, but had the system taken into account emotional damage? Bob certainly felt as though he’d been emotionally damaged by mud.

And that was when the fatigue hit him. In all honesty, Bob was surprised he'd lasted as long as he had. He staggered, clutching his head before collapsing onto the grass. The adrenaline of imminent death having petered out, the full price of his mana overuse had swept over him. He threw up violently. Then he threw up again. His head felt like it was going to split open. He wished the spider had finished him off after all. Just perfect. All the pain and none of the gain.

Bob lay in the mud, half-death with fatigue, just staring glassily up at the blue sky. It was supposed to rain later, he remembered. A pity that and it was such a nice day. He wondered how he was supposed to level up moving forward. Because this kind of xp division threw a real wrench in Bob’s secret leveling strategy: setting George’s hell breath loose on as many poor sods as he could find. The system had made sure he didn't just ride George's coattails.

"Why do I start to think getting stronger is going to be a real challenge for me?" Bob muttered to himself, fixing an evil eye on the heavens.

The tutorial knife was lying close by. Groaning, he reached over and picked it up. He didn't know exactly why. The weapon sure hadn't proved itself useful up till now. No, that wasn’t true, Bob did know why. His experience with the spider monster had taught him some hard truths about the capabilities and limitations of the mud mage. For one, mud-damage was annoyingly low (read non-existent). A full-on mud banger straight between the eyes and the monster hadn't even flinched. This weapon was about all he had capable of making a dent in a monster’s side.

Now don't get the wrong idea. Bob was thrilled with his performance against the spider. He felt he'd experienced significant advancement in his mud-bending skills. Sure they might not have contributed towards the final kill, but they had been pretty clutch at keeping Bob’s head on his shoulders.

Bob had managed a sustained assault against the spider, directing flow after muddy flow into its chomping jaws. He'd discovered mid-battle that he could sense mud through other mud, which had allowed him to chain his perception and interact with the distant knife. Give a man some credit. This morning he could hardly even sense a ball of mud lying plop in the centre of his open hand.

At the same time, Bob saw that he still had a long way to go before he could consider himself a proper battle-mage. Just look at him, he was puddled on the muddy ground, wrung out to complete exhaustion. What would have happened if George’s barking had attracted another monster, or god forbid a swarm of monsters? Bob would have been down and out, and hell knowing George, he probably would have tried to invite them all over for a play-date or something.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Bob needed to be more efficient with his powers. Obviously his mana reserves were miniscule. Bob scratched his head. He probably ought to use his cloak more. He didn't know if it was because of their "special" connection or because the cloak had its own mana that it was tapping into, but he had noticed that manipulating the cloak cost a fraction of the mana required to move insentient mud.

Well no point worrying about it now. Bob would probably be useless for the next thirty minutes. He'd just lie down here and recover himself. Maybe a short nap. A nap sounded capital. George would keep watch. Bob blinked at the dog. Something was wrong. George had frozen in place and was glaring at a patch of tall grass.

"What is it boy?"

Bob had a terrible suspicion. He came up on his elbows and crawled over to the dog. Bob followed the dog's gaze. He couldn't see anything.

"What is it boy?" Bob whispered, but George didn't move; he'd gone dead still. Bob couldn't see anything, but he trusted the dog.

He'd kept his eyes trained on the spot and... there! He made out the shadow of a creature moving under the grasses. He winched. He didn't feel so good. No, he didn't feel good at all. Why had George had to make such a racket? That and George's fireball of death had almost certainly attracted the monster.

The only silver lining was that George had not bounded, tongue lolling out, into the obvious danger. Maybe the creature hadn't caught sight of them yet. Maybe it'd just pass right by. They were hiding in a burnt-out patch of grass, complete with a very visible smoke trail. Bob wished he'd had the foresight to move out of the area and not squander his grace period checking his status and complaining about the system. We all make many wishes, don't we?

A second of further study and the system populated the annotation over the monster's head: "Erntemantik (lvl 7)". God have mercy. He hadn't managed to put a scratch on the level 5 spider and now a level 7 was approaching. And it wasn't like he was at the top of his form. He felt dead on his feet. Dead even before the monster had had a chance to kill him.

Bob gritted his teeth. What did they always say? You learned best facing your betters not your inferiors. Maybe this would be a rise-to-the-moment situation for Bob. That would be compelling, right? That's what would have happened to Jonny the Man.

The monster was insect-based. It stood as tall as a secondary-school kid. It walked two legged, its arms shaped into long, curved blades, a double set of wings folded on its back. Green with brown undertones and black highlights.

Hope dies slowly. Maybe the creature was just scouting. Come to peek around and see who had caused this black scar on the landscape. Surely an animal would have to be crazy to come to the site of such awesome destruction. Where was the creature's sense of fear?

Bob closed his eyes, put his hand on the ground and felt around him with his mud-sense. Just sensing the mud seemed to have a minimal mana cost. And he was getting better at it. It took less and less time to pick out that particular sensation from the jumble of sensory stimuli.

His consciousness flowed forward towards the monster's position. He sure was lucky there was so much mud around. If it weren’t for yesterday’s rainstorm, the soil would probably be dry and hard and wouldn't have counted as mud.

Now that he thought about it, the system was stacking the deck in Bob’s favor. Mud to the mud mage. You call this lucky: to be trapped in a zone with nightly rain and elbow-deep mud fields? But it was lucky. And the worse thing was, that even though Bob stood in his natural domain, surrounded by his mastered element, Bob was still absolutely and unequivocally weak as straw.

Of course, the reaper-insect was making straight for their position. His mud sense confirmed it. There was no mistake. Another lucky encounter. Just perfect. Thank you system for your infinite bounty and guidance. We are all most grateful to have another chance to die a horrible and painful death at the hand of your creations. Amen.

There was a momentary golden shimmer in the air.

> The system has received your prayer.

Bob shook his head. "One of these days..." he ground out through clenched teeth.

Bob had been holding George’s collar all this time. Just in case, as he'd said to himself, but the dog hadn’t pulled on it once. Now Bob quietly let go. He sincerely wished that the dog would remember how good Bob had been to him, how many times Bob had scratched him behind the ears or rubbed his belly, and do everything in his power to save his master from the terrible fate that seemed about to befall him.

Bob tried to make a plan. Yes, Bob was an excellent planner. It had been all his superior planning that had got him through the initiation. Repeatedly betting his life again and again on the arbitrary spinning of a little ball in a wooden wheel, yeah that had been a plan, all planned, all according to plan. He hadn’t just gotten shit-faced on whiskey and beer and let his smoldering anger take control. Somehow he felt that story lost something in the retelling.

Plan-time. Bob’s mud casting was ill-suited to direct confrontation (read all combat). Of course, Bob knew better than anyone that being splattered by mud was unpleasant (Bob dared anyone to disagree with this point), but deadly, mortal, slain-by-mud, not quite. Hell, Bob had got more mud in the face than anyone and he was still alive to complain about the fact. Mud casting was out.

That left Bob with the knife. Bob held the knife lamely in his right hand. The difficulty with said knife was the range on the blade. He would have to get right up and personal before he could put the knife to a meaningful purpose.

Now that reaper insect, on the other hand, had forelimbs toned into two-foot long, razor-sharp scimitars. And Bob had the inkling the creature would know how to use them, while Bob could only with extreme and probably unjustified generosity be called a swordsman. And right now he felt more like a sack of potatoes, a sack of bruised potatoes.

Bob could throw the weapon, his only weapon. He’d seen it done in movies. A clean, double rotation and the pointy edge stabs neatly into the temple. He could try it, hoping not only the blade would make contact (he remembered throwing stones at a pigeon a while back), but that he would somehow time the rotation correctly; not to mention the wound would have to be instantaneously fatal, because otherwise the monster would probably have enough time to cut Bob down. Long odds. But Bob was lucky wasn’t he? That lucky? Was Bob that lucky?