The crocodile had Bob by the arm. Bob had the crocodile by the eyeball. Needless to say they both felt like shit. George was nearby, barking, running around, making a nuisance of himself, but unable to aid Bob in a non mutually-assured-destruction way. No, this was a duel. Bob and the crocodile would have to duke it out by themselves until the superior fighter emerged over the broken and bloodied corpse of his antagonist.

Bob played his last card. He lunged at the crocodile's remaining eye with a backward stab of his left hand, using his trapped arm as a sort of pivot. That naturally meant he was off-balance, right arm immobilized in the crocodile's mouth, left arm swinging wildly towards the remaining eye, feet out of position, at exactly the moment the crocodile played its last card: the death roll.

The death roll was a simple, if deadly manoeuvre. Mr. Crocodile lashed its tail against the ground, propelling itself explosively backwards and upwards, while twisting its whole body over and around. The catch was that Bob's arm was trapped in Mr. Crocodile's strong jaws. Bob was coming with Mr. Crocodile. All the way.

Bob was thrown clean off the ground into the air, did a half somersault and landed hard and awkwardly. His arm screamed in protest. He heard and felt ominous ripping sounds from the soft flesh. His shoulder had popped out of its socket and was grinding against the back of his shoulder bone. The pain was mind-destroying. And if Harry's defensive formation hadn't been running on autopilot, Bob's control would have crumbled away and Mr. Crocodile would have taken the arm. Thankfully Harry at least knew what he was doing.

Mr. Crocodile rolled up unharmed. It righted itself, adjusted its position, grounded its feet and yanked at the arm that seemed to be attached to Bob's shoulder by no more than a few inches of skin and tendon. Only a few more good pulls. Victory was near. Its enemy was lying face-down in a muddy pool. The dagger was buried somewhere out of reach. Time to enjoy the spoils of victory.

Bob was lying face-down in a muddy pool. Thank god he'd landed in the soft mud, because otherwise his head-first landing would have knocked him unconscious. Still he'd had better days. Yes he thought he could remember better days. Better days, the phrase had a sweet, nostalgic music to it.

The nagging pain at his shoulder seemed oddly distant after that first, sharp intense shock. His thoughts ambled across his consciousness, like people were standing over him talking. Mud, mud, something to do with mud, the word had a familiar ring to Bob, but he felt dizzy and he was at the point where all words kinda just sounded like random noises. Mud, you brought your lips together to make that "mm" sound and then sort of clicked your tongue to get that oozy "ud" sound. It was really a rather onomatopoeic word, don't you think? Mud, yes, mud, that's right, that unpleasant, brown, half-liquid, half-solid substance that smells bad. Ah mud!

The crocodile and Bob suddenly dropped two feet, as the mud around jumped away, leaving a pit in the ground; a moment later the mud tide swept back, burying them under three feet of muddy sludge. The crocodile blinked and struggled, blindsided by the unexpected pressure and darkness and smell. The animal tried to wade out, slapping its tail and swimming towards the surface, but somehow progress was slow. Its prey seemed to drag against the current. The crocodile couldn't navigate properly. It kept getting turned around or led off course. It was like the mud resisted, pulling the crocodile down or just falling away behind it.

The man-creature was on his last legs. He'd soon drown in the mud trap anyway. The crocodile made the rational decision. It'd come back for Bob's corpse. The jaws came undone, as the crocodile thrashed upwards, trying to break free from the mud. But the mud redoubled its efforts. It was impossible to move forward. The mud gave back from every stroke or kick, bleeding away any upwards momentum. The crocodile was trapped.

Bob bobbed up to the surface, gasped in a mouthful of air and crumbled onto dry ground. Harry draped over him like some kind of disaster blanket. His first words were, "patch me George." A small mountain of white packages dropped on top of him. What? If you were a millionaire, would you really skimp on essential healing items? He tore open package after package and slapped them on his arm, all the while keeping one hand pressed into the mud and his mind laser-focused on the dangerous creature trying to break out and eat him.

The health patches certainly felt nice. The continual infusions of warm energy layered over his bleeding arm, sinking into bite holes, pooling over bruises, trickling down to his fingers. The ball of his shoulder joint, however, remained stubbornly outside of its bowl and jarred terribly at any incautious moments. With the small part of his mind that wasn't occupied on the mud, he managed to wonder, how, given he couldn't actually manipulate the arm, he was still somehow able to feel pain with it so acutely. Talk about the worst of both worlds.

After what felt like forever, the crocodile's frenzied struggling suddenly stopped. "Finally," Bob complained, it had already been five minutes since he plunged them both into the mud trap. Just how long could that creature survive without oxygen. And all the while writhing like the devil itself. Bob slumped back, pulling his hand back from the edge of the mud pit. His left shoulder was cramped from maintaining the awkward position for so long. He leaned back. Nothing like a moment's relaxation after a long fight. Now, system, I hope you bloody well made that worth my time.

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> Name: Robert Brown

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> Race: Human (lesser)

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> Class: Heaven's Fool

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> Level: 5 (96%)

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> Rank: E

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> Wealth: 4,878,300 credits

Bob's mouth dropped open. 96%. What the hell? He'd been on 96% before the battle started.

"Don't tell me you're not giving me credit for that. I'm the mud magician. The monster literally drowned in mud. That's basically my modus operandi. If death by mud isn't a valid, killing strategy, what do you expect me to do? Wait a moment. Something doesn't make sense. I got full experience for all those worm-thingys, didn't I? But that can only mean..."

Bob dived for the mud pond. He was going to make it. His hand was an inch away, a half-inch, a quarter-inch, when an enormous wave of mud splattered him in the face, as the crocodile shot out of the water and into the air. Crap, crap, crap, confirm the kill Bob, what have I been telling you all this time, confirm the kill. Bob blinked the mud out of his eyes to see the crocodile fly straight up, peak and then... tumble straight back down into the muddy depths.

System be praised. Mud be praised. Bob had been spared. Looks like the monster hadn't quite been able to judge the angles from inside the opaque, brown sludge. A water mage would have been done in there. What can I say, sometimes luck is better than strength.

Gravity and inertia dragged the crocodile back down to the bottom of the pit. Bob planted himself at the pit's edge. This time he'd make damn sure the crocodile stayed down there, even if he had to sit here all afternoon. Pretending to be dead... when had the animal realized that the mud was being controlled by a sentient being. Either way, Bob wouldn't fall for the same trick twice. He'd keep one eyed glued to the open status screen and wouldn't relax his vigilance until the system itself confirmed the kill.

The crocodile had made a complete fool of him. Twice. Was human intelligence really all it was cracked up to be? We seem to be prone to all of manner of shortcuts, foolish assumptions and shoddy reasoning. At least as far as our ordinary lives go. I mean honestly, if Bob put his mind to it, he could literally mud-sense twenty meters around him in all directions. A twenty-meter range omnisight for heaven's sake. And somehow he'd decided to wander around these plains with his eyes closed. Imagine, he, Bob, the mud magician, had just gotten ambushed by a creature inside a pool of mud. He hoped Prudence Wobblewand never heard of this. He'd be the laughingstock of the mage academy.

And that was only the prologue to his list of mistakes. He glared at his velcro trainers. What the hell was he wearing shoes for? Get those damn things off. His one good hand was occupied and multicasting was a skill several levels above his mastery. So, like a naughty toddler, he rubbed his feet together until he managed to slide one shoe and then the other off. Next came the socks. Finally he was barefoot. He submerged his toes and wriggled them in the mud.

Was it disgusting? Sure. Did it represent a final and irreconcilable fall from grace? Perhaps. But Bob could only manipulate mud he was in direct contact with (the locality principle). And that meant he needed skin on the mud. He needed to get dirty. Up until now, he'd literally crouched down every time and put his hand on the ground. How stupid was that?

Sorry, sorry, hold on there for a second, just one second, I've just got to put my hand on the ground, there we go, thanks for waiting, sorry about that, ok, you can attack now. If only Bob's enemies were so honorable...

Bob closed his eyes and focused on the sensation coming from his hands and feet. His brain was still struggling with this funny, mud-sense data. For one, it hadn't yet figured out how to overlap complementary information from multiple sources.

We have two eyes, but we don't see two different images, do we? The brain (most of the time) knows how to stitch together the two data streams into a single, seamless experience. Well that wasn't happening for Bob's mud sense. He got three independent data streams from his hand and his two feet. In some ways, the extra information actually blurred his picture of what was going on in the mud pit. He had to jump between data sources and manually compare them. It was confusing and disorientating.

But that's just the right level of suffering to get the brain working on the problem. See the brain is pathologically lazy. It only learns what it has to. It only learns what it's forced to. The scientists say it's an evolutionary strategy. It's cost minimizing. But when Bob told his French teacher that, somehow she'd didn't find the argument compelling. Mystery isn't it?

Either way Bob sat there, parsing through his mud sensations, as he waited for the crocodile to die. It didn't happen quickly. The crocodile made two more attempts to escape its muddy prison, but Bob was on the case and didn't give the poor creature half-a-chance. He could feel its desperation and helplessness. They reached him in the small movements, the way the one good eye flitted around, the line of tension in the jaw, the weak, stilting lunges towards the surface. Maybe it was all pathetic fallacy, but he thought he knew that mindset, that last panic, when hope and death spill into each other and mix together.

This time he was sitting over his enemy, in the place of strength, watching the final struggles of the enemy who hadn't realized he'd already been defeated. He wasn't used to the view. No, it wasn't just that, a part of him liked it; it thrilled him to see that proud monster humbled like this, before him, before Bob; but it frightened him too; it made him feel sick and heartless, because he knew that place, he knew the depths of the whirlpool, he knew the darkness. And a part of him wanted to show mercy. But he didn't. Call it human intelligence if you will. But he didn't show mercy. No he just watched and waited.