"Ambush Predator, motherfucker," Bob shouted at the top of his lungs. Yes announcing your successful ambush in a vulgar and offensive way was absolutely necessary to the path of the ambush predator. Bob would know. He was the mud magician after all.

Poor Croc. He'd never had a chance. He'd been flamethrowered down along with most of the surrounding plant life. The cost of the war.

"That my friend, is how you do an ambush. One overwhelming attack of unstoppable force. Don't give your enemy even a fraction of a chance to get back up."

Bob patted George's head, "you did good George. Good boy, good boy."

George yipped happily. Maybe he'd just leveled up.

Folks, we have a new playbook. Bob had a feeling that leveling was about to become a lot more fun for the both of them. No more desperate life-and-death dances, and a lot more shouting motherfucker over the corpses of vanquished enemies. What more could a man ask for?

Mind Bob couldn't let George do all the killing, because the system was very stingy with experience sharing. In fact, as far as Bob could tell, he'd never gotten a single experience point from something the dog had killed. It used to bother him. But Bob was a changed man. He had his own killing move now, thank you very much and he could earn his keep.

Pop! Bob had let himself get distracted and George hadn't missed the opportunity. The charred crocodile corpse disappeared into George's storage. Bob opened his mouth to complain, but bit back his remark. The earlier corpses had not been without their uses, and it was George's kill after all. Two days. It had taken two days for corpse hoarding to become normalized. Moral norms were transforming at a dizzying pace.

They set out at once to look for more prey. Feed me, system. Feed me. Ask for a thing and it shall be given. Bob just wished he'd been a little more specific in his request. Because they did not find a lonely monster, roaming about, seeking whom he could devour, instead they stumbled on what could only be described as a fortress of solidified grass. Bob kept his distance, hiding in the taller grasses, as he looked over this green fort.

Eight-foot high walls, broken into zigzagging panels, carved out an enormous ring in the prairie. The land beyond the wall had been cleared for hundred paces, giving defenders an unbroken line-of-sight over the plain. Sentinels were posted at semi-regular intervals along the wall. Bob could make out their figures across the blue skyline. And one thing was immediately obvious: they weren't human.

Bob edged as close as he dared, trying to get a better look at the fort-dwellers. Yes they weren't human. If Bob had to put a name to the creatures, he would probably call them beetles. They were six-legged, with a hard exoskeleton and a pair of mandibles, except they'd been blown up to about the size of an adult badger. Their shells were a vivid green and a solitary black horn pointed out from the centre of their forehead. The system called them "Kriegskäfer", with levels ranging between two and five.

Bob watched as a company of these beetles approached the walls. They kept good order, marching in tight formation, with the outer ring maintaining a close watch on their surroundings. Bob guessed they were a foraging party, because behind them they dragged rough sledges full of cut grass. They made their way to a particular, nondescript part of the wall, which suddenly collapsed down in front of them. Two guards came out and stood as rearguard while the group marched through the makeshift gate.

After the last beetle had passed, the wall quickly started to come back up as the guards worked on reforming it. They used a kind of green paste. It seemed malleable like clay, and the beetle had a knack for shaping it with their mandibles. Once they had it in the desired position, they sort of spit on it and it hardened instantly into place. The wall was serviceable again in less than five minutes.

Their efficiency, organization and architecture all seemed marvelous to Bob. For heaven's sake, he had spent one night lying against the bathroom floor, another in a tent and the last one just passed out the hillside. These beetles had civilization. Tall walls, organized companies, proper look-outs. They must also have some kind of drainage system rigged up, because otherwise the unnatural rain would have disrupted their fortress-building efforts.

Unfortunately, they were also monsters. And every game Bob had ever played, monsters attacked on sight. That wasn't meant as criticism. The monsters certainly had just cause for preemptive action. Players came out to their homes with the explicit and sole intent of hunting them down. And in most games, monsters didn't even attack each other, meaning they were able to live in perfect harmony, except for the evil, genocidal players.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Just look at our Bob. He'd been wandering around the plains looking for victims to execute, chanting under his breath, feed me, feed me. Don't try to play yourself as the good guy. Especially while you plot how best to burn down a semi-intelligent settlement of herbivore beetles.

It wasn't Bob's fault. Bob didn't make the rules. It wasn't Bob's fault the system didn't share the core values of peace, love and good-will that defined the Heavenly Father of Judaeo-Christian religions. No, Bob would describe the system as more of a cry-havoc-and-let-loose-the-dogs-of-war kind of deity. You know, let there be blood.

Still Bob was a little hesitant about attacking a beetle-force of this magnitude. Setting the moral question aside, there had to be hundreds of beetles living in the encampment. Maybe thousands. Individually they didn't look particularly dangerous. Bob had been fighting four-meter long crocodiles and blade-armed praying mantises. But, as they say, quantity has a quality of its own. Even all-mighty George, the fire god himself, had been practically KOed by a school of worm-snakes.

"George, strength is about choosing your battles." The dog nodded sagely.

"We've both gotten a lot stronger." The dog nodded sagely

"But I don't think we're ready for all-out siege warfare." The dog nodded sagely.

"Yet." The dog nodded sagely.

"Let's go around and look for something easier to squash." The dog nodded sagely.

George and Bob were really in sync these days. Bob felt like George really understood him, you know, heart-to-heart, man-to-dog. Making the dog a knight had been a real turning point. The burden of nobility. George had really matured since taking on the title.

Bob too had grown. Yesterday he would have run away immediately, tail between his legs, praying the damn insects weren't on his tail. This morning, he would have swaggered up to the walls and shouted, "bring out your champion." And the whole beetle swarm would have mobbed him. Now he scouted out his adversary, took counsel with his knights and made calm, deliberated decisions. He felt like he had struck the Goldilocks zone.

Don't misjudge Bob here. He certainly planned to attack in the near future. He just wanted one or two more levels under his belt and some time to muddle over the best way to break down those walls. His current attack repertoire lacked the area of effects spells suited to massacring the swarm. I'll be back.

Ten minutes puttering about, ear to the mud, and Bob had found just the ticket. The mud signal was a little distorted. Now try to piece this out: there's a motionless blob with a warm liquid spilling around it and a hard, pointed rob pressing into the ground. Around the blob are eight other points of contact, which occasionally make slight, adjusting movements that rock the central blob back and forth.

Any guesses? Bob figured he could tease out a picture of the scene. First the central blob, an unmoving body on its back with a long horn pushed into the mud. Where have you seen that before?

And then some other eight-legged entity, sitting over the unmoving body, doing something that might cause the body to twitch and shake. Do you need a hint? What if I told you the eight legs were all covered in fine hair. Not enough? Fine, this'll put you over the edge. Moustache. You got it right?

Unless Bob was very much mistaken, he'd come across a Spinnenhüpfer just as it was tucking into a midday beetle-juice snack. Looks like there was a good reason for those beetles to build tall walls and strong companies. It was also nice to know that real monsters unlike their video-game counterparts had no qualms about killing and eating each other. Equality be praised.

Bob almost felt nostalgic at the prospect of a reunion with his moustachioed friend. The spider monster had been his first true adversary post-initiation. His first real fight. He smiled fondly at the memory. They'd just happened upon each other in the grasses and the spider had thrown itself into Bob's arms like some long-lost lover. Bob remembered himself trapped under the spider as Harry desperately held back the fatal, venomous injection. Good times. Good times.

Bob guessed that Spinnenhüpfer, the dog-sized spider-grasshopper amalgamation, would probably be classified as a jumping spider. Jumping spiders were really rather interesting creatures. Now Bob thought he remembered reading something about the predator habits of jumping spiders. Something about how, after pinning their prey with their front legs, they'd inject a venom that liquifies their victim from the inside-out and then sort of slurp up the liquified insides. Interesting stuff no? Wow, thanks for bringing that up right now. Poor beetle. Bob had had a bit of a narrow escape on the last occasion. This time things would go differently.

Bob spat on one hand and then on some hand-shaped mud (Harry) and rubbed the two together. It was time to unveil a premeditated mudfall to the world. Bob would communicate his will through the mud and the ground would fall away from under his enemy. Darkness would crash down over him and then despair and then silence. It was a terrifying, merciless attack.

And the best part was that Bob could do it from a safe distance. You realize that in practically every single fight up until now, Bob had been required to make physical contact with his monster adversary. Bob had felt a host of sensations that he'd never wished for and would never be able to forget. But not this time. This time he'd pull the whole thing off safely hidden in the bushes and walk away without a scratch.

The spider was currently standing in a shallow mud pool (that's how Bob was able to get such a clear read on its position and activity). The pit wasn't ideal for mud-drowning an enemy. It wasn't deep enough to let Bob effectively forestall and trap his victim. However, there was plenty of mud around the spot. The true genius of battle lies in adaptability. Bob would build himself a little mud mound. A suitable grave marker for an old enemy.

The spider had made its fateful mistake. The moment it decided to walk through and not around the mud. Beware of mud. Beware of the mud magician. Bob concentrated on what he was trying to achieve; that mud goes here, that mud goes there, then this, then that. He crafted the spell and then: mudfall!