Bob looked out over the mud fields. And he heard a voice speak to him in his mind. And it said:

"Bob, raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the mud, that it be divided. Then draw away your hand, that the mud may flow back upon your foe."

Bob held out a hand to George, "stick."

George unhappily obliged. Bob, crouching uncomfortably in the thick grasses, raised his salvia-covered staff and stretched out his hand.

"Mudfall," he screamed. What? The voice hadn't told him not to say it.

The ground shuddered as Bob parted the mud sea, two thousand liters of mud were siphoned away in a moment, and then Bob drew away his hand, and the mud plummeted back into place, sweeping all away before it.

The spider and beetle corpse toppled down and then were battered overhead with wave after wave of muddy vengeance. More and more mud rained down on the heads of the enemies of the mud magician. A pyramid of mud was raised atop their fruitless struggling. And then, there was the silence of death. The army of the Pharaoh was drowned in the mud.

Bob handed back his stick, "thanks boy."

George jealously took back the stick and stored it in his satchel with a pop. Bob ruffled the dog's head.

"You know I never thought killing things would be this fun. There might be something terribly wrong with me."

Bob swayed and almost collapsed down head-first. He caught himself with his left hand. Maybe I overdid it a little. He felt a mana headache coming on. Had the mud pyramid really been necessary? Moving mud against gravity was many times more taxing than making it fall down on people's heads. Still a good attack has to have a bit of dramatic flair.

He counted down from five potatoes. Five potato, four potato... He was giving the spider enough time to break out any hidden trump cards. The last thing he wanted was more intimate time with a venomous arachnid who was dying to suck out his insides. If the creature could break out, Bob and George would skulk off and ambush it again later. No, you're right, fighting an ambush predator is not particularly fair. Bob hoped he'd never have to meet such an underhanded scoundrel.

Spoiler: the spider didn't have a secret trump card. It thrashed around a good deal, cycled through several swimming strokes optimized for eight-legged creatures and got absolutely nowhere. Don't mistake mud-sludge for H₂O. Mud-sludge is heavy and sticky. It gives when you want it to hold and holds when you wish it would give. And Bob was always ready to prod things along in the desired direction. Come on guys. Bob had imprisoned a three-meter crocodile. A mastiff-sized spider was child's play.

Once he'd confirmed there were no unpleasant surprises in store, he started to hopple over to the edge of the mound. There were network costs when trying to affect things at a distance. In other words, the closer Bob was to the mound, the less mana he had to pay to keep the spider entombed. The connecting mud somehow leeched away some of the magical energy. Oddly the limitation didn't seem to apply to Harry, but Bob would puzzle over that another time. Because, despite appearances, this was still a combat situation. He was no longer the greenhorn he'd once been. He understood when to focus and when to goof off.

Right now Bob needed to hoard as much of his mana as he could. You never know what might happen next. Not to mention, mana deprivation was very real and very unpleasant. There really was a world of difference between manipulating dumb mud and Harry Mud. He should probably try to come up with some attacks that didn't leave him exhausted and vulnerable. Still now was a time to celebrate. Look how far he'd come.

He saw young Bob. The Bob of two days ago. That Bob had quaked in his boots as the hairy spider emerged from the underbrush. That Bob had been knocked off his feet, screaming for George to save him. And now just look at him. He'd one-shotted the same monster from ambush. Power really was a rush. His heart was thumping. His face flushed. Is this what the strong feel like?

Bob relived the attack. He watched himself plunge his enemies into the wet darkness with a swipe of his hand. And he made a truly profound discovery. He'd finally understood why anime characters invariably called out their attack names. To an outside observer, the practice seemed strange, counter-productive even. You were telegraphing what attack you were planning to use. You were giving up the advantage of surprise. Some more recent productions seemed to go out of their way to justify the practice. Attacks are stronger if you explain how they work to your opponent. Or the shout is a physical cue to help you correctly execute the attack, etc, etc...

Stolen story; please report.

But no that wasn't the real reason at all. You'd never be able to understand, plopped on your couch, feet up, snacking on something salty. It was a question of psychology, of mental state. You see, it's not that you have to say the attack name. It's that you want to. It just feels good to shout out the attack name. In a word, it's just damn cool. That was the ultimate truth. And Bob knew that he was a convert. He was a name-shouter. It felt too good to stop.

Bob parked himself down on an uprooted stone, while George circled the mound, sniffing and wagging his tail. Now to wait out the spider's oxygen supply. In a couple days, Bob would probably be able to tell you exactly how long each monster in the grasslands could hold its breath. That was a worthwhile endeavor right? Exactly. Bob wasn't murdering living creatures for personal benefit. He was a biologist. It was all for science. That grand banner of enlightenment.

Bob opened up his status so that he could keep an eye on his level percentage. Learned caution is the sharpest. Now to watch the spider's swan song. The performance began with a long sequence of desperate writhing. Of course, the mud currents, the sludge, the darkness and the mud magician's all-seeing eye made sure that attempt got nowhere.

The spider followed up by letting itself float down to the pit bottom. There was a grace to the spider's slow movements in the mud, completely lacking in its aboveground scutterings. With its eight feet entrenched on the firmer ground, the spider leaned back and crouched into his grasshopper legs. Bob waggled his finger, "If I hadn't fought you before, you might have bested me. But I know exactly what you're doing down there."

The Spinnenhüpfer was a jumping spider after all. And ballet is all about its leaps. Bob focused. Just as the spider was about to uncoil its back legs into an eruption of upward motion, Bob pulled out the thin layer of mud he'd slithered under its footing.

The spider slipped, its back legs shotgunned into empty space and spun it widely around and backwards, thrown completely off balance by the lack of any counterforce. Bob clapped, but it was just out of politeness; the dancer had butchered the jump. When would the creature learn that death was the inevitability that came for us all.

Right now. The spider lay there, on its back, its spirit crushed, its dreams in tatters, utterly still, almost dead. Bob shook his head knowingly. You see he'd seen this dance before. "No one's as original as they think they are. What does the Bible say? There's nothing new under the sun." Except for Bob of course. Bob was originality incarnate.

The spider gave a good show. That was a passably convincing death-act. If he were looking for a corpse actor, the spider would certainly make callbacks. Unfortunately, Bob had the word of god written in a greyscale text box floating in front of his eyes. And his level percentage had not ticked up. Ergo, the spider was only playing dead.

Sure enough, only ten seconds later, it deftly flipped itself right-side and tried to scuttle away. So might a fly try to break out of the glass jar of its imprisonment. The spider was stopped short against an invisible wall of mud.

Maybe a minute and a half had passed. The long death dance was wrapping up. Credits to oxygen deprivation and her team of symptoms, confusion, fatigue, cornering and raised heart rate. The spider's movements started to slow and stretch, becoming dizzy and swaying. Here we go. The grand finale. The spider trekked its way back to the beetle corpse. It leaned against the body, like it was trying to catch its breath. Then in a last effort, the spider pulled itself up onto the beetle.

Bob watched through the mud. How was an animal to die? You read about how animals always supposedly struggle to their very last breath. Curious because humans in general seem to give up rather quickly. Animals must just have more to live for than us human-folk. Which was Bob? Oh Bob was a survivor. He'd fight to his last breath and beyond. He'd come back from death. He was unstoppable. Really Bob? I always pegged you as a giver-upper. Now that's not fair. Nobody can really say until they're put to the test. May the test never come.

Well the test had come for our spider. Here was the perfect experiment in animal death psychology. Bob leaned in, concentrating on the picture painted by his mud sense. What would our spider friend do? No scratch that, what was our spider friend doing?

The spider had climbed onto the beetle. That was clear as day. But Bob had a hard time judging what it was doing on there. His powers weren't beetle corpse manipulation after all, so the beetle formed a bit of blind-spot for him. You know it almost looked like the spider was eating the beetle. The monster had crouched low down and the beetle body rocked a little back and forth as the spider secured itself.

Wow, Bob would have to write a book. This was a groundbreaking discovery that had to be shared with the biological community. It was Bob's duty as a scientist. Struggle to the end? No. Give up and find peace? No. Our spider had carved out a third way.

"People of the world, I give you, the hedonist. If you are going to die, you might as well die with a meal. That's some sound reasoning, my eight-legged friend."

Bob applauded the spider's wholehearted devotion to its desires. Ten seconds passed, then twenty, then thirty. The spider went completely still. The spider had died mid-entree. Bravo, bravo. A tremble like a shiver of tension across a taut string and then boom!