You'd think the system knife would be listed on the system store, wouldn't it?

Well you'd be wrong. The system knife was not sold on the system store. Idiot, what could possibly have given you that idea?

Bob trawled through the interface, trying numerous search terms: "system knife", "initiation knife", "beginner's knife", "boar knife", "trash knife", "knife knife", "blade with handle." He was open-minded about categorization, weapons, camping, cooking, collectibles. No cigar. Who'd have guessed, the system didn't sell its signature knife in its signature shop.

That made the knife and its experience-sharing property initiation exclusive. The only way to get your hands on a system knife was to survive the initiation and pigheadedly carry the knife through all four challenges. That or kill someone who'd done the above. Bob had said a lot of mean things about the system knife, but the weapon might just turn out to be a good deal rarer and more valuable than he'd originally imagined. He'd have to remember to track it down later.

Wait a moment, if the system knife was secretly valuable, mightn't there not have been other valuable objects hidden through the initiation? Objects he had overlooked, dismissed as unimportant...

He remembered a rusted-through watering-can that he'd thrown away as worthless junk. What if it was a powerful weapon? Or what if that rusty iron was actually a secret, rare ingredient, like some living red metal, that could be used to craft unique, health-stealing items? What if it should turn up in the hands of his enemies as a wondrous divine artifact? Death by watering-can...

Ahem, ahem. Right, the question at hand, why did death by system knife give experience? Bob had not found what he was looking for on the system shop and yet, at the same time, he had found exactly what he was looking for.

Bob couldn't buy any weapons, both because of his in-combat status and rank restrictions, but he was allowed to browse. Once he'd given up looking for the exact system knife and broadened his focus a little, he'd quickly sniffed out the magical "experience-sharing property". In fact, he was an idiot. He'd long ago encountered the answer to his question. It's never just what you see, but what you fail to see. He scanned through an familiar entry:

> Glock 17 Gen5 9mm Luger Semi-Automatic Pistol (Mana Signed)

>

> Quality: Common

>

>

> The Glock 17 Gen5 9mm Luger Semi-Automatic Pistol is a staple in the Glock family, renowned for its reliability, durability, and performance. This semi-automatic handgun is designed for professionals, enthusiasts, and self-defense with its superior ergonomics, unmatched accuracy, robustness, and high capacity. Bullets fired from the handgun are automatically infused with the mana signature of the wielder.

See, it was right there in the description. Yes it was buried at the very bottom of a largely meaningless description, a place most readers would never reach, but the diligent reader is rewarded for his or her efforts: "Bullets fired from the handgun are automatically infused with the mana signature of the wielder." That's what the "Mana Signed" tag must mean. The weapon is capable of absorbing a little of your mana so that when you kill something, the death blow gets associated with you and the system can dispense appropriate experience. The system knife was mana signed. The beetle horn and random stone were not.

Bob had discovered another grand law. How many was that? Throwing in the grand axiom, five grand laws in less than a week. That had to be a record somewhere. Newton had only gotten three.

One of these days, someone would recognize Bob's brilliance and start a glorious tradition of building Bob statues. He sure hoped they'd follow the classical model of depicting him how he ought to look and not how he actually looked. No reason to disappoint future generations of fans.

"Now where was I, ah yes, I present the System's Law of Responsibility. The actor whose mana is associated with the death blow is recognized as responsible for a kill. Or more concisely, if you don't sign it, the system won't give you squat."

Now when you stop and think about it, that law had rather far-reaching implications. For example—hold on a sec, one sec, be right back, "mud-stomp," thud, death, okay, we're back. For example, there was a little mystery that had been niggling at the back of Bob's mind for a while now: why was humanity progressing so damn slowly?

Yes, of course, the "monsters" were scary and frighteningly powerful when compared with the house cats and foxes of suburban wildlife. But we're humans. We've been fighting wars for millennium. We've been developing weapons for millennium. We've killed more living creatures, ourselves and others, than any other species on the planet. We ought to be dominating these monsters.

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A thought experiment to illustrate the point: post-initiation survivors were returned to their origin room (though the room itself might have been transported elsewhere). Now, somewhere, in our vast globe, there must have been a soldier sitting in a tank, just when the initiation struck, probably with a handgun strapped to his hip.

The soldier would nail down the boar. Brute-force the escape room (bloody trick wall). Murder any enemies in "hunted or hunter." And hell he could just rob some other unfortunate player of their chips in the casino. Easy-peasy.

He'd pop out of the initiation and bam he was sitting in his tank. To a trained professional, armed to the teeth and operating a working tank, these little beetles and grass crocodiles, I mean, come on? Who are you kidding, it would be a massacre. And yet three whole days had gone by and no one had reached level 10?

I refer you to the System's Law of Responsibility. The pistol and tank would still work. They'd be just as effective at dealing out death and destruction. However, however, you wouldn't get a lick of experience. You could kill and kill and kill and all the same you'd die at level 1.

In short, any weapon that wasn't "mana-signed" would be worthless for leveling up. The system's arbitrary ban on weapons sales made a bit more sense now. Old weapons were useless for leveling and new weapons were banned. The playing field was significantly more level than Bob had imagined. Progress could only come by killing monsters with your own system-given powers.

The discovery also settled another issue that had been bothering Bob: why George wasn't level twenty by now. Sure Bob had killed beetles left and right, but the fire that George had started... Hundreds of beetles must have died to the flames. Bob looked guiltily down at his feet, "sorry guys; you might all have died in vain." Naturally George's direct fire breath was mana-linked to the dog, but the secondary fires indirectly caused by the heat and energy? Probably not. They were just natural phenomena and the dog wasn't credited with any resultant deaths.

Enough abstract speculation Bob; why don't you turn your attention to the problem at hand? Once humanity discovers a law, it usually doesn't take long for humanity to figure out a loophole to ignore or sidestep it. Bob didn't have the mana-signed system knife. So what? He had Harry, didn't he? Harry wasn't just a tool. He was an omni-tool. No, no, Harry was a maker of tools, the tool maker. He could take on any form and blur along the liquid-solid spectrum. Give him a blade and he could create a scythe. Give him a stone, and he would make a hammer. "Harry, I have work for you," Bob beckoned to his cloak.

The bodies had really started collecting and it was taking longer and longer for the new challenger to navigate the tunnel and get into firing range. Not to mention for the beetles outside to figure out whether or not the previous challenger was dead or not. Harry and Bob used that time to craft a new weapon.

We have the technology. We can make a new weapon, better than all that came before. Better, stronger, faster. Why bother with a handle when Bob manipulated Harry via his mind? They needed to think outside of the box. A weapon unbounded by the human form, by the need to grip and swing, by the limitations of mortal combat.

Harry condensed into a floating soap. Bob picked up the beetle horn and dipped it inside the chocolaty substance. When he pulled it out, the horn was coated with the thinnest layer of mud, only a half-millimeter, like a brown sheen. Bob held up the horn and squinted at the point; he nodded to himself and started slowly hardening the mud, methodically syphoning away its liquid component. He stopped. Yes, he muttered to himself; Harry had turned sludge-like, with the suppleness of a liquid and the stickiness of a solid.

He balanced the weapon, holding it out in front of him. "Yes, good," he nodded his head and pulled away his hand: the weapon floated there. Nope, I'm pulling your leg; the weapon clattered to the ground. Gravity to Bob. Gravity to Bob. Well, that was embarrassing.

Bob had actually been trying to hover the horn via the thin layer of mud surrounding it. Experiment failed. So, the amount of force he could express through the mud was proportional to the amount of mud present... Was there some kind of mana saturation limit?

" Earth to Bob."

"What is it? I'm thinking right now."

"There's another beetle coming."

"Ah, life is a series of distractions."

No matter. Harry wrapped himself around the bottom of the horn, gripping tightly and floating the horn up. Bob looked at the weapon and tilted his head.

It was kinda ugly. It looked like, well, a floating mud hand holding a horn? Bob couldn't really think of a good simile. It didn't look like any weapon he had ever seen. He tweaked the outlines a little bit, making Harry a tad more aerodynamic and easing away any blocky lines.

"It's a... mud dart?" Bob raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders. George ignored him and Harry was well a piece of cloth. Silence is the sound of consent.

A beetle challenger pushed its way through the bodies and emerged into striking distance. "Mud-dart!" Thud, Harry and the horn javelined into the beetle's head. The layer of mud blunted the horn a little, reducing the penetrative force, but Bob just compensated by pushing harder. You'd be amazed how many problems can be solved with overwhelming force.

Bob checked his status and, drum roll, "Level: 8 (63%)". "Hell yeah," Bob fist-bumped and danced around the little room. "I want to thank you science. Couldn't have done it without you man," Bob added humbly.

Why was Bob rubbing his hands together and looking at the beetle corpses in the funnel with sinister, calculating eyes?

"It's only right when good things come to good people," Bob said greedily with a low chuckle.

"George, I think these beetles need a little bit of help. All these bodies, they crowd up the passageway and make it so much harder for our noble beetle-friends to step up and do their part for the good of the earth. Don't you think? Don't you agree, George?"

George did agree. George was always happy to add to his collection of corpses.

"George's what the range on that backpack thingy of yours." George trotted over to the little gap. He had maybe a meter's range. If the dog poked his head out of the gap, he could pop away the majority of the dead challengers. In thirty seconds, the funnel was clear and breezy.

"Wonderful, wonderful. What'd you say we turn up the acceleration on this beetle conveyor belt?"