George Knows Best [Mud Wizard LitRPG]

"HE'S HERE!"

"But Big Man, the lookouts. And not a peep out of the traps. We should've heard him. It don't make sense."

"Idiot! Who do you think killed them? The Hand of God? We're under attack! Sound the alarm. Form up, form up. On me!"

Bells and fire. "We're under attack. Attack! Attack!" Shouts and curses as men stumbled out of their tents, struggling into shirts and grabbing weapons. Pandemonium. Ragnarök come at last.

Bodyguards swarmed up and encircled their leader. Their captain, a grizzled, blue eyed warrior, put his hand to the ground and froze it solid. Ice mage. Sentries combed through the camp, hunting for the shadow of the angel. A lieutenant gave a gruff salute, before reporting losses.

"Sixty-three combat ready. Forty-seven dead in their tents. Thirty on patrol, situation unknown."

The bandit king closed his eyes and ground his teeth together. "Half my army. Half my fucking army. In a single night. A single night!"

Bob stayed absolutely still. He was hidden in the deepest part of the mud. Some three feet under the ground. Sound, smell, visible light, infrared, metal detector, nothing should be able to find him here. He was completely invisible. The mud ghost. The vengeful silence. He would hover under them, waiting for that dark moment when sleep and weariness claimed them. And then he would step out and into their nightmares.

"I have eyes. Over here. One enemy. Three feet under."

Crap. Bob acted fast. He poured his mana into the mud, pressing the water up and outwards, transmuting it into a solid wall. Harry, he layered over the top as a super-dense mud shield. He was just in time.

Boom! Shudder! Crack!

Every bandit within ten yards had unleashed against the spot. The mud was ground up, stirred around, superheated, icicled and hedgehodged. The very earth trembled, the mud wall distorting and fracturing. It was flash hardened and then melted then cooled into patches of misty glass. It held, barely.

"How many?" The bandit king screamed as he rushed over with his troop of elites.

"One."

The bandit king blazed with fury and frustration.

"One man." He savaged the word. "YOU CAME ALONE!"

The bandit king strode over and two-handed the axe into the ground. The blade straight-lined through glass, brick, solid earth, cutting a full meter down and brutalizing the landscape. Any person hidden there would have been bisected whole.

But Bob was long gone. He had his own plans. His own dark ambitions. He hadn't come here for some hit-and-run. He had come here to massacre them down to the last soul. He wanted it all. And he would have it.

"Bossman, he's on the move."

"After him. I want his head! Drop everything and after him! I'LL PUT YOUR HEAD ON A POLE."

The scout shouted out coordinations, tracking Bob's twists and turns easily as Bob zoomed through camp. Only a little further. He could make it. He could take them all. Bob was almost sheared in half as an oversized chainsaw buzzed into the ground. But he was the master here. The mud was his servant. In the last second, he turned on his side and glided past. The spiked belt slicing air.

Bob used Harry as a jet engine. The cloak would swallow in the mud ahead of them, cutting their drag to near zero, and then spit out that same mud behind, thrusting them forward. Bob picked up speed, accelerated towards his destination.

A small buggy (someone's companion object?) raced after him, its passengers peppering the ground with magic and bullets. Bob dove and dipped, weaving through the underground. The whole bandit army was sprinting after him. The bandit king at their head. All running with a reckless abandon, demolishing tent, plant, or stone, anything that impeded direct passage.

"STOP! Back, back, I said back!"

Too late. The buggy burst forward and rammed straight into the trap corridor. One meter, two meters, boom, a landmine exploded under it. The vehicle rolled, metal groaning in protest, before finding a pitfall and plummeting down. Miraculously, one passenger was alive enough to crawl, shell-shocked, out of the vehicle. He stumbled straight down into a puddle of acid. He died gruesomely.

Bob was the master. Bob was the army-killer. The great force of the bandit king was bottled up before the walls of their own defenses. He was floating three feet under their own minefield. Completely untouchable. And now he would tear them apart. A white dagger spiraled through the ground and shattered into a man standing ten feet away from the bandit king. The man dropped, clutching his neck, whimpering before the inevitable death.

"Bastard!" The man's friends plunged into the corridor. Vengeance is the sweet ecstasy. The burning sun in the grey-black sky. Purpose enough to make a man drunk.

"Back! Back, I say! He'll slaughter you."

The cohort ignored their leader. They wound around an invisible safe-road that crisscrossed them between traps. They were honing in on Bob's position, almost in range. And yet how impossibly far. The ground tilted under them. The bandit king shook his head, knowing what was coming. Make enemies with the mud at your peril. They tried to steady themselves, thrusting weapons in the ground, grabbing on to each other. The mud swept them off their feet and slid them into a monster pit. D-rank snake-piranhas. They were eviscerated.

"COWARD!"

Another white missile picked off the chain sword. His companion object melted away as black smoke. The bandit king grabbed the scout and shouted into his face: "where is he?"

"Boss, he won't stay put. One second he's there, then he's over there, now he's here.""

"Fucking worthless." The Bandit king shoved the scout aside. "Torch it. Torch all the traps. I don't care how. Cut a path. Metal-head to flank. Black squad with me."

The bandit king was in a frenzy. He looked like he'd start cutting down his own men any moment. He paced around, panting noisily and glared at anyone and everyone, while his followers struggled to destroy the traps.

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One man was pumping out stone minions, which plunged into the trap corridor, springing trip wires and dart attacks, overwhelming trap monsters and filling in pits. Another was just throwing in explosives wholesale, fighting fire with fire. They were going scorched earth. Happy to trade the destruction of their own camp for Bob's head on a platter.

Bob laughed at them. Fruitless, empty labour. Couldn't they see? He was free as a bird. He could go when and where he pleased. Sure the ice mage was systemically freezing the ground around their approach, his spell reached all the way to the swamp bottom. But Bob could retreat back into the night whenever he chose. Ready to strike again when they should grow weary. Here in the swamp, in the mud, Bob was invincible.

"Mud dart."

The bandit king's axe snapped out, parrying the white dagger, as it jetted towards the scout's neck. But Harry was a living thing. The dart danced around, probing for some opening. Only one of their scouts could see him. Kill him and Bob would become the invisible man, the invisible monster. Harry committed, lightning towards the boy. But the bandit king bashed away the projectile with an ease and scorn that troubled Bob.

The king grabbed the scout by the shoulder and dragged him behind his person. His eyes sharp and angry, daring Bob to try something. The ice mage had already frozen the spot. Bob had no way of reaching them. Bob switched tactics. Very well then. He would bleed them all to death.

He started targeting soldiers on the fringes. Those outside the bandit king's sphere of influence. Most of them did not have the supernatural reactions of their leader. Man after man dropped down, clutching his chest or vainly staunching his neck.

Their morale started to waver. It's easy to stay brave when there's something to do. When you're face-to-face with your enemy or hand-to-hand. When you can just focus on the thing in front of you, finding cover, aiming your weapon, dragging a companion to safety. But to stand there and watch your fellows die, all the while asking yourself, asking some invisible, silent god, will I be next?

It broke one of the younger men. A new recruit maybe? A half-decent man seduced by the promise of easy strength. He bolted. And the bandit king roared after him. Pacing forward and slashing his head clean off. It bounced on the frozen ground, the young man's head, eyes wide with terror, distorted by fear. The head stared up at the bandit king.

"No surrender. No retreat. Cowards! It's me you should be afraid of."

"Mud dart, mud dart, mud dart." Thud, thud, thud. Bob was there again, in the siege of the city; the air smoked and crackled. The smell of blood and mud and rain. He was become death again. He was the destroyer. And this time on the other side of his blade weren't beetles. They were men. Humans. And this time he wouldn't stop. This time he would kill them all. This time he embraced the monster.

Remember little George. Remember little George.

These men cut him down just like this. Without mercy, without second chances. An innocent, little boy. Vengeance is a poison. A disease. You can't recognize the man after it takes hold. It eats out the heart and leaves only a black hole, sucking and sucking, consuming and destroying.

And then somehow, they were behind him. A company, ten-strong, a big armored man leading them. How had they gotten around him? A postern gate, transport magic? The big man started conjured metal shields and pounding them into the ground. They were trying to box him in. Ice on one side. Shields on the other.

Didn't they understand there were four cardinal directions? Bob started to reposition himself to the side.

"Barrier!"

An invisible barrier shimmered into existence right in the front of him and he crashed into it. He reversed course, jetting for the other side, but the barrier was already ahead of him. It was only some four meters across and three meters deep. Normally the delay between the scout finding Bob, the scout communicating that info to the barrier-user, and the barrier-user casting his spell would have made the power worthless. But with forward and backwards eliminated...

The bandit king howled with laughter. "Poor, little mud fish," he mocked, "is he all tangled up in the mean, nasty net."

The bandit king's company was penetrating deeper and deeper into the corridor. The ice mage diligently freezes the ground. There would be on top of him soon. He was in the vice's grip. And every moment, the jaws edged closer.

"Tut, tut, tut. You got arrogant, Bob. ARROGANT!"

He tried to dummy the scout and barrier user. Launching a mud bullet, as he quick-turned and rushed for the greater swamp. The scout didn't flinch, trusting the bandit king to snatch the bullet out of the air. Bob slammed into the barrier again. He was running out of time. The king was laughing, taking practice swings with his axe.

"Mud avalanche." Bob ripped out the ground from under the flanking company's feet, plummeting them into the abyss, as he pivoted, launching himself into of the air, over the barrier, over the shields and landed into their midst like an angry god. They had underestimated him.

Excaliborn torn down, eating through flesh, carving through limbs. They tried to attack, but they just got in each other's way. Bob was too close, too fast, he was the empty cup. And Harry moved independently, interrupting, distorting, flaring out into hardened spikes. Bob ducked a counter. The white dagger spiraled forward. He sidestepped, twisted. The white dagger garroted past. A charged fist hammered toward Bob. He dodged cooly and the attack smashed into another.

The bandit king was shouting and screaming. "He's right there. Kill him! Kill him! Butcher him! What are you waiting for!" He urged his team to move faster, almost throwing his men into the traps. Range attackers rained down fire, heedless of their companions. But the line of metal shields protected Bob.

Suddenly, Bob felt dizzy. He missed a swing and stumbled. Someone had plunged the whole company into a poison mist. One bandit tried to gut him as he coughed out the stuff, but Harry reacted, deflecting the blow. Bob let himself swoop down into the mud. Three others were dragged off their feet with him and slowly suffocated when the mud leeched back in to fill the vacuum.

Bob had broken through the shield wall. He was free. He would slaughter them all. He was the destroyer. He would melt into the night and haunt them now and forever.

"NOOO!" The bandit king screamed out.

And an axe shuddered through the air, missiling clean through a metal shield, maiming Metal-head where he stood and then thundered into the ground. Bob screamed. It had scored across his left eye. Half the world was lost.

The flanking company was decimated. Bob just had to get away. It was right there. The great dark mud ocean. Quick! Quick! Before—

The bandit king vaulted across the remaining distance, cratering down and swiping up his axe. Bob rolled and ducked, as massive blows hammered around him. Bob jerked the mud under the king's feet, but the king let himself fall forward and grabbed Bob with his free hand.

"BOB!"

The bandit king dragged him out of the mud, even as Bob kicked and struggled. The king lifted him easily, hoisting him up, his hand gripped around Bob's neck. Squeezing. Squeezing.

Bob was black with mud. His left eye a cloudy red. His nose broken and mangled. His face scored with small wounds. His thigh marred with an ugly, pulsing wound.

"Little George... Little George..."

The bandit king gripped his axe. It squelched out of the mud. He raised it over his head.

"This is the end, Bob. This is what happens in real life. The strong conquer and the weak die."

Harry fished the white dagger around and bulleted it at the king. The king had to drop his axe to catch the weapon. He caught it and let go immediately as his hand started to melt. The dagger thrust forward and... Bob gaped. The dagger had smashed into his side. Smashed into him and fallen harmless to the ground.

"Bob, Bob?" The king looked amused. He shook his head and smiled indulgently. "Now maybe you understand. I'm invincible. You can't hurt me. For five whole seconds, I am god of this earth."

"What?" Bob's mind blanked on him. Temporary invulnerability? How was that even allowed? How could the system give out a power like that? How was a man supposed to fight that with mud and meditation?

Bob kicked hopelessly at the bandit king. He didn't even flinch. No, he laughed as he reached again for his great double headed axe. "You're a slippery fellow." His melted fingers grasped the hilt and squeezed down like he couldn't even feel the pain. "But I've got a firm grip. You aren't going anywhere Bob."

"Harry!" Suddenly the world was all mud. Gallons and gallons and gallons of it. Every last drop Harry had in his great mud well. The sudden pressure, exploding out in the narrow space between the Bob and the king, was unbearable. The bandit king's hand was dragged off Bob's neck even as his fingers ripped away layers of skin. "NO! NO!" The axe shimmered forward and... missed.

Bob fled.