Sometimes the internet suggests the weirdest things one can find. The Legend of the 10 Elemental Masters, written by Nick Smith aka Ulillillia, is one of those.
While working, I was listening to something about video games on YouTube; I think it was Deadly Premonition and I just enjoy when nothing particularly important happens in my ears while I’m doing nothing of particular importance. Helps to cope with daily corporate grind.
Anyway, after the video ended, another one started, and it was about this exact person – Nick Smith aka Ulillillia. At first I didn’t pay much attention, but at one point the narrative got so intense I had to stop working and listen more carefully to the video.
I’m not a huge buff when it comes to the internet personalities, and while this guy is most certainly one of the said internet personalities with a fair share of awkward stuff, his story got interesting. Apparently he has some problems, and a very specific approach to life which is expressed by having weird phobias and weird hobbies.
How weird? Well, for example, Nick is a strong believer in degreasing his pizzas with the help of the napkin by soaking it in the pizza grease. Sounds weird, right? Well, hate to burst your bubble, but apparently Nick is not as weird as people on the internet want him to be. Soaking napkin in pizza fat is quite popular nowadays. Never tried it myself, though, but heard it helps to avoid eating extra fat, while pizza still tastes good. Playing Bubsy 3D for thousands of hours, on the other hand… yeah, there might be something weird about this one.
Anyway, long story short, Nick wrote a book, and he published the said book. And even after being warned that it is not for faint-hearted, I ignored the warning, and went straight after it. And let me tell you something, I didn’t regret it one bit.
From what I got from the introduction, Nick invented the game he plays in his mind anytime he gets bored. He also has a particular fix on the numbers. And the novel, as it’s known, was first written when he was a kid, then re-written a couple of times in the following years, until he finally finished the final draft and published it. And that’s exactly what I was reading. The final product.
What can I say? Holly fuckles here comes Knuckles…
The plot is basically goes like that – purple furry midget magician comes to Earth because he sensed something bad is going to happen and he has to prevent it. He also has a task of converting three humans into furries. His name is Knuckles and Knuckles doesn’t give a fuck.
From the beginning, we are informed that Knuckles is so fucking macho he operates on completely different frequencies than the rest of the world. He can run faster than the car, jump higher than the kangaroo on bath salts, see further than the best NASA telescope, and feel better than military-grade long-distance radar. He can cast spells faster than the blink of an eye, he can fly, he can reanimate corpses, teleport, talk without opening his mouth, and he has a portable safe inside his chest. As if it wasn’t enough, Knuckles also doesn’t give a fuck about incoming damage. In fact, he’s so fucking macho the damage heals him. He can take a direct hit from the nuclear warhead and only feel better. And also he has huge hands.
Anyway, Knuckles, being a furry on the mission, ignores the main quest and goes straight for the secondary objective – gaining followers. And what is the best place to recruit someone? Right, it is school. So that’s where he goes on the search of his future recruits, but not before he evaporates some monster with extreme prejudice in front of a crowd. As soon as he is done being badass, Knuckles separates two 14-year-old kids, Ivan and Tu, among the crowd who just a moment ago were busy doing typical 14-year-old stuff like playing volleyball or looking at rocks, and basically bribes, brainwashes, and kidnaps them. And everyone is alright with that. I mean, what can you say to a purple one-man-hate-campaign capable of bombing the place to the glass surface in a matter of nano-seconds? I thought so.
Knuckles and his newly acquired children then proceed traveling by plane only for us to realize that Knuckles doesn’t give a fuck about laws of physics or airspace either, since he has no time for waiting in lines or asking for permission for a takeoff. Nah, instead he just hijacks the plane by teleporting it straight into the air, makes a hole in the fuselage and fights another monster with a name that rhymes with lantern.
He also finds out that some evil entity who wants… something controls these monsters. For now, this entity doesn’t do anything excepts calling Knuckles names, possessing monsters who are actually chill dudes, and fucking off whenever things get ugly. And I don’t blame him. I mean, he messes with Knuckles and Knuckles doesn’t have time for this sort of bullshit. Knuckles doesn’t give a fuck how evil he is; Knuckles casts 100500 spells per fraction of nano-second first and asks questions never.
Yeah, anyway, later Knuckles shows off his hook ups with CNN who ready to stop whatever they were doing the moment he appears (tell me you wouldn’t if furry alien midget with giant hands and hair trigger temper wasn’t asking for attention in nuclear blast vicinity), also raids the military base with guards who, by some weird reason, are given fucking grenades instead of guns and after being possessed by the evil entity, try to utilize them in the closed quarters. There he also finds the third guy, Tyler, who is 27 and likes rocks.
Then the giant island the size of Texas appears out of nowhere. Knuckles and the team go there, where they find out about the civilization of extremely chill people who like fighting monsters on arenas, and causing havoc in virtual reality. Basically, they visit personified Twitter. Also, they found out about the guy responsible for all this crap. Turns out it is some kind of school dropout with an ego the size of Uranus, who wanted to become a mayor of this place but instead turned into a criminal sentenced to death. Fair mistake.
So, this purple SCP containment breach, and his entourage of underage brainwashed kids and one adult who likes rocks, has to save the Earth from the guy who wanted to get into politics but instead started doing Nixon-kind shit long before he even got the chair. How do you think, can an invincible, batshit crazy furry capable of casting nuclear blasts at the speed of light with hair trigger temper do it? Yes, he does. He saved the Earth and then everyone clapped. The end.
Obviously, I missed a coupled dozen important details and characters (like Knuckle’s best friend Speed, who you might think is actually Sonic the hedgehog, but he is not because his fur is green and he has normal hands), but you got the general idea – Knuckles doesn’t give a fuck and saves the day.
The novel is hard to read, not going to lie. Nick uses a lot of numbers in his descriptions to a point where even colors are written with the help of HEX codes. Every action, even if it is something as mundane as picking up a cup, described with mathematical precision – you’ll know the distance to the cup, its temperature, the speed of character’s hand that is reaching for the said cup. You’ll know every detail behind something this simple as he took a cup. Oh, and actually even his characters prefer to use digits in their conversations. These are very precise characters.
You might not understand the logic behind characters’ motives since author won’t even bother to give you a hint, but rest assured you’ll be informed of the length of their hair (to the inch), the price of their socks, and how fast are they walking, because apparently this information is what he considers being important for the plot. And that’s actually a pretty interesting approach to the narrative because while hard to read, after a while you start to dig the weirdness and just go with the flow.
You see, I find it fascinating to read the novel written by such a person. This novel is not just LitRPG (I learned it from Goodreads, apparently this is a thing, and I’ll have to investigate it further) take on Final Fantasy meets Sonic the Hedgehog, but it is also a mirror to the soul of the author.
The way he goes for the numbers, and the details he emphasizes, is actually fairly interesting, because by reading that, you can realize what is important to Nick, what he finds crucial to the story, and apparently in his life. It’s completely different from what is generally accepted. Yes, it is childish, and yes, at times it doesn’t even make logical sense, and the omnipotence of the main character in every aspect just kills off any tension there could be, yet nevertheless I wanted to get to the end just to see how it wraps up. And I wasn’t disappointed.
This is so far the most bizarre piece of outsider literature I’ve read, and trust me, I read some really weird fanfiction when I was a teenager. I know a thing or two about weird stuff, and this thing takes the cake on how unique it is.
I mean, from my personal experience, the outsider literature tries to take you by shock, excessive usage of violence, gore, sex on the verge of snuff porn, extreme swearings, heavy drugs, and basically everything your mama told you is wrong and you shouldn’t do. Not The Legend of the 10 Elemental Masters, though. It is very different in the core way it perceives and pictures the world, and not in a freakishly grotesque or perverted kind of way. I wouldn’t be afraid to call it one of the best examples of outsider art, actually.