Merchant Crab

As Balthazar regained his breath and composed himself, looking around to ensure no birds or adventurers were around to laugh at his embarrassing moment, he focused back on the floating text covering the center of his eyesight. It was similar to the one from the scroll, except that had existed as if projected from the parchment, floating in the air, while this was clearly inside Balthazar’s eyes, as every time he tried to grab at it his claw did nothing but pinch the empty air in front of him.

[Opponent killed, experience gained]

“Opponent?! And what in the world is this ‘experience’ anyway?” the crab asked, puzzled.

[Level 7 Wizard slain by [cleverly placed trap]]

“Wizard… that must be this guy,” he said, tapping the tip of the wizard’s shoe, who remained firmly stuck in his crater. “And what does this mean? What trap?”

Balthazar raised his eye stalks in realization, looked around, first at the dead wizard, then up at the sky where he had been floating just moments ago, and finally at the book that was now lying back on the ground, not too far off from where he had tossed it before the young man appeared.

“Is this thing blaming me for his death?” Balthazar finally said. “Hey now, wait just a moment, I didn’t… I couldn’t possibly know… it was his own fault. I did nothing!”

He paced from side to side, the words in front of him unchanging, ignoring his pleas of innocence.

[You have reached Level 2!]

He wasn’t sure what a level was supposed to mean here, only that whatever it was, the wizard had been a seven, which Balthazar knew was more than two. Yes, he may have been just a crab, but he still knew how to count, it’s a vital skill to anyone with as many legs as he has, never know when you might get into a scuffle and walk away unsure if you still got all your appendages.

“Well, he doesn’t look that superior to me now,” the crab said with a disdainful look at the young wizard’s twisted expression of horror still stuck to his face.

“Again, not that it was me who did this to him, of course!” he hurriedly added, to nobody in particular.

The block of text remained in his sight, and Balthazar began wondering if it would ever go away, or if he was stuck like that forever. Whatever it was, it was inside his head, inside his mind, so he tried to concentrate on pushing it away. The task would have been so much easier if he had the ability to blink.

Just as Balthazar began considering rubbing his eyes in the sand, his focus on the last line of text caused a small click and the words disappeared with a smooth slide to the side, as a new block appeared from the opposite direction:

[Level 2]

[Attribute Points: 1]

[Skill Points: 1]

[Strength: 3] [+]

[Agility: 2] [+]

[Intelligence: 11] [+]

[Skills]

“Huh, this again,” Balthazar said, staring out into the open, reading the new words only he could see.

He scanned each line carefully, rubbing his chin with the back of one claw.

“These attributes I’ve seen before, but skills are something new. And it would seem like I can increase one of these three again.”

He pondered on whether he should select Strength this time, but he never felt himself to be weak. He was the strongest around, no fish or bird ever dared stand up to him. And clearly, even these pesky adventurers were no match for him. One met his own demise after Balthazar did nothing more than give him an attitude-correcting pinch, and now this thing in front of him had just claimed he killed that wizard without so much as even touching him. He was clearly a powerhouse. He didn’t need to be stronger.

He could go for Agility, but he also failed to come up with a reason why he would need to be more agile. He already was agile enough to catch his lunch every day in his favorite feeding puddle. Sure, he never caught any of the annoying little feathery pests that provoked him on the daily, but that wasn’t due to lack of agility, it was just because they could fly, and that was obviously cheating.

The more he thought about it, the more he concluded that Intelligence was once again the way to go. You could never have too much of the stuff. Just look at that wizard guy. He was clearly very focused on Intelligence, with all that speed reading, magic casting, and whatever, yet, look where that landed him. He wasn’t smart enough to avoid falling to his doom. Clearly, you could always use being a bit more intelligent.

“That settles it,” Balthazar said, and with redoubled focus, he concentrated on the plus sign next to his Intelligence level, making it tick up from eleven to twelve.

As he was focusing his sight on the option, something behind it caught his attention, a reflection of light coming from the young wizard’s chest. Tilting himself slightly to look around the text, he spotted something small in between the folds of the wizard’s robes.

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Excited at the possibility of finding more of those beautiful, shiny pieces of metal he stashed away with the scroll earlier, Balthazar navigated his way around the small crater, trying to see his path while still having the attributes screen taking a portion of his view. With great care, he reached a pincer into the dead man’s robe in order to retrieve the source of the reflection.

As he pulled his arm back, he found what it brought between his pincers: a single, small, perfectly circular piece of transparent glass within a delicate silver rim, with a thin chain hanging from it.

“What’s this thing supposed to be?” Balthazar asked himself, looking down at the strange item between the many words still floating in front of him.

“Come on,” a man’s voice said from down the road, “we’re almost there, we can make it.”

Balthazar broke into a small panic, feeling like someone being caught with their pants down, which was an odd choice of feeling for someone who had never worn pants in their life.

He turned to the dead wizard, then to the other dead adventurer, the tiny lens in his claw, the attributes screen still covering his eyes, and the crab didn’t know what to do.

“I wish at least this damnable thing wasn’t blocking my view,” he said, vigorously shaking his shell. As he did it, the block of text flew down his field of view, disappearing into a tiny upward arrow that now sat at the very corner of Balthazar’s eye.

“Well, that wasn’t so difficult,” he said, turning to look down the road, where the top of two adventurer’s heads were coming into view.

Looking back at his right claw, still holding the strange small object he looted from the wizard, Balthazar darted towards the center tree, hurriedly crossing the water and reaching for his hidden stash. With a quick motion, he lifted the chunk of wood covering it and tossed the piece of glass inside where the small purse and scroll already were. He moved the makeshift cover back down before stopping and staring at the tree’s bark.

“What am I doing?” he said. “I did nothing wrong. I don’t owe anyone anything. Those two idiots out there got themselves killed, and it’s not like I was looting the dead or anything. Well, maybe just a little, but that’s exactly what those adventurers do all day. Who are they to judge?”

Balthazar turned back to face the road.

“Besides, they’re the ones who keep stepping on my residence, causing all sorts of chaos and mess, dying all over the place, like this is their home. Well, it’s not, and if they’re going to keep trespassing, I say it’s only fair whatever they leave behind becomes my property, as a form of compensation, if nothing else.”

As the now fully determined crab looked back at the road, he saw the duo of adventurers now walking the path in full view. They both carried large leather packs on their backs, not as large as the one the first adventurer from earlier had, but still full and heavy enough to make them show signs of strain while carrying them.

The one at the front was a young man with dark brown hair that looked like he had been wearing a helmet for hours for how messy it was. Sturdy steel armor covered most of his body, and he had a bold smile on his face that matched his confident walk.

Right behind him was a young woman, wearing a mix of leather and steel, slightly lighter brown hair tied into a ponytail, and a much less enthusiastic expression on her sweating face that matched her slouched posture as she struggled to continue walking.

“You promised this was going to be a quick run, Jack,” the young woman said. “It’s been two days now, and we’re only going back because we can’t carry any more loot. I swear, this is the last… hey, are you even listening?”

The young man was clearly not paying her any attention, as he struggled to step on top of two stones, trying to get closer to one of the swords that had gone flying out of the bursting pack earlier, the one that was stuck between two large rocks.

“Leah, look, it’s an enchanted sword!” he exclaimed, pointing at the sword, which seemed to have a thin layer of color glowing across the surface of its blade, waving and pulsating slowly.

“Oh, come on, you know we’re overburdened as is,” his partner said, taking a step around the body of the adventurer with the ruptured pack whose face remained firmly planted into the rocks, “do you want to end up like this guy?”

“Yes, I know, but I can’t let this opportunity pass, I have a good feeling about this one,” Jack said, without looking back, and while trying to devise a way to better reach the rocks holding the sword in place.

“I’m not carrying it, that’s for sure,” Leah declared, with the expression of someone who was already tired of the situation.

Balthazar was still standing on his small islet at the center of the pond, watching the pair bickering, annoyance growing in him.

He was really getting tired of all those adventurers. First one steps on him and spills trash all over his beautiful home, then another comes by and decides to make an ugly crater in his front garden, and now those two show up, ignore him completely, and begin pillaging his residence? It might have been trash, but it was his trash now, and this crab just about had it with their kind. No more standing idly by, expecting things to sort themselves out. He was taking matters into his own hands. Claws. Pincers. Whatever! He was going to show he’s not a crab to be messed with!

With determination in his eyes and shell held high, Balthazar stepped across the shallow water to the edge of the pond, and straight towards the steel-clad man trying to reach the sword still stuck in the stones.

“Hey, you, listen here,” the crab shouted at the young man, “I’ve had a very stressful day, and my patience is running thin, so you and your friend better scram and leave my stuff alone!”

The two adventurers turned their heads to face the angry crab.

“Look what you’ve done,” Leah said, “now you aggroed a crab on us.”

“Why… why is it squealing and waving its arms like that?” the man asked, confused.

“How should I know? Do I look like I speak crab?” she responded.

“Fiends! No manners! No respect!” the crab continued.

“Let’s just go, I’m way too exhausted to fight even just a crab,” the tired woman said over the crab’s continuous squealing.

“Wait, hold on, I think I have an idea,” said the confident adventurer.

“So you leave my stuff where it is, take yourselves up that road to wherever you were going, and leave my pond alone!” Balthazar said, agitation spilling from him.

But it was to no avail. He could tell they weren’t understanding a thing of what he was saying. He knew already that adventurers weren’t exactly the brightest kind, as demonstrated by the two previous specimens already cluttering his residence, but he hadn’t realized their education was so appallingly bad that they didn’t even learn crab language. Truly a primitive and simpleton race, they were.

While Balthazar reflected on the faults of the adventurer education system, the young man in front of him had taken his pack off, placed it on the ground, and was now squatting down, hastily looking for something within it.

The crab put both of his claws up and tensed up his legs. So there was to be a fight, it seemed. He had already dispatched two adventurers today (sort of), what was one more to add to the list (surely the one by the road would run away in fear once she saw him defeat her friend, right?), all he had to do was give him a good slash and a smash (through his solid steel armor… that sure looked pretty thick, now that he looked at it up close).

Balthazar began wondering if tossing that book the wizard picked up earlier would work a second time.

“Aha! Here it is,” the smiling man said, pulling something out of his bag.

As he stood up from his pack, he held a small object in his right hand, wrapped in a simple white cloth, and began unwrapping it with his left hand.

“Here you go, buddy, don’t be grumpy. I’ll trade you this for that sword. How’s that?” Jack offered, with a wide smile on his face, as he placed the open cloth down on the ground in front of the crab.

Balthazar stood with claws still ready, cautiously looking at what the man had just laid out in front of him, when a smell reached him, a smell he had never felt before, but that filled him with the purest of joys and happiness. He did not know what that triangular piece of soft looking… something was, but he instantly knew he must taste it.

Completely disregarding the two adventurers, Balthazar lunged forward at the unknown piece of food and tore a small piece of it off with the tip of his pincer, and brought it up to his mouth. The whole world turned brighter around him and he was sure stars could be seen dancing in his eyes. It was soft and slightly humid, with the tiniest crumbly feeling on his tongue. And the taste… he had tasted fruits before, from bushes and small trees around the area, when the season was right, but this was like something else entirely. Sweet, smooth, with a rush at every bite.

“Seriously, you’re feeding apple pie to the crab?” the female adventurer said to her partner with disdain.

“It worked, didn’t it?” he responded. “Look how happy he is with it.”

Without the weight of his pack, the young man climbed up to the stone where the sword was, and with an imposing posture stuck both of his feet firmly to his sides, grasping the hilt with both hands, and with a sharp exhale pulled the blade out of the rocks, lifting it up to the skies with his right hand, its edge shining against the sunlight, a huge victory smile stamped on his face.

“Yay, hooray, congratulations, chosen one, wahoo,” his companion said in a sarcastic tone. “Can we go now?”

“Mock all you want, I’m telling you, I have a good feeling about this sword,” Jack said with conviction, while jumping down from the rocks. “And yes, let’s go now.”

As the two adventurers carried on up the road, Balthazar finished eating his slice of pie, no longer caring about them or any silly sword. That had been a life-changing experience. He felt a satisfaction he had never experienced before. His mouth could still taste the subtle delight that had just gone through it. All he wanted to do was lie down, take a nap, and dream about that delicious treat.

As he smiled and his vision began to blur, a sudden block of glowing text assaulted his eyes:

[High-value item traded. Experience gained.]

[[Sword of Heavy Might] traded for [Slice of Apple Pie]]

[You have reached Level 3!]

“Gah! Son of a...”