Merchant Crab

Balthazar sipped on his lemonade from atop a boulder as he watched the sunlight flooding the golden plains across from his pond. The wind rolled over the grass, causing ripples not too different from the ones on the water behind the crab. The sky was a pale blue, and while it was still far from cold, the weather no longer felt as warm anymore, indicating the incoming end of summer.

Putting his cup down on the rock, Balthazar brought up his system.

“Might as well take care of this now,” he said to himself, as he checked his thirteenth level.

[Level 13]

[Attribute Points: 1]

[Skill Points: 1]

[Strength: 3] [+]

[Agility: 2] [+]

[Intelligence: 22] [+]

“Gee, I wonder what I’ll pick this time,” the crab said sarcastically. “At this point, investing into Strength or Agility would just feel like a waste of time.”

Pressing the plus sign next to his Intelligence attribute, he increased it to 23.

Then, he leisurely rolled his eyes to the skills menu.

“Hmm,” Balthazar said, while rubbing his chin with one pincer, and taking another sip from his cup with the other. “I already put a point into this Leadership skill. I might as well not let that go to waste and keep going. It could still prove useful.”

With the concept of sunken cost fallacy completely unknown to him, the crab spent his skill point on the Leadership skill.

Satisfied with his choices, he looked over at his status screen.

[Status]

[Name: Balthazar] [Race: Crab] [Class: Adept Merchant] [Level: 13]

[Attributes]

[Strength: 3] [Agility: 2] [Intelligence: 23]

[Skills]

[Charisma: S(+5)] [Medium Armor: A] [Speech: A] [Reading: B] [Fishing: C] [Imbuing: C] [Leadership: C] [Slashing Weapons: C]

More out of curiosity than anything else, Balthazar selected his class again.

[Select a perk for class: Merchant]

Sadly, the list of options below continued empty and unselectable.

“Figures,” he said. “If only there was someone I could complain to about this.”

Alas, the crab had no other option but to accept that Scrolls of Character Creation did not seem to come with customer support.

Going back to the previous screen, Balthazar stared at one of his other skills, Imbuing, and thought back to his conversation with Tweedus.

“I wonder if imbuing Bouldy could actually work.”

Hopping off the boulder, the crab skittered his way to a group of crates.

“Only one way to find out!”

Rummaging through the contents of a crate with his right claw, Balthazar retrieved an iron ingot from within. It was a rough and unrefined piece of metal, but it would do fine for his experiment.

Crossing the bridge, the crab went looking for his friend. Thankfully, a golem nearly as tall as two adult men wasn’t difficult to spot in a mostly open area as his pond, even while crouching down by the water, as Bouldy was.

Walking up to the rock giant, Balthazar found him observing the swimming fish as usual, occasionally dipping a finger into the water and swirling it around to get their attention.

“Hey, Bouldy,” the crab said. “Stop playing with my food for a moment. I need you for something.”

“Friend?” the golem asked, as he took his finger out of the water and turned his attention to Balthazar.

“No, I don’t need you to carry anything right now.”

“Friend?” said Bouldy, tilting his head.

“Also no. I haven’t got anyone needing kicking out either. All I need is for you to stand still for a bit while I try something on you. Nothing bad, don’t worry. It won’t hurt.”

Balthazar thought back to his molting after upgrading into his golden shell.

“Well, probably won’t hurt. Most likely.”

The golem looked at the crab with an intrigued expression, but did not protest.

Holding the iron ingot in one pincer and touching the living construct’s leg with the other, the crab tried to focus on the metal.

“Hmm,” he murmured. “How did I do this again?”

Balthazar tried focusing as hard as he could on the ingot, attempting to recall what he had done when imbuing his claws.

After a few moments of intense squeezing, a prompt appeared.

[Upgrade Stone Golem with [Iron Ingot]?]

[Yes | No]

The crab’s mouth opened with surprise and excitement. “No way!”

He read the words a second and a third time in disbelief.

“I could have done this the whole time, and I didn’t even know?!”

Bouldy looked down at his friend, who was talking to himself while staring at his rock leg. Even for an animated boulder, the crab’s behavior looked nothing short of bewildering.

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Balthazar selected the yes option on the prompt with great enthusiasm, which was short-lived, once he saw the text that followed.

[Error]

[Unknown subject]

“You have got to be kidding me!” the exasperated crab yelled out.

Bouldy scratched the side of his face with a rocky finger, concern formed on his stone face. “Friend?”

“No, no, not you, Bouldy,” Balthazar hurriedly added. “It’s just… crab stuff. You wouldn’t get it.”

The crab walked back across the bridge, looking grumpy. An extra dose of grumpy on top of the usual.

“I should have known,” he muttered to himself. “Too good to be true. This is what I get for using discard scrolls from some adventurer’s trash. I get a trash system. How do all those adventurers put up with this?”

Balthazar stopped as he got to the trading post platform, iron ingot still in his pincer.

“Unless they don’t?” the puzzled crab considered. “What if it’s only like this for me? Maybe that’s why nobody else seems to have problems with it?” He scratched the top of his shell thoughtfully. “No, surely not. They don’t mind because they’re all morons. A dumb system for dumb adventurers. If it was a system made for crabs, it would be much better. Someone should work on that.”

Tossing the iron back in a crate with a loud thud, Balthazar decided not to let the system’s faults sour his mood any further, and instead let the deliciousness of a strawberry tart sweeten his palate.

Flipping the lid of one of his many pastry baskets, he found it empty.

The crab gasped dramatically.

“I’m all out of strawberry tarts?!”

Great sadness came over him as he realized he had eaten all the tarts. He now had nothing else to eat.

Except for the pumpkin pie in the other basket behind that one.

And the remaining brioches in a box on the table nearby.

Or the chocolate chip cookies in a jar across the bridge.

Truly, those were desperate times for the crab.

“Balthazar!” a panting voice called from the road.

As the hungry merchant turned, he found Rye running down the dirt path and entering the trading post.

“I came as fast as I could,” the gasping adventurer said, bending down with both hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath.

“Oh, wow, that was… fast,” Balthazar said. “How did you know, though?”

“Madeleine told me,” the archer said, standing back straight and readjusting his bow and quiver.

“Amazing. It must be some kind of special skill the baker class gets,” the intrigued crab pondered. “But where are the baskets? You don’t seem to be carrying any.”

“Baskets?” the confused young man repeated.

“Yes, with the resupplies of strawberry tarts! I can’t believe you came running down here and forgot them in town, you airhead!”

“What?!” the perplexed adventurer said. “I came running down here because Madeleine told me about Druma!”

“Oh!” the startled crab exclaimed. “Of course. That makes a lot more sense.” He leaned in closer to the archer. “But are you sure she didn’t send you at least a couple of tarts before you left?”

“Unbelievable,” Rye said, shaking his head in disapproval. “Will you just tell me how Druma is already?”

“Don’t worry. He’s fine. Go ahead, see for yourself.”

Balthazar pointed a pincer at the other side of the bridge, where a small green goblin wearing an old wizard hat was vigorously sawing a log of wood.

“But… what happened?” the boy asked, surprise on his face, as they both crossed the bridge. “I thought he was really ill, and the cure was some nearly unobtainable flower.”

“Eh… Let’s just say I’m a very resourceful merchant, and leave it at that. Point is, the little guy is back on his feet and good as new.”

As they approached him, the goblin put his saw down and wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist.

“Druma!” said the archer. “You’re alright! I heard you bravely fought a wolf and won! How are you feeling?”

“Druma feel good,” the crab’s assistant said with a wide smile. “Boss get magic petal for Druma. Druma drink magic potion boss give. Druma feel more magic now!”

“Again, as I keep saying, the petals were not…” Balthazar started. “Oh, whatever, just let him have that, if it makes him happier.”

“Oh, man, this is great news,” Rye said, smiling in relief. “Madeleine is going to be so happy to hear that. She was worried sick. She’s been asking everyone about that damn flower for days, and as soon as I came back into town, she was already all over me about going back out and looking for where it grew.”

“Hold on,” said Balthazar as he walked around the tree to grab his cookie jar from the tent. “Why didn’t she come down here herself, if she was so worried? It’s a bit strange she hasn’t come to see Druma yet.”

As the boy followed the crab to the front of the tent, he passed in front of the drake’s resting cushion. She lifted her head and looked at the two of them, looking displeased that their conversation was interrupting her nap.

“Oh, hey, Blue,” Rye greeted, before answering the question. “Because she has her hands full with work back in town. She’s barely sleeping, she just kneads and bakes day and night, trying to fill as many orders as she can get.”

“Still?” Balthazar asked, as he retrieved a cookie from his jar. “I thought the gold I gave her would cover at least the rest of the month. Why is she overworking herself again like that?”

“Wait. You don’t know? She said she was going to tell you,” the other said. “Oh, damn it, Madeleine. She probably came here, found out about Druma, and didn’t have the heart to mention it anymore.”

“Mention what?” the increasingly agitated crab asked. “Just tell me already.”

“Antoine,” said Rye. “He bought her spot at the market, and now has doubled her rent. No doubt as a way to take revenge on her for helping you, and get back at you.”

Balthazar’s eyes went wide and his pincer snapped the cookie he was holding in two.

Crumbs of war had been spilled.

“That bastard!” he yelled out, startling Blue’s head up from her pillow. “He can’t get me, so he goes after my baker. That’s just low.”

“I know,” the archer agreed. “And now she’s struggling to make enough to keep paying rent, or else she’ll lose the spot and have nowhere to make business anymore.”

“Why won’t she just rent a different spot from someone else? Surely not even that guy is rich enough to own every single market spot.”

“No, he's not, but apparently his influence up there is vast, and no one who owns a business in that town dares go against Antoine and his interests. So if anyone dared to rent Madeleine a spot for a fair price, he would make sure that was the last business they made. Nobody wants to go up against the corrupt guildmaster of the Merchants Guild over a poor baker.”

Balthazar felt an anger that only someone messing with what he cared for the most could cause. And he cared a lot for his pastries. And also Madeleine, of course.

The crab paced back and forth, snapping his iron claw angrily, as he let out multiple angry exhales.

Rye watched, clearly unsure of what to say, while Blue stood up from her cushion and observed the crab with interest and a furrowing brow, as if sensing his radiating anger.

“Guess what, Blue,” the fuming crab said, turning to the drake. “Looks like some pencil-mustached fancy pants in town has decided to mess with our baker because he can’t get to us.”

Blue frowned even more, as if she somehow understood the context of what she was being told.

“He’s making our Madeleine’s life difficult, because she’s our friend. I’m not about to let that happen. He’s messed with the wrong crab!”

As if roused by Balthazar’s words, Blue stood up with her wings spread and let out an aggressive roar at the sky.

It would seem nothing brought a crab and a drake together quite like a common hatred.

“I was ready to forget about him after his tax stunt failed,” the determined crab said, more to himself than to anyone around him, “but if it’s indirect war he wants, indirect war is what he will get.”