Merchant Crab

The raised floor cobblestone sunk down with a click, and a tiny mechanical mechanism snapped in place under the mage’s heel, triggering several gears, which pulled on tripwires, which in turn activated rows of pulleys, causing a fake ground plate to move.

It took a split second for the realization to hit Reagan, but by then it was too late.

“You should watch where you step,” said Balthazar, backing away from the man.

The trapped floor opened up under the cryomancer, and gravity called on him to obey its pull.

Flailing his arms and vestment sleeves around in a fruitless attempt at spontaneously becoming a flying adventurer, Reagan’s expression of surprise and horror tumbled backwards as he fell into the dark pit.

“Noooooo!”

The crab stood over the open well for a moment, staring down into its abyss.

“How come I didn’t even hear him—”

A sudden thump echoed from the pit, startling the merchant.

“Oof, never mind.”

The trap mechanism unwound itself with several clicks, and with a final snap, the trigger reset back to how it was moments before, leaving no trace of what had just happened.

Just as Balthazar turned away from the recently covered hole, a sharp itch struck the back of his shell. “Ow!”

In just a few seconds, the thick layer of black bark covering the crab’s body cracked and crumbled into dust that disappeared before it even reached the floor.

The now gray again crustacean moved his eyestalks around to look at himself.

“Huh, looks like imbuing really doesn’t stay permanently anymore. Shame.”

[Adventurer slain]

[You have reached level 18!]

Already? I guess even at 50%, the experience from beating a level 30 while at 17 is still a lot. Or was it because I managed to pass his dialogue check too? Hmm…

A low rumbling made the cobblestones under Balthazar’s feet vibrate as he heard several hurried footsteps approaching from both ends of the room.

Great. What now?!

Both the door leading into the chamber and the one leading out of it slammed open with a kick, and several spooky skeletons rushed into the room, wearing decrepit armor and brandishing rusty weapons as they yelled loudly.

“Oh, it’s you guys,” the crab said casually.

The bone mob slowed down and came to a full stop as they found no one else there but Balthazar and Jim’s ice sculpture.

Tom, who came in leading the charge from one of the doors with his walking stick held high in one hand and Sal’s skull in the other, stood in front of his group with a confused expression.

“You are getting pretty good at doing this,” said Balthazar.

“Doing what?” said the bewildered skeleton.

“Arriving just a moment too late,” the crab said with a chuckle.

“The hell happened?!” asked the bearded skull in Tom’s hand.

“I took care of your adventurer problem. Jim might need a blanket or two now, though.”

The dungeon’s merchant stared at the block of crystal ice encasing the unclothed skeleton while slowly shaking his head. “I told him he’d catch a cold one day if he kept running around naked like that.”

He turned to the group of skeletons behind him. “Hey, Tim, go get some torches, will ya? We gotta defrost Jim’s chicken bones again.”

Balthazar stepped next to Tom. “Don’t be too harsh on Jim. He did try to save me, and bought me enough time to come up with a plan.”

“What happened to the adventurers that came down here anyway?” asked the skeleton. “Don’t tell me you ate them?”

“No, of course I didn’t—Why would that even be your first thought?!” asked the baffled crab.

Tom shrugged.

“No, I ended up confronting the cryomancer directly,” Balthazar continued. “After Jim kept him busy for long enough, I got lucky and managed to find… an advantage. Then I just had to be convincing enough to sell him on the idea that this dungeon wasn’t as easy as he thought, that I was some kind of miniboss, and that an army of skeletons was coming to feed him to a giant slime. So, you know, slightly enhanced true facts.”

Tom looked at the crab while shaking his head slowly, a surprised and amazed expression all over his face bones. “You sure are quite the talking crab, aren’t you? Where is he now, though? Don’t tell me you…”

The skeleton ran a finger across his throat. Or at least where one would be, if he still had any flesh and muscle.

“No, I didn’t lay a pincer on him. He did it all to himself. He stepped on that floor trap over there. I merely had to make him scared enough to forget his own dirty trick.”

“Ah, good old hole traps!” said Sal. “Some of my favorites. No matter how high the level, enough fall damage can still do you in.”

“Wait, what about the girl?” asked Tom. “What happened to her?”

Balthazar’s mood turned slightly somber.

“She was scared and just wanted to leave,” he said.

“Ah, so you showed her the way out?” said the skeleton.

“No, because the frosted douchebag wouldn’t let her go. His intention was to use her as a meat shield and trap bait so he could get easy loot. When she refused, he triggered a trap and sent her down the chute like discarded garbage.”

“And then they say that we undead are the evil ones!” said the old skull with an upset rattle.

Balthazar looked at the place on the floor where Lisa had fallen.

“Hey, Tom, how deep is the fall from here?”

“From these traps?” the unliving merchant said. “Hmm, pretty deep, several floors, at least.”

“Do you think there’s any chance she’s still… you know…”

“Alive? Nah, no way. Way too long of a drop for that.”

“Oh…” said the pensive crab.

“She’s definitely dead,” added Tom.

“I see.”

“Goner than Sal’s dancing career.”

“Alright, I got it, geez!” said Balthazar.

“Ah, sorry, my bad,” the undead said. “I forget how uncomfortable you living ones can be with death.”

“Poor kid just didn’t deserve to be done in like that, that’s all,” the crustacean said. “It wasn’t greed that brought her down here.”

Tom tapped the crab’s shoulder gently. “Don’t worry, I’ll send Tim down there for her later. If there’s one thing we know, is how to respect the dead. Would be strange if we didn’t!”

Balthazar nodded quietly in appreciation.

Of the large group of skeletons that had barged into the room, some had now either left, or were helping with defrosting Jim and cleaning the room.

“Hey, crab,” said Tim from behind one of the stone coffins. “Is this yours?”

Held up in his hand was a brown satchel, the one that belonged to the cryomancer, had been carried and dropped by the fallen girl, and from where Balthazar had retrieved the piece of Voidwood.

“It is now,” he said, skittering towards the skeleton. “To the victor go the spoils.”

He took the bag and began rummaging through it with more proper care this time. It was no Backpack of Holding, so it had little space for items, and most of what the crab was finding inside was either useless trash, a few loose coins, or half empty vials of potions.

Bah, I was hoping for some more of that strange bark, but I guess I’ll have no such luck. I wonder how he got it…

As he nearly gave up on the contents of the bag, Balthazar’s pincer grabbed something that made his eyestalks jump with interest.

He pulled his pincer out of the bag, holding a piece of rolled up parchment, which seemed to glow just for his eyes.

Another Scroll of Potential!

“Hey, Balthazar,” Tom called, approaching from the other side of the room.

“Yes?” said the crab, quickly stuffing the scroll in his pack for later inspection.

“I almost forgot, the boys cleaned the snot off the coins and bagged them for you,” said the skeleton, tossing a large coin purse at the crab.

“Sweet,” the eight-legged merchant said, while pocketing the money together with his other coins.

[Bag of Holding Money: 12,512 crowns]

“So, will you stay for the night?” asked Tom.

“We ain’t got no feast to offer, though,” said Sal. “On account of us being undead skeletons and all that.”

“Come on, Sal, have some manners!” grumbled the other skeleton. “I’m sure we could scrounge together some appetizers.”

Balthazar recalled all the cockroaches and slugs he saw crawling around when he first entered the dungeon.

“No, it’s fine, fellas. I left Druma and Blue waiting for me outside, so I should probably get going anyway.”

“You brought the little rascals along, and you didn’t even mention it?!” Tom said. “Come on, I’ll show you the secret way out.”

***

After saying goodbye to all the many skeletons of Tudor’s Hall, Balthazar was on the surface once again, accompanied by Tom and Sal—whose skull was now tied to the merchant’s walking stick—making his way back to the road as the late afternoon sun bathed the forest in its faint orange light.

“So where will you go now?” asked the merchant skeleton.

“Not really sure,” answered the merchant crab. “Probably need to find Rye again, see if he managed to track the whereabouts of the dragon.”

“Ah, looking to rescue your baker friend, right?”

“Yep.”

Balthazar pondered on his options as they leisurely walked out of the crypt’s clearing and towards the main road.

He had gotten his system access back, he had even started getting some skills, but he was still far from being fit to face off against a level 75 dragon. Not to mention he was still not any closer to understanding half of what was really happening around him, from the strange mind-wiped adventurers, to the mysterious birds that can just swoop by and steal his system.

He did have one lead on that, however.

Reaching into his backpack, Balthazar retrieved Ruby’s letter he had received before leaving the pond.

“Hey, Tom, you wouldn’t happen to know where a town called Condor is, would you?” the crab asked.

The skeleton rubbed his chiseled jawline for a moment, thinking.

“Hmm, Condor… That doesn’t ring a bell, and I’ve been all over the land,” he said.

“Condor?” said the skull hanging from Tom’s walking stick, where the firefly lantern usually was. “Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.”

“You know it?” asked the excited crab.

“Well, I remember it, don’t think I ever visited,” Sal explained. “This was many moons ago, I might have even still had some meat on my bones back then!”

“Could you tell me where it was?” Balthazar said, while pulling a map from his backpack.

The crab spread the piece of parchment open on the ground, while Tom placed the skull on top of it.

“Hmm, the land looked so different back then,” the old-timer said as he looked around the map. “I don’t even know what half of these places are now, but I’m pretty sure Condor used to be somewhere around… there.”

Balthazar stared at the map and then back at the skull sitting on top of it, like some kind of macabre paperweight. “Uh… where?”

“Right there!” the old piece of bone said again.

“You… you know we can’t see you pointing, right?”

“Ah, fiddlesticks! Sorry, phantom limbs, I guess. Tom, pass me a stick or something, will ya?”

The skeleton grabbed a small broken branch off the forest floor and handed it to the skull, who took it between his teeth.

“Itfs rifth fthere,” Sal said, maneuvering the stick with his mouth to point at an empty clearing near some hills on the map, before spitting it out. “Or at least it used to be, back in the day.”

“Well, it’s a start, at least,” said Balthazar, rolling the map back into his backpack. “Thanks.”

After a few more steps through the woods, they arrived at a clearing near the road, where they found Druma and Blue playing hacky sack while waiting for the crab.

“Boss!” the goblin cheerfully greeted.

“Hey there. I hope you two didn’t get up to any trouble while I was away, because I sure did.”

After some more hellos and goodbyes, the trio was back on the road, waving back at Tom and Sal as they left.

“Where boss go now?” asked the enthusiastic assistant.

“Well, I’m thinking we head southeast, but I’d like to find Rye again first.” He turned to the drake walking alongside them. “Hey, Blue, have you spotted any signs of Rye while I was away?”

The winged creature shook her head.

“Damn, it’s been a while, I wonder if he’s alright.”

The sound of twigs breaking and shuffling bushes came from one side of the road, and the party froze in place, Blue baring her fangs, Druma holding his staff, and Balthazar putting his pincers up.

“Who goes there?” he asked loudly.

A figure stepped out of the shadows of the forest trees, his clothes and armor dirty and messy, his blond hair and face covered in soot and ash, looking completely exhausted.

Balthazar frowned at the boy.

“Rye?!”