Merchant Crab

Balthazar sat in front of a table, pincers extended over the edges of it, staring intensely onto its surface.

He let out a long, shaky breath.

“I gotta do this.”

On the table rested a single butter cookie.

It was the last one the crab had left from Madeleine’s latest batch.

Reaching forward with his claw, he took the lone cookie and shoved the whole thing into his mouth.

It was crumbly, not quite as crunchy anymore, and was beginning to turn stale.

And yet, Balthazar savored it like it was the most delicious meal he had ever experienced.

He did not know if he would ever get to taste Madeleine’s baking again, so he needed to make that one count, and he also needed it to give him courage for what he was about to do.

The last crumbs of cookie slid down his throat, and he sighed. As always, it was over too soon.

“Boss?” a timid voice said nearby.

Balthazar turned to see Druma standing by the bazaar’s counter, broom in hand.

“Druma finish clearing rubble.”

The small goblin assistant had been working tirelessly since the day of the avalanche, barely taking any breaks, despite the crab’s protests. He was also not acting like his usual excited self, instead being more quiet and his big pointy ears always sagging next to his large head.

Balthazar knew what the goblin was going through. He missed his golem friend, and he also felt guilty for not doing more about Madeleine’s kidnapping.

The crab had tried telling him it was not his fault, and there was little more he could have done to help that day, but deep down he also knew that no matter how many times one might repeat that, the sadness and guilt wouldn’t just go away that easily.

“Great job, Druma,” said Balthazar, trying to force himself to smile for the goblin. “Thanks for working so hard to clean up the place.”

The goblin’s ears perked up ever so slightly and a shy smile briefly appeared on his face.

“Boss need Druma to help more?”

“Not right now, thank you,” said the crab as he stood up and stepped towards the entrance.

“Boss going out?” the assistant quickly asked. “Boss need Druma to go with boss?”

Balthazar’s mouth twitched with a wistful smile.

He knew that with Bouldy gone and Blue still recovering from her injuries, the goblin felt it fell upon himself to do everything he could around the place, including protecting his boss.

The crab did not want to discourage him, and in fact found himself thankful for his friend’s unwavering support.

But some things he could not assist with.

“Not this time, buddy. This I have to take care of on my own.”

The goblin’s ears slacked again, but he nodded in acceptance as Balthazar left the bazaar.

Walking up the dirt path between the bazaar and the main road, the crab contemplated the overcast sky above.

Since the talking crow had stripped him of his system, the world around him felt different. Everything seemed like always, yet not quite the same. Balthazar could not find the right words to explain it, but it was as if he was seeing it through different eyes.

He arrived at the road and took a moment to stare off into the vast plains in front of him.

Brown and orange, the grass bobbed in the wind, like a sea of vegetation. Or at least so he assumed. Balthazar had never actually seen the sea. He had read about it, and he was more than familiar with his pond, but the idea of an ocean more vast than the land itself, an infinite pool of deep blue stretching further than the eye could see, and all of it inhabited by crabs? He could hardly imagine that.

Despite having always felt no interest in places outside of his pond, he found himself musing over the idea of seeing the sea one day.

Putting his distracting thoughts aside, Balthazar doubled his focus on the task at pincer and started walking up the road leading to Ardville.

All his life, he had remained within the confines of that one small area around his pond. He had always believed it was by choice, because he saw no need to go anywhere else. The pond was all he needed. It had everything: food, nice water, good shelter, sunlight, peace and quiet. What more could a crab ask for?

And then the scroll happened. He gained levels, skills, started communicating with others, meeting people. Yet, he was still convinced there was no need to leave his comfort zone.

It wasn’t until the day he really needed it that the crab finally realized he could not leave, that it wasn’t his choice at all. That something was binding him to that place. The day Druma was wounded and Balthazar couldn’t go up the road to find someone who could help was the day he learned he was not as much of a free crab as he always thought he was.

He had pushed that fact to the back of his shell since then, kept his focus on other things as they happened, but it was still there, gnawing at him since that day.

He had never been truly free, but he was going to change that.

He wasn’t sure exactly how, but he just knew something had changed, that something deep within him was different now, and that there was only one way to really put his theory to the test.

The gray crab arrived at his destination, a point on the road between his pond and Ardville that, at first sight, would have looked to anyone else as normal as any other random section of road in each direction, but not to him. He knew exactly where the line was, the look of each individual cobblestone, the small bushes and mounds with grass on the edges of the path. It was all ingrained in his brain.

That was the exact spot he had tried so hard to cross before, but could never step through.

The edge of his own little world.

Balthazar took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

He was not afraid of the motion itself. It was what the outcome of it might be that truly scared him, for all that it could mean to his and his friends’ future.

It would have to work, he was sure of it. Everything else was depending on it.

Everyone else was depending on him.

The crab who never wanted responsibilities.

“You got this, Balthazar,” the crab whispered to himself.

As he raised one leg forward, towards the impassable point on the road, his eyes focused with trembling effort on the cobblestones. He didn’t know if it would matter or help, but as he slowly moved, images of his friends were all he could see in his mind. Those he was so motivated by. He pictured Bouldy’s towering figure smiling down on him. Madeleine waving at him from the road. A plate with a large apple pie resting on it.

Balthazar braced in anticipation, expecting his body to jerk back, away from the invisible line like before, but to his surprise, his foot simply landed on the next cobblestone like it was nothing.

He froze for a moment, staring at his leg and the stones.

He moved another one of his legs forward.

And another.

Soon he had fully crossed with all of his eight legs.

The crab looked around in disbelief. Had it really worked? Had he done it, and so easily?

He took a few more tentative steps up the road, just to make sure he hadn’t gotten the spot on the road wrong.

There was no longer anything keeping him from walking. No physical barriers or mental blocks pushing him back.

He could finally step away from his pond.

Balthazar chuckled. A few short and contained chuckles at first, which quickly evolved into loud ones, until he was fully laughing out loud in the middle of the road.

“I knew it!” he yelled to the empty road and plains around him. “I knew it!”

Since the day the crow had removed the system from him, Balthazar had an underlying feeling deep in him that something more had changed. That something else had disappeared, along with the system stats, attributes, the levels, the skills, and everything else.

If it was an accidental consequence, the crab did not know, but whatever the bird had taken away from him had also removed the invisible shackles keeping him bound to that place.

“Yes! Yes!” he howled to the skies, pincers pumped high in the air, his eyes watery from all the joy running through him.

For someone who had never cared for going anywhere outside of his pond, he found himself now suddenly ecstatic at his newly found freedom.

The gleeful crab started running, straight out of the road and through the tall grass of the plain fields next to him.

He did not care where, he just wanted to go somewhere he knew he had never stepped before.

He ran and spun around, his pincers brushing against the reeds he had never touched, stepping on the pebbles he had never felt under his feet, taking in all the familiar sights from the angles he had never witnessed.

Despite not yet daring to go too far off, for while he might be a free crab he was not an incautious one, Balthazar ran and frolicked through the nearby plains for what might have been an hour, enjoying his brief moment of joy after the depressing previous days.

The crab sighed and stared up at the sky as he laid on his shell, between some rocks and more tall grass he had never been close to before.

Somehow, it seemed to him like the sky was bluer than it had been when he stepped out of the bazaar earlier.

“Alright, enough rolling around,” he told himself, hopping back onto his feet. “I know now what I must do. Time to go back home and prepare.”

Feeling content and proud of himself, Balthazar made his way out of the grass and back onto the road, feeling the thrill of, for a very brief moment, not recognizing his surroundings and wondering where his way back was. He could have never imagined such excitement from the idea of being lost.

Chuckling at himself, he jokingly wondered if he had finally snapped and gone insane.

Whistling a cheery tune, the crab skittered back down the road.

As he approached his destination, Balthazar spotted something unusual by the split on the road that led down to his bazaar.

A small group of people, some on foot and some on horseback, wearing armored uniforms and carrying long spears, stood in wait, facing the bazaar.

The crab squinted at the entourage in the distance, focusing on the familiar figure standing at their center.

“What in the hell?”