Merchant Crab

With a yawn and a stretch, Balthazar emerged from the sand to a brand new morning. Scratching his backside with his pincer, he lazily sidestepped to the water to wash away the sand from his eyes, followed by a quick gargle and another stretch. Still feeling slightly grumpy, he put on his monocle and picked up the recipe book Madeleine had left him the day before.

What good was a book if he could not read it? He had even gone through other books that were up for sale and they were all impossible for him to read. Attempting to look at it through his Monocle of Examination was also useless, as all it did was show him its name:

[Recipes from Grandma, Vol. 3]

But if he could read that, how come he could read nothing else? It made no sense to his crab brain, just like the characters on those pages. Perhaps he could only read things in that strange scroll’s “system” because they were exclusive to him? He had tried looking at the Scroll of Creation again, but it had remained dormant and lifeless since the day he used it, so that was of no help.

Whatever this thing that kept assaulting his eyes was, it was starting to wear out his patience with its lack of explanations.

"Where is a manager when you need one?" the grumpy crab said to himself. "Also, what is a manager, anyway?" He scratched the top of his shell in thought. "Bah, probably something useless."

The whole thing had left Balthazar so annoyed that he hadn't even felt like going through his level up screen the night before. He had invested so much in being “intelligent” and what good did that do for him if he couldn’t even read? Maybe if he had invested everything into more Strength he would have been able to smack the words out of the book.

He began wondering if all those attribute and skill points even really did anything, or if they were just a placebo effect. But at the same time, he then also wondered how in the world he understood what a “placebo effect” was.

“Wait!” Balthazar suddenly shouted. “Skills! Maybe there’s one that could help me.”

Bringing back up his level up screen, he quickly bumped his Intelligence to 15 and moved on to the skills menu. Scrolling his eyes up and down, looking for something that looked relevant, he suddenly stopped and smacked the side of his claw to his shell. “Of course, why didn’t I think of checking here before?”

[Reading: F]

[The ability to read and write the common language]

[Next Rank Requirements: Intelligence 6]

[Upgrade]

Having only one point to spend at that time, Balthazar pondered for a moment on whether he should spend it here. The “common language” was almost certainly the one all the adventurers and Madeleine used, as it’s so, well… common. This was clearly the right skill for what he wanted to do, but would it be worth it? As he looked at the book in front of him once more and wondered about all the potential pie secrets within, he made the decision and pressed [Upgrade] on the skill.

Waving the wall of text away with his eyes, he quickly opened the book and attempted to read from one of the pages.

“In… in great… in gradient…” Balthazar slowly muttered, with difficulty. “Ah! Ingredients!”

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Readjusting his monocle, he attempted to continue through the next paragraphs.

“Flower? They eat flowers? Wait, no, it’s… flour. Huh, alright then.”

Closing the book with a loud thump after a while, the crab sighed.

“This is going to be tough. Clearly a D rank in reading barely lets me understand what I’m reading. How do the small human children do it? They must get extra skill points, I bet.”

Bringing his status page back up, he felt a slight satisfaction in easily reading through it.

[Status]

[Name: Balthazar] [Race: Crab] [Class: Choose] [Level: 5]

[Attributes]

[Strength: 3] [Agility: 2] [Intelligence: 15]

[Primary Skills]

[Medium Armor: B] [Speech: B] [Fishing: C] [Slashing Weapons: C] [Reading: D]

“That’s new,” Balthazar said, looking at the class field. He recalled seeing it there before, but it had always been marked as “undefined.” Was this going to let him define one now?

Focusing on it for a moment, a new menu popped up, not too dissimilar from the skills one, except this one seemed to list choices of classes. At the top of the long list floated a short piece of text:

[Classes unlock access to certain skills unique to their type. Certain levels of skills will also only be available to specific classes.]

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“Ooh, now you start explaining things, eh?” Balthazar exclaimed, as if talking to someone in front of him that wasn’t there. “It would have been nice if you did it from the start, you know?”

Scrolling through the many choices of class, he felt lost as to what to pick. There were typical ones, like [Archer], [Fighter], or [Wizard], but also things like [Alchemist], [Miner], and even [Sailor], but none of them seemed like a proper fit for a crab like him. He tried thinking what his talents were, and looking around, he concluded he had been showing a good sense for trading, selling and buying things, making deals, and that’s when he saw a class that caught his eye.

[Merchant]

[Specializes in trading, can sell and buy things for better prices, as well as start their own merchant business.]

“That’s it, that’s my pick!” Balthazar said, one pincer stretched forward.

Confirming his selection, the screen returned to the status page, where it now showed [Class: Novice Merchant].

“A novice, is it? Not for long, funny words in my eyes. Not for long.”

***

The day had been quieter than Balthazar was hoping, with few clients passing by. He had hoped that the rumors started by the archer boy the day before would have spread and attracted people curious about a talking crab trading things on the side of the road, but today there had been very few adventurers coming down from town heading to the forest or the plains.

One possible explanation was the fact that Ardville also had another gate facing west, with roads leading both west and southwest, which was apparently much busier than the south one, as he had learned from an adventurer who stopped by and bought a couple of trinkets. Since there wasn’t much else other than the Black Forest to the south, not as many people came that way.

Taking advantage of the quiet afternoon, Balthazar had tried picking up on his reading skill, making it a few pages into Madeleine’s recipe book before realizing he had no idea how most of what it described worked. He had always just eaten his food as it was, pick it up, put in mouth, eat. Simple.

But these humans had entire rituals around their food preparation. They took things out of it, they added others, they heat it up, then cool it down, they cut it, then they mix it back together. It was madness to him. Why would anyone spend so much time playing with their food like that?

But he also kept remembering the end result that was Madeleine’s pies, so maybe there was a good reason behind it after all. He still couldn’t conceive of ever doing half of the stuff described, however. Maybe cracking walnuts, that step he could see himself doing better than any human.

Accepting that his calling was in coin making, he came to terms with leaving the baking to true artisans like Madeleine, and focus himself on gaining more money, in order to get more pies. He was going to earn that dough!

There were still a few other books lying around that he could now understand, so he put himself to reading the ones that sounded like they’d teach him useful information, such as a book with the local history of the area, a financial journal, and even a “Guide to Windmill Maintenance.” That last one wasn’t particularly useful to him, but it had lots of drawings and figures, which he liked.

It was while deep in one of his reading moments that Balthazar heard a horse trotting up the road. Putting his book down, he moved over to the entrance of his pond and watched as a robust brown horse approached, pulling an open two-wheeled cart behind, surrounded by two adventurers slowly walking alongside it, plus another in front of the horse, leading it with one hand on the reins. All with tired expressions on their faces, mud and other unknown forms of goo splattered all over their armors and vestments. They were all different classes of adventurer, the one at the front was level 14, while the other two were level 12. The horse was just level 3.

Seeing the leading adventurer hold his step and clutch the hilt of his sword when noticing the large crab staring at them on the side of the road, Balthazar quickly broke the tension. “Hail, adventurers. Nice day for a stroll, ain’t it?”

While he thought his attempts at being friendly could still do with some more work, Balthazar was relieved to see the man relax his hand from the sword.

“Oh, that’s right,” the man said, in a casual but tired tone, “I heard about a talking crab on this road. Guess that’s you.”

“Sure am,” the crab confirmed. “And not just a talking crab, but a merchant too, in fact.”

“Merchant, is it?” said one of the other two adventurers as they both joined at the front of the cart to see the crab. “Sell us a couple of nice beds, would you?”

“Ah, yes, I certainly would, if I had any, but I’m afraid I’m fresh out. I might be interested in buying some of the loot you fellas have there, though.”

“Loot?” said the front man. “It’s not loot we’re carrying back to town, crab.”

“It’s not?” Balthazar asked, with curiosity, while stepping around the cart to look at its back.

“No, just these two,” the man continued.

The back of the cart had its lid dropped open, and two pairs of legs could be seen hanging from it, feet almost dragging on the road. Raising himself higher on his legs, Balthazar looked at the two men lying on the cart. One had a protruding belly, sticking out of his suit of very worn out armor, and the other a face that resembled an ugly fish, covered in scratches. He recognized them from the day before.

“Are they… dead?”

“Nah,” said the third member of the group, while holding two fingers in front of the crossbowman’s nostrils. “Still breathing. Just passed out and pretty banged up.”

“What happened to them?”

“They got more than they bargained for,” said the leader. “Went deep into the forest and got ambushed by some giant spiders.”

“Yeah, lucky we found them when we did,” continued one of the other two, “or they might not have made it.”

“Also,” added the third adventurer, “lucky for them they had those poison cure potions with them, or they’d be two shriveled up corpses right now.”

The man signaled towards two empty bottles sitting in the cart's corner. Balthazar recognized them as the two potion bottles he sold the pair the previous day.

He wondered to himself what were the odds that the story he made up on the spot about poisonous spiders in the forest in order to sell them the potions would turn out to be accurate. Pretty high, apparently.

“Yeah, in fact,” the higher level adventurer said to the other two, “didn’t the big guy say they bought them on the road on their way there while he was still conscious?”

“That’s right, he did say that,” confirmed one of the two companions. “Even scolded the other one for trying to complain about their price.”

“There are no other traders down here,” the man said, turning to Balthazar, “did they get those potions from you, crab?”

“That they did,” the crab responded, while adjusting his monocle and assuming a respectable pose. “Those two passed through here yesterday. I warned them the forest was full of dangerous spiders, they didn’t want to listen at first, but I convinced them to take the potions, nearly forced them into their hands for free, just because I didn’t want the worst to happen, as apparently it nearly did.”

“I’ll be damned,” said one of the two lower levels, “saved by a talking crab, who would have thought? That was mighty noble of you.”

“What’s your name, crab?” the leader asked. “I’ll be sure to put in a good word for you with the Adventurer’s Guild once we get back in town and drop those two off at the healer. They need to know there’s a good merchant down here.”

“The name’s Balthazar,” the crab announced, puffing his front up. “And any adventurer coming this way is welcome to trade with me. I’ve got the best deals for their journey, guaranteed.”

As the cart continued its way up the road towards the gates, Balthazar saw a new notification coming up.

[Adventurer’s Guild Reputation +1]

Balthazar had no idea until that moment that there was some kind of reputation system, and he also wasn’t yet sure how he had managed to stumble into the good graces of the Adventurer’s Guild so easily, but he knew that if he had any hands in that moment, he would be rubbing them together.