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Thankfully, it was not blood, as crab’s blood is not red.

How did Balthazar know that when he had never so much as suffered a scratch in his entire peaceful pond life? He wasn’t sure.

Just as he wasn’t sure why he was finding that to be the time to ponder about the color of his blood, seeing as he was also lying upside down on his shell.

Rocking from side to side, Balthazar propped himself back onto his eight legs. He still had them all, which he found to be a good start.

Trying to focus his blurry vision against the bright light of what seemed to be the sunrise, a familiar set of words appeared in front of his eyes.

[You have reached level 9!]

“Oh, you’re still here,” the crab complained. “I was half hoping you’d be gone for good once I woke up.”

“Boss… boss want Druma gone?”

Balthazar turned around, his senses still trying to figure out his surroundings. He was in front of the tent, with Druma standing nearby, his hands clasped around an empty glass vial in front of his shirtless chest. He had an expression of great sadness in his eyes. “Is because Druma use magic?”

“What… no! No, no, I wasn’t talking about you, Druma! You did nothing wrong. On the contrary, you did great… uh, last night, I think? How long was I out?”

The goblin’s long ears perked up and a joyful grin opened across his face. “Thank! Druma no run this time! Druma get thief!”

He jumped in place with glee, empty bottle still in his hands.

“And boss sleep for many hour. Druma start to think boss no wake up no more. So Druma get heal potion and give it to boss.”

“That explains the red liquid, I guess. Wait, you said I was out for hours? And you only decided to give me a healing potion now?!”

The goblin’s shoulders slumped, and he looked down at his feet.

“Boss say heal potion cost much gold. Druma scared boss get mad for using potion. Druma will work more to pay potion.”

“Oh, for the love of… forget about that, it’s fine,” Balthazar rubbed his shell above his eyes and picked up a silver plate from nearby, to check his reflection on it. “No cracks and still perfectly golden. Hmm, maybe gold isn’t that bad of an armor material as they all say. Or could it be that…”

Balthazar looked up at the sky with a pensive expression. No birds in the air that morning.

“Wait! What happened to the thief, the big one that hit me with the club? Don’t tell me he got away?!”

“No, no! Druma and big rock get thief!” the goblin perked up again and pointed to the other side of the bridge, where three thieves lay chest down, tight ropes tied around their wrists and ankles, while a tall golem watched over them. The boulder smiled and waved his massive hand at Balthazar.

“When big thief hit boss,” the goblin began, “Bouldy come running. Druma hit thief face with magic balls from magic stick. Thief fall. Bouldy smack thief. Thief go to sleep again. Druma tie thief.”

Balthazar took a moment to process everything that had happened.

He had survived the blow from the club, that was good, but he had come dangerously close, judging by the health value he remembered seeing. 5/100. But what happened after? The “system” thing seemed to… break? He couldn’t remember the details. It was all like a fading dream. There was an error, and then… how was it fixed?

“Damnable birds!” Balthazar said, shaking a claw up at the sky, where a distant flock of the feathered creatures flew. “Why do you always show up to ruin my day!”

Trying to take his mind off the unpleasant beings, Balthazar went inside his tent and checked under his hiding spot. The Scroll of Character Creation remained dormant as ever, not a sign of activity ever since that first day.

He really wished whatever that system was came with a better instructions manual, but by that point the crab had come to accept he would probably never learn much more about it.

It was not as if he could ask someone about it either. They’d probably start asking too many inconvenient questions, or worse, they would try to take everything away from him.

Besides, who could he ask about it? Almost everyone he knew were adventurers, and those idiots barely knew how to tie their own shoes. What could they possibly know about systems, levels, or skills?

“Boss?” Druma called, interrupting the crab’s thoughts about how shoelaces were supposed to work.

“Hmm… uh, what? What is it?”

“What boss want to do with thieves?” the barefoot goblin asked. “Boss want Druma to poke thieves with stick?”

“Oh, that’s right, those guys,” Balthazar said, snapping out of his pondering. “No. No poking. At least not yet. I got better plans for them. But speaking of thieves… I’ll be right back.”

Balthazar reached inside the tent and took a small coin purse into his pincer before skittering his way across the bridge, passing the golem and his three prisoners, each of the thieves glancing at the crab with scorn.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Reaching the road, he approached a nearby bush.

“Hey, you. Still there?”

“Yes, but keep it down!” Rob’s voice said from the bush. “I don’t want any of them to hear us.”

“Oh, come on. Why are you so afraid?”

“Maybe you don’t get it, but after this I still have to go back to town, back to the alleys, and the thief\'s life. That gets complicated if word gets out that I sold out a group of fellow thieves.”

“Hah! Honor among thieves, is it? I thought you would all be out for yourselves. But even you got some kind of code of ethics, eh?”

“Code? Ethics?” Rob repeated, perplexed. “No, man, they just break your legs if they find out you’re a snitch, that’s all!”

“Hang on,” Balthazar said. “Did you stay in that bush the whole night?”

“Yeah?”

“Never left? Not even when you saw that guy knock me out? You didn’t do a thing?”

“Maaaaan, what part of me being a coward have you not grasped yet? You want me to gather information in town, that’s one thing, but expecting me to fight that walking wardrobe? Hell no!”

“Alright, whatever. Good job on bringing me word Antoine’s goons were coming. Here’s your payment.” Balthazar tossed the coin purse into the bush. “Now go back to town and stick to our plan.”

The crab stood in front of the bush, waiting. “Well? What are you waiting for?”

“I’m not stepping out of this while you’re there. That’d be too conspicuous. What if they see me? Go away. I’ll leave when I’m sure nobody’s watching.”

Balthazar shook his shell in exasperation and walked back to his trading post, where the captured thieves remained waiting. Not of their own will, of course.

***

“An outrage, I tell you!”

“Yes, yes, I heard you the first dozen times.”

“I couldn’t believe it. The gall! The audacity! Right outside our town’s gates!”

A guardsman from the town of Ardville walked down the road from the south gate, accompanied by a lavish merchant who couldn’t seem to shut up, much to the guard’s dismay.

“This just better not be a waste of my time,” the guard said to the merchant. “I skipped on breakfast to come here, and if it turns out it was for nothing, I don’t care if you’re friends with the captain or the mayor, I’ll toss you into the Black Forest and leave you there.”

“I wouldn’t dare waste the time of our esteemed guards if my information wasn’t fully reliable,” Antoine said.

Reaching the entrance to the pond, the two men found Balthazar already waiting for them.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” the crab said.

“Uh… are you… Balthazar?” the guard asked, hesitantly.

“Sure am. And you must be part of the guardsmen of Ardville, judging by your immaculate yellow armor.”

“I… yes, I am,” the man said, running a hand down the length of his yellow-dyed leather chest piece, straightening it out before continuing. “I’m sorry, I heard about a talking crab, but now that I came down here, I’m actually still surprised. You really do talk, and quite well, I must admit.”

Growing visibly impatient, Antoine stepped forward.

“Can we save on the pleasantries?” the merchant man said. “May I remind you we are here on official business, of the most important lawful kind?”

“That’s right,” the guard said, clearing his throat. “Mister Antoine here has informed me that yesterday a piece of precious jewelry was stolen from his store, and that according to his sources, your trading post down here handles the transaction of that and many other stolen goods with well-known criminals.”

“In other words,” Antoine said, his smile twisting his pencil mustache into an even more ridiculous shape, “you, crab, are dealing with stolen goods, and now the law has come to shut you down.” He turned to the guard again. “I assure you, if you search this… dump he calls a trading post, you will find the described gold medallion with an emerald. Perhaps hidden somewhere, but he received it from the thieves, I have no doubt.”

“I can save you the time,” Balthazar said. “Come with me.”

The crab headed down the path to his pond, the two intrigued men In tow. As they entered the larger area preceding the pond’s shore, a large platform floor made of crude wooden boards extended in front of them, a large portion of it occupied by a variety of crates, shelves, and tables, each displaying all sorts of random items one would find at a general trader.

But what really got the attention of the guard and the merchant was the towering golem at the center of it all, watching over two men and a woman sitting on the floor, all tied up.

“Is… is that a real golem?” a perplexed Antoine asked.

“Ah, yes, that’s my personal guard,” Balthazar answer, in a casual tone. “Say hello, Bouldy.”

The living boulder smiled and waved his hand at the two men.

“And what’s the meaning of this?” the confused guard asked, pointing at the three tied up figures in front of them.

“These are the three thieves we caught last night, trying to rob my trading post. And I believe this,” Balthazar said while revealing a gold medallion with an emerald from his silver pincer, “is the stolen item you were both looking for. The thief in the middle had it on him. Perhaps they were on a thieving spree, hitting all the general merchants of the area. First Mister Antoine here, then me. Luckily, we got them.”

“Preposterous!” the irate merchant exclaimed. “The crab is clearly trying to play us for fools! He knew we were coming. Somehow, I don’t know how! And he set it all up!”

“I don’t see why I would do that,” Balthazar calmly said. “If I was actually fencing stolen goods, and I knew the guardsmen were coming, I would simply get rid of the medallion, and any other stolen goods, and tell the thieves to not be here. Why would I be serving up my own customers and my precious contraband to a guard?”

“He… he kind of has a point,” the guardsman said, looking slightly baffled.

Stepping up to the trio of thieves, the guard looked at their faces closer.

“I know these three. We’ve caught them multiple times before, always stealing something. You got anything to say in your defense?”

The leader remained silent, while the muscle of the group showed his disdain for the guard by spitting on the floor, and the woman called the guard a colorful name.

“Well,” the guard started, “didn’t expect to come here and walk away with my job done for me so easily and so quickly, but I’m not complaining.”

“What?!” Antoine blurted out. “You can’t be serious! You are clearly being tricked by this… this crab! He’s a menace! He even shelters a wild goblin here!”

“You mean my loyal assistant, Druma?” Balthazar said, signaling with a pincer to the other side of the bridge.

The goblin came trotting across the wooden footpath.

“He built most of what you see around here,” the crab announced as his assistant stood to his side. “He’s very hardworking and in no way a threat to anyone. Except maybe thieves. Isn’t that right, Druma?”

“Yes, yes, boss,” Druma said, bowing his head while holding the wizard hat in place.

“I’ll be damned… first a talking crab, then a real golem, and now a tamed goblin,” the guard said. “This day just started, and I already got quite the story to tell back at the barracks.”

“How can you believe a word he says?!” Antoine asked, his mustache shaking with anger. “He’s a crab!”

The guard looked at the golden crab. “Sure he is, but he just handed me three thieves on a silver platter and solved our stolen property case. Besides, why shouldn’t I believe his story? It makes sense, and he just strikes me as the trustworthy type.”

“This isn’t over, crab,” Antoine threatened, turning to Balthazar. “I will have this stain on our map removed, you’ll see.”

“Sure. Anyway, I believe this is yours,” Balthazar said with a smile, dropping the medallion in his rival’s hand.

With a loud scoff that revealed more frustration than a sense of superiority, the town merchant started marching out towards the road.

“Well, I guess I’ll be going too,” the guardsman said. “These three are all nice and tied together already, so I’ll be taking them up to town and straight into their cells.”

“Glad to be of service,” the crab said, making a salute with his pincer.

“Hah. The other guardsman in town won’t believe it when I tell them this wild story. You’re going to be quite the tale.”

Balthazar accompanied the guard back to the road, the three bound thieves slowly scooting their way behind the man holding their rope.

As they headed up the road, a message appeared in front of the crab’s vision.

[Ardville Guards Reputation +1]

“Well, well. I’m sure that will prove useful at some point.”