Balthazar was very fond of his pincers. He had them ever since he could remember. They were always there with him, never let him down. Whether it was for catg fish, snapping branches, or sg away birds, they always got the job done. Eve came to teag a rude adventurer a lesson, they still stood up to the challenge.

  But on that day, when up against an angry giant spider, his mighty cw was no match for it. Was he really that weak? Did he really need an upgrade?

  Staring at the words in his eyes, and then at the iron ingot he was holding, Balthazar weighed his options. His chitin was strong, but definitely not as strong as the iron he had in front of him.

  But what exactly would this upgrade do for him? And how e this strange system of menus and prompts always seemed to pop up with something ly at the most ve of times?

  Deg to set aside all those questions for the moment, he firmed the upgrade, hoping to at least get one answer out of it.

  [Imbuing rank D required frade]

  “Oh, e on! Really?” Balthazar said with frustration.

  Cheg his list of skills, he found the Imbuing skill and ope.

  [Imbuing: F]

  [The ability to ierials into other objects in order to upgrade them.]

  [ Rank Requirements: Level 5, Intelligence 17]

  [Upgrade]

  Balthazar noticed that to upgrade that skill, he would o get exactly one more point of Intelligehat felt annoyingly specific. What if he wao i intth now?

  After all, one of his main s right then was how powerless he had felt against the spider. All his Intelligence served him of little in that moment. Maybe that’s why most of those adventurers who ied heavily into that stat were magic users of some type, so they could rely on magic to protect them.

  He had noticed an are skill before, whilocked the use of mana, but he had no i in messing with such forces, so there was no ce he would i in it. He had seen his fair share of mages, and they hadn’t left the best impression.

  Jumping to one of his other skills, Sshing ons, at rank C, he checked the requirements for the rank. Strength 5 and Agility 5. That was even more out of his reach at that moment. It was almost like that annoying system was trying to force him into making decisions.

  He only had one avaible attribute point to use from reag level 7, thanks to his heroic boot throwing tribution in the fight against the spider. Looking at his options and his now piqued i about the iron ingot, Balthazar ceded that, once again, Intelligence was the way forward. He was destio be a genius, so it seemed.

  Balthazar leveled up his Intelligence from 16 to 17 and used his one skill point to upgrade the Imbuing skill.

  [Status]

  [Name: Balthazar] [Race: Crab] [Css: Novice Mert] [Level: 7]

  [Attributes]

  [Strength: 3] [Agility: 2] [Intelligence: 17]

  [Skills]

  [Medium Armor: B] [Speech: B] [Fishing: C] [Sshing ons: C] [Reading: C] [Imbuing: D]

  Returning to the ingot in his left pincer, he brought up the upgrade prompt once again, aed yes.

  [Hammer required]

  Balthazar groaned, while turning around to look through a nearby crate for a hammer he remembered having somewhere.

  What was the logi needing a hammer for that? Not that he really knew how this imbuing thing was supposed to work or even what it was, but it felt like he was being mocked. And why couldn’t that thing just tell him everything all at o was always dripping information to him, as if he was too slow to prehend more thahing at a time. He was a smart crab, and he didn’t appreciate this system’s stant attempts at treating him like he was dumb.

  “Alright, now how do I use this thing?” the crab said, pulling a ball-peen hammer from the crate and holding it upside down in his pincer.

  Balthazar awkwardly poked the iron ingot with the bottom of the hammer’s handle.

  “I thought I had already established my appendages weren’t made to use stupid human tools, damn it!”

  Deg to give the whole thing o go, he brought the prompt up once more, and firmed the upgrade while holding the ingot in one pincer, and the hammer iher—still upside down.

  The Iron Ingot vanished without a trace or sound. It simply was there one moment, and gohe . Balthazar looked around, under himself, and even up at the sky, but no sign of it. Then a new notification appeared in front of his eyes.

  [Right Cw upgraded to [Iron Cw] (+5 damage)]

  Balthazar looked at his right cw, still holding the hammer. To his surprise, it was now shinier, with a metal finish to it, his pincers looking sharper and pointier. He dropped the hammer and gave it a couple of ccks, feeling the tension in its grip. It felt more powerful, and he liked it.

  Rushing to a bush on the side of the road, he picked a thicker bran it, and with a quiap, broke it in two with little effort.

  After a few more snapped branches, his attention turo something that would provide a harder challenge: small loose stones from the road.

  Pg a rock the size of an apple between his pincers, he squeezed. Despite a moderate amount of effort required, he had smashed it into dust and tiny fragments.

  “This is awesome!”

  The crab went on to snap, cut, and crush all sorts of things with great joy for the few hours.

  ***

  Balthazar sat on a rug by the road, uhe afternoon sun, watg the wild rabbits running and jumping across the pins, a crag sound making them stand up aheir ears every few seds. The sound came from the crab’s right cw every time he cracked open another walnut.

  He did not actually like walnuts, they were dry and tasteless. But he took great joy in crag them open.

  As he cracked each, he would then carefully pce their tents inside a little baggie, which he inteo give to Madeleiime she visited. He had read a recipe for a type of cake in her book that required walnuts as one of its ingredients, so he thought it would be a nice offer.

  Luckily for him, you could always trust an adveo take the stra of things from a bandit hideout, even a huge sack of walnuts. Maybe the fact that Balthazar kept buying their stuff art of the problem, further enabling their weird behavior, but so long as the merdise kept moving, who was he to question the invisible pincer of the market?

  Happily tinuing to crauts open, Balthazar looked iown's dire and spotted a figure walking down the road. He was used to seeing lots of adventurers walk up and down that road every day, but something about this figure struck him as different.

  As the man approached, the first thing that stood out were his clothes. Not a single piece of armor, nical robes of any kind. Instead, he wore bright clothing of clearly exquisite quality. Reds mixed with yellows and blues, their silky material immacute, without a hint of wear or tear. On his head he wore a yello, adorned with a feather. He was clearly not ing from field bor, or heading out for monster sying.

  Once close enough, Balthazar looked him over through his monocle.

  [Level 12 Mert]

  “Good afternoon. What —”

  “So you must be the talking crab I’ve been hearing so much about,” the man said, pletely ign Balthazar’s first words.

  “And you—”

  “This must be your little trading post,” he tinued, interrupting once more, while looking down at the tris on the rug and over to the shelves and tables dispying multiple types of items. The man scoffed loudly.

  “Yes, I am, and yes, it is. And who are you?” Balthazar finally asked, with his st remaining shred of tolerance.

  The man drew an arrogant smile on his lips, framed by a thin pencil mustache. “I am Antoine, and as you must know by now, I am the rgest trader of goods in Ardville, owner of Antoine’s Emporium, as well as the local master of the Mert’s Guild.”

  “Never heard of you,” Balthazar said, with a dry tone, before casually crushing another walnut with his pincer.

  The smile vanished from the mert’s face for a moment, before his previous smug air returned. “Unsurprising. Not much culture be expected from a crab.”

  “Been doing fine so far without that knowledge,” Balthazar responded, while grabbing one of the purses behind him, opening it, and casually starting a t of its tents. He found that was the perfect time to perform his daily earnings t.

  “Right,” Antoine began, a hint of annoyan his voice, “that art of the reason I decided to e down here myself. I wao see this so-called mert crab myself, and try to uand why our town’s great adventurers would lower themselves to do business with a wild creature.”

  “Maybe it’s my charming personality. Maybe it’s my ve location. Who knows.”

  The man was no longer smiling. “I assure you, if you ever were to visit the emporium in town, you’d uand how none of… this really pare to a proper fiablishment. Not that the guardsmen would ever allow you through the gates, of course. Any unpleasant creatures attempting to ehe city would promptly be dealt with.”

  “Oh no, how will you ever go bae now,” Balthazar said, in his most casual and in no way sarcastie, while closing the purse.

  The smugness had mostly vanished from the mert’s face, quickly being repced with irritation.

  “Look here, crab. I don’t know how you came to be a talking crab, aher do I care to know. But what does me, as the Guildmaster of the merts in this region, is how a mere crab came to possess money, purchase goods, a up a trading operation out of a… a pond, on the side of a road!”

  “That’s simple. You see,” Balthazar began, no longer willing to py he starting money and items I got off a pesky, annoying human who thought he could step on me, after I gave his leg a good snap with this here cw.”

  He showed the man his iron cw, giving it a couple of audible snaps.

  “As for everything you see around you, that was mostly built by my loyal assistant,” Balthazar said, while turning to face the tral area of his pond. “Hey, Druma, e here for a moment.”

  The goblin put down the sank he was w with and trotted his way to them.

  “This is Antoine, a fellow mert. Say hello to Antoine, Druma.”

  “Hello,” the goblin said, with a wave and a wide grin that revealed a set of yellow, serrated teeth.

  “A… a goblin?!” the man said, holding his hand up in front of his mouth in a dramatiner, a mix of horror, e, and disgust going through his face. “That is a vile a creature, a menace! How dare y it to my presence!”

  “I don’t know. You seemed to have no problem bringing yourself to mine.”

  “I came here,” Antoiarted, while taking two steps back, “thinking that, perhaps, a creature who had developed the ability to speak could be reasoned with. But I see now that was foolish thinking. You are a wild beast, and this little circus you call a business is an affront to all the fine merts of Ardville. Not to mention how dangerous it is to be allowing wild beast such as goblins and openly violent crabs to prowl this close to town!”

  “Right. I’m sure this is not because you’re feeling a cut in your profits when all these adventurers get to your store with much less loot than they used to, is it?”

  The mert huffed, his mustache twitg slightly.

  “I will give you this warning only once, crab,” Antoine said, wagging a finger in front of his own face. “Cease this… this poor excuse of a trading post at once. You are not a member of the Merts Guild and thus are operating illegally. Ignore my words and I will have this pce cleared of your presence.”

  Leaving no room for respohe fuming mert turned around and started walking back up the road at a fast pace, only slowing to take a quice from the er of his eye and make sure the goblin was still standio the crab.

  Druma stared at him while scratg his head under his hat, as the man made his the road, swaying his arms in an exaggerated manner.

  “Druma don’t like funny looking human, boss.”

  “Me her, buddy. Me her,” Balthazar said. “And something tells me he’s going to be a pain in the shell soon enough.”

  Annou chapter will be up tomorrow!?