With a quiet plink, Balthazar watched the crossbow bolt hit the floor, its shaft broken in two and the tip cracked.

  [Natural Armor: 0 damage taken]

  “Really, miss?” said the crab with a frown, as he rubbed the area between his eyestalks. “Shoddily made stoip bolts? Those aren’t even good enough to pierce chitin! If you’d e to Balthazar’s Bazaar, you could have purchased some much better steel—”

  “Just please don’t kill me!” cried the young adventurer, dropping the crossbow to the floor, along with her knees.

  “What?! No! I’m not going to hurt you,” the mert quickly said, waving his cws from side to side. “I’m not one of the skeletons, I swear. Not that they’re bad either. Well, I mean, teically they do set all those traps and… the point is, just st, will you?!”

  Lisa gasped, staring at the crab through teary eyes as she tried to tain her cries.

  “It’s fine, all is fine, o be scared,” Balthazar quietly said, taking slow steps forward.

  “What are you doing?!” whispered Jim from behind the pilr, out of the girl’s sight. “We’re not supposed to chat with the adventurers.”

  “Let me try things my way,” the crab whispered back.

  “Who… who are you talking to?” said the fused adventurer, still sitting on the floor.

  “Nobody! Definitely no spooky skeletons in this room. Just me, talking to myself. But totally not in a crazy kind of way either!”

  “You’re… strange. Who are you?” said Lisa, her g hiccups slowly subsiding.

  “Ah, of course, where are my manners!” the crusta said while taking a quick bow. “I am Balthazar, a crab, a mert, and a traveler. In that specific order.”

  “A… crab mert?”

  “No, no. A mert crab. The other way around would imply that I sell crabs, and that would just be weird, don’t you agree?”

  For a split sed, there was almost a hint of a smile on the girl’s lips, a tenuous glimmer of hope trying to blossom through the fear and despair in her eyes.

  “You… you seem out of pce down here. Did you get lost?” she asked, sounding slightly more at ease.

  “Not really,” answered the crab. “Just doing some social visits, trying to do some business, uhe secrets of the world. You know, everyday stuff. You’re the one who seems lost, however.”

  The girl pulled her knees up against her , sitting with her arms hugging her legs.

  “I was trying to find another way out of this pce. I didn’t even want to e here. James was the one who vinced me. He was so excited by the idea of being an adventurer expl dungeons, but I told him we were too weak and inexperienced. I should have never let him hire that bastard of a mage.”

  Now standio her, Balthazar gave a couple of f pats on her shoulder with the side of his cw. “Hey, it’s alright. Everything will be alright.”

  “How? I don’t know how to get out of here, and he’s out there, looking for me, wanting his payment.”

  “Pfft, girl, you’ve e to the right crab. Swindling dumb adventurers is one of my specialties.” He paused and g her from the er of his eyes. “Present pany not included, of course. How about I help you get out of here?”

  “But… how?” Lisa said, raising her face from between her kears pooling around her eyes again.

  “Oh no, don’t start g again,” said Balthazar, quickly rummaging through his backpack. “Here, look, we’ll use this shiny, pretty thing!”

  Pulling his cw out of his magical bag, the crab revealed a roual object with a gss front and a spinning needle within.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a, uh… it’s a pass.”

  “A pass?”

  “Yes, it points the way north!”

  “How is that going to help me get out of here?”

  “I… hmm… I’m not sure, actually. But it sure is shiny, isn’t it?!”

  The young adveook the small pass into her hand, turning it over and admiring it.

  [The Gift of the Crab: success]

  “It’s pretty. I like it,” said Lisa, a faint smile f on her face, and this time, stig around for more than just a sed.

  “Great! So, uh… do you wanna buy it, or…”

  Suddenly, the girl and the crab jumped iartled by the wooden door smming open behind them.

  Like the cold, bitter air of a winter night, Reagaered the room through the open doorway, a halo of pale light around him from the h orb above his head.

  “There you are,” said the ancer, with a smile that was anything but warm.

  Lisa scooted backwards on the floor, away from him, until her back was against a wall.

  “I just want to leave, please,” she pleaded, anguish ba her eyes and voice.

  “Sure, you go, after I get my fill of loot, and you’ve done your job being a nice meat shield.”

  The adveepped forward, and his gaze nded on Balthazar.

  “What is it you’ve found here?” he said with a smirk.

  “Hey, pal, why don’t you stop being a scumbag and just let the pirl go?” said the hard shelled mert.

  “A giant talking crab?” Reagan said, raising both eyebrows in amused surprise. “Now that’s a rare find for sure. Well done, little Lisa.”

  The man’s demeanor was making Balthazar angrier by the sed. Dumb adventurers, foolish adventurers, even inpetent ohose the crab had learo deal with, tolerate, and even accept. But the rare ohat were evil, just purely, needlessly cruel, like this one, he simply could not stomach.

  Something about seeing those with more power stepping on those below them made his blood boil, and as a cold-blooded crusta, that was not an easy feat to achieve.

  “Alright, girl, get up,” Balthazar said. “I’m taking you back to the exit.”

  Lisa gnced bad forth between the mage and the crab, hesitating.

  “Really?” said Reagan with a sudden ugh. “I guess this crab talk but not listen. She has a debt to pay, and since her stupid friend already got himself killed in the first room, she will have to do the rest of the job by triggering every trap standiween me and some easy money. She’s not going anywhere.”

  Balthazar frowned. “Yes, she is.”

  The ancer ughed even harder. “Says who? A ridiculous crab wearing a backpack who thinks he’s threatening?”

  “Yes,” said the crab wearing a backpack, “him and the squad of armed skeletons guarding this dungeon, so you’d better just get lost and leave us be.”

  [The Gift of the Crab: failure]

  “ry, but I’m not some novice adventurer you easily fool into running away scared,” the smug mage said. “I know this pce is a beginner’s dungeon. Every being in here is weak and way below my level, which is exactly why I enjoy ing with idiots like those two into pces like these. Cheap but easy loot I get, plus whatever I snag from their bodies after they invariably get themselves killed, and I barely o lift a finger or risk my own skin.”

  Damn it, I ’t take this guy in an actual fight, aoo smart to trick so easily.

  “Now get up, I’m tired of wasting my time,” he barked at the girl, while turning back to the door.

  Lisa stood up, but did not seem willing to follow him.

  “I… I won’t go with you,” she said in a trembling voice. “I’m leaving with the crab.”

  Balthazar looked up at her. Attagirl! Show him you won’t be pushed around.

  Reagan gred back at the adventurer. “Is that so?”

  “Y-yes,” she said, standing up straight and raising her voice. “I’m going to leave here and go back to town.”

  Yes, good job, you tell him!

  “And once I’m there, I’ll make sure everybody knows who you are and what you do to new adventurers like James and me!”

  Nooo! Don’t tell him that!

  Reagan turned back to her, and it was as if the already cold, damp air of the crypt suddenly grew even icier, the densation of Lisa’s shaky breath billowing out of her mouth as she shrunk ba pder his gaze.

  “And how do you pn to do that?” he said, slowly walking towards the girl.

  “I… I…” the scared adveuttered, slowly bag away from the advang mage.

  “Who’s going to help you? That crab?”

  The ancer ughed as he pointed a fi Balthazar, his eyes still fixed on Lisa’s as he moved in closer.

  The young adventurer tinued bag away from him as she clutched the satchel around her chest, holding it up between her and the mage, like an iive shield.

  “Please,” she pleaded in a trembling voice, “I’ll do what you want, just don’t turo an ice cube.”

  Reagan leaned down, bringing his face closer to hers. “Too te. You ’t leave anymore.”

  Moving one foot to the side, the man pressed a slightly higher stone on the floor, which sank with a quiet click of pieces snapping together uhe weight of his step.

  Balthazar’s eyestalks stood up. Oh, no.

  Several cogs and pulleys creaked and moved uhe cobblestone floor as the mage took a step back, while the girl stood frozen in pce, looking at him with fusion in her eyes.

  Her eyes widened, and a gasp escaped her mouth, but it was too te. The floor pte under her feet split in two, opening a hole into a deep well.

  Lisa threw her arms up as gravity pulled her down, the satchel in her grasp going flying across the room as she screamed, the echoes of it quickly fading in the distance as she disappeared into the dark depths below.

  With a quick thump, the trap closed back up and the lowered sto bato pce, everything looking like nothing had just happened.

  “That’s ohing for me to worry about ter,” said Reagan, brushing his gloved hands like someone proud of a job well done.

  “You… you just killed that girl,” the shocked crab said, still staring at the pce where the hole was a moment before.

  The adventurer cocked an ung eyebrow. “Teically, gravity did. I merely facilitated the process. Not sure why you’d care, you’re a monster creature, humans dying should mean little to you.”

  Balthazar’s eyestalks moved over to the despicable man. “I only see one monster in this room.”

  Reagan stared at the mert for a moment, a half surprised, half amused expression on his face, before suddenly bursting out ughing.

  “Oh, that is just hirious!” he said, wiping the er of his eye. “You must really be quite the unique creature, if you’re that naive. Not sure how things are in whatever hole you crawled from, but out here in this world, you don’t get to make it as a higher level adventurer by being niorally upright. You either take advantage, or you get taken advantage of. Law of the jungle, little crab.”

  A system notification surprised the crab out of nowhere.

  [Adventurer sin. Assist experience awarded.]

  [You have reached level 17!]

  The hell?! I had nothing to do with that!

  Was the system ting the use of his trait to distract the girl as something that led to her tragic fate? Was it because her atta him teically made it t as them being engaged in bat? Or was it simply the fact that he stood by doing nothing while she ushed into a trap that made the mert an accessory to the act? He did not know, but what he knew was that this was not the time to be w about systems or levels up, not with Reagan still there.

  Balthazar felt a revolting knot i of his stomach, and for once he was sure it had nothing to do with a ck of pastries, but he was also sure there was little he could do against that odious human.

  “But never mind her, her stupid friend, or even whatever worthless other loot this pce might have,” the mage said, setting his sights ba the crusta and stepping towards him. “You’re a big, talking, apparently somewhat sapient crab. I’ve never seen anything like that. You have to be quite unique. And valuable.”

  Uh-oh, this guy is looking at me like I’m a loot chest he wants to crack open.

  Turning around, Balthazar started skittering his way to the back wall where he had ehe room from, but after just a couple of steps, a wheezing sound made him instinctively duck.

  With his shell pressed against the floor, the crab looked up, just in time to spot a sharp spike of ice shooting over him and hitting the wall somewhere oher side of the room.

  The crab gnced back, and he saw Reagan was already casting again, a shard of solid iiween his hands amidst a swirling spiral of snowy air.

  Balthazar unched himself forward, taking cover behind a stone coffin as the sed ice spike zip past where he had been a moment before and hit a nearby pilr, chipping a rge k off of it and sending fragments of rock flying everywhere.

  Those are no shoddy stoip bolts. My shell definitely ’t take a hit from something like that!

  “e out, e out, little crab,” the caster’s voice said from the other side of the room as his steps slowly grew closer, apanied by the sizzle of the charged ice between his hands. “I ’t wait to find out how much I sell your parts for.”

  Trying to push aside his curiosity about how much his body parts would fet the bck market, Balthazar looked around looking for some way out of the trouble he’d gotten himself into.

  He was halfway to the end of the room where the secret passage he had e from was, but in order to get there, he’d have to risk running in front of the mage’s sights, and probably be turned into a crab popsicle. Even if he got there, the mert realized he had lost track of where exactly the door was, and there was little ce Reagan would just give him time to examihe wall until he found it again.

  No, I o get rid of him first, but how am I going to… Wait! I just got a level up a moment ago!

  A rattling sound came from between the pilrs o Balthazar, where the faint light could not quite reach, and a moment ter, a tall skeleton charged forward, running at the human with a rusty hatchet in his hand.

  “RAAAH!” yelled Jim as he broke into a mad sprint that caught the mage by surprise.

  “What the—” excimed Reagan, right before releasing his charged ice spike towards the skeleton.

  The projectile shot at its arget and Balthazar watched from behind cover with his jaw dropped as the naked skeleton lunged forward, and somehow the ice spike flew right between the empty space of his hip bone and disappeared oher side of the room.

  “No dangly bits…” muttered the awestruck crab.

  But the skeleton’s impressive stroke of luck was short-lived, as before he could strike at the adventurer with his axe, the caster had already woven a new spell, and a sudden wall of solid ice appeared between him and Jim.

  Halfway through his strike, the undead’s axe hit the ice shield, its bde being stu it. Jim pulled at it, trying to get it out, but with no success.

  Balthazar’s eyestalks jumped. What am I doing? This is my ce.

  The crab turo the dark side of the room, but immediately came to a stop again.

  I ’t just leave Jim and run away like a coward. I mean, I definitely want to, but… argh, there’s got to be something I do!

  As if a dle had just lit up above his shell, Balthazar brought up his system s.

  It’s a long shot, but it’s not like I have any other skills.

  [You have reached level 17]

  [Choose a base stat to increase by 10]

  [Health: 190/190]

  [Stamina: 30/30]

  [Mana: 10/10]

  I doubt 10 more health will save me from those ice spikes, but more mana should let me use my new skill.

  [Mana: 20/20]

  he ter of the room, Jim tirying to pull his on from the ice wall, while a sound of howling wind grew louder from the other side.

  [You have 3 u attribute points]

  [Attributes:]

  [Strength: 5]

  [Endurance: 5]

  [Agility: 5]

  [Perception: 5]

  [Intellect: 5]

  [Charisma: 60]

  Argh, this feels like such a waste, but what other choice do I have right now?

  [Intellect: 8]

  Whatever Reagan was casting oher side of his wall of ice was clearly something big, as the wild gale ravaging from behind the frost grew deafeningly loud.

  e on, e on!

  As fast as his eyes allowed, Balthazar navigated through the system’s ss, trying to reach his list of avaible skills, which listed only one.

  [Imbuing]

  [Skill - F tier]

  [Requirements: 10 CHA, 8 INT]

  [Cost: 15 mana]

  [Absorbs a patible held material, temporarily infusing its properties into your body to gain different bonuses depending oype, quality, rarity, and amount of material used.]

  “This better work. I hate wasting money!”

  Reag into his Bag of Holding Mohe crab pulled a single golden .

  Carefully holding it between his pincers, the mert tried to activate the Imbuing skill as the sound of crag ice came from behind his shelter.

  [Insuffit material amount]

  “Oh e on!” excimed the frustrated crab.

  Grumbling, he reached into his purse again, pulling a few more s and holding them all between his pincers with a sense ency.

  [ only imbue oem at a time]

  “You have got to be kidding me!” Balthazar blurted out.

  As if aligned with his outburst, the wall of ice separating Reagan from Jim shattered loudly, making the skeleton stumble back as the hatchet he was trying to retrieve went flying across the room.

  A miniature blizzard erupted from the ancer’s hands now, a e of pure hail and freezing winds aimed at the naked skeleton as he tried to weather the storm and reach the caster.

  Balthazar peeked from behind one of the stoombs, his eyes teary from the frosty gale reag him, watg as Jim’s bones quickly grew icicles all around them, and his march slowed down with each struggling step.

  In just a few moments, his entire skeleton had bee pletely frozen in pce, surrounded by a crystallized block of ice, like a bizarre sculpture of macabre taste.

  Crap, not again!

  Ceasing his casting, Reagan flexed his gloved fingers as he casually walked around his test victim.

  “Now where did my prize go?” the smug mage asked loudly in a mog tone.

  The crab shoved both cws into his backpack, searg for something, anything that he thought could work with the only skill he had to use.

  No, no, that’s useless. So is that. And that. Why do I only deal in junk?!

  Reagan’s steps grew closer, and Balthazar knew he would be found any sed now.

  Curses! Why didn’t I bring an ingot of gold or even iron with me? Sure, they’re heavy, and not like I would expeeoo buy them on the road, but damn it, I could use ht now! Bsted hindsight!

  Pulling his pincers out of the pack, the mert did a double take to the other side of the pilrs with his eyestalks. There, across the room, behind aone coffin, right on the edge of where the light reached, rested a dropped brown bag.

  The satchel the girl was carrying!

  Seeing the shadow of the mage appearing over his hiding spot, the ered crab decided there was no time for decisions.

  Skittering as fast as he could from behind oomb to the other, the crusta unched himself at the satchel, grabbing it between his cws as he nded.

  “There you are!” yelled Reagan.

  Please tell me there’s something I use in here!

  Balthazar dared not turn his eyestalks, but he could hear the sound of another ice spell f in the ancer’s hands as his cws desperately reached down into the satchel, grasping for anything that the system would accept.

  Until his pincers finally gripped something.

  “You’re mine now, little crab!”

  [Imbuing activated: Voidwood absorbed]