“Rye? you hear me?” Balthazar asked quietly.

  After a few seds that felt like ages, the archer blinked as he wobbled on his knees. Pg his fa his hand with a grunt, Rye slowly looked up and around the room, eyes clear from the fog that covered them a moment before.

  “What… what happened?” he said with a bored breath.

  “Are you alright?” asked the ed mert, approag the young man and toug his arm.

  Rye recoiled instinctively at the crab’s touch, turning to him with a momentary frown, as if he hadn’t reized his traveling part first.

  “What have you doo my friend?” Balthazar excimed, gring at Ruby.

  “We merely pulled the veil of fog draped over his eyes,” the entress dispassionately said while stepping closer to the boy. “How do you feel? Do you remember now what has been taken away from you?”

  “I… how did I get here? What am I doing here?” Rye said, stariily at the floor. “I remember the beach, but… but what about before? I was doing something… what was it? I know it was important. I know there was someone important.” His breathing shaky, the adventurer looked up at the woman in red. “It’s right there. They are right there in front of me, I almost touch them if I reach out, but I ’t see them clearly. Why ’t I remember their faces?!”

  Ruby leaned forward and pced a hand on his shoulder. “Breathe. I know it’s a lot to take in at o will take time for you to adapt, but your eyes have been opened now.”

  “What’s going on, kid? e on, talk to me,” the ear crab asked.

  Rye looked at Balthazar, a mix of hurt and fusion in his eyes.

  “I know something’s missing. I couldn’t before, but now I see the empty spots.” He paused, clutg his head again. “I o think. I need some fresh air. Please.”

  “Of course,” said Ruby, standing up and looking towards the door. “Jasper, please take our friend outside.”

  The tall adventurer nodded quietly and helped Rye stand up before opening the door and leaving with him.

  “What the hell was all that?!” asked the crab.

  “That, dear Balthazar,” said the entress as she sat back down, “was your friend being rid of the haze that kept him from questioning his existen this world.”

  “So you unlocked his old memories?”

  “No. Unfortunately, that is something we ot easily do. The tea he had tained a very specifid difficult mix of ingredients that peel back the yer of occlusion the system pces on every adventurer in order to make them not remember what they fot.”

  Balthazar pondered for a sed. “So he still doesn’t remember where he came from or who he was, just that those memories are missing?”

  “Correct.”

  “That sounds… tortuous.”

  “Indeed, it be, but it is better than to live blissfully in ignorahe truth is always better.”

  “Maybe, but isn’t that just your opinion?” the crab retorted.

  The scarlet eered at Balthazar through her red-tinted gsses, the glow of the ntern hanging above them refleg like golden fmes off the round lenses.

  “You tell me how you obtain an informed opinion from someone who ot freely think about what they are choosing?”

  The crab held quiet for a moment.

  “Did all of you guys gh the same? You’re aware of your old lives, you just ’t fully recall them?”

  Ruby sighed. “Correct again. It is one of our main driving forces to what we do. To find out who did this to us, and why.”

  “So you all had to gh that tea business?”

  “Most of us,” the woman expined. “Early on, our movement was started by a few strong-willed adventurers who mao break down the dams holding the memories from flowing in. Whether through sheer willpower, or simply a mind too stubborn to suppress, the mind haze did not fully work ohe powers that be have since made sure that no sudividuals are brought into this world anymore, but by then it was too te. The few that existed had already spread, explored, and recruited others. In time, they found ways to break the hazing, even if only partially, and here we are today, following in their footsteps.”

  “And serving straeas to make more of you,” said the pensive crab. “Hey, wait a minute! Did you put something funky in these pies you served me, too?!”

  The entress leaned ba her chair. “Don’t worry, other than an uhy amount of sugar, there is nothing nefarious in them.”

  “Oh good, that’s a relief,” Balthazar said, between mouthfuls of strawberry pie. “So, this is all very iing, but I keep ing up with the same question: what does all this system and adventurer spiraonsense have to do with me? I’m just a crab trying to earn a living and spend that liviing pastries.”

  Once again, Ruby leaned forward on her seat, gring at the gluttonous crab with an intense look in her eyes.

  “Except you are not, Balthazar. You are different. A stig point in an otherwise smooth surface. An anomaly.”

  “Gee, thanks,” the chewing crusta said in a sarcastie. “You really o work on your fttery.”

  “You have, whether through fate or random ce, stumbled upon something no local was meant to access, especially not a crab in an insequential er of the world. That makes you unique, a potential one in a million shot for us. It means you are—”

  “I swear, dy, if you call me ‘special’, I’ll flip this table right here,” said Balthazar, after finishing the st piece of pie on said table. “Your pliments really need some work. And I don’t know what you think you need me for, but I don’t know much of anything about the world, the system, or any of that stuff. I’m probably more clueless about it than you are. Remember, I came here looking for answers, not looking to provide them!”

  Ruby closed her eyes and exhaled like someone whose patience was beied.

  “You don’t seem to get it. No local was meant to be able to use a Scroll of Character Creation. Somehow, you did. You are from this world, with a system that was meant only for people not from this world. The scroll you used was old. A, even. From way back when our founding members arrived here, maybe even older than that. It’s from a time when the system was still new, unstable, and much more exploitable. That is what makes your uuation so… promising.”

  The crab shrugged. “Well, that’s too bad for you, then, because the crow took my old scroll.”

  Balthazar sidered mentioning the bird had also taken away his system access, but stopped himself, deg he didn’t o tell his cryptiversation partner everything until she did as well. As much as he ealking, even he khat sometimes there was merit to keeping one’s mouth shut and listening instead.

  The woman’s eyes widened. “You met one of the crows?”

  “Yep. Showed up at my pce, took my scroll, and then just flew away. A real jerk.”

  “That means you really must have stirred some trouble up the of and, if a crow came to you directly,” Ruby said. “No matter, the scroll is not as important as you are now. Something about you disturbs the system, and I have only ever heard of oher instance of someone like that before.”

  The crab’s eyestalks perked up with i. “Someone like me?”

  “Yes, indeed,” replied the entress. “And I believe you have met him already.”

  “What?! When? Don’t tell me it was that giant that showed up at my pd drank a whole barrel of beer?”

  “No,” Ruby said dismissively. “Remember that ruinous deal you made folden statuette?”

  “Ugh, don’t remind me of that,” Balthazar said. “Wait, so you mean that strange guy all dressed in bd covered in bandages was…”

  “Quite possibly. There were tales, even before my time, about one individual with a system access from the first age. Nobody knew his name anymore, or where he came from, only that wherever he went, strahings followed. I believe you experiehat yourself.”

  The crab stared pensively at the empty ptes oable. “The red dragon…”

  “Precisely,” said the adventurer. “Dragons were just a mythical tale from ages past, not seen in geions, and then a stranger shows up at your pce, makes up a tale about one, and suddenly a dragon appears? This is the kind of unintended and uable effects the ones in charge of this world do not want anyone having.”

  Balthazar shook his head. “And you think that’s me? I ’t pull dragons out of my shell!”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But what about giant spiders where they did before? Or a pack of wolves that shouldn’t have been there? Have you old a tale so real even you believed it?”

  “I…”

  The mert paused. He khat what Ruby was telling him had some truth to it, he had noticed those stras before, but yet he always dismissed them. The crab wanted and pies, not to deal with world plots a spiracies.

  He also wanted his friends back…

  “Hey, wait a minute,” he suddenly said. “How do you know all that about me?! The strahings that happened before, the deal with that stranger. How could you possibly know that?”

  The entress reed on her chair once again, with a sly smile on her lips.

  “I told you, we like to keep the subjects of our watg at a distao not disturb their natural behavior. We may be called ‘birdwatchers’, but we observe a lot more than just birds.”

  Balthazar’s eyestalks frowned. “That’s not really an answer.”

  Ruby nodded. “Indeed. In our line of business, secrecy is a must. The birds you shtfully suspected all your life are always watg too, and they do not take kindly to our meddling. The only way we stay safe is by hiding our movements in the shadows, in pces like this, where nobody would think of even looking anymore. To be invisible in pin sight.”

  “What for?” asked the crab. “What’s the point of all this?”

  He could see a fiery determination sparking in the woman’s eyes behiinted gsses as she looked straight into his eyes.

  “Someone—or something—brought us to this world, out of our own will, took away our memories, and has us running around in circles gaining levels, for some reason nobody knows. Why? By what right? What about locals like you, or your baker friend, or all the others? What unwitting role do you py in this scheme? We want to uhe truth, a back what was taken from us.”

  The mert paused for a while, refleg on all the woman said.

  “I get it,” he said, “but that sounds like too much world-sized trouble I don’t want to deal with. I just want to go bay little pond, to my little bazaar, with my friends, and enjoy my pead quiet. That’s all.”

  Ruby stood up.

  “Perhaps, but you be certain that your little er of the world will always remain ued by the sequences of what you choose to ignore?”

  Balthazar sighed. “I don’t know, but right now all I want is to help my friends. The rest of the world wait behind them.”

  The entress exhaled in a way that the crab wasn’t sure if it had been a scoff or an amused chuckle.

  “There is still a way we may share mutual is,” she said. “I believe you seek a way t your stone guardian back to life, do you not?”

  The crab’s eyestalks stood up. “Bouldy? Yes, I do. You know something about that?”

  The scarlet woman walked around the table and towards a door at the end of the room.

  “e with me. I’d like to show you something.”