[Warning: you are being digested.]

  You don’t say, system?!

  Balthazar tried pulling at his leg again, but it was still firmly stu pce by the thick, binding slime.

  As he looked down again, the crab paid closer attention to the advang ooze.

  Aared.

  For a while.

  “Uh…” said the crab awkwardly, gng up at Montgomery. “Does this usually take so long?”

  The giant golden slime stared down at him, its appeill moving up Balthazar’s leg at a snail’s pace.

  “Er… yes,” said the embarrassed creature. “It take a while. It’s a very thid viscous substance, if I do it any faster I’ll get iion.” It suddenly switched back to its deep and menag voice. “But once I fully absorb you, your entire body shall be mine, ha ha ha!”

  Balthazar rolled his eyes.

  Oher side of the gate, the crab could still hear the skeleton smming on the doors and calling for him.

  “It’s alright, Tom,” shouted the crab. “This thing is a very slow eater. I think you got a couple of hours to get that open, easy.”

  The hungry slime rumbled again, its voice thundering from above.

  “You mock me, crab? You will not find it so funny once Montgomery, the Great Destroyer is sug the flesh out of your shell! Just a little longer and I shall have my first taste of your—”

  The crab felt a tiny tiween the joints of his leg’s chitin as the ooze seeped into it.

  “BLAAARGH!” excimed the monster, its form twisting and shaking as it recoiled back, spitting and coughing loudly out of a newly formed mouth hole at the ter of its body. “You taste terrible!”

  Balthazar shrugged as he watched the slimy appendage recede from his leg, shrinking bato Montgomery’s body.

  “I could have told you that, if you had just asked.”

  “How a freshwater crab taste so… salty?!” said the creature, stig a tongue of slime out of its mouth in an uny expression of disgust.

  “Perks of dealing with adventurers all day for a while, I suppose,” the mert said with another casual shrug. “And what are you pining about anyway? You eat pieetal!”

  Montgomery shrunk back slightly.

  “I know, and I hate it!” it cried out in a wimpy voice.

  “Wait, what?!”

  “These s and all the other crap the skeletons bring me all taste awful,” said the slime. It had no shoulders—or really any other defining body part—a just looked like it was slumping them as it spoke.

  Balthazar scratched the top of his shell with the tip of his pincer, oalk cocked in fusion.

  “Then why the hell do you eat the stuff?”

  “Because there’s nothing else here, and I was starving when I found this pce! Besides, some of the stuff they feed me is giving me all sorts of new bonuses I never dreamed of when I was just a on slime crawling around the gutters. I even became smart enough to give myself a name!”

  The crab pihe space between his eyestalks gently. “Right, and look at what you picked. So anyway, you don’t actually like all those gold s swimming around in yut? Does that mean I could perhaps have—”

  “No!” shouted the mad slime, its suddenly deeper voice eg from every er of the chamber, making its own body tremble like jelly. “You will not take away my sustenance, crab! Slowly or not, I will dissolve you if you try to steal from me.”

  Balthazar gred at the giant monstrosity with a hint of annoyance. A tough foe, certainly, but the crab would not give up so easily, not when so many shiny gold s were on the line.

  “Who said anything about stealing?” asked the mert with faked e. “I am no thief, I’ll have you know. I’m a reputable mert and well-known throughout the nd. But, before I was all that, I too was little more than an insequential creature in some fotten er of the world. That was, until the day I discovered shiny golden s like you, and even more importantly, until I discovered something else. The ultimate delicacy.”

  The quick bubbling going on inside Montgomery seemed to slow down at the st part of what Balthazar said, and the slime’s supposed eyes drifted downward in its body, closer to where the crab stood.

  “Delicacy?” asked the creature with cautious curiosity.

  “Yes, my friend,” said the crusta, his eyes staring longingly and his tone being ear. “A sweet girl came down to my home, bringing me something I had asted before, and it ged my life forever. It was like a piece of heaven in my mouth, its taste was like a dream traveling through my body, and the feeling it left afterward was like the most fortable nap I could imagine during a rainy afternoon.”

  “What… what was it?” Montgomery asked, almost in a plea.

  “It’s called pie,” answered the smiling crab. “And that was just the start. After the oven’s door ened in my life, I’ve discovered and tasted tless other delicious baked goods, and with eae I look forward to tasting the even mold s are great as shiny trio colled admire with my eyes, but pastries, dear Montgomery, those are to be enjoyed by the whole body, and are what makes me get up in the m every day.”

  “Pastries…” the slime repeated slowly. “I ried that. They sound like they would be… good.”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t believe it until you tried them. No words from me could ever pare to feeling the real thing. A piece of baked goodness in your mouth will make everythi away for one joyous moment.” Balthazar’s eyes perked up. “In fact, just retly I fou another baked good I wasn’t even aware of, and it turns out to be delicious too! It’s called bread.”

  Montgomery’s slimy body waved and twisted with i. “Bread? What’s that?”

  “It’s this loaf of baked dough that…” He paused and pulled his Backpack of Holding forward. “In fact, hold on, I should still have some of it around here somewhere…”

  With one swift pull, Balthazar brought out the bread in his cw. Or rather, what remained of it: a small piece of the leftover loaf, full of pincer marks on its now rock-hard crust, along with strange spots all over it that the crab suspected might be mold.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t store this stuff in there, now that I think about it,” muttered the mert. “I promise it was even more impressive when I purchased it!”

  Montgomery’s eye-bubble-things were like glistening pearls staring at the old piece of bread.

  “It looks so… wonderful,” it said in a strangely high-pitch voice. “Oh, and the aroma, it’s just perfect!”

  Balthazar winced and recoiled as he took a quiiff at the loaf in his pincer.

  “May I… taste it?” the slime asked, sheepishly stretg tendages out to the crab.

  “You… you want to taste it?” said the mert in disbelief, before quickly shaking his shell and regaining his posure. “I mean, of course you do! How could you not. Just look at this beauty, with its crispy crust and… green speckled crumb.”

  “Yes… yes…” Montgomery said, ara amount of moistness running down its already slimy surface.

  “Well, we o iate, then,” said Balthazar, suddenly pulling the loaf away from the creature’s grasp, causing it to let out a sad whimper. “This bread e a lot, so it’s only fair that you trade me something for it.”

  The slime’s voice deepened slightly once again. “Fine, ing crab. What do you want?”

  “Well, the obvious thing would be for you to pay me with some gold s, like the ones you have floating around in there.” He gestured towards the creature’s stomach area, which also seemed to be its face. “Although I also would sider an offer for some of those chests and boxes you’ve pocketed there.”

  Montgomery’s entire mass shook disapprovingly.

  “What if I end up trading my entire sustenance for something worthless? No, I am not one of your dimwitted ts, crusta. I know when I’m being offered a bad deal and—”

  Balthazar’s eyes squinted as a wry smile formed on his face.

  Sometimes you have to spend bread to make some bread.

  “What if I let you have a taste first, as a show of good faith in our transa?” said the sly crab.

  “I will not—Wait, really?!” excimed the giant slime with a sudden jiggle. “Will you let me try it?”

  “Sure, why not? I tell a good t when I see one.”

  With a swift snip of his pincer, Balthazar broke off a piece of the loaf and tossed it towards the creature, who quickly opened up a way rger than necessary hole in its body to receive the bread.

  The golden slime vibrated from top to bottom, apanied by a long and pleased humming that made the surrounding pilrs vibrate along, as well as tickle every bristle in Balthazar’s body.

  With wavy ripples unduting across its body, the small pieoldy bread disappeared into the being’s body, quickly dissolving into tiny bubbles that faded away into more ooze as Montgomery smacked whatever passed for lips in its anatomy, before addressing the crab again, with a much softer and almost tearful tone.

  “This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted! The texture! The subtle fungal uohe pu aftertaste! I ot believe I’ve gone my whole life without knowing the feeling of eating bread.”

  “Ah, I knew you’d like it! ever g with baked goodies. I take it that you want the rest of it now?”

  “Please,” excimed Montgomery in a deep and low tone, “I must have it all, every piece you have. Let me absorb it!”

  “Well then, in that case, what will you trade me for—”

  [Gift of the Crab: success]

  “Here, have it all!” said the slime, quickly vulsing itself until the piles of gold s and a few small chests spilled out of its body. “I have no wish to ever taste such garbage again after what I just experienced. Bleh!”

  Balthazar smiled with a glint to his eyes, seeing the loot pile spilled in front of him, despite its slimy state.

  Hah! I guess if just Charisma isn’t enough, adding a little bit of baking will do the trick.

  Without even taking his eyes off the prize, the crab tossed the remaining piece of old bread into Montgomery’s weling maw, who received it with a loud moan of satisfa.

  Despite the piles of shiny s spilled in front of him, Balthazar’s eyes were attracted to something else among Montgomery’s regurgitated loot. A small woode, toppled between some sticky s and covered in goo, with its lid half open, revealing a small piece of rolled part stig out of it.

  The crab reached for the chest, opening the lid arag a rolled up scroll from it, surprisingly and untouched by the slime’s ooze.

  Could this be…

  Balthazar opehe piece of part, and an intense glow filled his vision as words flew out of the page, directly into his eyes.

  [Scroll of Potential]

  [Revealing skill…]