Every detail of the greatarrow, from its glinting, razor-sharp tip to the intricate fletg, hi a strength and craftsmanship far beyond ordinary.

  Balthazar knew rare and expensive when he saw it, and that was definitely both.

  He stood back up along with Druma and they looked up at the tunnel’s exit.

  Standing against the bright light of the outside was the figure of a man, his hunting shawl fluttering in the breeze as he slung a greatbow over his shoulder.

  “Rye?” the crab said relutly, squinting his eyes against the blinding sunlight.

  “e o out of there!” the young adventurer said, waving for them to follow.

  Bouldy’s massive stone hand grabbed the bottom of the gate before it fell back down and he ducked u, joining the group oher side.

  “Friend?” the golem said as he let go of the thick gate, which smmed shut with a ground-shaking thud.

  The crab and his party quickly made their the steep stoh leading to the exit, leaving the fe and its guardians behind. As Balthazar reached the outside, the bitter wi particurly cold after ing from the heat of the smelter’s chamber, but he did not mind, he was just gd to be out of there. Crabs were creatures of the outside anyway. Where the air was fresh, the sunlight was bright, and the rocks did not hold ons and tried to kill him.

  After adapting to the brightness of the exterior, the crab looked closer at Rye.

  He was the same young man Balthazar had known sihe first day he passed by the pond and the mert vinced him to find a baker in the nearby town.

  Yet, something about him felt different.

  The light facial hair on the boy’s face had increased slightly, that was for sure. But Balthazar k wasn’t just that. His expression, his gaze, the way he carried himself, it all felt… heavier.

  It had only been a few weeks sihey went their separate ways iown of dor, after the Birdwatchers gave him the strange co that removed the mind fog every adventurer seemed to be under.

  And still it felt as if the years weighed heavily on the archer after just those few weeks.

  [Archer - Level 27]

  He sure isn’t the same young level 12 I met wandering down that road anymore…

  “Are you guys alright?” Rye asked, his voice raspier and less like his usual jovial self.

  “Yes,” Balthazar said, looking at Druma for a moment to double-check whether four was the right amount of limbs for his assistant to have. “I think so.”

  “Thank you for saving Druma!” the goblin excimed to the adventurer.

  Rye gave the little green guy a nod and a wistful smile.

  “I see you mao repair our friend,” he said, looking up at the golem. “Looking good, big guy.”

  “Friend,” the living stone said, smiling at the archer.

  “And of course, it’s o see you again too, Blue,” the human added, looking at the drake behind the others.

  She simply nodded ba aowledgement.

  “How did you find us, anyway?” asked the crusta.

  “That’s… a long story,” Rye said. “We should get ba the road. I’ll tell you on the way.”

  The adveurned and started walking, leading the way back to the beaten path through the mountain’s valley.

  “I guess you know where to go?” Balthazar asked, catg up to the archer’s side.

  Rye just nodded, his gaze still looking forward.

  “I wasn’t sure we’d ever see you again, to be ho,” the crab tinued.

  “Yeah, me her…”

  Balthazar looked around awkwardly for a moment as they kept walking. The weather sure felt… chilly.

  “So… what have you been up to?” the unfortable crusta asked.

  Rye sighed.

  “I did a lot of… wandering.”

  “Ah, . Seeing sights is nice. Any luck… you know…” Balthazar tapped oop of his shell. “Getting the ol’ thinkin’ box sorted?”

  “Kinda.”

  The crab nodded. “Hmm, so did you remember anything about where you came from?”

  “Not quite,” the adventurer said. “Whatever that stuff I drank did, it only removed the unawareness of what is missing in my mind. I know there are things missing in my past, I just ’t quite reach them. I know I had a life, a family, friends… elsewhere. But no matter how hard I try, I ’t remember their faces, their names, who they were. They’re just silhouettes in a foggy background that I ’t see clearly. It’s… very frustrating. In a way I’m not sure if making me aware of it all wasn’t worse than remaining blissfully ignorant.”

  “Oh, that reminds me,” Balthazar said. “That woman, Ruby, and her group? Not the most trustworthy lot, as it turns out.”

  The mert briefly expihe frontation that took p the wizard’s cave to the young man as they tinued making their way down the road.

  “Huh…” Rye said after the crab was done. “I guess we should have figured that people who spike someoea arely the kind you should trust.”

  “Yeah…” Balthazar said, averting his gaze. “That one’s on me. You didn’t even want to go in there. I’m… sorry for what happened.”

  The archer sighed again.

  “It’s alright. I don’t bme you. It’s not really your fault. Not really theirs either. I just… didn’t really know what to do with what I found out.”

  The crab gnced back up at the human.

  “And now you do?”

  “irely, but enough to know what truly matters.”

  “And… what’s that?” Balthazar asked hesitantly, w about the answer.

  “Whatever happened, wherever I came from… It’s all in the past. A whole other life that is long gone. I could dwell on it forever, driving myself mad trying to grasp at what’s been lost, but that doesn’t sound like a good way to live.”

  “Heh, yes,” said the mert. “I would imagihat would drive any adventurer insane.”

  The blond human nodded as he walked, his gaze lost over the horizon.

  “While I was wandering around, trying to figure things out, I realized how much I ehis world before, and that if I looked past the fusion, that fact hadn’t ged. I’ve been so lucky to do what I love, to have made friends, to be happy. None of that ged just because I became aware of having had a previous life. I ’t ge the past, but I make the most of the present.”

  Balthazar chuckled. “I think I know a wizard who’d like you a lot.”

  They tio walk in silence for a few more moments, until the crab spoke again.

  “So, what did you decide to do?”

  “Focus on what truly matters. What I do something about here and now. I won’t chase echoes of a past I ’t go back to while I let the present fall apart. Like I said, I’m very lucky for what and who I’ve got in this world. I’m not about to let them down.”

  Balthazar looked up at the young man, whose ponytail swayed gently as he walked.

  “And that means…”

  “That means finding and resg Madeleine. She’s somewhere out there, captive to a dragon, because she stood up to save us. I’m not going to sit around feeling sorry for myself knowing that.”

  “That’s my boy!” the crab excimed, pumping his pincer up.

  “Which brings me to what I said I’d expin,” said Rye. “I know where the red dragon’s ir is.”

  The mert came to a sudden stop, staring at the archer in disbelief.

  “You do?! How?”

  “Strange enter I had,” the advearted. “I was wandering aimlessly through some road in the middle of nowhere, trying to make sense of everything, when I came upon this man. Mysterious-looking fellow. I was suspicious of him at first, but he was friendly enough. He shared his campfire with me, aalked for a while.”

  The group reached a small wooden bridge over a river, separating the valley from the open pins ahead.

  As they crossed it, Rye tinued his expnation.

  “Anyway, ohio another, and I ended up mentioning the dragon. To my surprise, the guy said he had seen it. I didn’t believe him at first, but then he described it perfectly. Large as a house, crimson red, ahis… he saw it flying into a mountain with what seemed to be a girl in his cws.”

  “Madeleine!” excimed the crab.

  “Exactly. So I had him point me on the map where this mountain was. I told him I was going after it and why. That’s when he said he wanted me to have this.”

  The archer pulled the greatbow off his bad held it for the mert to see. It stretched almost as tall as the human from oo the other, its limbs made of a dark wood Balthazar had never seen before.

  The golden monocle dispyed a name above it.

  [Dragonsyer Greatbow]

  “You’re telling me you met a guy who just happeo know where the dragon’s ir was, and then he gives you a special bow for free?!”

  Rye shrugged.

  “I felt it was straoo. He cimed it was an old family heirloom, but that his glory days were gone now and that after hearing what my iions were, he felt I was the right oo pass it down to. He called it destiny.”

  The crab rolled his eyestalks. “Freaking quest givers, I swear…”

  “Unfortunately, this thing only shoot very specific greatarrows, and he only had three left to give me.” The archer pointed back to his quiver, two huge fletgs stig out of it. “And I just used one of them back there.”

  “Yeah…” said Balthazar, looking at the dirt path thoughtfully. “Wait, that’s right. How did you know where to e to find us?”

  “Well, you’re not going to believe this,” Rye started, “but when the guy was expining ath I should take to get to the dragon’s mountain, he just casually mentions going through the valley where ‘that old golem fe’ is.”

  “What?!”

  “I knht? Biggest stroke of good luck ever! I khat had to be the pce you were looking for to repair Bouldy’s core. So when I got here I had to check it out. The front gate was sealed shut, so I went scouting the area for alterrahat’s when I found that back tunnel and, well… there you guys were.”

  “Woah,” the crab said. “What a series of almost unbelievable circumstahat came from just bumping into some random local on the road! In no way suspicious at all!”

  The archer nodded in agreement. “Tell me about it. Just lucky, I guess. I would have never expected to just find you here, and with Bouldy already restored, too.”

  “Oh, that reminds me!” Balthazar said, reag back to his pack. “I have to introduce you to someone.”

  The crab carefully retrieved the tiny pebble in his side pocket with the tip of his pincer and prese to the young man.

  “Uh… You’ve got a pet roow?” Rye said, one eyebrow cocked at the stohat’s —Woah! What?!”

  The small k of stourned in Balthazar’s pincer and smiled at the adventurer. “Creee!”

  “Who is that?!” he asked in amazement, leaning to look closer.

  “Her name is Pebbles,” the crab proudly said.

  “She’s awesome! Where did you find her?”

  “I didn’t. She was born from Bouldy after he was grinding against an rod a pebble broke off his body.”

  Rye stared at the crab for a moment, unblinking, and then he ughed for the first time sihey had reunited.

  “Alright, I’m not even going to address horopriate what you just said sounds.”

  Balthazar started ughing too.

  “You think that’s weird? Wait until I tell you about the mangoes!”

  As the day went, the crab and his friends tinued down the road, chatting and ughing along as they shared tales of their adventures until the sun began to set.

  ***

  Nighttime came early, the days growing shorter with the ing of winter, and the crab’s group settled down uhe opy of a giant tree. After some more chatting and sharing of stories around the campfire, everyone was ready for an early night.

  Druma slept snuggled against the warmth of Blue’s body, as had bee their habit during the past couple of months on the road. Bouldy, still needing no sleep, remained some distance away, watg the road with Pebbles on his shoulder for pany. Even Rye had goo sleep already, curled up against his pad quiver, and using his shawl as a b.

  Only Balthazar remained awake by the sm remnants of the campfire, thinking.

  It had been a long aful day. Then again, so had most others before that.

  He reflected on the wild turns his once quiet life had taken. First when he became a mert at his pond, and then ter, when he finally stepped out of his territory to travel the ti.

  The crab had seen a lot and learned almost as much. As it turned out, traveling wasn’t so bad after all.

  But now that he had pleted one of his main reasons to go out into the world—repairing his golem friend—and found himself so close to finally reag the other—resg Madeleine—he realized how much his heart longed for his home.

  He wondered how his beloved pond was looking now that the cold season was ing. Was there any white on the leaves in the m? Did the waters start to gain a thin yer of ice over them yet?

  What about his precious bazaar? John would surely have fully repaired it by now. Probably even worked some improvements in. The mert mented not being there to oversee it all.

  Surely Tristan and Hea were taking good care of it in his absence, however. Balthazar wondered how those two were as well.

  What of his other friends and acquaintances? Had they still been visiting and doing business while he wasn’t there? The mert hoped they were.

  He found himself even missing Khargol’s stern scowl of all things.

  The outside world turned out to not be so bad after all, but the crab felt it might be time to go bae soon.

  Hopefully with his baker by his side.

  I should take care of this befoing to sleep… Balthazar thought, pulling up his system and the two level-up prompts he had gotten that day.

  Hmm, I guess having a higher-level golem in my party dispatg her-level oppos by the dozen makes for a lot of juicy experience.

  The mert thought back to his visit to Tom’s dungeon, and the pair of young adventurers apanied by the high-level mage who promised to carry them through some easy level-ups, just to betray them ahem to their demise.

  Balthazar shook his shell idly and carried on distributing his points.

  Feeling validated on his previous choice of iing most points into health after his ret enter with the ste keeper of the Golem Fe, the crab increased that by a further 20 points.

  After that, looking at his list of attributes without knowing what else he could possibly need, he simply fell back to the old reliable—Charisma.

  “he crab whispered to himself after spending the first set of three points.

  With no reason to ge what had so far been a winning strategy, he applied the other three into the same stat as well, bringing it up to an impressive 72.

  [Name: Balthazar]

  [Race: Crab]

  [Level: 25]

  [Css: Expert Mert]

  [Health: 260/260]

  [Stamina: 30/30]

  [Mana: 30/30]

  [Attributes:]

  [Strength: 5]

  [Endurance: 5]

  [Agility: 5]

  [Perception: 5]

  [Intellect: 20]

  [Charisma: 72]

  Well, time to tu!

  Lying down against his backpack, the mert reached io retrieve something.

  “Ah, my pretty,” he whispered, setting the bar of pure gold he had acquired in the fe dowo him and giving it a couple of pats with his cw. “I may not have any of the forts of hht now, but at least I still got what truly matters—beautiful gold.”

  Gazing upon its shiy for fort, the crab smiled as his eyestalks grew heavier.

  Nothing made him fall asleep as peacefully as the sight of gold in front of his eyes.

  And asleep he fell, smiling and tent, lulled by thoughts of gold and memories of pastries.

  At least until m came and his eyestalks rose again, only to find ay spaext to him, where the gold ingot should have been.