Merchant Crab-Chapter 192: Forging Friends

Reaching into his backpack, Balthazar carefully retrieved the broken golem core. With steady steps, the crab walked toward the smithing area of the forge, ready to lay the cracked orb onto the burning coals.

“Argh!” exclaimed the merchant, feeling the blazing heat radiating from the forge seep into the cracks on his shell, the searing pain nearly making him drop the core.

Stepping back, Balthazar placed the orb down with trembling pincers. The heat was too strong, and his injured state only made it harder to bear.

“Boss want Druma to help?” the goblin shouted from the back.

“No, stay back there, Druma,” the crab quickly replied, worrying his skin-having assistant would get himself severely burned in his eagerness to be helpful.

Blue would certainly be more comfortable around high temperatures, but her wings and talons weren’t exactly made for finesse.

“Seriously? Out of all the ridiculous junk I have here, I can’t find a single health potion?!” Balthazar grumbled as he dug through the contents of his backpack.

He needed some way to make it closer to the fire, in order to place the core into the forge so that it could fuse back together. Unfortunately, other than way too many bottles of supposed “Potions of Hydration” and some other unhelpful concoctions, the merchant couldn’t seem to find anything that would work.

“If only I had some potions of fire resistance…”

For a moment, he recalled a certain bandit chugging down a bottle of an orange liquid seconds before exploding into a ball of flames, and a shiver ran down his shell.

“No potions for me.”

As Balthazar was pulling his claws out of the backpack, he noticed the two metal ingots he currently owned, one silver and the other gold.

The golden one the merchant already knew would be of no help there, but he found himself wondering if the silver bar he brought from Marquessa would do anything useful.

Just as he looked at the chunk of metal and touched it wondering what kind of imbuing he could get from that, his Monocle of Exposition displayed a description in front of his eye.

[Imbuing - Silver Ingot]

[Duration: 15 minutes]

[Effect: 50% resistance to all elemental effects]

Huh. Fire is an element, right?

With time and heat working against him, Balthazar gripped the silver ingot and activated his Imbuing skill.

The metal disappeared from his grasp and a cold feeling washed over his body as a shiny coating of metal appeared around his shell.

“Boss is silver!” Druma exclaimed from the back.

“Yes I am!” the argent crab said with confidence.

The imbuing had covered up the fissures on his shell, easing his aching and also shielding him from the intense heat of the forge ahead.

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While still intense, the temperature was now bearable enough to proceed, and so the determined crustacean picked the core back up into his claws and walked to the blaze. 𝘙áNΟᛒЕʂ

With a strained wince, the sterling merchant gently dropped the cracked heart of his friend into the fiery coals.

“What next?” he asked himself, checking the open book again. “Damn, that’s right. Going to need something to bind it back together.”

Balthazar looked through the bits and pieces of ore and other metals left around the dusty workshop. Nothing was quite right. Either there was too little of something or it was too low quality to suit the heart of his best friend.

“Oh, what’s this?” the crab said, pushing aside a pile of old scrolls to reveal a large chunk of a metallic blue rock sitting underneath, strangely clean and free of dust.

[Cobalt Ore]

[A rare and nearly indestructible metal. Usually too difficult to create weapons or armor with, it is a favorite among artificers due to its incredible magical properties. And because it’s pretty to look at!]

“That sounds perfect for my golem!”

Holding the ore in his pincers, Balthazar skittered back to the fire, where he dropped the chunk of rough blue rock on top of the core.

He watched for a moment, realizing he had little idea of what he was doing.

“Damn it, why isn’t it melting?” he impatiently said, checking the timer on the Golemancer’s Mark in the corner of his eye.

He was a merchant, not a smith. As much as he liked shiny metals, he had little idea of what went into forging ingots like the golden one he had just acquired from the storage room a few minutes before.

It reminded him of pastries—as most things did. He very much enjoyed consuming them, but he had no talent for making any himself.

With his thoughts going back to Madeleine and how much he missed her, Balthazar found himself reminiscing over the times the two of them sat by the pond, chatting while snacking on whatever delicacy she had brought him that day.

He remembered the mornings where she tried to teach him how to bake simple things, going over each step in her recipe books while the crab chomped down on another slice of pie. It never really went very far. Both because the crab had little patience for how much time the baking process took, and because being gifted with superior pincers meant he was not cut out for the fine art of operating kitchen utensils or handling delicate doughs.

“What did Madeleine once say about making dough rise?” the shiny crustacean wondered. “That different kinds require higher temperatures than others?”

With a snap of his pincer, Balthazar turned back to his companions.

“Blue, get over here and give this thing a breather!”

The drake swooped down and hovered over the forge, her flapping wings blowing wind into the magicoals like a bellows, increasing the intensity of the flames.

Taking in a big breath, the winged creature let out another bout of azure fire, bathing the ore and the core in magical heat.

“It’s working!” Balthazar exclaimed in excitement, looking through the gap of his pincer as he shielded himself from the blinding blaze. “Haha! Forging is just like baking!”

Blue ceased her fire breathing and flew away to land behind Druma, looking visibly exhausted.

“Good job, girl,” said the crab. “I’ll take it from here now.”

Using his baker’s teachings as inspiration, the crab moved back to his version of a recipe book, looking for the next step in the process of baking himself a new golem core.

The golemancy guide told him to move the damaged core around using a pair of tongs, ensuring an even distribution of the binding material, but Balthazar knew that using human tools wasn’t for him.

He only had one pair of tools, and those would have to do.

With a loud gulp, the crab brought his pincers into the forge’s fire, grabbing the red-hot golem core and rotating it around as the melting ore slowly seeped into the cracked areas.

Despite the elemental resistance, the scorching heat was still hard to take for more than a few seconds, but Balthazar did not relent, remembering how Bouldy didn’t when he held that avalanche to save him.

“Oof, it’s starting to smell like steamed crab in here!”

Like a proud chef watching his yeast bubbling and fermenting, the fascinated crustacean observed as Bouldy’s core glowed brightly and fused with the cobalt, the two halves binding back together, leaving the red orb covered in azure veins that pulsed with magic.

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[Repaired Golem Core]

“Yes!” the crab exclaimed, clacking his pincers in celebration.

The mark’s timer was reaching five minutes left and Balthazar glanced back nervously at the immobile statues on their pedestals all around the forge.

“What’s next!” he said, flipping the book’s pages.

Reading over the instructions, he learned he would need to infuse the core into a prime material again, just like he had done back home, with his favorite boulder.

“Crap! What do I use?!” the scrambling crab said. “I need enough material to make a golem!”

“Boss, boss!” Druma yelled from his safe distance, pointing a finger at something nearby. “Big rocks!”

With no time to waste, Balthazar scurried to whatever his assistant was trying to show him.

Near one of the edges of the forge sat a large pile of loose rocks, each one bigger than the crab himself. They were brown and rough at first glance, like any other common stone one would find on the side of a mountain or a cliff. But upon closer inspection, the merchant noticed peculiar lines shining like metal from the inside of the rocks.

“It’s like a raw version of the material those guardians are made of.”

[Primordium Rock]

[A type of primordial mineral with metallic properties. Instead of melting away, these ancient rocks harden with the metal when under high temperatures, making it a material of choice for golemancers. Tastes like dirt when licked.]

He looked at the statues and at the timer again. There was no time to waste pondering.

“We need to get these in the fire with the core!” he said to Druma.

The goblin ran over to help push one of the boulders, but the rock was too heavy for them and refused to budge.

Seeing the other two struggling, Blue swooped in to their aid, using her talons to push the stone too, but to no avail.

“It’s too big to transport this way,” the increasingly agitated crustacean said. “If they were smaller rocks I could… That’s it! We need to break them. Druma, your staff!”

The assistant’s ears perked up and he looked at his weapon. Likely acting on his most primal goblin instincts, he started smacking the boulder with the blunt side of the staff.

“No, no! Not like that! Hit it with the magical bolts!” Balthazar said.

“Oooh! Druma get it now!”

Adjusting his wizard hat away from his eyes, the goblin threw his cape back dramatically with one hand while slowly waving the staff in circles with the other.

Biting his tongue in the corner of his mouth and with a bead of sweat rolling down his deep frown of concentration, Druma charged up his spell until the gem at the tip of the staff glowed bright green.

With a thrust forward, the goblin released a stream of emerald bolts, each one hitting the boulder’s surface with enough force to leave small cracks on the softer parts of the stone.

“Keep going! Chop those ingredients!” said the crab.

One volley after the other, the goblin struck the rock with everything he and his staff had, until the boulder cracked open with a loud rumble.

The two halves split apart and fell to the floor, shattering into smaller chunks.

“Great job, Druma!” Balthazar said, quickly gathering primordium rocks with his pincers. “But stay back now, it’s too hot in there for you.”

The merchant ran back to the core, which pulsed bright red in between the blue coals it rested on, and spread chunks of the unrefined mineral over it the way he imagined Madeleine spread slices of apple on her pies.

Dashing back and forth as fast as his legs could, Balthazar dumped all the raw primordium he could until the golem core was covered in a pile of it.

“And something to remind you of home,” the crab whispered as he reached into his personal belongings and retrieved one of his oldest treasures: a small pebble from his collection of smooth rocks.

It was the first one he had ever picked up by the shores of the pond, attracted by its round and smooth shape, long before he had discovered coins, pastries, or strange scrolls. Back when he was just a young crab who talked to a boulder and kept a pet rock for company, because he lived all alone in a pond, with no friends or company.

His pincer hesitated over the fire before dropping the pebble in. It was hard to let go of one of his oldest possessions, but he knew it would be well guarded in his friend’s heart.

The bright blue flames burned high, bathing the room in an azure hue as they slowly melted the stones over his friend’s heart. Too slowly.

“Two minutes left before the mark expires!” the panicking crustacean said. “Smelt faster!”

The pile of rocks kept breaking apart and melting until it turned into thick bright lava, flowing and pooling around the orb.

“Crap! It says I need to cool it now!” Balthazar said, glancing at the book. “How do I do that?!”

The merchant looked around at the forge instruments around him, the valves, levers, and pulleys connected to chains and gears, all far too complex for him to figure out in what little time he had left.

“I’m just a crab, I don’t know how to work this forge!” he exclaimed. “Wait, I’m a crab! I know exactly what puts out fires. Water!”

Quickly shoving both arms into his backpack, Balthazar started pulling out all the bottles of pond water Rob had delivered to him.

“I was going to sell these for lots of coin!” he grumbled. “But I guess this is a good trade too.”

Popping their corks with the tip of his pincer, the crab began pouring the contents of his “Potions of Hydration” over the molten rock and the coals.

Clouds of steam shot up as the water came in contact with the heat, making Balthazar cough and look like a deranged alchemist preparing a crazy concoction.

The flames died down and the molten primordium began to solidify again, binding with the blue veins of the cobalt into a much denser form.

But the core remained inert.

“Why isn’t it working?!” the stressed crustacean said. “I’ve repaired the core. There’s plenty of prime material to fuse with. Why isn’t this thing shaping into a golem? I don’t have ti—”

[Golemancer’s Mark duration: 0 seconds]

“Oh no…”

The silver crab turned his eyestalks to the other end of the hall just as several heavy thumps echoed through the forge’s chamber.

The guardian statues had woken up and were stepping down from their pedestals.

“Boss!” Druma shouted, pointing at the incoming forces.

A dozen forge guardians closed in on the workshop, weapons pointed forward.

Blue spread her wings open and stood by the goblin, looking around at the constructs encircling them with her fangs bared.

“Crap, crap, crap!” Balthazar cursed, turning back to the core sitting among a pile of half-molten rocks. “What am I doing wrong?!”

The crab tried to think, remembering everything he had done, looking for what was missing.

He had followed every step the book listed.

The core was clearly repaired.

There was plenty of compatible raw material for the core to fuse with.

“Boss, hurry!” Druma shouted as he shot a stream of green bolts from his staff, which hit one of the statues and did little more than make it stumble slightly.

Was there something else I did back at the pond the first time around that I’m forgetting now?

Blue screeched as she shot out what little fire she could still muster after spending most of her energy powering up the forge, barely slowing the guards marching toward them.

The merchant recalled the boulder from back home, the way the Golem Core sank into the stone like it was liquid, fusing into it before the rocks took shape and Bouldy was born.

“It all worked so easily then…”

Another group of sentries was marching toward the crab, ready to seize the unwelcome visitor using their forge, each one holding a different bronze weapon, all of them as intimidating as the next.

“I can’t pinch my way out of this,” Balthazar said, glancing back at the guardians. “I need this to work! What am I miss—”

Suddenly, Tweedus’s words echoed back in his mind.

You just gotta pour your heart into that core the same way you did before.

It all made sense to him. Just like what Madeleine had once told him, too.

It’s not just about throwing ingredients in and mixing things together when baking. You have to add love.

“That’s what I’m missing…” the crab whispered. “I’m missing my friend.”

The forge guardians readied their weapons as they marched into the workshop area, their empty bronze faces reflecting the dying fires of the forge and a scared silver crab leaned over a lifeless core.

“I’m sorry you had to hold that avalanche to save us, Bouldy. It was all my fault. If I hadn’t been so greedy with that stupid golden statuette none of that would have happened. I lost my best friend because I didn’t value what I already had and kept wanting more. I was dumb. Probably still am! Just now I almost ruined my one shot to bring you back because I got greedy over gold again. It’s all my fault, it always is! I know I’m stubborn and full of flaws, and maybe I don’t deserve it, but… but I miss you, buddy!”

The living statues encircled the merchant and prepared to seize him, but Balthazar chose to keep on whispering to the core.

“I don’t care how long it took me to get here, or how many dangers I went through, or if these big piles of metal take me, I just want to see my best friend one more time!”

The red-hot core started trembling timidly.

But the forge guardians had already grabbed the crab.

“It’s working! It’s working!” Balthazar yelled, trying to cling to the edge of the smelter as the statues pulled him by the shell and legs. “Let me go! I can’t stop now! I’m almost there! Let me bring my friend back!”

The trembling increased, but the constructs cared not for it or the crab’s pleas, and forcibly pulled him off the forge, carrying him to the other sentries, who had already captured his companions and held them under their blades.

“Let them go! I’m the trespasser, I brought them here! It’s me you want!” a desperate Balthazar exclaimed at the uncaring statues, before looking back at the shaking Golem Core. “Please wake up, Bouldy! Help Druma! Help Blue! Save our friends!”

The core pulsed red, its cobalt veins glowing a brilliant blue as it vibrated violently and sank into the molten rocks.

Steam billowed from the sizzling clay, twisting and bubbling as it embraced the orb.

Like raw dough rising in the warmth of an oven, the primordial concoction grew.

The shattered rocks, broken by a goblin's magic, fused and hardened with cobalt breathed into life by a drake. The core bound itself with the fiery materials, tempered by the waters from a distant pond, carefully poured by the pincers of a crab who longed for his lost friend.

In the burning coals, the golem’s heart stirred again, answering the call of his friends like he always had.

The forge guardians paused all at once like a hive mind, turning toward the smelter as lava splashed out of it and a giant arm emerged, reaching out for the ceiling.

A thunderous rumbling shook the ground when a stone torso began taking shape, rising from the blue fires of the golem forge with hot magma rolling off its shoulders.

A head soon followed, its eyes slowly opening up to the world while the construct stood up.

With a powerful jet of steam venting out of its settling rock joints, the golem rose from its cradle of fire and stone, flexing its arms as his earth-shattering roar shook the walls of the ancient chamber.

“FRIENDS!”