Merchant Crab-Chapter 200: The CrabH.2019:s Travels

It was a cold night over the pond, a short time after the crab’s return to his home, but by the crackling fire of the glowing hearth at the center of his bazaar it was warm and cozy, like a tender embrace from a dear friend.

And a dear friend was exactly whom Balthazar was waiting for as he sat by the edge of the fire pit.

Madeleine, his favorite baker—and human—in the whole world came to join him with a large plate in her hands.

“Right, as promised, here's your plate of butter cookies, Balthazar,” the girl said as she sat down opposite of the crab. “It’s not much, but it’s what I could whip up on such short notice. I’ll make you some proper pastries later. Now go on, it’s your turn to do as promised—I want to know everything that happened while I was gone!”

Balthazar smiled from ear to ear. Or he would have, if he had any of those. Being a giant crab, he was not burdened by such unnecessary appendages.

Smooth and sturdy—those were the two best words to describe his body. The peak of evolution. Nature’s perfect lifeform. Without any of those flaws commonly seen on the bodies of less evolved species, such as humans.

In fact, the only human-like trait one could find on him was the fancy golden monocle held precariously in front of his left eye. But that was not part of his anatomy, it was merely a fashionable gadget, befitting of such a unique crab—a merchant crab.

And an expert merchant at that. Owner of his own bazaar and accomplished trader of goods with several employees under him—although he usually preferred to refer to them as friends. Because that was who Balthazar was, a kind and generous businesscrab.

Lately.

Most of the time.

With a few exceptions.

“Oh, these smell so good, Madeleine!” Balthazar said, looking at the plate of cookies in front of him with eyestalks stretched forward.

Standing on no ceremony, the hungry crab chomped down on the first butter cookie, which produced a satisfying crunch as he bit into it, along with a plume of steam from its freshly-baked interior.

“Oof! Ah! Hot! Hot!” the merchant exclaimed.

“Be careful, you silly crab!” the baker warned, stifling her laughter. “They’re still hot!”

“I know!” Balthazar said, ignoring both warning and common sense as he went in for a second bite. “But I’ve missed your baking so much! Ow!”

Madeleine smiled and chuckled with earnest warmth on her face.

“And I missed watching how much you enjoy them. It just never gets old,” she said. “But don’t think that will distract me from our agreement! I’ve made you a plate of cookies, so go on, catch me up on everything I’ve missed while I was gone! I bet your adventures in the last couple of months could fill a whole book!”

Balthazar cocked an eyestalk at the young woman as he worked through chewing the burning contents of his open mouth.

“A book about the travels of a merchant crab?” he said with irony in his tone. “Pfft. Who’d ever want to read that!”

“Me!” exclaimed the blonde baker. “So start telling me what you’ve been up to out there. Starting by how you’ve gotten yourself out there. I never thought I’d see the day when you’d set foot outside your little home!”

The crab puffed himself up. “Well, after you were taken by that dragon, I just knew I couldn’t sit idly by waiting for someone else to go and rescue you. It had to be me. So I put on my big crab pants and set out to—”

Balthazar stopped mid-sentence as he watched the girl holding back a fit of laughter behind her hand.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, mouth half open in annoyance, exposing crumbs and chewed bits of butter cookie.

“Sorry! It’s just that I started picturing you wearing pants and it was too funny,” Madeleine responded between giggling. “I wonder if they’d have eight pant legs or just two really large ones for each side.”

The merchant frowned and swallowed the rest of his cookie before crossing his arms.

“If you’re just going to be laughing at me, I’m not going to tell you anything!”

“Sorry! Sorry!” the baker said, toning her giggling back down to a smile. “Please continue. Oh! Have you visited Ardville yet?!”

“I have,” Balthazar said, uncrossing his arms and taking another cookie from the plate. “It was the first place I headed to once I left the pond with my guys and your archer boy.”

Madeleine tilted her head down in a cute show of disappointment.

“Aw, I had hoped I could be the one to show you around my hometown one day.”

“Don’t worry, you still can,” said the chewing crab. “It’s not like I got to see much of the place. I had to run away shortly after arriving.”

“Oh?” said the girl. “Why? What did you do?!”

“Nothing!” pleaded the merchant with a shrug. “I was just minding my own business, buying bread, as a crab does, when suddenly this weird kid showed up, saying he was my biggest fan and how he wanted to come along with me, and a bunch of other nonsense.”

“Hmm,” the baker said, looking up in thought. “Was he a boy with ginger hair called Taffy?”

“Yes! Wait, you know him?!”

“Yeah… Not personally, but he’s always been a strange one. Not harmful, though! How come you had to run out of town? Don’t tell me you pinched the poor boy, Balthazar!”

“Of course not. I’m a civilized crustacean,” the crab said as he loudly chewed on the second cookie with his mouth open. “But after he made a big ruckus about me being in town, a bunch of other townsfolk started getting all riled up and trying to get a piece of me too. It was pretty odd, actually. Like something was… affecting them.”

Madeleine giggled. “Yes. You. You’re famous now! Little Ardville isn’t used to seeing celebrities very often.”

Balthazar rolled his eyestalks.

“I really don’t think it was just that,” he said. “But anyway, after we made it out of your town, Rye and I caught wind of a lead on the dragon’s whereabouts, and that was when we split up on the road and your favorite archer set out to the village the dragon had supposedly been seen at.”

“Mhmm,” said Madeleine, taking a cookie for herself and nibbling on it gently as she gave the crab her undivided attention. “What about you? Where did you go?”

“I…” Balthazar started, before realizing what had come next during his journey.

Star Beach, the place where new adventurers first arrived on Heartha and where they’d gain their access to the magical scroll that gave them access to the system.

It was there that the merchant found a freshly marooned adventurer from whom he purchased a new Scroll of Character Creation in order to regain his access to the system.

It was also on that day that, unbeknownst to the crab, a new adventurer arrived in that world. One that was not meant to be accepted by the system, but that thanks to Balthazar’s unwitting interference, entered Heartha with far more awareness than adventurers were supposed to have.

Ren would go on to blame this mysterious merchant he never laid eyes upon for his arrival and scrambled memories. He swore vengeance on his new nemesis and made it his sole focus to become strong enough to confront the villain of his own story.

But all of that was entirely unknown to Balthazar, who had left the beach on that day with a clear conscience and content for having regained his system access to help with the goals of his travels.

However, the details of his visit to the beach were probably best left out of his report to Madeleine. He was still unsure how he could ever explain his peculiar circumstances regarding the system to anyone. Especially considering he barely could make sense of them himself.

“I… went to the beach,” the crab finally said.

“You… went to the beach?” the girl repeated, raising an eyebrow as she lowered the cookie she was about to bite into. “You set out on a journey to rescue me from a dragon and to bring your best friend back to life and the first thing you do is… go to the beach?”

“Uhh… yes!” Balthazar awkwardly said. “I had crab business to tend to, alright?! You wouldn’t understand!”

The baker exhaled with resignation and shrugged as she resumed nibbling on her cookie. “Alright then. I just hope you had fun playing with a beachball, collecting conches, or whatever it is that was so important.”

“Anyway, remember Tom, the merchant skeleton?” the crab continued, eager to move on from the beach stop. “I went to visit his dungeon. You know… to see if he could be of any help.”

The sitting crustacean went on to tell his human friend about his adventure in Tudor’s Hall, all the friendly skeletons he met, about Montgomery, the giant slime he befriended in the depths of the dungeon, and even about the two adventurers who were betrayed by a higher-level ice mage down there.

“So anyway, that was how I single-handedly defeated the cryomancer without so much as laying a pincer on him,” the merchant concluded, swelling with pride after a highly embellished battle story.

“Oooh,” the attentive baker whispered as she listened to her friend’s tale.

“After we left Tom’s dungeon, I met up with your boyfriend again,” Balthazar said.

Madeleine shot up on her seat and her cheeks turned a few shades redder.

“Rye is not my—”

“And from there we got back on the road after learning the lead on the dragon was no good,” the crab continued, ignoring the girl’s fluster. “We even met a real bridge troll! Not a bad fellow, all things considered. I hope he got to see the ocean like he wanted to. Anyway, we eventually made it to a place called Condor.”

The merchant did his best to justify their stop at the old ghost town where the Birdwatchers had their headquarters without any mentions of anything to do with world systems and mind-wiped adventurers.

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It was there that he met Ruby, the enchantress and leader of the mysterious adventurer faction. She tasked Balthazar with retrieving a special astrolabe ring to finish a strange artifact they possessed. The details and importance of it and the crimson woman’s machinations were mostly lost on the crustacean, who only cared about finding Tweedus, the old wizard who could help him bring Bouldy’s core back to life. Luckily for him, that same loony wizard was the one who had the item the Birdwatchers sought, leading to an agreement between the crab and the adventurer—the location of Tweedus’s home in exchange for convincing him to give up the astrolabe component.

Unfortunately, the group’s stay in Condor was not all easy deals and progress. The secretive faction trying to uncover the truth behind the world’s system also pulled back the fog covering up Rye’s memories, making him aware of having a previous life before arriving there and becoming an adventurer. The effects of it all made the young man leave, striking out on his own in an attempt to settle his thoughts before figuring out what to do next.

“So yeah, Druma, Blue, and I kept going without him,” Balthazar said after being as vague as he could about the archer’s departure.

“Oh,” Madeleine said with a sad tone. “I wonder what got into Rye to just leave like that.”

“Err, you’d have to talk to him about that,” said the merchant, looking up at the smoke billowing from the fire pit. “But between you and me… I think he just felt my constant detours were slowing him down from tracking you. He was just really worried about you.”

The baker frowned slightly and shook her head. “I’m sure Rye wouldn’t think that about you guys, come on.”

“Anyway!” Balthazar exclaimed with a clack of his pincers. “I met a ghost after that.”

“You… what?!” Madeleine blurted out, widening her green eyes at the crab.

“I met a ghost. And a zombie!”

After regaling his baker friend with the tale of how he met Sir Edmund and his zombified body, Ned, Balthazar realized his plate of cookies was now more than halfway empty, a fact which greatly saddened him. Good things just never seemed to last.

Unlike sidequests, which seemed to go on forever.

“Then I arrived in the city of Marquessa,” the merchant said.

Madeleine’s eyebrows rose in surprise and amazement. “The big city on the other side of the continent? I heard so much about it from travelers who passed by Ardvile. I always dreamed of visiting it one day! How was it?”

“Very distracting,” Balthazar said with a roll of his beady eyes. “I wasted days looking for a fancy lady’s stock of fruit.”

The young woman looked at him with visible confusion.

The crab went on to tell her his misadventures in the city of Marquessa. How he met Olivia, the mayor’s niece, when she was smashing a jug of milk over a mugger’s head in an alley. How he came to meet the mayor herself and how she asked for his assistance in uncovering the truth behind the city’s stolen supply of mangoes. And of course, how he met a little street urchin by the name of Suze, who was as clever as she was slippery.

“Hahaha! I think I’d like this girl! I hope we get to meet someday,” Madeleine said with great amusement at her friend’s story of how the little kid fleeced two gold coins from the crab in exchange for a 30-second tour of the city hall.

The baker cocked an eyebrow at the crustacean as she realized he had gone quiet and his eyes fixed on the ground.

“You’re alright, Balthazar?”

“Yeah, yes… I just don’t know how to tell you this, but…” the hesitant crab said with the tone of a kid who had been caught with his pincer in the cookie jar.

“You’re worrying me now,” said Madeleine. “What happened?”

With a deep breath and an even deeper sigh, Balthazar confessed his sins to his friend.

He told her about the bakery he found while in Marquessa, about the owner, Lady Margo, and how he had consumed several of her pies, on more than one occasion, with great delight and little to no regret.

“I… I don’t get it,” said the young woman, staring at the merchant with a blank stare.

“I know, how could I?!” the distraught crab exclaimed, averting his gaze. “I’m sorry, Madeleine! I swear your baking was and still is my favorite, but it had been weeks since you were gone, and I missed a good pie so much!”

“What do you mean, Balthazar?” the girl said, blinking in confusion a few times. “Is that why—”

“I had never tried a mango pie either, so the temptation was too great for me!” the ashamed crustacean loudly continued over his friend’s words.

Madeleine shook her head. “Wait, you thought I’d be upset because you had someone else’s pastries?”

“I tried so hard, but in the end it didn’t—” Balthazar froze, and his eyestalks shot up to the girl. “Wait, you’re not mad?!”

The baker chuckled. “No. Why would I be? It’s fine, you silly crab! It’s not like you have some exclusivity contract with me. I’m actually glad you got to find and try new flavors in your travels!”

The merchant stared at his friend for a moment, befuddled by her reaction—or lack thereof.

“So you’re alright with me having eaten someone else’s pie?”

“Of course!” said the Ardvillian baker.

“And that I enjoyed it too? Like… a lot?”

“Yes?”

More confused frowning from the crab before he relaxed his eyestalks.

“So if I ever got some mangoes from over there, would you be willing to try and make some mango pies too?”

“I’d love to!” Madeleine said with a wide smile. “I’m always eager to try my hand at baking new things, and I’ve actually never tried mangoes before. You know, they’re too expensive and hard to find on this side of the continent. Are they as sweet as I’ve heard?”

Balthazar beamed up with a smile of his own at the baker’s response.

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“Oh, so, so sweet! You wouldn’t believe the things they make with mangoes over there!”

The merchant went on to spend a considerable amount of time telling his friend everything about Marquessa’s mango delicacies while munching on her butter cookies one after the other, crumbs flying everywhere with every excited exclamation.

“That’s it, then!” said Madeleine, slapping her knees with determination. “If you ever get me some mangoes, I promise you I’ll try my best to make something as good as what you had in Marquessa! But you haven’t told me yet, how did you recover their harvest?”

“Oof, that was something,” the crab said while grabbing one of the last few remaining cookies.

He went on for several more minutes, telling her everything about the bandit that smelled of onions, the bewitched commander of the guardsmen, as well as the other many colorful characters he met during his stay in Marquessa. From the charming guildmaster of the local thieves, Clovis, to the mayor’s right-hand and martial arts expert, Captain Leander.

All leading up to the night the crab and his group stormed into Damask Manor to confront the one behind the scheming taking place in Marquessa.

“Velvet?!” exclaimed Madeleine, eyes wide as she sat on the edge of her rock, both hands grasping a half-eaten butter cookie that she had forgotten to bite into for the past five minutes. “The witch that wanted one of your legs for some witchcraft thing?!”

“The very same,” Balthazar confirmed.

The baker’s dislike for witches showed through as the crab told her about their epic confrontation. In the end, she pumped her fist and roared triumphantly as she learned of the witch’s defeat and the loss of her enchanted charm, which was the source of most of her powers.

“So anyway, the mayor gave me the key to the city, I spent some time getting my pincer kissed by the local merchants wanting to make trade deals with the city’s new hero, and I had some more mango pie. Good times!”

“Wow, you’ve been busy,” said Madeleine.

“Sure have, but it made for a lot of good business for my bazaar in the future!” said the proud crustacean as he bit into another one of the girl’s treats.

“Sooo… When did you remember me or Bouldy in the middle of all this?” the baker said with a cocked eyebrow.

“Oh, this was all still part of me trying to find the wizard who could help me figure out how to repair Bouldy’s core!” Balthazar quickly explained. “You see, I only stopped there for several days and did all this because I was asking for directions.”

The girl blinked blankly a couple of times. “Right. That’s… quite the sidetracking.”

“Anyhow,” the merchant casually said. “After that I set sail north to find Tweedus in his lair up in the mountains.”

Madeleine listened with bated breath as Balthazar told her about his meeting with the old loon and the appearance of the birdwatchers, followed by their confrontation over the astrolabe ring.

“Wait, what do you mean, he flashed them?!” the young woman inquired.

“Not important!” replied the crab. “The point is, Tweedus cast some crazy spell or whatever, and we all got teleported away from his lair. Too bad that scheming enchantress and her group still got the component they wanted in the end, but the wizard didn’t seem too bothered by it.”

From there, the crab’s tale about his journey proceeded to the Golem Forge, with Madeleine gasping and clutching her chest as she heard the recounting of all the close calls Balthazar and his friends had with the constructs guarding the halls of the golemancers.

By the end, a small tear danced precariously in the corner of her eye as Balthazar recalled the moment his stone friend emerged from the flames of the forge and came to their rescue.

“It was after this that we met with Rye again,” the merchant continued, after Madeleine took a moment to wipe her eyes with a tissue, and Balthazar did the same to his eyestalks. Because he had gotten some cookie crumbs in them and no other reason at all, as he made sure to explain to her.

The tale continued, touching on Rye’s return, the Dragonslayer Greatbow he had acquired from some stranger dressed in black that he met during his own travels, and how they finally found the location of the lair Madeleine was being held in by the dragon.

Balthazar carried on, waxing poetic about his heroic feats, his bravery, and his outsmarting of the great red dragon, Beatrix LaFlamme, in a battle of wits.

“Uhh… Balthazar?” Madeleine called after several minutes of the crab excitedly talking while propped up on the rock he had previously been sitting on, striking a valiant pose. “You know I was present for that part, right? You don’t need to tell me about it.”

“Oh…” said the merchant, climbing down from the rock with a slightly surprised expression, as if he had completely forgotten about his surroundings. “I knew that. I was just… being thorough with my recap, for everyone else.”

The baker shrugged with bewilderment. “Who?! There’s no one else here but me!”

“Err, you never know,” the crab said, attempting to disguise his embarrassment. “I just wanted to make sure that if someone else did hear the story of my travels, they got all the right details.”

Madeleine scowled at him. Not a serious scowl of someone genuinely annoyed at another, but instead a playful one of someone partially amused at her friend’s shenanigans.

“Really? Because I’m pretty sure I don’t remember you clipping the wings of the dragon with one swift snap of your pincer as you claimed there, mister.”

“You gotta be open to some creative liberties when telling a good story, Madeleine!”

The girl chuckled at her crabby friend.

“Sure. Now I’m wondering if you really defeated that commander by snapping his belt buckle in two and causing his pants to fall or if that was another one of your creative liberties.”

“Of course I did!” the flustered crustacean exclaimed. “I would never make up something so ridiculous!”

“Are you sure? Because if there’s something I’ve come to learn about you, it's that you’re a crab with a pretty fertile imagination.” She smiled and winked playfully at him. “I’ll have to keep an eye on your tall tales, mister merchant!”

Balthazar’s eyestalks jumped. “Oh, that reminds me! I haven’t even told you about the cyclops I met.”

The evening went on for a while longer, the flames of the fire pit slowly turning to smoldering embers as the crab regaled his friend with the story of Brontus, the colorblind cyclops and aspiring blacksmith.

“And then he went his way, carrying the powerful tool of legend that I so generously bestowed upon him. I’m sure he will—”

The merchant paused, his gaze moving down from the stars above and to the plate his pincer was reaching for.

It was empty.

Balthazar’s shell slumped with disappointment at finding no more butter cookies left.

“Hey, Madeleine, the—” he started, but as his eyes landed on the baker he found her fast asleep, curled up into a ball on the ground near the fire with her head resting on one of the bazaar’s many cushions.

A quiet and involuntary aww escaped the crab’s mouth as he placed the back of his pincers against the sides of his shell.

And then he frowned slightly.

“Wait,” he whispered to himself. “Is it just me, or it’s starting to seem like everyone always falls asleep whenever I’m telling them the stories of what happened to me?”

Shaking the unimportant question away from his thoughts, the merchant quietly moved to a nearby shelf.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. After everything that has happened, she must be exhausted. She deserves some good rest.

Retrieving a thick blanket from his stock, Balthazar carefully moved next to Madeleine and placed it on top of her, doing his best not to wake her.

After all, she needs to be well rested in order to bake for me tomorrow!

Nodding at the generosity of his entirely selfless act, the crab skittered away to the other side of the dying fire.

Sitting down near the remnants of warmth radiating from the hearth, he used his pincer to gather what few crumbs were left on the plate in an attempt to get one last taste of cookie.

And because I missed her, I guess. Balthazar finally admitted to himself as he shoveled tiny bits of baked goodness into his mouth.

Dropping himself back against a pillow, the crab’s gaze lingered lazily over the distant glow of the mountaintop above his pond as he slowly drifted off to sleep as well.

His trip might have been over, and he might have finally made it back home, but Balthazar knew he was still far from being done with his adventures.