Merchant Crab-Chapter 289: The Hero From the Wall and the Golem From the Ceiling

Kole rushed back out of the tunnel once he made sure all of his fellow kobolds had made it in and were getting away from the besieged chamber.

The cave was their last safe spot, and now the ogres had come for it too.

He glanced back at the fleeing women, the children, and the elderly kobolds.

There were so few left now.

He felt helpless and nearly hopeless.

But one last shred of hope remained in him—the hero of legend.

Across the underhall, past the blasted huts his tribe had been living in and near a gigantic hole in the ceiling, there he was, standing among his allies.

The valiant goblin addressed the one he called “boss” with a broad smile and determination in his eyes, and Kole felt hope swell in his heart. If the one from the prophecy was so confident, who was he to have doubts?

The green hero would save them all, just like the omens foretold.

Keth’s visions had never been wrong. On another cave wall she had once drawn a big rock crushing a worker kobold, and a few months later, sure enough, one of the miners died exactly like that.

As did a few others that year.

And the year after.

And also the years before she made the painting.

In fact, lots of kobolds met their end under collapsing rocks while mining all the time, but nevertheless, Keth’s prediction had still been right either way.

Kole approached the hero’s party, and he heard the goblin’s speaker—the crab named Balthazar—addressing the group.

“Alright, Druma, you hop on Bouldy’s hand, and he will bring you up close to the ceiling, where you should get a good angle above everything and everyone. Then you can shoot your fully powered blast toward the entrance the ogres are coming from. Aim right at that spooky purple fella approaching from the other side.”

“Friend!” the golem exclaimed affirmatively.

“Yes, yes, boss!” the goblin hero said with several vigorous nods.

The kobold watched with great interest and understanding glimmered in his eyes.

Indeed, it all started to make sense to him now.

The crab was the hero’s general. The tactician. A trustworthy right-hand man. Crab. Right-pincer crab?

The crab was the goblin’s trusted assistant, that was the point.

“Thunk! Hannabeth!” Balthazar shouted toward the two adventurers holding the invading beasts. “I know they’re mostly empty, but if you value your heads, get ready to duck!”

The two women looked back, and upon seeing the staff-wielding goblin climbing on the golem’s hand, seemed to understand what was coming their way.

From the breach on the wall, more ogres were squeezing their way into the chamber, but most frightful of all was the eerie figure approaching behind them—a thin and hairless man in fluttering robes, with a wispy aura of purple magic around him, who seemed to be floating toward the passage, rather than walking.

A shiver ran down the kobold’s spine as he saw the source of all the evil that had taken so many of his kin.

“Druma ready, boss!”

Kole turned his gaze back to the hero, and his eyes widened, a feeling of awe so great blooming from within that it banished all the fear and despair he had felt a second ago upon seeing the lich lord.

The gigantic stone golem was down on one knee, head slightly bent to avoid hitting the ceiling stalactites, and his right arm was extended forward, palm open. On his hand stood Druma, the goblin wizard.

It was like watching the omens on the wall come to life—with much greater detail and fewer stick figures.

Druma stood heroically on the giant’s hand, hat pulled away from his eyes, cape fluttering in a breeze that had no reason to exist in an underground cave like that, and he pointed his staff forward.

“Druma cast… BIG KABOOM!”

Green light flooded the kobold’s glimmering eyes as he witnessed the biggest display of raw magic he had ever seen.

The huge arcane blast shot from the staff’s tip, making a perfect arch near the cave’s ceiling and over everyone else’s heads.

Just as the hero’s attack was about to fly into the breach in the wall, Kole saw the shadowy figure on the other side flick his wrist. A translucent barrier of purple magic flashed into existence against the hole, causing one of the mindless ogre thralls who was about to walk through it to hit the solid surface and fall backward.

The kobold gasped, but before he could finish inhaling, the green spell connected with the purple ward.

And everything went white.

***

“Everyone alright?” Balthazar yelled as the cloud of dust settled.

Across the chamber, the cave’s ceiling had collapsed, filling a quarter of the space with rocks and dirt and completely covering the spot where the breach had been just moments before.

Two adventurers stood up from the rubble. Taking cover in time seemed to have saved them from being buried under the collapsing stones like the undead ogres they had been fighting.

“Thunk dizzy…” the barbarian groaned, holding the side of her head before a big grin spread across her face. “Do again! Do again!”

“Worry not, I am well, friends!” shouted the knight, raising a closed first in the air.

Kole came running toward Druma as the goblin jumped off Bouldy’s hand.

“Hero!” the orange kobold exclaimed, throwing himself into a bow. “Saved us, you have. As foretold, by the omens! Thank you enough, we can never.”

“Don’t start eating your éclairs before they’re cooked, pal,” Balthazar said. “Everyone saw the barrier the lich cast on the breach right before Druma’s attack connected, right? Well, the strike might have worked to collapse the ceiling on their entrance point and buy us some time, but the creepy guy and his army of thralls are surely still alive and well on the other side. Well, not alive, but you know what I meant.”

“Alive, my tribe is,” Kole said, still taking a knee in front of the goblin. “Because of the hero, it was.”

The green wizard turned to the crab with wide eyes and a big smile.

“Druma do good, right, boss?”

“Yes, you sure did, buddy,” Balthazar replied with a full nod of his shell, before turning his eyestalks back to the underground dweller. “But our hero here just blew his entire magical load with that one attack, so that trick is out of the equation for now. We need to come up with a new plan.” He glanced at Thunk and Hannabeth as they joined them. “And preferably a plan that doesn’t involve just running in without a plan!”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“The kobolds are safe for now,” announced Khargol as he returned from the tunnel. “I took them as far as I could into the cave system. If I couldn’t fit any further, the ogres surely won’t be able to reach them easily either. But that’s only a temporary solution, sooner or later they will find a way in, and that place is too cramped for even kobolds to live comfortably.”

“As usual, the chieftain makes a good point,” the eight-legged merchant said, rubbing his chin in thought. “Those ogres were tough, but worst of all is the lich lord. He’s way more powerful than anyone else here. We’re not ready to face something like that.”

Kole stood up and stared into the crab’s eyes.

“The Altar of Potential, you need.” 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

“The what now?” the puzzled crustacean asked, cocking an eyestalk.

“The Altar of Potential, I said.”

“Yes, but what is that?” Balthazar asked slowly, rolling his eyestalks.

“An altar, deep within the mountain,” Kole explained. “Upon it, you place an item. Its full potential, the altar unlocks. Legendary weapons, common arms become. Mythical gear, simple armors turn into. The best version of something, always.”

“Oooh, sounds juicy!” the merchant howled, eyes gleaming. “Alright, you got my interest! How far is that thing?”

“Guard the altar for generations, my tribe has. In a hidden cave, where no ogre knows. Many hours walk, it is. There, I can take you.”

“Oooof course,” said Balthazar. “These things can never just be around the corner, can they? Well, like I said, we only have so much time before the ogres find a way back in, and we don’t have many options. Let’s go to this altar and see what we can get. We will need all the help we can get anyway.”

“S-sorry,” a timid girl’s voice said.

The crab turned to find Amber standing next to Bouldy, looking sheepish.

“I… I was wondering if there’s any way I could help?”

Balthazar shrugged while adjusting his monocle.

“I guess. We could use all the—”

[Alchemist - Level 14]

“Never mind that!” the crab exclaimed, throwing his pincers up. “You’re waaaay too low-level to be down here, girl.”

Amber frowned. “But I—”

“Bouldy, take your friend back up before she gets hurt! I don’t have party insurance, and she would be a liability on a floor where even kobolds are level 40.”

“Friend!” the golem said with a firm nod.

“Hey, wait just a second, I can—Yiiiip!”

The stone giant swept the girl off her feet by pinching the back of her robe between his massive fingers, and began climbing back up the hole in the ceiling.

“Make sure your new friend is safe until we go back up, or else I’m not getting you a new one!” the crab shouted to the golem as he disappeared above.

After quickly regrouping, everyone took off through the only tunnel left out of the wrecked chamber, following Kole to their new destination—that mysterious altar he mentioned.

Balthazar wasn’t sure when exactly it had happened, or from which side the idea came from, but the kobold host was no longer walking them there. Instead, Kole was riding on Thunk’s shoulder, who looked very happy about her new mascot.

As the seven intrepid dungeon delvers slowly navigated the network of cramped hallways and narrow tunnels, the group could spot the few dozens of remaining kobolds peeking out of their chambers and hiding holes.

The frightened orange creatures looked at them with different degrees of either concern or hope.

“Hundreds, we were,” Kole said in a somber tone, his voice even raspier than before. “So few, remain. Take whole floor, the lich intends. Fight him, the entire ogre tribe could not. Stop him, how could we?”

Usually, in such situations, Balthazar would resort to cracking a joke or making a snide comment, but not even he could bring himself to say anything to someone who had clearly lost so much.

The crab could not relate to what it was like to lose almost everyone you had known your entire life, because he hadn’t known anyone most of his life.

But he could imagine what it would be like if he was ever to be pushed out of his pond and lost all of his companions, his allies, his friends. It would be devastating.

“Maybe you guys can’t stop the lich,” the crustacean said quietly. “But we will. That’s a promise.”

Kole raised his gaze from the floor and looked at the crab with an expression of quiet gratitude.

“And I’m a merchant, so you know my word is my bond!” Balthazar added.

A small kobold child ran out of her mother’s grasp and stepped in front of Druma, who stopped walking and stared down at her with a surprised look on his face.

The orange youngling stretched her arms up, offering a big chunk of something brown to the goblin.

“Chocolate for… for Druma?” he asked.

The reptilian girl nodded and pushed the chunk into his arms before running off back to her mom.

Balthazar looked at his assistant’s gift and then—resisting the urge to ask where his chocolate offering was—turned back to Kole.

“You guys have chocolate down here?”

“Our main food source, it is now,” Kole replied. “Mine it from the caves, we do.”

The crab frowned, intrigued.

“Wait, you mine it?”

“Yes,” the kobold said. “There, look.”

As they exited into a slightly wider tunnel section, the group saw about half a dozen male kobolds wearing loose rags similar to Kole’s and wielding pickaxes.

The visibly exhausted workers toiled at the rocky walls, except upon closer inspection, it became clear those were not common stones they were chipping away at—they were brown chunks of hardened chocolate.

“Bring us the delicious chocolate, the great eruption did,” the orange underground dweller explained. “First kobold to try eating it, Kyle was. A fool, we all called him. Little, we knew. Prosper, our tribe did. Great energy from consuming it, we gained.”

“So… you guys had never seen chocolate down here until the volcano’s eruption?” Balthazar asked.

Kole shook his head.

The crab rubbed his chin. So where did it come from?

“Wait,” he suddenly said. “Then what did you guys used to eat down here?”

“Barkmoss,” replied the kobold.

“What did you just call me?”

“No,” the reptilian creature said. “Barkmoss. From the trunks of rocktrees, it grows. Very nutritious, it is. But very sour, its taste. Better, chocolate is.”

“You guys have trees down here?!”

Kole pointed to an opening on the tunnel wall, like a narrow window into a much larger but inaccessible area of the caves.

The crab peeked through and saw a few tall wooden trunks that extended from the floor and merged with the stone ceiling, like pillars of the cave itself, except made of a grayish bark. These strange trees had no leaves or flowers, and looked more like the kind of dead trunks one would expect to see in a bog, but unlike those, the wood did not look weak and brittle, but rather sturdy and solid as… rock.

“Hence the name,” Balthazar muttered.

“Our tools and weapons, we use the rockwood for,” the group’s host explained, holding out his spear in one hand. “Very sturdy, it is.”

“Hmm, interesting,” the merchant said, an idea imbuing his thoughts. “You wouldn’t mind if I took some branches of this rockwood stuff with me back home, would you?”

“Free to take, rocktrees are,” said Kole. “Own it, we do not. Human concepts, those are. As much as you need, you can take, hero’s speaker.”

“I’m not Druma’s… Ah, forget it.”

As he skittered forward, a loose piece of shiny rock on the ground caught Balthazar’s attention.

“Hmm, why does this look familiar? Wait…”

Upon realizing the strange mineral chunk reminded him of Bouldy, the crab placed his monocle in front of his eye to inspect it.

[Chunk of Raw Primordium]

That’s the stuff we used in the Golem Forge to repair Bouldy!

Balthazar turned his eyestalks to the kobold again.

“You guys mine this stuff too?” he asked, holding the piece of metallic rock in his pincer.

“Yes,” said Kole, still sitting on Thunk’s shoulder. “To get chocolate out of walls, those shiny rocks we break. In piles like those, we throw them.”

He pointed at a group of broken rocks discarded by a corner, and the merchant’s eyestalks nearly shot out of his shell.

“You guys just… toss it after extracting the chocolate around it?!”

Kole shrugged.

“Eat the chocolate, we can. Eat those rocks, we cannot.”

“Delicious chocolate and an extremely rare and precious raw material in one place?” Balthazar muttered to himself, a glint in his eyes and a grin on his face. “We are so going to save the hell out of this place!”

“Yes, yes, boss!” said Druma, suddenly appearing by the crab’s side. “Druma want to help new kobold friends save home!”

“Huh? Oh, yes, right, of course, Druma,” the merchant said, snapping away from his greedy thoughts. “That, too.”

“Here, we are,” the kobold on the barbarian’s shoulder announced, pointing to an archway at the end of the tunnel.

“Hmm? Already?” said Balthazar. “I thought you said the journey to the altar would take hours.”

“Hours, it takes. Walking on kobold legs, that is.” He patted Thunk’s shoulder with his tiny hand. “Much faster, this is.”

The crab rolled his eyes.

“Let’s just go in and check this fancy altar of yours, before we get surprised by drooling ogres again.”