"I'll be right with you, young man!" Balthazar exclaimed to the adventurer who had just entered the bazaar with a rucksack over his shoulder.

"Oh," the newly arrived client said, looking surprised to be noticed. "Yeah… yeah, that's fine. I'll just be over here… browsing."

The merchant cocked an eyestalk at the young man's back as he turned to look at some shelves. His attitude felt shifty, but for now the crab decided to just keep an eye on him quietly.

"So, where were we?" Balthazar said, turning back to his other client in front of the counter with his best salescrab grin.

"You said you had a very special item to show me?" the swordsman adventurer said, crossing his arms and rolling his shoulders to adjust the weight of the longsword strapped to his back. "This better be good, crab."

"Oh, it is, I assure you, brave traveler," the eight-legged merchant said, doing his best to maintain his business smile. He needed the experience to level up, and if that meant putting up with a few adventurers with an attitude, so be it.

"Let's see it, then," the cross-armed human said.

Balthazar reached under the counter and inside his Backpack of Holding Stuff & Things. Its weird enchantment continued to provide him with even weirder items every day, but the crab had learned to take them for what they were—free stuff.

And the merchant loved free stuff. Especially if he could turn around and sell said stuff at a premium.

"Tell me," he said, "You look like a brave warrior who has danced with danger and tussled with doom, but have you ever wielded a… Legendary Spoon of Ever-Stirring?"

With a dramatic flair, the crab pulled his arm from under the counter and revealed a metal spoon in his pincer, holding it up in the air like a holy torch lighting the path of righteousness to the worthy.

It was quite the sight, but the adventurer was ruining it by remaining unimpressed.

"That's just an old spoon made of common tin," he said, giving the crustacean a bored glare.

Balthazar brought his arm down and looked at the man with both eyestalks curved into an affronted frown.

"Just an old spoon? Just?! My dear sword-swinger, this is no ordinary ladle! This relic was forged in the molten cores of a thousand soufflés and blessed by the holy order of the Culinary Clerics of Battnaware. This spoon can stir anything. Soups, stews, even the hearts of men, if you wield it just right."

"I fight ogres and slay trolls, I don't make stews," the adventurer said in a flat tone.

The crabby merchant laughed. Not just laughed—he guffawed. Roaring chuckles made his carapace bounce up and down as he slapped the countertop with the bottom of the spoon in his pincer.

In reality, Balthazar just wanted to toss the kitchen utensil at the guy's forehead, but he knew that might not be the best way to convince the fool to buy the damn thing.

"That's exactly it, my boy! What better way to confuse ogres, trolls, or any of your potential enemies than to brandish a spoon mid-battle? They'll hesitate, they'll question their life choices, and bam! You strike! Psychological warfare!"

With arms still crossed, the unimpressed swordsman cocked an eyebrow at the crab.

"Does it do anything magical?"

"It once stirred a cauldron so vigorously, it turned the potion inside into a smoothie. That's alchemy right there, pal."

The adventurer narrowed his eyes at the merchant. "How much?"

"For you? A mere 50 gold. A real bargain. And I'll even throw in this slightly cracked thimble, rumored to be cursed with mild inconvenience."

"I'll take the thimble," said the man as he finally uncrossed his arms. "Just the thimble. I need to patch some holes in my breeches."

"Excellent! A wise choice!" the crab said, gritting his mouth parts and forcing himself to smile. "May your sewing be forever slightly off-center!"

As he watched the swordsman leave, Balthazar exhaled sharply.

"Idiot. That thimble isn't even really cursed. But I guess every little bit counts in my race to my next level-up."

The merchant awaited the trade notification with a hopeful gaze, but as the words crossed his sight, he found no new level message.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"Ah, well," the crab said, deflating slightly. "Maybe the next trade will do it. Speaking of which…"

Balthazar turned and skittered toward the shelves by the entrance of the bazaar, looking for the other adventurer who had arrived a few minutes earlier.

"Where did you go, sketchy fella?" he muttered to himself while peeking between the empty spaces of the shelves.

Spotting the human across two rows of shelving, near a display case next to the counter, the crab came to a sudden halt and watched him from out of sight. He appeared to be looking for something, but in a nervous and suspicious manner.

"Strange…" said Balthazar, narrowing his eyes.

Seeing Druma enter the bazaar from the back with a broom in hand, the merchant gestured wildly but silently for the goblin to be quiet and come join him behind the shelves.

"Yes, yes, boss?" the assistant whispered, leaning down next to the crab.

"See that guy over there?" Balthazar said. "He's acting suspicious. I want to figure out what he's up to."

The goblin nodded vigorously.

"Yes, yes, boss! Druma help boss watch!" he said. "Boss think adventurer want to steal from boss?"

The merchant adjusted his monocle in front of his left eyestalk and examined the jumpy young man across the corridor.

[Fighter - Level 7]

"His class isn't thief, so probably not," Balthazar said with the confidence of someone who was certain that only thief-class adventurers could possibly ever steal things. "But let's keep an eye on him a little longer just to make sure he's not up to no good."

The small assistant nodded once again.

"If adventurer do something bad, boss want Druma to hit adventurer on head with staff and then get shovel?"

Balthazar turned to his trusty helper with a serious expression on his face.

"Druma, we talked about this. We don't do that," the crab said. "Because burying bodies is a lot of work."

The fighter took a couple of steps closer to the counter and looked around in the most I'm-about-to-do-something-bad manner imaginable.

Balthazar leaned closer to the gap in the shelf to see what the adventurer was doing.

The young man looked inside a box behind the counter and then pulled his rucksack off his shoulder.

"Huh? That's the box where we keep the crab figurines I've been selling to everyone who passes through here," the puzzled merchant muttered. "Seriously? Of all the things in this place he could steal, that guy chooses to take wooden figurines made in my image? I'm not sure if I should be mad or flattered."

Shaking his shell disapprovingly, the crab stepped around the shelf and stomped his way to the adventurer.

"Young man, you chose to steal from the wrong cra—huh?"

As the adventurer jumped in place from the fright of being caught, he turned and let the contents of his rucksack spill on the floor.

His bag was full of wooden crab figurines, and in his hand he held one of them that he was about to put inside the box from his rucksack.

"Wait, you're not taking figurines, you're adding more to my stock?!" said the utterly confused trader. "Now I really don't know if I'm supposed to be upset or thank you."

"I—I… I can explain!" the panicking young man said, clumsily trying to catch the spilling contents of his sack.

"I sure hope you can, but I don't think I can!" Balthazar exclaimed. "I mean, come on! If you guys really didn't like my crab figures you didn't really need to go to all this trouble to put them back behind my shell. Very thoughtful, but at the same time, very hurtful!"

"No… I… it's not…" the young man struggled to say before finally breaking down. "He promised me a set of rare armor, alright?!"

The crab frowned. "Who promised you what to do what?!"

"The… The Duke," the newbie said, gazing down at the floor in shame. "I was just so tired of getting my butt kicked everywhere I went. When this big guy at an inn told me about him, I just couldn't not check. I went and visited him."

"Oh, that guy again?" the merchant said, rolling his eyestalks. "What the hell is that guy's problem, whoever he is? I don't even know any dukes, why does he keep trying to mess with me? Did he give you a name, at least?"

"N-no," the fighter said. "He only wanted me to refer to him as The Duke."

"So pretentious," said the merchant crab.

"He said that if I did a small errand for him, I could have the most powerful set of armor I had ever seen."

Balthazar's eyes narrowed. "What errand?"

"He had this bag full of all these crab figurines, and he instructed me to come here to your bazaar and sneak them into wherever you kept all the others."

"What the hell?" said the crab. "This guy wants to mess with my business by… restocking my supplies?"

"I-I don't know either, I-I just agreed to do-do as he told me," the adventurer said between hiccups. "Please don't call the guards on me!"

"The guards? What would I even tell them?! 'Guards, arrest this guy for giving me free stuff'? Just get out of my sight, kid. And next time remember there's no such thing as free sets of rare armor. Choose who you trade junk with more wisely."

Without so much as a thanks, the young man bolted out of the bazaar, leaving the eight-legged merchant staring at the wood figurines with a puzzled expression.

"Boss?" Druma said, stepping out from behind the shelves and joining the crab. "Is anything wrong?"

"I don't know," Balthazar said as he picked up one of the carved figures the adventurer had dropped and looked at it closer. "Do these seem… off to you?"

The merchant flipped the figurine to his assistant.

"Uhhh… Boss? What is black goo on back of thing?"

"What black—Ah!"

As Balthazar turned the piece of wood to look at its back, he saw a piece of black tar attached to it, pulsing gently as if breathing. With a quick jerking motion of his pincer, he tossed the figurine on the floor, not wanting to touch it for a second longer.

He immediately recognized the thick ooze as the same corrupting substance holding the bone colossus together in Halls of Semla weeks before.

"Druma, go get—Oh, crabapples…"

One by one, the tiny crab figurines started coming to life, their wood limbs snapping free off their wooden shells and scuttling about on the floor, spreading all around the bazaar with an angry chittering.

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