Merchant Crab-Chapter 228: Colossal Responsibility

“Can you maybe be a little more specific?” Balthazar said to the panicked adventurer. “What exactly are we all going to die to?”

“That… That… Thing,” the young man said, eyes glassy.

“Oooh, right, right. That really clears it up, thanks,” said the sarcastic crustacean.

As the stomping and rumbling grew closer, Jack stepped forward and unsheathed his greatsword, waiting to meet the challenge.

“Whatever it is, we’ll take it straight on,” he said with a grin.

The crab frowned at him.

“Do I have to remind you of how you all had your backsides thoroughly handed to you back there by one old skeleton?”

“Hey, look at me,” said Rye, kneeling down in front of the lost adventurer and grabbing him by the shoulders. “Breathe in, calm yourself, and tell us what happened from the beginning. We can help, but we need to know what we’re dealing with.”

The nervous warrior swallowed, nodded at the archer, and tried to still his breathing.

“I… I was wandering around the halls with my light in one hand and my sword in the other,” he explained. “I was starting to think this place was a complete bust, I wasn’t finding anything to loot at all. That’s when I ran into this old skeleton moving around in the dark. It was carrying something on its back. I don’t know what it was, but it looked important, valuable. It was this sort of big… white orb?”

“Did you just say orb?!” Balthazar exclaimed, remembering the system message from earlier about the floor’s power source.

“Keep going,” Rye said, one hand resting on the other adventurer’s shoulder. “What happened next?”

“I was excited to finally get a chance to try out my new weapon and get something valuable, so I… charged in,” the young man said, shrugging. “The sword cut right through the bones. I thought I had slain it. An easy win. But then something started happening to the bones.”

The ground was shaking harder now. Whatever was out there looking for them was getting closer.

“Might want to tell your story faster, kid!” Balthazar said.

The adventurer looked over his shoulder nervously before resuming talking at a much faster rate.

“Something was wrong. The sword started vibrating, shaking with the bones of the skeleton. I felt a sting in my hand and I let it go. It was like the skeleton broke apart, but in reverse. It just sort of… imploded. Other skeletons appeared from the darkness, coming straight for me, but when they got closer to the first one they started getting sucked in, like it was a vortex. The mass of bones started growing and growing around the sword.” His eyes were getting teary as his voice started to fail him. “I didn’t know what to do. I turned around and fled. I lost my light yesterday, been wandering in the darkness ever since, looking for the exit, but that thing has been stalking me the whole time.”

A rattling of what sounded like hundreds of bones came from the edge of the darkness surrounding them.

“When that explosion lit up the place, I saw you guys and came running, but so did that thing. I’m… I’m sorry, I didn’t know where else to go.”

“It’s alright,” Rye said to the boy while clasping his shoulder and nodding. “You’re safe with us now.”

Balthazar’s eyestalks tilted up slowly as his mouth dropped open.

“I don’t think any of us is safe right now, Rye.”

A white mass of bones emerged from the darkness, twisted and enveloped in a black smog that swirled around it like evil tendrils. The giant abomination was made up of the remains of countless other skeletons, their bones broken apart and pulled into a vague humanoid form around a pulsing heart of oozing muck, with a blacksteel sword sticking out at its very center.

A ball of multiple skulls at the very top formed the vague shape of a head, which turned down, every empty eye socket staring at the eight mortals.

The monstrosity let out a haunting wail, part mad anger, part pained suffering. Every time a bone broke and started falling from the main body, something would make it twist unnaturally and be rapidly pulled back into the main mass to be absorbed into the rest. It was as if every piece of it wanted to fall apart and die, but its corrupted core was holding every skeleton together, forcing it to keep moving forward.

Whatever that creature was, it felt wrong. More so than anything the crab had ever seen in his life.

He fumbled to grab his monocle without daring to take his eyes off the amalgam of bones, his jaw still dropped in shock and a reasonable amount of disgust.

As he looked through the lens, it became clear that even the system agreed that whatever that thing was, it wasn’t right. The text above it flickered and shifted rapidly between strange characters before settling into an ominous line.

[Bone Colossus - Level ?0*Z%]

That can’t be a good sign…

The young warrior crawled away on his hands and knees, tears now running down his cheeks. “No, no, no. Not again!”

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Rye grabbed the boy by the arm and pulled him until they were facing each other.

“Go,” the archer said, shoving a torch into his hand. “See those markings on that pillar? Follow the arrows to get out of here. The lower the number, the closer you are to the exit.”

The lost adventurer managed to nod his head shakily before darting off into the darkness, his faint torchlight disappearing as he sprinted away.

“Good call,” Leah said to Rye, her hand tightly wrapped around her axe. “He was clearly not going to be of any help, better to get him out of here.”

“Alright!” Jack shouted, his Sword of Heavy Might held up, tip pointed at the bone colossus shambling toward them. “Finally a challenge worth using my—”

A limb made entirely of broken bones and as thick as a tree trunk swung out of the darkness, coming right for the swordsman’s side.

With a start, Jack attempted to turn to meet the strike, but the weight of his sword made his movements too slow.

The colossus's arm slammed onto his side with brutal force, throwing the naked adventurer through the air like a rag doll as his greatsword clattered heavily onto the floor, until he landed in a heap several paces away, nearly out of the light’s reach.

Leah bolted to him recklessly, abandoning any sense of battle stance. “Jack! Get up, Jack!”

More rattling sounded from the darkness all around them, and in an instant, more savage skeletons started pouring in from every direction. As the young woman reached her friend, a handful of the undead cut her path back to the main group.

Leah tightened her grip around the axe in her right hand and pulled a wooden shield from her back with the left one as she planted herself in front of Jack’s crumpled figure.

“Jack, you better not be dead over there, or I’m gonna kill you!”

As more and more skeletons continued to emerge from the darkness, the bone colossus towering above them let out a roar, pulling its attention away from its first target and back onto the main group—its empty gaze setting specifically onto the crab.

“Not good,” Balthazar said. “Not good at all. We need to—”

Another roar echoed through the halls, but this time from behind the merchant. Before he could even turn, Balthazar saw a shadow pass over him as Bouldy rushed forward.

The golem stomped rapidly toward the bone colossus with a firm expression on his face that was a far cry from his usual friendly smile—he looked angry.

The two giants collided as the colossus’s attempt at another swing with its bone-arm was met by Bouldy’s hands, which held back the strike with a loud crunch. The bodyguard braced and buckled under the sheer force of the impact as the ground beneath his feet began to crack.

It only dawned on Balthazar how enormous the colossus really was when he saw Bouldy standing in front of it, dwarfed by the abomination's size, and looking almost like a child next to an adult.

Bouldy gritted his stone teeth as he held back the monstrosity’s arm, his entire body shaking but the resolve in his eyes unwavering.

Balthazar couldn’t help but notice the golem’s lack of his signature word despite all the grunts and roars he had let out.

That thing was no friend, and even Bouldy knew that.

While the vile mass of corrupted bones and dark ooze had been engaged by the stone guardian, the other minor skeletons were still freely shambling toward everyone else.

Leah was swinging her axe wildly, trying to keep the skeletons away from Jack as they began to pound her shield with their own weapons, making her flinch under each strike.

Rye moved near one of the hall’s pillars and tried to provide support to the fighter from a distance with his arrows, but they were doing little more than whooshing between the ribs and other gaps between their bones.

Balthazar turned around to face his two other companions.

Druma was practically hugging his staff, a terrified frown on his face.

“Druma want to help, boss,” he said, looking up at the crab. “But Druma’s stick has no magic left.”

“I know, buddy,” Balthazar said. “Blue, you—Where the hell is Blue?”

A screech came from above and the merchant looked up to see his drake soaring past everyone’s heads, making a beeline for the giant bone mass.

She hovered over the colossus and the golem, who were still engaged in their measuring of forces, breathed in deeply, and with an ear-piercing battle cry unleashed her fire onto the abomination from above.

Despite the recklessness of her act, Balthazar held out hope for a moment that the magical fire would tip the scales of the fight in their favor. But that hope only lasted a few seconds.

As the rain of blue flames died down, charred bones were quickly covered in the black sludge from the sword’s corrupted heart, returning them to their previous state and leaving the bone colossus completely unfazed, its pressure on Bouldy still just as strong.

Blue, having put all she had into that one torrent of fire, came plummeting from above, landing clumsily on the floor between Bouldy and Balthazar, where a dozen undead quickly surrounded her.

Savage skeletons were now also closing in on the crab and goblin too.

“Boss?” Druma said with a whimper, his eyes wide and teary. “Druma scared of skeletons. Druma want to be brave, but Druma don’t know how.”

Balthazar’s gaze scanned the hall around him.

The army of skeletons encircling everyone. The corrupted colossus about to overpower his golem friend. The drake desperately swatting her tail at her assailants. The three adventurers fighting for their lives.

Maybe that lost adventurer had been right. They were all going to die.

And it’s all my fault. I brought everyone here.

The crab had never been one to care much about the lives of adventurers. Plenty of them died out there every day. It was just the way things were. They signed up for that life, they knew the risks. Some were probably too dumb to know it, but that was still on them.

But this time, Balthazar felt guilty. No, not just guilty. He felt responsible.

The big, famous crab everyone had grown to look up to and admire. His reputation carried weight, his words were not just heard, but listened to. Which had been great for him as a merchant.

But he was more than that now.

Everyone in that hall had in some way or another walked into that place following him as the one in charge. As the one who definitely knew what he was doing. As a leader.

I never wanted to be anyone’s leader! the crab argued to himself.

But looking around at their current situation, he realized it did not matter anymore. He led them there, into their doom. This was on him.

He was no longer that lone crab who was only responsible for himself. He was responsible for every single life present in that hall.

Balthazar felt the heavy weight of it on his carapace. The weight of responsibility. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com

But what could he do? He was just a chatty crab, barely capable of defending himself. Those things couldn’t even be persuaded through words.

He was not a fighter, or some powerful being capable of wiping out all those skeletons in one fell swoop.

He was no hero.

Balthazar’s eyestalks frowned with newly found resolve, and he clicked the latches on his backpack with his pincers, letting it drop to the floor.

“But what I am is a damn good merchant!”

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