Merchant Crab-Chapter 282: Thunking Along

A brittle bone snapped with a dry crunch beneath Joshua’s boot as he crossed the dusty floor of the dark, damp hall with a torch in hand, and he wondered once more what he was doing there.

He was no adventurer. He was just a simple farmer from the quiet fields outside Ardville.

Sure, he had always loved listening to the tales of the brave and famous adventurers who cleared dungeons and saved towns since he was a little kid. Did that mean he had the stomach for that life? No sir, it did not.

Even as a grown young man he still had trouble dealing with the rats that occasionally appeared inside his family’s barn, more than once finding himself climbing up a stool when they’d come scurrying out of some hole in the wall.

That was when he first had the idea of using something he loved together with something he hated in order to solve his problems and he began posting quest notes on the town notice board.

It cost him a large chunk of his allowance from working the farm, but soon enough he would see adventurers showing up looking for the quest to slay some barn rats and make some easy coin.

It started as something he did out of necessity and—truth be told—cowardice, but soon enough young Joshua was leaving pieces of cheese on the barn floor overnight just in hopes he’d have an excuse to call some aspiring adventurer the next day and see them in action.

There was just something magical to him about seeing those figures of legend come to his aid, swinging their weapons and casting their spells as the bright-eyed boy watched on with great glee.

He would never be a strong and brave adventurer himself, but at the very least he wanted to watch the real deal from the front row.

Another loose bone cracked under his foot as he continued walking forward.

Maybe that was just a little too front row now, however.

Joshua really had no business being where he was, inside Semla Dungeon, wandering around in the dark with a heavy pack on his back and no weapon of his own.

But one glance forward at the large lumbering figure ahead was all the farmer boy needed to remember why he was where he was, and that everything would be fine.

Thunk.

That was the name of the barbarian walking in front of him, not the sound of another object being stepped on, of course.

A towering woman with shoulders broader than a barn door, Thunk stomped her boots forward like she owned the dungeon and feared nothing and no one in it.

And she probably didn’t.

The barbarian adventurer was no stranger to fighting all sorts of beasts and monsters, and whatever foes came her way trying to make a meal out of her—or worse, the farm boy—tended to get a taste of the brute’s rage and meet a bloody end under her massive warhammer.

Tightly strapped to her back, the thing resembled more a sledgehammer than a proper adventurer’s weapon, like the kind of tool workers would use at a construction site to break rocks and drive down stakes and posts.

It was big, crude, and of not very fine make—just like its wielder.

They were a perfect match, Joshua felt.

Especially since she was extremely effective with it.

From the moment they stepped inside the Halls of Semla, Thunk was ready to bash skulls. And she got her wish in no time.

In the very first hall they walked through, they spotted a wardrobe—or as Thunk called it, “big vertical loot chest.”

She just had a special way with words.

Naturally, the barbarian walked up to the container and swung its door open without a second thought. Or any thought at all, most likely.

From inside the wardrobe jumped an old and dusty savage skeleton wearing nothing but a nightcap and swinging a dagger in each hand.

Joshua’s immediate reaction was, as it tended to be in such situations, to jump and let out a yelp.

Thunk’s response to the surprise attack was, as per usual, to smash the assailant.

Because when you’re a barbarian with a big hammer, every problem looks like a nail to you.

Before the savage undead could finish its first wail and reach the adventurer, she had already brought the warhammer down on its nightcap, the skull it rested on, and also the spine, ribcage, and even the hip bones beneath.

What had been a full skeleton a second prior, was now a pile of mostly shattered bones on the dusty floor of that hall.

And by the time Joshua lifted his still terrified gaze back up to the barbarian, she had already stepped over her defeated foe and was looking inside the wardrobe while scratching her chin.

“Empty,” she grunted. “Bah!”

That was Thunk—too brave to be scared by little things like an undead trying to stab her.

Or perhaps just too dumb? Joshua wasn’t entirely sure, but he chose to believe it was the former, rather than the latter.

With nothing shiny to loot, the lumbering adventurer casually carried on to the next hall.

For whatever reason, the big brute had developed a very peculiar taste when it came to what she looted now.

If it wasn’t shiny enough to make her big blue eyes widen, she was likely not going to be interested.

Which was best illustrated by her current choice of helmet.

Upon her head of blonde hair sat an open-face helmet, shiny as silver and with a single horn at its middle, right above the forehead. And not just any boring old horn either—it was a pearly white spiraling horn with a circle of tiny colorful gems at its base.

From the very moment Thunk first put it on her head, with a big grin on her face, she dubbed it the “Unicorn Helmet.”

Unfortunately, that piece of shiny headgear was not exactly… armor.

The “metal” of the helmet was actually just cheap leather covered in silvery foil paper.

The “gems” from which the horn sprouted were nothing more than tiny pieces of stained-glass.

And the pearly unicorn tusk was merely wood painted white.

Which was all easily explained by the fact that the adventurer had acquired the item not from loot, but rather as a prize from an “all you can drink” contest at an inn.

Joshua tried to explain the obvious to her at first, that such a novelty item was not suitable for combat, but Thunk’s stubbornness and conviction had a way to disarm the poor farmer boy, and he quickly decided to just let that go. After all, he wasn’t entirely sure the barbarian’s skull wasn’t already harder than any metal helmet anyway.

As the pair continued through the halls, they encountered more than just evil dead. Traps awaited them, too.

Thankfully, whoever had designed those security measures did not seem to account for someone the size of the barbarian currently stomping her way through that hall.

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Thunk’s boot landed on a raised floor tile, which sank down slightly with a click.

Joshua opened his mouth to yell a warning to the unwitting adventurer, but before he could get a word out, a perfectly camouflaged trapdoor had swung open beneath her.

Had anyone else—for example, a skinny farmer boy—been standing there, they would have no doubt plummeted down that trap to their certain doom.

But not Thunk.

The puzzled barbarian looked down at her left leg as if searching for the cause of a mild annoyance.

Instead of swallowing her whole, all the trapdoor had managed to trap was her leg. Part of it, at least.

Thunk’s thick and muscular thigh had gotten stuck in the hole, preventing her from going down any further.

With a grunt, the barbarian simply pulled her leg free and continued on without seemingly giving it another thought.

If she had even given one to begin with.

Being careful to walk around the hole and then follow Thunk’s exact steps so as not to trigger any traps himself, Joshua followed the woman into the next hall.

So focused was he on not stepping on the wrong stone tiles, that the boy nearly fell backwards when his forehead hit the middle of the barbarian’s back after she came to a sudden stop in the middle of a poorly lit section of the floor.

“Shiny!” she exclaimed, pointing forward at a brilliant chest that had a convenient torch on the pillar right above it, despite every other area of those halls having been devoid of any light so far.

“Wait, Thunk, it might be a tra—” Joshua tried to warn, but the adventurer had already reached forward to flip the container’s lid open.

As she did, a whirring noise came from behind the chest and then from above.

“Huh?” the woman said, spinning around to follow the sound.

Her companion did the same, just as he heard what sounded like a chain being released.

“Joshy!” Thunk shouted, unceremoniously pushing the boy’s head down with her meaty mitten just as a metal ball attached to a chain came swinging through where his brain matter had been half a second before.

The trap had missed the farmer, but not the barbarian.

With a crunch, the ball connected directly with the front of the barbarian’s helmet.

“Thunk! Are you alri—Oh…” said Joshua as he raised his head again. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Seemingly unharmed by it, the adventurer dislodged the swinging ball from the front of her helmet. The wooden horn had snapped from the impact, now hanging precariously by a few splinters.

“Aww…” the big woman said, making an ugly frown.

Joshua tried to comfort her for all of five minutes, before they reached the next hall and the barbarian forgot all her woes upon realizing they were entering what adventurers called a “boss room.”

“Loot!” the excited brute muttered in anticipation, hands firmly gripping her warhammer while looking around for something to smash.

“You dare trespass into my hall?” said a deep, guttural voice that seemed to echo from every direction at once.

Joshua immediately froze on the spot, every hair on his body standing up in fear.

“Hmm?” said Thunk, cocking an eyebrow as she looked around, more intrigued than worried.

“T-Thunk… I-I think we should turn around and go a different way,” said the frightened farmer boy.

“Bah!” exclaimed the barbarian, taking another step forward.

The voice spoke again. “Yoooou… Trespasser, should heed your companion’s words and leave these halls while you still can.”

The voice was haunting, like it dragged on each word, distant yet far too close for comfort. It was accompanied by a sort of unsettling gurgling that produced very unpleasant images in Joshua’s mind. Like someone trying to speak from under a thick layer of muck.

Thunk, on the other hand, seemed unbothered by any of that. With a shrug, she took a few more steps forward. Her adventure partner, scared of what might be ahead, but even more scared of being left behind on his own, followed behind.

A light, dim and flickering, came into view in the darkness ahead. Something was fluttering in front of it. Curtains.

It was as if someone had hung several layers of thin sheets in front of a candle lit in the middle of the hall, for dramatic effect.

And a dramatic effect it produced.

Projected on the curtains was a huge shadow. Not of a person, but of… something. Some kind of creature, partially translucent and its shape more of a blob than a body.

“I-I think… I think that’s a giant slime, Thunk,” Joshua whispered, his knees nearly clapping against each other.

“Slime?” the woman said with a raised brow.

She walked around the nearest curtain to look behind it, but all they found were more curtains, like a maze of fluttering white sheets, all with an intimidating shape projected on them by the light at the center of the room.

“Hahahaha!” the guttural voice laughed, nearly sending Joshua onto the floor from fear. “Come, adventurer! Meet your end and become my next meal. If you can find me before I find you, hahaha!”

The farmer boy cowered behind his barbarian, looking around in a panic, trying to find where the voice was coming from.

Meanwhile, Thunk idly scratched her chin in thought.

“Hmm,” she finally said, her gaze going to a nearby wall with something hanging from it.

She approached the wall and stood in front of a tapestry with a sort of banner pattern sewn into it. It was brown, green, and beige. Its shape was… interesting. Certainly not something Joshua recognized or even understood, but he wasn’t exactly the arts type. Being a simple farmer, he had no delusions of understanding the intricacies and subtle details of the fine arts like that.

“Ugly!” Thunk exclaimed, frowning at the vertical rug in front of her.

“Well,” said Joshua, “that’s just one way to look at it, Thunk. You need to learn to appreciate the—Hey, what are you doing?”

Using her massive hammer, the barbarian pulled the tapestry down from its walls, tearing it halfway to the floor.

“Scared?!” the oozing voice continued from a distance. “You should be! Come, face me if you da—”

With a sudden clank, all the lights of the halls around them came on at once, flooding the entire floor in a brightness that nearly blinded the unprepared farm boy.

As he squinted toward his travel partner, Joshua saw Thunk standing where the tapestry had been a moment before, her hand still wrapped around a lever as she looked around with mouth slightly ajar.

“Wow, this place looks a lot smaller and less scary with the lights on,” the young man said, slowly standing back straight.

“What just happened? Who turned the lights on?!” the mystery voice said, except now it sounded far less threatening and far more… concerned.

With no more darkness around them, Thunk marched straight ahead through the layers of curtains and toward the center of the hall with her warhammer in hand.

“Wait for me!” said her companion as he rushed behind her, backpack bouncing up and down as he ran.

“Ah, you have… found me… adventurer,” the voice said, no longer echoing.

Joshua peeked from behind the barbarian, and what he saw wasn’t exactly what he had expected.

It was indeed a slime, like a big blob of dark gray ooze, shifting and undulating threateningly, but it was barely the size of a goat, or a very large dog.

“Were you the one speaking?” he asked.

“Yes!” the slime exclaimed proudly. “I am Montgomery, the Great Destroyer!”

“You’re… not as big as you sounded.”

“It’s not about the size, it’s about how you use it!” the ooze exclaimed, its voice suddenly going far higher pitch than before. “Besides, I will be plenty big after I consume your big friend over there!”

Apparently done with the chit-chat, Thunk stepped forward with her hammer at the ready, her small eyes fixed on the shapes floating inside the translucent slime.

“Loot!”

“Aha! You have fallen for my trap, you simpleton!” Montgomery exclaimed.

The barbarian stopped right next to the creature, her brow creased inward as she looked down. “Huh?”

A thick layer of ooze was firmly attached to her right leg, halfway up her shin and slowly creeping up.

“You will be digested now, hahaha!” the medium-sized destroyer declared triumphantly.

“Tickles,” Thunk said with a childlike giggle.

“What?” the slime said blankly. “You’re… You’re supposed to be in agonizing pain.”

“Looooot!” the grinning adventurer exclaimed, raising her weapon above her head.

With a powerful swing, Thunk slammed the warhammer down on the talking ooze, producing a disgusting squelch.

“Hah! You fool! I have no bones, your blunt weapon is ineffective against my—Hey! What are you—Ouch! Stop it!”

Caring little for Montgomery’s claims, Thunk continued bashing away at it, her sledgehammer going up and down repeatedly as the barbarian giggled and cackled, and the snapped horn on her forehead bounced around wildly.

“Heh… Heheh… Squish, squash!”

Joshua watched on from a few paces away, almost feeling bad for the slime.

“Sto—Ow! I said—Ouch! Damn it, just take the loot and go! OWWW!”

Suddenly, a strange noise came echoing from the distance.

Joshua turned, looking for its source. It was like clacking. Skittering. The tapping of many pointy and hard legs rushing closer and closer.

“Thunk? Thunk?! I think there’s something coming!”

The barbarian stopped her squashing to look up, alerted to the noise too.

They both squinted at the fluttering curtains as a large, round shadow approached.

And then a giant crab carrying a backpack and wearing a wool hat along with a monocle over his left eye appeared.

“Balthazar?!” exclaimed Joshua.

“Crab??” said the confused barbarian.

“Oh, thank goodness you’re here, Balthazar!” exclaimed the high-pitched slime from under the weight of Thunk’s hammer. “Get this brute off me!”

The merchant chuckled.

“Alright, very impressive, but I think we’ve seen enough,” he said, smirking as he approached the tall adventurer.

“Huh?” Thunk said, scratching the top of her helmet. “Whatcha want??”

“I’m here to talk to you about the adventurer’s initiative.”