Merchant Crab-Chapter 283: The Idea

Bouldy and Amber sat in their usual hiding spot, surrounded by large boulders and behind some bushes, where they wouldn’t easily be spotted by anyone approaching from the road.

The girl sat cross-legged on the ground, still wearing her straw summer hat despite the cold snow around them, her mouth full of a pastry and another in hand, ready to follow. Bouldy watched from above, a smile on his rocky expression.

“Hmmm! These mango treats are delicious!” the young adventurer said to the golem. “You know, I had never tried mangoes before. I wanted to go with Jasper to Marquessa once, but he said it was too dangerous and that he would take me one day once I was higher level.”

“Friend,” the stone giant said with a nod.

Amber sighed. “I wish I could congratulate and thank Madeleine for these. I’m so tired of staying in hiding. Why can’t we all just get along?”

Bouldy tilted his head. “Friend?”

“No… No,” the girl replied. “It’s not that simple. Madame Ruby takes her mission very seriously, as do all the other birdwatchers. We’d never betray her trust.”

“Friend,” the golem declared, crossing his arms.

“I know, Bouldy. I know. It’s the others who would need convincing. Even Madame Ruby. If only they got to know Balthazar. If they got to know you. They would understand you guys are alright, that you’re not the enemies, and can be trusted. But… My mentor isn’t big on trusting locals.”

The girl’s head dropped slightly, and she stared at the ground for a moment. The rock construct frowned and gently touched the side of her shoulder with the tip of his massive finger.

“Friend…”

“Ah, don’t mind me,” Amber replied, looking back at him and trying to perk up with a smile. “Go on, finish telling me about what our favorite crab has been up to! You said he has finally found a couple of adventurers to go into the mines with him. A knight and a barbarian, wasn’t it? So what is—”

A branch snapped in the distance and the two friends turned their heads in the direction of the sound.

Amber rushed climbing up the boulder behind her in order to look toward the Black Forest.

“Oh no,” she whispered, her straw hat peeking over the stone. “It’s Flint!”

“Friend?” the intrigued golem asked.

“The other birdwatcher I told you about before,” the girl said, sliding back down and quickly packing away the sweets Bouldy had brought her. “The one I don’t like. And who also doesn’t like me. Or most other people, for that matter. The point is, he’s coming over! I don’t know why, but he’s coming, and he can’t catch us here chatting and sharing pastries, or I’ll be in big trouble!”

The crab’s companion scratched the top of his head with a finger. “Friend?”

“I don’t know!” exclaimed the panicking girl. “You can’t slip away back to the pond now, he’d definitely see your big head passing. Just… just… hide somehow!”

“Friend?”

“Just… sit still and pretend to be a rock!”

Bouldy’s stony brow furrowed. “Friend…”

“I know you are!” Amber said with a whispered groan. “Just be a very still and quiet rock!”

“Who are you whispering to?” a blunt, dry, and rather unfriendly voice asked.

“Flint!” the girl exclaimed with a start. “I-I didn’t hear you coming there!”

The man was lean, his jaw sharp enough to cut marble, and he wore layered mantles over thick leather armor, including a pair of long and sturdy gloves, all in dark gray that seemed to drain the world around him of color and joy.

“You’re not a very good lookout if you can’t tell when someone is coming, are you?” the adventurer said with a superior glare in his eyes and disdain in his tone. “But you didn’t answer me—who were you whispering to?”

Amber stared wide-eyed at Flint as he circled around her, feeling too scared to look up and give away who she was hoping he wouldn’t notice.

“No one!” she said, trying desperately to keep the man’s focus on her. “I was just… talking to myself. You know how it is, too many hours spent on my own up here doing watch duty, I have to keep my head busy somehow, heh.”

Flint stopped and narrowed his eyes at her. A few paces above his head was a sitting and very still golem, looking down and smiling. Thankfully, Bouldy’s body really looked like any of the other boulders around them when he curled up into a ball like that. Which made sense, considering he was technically a boulder too.

“Are you losing your marbles, rookie?” the older birdwatcher said. “You know, if you’re not fit for the job anymore, it’s my duty to inform Ruby.”

“No,” Amber replied. “I’m fine, just keeping myself entertained while time passes, is all. There’s nothing to report to Madame Ruby.”

“Speaking of reporting,” the other adventurer said, “Do you have anything to report?”

“Hmm, nope! Nothing relevant’s been happening lately!” the nervous girl responded quickly.

“Is that so?” Flint hissed. “Because our guys posted in Ardville have just informed Ruby that two adventurers are gearing up to go into the second floor of the Semla Dungeon with the crab. One would think you, the one given the task of watching over that merchant, would know about this before anyone else.”

Amber fought back the urge to dry swallow.

“Oh, right, that. Yeah, I knew about it.”

“Yet you just said nothing about it when I asked?” the other birdwatcher said, his small eyes squinting into tiny beads.

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“I… I don’t owe you any explanations, Flint!” the younger adventurer said, gathering all of her courage, despite the tremble in her voice. “Madame Ruby tasked me with watching and reporting to her, not to you. Maybe I ought to be the one informing her that you have been butting in here instead of doing your own job!”

Flint’s already thin lips tightened further around his teeth with scorn, turning nearly as gray as his clothes.

“I don’t trust you, rookie,” he said menacingly, raising a gloved hand to waist height, fingers curled into a claw. “I think you’re up to something. And if you are, and I find out, Ruby and Jasper will be the least of your troubles.”

The adventurer wiggled his clawed fingers idly and Amber could feel the smallest of rumblings coming from the gravel and pebbles under her feet.

She knew what the geomancer was doing. He was trying to scare her by displaying his control over earth elements. But despite his much higher level than hers, the young alchemist was not afraid. Madame Ruby had no tolerance for infighting among birdwatchers, and despite all his bravado, Amber knew Flint would not dare go against their mentor or Jasper, if not out of respect, out of self-preservation.

Although, if he was to find out and tell their superiors that she had been sharing crumpets with their target’s bodyguard, that might… change things.

“Noted, Flint,” the girl said, trying to set those thoughts aside and remain assertive. “Now buzz off before your little quake starts attracting attention and blows our cover, yeah?”

Flint dropped his clawed hand and the vibrating stopped. He scoffed and without another word walked away with an air of someone convinced they had won that confrontation.

Amber let her shoulders slump forward and breathed a sigh of relief once the other adventurer was far enough away.

“Phew, that was close,” she said, turning back to Bouldy.

“Friend?” the golem asked, a slight frown of concern on his face as he uncurled from his upright fetal position.

“Oh, don’t worry, that was nothing,” the girl replied. “Flint is just like that, an unpleasant paranoid who never liked me from the start. He’s always looking for reasons to pick on me. Honestly, I think he’s just jealous because he thinks I’m Madame Ruby’s favorite, or something.”

“Friend…” said the talking rock.

The birdwatcher nodded. “Ah, yes… Flint’s class is geomancer.”

“Friend?”

“Right. That means he can control earthly elements, like dirt, sand, and… rocks. But don’t worry! He’s all show! For all his boasting, I know for a fact he always had trouble manipulating anything bigger than a stone small enough to fit in his palm. At your size, you have nothing to fear from him!”

The golem looked down at the girl, who was offering him a comforting smile, and he smiled back, albeit hesitantly.

“Friend…”

***

“Are you guys sure you don’t want to stay a few more days?” Balthazar asked, standing outside the gate to his bazaar as a convoy of carriages waited above on the road. “Madeleine is making a ton of sweets for this Festus thing. I’m still not sure what it is exactly, but it seems to involve copious amounts of baking and sugar, so it’s got my interest!”

Olivia smiled at him as she tightened the buckles of her traveling gear.

“No, we really can’t,” she said. “My aunt needs us back home as soon as possible. To be honest, we should have left already, but I really wanted to see that walking wart Antoine be escorted out in shackles to his one-way trip to Hollow Island. I’ll sleep better now knowing he didn’t slip out of your town’s jail again.”

“Yeah, I threw an egg at his head on his way to the guarded carriage that took him,” Suze said, grinning with pride.

The merchant was glad to see her mischievous glee and attitude had not been affected by her brush with death.

“Waste of an egg that could have been better used in some baking, I say!” Balthazar exclaimed with a chuckle.

“Meh, it was rotten anyway,” the little rascal said with a shrug. “What about you? Are you sure you don’t need our help going down into those mines?”

The crab peered at the two girls and their modest levels and smiled. It really was a shame that non-adventurers didn’t seem to level up like users of the system did, but in that one case, maybe it was for the better, for their safety.

“Nah, I’ll be alright, don’t worry,” Balthazar said. “I’ve already found some backup.”

“Are you sure you’ll be alright?” Olivia asked, peeking over the crab’s shell and inside the bazaar, where a knight and a barbarian were already waiting for him. “Those two don’t seem like the most… reliable.”

Balthazar chuckled.

“Do I have to remind you that when we once tried to sneak into a manor, you charged in kicking the front door and shouting for the guards to come and fight you? We’ll be fine, don’t worry. In fact, I could ask you the very same thing, considering your choice of company.”

This time it was the crab who peeked over her shoulder and toward the two adventurers waiting next to one of the carriages.

One was a girl that looked just like any other adventurer, wearing a mix of light and heavy armor along with a rusty mace on her waist and a bow on her back. The other was a young man wearing nothing beyond a loincloth and a dented horned helmet, along with a huge sword strapped behind him that made his back curve forward in an awkward stance.

“You know we can hear you from up here, right?” Leah yelled from the road.

The crab grinned and waved at them.

“You guys look good! Your friend’s been working out?” he shouted back while nodding at Jack.

“Yeah, he’s found a new obsession in workout routines,” the fighter replied with a slight roll of her eyes. “Got the idea of lifting boulders every morning from your golem, says he needs new ways to build strength to keep using his sword.”

Balthazar gazed at the scrawny human and stifled his laughter.

“Took him a while to think of the obvious, huh?”

Jack uncrossed his arms and groaned.

“Can we hurry up and hit the road? I wanna see if it’s true that Marquessa is the only place in the continent where you can buy ostrich eggs. Can you imagine the amount of protein in those?!”

“Wait for me!” Madeleine called, running out from inside the bazaar with a stack of paper boxes in her arms.

After several minutes of goodbyes, the baker listing all the sweets she had packed for them, and the Marquessian girls insisting that Madeleine should come and visit their city one day, the convoy started its journey back across the continent.

“Alright, next order of business, then!” Balthazar said, stepping back inside the bazaar and addressing the two adventurers and one farmer waiting for him. “The mines! Are you guys ready? You got the idea of what my plan is?”

“Uuuuhh…” grunted Thunk, scratching under ear and looking at the crab with mouth half open and likely just a few seconds away from producing a line of drool.

“I… I think Thunk would benefit from you explaining the plan again,” said Joshua, grimacing from his seat next to the barbarian. “With maybe fewer words? And perhaps some drawings, if you could provide some?”

Balthazar sighed and pinched the space between his eyestalks.

“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?” he mumbled under his breath before lifting his gaze to the other adventurer. “What about you, Hannabeth?”

The knight, who was facing an empty shelf while stroking the chin of her helmet, turned with a start at the mention of her name.

“Hmm? Huh? What? Oh! Pardon me, good merchant! I seemed to have lost myself in thought. Yes, I would be delighted to accept some tea, thank you.”

The crab felt his will to live slip away like the custard in an overfilled éclair when held in his massive pincers.

“Greetings,” a deep and familiar voice said from the entrance.

The eight-legged merchant pivoted in order to see who had arrived—a tall and muscular individual with grayish green skin stood by the gate with two others behind him.

“Khargol?” Balthazar said with surprise. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

The orc stepped inside, wearing his usual stern frown.

“I have heard about your mines and your plan to explore them,” the chieftain said. “And I have come to discuss matters with you.”

The puzzled crab stared up at him.

“Uhh… What matters are you looking to discuss?” he said with a cocked eyestalk. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

“I wish to join your incursion.”