Merchant Crab
Chapter 302: Exported Crab
Balthazar had a great many thoughts going through his mind as he soared through the skies of Heartha.
Thoughts such as…
Why did I go into that dungeon core?!
How far away from my home have I flown already?
Will I ever see my friends again?
Did I leave Madeleine’s oven on?
But as the wind whipped through his bristles and the freezing air above the clouds coated his chitin in tiny ice crystals, the merchant realized there was one far more pressing concern.
“I hate heights!” Balthazar shouted out to the bright blue sky as he continued hurtling like a meteor over the continent of Mantell with a small asteroid belt of chocolate chunks from the Semla Volcano orbiting around him.
Indeed, for a crab—especially one with such a fear of heights—Balthazar seemed to find himself flying far more often than most crustaceans.
At least there were no birds in sight anywhere around him, so that was a silver lining. They’d probably point and laugh at him if they saw him desperately flailing and shouting like that next to their flock.
The merchant couldn’t imagine having to handle that extra humiliation on top of his already dire situation.
Perhaps that was what he had to do—look on the bright side of things.
He had no control over his current predicament. He was powerless to stop his ascent and soon-to-be descent. So maybe it would be best to take a moment to enjoy the ride.
At least the weather was nice.
He had a great view of the land below.
He could even see a massive city surrounding a great lake at the heart of the continent. From up there, the houses looked like tiny tiles, with a handful of towering spires rising high above the rest.
That had to be Mantell’s capital that the merchant had heard and read so much about. His travels before winter had never actually taken him anywhere near it, but perhaps one day he would get to visit it.
It would certainly be an interesting place to see.
Plenty of business opportunities in the capital for sure.
To say nothing of the many new delicacies he would get to taste and…
“OH DEAR LORD, I’M GOING TO DIE!”
As it turns out, Balthazar was not very good at taking his mind off his problems and enjoying the moment.
Especially when that moment was leading to his guaranteed demise.
As the continental landmass disappeared from under Balthazar, leaving just the endless blanket of blue that was the ocean below him, the crab’s rise finally started to slow and shift into the inevitable fall.
“No, no, no! I’m not sure how old I am but I’m way too young to die!” the crustacean cried, flailing his many legs and pincers as the leather borders of his backpack flapped wildly in the wind over his carapace.
With tears pooling in front of his eyes—that were totally from the violent winds whipping against them and not from being so scared—Balthazar turned an eyestalk back to look at his magical Crab Bag.
“Get it together, Balthazar!” he said to himself. “There’s got to be something you can do. You’ve been in way worse situations before and gotten through them. Just pull some trick out of your bag again!”
With difficulty under the force of the rushing air as he accelerated downward, the merchant reached one pincer back to pull the backpack forward and reach inside it.
“Cree!” a tiny living rock chirped, its smiling face poking out from one of the bag’s side pouches.
“No, no, you stay in there where it’s safe, Pebbles!” Balthazar exclaimed, closing the pouch’s flap back down before returning to his rummaging.
The crab searched frantically through the magical interior of his bag, but all his claw kept bumping into were pieces of useless junk armor, leftover plates from past pastries, and the occasional piece of living room furniture.
“Come on, come on! I was sure I had a potion for this type of situation somewhere!” he bemoaned right before he felt the familiar clink of chitin against glass. “Aha!”
With great haste, the meteoric crustacean pulled a small bottle containing a milky white liquid from his bag.
“Yes! I knew I still had one of the lizardfolk’s Feather Potions left somewhere in here!”
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Using the tip of his pincer, Balthazar pulled the cork off the bottle. The stopper was nearly ripped away from his grasp and tossed away by the winds, but with some desperate grabbing and pinching, the crab managed to snag the cork again.
“Damn bouncy thing!” he said. “Perfectly good cork shouldn’t go to waste. In you go with the others.”
Shoving his claw in his bag, the merchant stored the little cork into a much larger bundle of tightly packed corks tied together inside heavy netting. Because even in that situation, Balthazar still remembered how insanely expensive brand new potion corks were in Ardville.
With trembling strain, he brought the potion to his mouthparts, doing his best not to let the whipping winds spill the liquid, and took a swig.
[Feather Potion]
[Items you carry are 50% lighter for 5 minutes]
“What?!” the crab yelled as he saw the system text describing the potion’s effect appear in his sight. “Oh, crabapples! That’s not the kind of feather effect I was expecting!”
With no sense of slowing down at all, Balthazar tossed the empty bottle in his bag too for later reuse. If there was even to be a later for him.
“I’ve flown past the whole continent, so all that is left now is the sea. Crashing into the water shouldn’t be that bad, right? I’m an aquatic creature after all,” the crab coped.
As his fall reached terminal velocity, the crustacean breached the line of white clouds and got to see what was below again—a large landmass covered in mostly lush green.
“Oh, never mind. I’m definitely going to turn into crab soup!”
Desperate to cancel his appointment with the ground, the merchant reached inside his bag again.
“Think, Balthazar! There has to be something,” he shouted as the ground below grew dangerously closer. “I don’t want to feel my precious chitin shattering like—Wait!”
With a sudden bout of inspiration, the falling crustacean dug deeper into his Crab Bag again, shoved aside a stack of pillows, a large hay bale, and a spare mattress before pulling the giant netted sphere of corks he had been saving for recycling halfway out of the backpack.
“Cork! It has to work. Please!”
He touched the tightly packed ball of cork and a familiar system prompt appeared in his eyes.
[Imbuing - Use Cork Floater?]
“Yes! I don’t have time for this! Yes!”
[Imbuing activated: Cork Floater absorbed]
[Imbuing - Cork]
[Duration: 2 minutes]
[Effect: Negates all fall damage. You also become slightly bouncier and smell faintly of wine cellars.]
In an instant, the crab saw his entire body turn light brown and become covered in tiny pores.
He also felt quite itchy, but that was a minor problem compared to the beach rapidly coming his way below.
“Ooooh craaa—OOMPH!”
The shoreline vanished beneath an explosion of sand.
The impact gouged an enormous crater into the beach, hurling dunes in every direction as though a small meteor had struck, and for a tiny instant, Balthazar’s corky body compressed beneath the force of the collision.
Balthazar’s landing looked like the end of the world, but it sounded like someone sitting down on an overstuffed sofa.
After a moment, the sand settled, leaving a cloud of dust still lingering in the air, and a pair of eyestalks popped out of the ground accompanied by a muffled noise.
“PFTAH!” the crab exclaimed as his mouth surfaced and spat out a few spoonfuls of sand. “Ow…”
Balthazar dislodged himself out of the sand with difficulty and pulled his backpack behind him.
“Argh! I’ve got sand in all my holes,” he said, tapping his cork shell. “And I’ve got a lot more holes than usual right now.”
Pulling his Crab Bag closer, the merchant checked one of its pockets.
“You’re alright in there, Pebbles?”
“Cree-cree!” the tiny rock chirped with a smile from her little side pouch.
“Good. Stay there. I have no idea where we are yet.”
Putting the bag back down, Balthazar climbed up the wet sand wall of the crater formed by his crash landing and popped both eyestalks over the edge.
He saw more sand, the sky, and water—he was by the shore of the sea, it would appear.
“Well, that doesn’t tell me much,” he said, using both pincers to pull himself over the edge and getting all the way to ground level.
He spun around on his eight legs to take a better look at his surroundings.
There was still a cloud of dust floating over the massive crater, but from all the crab could tell, there wasn’t much to see.
On one side he had the ocean—an endless blanket of blue with a cloudy sky above.
Turning the other way, he could only spot some small dunes with scarce grass covering them and more skyline. If there was something more beyond that beach, he wouldn’t know until he climbed them.
“Alright, I can figure this out,” Balthazar said to himself. “You’re a crab on a beach. Just use your natural instincts to figure out where you are and where to go, right?”
The crustacean took a deep breath in and lowered his eyestalks—because closing them isn’t really an option for a crab.
Easing his senses into the world around him, Balthazar allowed the sound of the waves to pass through him, the wind above to caress his rough cork chitin, and the salty smell of the beach to fill him with focus.
“Hmm… Yes,” he mumbled.
Raising his eyestalks, the crab looked up and calculated the position of the sun.
Then he dipped the tip of his pincer into his mouth to wet it before putting it up in the air to feel the breeze.
He pondered for a moment.
“Yes… It’s as I thought,” he said, nodding slowly. “I have no clue where I am.”
Kicking a small piece of driftwood with one of his legs, Balthazar turned around and climbed back down the crater to retrieve his backpack.
“Damn, this is itchy,” he said, scratching his corky underside just as it started to break apart.
After a few seconds, the cork imbuement shed away into nothing, leaving him gray and shiny as before.
“Oh, that is so much better,” Balthazar said with relief as he pulled the bag’s straps over his carapace.
As he turned to climb out of his landing crater, the crab spotted movement above through the dispersing mist and dust in the air, followed by a rough voice.
“Hey there, adventurer! Welcome to—”
The greeter cut himself short, and as Balthazar squinted his eyes against the brightness of the sun, he saw someone appear over the edge of the crater above—an old man.