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Staring at the words in his eyes, and then at the iron ingot he was holding, Balthazar weighed his options. His chitin was strong, but definitely not as strong as the iron he had in front of him.

But what exactly would this upgrade do for him? And how come this strange system of menus and prompts always seemed to pop up with something new exactly at the most convenient of times?

Deciding to set aside all those questions for the moment, he confirmed the upgrade, hoping to at least get one answer out of it.

[Imbuing rank D required for upgrade]

“Oh, come on! Really?” Balthazar said with frustration.

Checking his list of skills, he found the Imbuing skill and opened it.

[Imbuing: F]

[The ability to infuse materials into other objects in order to upgrade them.]

[Next Rank Requirements: Level 5, Intelligence 17]

[Upgrade]

Balthazar noticed that to upgrade that skill, he would need to get exactly one more point of Intelligence. That felt annoyingly specific. What if he wanted to invest into Strength now?

After all, one of his main concerns right then was how powerless he had felt against the spider. All his Intelligence served him of little in that moment. Maybe that’s why most of those adventurers who invested heavily into that stat were magic users of some type, so they could rely on magic to protect them.

He had noticed an arcane skill before, which unlocked the use of mana, but he had no interest in messing with such forces, so there was no chance he would invest in it. He had seen his fair share of mages, and they hadn’t left the best impression.

Jumping to one of his other skills, Slashing Weapons, at rank C, he checked the requirements for the next rank. Strength 5 and Agility 5. That was even more out of his reach at that moment. It was almost like that annoying system was trying to force him into making decisions.

He only had one available attribute point to use from reaching level 7, thanks to his heroic boot throwing contribution in the fight against the spider. Looking at his options and his now piqued interest about the iron ingot, Balthazar conceded that, once again, Intelligence was the way forward. He was destined to be a genius, so it seemed.

Balthazar leveled up his Intelligence from 16 to 17 and used his one skill point to upgrade the Imbuing skill.

[Status]

[Name: Balthazar] [Race: Crab] [Class: Novice Merchant] [Level: 7]

[Attributes]

[Strength: 3] [Agility: 2] [Intelligence: 17]

[Skills]

[Medium Armor: B] [Speech: B] [Fishing: C] [Slashing Weapons: C] [Reading: C] [Imbuing: D]

Returning to the ingot in his left pincer, he brought up the upgrade prompt once again, and selected yes.

[Hammer required]

Balthazar groaned, while turning around to look through a nearby crate for a hammer he remembered having somewhere.

What was the logic in needing a hammer for that? Not that he really knew how this imbuing thing was supposed to work or even what it was, but it felt like he was being mocked. And why couldn’t that thing just tell him everything all at once? It was always dripping information to him, as if he was too slow to comprehend more than one thing at a time. He was a smart crab, and he didn’t appreciate this system’s constant attempts at treating him like he was dumb.

“Alright, now how do I use this thing?” the crab said, pulling a ball-peen hammer from the crate and holding it upside down in his pincer.

Balthazar awkwardly poked the iron ingot with the bottom of the hammer’s handle.

“I thought I had already established my appendages weren’t made to use stupid human tools, damn it!”

Deciding to give the whole thing one last go, he brought the prompt up once more, and confirmed the upgrade while holding the ingot in one pincer, and the hammer in the other—still upside down.

The Iron Ingot vanished without a trace or sound. It simply was there one moment, and gone the next. Balthazar looked around, under himself, and even up at the sky, but no sign of it. Then a new notification appeared in front of his eyes.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

[Right Claw upgraded to [Iron Claw] (+5 damage)]

Balthazar looked at his right claw, still holding the hammer. To his surprise, it was now shinier, with a metal finish to it, his pincers looking sharper and pointier. He dropped the hammer and gave it a couple of clacks, feeling the tension in its grip. It felt more powerful, and he liked it.

Rushing to a bush on the side of the road, he picked a thicker branch in it, and with a quick snap, broke it in two with little effort.

After a few more snapped branches, his attention turned to something that would provide a harder challenge: small loose stones from the road.

Placing a rock the size of an apple between his pincers, he squeezed. Despite a moderate amount of effort required, he had smashed it into dust and tiny fragments.

“This is awesome!”

The crab went on to snap, cut, and crush all sorts of things with great joy for the next few hours.

***

Balthazar sat on a rug by the road, under the afternoon sun, watching the wild rabbits running and jumping across the plains, a cracking sound making them stand up and perk their ears every few seconds. The sound came from the crab’s right claw every time he cracked open another walnut.

He did not actually like walnuts, they were dry and tasteless. But he took great joy in cracking them open.

As he cracked each, he would then carefully place their contents inside a little baggie, which he intended to give to Madeleine next time she visited. He had read a recipe for a type of cake in her book that required walnuts as one of its ingredients, so he thought it would be a nice offer.

Luckily for him, you could always trust an adventurer to take the strangest of things from a bandit hideout, even a huge sack of walnuts. Maybe the fact that Balthazar kept buying their stuff was part of the problem, further enabling their weird behavior, but so long as the merchandise kept moving, who was he to question the invisible pincer of the market?

Happily continuing to crack nuts open, Balthazar looked in the town\'s direction and spotted a figure walking down the road. He was used to seeing lots of adventurers walk up and down that road every day, but something about this figure struck him as different.

As the man approached, the first thing that stood out were his clothes. Not a single piece of armor, nor magical robes of any kind. Instead, he wore bright clothing of clearly exquisite quality. Reds mixed with yellows and blues, their silky material immaculate, without a hint of wear or tear. On his head he wore a yellow cap, adorned with a feather. He was clearly not coming from field labor, or heading out for monster slaying.

Once close enough, Balthazar looked him over through his monocle.

[Level 12 Merchant]

“Good afternoon. What can—”

“So you must be the talking crab I’ve been hearing so much about,” the man said, completely ignoring Balthazar’s first words.

“And you—”

“This must be your little trading post,” he continued, interrupting once more, while looking down at the trinkets on the rug and over to the shelves and tables displaying multiple types of items. The man scoffed loudly.

“Yes, I am, and yes, it is. And who are you?” Balthazar finally asked, with his last remaining shred of tolerance.

The man drew an arrogant smile on his lips, framed by a thin pencil mustache. “I am Antoine, and as you must know by now, I am the largest trader of goods in Ardville, owner of Antoine’s Emporium, as well as the local master of the Merchant’s Guild.”

“Never heard of you,” Balthazar said, with a dry tone, before casually crushing another walnut with his pincer.

The smile vanished from the merchant’s face for a moment, before his previous smug air returned. “Unsurprising. Not much culture can be expected from a crab.”

“Been doing fine so far without that knowledge,” Balthazar responded, while grabbing one of the coin purses behind him, opening it, and casually starting a count of its contents. He found that was the perfect time to perform his daily earnings count.

“Right,” Antoine began, a hint of annoyance in his voice, “that was part of the reason I decided to come down here myself. I wanted to see this so-called merchant crab with my own eyes, and try to understand why our town’s great adventurers would lower themselves to do business with a wild creature.”

“Maybe it’s my charming personality. Maybe it’s my convenient location. Who knows.”

The man was no longer smiling. “I assure you, if you ever were to visit the emporium in town, you’d understand how none of… this can really compare to a proper fine establishment. Not that the guardsmen would ever allow you through the gates, of course. Any unpleasant creatures attempting to enter the city would promptly be dealt with.”

“Oh no, how will you ever go back home now,” Balthazar said, in his most casual and in no way sarcastic tone, while closing the coin purse.

The smugness had mostly vanished from the merchant’s face, quickly being replaced with irritation.

“Look here, crab. I don’t know how you came to be a talking crab, and neither do I care to know. But what does concern me, as the Guildmaster of the merchants in this region, is how a mere crab came to possess money, purchase goods, and set up a trading operation out of a… a pond, on the side of a road!”

“That’s simple. You see,” Balthazar began, no longer willing to play nice, “the starting money and items I got off a pesky, annoying human who thought he could step on me, after I gave his leg a good snap with this here claw.”

He showed the man his iron claw, giving it a couple of audible snaps.

“As for everything you see around you, that was mostly built by my loyal assistant,” Balthazar said, while turning to face the central area of his pond. “Hey, Druma, come here for a moment.”

The goblin put down the saw and plank he was working with and trotted his way to them.

“This is Antoine, a fellow merchant. Say hello to Antoine, Druma.”

“Hello,” the goblin said, with a wave and a wide grin that revealed a set of yellow, serrated teeth.

“A… a goblin?!” the man said, holding his hand up in front of his mouth in a dramatic manner, a mix of horror, outrage, and disgust going through his face. “That is a vile a creature, a menace! How dare you bring it to my presence!”

“I don’t know. You seemed to have no problem bringing yourself to mine.”

“I came here,” Antoine started, while taking two steps back, “thinking that, perhaps, a creature who had developed the ability to speak could be reasoned with. But I see now that was foolish thinking. You are a wild beast, and this little circus you call a business is an affront to all the fine merchants of Ardville. Not to mention how dangerous it is to be allowing wild beast such as goblins and openly violent crabs to prowl this close to town!”

“Right. I’m sure this is not because you’re feeling a cut in your profits when all these adventurers get to your store with much less loot than they used to, is it?”

The merchant huffed, his mustache twitching slightly.

“I will give you this warning only once, crab,” Antoine said, wagging a finger in front of his own face. “Cease this… this poor excuse of a trading post at once. You are not a member of the Merchants Guild and thus are operating illegally. Ignore my words and I will have this place cleared of your presence.”

Leaving no room for response, the fuming merchant turned around and started walking back up the road at a fast pace, only slowing to take a quick glance from the corner of his eye and make sure the goblin was still standing next to the crab.

Druma stared at him while scratching his head under his hat, as the man made his way up the road, swaying his arms in an exaggerated manner.

“Druma don’t like funny looking human, boss.”

“Me neither, buddy. Me neither,” Balthazar said. “And something tells me he’s going to be a pain in the shell soon enough.”