Balthazar remained immobile, staring at the bright, glowing object floating in front of him, one arm still outstretched, as if frozen in time, his eyes dited, his mouth slightly ajar, as the unfurled roll’s light tio shine over him, with a soft, low humming sound.

  He was in utter shock. It was simply unbelievable, yet… there it was. How could it possibly be? The fusion and questions bubbling up his thoughts into a turmoil, until they finally reached the breaking point and he broke out of his catatonic state.

  “Since when I freaking read?!” the crab finally said, an involuntary squeal ing out of him as his tensed up apperetched out in an expression of exasperation.

  Balthazar was sure he had learned many useful things in his life, such as how to roll perfectly round balls of sand, or the most effit way to sli apple with his pincer, but reading was absolutely not one of them, yet now he found himself perfectly able to read the words right in front of him as if it was the most natural thing ever. Well, it damn well wasn’t.

  “And what’s this nonsense supposed to be about anyway?” Balthazar wondered, approag the glowing scroll in order to ihe words closer. “Attribute points?”

  As he he mysterious item, a few more lines appeared on the surface. Balthazar raised his eye stalks in curious surprise ahe new words. Still without a clue how he was doing that.

  [Scroll of Character Creation]

  [Allocate attribute points: 10]

  [Name: Balthazar]

  [Race: Crab]

  [Css: Undefined]

  [Strength: 3] [+]

  [Agility: 2] [+]

  [Intelligence: 1] [+]

  He read the lines owice, and then again. Not because he was finding his newly found reading abilities fun, but because he was trying to process what all that was supposed to mean. And maybe also because he was finding reading to be kind of fun.

  “Balthazar,” he said, pointing at himself with his right cw, “that’s me. And I am certainly a crab, that much I know. I don’t know what a ‘css’ is, but apparently her does this thing.”

  The crab scratched his with his pincer, p on the rest of the text.

  “Strength, agility, and intelligence,” he repeated to himself, “yep, those are all things I have. But these values o them… are they supposed to represent how much of each I have?”

  Balthazar felt a slight e within him.

  “I’m strong, no doubt about it,” He said, puffing himself up, “Am I as agile as I am strong? Maybe not, but still pretty agile, I’d say. But… 1 Intelligence? What is that supposed to mean?!”

  Was the scroll calling him dumb? Balthazar had half a mind to give the thin piece of part a good snip and show it who was the dumb ohere. But then again, g angrily at an—apparently—inanimate object sounded quite dumb, so he restrained himself.

  “Hmm, 10 points…” he slowly sidered, “so does that mean that if I press this…”

  Relutly, Balthazar touched the plus sigo the Intelligence level on the scroll, and the value ged from 1 to 2.

  “Oh!” Balthazar excimed, with excitement in his eyes. “And I still have nine points left now.”

  The crab crossed his arms in deep sideration.

  “I could spread them evenly,” he began, opening one arm in one dire, as if weighing an invisible object. “Or I could focus oribute.”

  He stared back at his Intelligence value on the scroll, the low aunting him.

  “Ah, to hell with it, calling me dumb!” the crab shouted, throwing both cws up angrily.

  With fierce determinatioapped the sigo the Intelligeat until there were no attribute points left.

  [Scroll of Character Creation]

  [Allocate attribute points: 0]

  [Name: Balthazar]

  [Race: Crab]

  [Css: Undefined]

  [Strength: 3]

  [Agility: 2]

  [Intelligence: 11]

  [firm?]

  “Damn right I firm,” Balthazar said proudly. “I firm that I’m intelligent as hell, baby.”

  With a smug look, he reached out with his pincer and touched the firmation prompt on the scroll.

  “Gah!”

  A torrent of invading thoughts rammed into the crab’s brain like a speeding truck had just hit him. His body felt as if being struck by lightning, and a millioions assaulted his mind. Questions such as “what is the meaning of life?” or “what the hell is a truck?” ran through him at dizzying speeds.

  And just as quick as it started, the feeling subsided all at once, leaving a prostrated crab on the ground, each leg spread in a different direouth drooling off the side, eyes still spinning.

  “I did not enjoy that,” Balthazar said, while trying to stand up and regain his posure.

  The scroll had rolled itself bad dropped on the sand, immobile, as if it had been nothing more than a harmless object. Balthazar poked at it a couple of times, but with s.

  As he lifted his eyes from the cursed thing, Balthazar gazed upon his surroundings—the pond, with its calm, rippling water, the a, wise tree overseeing it, the many moss-covered boulders around him, the open pins stretg far into the horizon in front of his eyes, the warm, powerful sunlight hitting his face, f him to put a cw up to shield himself from the brightness—all of it, he was taking it in as if for the first time, and with a sigh he felt like…

  “Nope, everything feels the same,” the crab said with a shrug.

  He turned around, grabbed the small pouch taining the shial circles with one pincer, picked up the scroll with the other, and started walking towards the small patch of nd at the ter of the pond, where the rge tree was.

  “What an absolute waste of time,” he pined, while carefully holding his arms up to not get the poud scroll wet as he crossed the shallow waters.

  “For now, I’ll be keeping these safe here,” Balthazar said, while depositing the two items ihe small hole in the ground where he kept all his precious belongings: his colle of oddly shaped pebbles and a dried up pine e he used to py with in his younger days. All covered up with a ft piece of driftwood, guarao keep nosy birds out. Not really the safest of spots to keep things, now that he really thought about it.

  “I could have at least gained something from that traumatizing experience,” Balthazar tinued, while crossing back to the other side. “But no, I ’t eveo read anymore.”

  He held up one of the books that had spilled over from the adventurer’s pad stared at its cover, puzzled, trying to make sense of eaknown glyph written upon it, but with no success.

  “Bah, pointless!”

  With one frustrated thrust, he threw the book, whided squarely oo the edge of the road.

  Looking back at the dead adveill lyiween his bed of rocks, burst pack hanging loose from his shoulders, the crab released one more sigh.

  “Well, you’re surely not going to help me up this mess, are you—”

  “No way!”

  Balthazar jumped iartled by the loud excmation.

  As he turned, he saw a young, skinny man wearing long gray robes and a tall pointy hat rushing up the road from the same dire the retly deceased (by his own fault) adventurer had arrived earlier.

  “I ’t believe it,” the overly excited young man said, “it really is a Tome of Levitation!”

  The odd fellow picked up the book Balthazar had cast aside just moments before off the ground and marveled at it, holding it with arms stretched, mouth open into a goofy smile.

  “I’ve been looking for one fes, and then I find it just like this, at a randomly geed roadside event of all pces.”

  The man was so captivated by the book in his hand that he was pletely ign the fact that there was a crab standing not too far off to the side, staring at him in fusion and disbelief.

  As if this day hadn’t been bizarre enough so far, Balthazar now had to put up with yet another lunatic adventurer.

  The young man began frantically leafing through the pages of the book, his eyes darting from one dire to the other, running through the length of each page like someone afraid the book would be taken away from him at any moment.

  It was hat at least he seemed able to read it. Balthazar pondered whether he should try to approad learn more about the mysterious texts, or simply hope the annoyingly excitable man would just leave on his own, when the loud smming sound of the book being closed cut his thoughts short.

  “Eureka! Ha-ha-ha! I finally have it,” the young man said excitedly, book still in one hand, while shaking the other wrist out of his oversized sleeve and assuming a ready stance.

  Balthazar watched as he murmured something unintelligible, snapped his fingers, and slowly began rising from the ground, as if being lifted by the shoulders.

  “Magnifit!” the young man roared as he tinued asding.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Balthazar said to himself, as he tinued watg the robed figure going up, already floating higher thaop of the old tree of the pond.

  Balthazar wasly jealous of the man, not only because he had never really wished to fly—flying was for puny birds, not fhty crabs—but also because if he was going to feel anything of that sort it would be envy, not jealousy. He wasly sure when or how he had learhe differeween those two, but that didn’t really matter right then, because something else up above was recapturing Balthazar’s attention.

  The small figure in the sky had ged demeanor and had gone from excited joy to franti.

  “Oh crap, crap, crap,” the young man shouted, “what was the duration of this thing? I didn’t even check.”

  He was quickly turning the pages of the book bad forth, desperately looking for what he couldn’t find, while trying to maintain his bah no surface to hang on to.

  “Please tell me this also gave me immunity to fall damage, please, please, please,” he pleaded to nobody in particur.

  Balthazar watched from below with one front of his ent forehead and his eyes squinting with equally ent eyelids.

  “Damn it,” the speck far up in the sky echoed in frustration, “where is the part about maneuvering this stupid—oh no.”

  Without warning, the slow assion ceased, being repced with the high-pitched screams of the robed young man as the gravity of the situation came down on him, just as he was now ing down towards the ground at an arming speed.

  “Heh, the gravity of the situation,” Balthazar chuckled to himself. “Nie.”

  The crab focused ba the falling figure just in time to watch him sm into the ground with a loud crash and a cloud of dust, the book flying off and nding in one dire, and his pointy hat in another.

  Balthazar approached the mangled figure now carved into the ground slowly and gave his foot a small shake.

  “Well, this one is not flying again anytime soon.”

  Just as Balthazar finished his sentence, a bright, bold block of text popped out of nowhere in front of his sight, causing him to stumble bad fall upside down on his shell, squeaking in a fright.

  “WHAT! GET AWAY! SHOO!”

  He desperately waved his cws in all dires, pung nothing but air, while trying to tilt himself bato his feet.

  Ohe crab finally regained his footing, he tinued looking in all dires, trying to shake off the intruder in his eyes, but no matter where he looked, the text followed.

  [Oppo killed, experience gained]

  [Level 7 Wizard sin by [cleverly pced trap]]

  [You have reached Level 2!]

  “Now I read again?!”