Balthazar sat in front of a table, pincers extended over the edges of it, staring intensely onto its surface.

  He let out a long, shaky breath.

  “I gotta do this.”

  Oable rested a siter cookie.

  It was the st ohe crab had left from Madeleiest batch.

  Reag forward with his cw, he took the lone cookie and shoved the whole thing into his mouth.

  It was crumbly, not quite as chy anymore, and was beginning to turn stale.

  A, Balthazar savored it like it was the most delieal he had ever experienced.

  He did not know if he would ever get to taste Madeleine’s baking again, so he o make that one t, and he also to give him ce for what he was about to do.

  The st crumbs of cookie slid down his throat, and he sighed. As always, it was over too soon.

  “Boss?” a timid voice said nearby.

  Balthazar turo see Druma standing by the bazaar’s ter, broom in hand.

  “Druma finish clearing rubble.”

  The small goblin assistant had been w tirelessly sihe day of the avanche, barely taking any breaks, despite the crab’s protests. He was also not ag like his usual excited self, instead being more quiet and his big pointy ears always saggio his rge head.

  Balthazar knew what the goblin was going through. He missed his golem friend, and he also felt guilty for not doing more about Madeleine’s kidnapping.

  The crab had tried telling him it was not his fault, and there was little more he could have doo help that day, but deep down he also khat no matter how many times one might repeat that, the sadness and guilt wouldn’t just go away that easily.

  “Great job, Druma,” said Balthazar, trying to force himself to smile for the goblin. “Thanks for w so hard to up the pce.”

  The goblin’s ears perked up ever so slightly and a shy smile briefly appeared on his face.

  “Boss need Druma to help more?”

  “Nht now, thank you,” said the crab as he stood up and stepped towards the entrance.

  “Boss going out?” the assistant quickly asked. “Boss need Druma to go with boss?”

  Balthazar’s mouth twitched with a wistful smile.

  He khat with Bouldy gone and Blue still rec from her injuries, the gobli it fell upon himself to do everything he could around the pce, including proteg his boss.

  The crab did not want to disce him, and in fact found himself thankful for his friend’s unwavering support.

  But some things he could not assist with.

  “Not this time, buddy. This I have to take care of on my own.”

  The goblin’s ears scked again, but he nodded in acceptance as Balthazar left the bazaar.

  Walking up the dirt path between the bazaar and the main road, the crab pted the overcast sky above.

  Sihe talking crow had stripped him of his system, the world around him felt different. Everything seemed like always, yet not quite the same. Balthazar could not find the right words to expin it, but it was as if he was seeing it through different eyes.

  He arrived at the road and took a moment to stare off into the vast pins in front of him.

  Brown and e, the grass bobbed in the wind, like a sea of vegetation. Or at least so he assumed. Balthazar had never actually seen the sea. He had read about it, and he was more than familiar with his pond, but the idea of an o more vast than the nd itself, an infinite pool of deep blue stretg further than the eye could see, and all of it inhabited by crabs? He could hardly imagihat.

  Despite having always felt no i in pces outside of his pond, he found himself musing over the idea of seeing the sea one day.

  Putting his distrag thoughts aside, Balthazar doubled his focus oask at pincer and started walking up the road leading to Ardville.

  All his life, he had remained within the fines of that one small area around his pond. He had always believed it was by choice, because he saw o go anywhere else. The pond was all he needed. It had everything: food, er, good shelter, sunlight, pead quiet. What more could a crab ask for?

  And then the scroll happened. He gained levels, skills, started unig with others, meeting people. Yet, he was still vihere was o leave his fort zone.

  It wasn’t until the day he really that the crab finally realized he could not leave, that it wasn’t his choice at all. That something was binding him to that pce. The day Druma was wounded and Balthazar couldn’t go up the road to find someone who could help was the day he learned he was not as much of a free crab as he always thought he was.

  He had pushed that fact to the back of his shell sihe his focus on other things as they happened, but it was still there, gnawing at him sihat day.

  He had never been truly free, but he was going to ge that.

  He wasn’t sure exactly how, but he just knew something had ged, that something deep within him was different now, and that there was only one way to really put his theory to the test.

  The gray crab arrived at his destination, a point on the road between his pond and Ardville that, at first sight, would have looked to anyone else as normal as any other random se of road in each dire, but not to him. He kly where the line was, the look of eadividual cobblestohe small bushes and mounds with grass on the edges of the path. It was all ingrained in his brain.

  That was the exact spot he had tried so hard to cross before, but could ep through.

  The edge of his own little world.

  Balthazar took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

  He was not afraid of the motion itself. It was what the oute of it might be that truly scared him, for all that it could mean to his and his friends’ future.

  It would have to work, he was sure of it. Everything else was depending on it.

  Everyone else was depending on him.

  The crab who never wanted responsibilities.

  “You got this, Balthazar,” the crab whispered to himself.

  As he raised one leg forward, towards the impassable point on the road, his eyes focused with trembling effort on the cobblestones. He didn’t know if it would matter or help, but as he slowly moved, images of his friends were all he could see in his mind. Those he was so motivated by. He pictured Bouldy’s t figure smiling down on him. Madeleine waving at him from the road. A pte with a rge apple pie resting on it.

  Balthazar braced in anticipation, expeg his body to jerk back, away from the invisible line like before, but to his surprise, his foot simply nded on the cobblestone like it was nothing.

  He froze for a moment, staring at his leg and the stones.

  He moved another one of his legs forward.

  And another.

  Soon he had fully crossed with all of his eight legs.

  The crab looked around in disbelief. Had it really worked? Had he do, and so easily?

  He took a few more tentative steps up the road, just to make sure he hadn’t gotten the spot on the road wrong.

  There was no longer anything keeping him from walking. No physical barriers or mental blocks pushing him back.

  He could finally step away from his pond.

  Balthazar chuckled. A few short and tained chuckles at first, which quickly evolved into loud ones, until he was fully ughing out loud in the middle of the road.

  “I k!” he yelled to the empty road and pins around him. “I k!”

  Sihe day the crow had removed the system from him, Balthazar had an underlying feeling deep in him that something more had ged. That something else had disappeared, along with the system stats, attributes, the levels, the skills, and everything else.

  If it was an actal sequehe crab did not know, but whatever the bird had taken away from him had also removed the invisible shackles keeping him bound to that pce.

  “Yes! Yes!” he howled to the skies, pincers pumped high in the air, his eyes watery from all the joy running through him.

  For someone who had never cared foing anywhere outside of his pond, he found himself now suddeatic at his newly found freedom.

  The gleeful crab started running, straight out of the road and through the tall grass of the pin fields o him.

  He did not care where, he just wao go somewhere he knew he had epped before.

  He ran and spun around, his pincers brushing against the reeds he had ouched, stepping on the pebbles he had never felt under his feet, taking in all the familiar sights from the angles he had never witnessed.

  Despite not yet daring to go too far off, for while he might be a free crab he was not an incautious one, Balthazar ran and frolicked through the nearby pins for what might have been an hour, enjoying his brief moment of joy after the depressing previous days.

  The crab sighed and stared up at the sky as he id on his shell, between some rocks and more tall grass he had never been close to before.

  Somehow, it seemed to him like the sky was bluer than it had been wheepped out of the bazaar earlier.

  “Alright, enough rolling around,” he told himself, hopping bato his feet. “I knohat I must do. Time to go bae and prepare.”

  Feeling tent and proud of himself, Balthazar made his way out of the grass and bato the road, feeling the thrill of, for a very brief moment, nnizing his surroundings and w where his way back was. He could have never imagined such excitement from the idea of being lost.

  Chug at himself, he jokingly wondered if he had finally snapped and gone insane.

  Whistling a cheery tuhe crab skittered back down the road.

  As he approached his destination, Balthazar spotted something unusual by the split on the road that led down to his bazaar.

  A small group of people, some on foot and some on horseback, wearing armored uniforms and carrying long spears, stood in wait, fag the bazaar.

  The crab squi the ente in the distance, fog on the familiar figure standing at their ter.

  “What in the hell?”