A scuttling crab, a scampering goblin, a leaping toad, a dashing baker, and a fumbling man burst out of the kitchen's front door and onto the outside, leaving a confused golem standing alone inside.

"Friend?" Bouldy said before shrugging and calmly strolling out of the building too.

The clusters of frantic animated miniatures that were surrounding the walls and roof of the kitchen quickly rolled back onto the ground in droves, producing a deafening chattering as they chased after the group of friends.

"Where are we even going now?!" said Henrietta as she hitched a ride on top of Tristan's scruffy head of hair.

"We could get in the water!" Balthazar said, pointing a claw to his right as they continued fleeing from the mass of wooden crabs.

"That water is gelid, we'd freeze!" exclaimed Madeleine as she pulled the short-legged goblin behind her by the hand so he wouldn't fall behind.

"Bah, typical warm-blood excuses!"

As the group got closer to the back entrance of the bazaar again, they encountered another small horde of the animated pests that had stayed behind, chewing on the wooden steps and arches.

"Oh no, we're pinched!" the eight-legged merchant said as he skidded to a stop.

They looked back, but the larger swarm was nearly caught up to them. They looked forward, but the other figurines had already dropped their snack to focus on them.

And when they looked in the other directions around them, they saw even more of the miniatures pouring out to encircle them.

"Cursed crab carvings!" the crustacean cried out in frustration.

"I knew you were a hoarder, but when did you get so many of those damn things to sell?" said the baker as they all pushed closer together. "I thought you had only gotten a boxful that the crazy kid had left behind."

"I did! These things have somehow been multiplying, like a plague!"

"Look!" said Tristan, pointing at some of the figurines standing on top of the doorway of the bazaar.

The nasty things were biting and chewing through the fine wood of Balthazar's bazaar, the very same that his friends had gathered to build his home and that John had so carefully worked.

And then one of them stopped and started convulsing. The black ooze that was seeped into its joints started bubbling violently, and it was as if the animated wood began to swell. It cracked and creaked, pulling apart from itself.

Until it split completely, and from one mini crab there were now two.

Balthazar used his monocle to inspect the new wooden vermin, but just like all the others around, the system continued to display them not as a creature, but rather as a common, descriptionless item simply called [Wooden Crab Figurine]. Whatever those things were, not even the system seemed to understand how to categorize them.

"They're eating the wood to replicate themselves," the toad on Tristan's head said.

"It's that damn corrupting substance!" said the shelled merchant.

"Boss, boss!" called the goblin assistant. "Can Druma do big kaboom now?"

"No!" Balthazar exclaimed. "You want to blow us all apart too?!"

Druma dropped his head, looking dejected as his oversized wizard hat fell over his eyes. "Aww…"

"Well, this baker isn't going down without a fight!" Madeleine yelled. "These things want to bite me and my friends, they can come and try it!"

Pulling a rolling pin from her apron's waist with her right hand and then another roller from the other side with her left hand, the girl whipped her blonde braid behind her shoulder and narrowed her eyes with a determined squint.

The first lines of the approaching swarm came close enough to launch themselves at the group with a leap, and as one of the flying pests was about to land on the baker's head, a cracking Thwack! echoed through the pond and surrounding walls of boulders.

With a fading whistle, the shattered piece of wrecked wood was sent flying back into the mass of chittering artificial crabs, who quickly absorbed it into their midst.

"Get kneaded!" the dual-wielding baker yelled as she delivered merciless smacking left and right with her pastry rollers, smashing up tiny wooden crabs with reckless abandon and a hint of insane satisfaction in her eyes.

"You know, I appreciate your enthusiasm, Madeleine," Balthazar said, staring at his rampaging friend with eyestalks standing all the way up. "But I'm feeling a little worried about how much you seem to be enjoying smacking a bunch of figurines carved in my image."

The girl laughed. "I love you, Balthazar, but sometimes you're really frustrating, so I'd be lying if I said this isn't just a little bit cathartic!"

One of the corrupted miniatures leaped at her face with tiny mandibles open, but the baker reacted in a flash, smashing the tiny crab between her two rolling pins in midair, producing an uncomfortable squelch that made Balthazar recoil.

"Oof," muttered the big crab. "Better them than me, I guess."

"Oh, come on, don't be so dramatic!" said the grinning girl while twirling one of her rollers in her hand. "I would never want to hurt you, Balthy!"

"A little help?!" a croaked voice yelled.

They turned to find Henrietta trying to fight a mini crab off Tristan's head as it bit into and sliced thick locks of his hair while the panicking man ran in circles.

Balthazar rushed to his business partner with claws open.

"Oh, for fudge's sake! Stand still, man!" he said, while trying to reach the top of Tristan's head, where the toad was doing her best to swat the assailant off with her tongue. "Druma! Give us an assist here!"

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With a nod, the goblin took a short run and hopped on Balthazar's carapace with one foot in order to jump high enough to reach Tristan's head. With a sharp thwack! of his staff, the small assistant hit a bullseye on the figurine, sending it twirling through the air with a tuft of gray hair still in its tiny pincer.

"Boom!" exclaimed the goblin, pumping his fist as he landed back down onto the ground. "Druma score!"

"Oww!" cried Tristan as he rubbed the top of his head with both hands. "How bad is it, Henrietta?"

The toad, still sitting on top of his head, eyed the bright red bald spot left on the man's dome with an awkward grimace.

"It's… fine, Tristy. Don't worry about it. Nothing a comb won't sort later."

"Guys?!" Madeleine called as she slowly backed away closer to them. "I don't think two rolling pins are going to be enough anymore."

The swarm of aggressive crab pests had grown large enough to fully encircle the group now, trapping them in an increasingly smaller space with no way out.

"Surely those tiny wooden pincers can't really hurt us… right?" said Balthazar, sounding way less confident than he had intended.

"Do you really want to put that theory to the test?" said the baker, her back now pressed against the crab's carapace. "There are way too many of them."

"Frieeeeend!" Bouldy's thundering voice called as he rushed toward them with backup flying above his head.

"Blue!" Madeleine and Balthazar exclaimed in unison.

With a roar, the drake glided to a halt overhead, scanning the chittering mass of brown wood and black ooze below with her gilded eyes.

Balthazar could see the fire in her gaze and feel the burning scorn in her heart as she glared at the corrupted vermin. He knew what she intended to do, but he also knew it wouldn't fully work.

"Blue!" the crab shouted. "Your firebreath won't be enough to destroy them all. You can't sustain it for long enough to cover enough area. Just clear a path for us to pass and—"

"Friend!" Bouldy exclaimed as he trampled through a dozen of the figurines to reach the crab and company.

"What?!" the merchant said. "What do you mean, get dow—"

The golem threw himself over his friends with no regard for grace, making Balthazar think for a second that he was about to become a flat crabcake, but instead the guardian cradled the five of them under his massive body, like a shielding dome of stone.

"Frieeeeend!" the bodyguard shouted up toward the drake.

Peeking through the gap between Bouldy's arm and torso, Balthazar saw Blue spread her wings and let out a thundering screech that echoed all the way up to the mountain and through the plains around the pond.

Something was different about the drake. She always moved effortlessly through the air, born a winged creature as she was, but something about the way she hovered and glided looked… lighter, more graceful.

Azure fire began forming from inside Blue's mouth, but that too seemed different. It was brighter, more intense, and something about the way she was shaping her attack made it look like it wasn't going to be a jet of flame as usual.

Balthazar's eyes, staring from the small gap in the rock below, widened as he witnessed Blue's new trick.

A wave of bright blue flames burst out of the drake's mouth, shooting not forward, but outward, where they were fanned by the powerful beating of her wings.

Like a storm of ravaging fire, the blue inferno spread out in a circle, cascading down on the clearing below.

The flames rained down on the swarm and the shielding golem equally, but just as fast as Balthazar became worried about his golem friend, he saw his upside down face smiling at him above Madeleine's and Tristan's cowering heads.

Bouldy's entire body started glowing with spreading blue veins as the flames washed over his back.

The cobalt mixed in his stone… The crab thought as the realization that the two companions had planned for it dawned on him.

But while the golem was safe from most of the magical damage from the drake's fire, the same could not be said about the corrupted pests surrounding them.

Sizzling and horrifying chittering echoed all around them as the smell of burnt wood and something else much more foul filled the air.

Balthazar felt a slight feeling of relief at not being able to see the scene around them from behind Bouldy's stony barrier once he pictured the sight of hundreds of miniatures of himself burning up in a sea of flames.

[Party member Blue has learned a new skill]

[Firestorm]

[Skill]

[Cost: 50 Mana]

[The drake breathes a powerful stream of fire while beating its wings to spread the flames into an expanding circle of fiery destruction that does large amounts of magical fire damage in an area. High chance of inflicting intense thirst on bystanders.]

The merchant's eyestalks stood up as he read the system notification.

Blue had learned a new skill. Something Balthazar had never seen from a local before. Except for himself.

Confusion and a myriad of questions assaulted his mind. What could that mean? As far as he knew, non-adventurers—or at least those who had never used a Scroll of Character Creation—were meant to be static, always stuck with whatever skills and attributes they had from the start.

The crab pondered while still safely cradled under his golem as the fires burned away the remnants of the swarm outside his rocky bubble.

Druma had learned to read, through Balthazar's own tutoring, and then gained an actual class after successfully casting a spell.

Bouldy became able to be imbued, thanks to Balthazar's upgraded skill.

And now Blue learned a new fire ability.

As much as he tended to reject those ideas, it was becoming harder to deny that all of those things had the same common denominator—Balthazar was at the very center of those unusual events.

The crab's eyestalks frowned. He didn't like it. He was a merchant, that was good enough for him. He did not want to be at the center of anything, except maybe a giant pie.

As the fires faded and Bouldy started to move to let the group of friends out, Balthazar shook his shell. He needed something else to focus his attention away from those thoughts. Something else to get annoyed at.

The golem stood up, along with everyone else who had been sheltered under him. The construct's pulsing veins of cobalt were fading away as the effects of the drake's fire passed, leaving nothing but some superficial scorch marks on his stone skin.

"Are you alright, Bouldy?" Madeleine asked, placing a hand on his forearm gently.

"Friend," the construct said with a smile and a thumbs-up.

All around them was a circle of burnt wood reduced to crumbling ash, all traces of the black ooze corrupting it seemingly incinerated away.

The one responsible for the scene of destruction landed at the center of the circle, kicking up a small cloud of ashes with the wind of her wings.

"Blue make big KAFWOOM!" Druma shouted, hopping between his left and right leg in a celebratory dance as he ran closer to the drake.

As much as the azure creature tried to remain serious and stoic-looking, a proud smirk appeared on the corner of her mouth and she let out a quiet growl.

Tristan, wearing Henrietta on top of his bald spot, approached Balthazar, who was standing by one of the piles of carbonized wood, rubbing a pinch of ash between the tips of his pincer while thinking.

"You alright, partner?" asked the human merchant. "You… need anything?"

"Yes," the crab said with a serious tone. "I need you to call Rob here right away. That Duke, whoever he is, crossed the line today."

"By threatening our lives?" the head-mounted toad asked.

"No," said the crustacean.

"By damaging your home?" asked Tristan.

"No. Well, that too, in part."

"What line did he cross, then?" his business partner asked, looking up at Henrietta and shrugging.

"He messed with my stock. And nobody messes with my wares," the crabby merchant muttered bitterly. "So now I'm going to put a bounty on him."

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