“What’s your secret?” Balthazar whispered to himself. “How are you getting in their good graces so easily?”
The grumbling crab peered through his spyglass once more, his mouth twisted into a frown as he observed the toad across the road, sitting atop her booth, cheerfully chatting it up with a pair of adventurers.
He had twisted and turned inside his shell, racking his brain trying to figure out what could possibly be her trick to win the stupid humans favor so easily, but nothing made sense.
A spell, a magical item, some hidden skill. He couldn’t figure out a sure answer for it, and it was only riling him up even more.
Adventurers were barely even stopping by his bazaar since she arrived, and if Balthazar did not figure something out quickly, his clientele would be reduced to nothing.
“How dare she?!” he grumbled, ducking behind a boulder to make sure none of them saw him spying. “Setting up business right outside a busy area to take advantage of the passing adventurers in order to trade junk at a profit. That’s just dirty!” The crab snapped his right pincer angrily. “That was my whole shtick!”
Raising his eyestalks over the rock, Balthazar checked if the two adventurers were still there.
“Thanks, Henrietta!”
“See you later, have a nice day!” the adventurers yelled, waving as they left.
“Bye, dears. Be safe out there,” the lady toad said.
“Pfft, they never wish me a nice day when they leave,” the crab begrudged.
Just as soon as the other two walked away, a new adventurer came down the road, strolling her way from the town gates.
“Damn it, they just don’t stop coming today, do they?” Balthazar complained, bringing the spyglass back up to one of his eyes. “Come on, come on. Maybe this one will ignore her and turn this way.”
The crab’s hopes were swiftly dashed as the amphibian merchant called out to the human adventurer, and, much to his dismay, the woman stopped and approached her.
Balthazar groaned and rolled his eyestalks before focusing back on his spyglass.
The adventurer wore long, fancy vestments of multiple folds and colors. She did not look like the fighting type, so Balthazar’s guess leaned towards a magic user, and one with deep pockets, judging by her attire and accessories.
In less than a minute, the two of them were already happily chuckling away at each other like they were old friends exchanging the latest juicy gossip.
“She’s a frog, and you just met her!” the incredulous and exasperated crab exclaimed to no one that could hear him. “How are you already so cozy with her?!”
Redoubling his attention, Balthazar watched as the toad said something he could not hear from the distance he was at and then pulled her Bag of Holding up onto the counter. Propping the bag open, she peered into it and with a sudden movement shot her long tongue inside it.
“What the…”
With another quick move, the toad pulled her tongue back and stuck to the tip of it came a blue potion bottle, which she skillfully placed on the wooden surface.
The adventurer was smiling and nodding as she retrieved a few gold coins from her purse and placed them in front of the toad. She said something unintelligible and took the mana potion.
“Eww, her sticky tongue was just touching that!” the disgusted crab said. “But then they look at me sideways for grabbing a cookie with the same pincer that was counting their money. Who can understand these idiots?”
Just as with all the others, the adventurer waved at the toad as they said their goodbyes, all smiles and niceties.
“Bye-bye, honey! Good luck with your butterfly collection,” Henrietta said to the woman as she walked down the road.
Balthazar felt his stomach turn. Even with the high tolerance for sweetness he had built up through copious amounts of pastries, there was only so much he could take before feeling sick.
“Blah! How can she keep that act up so well?” he asked, throwing his tongue out in disgust. “Pretend to care and like them like that?”
He looked through the spyglass again, sizing up her market stall. It was simple, not very big, and crudely assembled, but still far beyond something a mere toad could have built on her own. Balthazar wondered who could have helped her set it up.
“Surely there’s someone else behind this toad,” he mumbled to himself. “I just don’t believe a toad popped up out of nowhere and started doing business with a stall, coin, items, and even a Bag of Holding just like that. There’s got to be more to this.”
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All he wanted was for her to go away from his road, to go back to being the sole merchant there. He didn’t like company, and he certainly did not like competition.
Competition for profits, of course. Nothing to do with the attention from the adventurers. What did the crab care for that? Nothing at all.
The obsessed crab pondered on what he could do to rid himself of the toad, but all options led back to the same problem: she was already too beloved by the adventurers, and any action he took against her would almost surely turn him into a pariah.
“And I don’t even know what a pariah is, damn it!”
No matter how many times he turned and twisted over the subject, Balthazar kept coming back to the same sneaky suspicion, like something coming from deep within his merchant senses, that the toad being there wasn’t just a mere coincidence. Someone put her up to it. Someone who hated the crab.
“I need to find evidence,” he pondered to his buttons that he did not have. “Something that would expose her as the big fraud I know she has to be!”
As if a lantern had lit up above his shell, the crab snapped his pincer and ran down the path and around his roofed platform, searching for his goblin assistant.
“Druma! Come here,” he called, spotting the small worker rummaging through a few crates.
“Yes, boss?” the goblin answered, running to the crab, wizard hat bouncing up and down on his head.
“I have a very important task for you,” Balthazar said.
“Boss can count on Druma!” the other said, standing to attention like a soldier responding to a superior. “What boss need Druma to do?”
“I need you to sneak to the road through the back of the bazaar.”
The goblin looked at him with confusion.
“Why boss want Druma to hide?”
“Because I don’t want the frog on the other side of the street to see you,” the crab explained. “She doesn’t know you yet, so I want you to take a couple of coins and walk up to her stand, pretend you want a refreshment, or something, just keep her distracted, and while she’s busy, snoop around, behind her stall, under it, inside her bag if you can. Just find anything that looks suspicious and bring it back to me.”
The assistant scratched the back of his head, looking puzzled.
“Boss want Druma to be sneaky?”
“Yes! Exactly, you got it,” said the merchant, while retrieving a couple of gold coins and shoving them in the goblin’s hands. “Now go on, take the long way around the back. I’ll be watching from over here.”
Leaving the confused assistant to his task, the crab hurried back to his watching spot.
As he popped his eyes over the boulder, he spotted yet another small group of adventurers gathered around the toad, happily trying on rings, putting hats on, and checking her selection of potion bottles.
“Curse you, fools!” he said. “I’ve got all that stuff too, and it doesn’t come with toad spit all over it!”
The increasingly agitated crab continued watching the adventurers as they bought and sold, many shiny gold coins being exchanged right in front of him, and none being spent with him. Frustration was growing in him in such a way that he had even skipped his mid-afternoon tart.
Balthazar never skipped his mid-afternoon tart.
Soon after, the adventurers left. Bringing his spyglass back up to his eye, the crab saw Druma approach the rival merchant’s stand.
“Yes, there you go, Druma. You can do this,” Balthazar whispered, eyestalk firmly stuck to the smaller end of the spyglass as he tapped a few of his feet impatiently.
Too far away to hear their exchange, he watched as the toad greeted the goblin, who was looking sheepish and shy as he responded to her.
“Come on, little guy, don’t be so conspicuous! Act natural.”
They continued exchanging words back and forth for a while, the amphibian looking endearingly at the goblin, who slowly seemed to grow more confident and talked to her with a wide grin on his face.
“What the hell is taking so long?” muttered the impatient crab. “I told you to distract her, not have her adopt you.”
Henrietta smiled and said something to Druma, before hopping to the other end of the stall, where a small keg stood, surrounded by a few cups. Pushing one cup under the tap, the toad began filling it with a clear yellow liquid.
“That’s your chance! She’s got her back turned, snoop around!”
Balthazar watched with anticipation, but the goblin kept grinning and talking while hopping from side to side in apparent excitement, until the toad finally turned back to him and he took the cup, sipping from it with visible satisfaction.
“What are you doooooooing?” the crab howled under his breath.
The other two exchanged a few more words and smiles before the goblin left, hopping away with a happy grin on his face.
The befuddled crustacean got down from the boulder and circled back to where his assistant was coming from.
“Druma!” Balthazar yelled, startling the gleeful goblin who was scampering his way into the bazaar with the cup still held in his hands. “What the hell? You didn’t do any of what I told you to do!”
“Sorry, boss,” the assistant said, ears sagging as he looked down. “Toad lady too nice, she offer Druma free lemonade, don’t even take coin. Druma feel bad to snoop on nice toad.”
“Even you, Druma?” Balthazar said in a defeated tone of someone being stabbed in the back.
“S-sorry, boss. Druma bring some lemonade for boss…”
“I didn’t want lemonade! I wanted to know who’s banking her business!”
“Druma is sorry,” the goblin said, with a guilty look in his eyes. “Druma no want to make boss mad. Druma think toad lady maybe is just nice.”
Balthazar took a deep breath and brought a pincer up to his face.
The amphibian was crafty, he would have to give her that. She had some way of endearing herself to others with great ease. Untrained eyes might claim it’s simply called being kind, but Balthazar knew better. He knew that couldn’t be it. Since when did kindness alone win anyone over? Absolute nonsense. Something else was there, he could feel it in his bones. If he had any. Which he didn’t, but if he did, he’d feel it for sure.
“No, no, I’m not mad at you. It’s not your fault. It’s her, she’s the problem. I should have known her trickery would be too much for you. You’re no match for whatever cunning scheme she has going on.”
“Boss not mad at Druma?” the small goblin asked, perking up slightly.
“No, buddy, it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have sent a goblin to do a crab’s job,” Balthazar said, determination flaring up in his eyes. “If I want something done right, I should do it myself.”