Crab

Level: 13

Just a normal crab.

Haha nice one, now what is this thing?

Crab

Level: 13

Just a normal crab.

Come on, it was funny the first time, just show me what this is.

Crab

Level: 13

Just a normal crab.

Phac frowned. After traveling carefully through the dark tunnel for a few minutes, he had finally seen the light at the end of the tunnel. The trip had been mentally exhausting, every new step carrying the danger of an unknown and unseen enemy killing Phac before he knew what hit him or, even worse, after he did. Phac had been forced to proceed carefully (and sideways, for good measure), with his arms extended forward to avoid bumping into anything. But he never did, as the tunnel was nothing but a straight line.

Eventually, a light could be seen and Phac accelerated, excited to finally be out of the darkness. The sight that awaited him was a mixture of exciting and terrifying. Another horizontal tunnel was connected to his own at a 90-degree angle, the walls and ceiling fully covered in some kind of glowing, light blue algae. This one had a higher ceiling, at least 2.5 meters. Occasionally, shiny, round black stones were embedded in the walls and ceiling, giving the impression of a blue sky with interspersed black stars. It was beautiful, and it felt safe.

Or rather it would have, if not for the incredibly oversized, orange crab waiting next to the opening of Phac’s tunnel. It was about a meter and a half from front to back and two and a half meters in width, including the legs, while it reached above Phac’s waist in height. Contrary to what the annoying blue screen was trying to convince him about, Phac was very sure that crabs were not supposed to be this big.

Fine then, I’ll call you Dunce, he thought to the blue screen.

At least Dunce had taken the initiative to present information about the crab as soon as Phac focused on it. Luckily, he had sneaked a peek before jumping right into the other tunnel, and it seemed like he had not been noticed, so far at least. The crab was facing a wall opposite of Phac’s tunnel, using its pincers to continuously extract small chunks of algae and feed them to its mouth.

Phac considered his choices.

Okay, that thing is level 13, and I am level 1. If this is anything like video games, it means I hardly stand a chance. But if I try to sneak away, will it hear me? Do crabs even have ears?

He took another sneaky look at the crab. It did not seem to have ears.

But what if it does? Or if it can hear in some other way? And even if I can sneak by it, what if I run into another? I will be flanked! But even supposing I kill it, perhaps the scent and sound will attract more crabs. Aaaaaaargh… he thought, frustrated.

Okay okay, calm down. Let’s consider our options here. Option 1, I try to sneak by this one and any other crab that shows up, and get to an exit safely. Afterward, I run through the beach, trying not to die, and then find other ways to not die. A great hobby. That’s assuming there is an exit to this place, and that it’s unguarded.

Phac grimaced. This did not seem like a good plan.

Option 2. I kill this crab, level up, and get stronger using the video game mechanics. I hunt crabs, get much stronger, and fight my way out.

This sounded like a better plan, but there was a catch. It assumed that he, bare-handed, could ambush and kill a human-sized crab which could probably snap him in half using a single pincer. And it was 12 levels above him, whatever that meant.

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This did not seem like a good plan either.

Option 3, I go back by the hole I fell into, wait until a crab comes, at which point I cannot ambush it and end up committing suicide by crab.

Okay, this was definitely not the way to go. So Phac was left with two options, each worse than the other. He took a look at the crab and its big, scary pincers. He took a look at his bare hands. Dunce, if I die like this, know that it’s all your fault.

Okay, I can do this. Don't panic. There's no time like the present.

Suppressing his anxiety, Phac sneakily got up and tried to move behind the crab without being noticed. He succeeded; whether because crabs couldn’t hear or for some other reason, he might never know. Now the crab’s back was right in front of him, its hard, bumpy carapace facing him. So Phac ducked down and, mustering all his strength and courage, grabbed the lowest part of the crab’s back and lifted.

He knew that once flipped, crabs had no way to turn over again by themselves. All he had to do was flip it over, get behind it, and hit it in the hopefully soft underbelly until it fell dead. Simple, right?

So he lifted, bracing himself against the far wall of the tunnel and pouring out all the strength he ever had. The crab was heavy. It felt like trying to lift a piano by himself and for a moment he almost let up but he knew that if he did, he would inevitably die. So he kept lifting, hoping for a miracle.

The crab itself noticed that something was trying to lift it and started moving its legs in panic. Luckily for Phac, it didn’t think to move sideways, only hitting him with its legs. The hits were not light but to the current, adrenaline-filled Phac, they barely even registered. Yet the crab’s weight was also bearing down on him, its movements making his job all that more difficult.

In desperate moments, humans have a way to exert strength way over their natural limits. Mothers lifting cars to save their children, men running as fast as Olympic athletes to escape a wildfire. In fact, humans are usually restricted by their own brains to only be able to use less than 50% of their available muscle power, as anything more would damage the muscles. It is only when extreme adrenaline is flooding the system that these restrictions are lifted, and humans can perform 'miracles'.

And so, as Phac was realizing that he cannot flip the crab over, he felt a wave of power course through him.

“FUUUUCK,” he shouted, a brief moment of clarity making him realize he was screaming his own name in battle like a certain type of monster, but he ignored it. He felt stronger than he had ever been (to be fair, he only remembered a few hours of his existence) and, with a desperate push, the crab’s bottom reached a tipping point, allowing Phac to flip it over. Phac, by his own momentum, fell on top of the crab’s underbelly, which was covered in multiple plates much harder than he would have liked, but at least much softer than the sturdy carapace above. And then he realized that since he flipped the crab over from behind, the crab’s pincers were now right beneath his legs.

Suppressing a cold shiver, he tried to pull himself over the crab to escape, when an irresistible pressure appeared around his left ankle and shattered it like a twig. Phac screamed, waves of terrible pain coming from his ruined ankle and running all over his body. He didn’t look back, afraid that if he saw his leg right now he would lose all of his courage.

He tried to pull himself but the pincer was too strong and, to his horror, Phac found himself pulled towards the pincers instead of away from them. He had managed to bend his right leg in time so the other pincer missed, at least. In despair, Phac inserted his fingers in the grooves between the plates before, with a desperate, adrenaline-fueled pull, using the soft flesh beneath as leverage to rip a plate right out. With no time to rejoice over his success, he used his hands to pummel the crab’s now exposed underbelly as hard as he could, causing the crab to start thrashing around like mad, making more waves of horrible pain course through his leg, but he knew he couldn’t stop or he would die.

The pincer pulled his ankle to the ground and suddenly, another pincer was mercilessly grabbing onto his thigh, dangerously close to his more tender areas, breaking bones in the process. The second pincer started to pull on him as well and gradually more of Phac’s body was entering the range of the pincers.

Not much sense was left in Phac’s mind by now, his entire being devoted to hitting, and hitting, and smashing the thrashing crab as hard and as much as he could. A faint sense of pressure appeared in his right thigh as well but he barely noticed it, shrill screams were registering in his ears but he could no longer tell they were his.

Under Phac’s desperate punches, the crab eventually slowed down, then stopped moving at all. Blue juices were flowing out of the crab’s body beneath Phac’s, and his own hands were bleeding, injured by the bones hiding beneath the crab’s skin. He could no longer feel his legs. In front of Phac’s blurry eyes, a blue screen appeared.

Congratulations! You have defeated “Crab”. Would you like to loot the body?

A faint acceptance arose in Phac’s mind, more from the urge to accept anything to escape the pain than anything else. The body beneath his, along with the blue blood, suddenly dissolved into thin air and Phac fell on the ground, no pain coming from his legs. They were too numb to feel anything anymore.

The corners of Phac’s vision were fading away but his last speck of reason had not yet left him. Not here, they will catch me… The tunnel from where he had originally come from was no more than two meters away, but that seemed like an unbridgeable chasm right now. More blue lights flickered in the edges of his vision, but he ignored them. Focusing his entire will on the task, he slowly pulled himself forward, leaving a trail of blood behind him. Phac didn’t remember how it happened, but he finally found himself in the tunnel he had come from. Through the blurriness, his leg seemed to be... itching? A hint of relieving warmth coming from it?

His final vestiges of strength completely extinguished, he finally fell unconscious.