Beach Crab

Level: 13

Just a normal crab.

Haha, nice one, but what is this thing?

Beach Crab

Level: 13

Just a normal crab.

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

Beach Crab

Level: 13

Just a normal crab.

Phac frowned. After carefully walking through the darkness 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 him 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 had 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 ninety-degree angle, the walls and ceiling fully covered in glowing, light blue algae. This tunnel was taller, at least two and a half meters, with shiny, round black stones occasionally 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 stunningly 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 crabs were not supposed to be this big.

Fine, then, have it your way. If you just want to mock me, I’ll call you Dunce, he thought to the blue screen. I didn’t like it when people called me tha— Wait! I remembered something!

Unfortunately, the feeling was fleeting, and he lost the memory only a moment after regaining it. He pouted.

At least Dunce had taken the initiative to present information about the crab as soon as Phac focused on it. He’d sneaked a peek before jumping right into the other tunnel, and it seemed like he remained unnoticed. The crab was facing a wall opposite Phac’s tunnel, using its pincers to continuously extract small chunks of algae and feed them to its mouth.

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 didn’t 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 one? I will be flanked! Even supposing I manage to kill it, perhaps the scent and sound will attract more crabs. Argh, he thought, frustrated.

Okay, okay, calm down. Let’s consider our options here. Option one, I try to sneak by this crab and any others that show up and get to an exit safely. Then, 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 it’s unguarded.

Phac grimaced. This plan did not seem very good.

Option two, I kill this crab, level up, and get stronger by video-game mumbo jumbo. I hunt crabs, get even stronger and, eventually, fight my way out.

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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 that could probably snap him in half using a single pincer—and it was also twelve levels above him, whatever that meant.

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.

That was definitely not the way to go. Therefore, Phac was left with two options, each worse than the other. He looked at the crab and its big, scary pincers. He looked 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.

The crab could finish its meal at any moment, and there was no telling what it would do afterward. Phac would never find a better moment. He had to act now.

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, mustered all his strength and courage, grabbed the lowest part of the crab’s back, and lifted.

He knew that, once flipped, most crabs had no way to turn over again by themselves unless they could grab onto something with their pincers. All he had to do was flip this crab over, get behind it, and hit it in the hopefully soft underbelly until it fell dead. Simple, right?

Therefore, he lifted, squatting until his waist cracked and pouring out all the strength he ever had. The crab was heavy. It felt like trying to lift a piano and, for a moment, he almost let up, but that would inevitably lead to his death. So, he kept lifting, hoping for a miracle.

The crab noticed something was trying to lift it and kicked at its assailant. Luckily for Phac, it didn’t think to move sideways, only hitting him with its legs. And while the hits were not light, they barely registered to the current, adrenaline-filled Phac. Yet, the crab’s weight was also bearing down on him, its thrashing making his task even more difficult.

Phac buckled down, and his mind turned to steel.

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 using less than fifty percent of their available muscle power, as anything more would damage the muscles. It is only when extreme amounts of adrenaline flood the system that these restrictions are lifted and humans can perform 'miracles.'

And so, as Phac realized he could not flip the crab over, he felt a wave of power course through him.

“FUUUUCK,” he shouted, briefly realizing he was screaming his own name in battle like a certain kind of creature. He felt stronger than ever before—though, to be fair, that didn’t mean much in his amnesia—and, with a desperate push, the crab’s bottom reached a tipping point, allowing Phac to flip it over. His own momentum dropped him atop the crab’s underbelly, which was covered in multiple plates much harder than he would have liked but much softer than the sturdy carapace above. Then, he realized in horror that, since he’d flipped the crab over from behind, the crab’s pincers were now right beneath his legs.

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

He tried to pull himself away, but the pincer was too strong and, to his horror, Phac found himself pulled toward the pincers instead of away from them. He’d 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 plate. With a desperate, adrenaline-fueled pull, he leveraged the soft flesh beneath to rip a plate right out, making blue blood and pieces of tender meat erupt from the gap. As the world turned red, Phac used his fists to pummel the crab’s now exposed underbelly as hard as he could, again and again and again. The crab thrashed around like mad, sending more waves of horrible pain up his leg, but it didn’t matter. If he stopped now, he would die.

The pincer pulled his ankle to the ground. Suddenly, another pincer snapped shut around his thigh, dangerously close to his tender areas, breaking bones in the process. The second pincer started to pull on him as well. More and more of Phac’s body entered the range of the pincers.

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

Under Phac’s desperate, heavy punches, the crab eventually slowed down, then stopped moving at all. Blue juices flowed out of its body beneath Phac’s, and his hands were bleeding, injured by the bones hiding beneath the crab’s skin. A voice whispered to him, claiming that crabs had no bones, but it was the least of his concerns.

He could no longer feel his legs. In front of Phac’s blurry eyes, a blue screen appeared.

Congratulations! You have defeated “Beach Crab.” Would you like to disperse 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. Phac fell on the ground, no pain coming from his legs. They were too numb to feel anything.

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 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 around the edges of his vision, but he ignored them.

Focusing his entire will on the task, he slowly crawled forward, leaving a trail of blood behind him. Phac didn’t remember how it happened, but he finally found himself in the tunnel he’d come from. Through the blurriness, his leg seemed to be…itching? A hint of relieving warmth?

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