[Short Story] Crab And Dagger (Patreon)

Time changes everything. A thriving city might survive for a thousand years, only to be reduced to a crater in a single day when a hero clashes with a demon lord. Then, as the years pass, that crater fills with water and forms a peaceful lake.

Except it’s just a smidge above sea-level and only a short distance away from the ocean. So as more years pass and the land between the two is worn away by the occasional flood, slowly the freshwater lake connects up to the sea. Up until finally, after one particularly heavy rainfall up in the nearby mountains, the lake flooded for the last time and became just an extension of the ocean, a bay. 

Along with that, since the lake had been a smidge above sea-level, the water-level dropped, finally after hundreds of years, revealing the very outskirts of the long-forgotten city.

In any world, such a reveal would draw attention. In this world, that attention meant adventurers. Though with the rapid change to saltwater and general instability, the area ends up being quite dangerous.

Pressured from both sides, the local animal population is forced through monsterification at a breakneck speed. So soon enough, only the strongest can explore the area. This is not helped by the fact that more than a few powerful relics have turned up at this point.

However, once again, time changes everything. Warriors from across the land show up to fight the monsters, Magic Users cast mighty spells of divination and detection, while Holy Men show up to cleanse the last remnants of the fight. And so over the years the monsters are slain or chased into the ocean, artifacts found, and corruption cleansed.

This left the area a bit pockmarked with craters, empty of monsters, and quite boring all things considered. In fact, after over a decade of nothing of interest being found beyond some cheap baubles, it became the first training ground for the nearby city’s new adventurers. A common first quest is to go there and find an old coin or a decorated bit of pottery. While not valuable, there is a thriving community of historians there researching the end of the third heroic age.

This state of affairs continued for many years. Sure, an occasional monster would form, but that sort of just happens wherever you are. However, this changed as years of silt and mud built up in the bay.

Slowly the water shrunk and the shore grew into a mud flat. This actually ended up making the area more popular as a sizable population of mud crabs, which, despite the name, actually tastes quite good. And so as less and less bits of history turn up, the common quest soon shifts over to gathering mud crabs.

And now?

Things are about to change again!

The inevitable churn of the earth bringing up something long forgotten since that cataclysmic end to the third heroic age. Because while everyone remembers the hero’s sword, forgotten to history was the fact that the fight started not with some brave declaration of intent.

No, the hero took a more subtle approach. With guile and stealth, he had tempted the demon lord into entering the city in disguise and then in the middle of the busy market, struck the first blow. A small dagger, enchanted to the nines and coated in acidic poison was slipped into the demon lord’s back.

From there the fight began, and a city of innocent people died. A cost the hero considered worthwhile, but the rest of the world? Yeah, not so much. And so the age ended not with the death of the heroes or an end to the need for them. No, it ended because heroes were no longer seen as heroic!

And while this led to the age of reconciliation, as both sides, shocked by this, finally reached out for negotiations. It also resulted in that dagger being left behind in the rubble, forgotten. But anyone who has truly looked into the depths of magic will tell you one thing. Even if magic isn’t alive, it certainly trends towards the dramatic.

In this case, it means a long-forgotten artifact blade that by all rights should have decayed away, now sitting handle-up in the mud. A couple days pass and the handle is mostly ignored. Adventurers do notice it, but this was never meant to be a flashy weapon. The handle is a simple thing of rough leather.

Oh sure, it was leather made from the hide of a cerberus, but new adventurers can’t be expected to notice the difference between that and regular leather. Though it certainly didn’t help that part of the magic woven around the blade locked its magic in, making it feel mundane.

So it isn’t until the third day of its reveal that something finally checks the dagger out. Though this isn’t some chosen one, picking up pearls from the mud. No urchin scavenging for scraps, now blessed by luck and about to go on an adventure. It isn’t even an orphan hiding their noble past about to be set on a path of vengeance against the ones who struck their family down.

Rather, it was a common mud crab, scuttling around, looking for food. The crab didn’t purposefully wield the dagger. Rather, it was trying to check under the dagger. That was enough, though.

As the crab’s claw clenches around the handle, long-forgotten enchantments activate and flood the animal’s body with magic. Any other relic would be sending up a light show! Excess magic bleed escaping into the air. Except that wouldn’t be good for a tool of assassination.

A shame as maybe what would come next might have ended up differently. The light scaring the crab into dropping the dagger and the spike in the mana field drawing the nearby cities Magos. Instead, the crab stood still as unfamiliar sensations coursed through its body.

And as the dagger’s enchantments fully ensconce the crab, the final bit of magic goes off, preventing the crab from ever dropping the dagger. Originally meant as an offensive curse, and the reason why the long-dead hero didn’t take the dagger with them. This final enchantment sticks the weapon onto the first non-enlightened being to touch it. Which against the demon lord meant the blade got stuck in their back and in this case results in the mud crab clutching the blade like a sword.

The crab does not like this. Not one bit.

When an attempt to drop the knife fails, the crab begins to flail around. This leaves furrows in the ground as the blade slices through dirt as if it isn’t even there. The only saving grace for the crab is that the blade has a body-phasing enchantment on it, allowing the blade to pass through the wielder’s body without causing harm. Otherwise, the crab would be down a few legs, if it was lucky.

Of course, even though the dagger wasn’t putting off massive amounts of magic, that did not prevent people from noticing the effects it has. So within an hour the panicking crab was noticed. Kind of hard to miss a mud crab running around magnitude faster than should be possible while leaving behind large furrows in the mud that don’t instantly fill back in afterwards.

Another hour later and there is a group of young adventurers gathered a hundred yards away. They tried to get closer, but the crab would occasionally trip and go flying. Never too far as it wasn’t trying to jump or anything. Still, after seeing what that blade did to the ground, the adventurers decided not to test what it would do to them if the crab accidentally stumbled into them.

This couldn’t go on forever and soon enough, one fighter gets the bright idea of trying to throw a rock at the crab.

The good news is that the crab hasn’t really gotten used to the situation and so doesn’t charge at them. The bad news is that it does nothing to the crab. In fact, the rock bounces off their shell without even knocking the crab over.

Well, after the other adventurers finished laughing, an archer stepped forward. “Here! Let me show you how it’s done.” They pull an arrow from their quiver and do a half draw.

After a moment of waiting for the crab to stand still, the arrow flies.

Plink

The archer frowns, “Just a second.” And they retrieve a second arrow, this time drawing the bowstring fully back. Another moment for the crab to sit still and the archer lets loose once again.

The arrow ricochets off the claw, swinging the dagger around. Not only does the dagger not get knocked away, but the claw doesn’t even move.

And this time? The crab notices them.

Of course, being a normal mud crab means that even with the speed boost, most of the adventurers manage to get away. Only most though as the crab managed to catch up to a few of the slower adventurers and they soon fell to that fell blade.

Oh, the crab didn’t kill them on purpose. However, a cut from the relic blade bled ten times what it should have in a way that couldn’t be stopped. Worse, the dagger applied all kinds of debuffs! Maybe not the worst thing. After all, there were certainly more than enough enchantments to simply apply a ton of damage.

There’s just one problem. These were debuffs meant to hold down a demon lord! So a simple debuff to strength? What reduced that ancient demon lord’s strength by a tenth instead dropped the adventurers to the ground, unable to move. There was even a magic user who started out so unfit that this debuff alone made it so their diaphragm wasn’t strong enough to continue breathing.

This was an unfortunate turn of events for everyone involved. Not only were people dead, but the kills counted as the crabs. Sure, a monster getting a few beginning adventurers under their belt isn’t that big of a problem.

Except the crab isn’t a monster. Or rather, it Wasn’t a monster. Now? Well, just as adventurers get stronger by killing monsters, the reverse is true and this was like a farmhand being fed a few goblins by an advanced adventurer. They don’t get full credit, but what little they do get is more than enough to gain a magnitude more power.

A new surge of power overcomes the crab! It twitches and writhes even more than when it picked up the dagger. This was because the power came from within. The dagger’s power, being external, could only go so far, not being able to innately change the crab.

This new increase in power? There were no such limits and so the crab’s body began to change. Except the dagger did have one small, but important effect on this process. It had provided an all-around buff to stats.

Now, normally a buff isn’t enough to change anything. Except the crab was a normal animal and the buff was meant for a hero at the top of their power. The buffs caused the crab to not only be strengthened, but strained. This strain in turn guides the evolution from animal to monster.

So whereas a normal animal who evolved into a monster would be gaining a big boost to their physical strength or the toughness of their hide. The mud crab instead gained a boost across the board.

Now, this didn’t make the crab smart like a person. However, more than enough animals have proven over the years that you don’t need to think like a person to succeed. And this crab? Well, it was about to prove that point.

Over the coming weeks, the adventurers guild would be sending progressively stronger people to try and figure out what was going on and maybe put down this rising threat. This normally works, except with the crab’s new intelligence, it learned from those fights, growing stronger in more than just physical might. Then the nail in the coffin.

While alone one night, the crab formed a nexus of power and sunk into the ground, vanishing. At first the guild figured it had retreated into the ocean as so many powerful monsters had done so before. Right until an earthquake rocked the area and a cave mouth rose up out of the ground!

This was both the best and worst outcome the guild could have imagined. Instead of retreating into the sea or being secretly killed by some passing adventurer. The mud crab had managed to change its fate, hooking into the world’s Mana field and forming a dungeon!

And deep in that cave, far below the surface, the once simple mud crab now resides at the end of a cavern system inhabited by monster crabs. Not quite immortal, but unable to be permanently killed as long as the dungeon itself remains. Forever more a Boss monster, the dagger gone having been absorbed into the crab during the transformation.