“And you’re sure you’re feeling fine?” asked the crab.

  “Yes, yes, boss!” answered the goblin.

  It was yet another warm m at the tail-end of summer, and Balthazar was seeing Bouldy and Druma off to the road, heading out to collect more trees to build the roof over the trading post.

  It had only been a day since Druma had woken up from his fever, but the goblin was already eager to go back to work.

  Ohing Balthazar had to admit was that the little guy was definitely not zy, which, for a businesscrab like him, was a very valuable trait.

  As willing to see the roof done as the mert was, he was also not too keen on the idea of his assistant falling ill again for not taking enough time to recover.

  Not because he had grown soft towards his worker, of course, but just because he couldn’t afford any more sick days, that’s all.

  “Alright, you two be careful out there,” Balthazar told the pair. “And remember, stay osides of the forest.”

  “Yes, yes,” Druma said, while vigorously nodding. “And will boss be alright without Druma and Bouldy? What if bad wolves e back?”

  “Don’t worry,” Balthazar reassured. “I’ll be sure to stay away from the road and not let myself get surrounded again. Besides, after what Blue did to their alpha, I doubt those wolves will dare show their snouts around here anytime soon.”

  Before the golem and the goblin made it too far down the road, the valiant crab skittered his way baside the safety of his pond.

  While he was indeed vihe wolves would not show up again, that still did not solve the problem of him feeling too unsafe all by himself at his trading post, knowing all the dangerous creatures that lurked out there, from angry giant spiders and hungry wolves to crazy witches ay merts.

  Not all by himself, however, as he still had one dangerous creature of his own there, too.

  The crab crossed the wooden bridge to the ter islet and looked at the zy drake sleeping underh the sparse shade of the tree above them.

  Balthazar knew she wasn’t pletely indifferent to others. Madelei through to her just fine, and she even seemed to care for Druma’s well being.

  So the question remained: why wouldn’t she respect Balthazar? He hatched her. He was clearly the closest to a leader that pce had, ahat scaly beast just did not seem willing to give him anything but disdain and an attitude.

  Determio give his new Leadership skill a ce, he stepped up to the drake, who g him from her red cushion with an ung expression.

  “Hello,” said the golden crab. “I want to try something with you, but you’ll have to get up from there and e with me.”

  The blue drake raised a zy brow and made no effort to move.

  “There will be birds to eat,” Balthazar added.

  Raising her brow even further, her eyes seemed to show her i had been piqued.

  Slowly standing up from the cushion, the drake made the short distao follow the crab.

  “Right,” he started, turning to face the winged creature, “we o establish some hierarchy here. I’m your elder. I own this territory, but you keep ign my authority. That’s not good, is it?”

  Blue looked at him with an expression that made the crab sure that if she was capable of it, she would be crossing her arms right then.

  “Look, let’s start with something simple,” he tirying to el his inner leadership skills, which, as he was just realizing, weren’t many. “I’ll tell you to fly up, and you… fly up, alright?”

  The unimpressed creature made no signs of aowledging his request.

  Balthazar sighed.

  “Well, might as well try… fly up, Blue!”

  The drake let out a long yawn and stayed as she was.

  “Urgh… why are you like this?” the annoyed crab said.

  If he couldn’t wihrough ventional means, he’d strike where he k would hurt her.

  “Oh, I think I get it,” Balthazar said, giving her a side eye. “You’re not fide about your flying capabilities. It’s alright, I get it. You’re still pretty young, despite appearances. You were literally borher day. You’re worried you might embarrass yourself if I tell you to fly up and your clumsy wings make you fall back down.”

  Blue stretched her neck up and her pupils narrowed at the crab. She was offended.

  “Don’t worry, I uand,” he tinued. “o feel bad. You’ll get better at flying some day, I’m sure.”

  Letting out a puff of steam from her nostrils, the drake spread her wings wide and batted them with dramatic effect as she took off into the air.

  “Heh, so easy to bait,” Balthazar said under his breath.

  With another couple of fps of her wings, Blue unched herself upwards, darting towards the clouds.

  “Alright, you’ve made your point,” the crab shouted. “You e back down now.”

  But the prideful creature either did not hear him, or did not care to listen, and tinued her ast.

  With a pincer over his eyes to shield them from the light of the sun, Balthazar was looking up at the shrinking figure of the drake in the distance when he spotted a sed smaller dot higher in the sky.

  “What is that?”

  Whatever it was seemed te for a bird, and also the wrong shape.

  Skittering across the bridge, the crab hurriedly searched through a box of random items until he found something an adventurer had sold to him weeks before, a small spygss.

  Looking back up, he found the now barely visible drake, still speeding up as if trying to prove how high she could fly, and not too far off to the side, the slow-moving dot.

  Balthazar pced the spygss in front of his monocle and tried fog on the unknown figure in the sky.

  As he focused on it, he finally realized it was a man, sitting cross-legged on a blue cushion that was slowly flying horizontally, heading straight into Blue’s flight path.

  “Blue!” the crab yelled. “Stop going up! Yoing to crash into someone!”

  But she was too far away to hear.

  Bringing the spygss up to his monocle again, he gave the flying man a better look.

  He wore a purple wizard hat and robe, and had an excessively long white beard that fpped in the wind over his shoulder as he flew forward.

  “Wait,” Balthazar said to himself. “Is that… what is he doing?”

  Trying to focus more on the man’s hands, the crab finally figured out what he was holding.

  The wizard was holding a small por saucer with one hand, a teacup with the other, casually taking sips from it as he flew onward.

  It was hard to make out more of his features, but something seemed familiar about him.

  Surprisingly, the moill showed a line of text above his head, even through the spygss.

  [Level 67 Are High Wizard]

  The drake and the wizard were on each other’s direct route of collision, still unaware of one another. Blue still stubbornly pushing upwards, the man carelessly drinking his tea.

  Balthazar winced in anticipation of their immi collision.

  Right as the flying wizard was about to crash into her, Blue looked to the side and took a st moment dive sideways.

  Unfortunately, so did the wizard.

  As the drake came up into his field of view, the man threw his hands up, sending the teacup and saucer flying, befrabbing the edges of his flying pillow and swerving wildly to the other side.

  The unventional mode of transportation now spiraling out of trol in the wind, the man tried holding on to his hat as the cushion under him veered to the side and flipped over, tossing him off into a free fall.

  “Oooh, craaaaaap,” Balthazar yelled out, throwing both pincers up to his shell.

  The wizard was ing down towards the ground at great speed, his long beard fpping wildly against his face as he struggled to move it out of his vision, his wizard hat flying off his head from all the wind.

  “Damn it, what’s with me and wizards always crash nding on my property!” the crab pined as he rushed out the trading post, heading in the dire the wizard was going to nd.

  Balthazar arrived oh between the road and his trading post just in time to see the purple blur reach the ground, except, instead of crashing into a crater, the wizard’s fall suddenly slowed down and he nded on his feet gracefully, like someone who had just hopped off a small height.

  The astonished crab stared at the man with his mouth open, as the mage calmly and casually shook the dust off his robe with one hand, while the other caught the hat that was slowly drifting doced it ba his head.

  “How… how did you not sptter yourself all over the ground from that?” Balthazar stuttered, still utterly fused by the casual nding.

  “WHAT?!” the wizard yelled out. “Sorry, ears still ringing a little. You asked why I didn’t take fall damage? Pfffft! You think I’m some kind of low-level wizard, or something?” He poi his old brown shoes that curled at the tips. “Shoes of Soft Landing. Never leave home without them. Only an idiot would use levitation without a pair of these.”

  “Heh… I guess you got a point there,” the crab said, as he slowly recovered his wits and g the mounds of dirt where a certain crater used to be months before.

  “Was that flying devil up there yours?!” the wizard asked.

  “Uhh… sort of. Mostly she’s her own girl, though,” Balthazar responded.

  “Well, you owe me a new pair of breeches!” A loud ctter came from the road behind the wizard as a teacup and saucer shattered against the cobblestones. “Also, a ea set!”

  “Wait a moment,” the mert said, as he squinted his eye stalks forward at the man. “I remember you now! You’re that weird wizard that sold me Bouldy’s core!”

  “I’m the what who did the what to the what now?!” the other blurted out loudly. “I got no idea what you’re yapping on about, crab! And then people call me senile!”

  “It’s me!” Balthazar said, stretg his arms open. “I traded you some mana potions folem core. Surely you must remember a talking crab?”

  “Buddy, I’ve met a lot of talking things. A crab is barely even on my top 10 of the weirdest ones. Now this pair of socks ohough, they were…”

  “You said you were in the forest dealing with some fairies or something,” Balthazar interrupted. “And apparently you ran out of mana, walked in here yelling for potions, you had no shirt on, for some reason I still haven’t figured out to this day. Any of this ring any bells?”

  “Fairies?” said the wizard, as he stroked his beard pensively. “Hang on, aren’t we he Bck Forest? I remember now. Those dars! rust a fairy, crab! They’ll give you nasty fungi in even nastier pces!”

  “Wow, hey, too muformation! I don’t wanna know,” the crab pleaded, waving both pincers in front of himself.

  With a small gust of wind, Blue came down from the sky and nded on a nearby rock, looking at the other two with curiosity.

  “Well, well, there she be,” said the wizard, pg both hands on his waist. “Quite the rascal, aren’t ya? Made me spit out my tea.”

  “Tell me about it,” the frustrated mert said. “Won’t listen to a single ive her.”

  “Order?” the incredulous maed. “What are ya doing trying to give a drake orders, crab?!”

  “What do you mean?” Balthazar asked back.

  “Did ya just pick a drake off the side of the road and didn’t do any studying on the subject, soggy-brain? Draic creatures don’t take ‘orders’ from anyone. Best you hope to achieve is them taking suggestions, and even that take years of earning their respect!”

  “But… I hatched her from an egg. Shouldn’t she see me as some kind of parental figure, have some resped obedience, or something?”

  “HAH!” The wizard ughed. “You got a few too many legs and not enough wings to be that one’s momma, don’t ya think, crab? Dragons and drakes are very intelligent and intuitive creatures. They know who respects them and who to trust just from a quiiff at your iions. You wao follow your lead, you o treat her as an equal, not like some pet dog that does tricks for you. Did ya try that, smart-butt?”

  “Well, I…” the hesitant crab said. “It’s not like I ever had any bad iions towards her. I just wanted her to listen when I tell her to do something.”

  The wizard bent over at the waist, hands still on his hips, a wide grin on his face as he brought it closer to the crab.

  “Why?”

  Balthazar couldn’t help but notice his irises were still different sizes, just like when they first met. It certainly added to the deranged mad wizard look, but it made the crab very unfortable.

  “hat?” he asked, trying to shrink away from the wizard’s nose.

  “Why should she listen? If I came out of nowhere and started demanding things from you, would you just do them?”

  Balthazar thought back to the first time he met the wizard.

  “That… that’s literally what you did when you came here yelling for mana potions st time.”

  “The point, my pincer-y friend,” the strange old man suddenly yelled out, standing straight again and opening his arms, “is that if you want to earn a drake’s respect, show respect first!”

  Balthazar tried to make sense of what the wizard was trying to tell him, but the cept was still not quite clig yet.

  “Uh… how?” he asked, with great hesitation.

  “Oh-oh-oh,” the grinning wizard said. “Are you asking me for some… tut?”

  H0st