Bonus Short Story

A Wild Crab Wanted to Appear

The ocean spread all the way out to the horizon. There was a single party of adventurers at the beach, marveling in its beauty. The party consisted of a human swordsman, an elven mage, a black-winged girl, and a dwarven warrior. It was a strange party, but they were fairly well-known.

“Seeing it like this, it really is beautiful. It was worth the trip.” The leader of the strange party, the heaven-winged girl Lufas Maphaahl, narrowed her eyes in pleasure upon seeing the ocean, something she didn’t get much chance to do.

But Mizgarz’s beaches weren’t just beautiful. They were also dangerous areas crawling with monsters. This was a large part of why Lufas and the others had come here. They’d been requested to clean up the monsters, since they’d multiplied too much.

“Now then, let’s get to work and finish this quickly.”

Alioth heaved his newly bought sword up onto his shoulder. Lufas and Megrez also readied their weapons—a whip sword and staff, respectively. Mizar also picked up his ax, and the four of them waded into battle with the monsters.

Megrez kept the monsters in place with magic. Mizar cracked open their shells with his ax. And Alioth split them in two with his sword. Meanwhile, Lufas had her whip sword extended, sweeping away all the ones around her.

The four of them cleaned up the monsters in the area one after another, piling up a mountain of corpses. Eventually, the things cottoned on to the difference in power, and they started to scurry away as fast as they could.

Lufas’ party didn’t even come close to managing complete extermination, but the monsters still shouldn’t approach the beach any time soon. So it was good enough to consider the job finished.

“Well, I guess that’s that,” Alioth said, smiling victoriously as he watched the monsters run away.

Lufas cast him a sidelong glance before turning back and using Observing Eye on the running creatures, selecting the one with the highest HP stat.

“What’re you doing, Lufas?”

“Nothing much. I just figured I might capture some. The monsters here seem like they’d make for a good wall.”

Shelled monsters had high DEF stats. While they’d managed to brute force their way through this fight thanks to their level difference, they would have done almost no physical damage to their shelled opponents if their levels had been similar. That was why Lufas was considering capturing the strongest monster among them and training it.

“Oh? That’s a good idea. Which one do you want?”

“I was thinking of that one in the rear with the spiral shell.”

The one Lufas was eyeing had a really high DEF stat, but all its other stats were low, making it a specialized monster. But to become a wall, DEF was the most important stat. So from that perspective, it was a good pick.

“Capture!”

Lufas activated the most basic and relied-on Monster Tamer skill, Capture. Her hand released a light that flew straight towards the spiral-shelled monster, and everyone expected it to hit. However, another monster appeared at that very moment, interrupting everything.

“H A H A H A! Humans, let me first compliment your B E A U T I F U L looks! But your conquest stops here! M E will be the one to stop you!”

Then, the light of Capture hit the idiotic crab which had so suddenly appeared.

“Ah—”

“N O O O?!”

In an unexpected turn of events, the strange crab that had appointed itself the boss of the shelled monsters got hit by Lufas’ Capture as suddenly as it had appeared. It was subdued by her skill just like that. It must have been caught off guard.

Normally, the skill needed the user to weaken the target first, but apparently, Lufas’ luck was good today—or maybe it was bad?

And so, Lufas ended up capturing a completely different monster than she’d intended. On top of that, she found out that the crab hadn’t told a single lie when she checked its stats. It really was a high-leveled, high-ranking monster. So the only reason it had been captured was because of its foolishness.

And that was how Lufas, who would later be referred to as the Black-Winged Conqueror, and Karkinos, who would be her subordinate as the Crab of the Twelve Heavenly Stars, met. Although it was doubtful anyone would believe it if there were told as much.