“And so, this letter must always come before that one, except when after that one over there,” Balthazar said as he pointed at words on the paper with the tip of his pincer. “The exception is that word here. Or that one. That one down there too. Or… Well, you get it, right?”

The goblin lurching over the parchment scratched his head, frowning intensely at the characters inked onto the page.

“Druma no get it,” the frustrated assistant sighed, rolling his shoulders forward into a slump as he stared sadly at the ground. “Reading is hard.”

Merchant and helper were both sitting in a clearing behind the bazaar, between two mounds of snow the goblin had shoveled out of the way earlier. Balthazar wore his winter hat that Madeleine had given him to stay warm, while Druma wrapped his scrawny body with the cape Tweedus had gifted him the last time they met.

The crab looked at the small green creature for a moment with a feeling of pity before turning his gaze away to the water. Balthazar stared at the pond and he… pondered.

This isn’t working. How am I going to teach a goblin with 4 Intellect how to read? Think, Balthazar, think! How do Captain Leander or any of the other tutors out there pass on their skills to others? There’s got to be a trick to it.

As the crab pondered, he remembered what Leander had once told him while they were sailing on his ship and the veteran was trying to teach him one of his combat techniques.

For some things, there are no tricks or shortcuts. You just have to do the work, study, understand what you are trying to learn, and absorb it into you. The words echoed in the merchant’s mind.

Balthazar scoffed internally.

Easy for him to say that. He’s got the tutor title, I don’t.

Tapping on his chin with the tip of his pincer, the crab considered looking at it from a different perspective.

When he had finally managed to learn what would turn out to be the Mega Pinch skill from the captain, it had taken him days of trial and error.

In the end, what made it all finally click for me? He wondered.

“Boss?” the goblin sheepishly asked, his big eyes looking up at Balthazar, and a sad frown creasing the brow above them. “Is Druma too dumb to read?”

The crab’s eyestalks frowned too, not with sadness, but with indignation.

“Dumb?!” he said, puffing up his shell. “You’re the smartest goblin I’ve ever known! How would a dumb goblin save me as many times as you did? If you were dumb, do you think a high-level arcane wizard like Tweedus would have wasted his time giving you that cape and that book? And you keep my whole place up and functioning practically all on your own! You’re not dumb, buddy, you’re gifted!”

A trembling smile found its way onto the aspiring wizard’s face as his chin quivered. “Boss mean all that?”

“Mean it? Druma, I am as serious about it as I am about the strings on my coin purse,” the merchant said to his assistant.

Balthazar leaned closer over the goblin’s shoulder to look at the page.

To him, reading just felt so natural now. Like something he had known all of his life. He couldn’t explain how he knew it, because he had never actually learned it. The system simply gave him that knowledge like it had always been there.

How can I teach something I never learned myself?

The crab’s eyestalks glanced at his green assistant, who was staring intently at the page with a frown of concentration and a spark of hopefulness in his eyes.

I’ve figured out harder things than this before, I can figure this out too. For him.

Balthazar gently placed the side of his pincer on Druma’s caped back and used the other one to point at the written piece of parchment.

“Look at the words,” he said calmly and reassuringly. “Piece each character together with the sounds I told you. Let them lift off the paper and enter your eyes, into your brain, and then back out of your mouth. Your ears already know these words, as does your tongue. Let them help the other parts of you catch up.”

The goblin stared at the first word at the top of the page, eyes wide and unblinking, as if he was worried the letters would run off and hide if he took his gaze away.

“Reading sound like… magic to Druma,” he muttered.

“Sure,” the crab said, patting his assistant on the back gently. “In a way, it kind of is. Think of this as your first step into learning real spells, buddy. I know you love music too. Think of reading as that. Each letter, a note entering your ear, tickling your brain in pleasant ways as it makes a distinct sound. Put many of them together, and it makes a tune, like a word.”

Druma’s brow rose even higher as his eyes widened.

“Is each letter like when Druma hit drum with different part of hand to make different noise, boss?”

Balthazar smiled. “Yes! Like that. And you keep adding more noises, more letters, until it forms a rhythm.”

The goblin grinned, his pupils narrowed to pinpricks as a large bead of sweat slid down his cheek from the effort.

“Druma… Druma think he got it. Druma is reading first word!” he excitedly announced, without daring to take his focus away from the inked piece of parchment.

“Go on, read it to me,” the merchant said encouragingly.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The small caped apprentice gritted his teeth as if struggling to get the word out, eyes dragging across the top of the page.

“The,” he slowly stated.

With a start, Balthazar threw his arms up and clacked his claws in celebration.

“You did it! You read your first word!”

Druma’s gaze finally broke away from the page, and he looked at the crab with a childlike joy on his face.

“Druma did it? Druma read good?”

“You sure did, buddy!”

Out of nowhere, a system notification surprised Balthazar.

[Congratulations! You have unlocked the title of Tutor.]

[You are now able to teach skills you are proficient at to those who are capable of learning them. Tutoring others awards bonus experience.]

[You have reached level 31]

Oh, that’s new! I’d never gotten a title before. I didn’t even know I could!

“Boss?” Druma said with a slight pant as he rubbed his temples. “Druma feel tired and head hurt a little.”

“Hmm, makes sense,” the crab said. “I felt pretty drained after my tutoring sessions with Leander, too. Go on, take some rest for now. Later you can keep practicing reading some more. I think that now that you’ve broken through your first word, the others will prove a lot easier!”

The goblin obliged and headed to his bales of hay where he usually slept, but not without first grabbing his tome of spells and carrying it under his arm. Somehow, the merchant suspected the eager goblin wouldn’t be able to wait until later to get some more reading practice in.

“Heh, I knew you had it in you,” Balthazar muttered to himself as he walked toward the bazaar.

On his way back, the crab casually strolled while navigating the prompts of his level-up.

Tempted as he was to add another ten points into his already robust health pool, Balthazar decided to hear the voice of reason and instead add another ten into his mana, as he had with the previous level.

[Health: 300/300]

[Stamina: 30/30]

[Mana: 50/50]

“Next level I’ll go back to health,” he said to himself. “But at least with 50 mana I should be able to use my current and possibly future skills without much trouble. Not like I plan to start casting spells anyway. I’ll leave that stuff to Druma and his dreams of becoming a wizard.”

When it came to his three attribute points, however, there was no voice of reason to listen to other than the one that said Charisma was the way to go all the way.

[Attributes]

[Strength: 5]

[Endurance: 5]

[Agility: 5]

[Perception: 5]

[Intellect: 20]

[Charisma: 84]

“Perfect,” the crab said as he dismissed all system prompts in his sight. “Now, I should probably find the time to try out some—”

The merchant’s thoughts were cut short as he entered the bazaar and found Tristan behind the counter, with his back turned to it, searching through a tall shelf of books and scrolls.

“Looking for something?” Balthazar asked.

The graying man raised his head, looking around disoriented at first, before finding the source of the question.

“Oh, there you are, partner,” Tristan said. “Do you know where the bazaar’s ledger is? I swear it was usually here.”

“Over there,” the crustacean said, pointing a pincer at a lower section of the counter’s inner side. “I moved it to where I can reach it better. Why do you need it anyway?”

“Oh, you know, just trying to get some studying done,” the other merchant said, looking slightly uneasy as he moved from the shelf to the counter. “The closer the meeting gets, the more anxious I’m getting about being unprepared. I realized earlier that I haven’t reviewed ledgers in years. A merchant, unfamiliar with record-keeping, can you imagine?!”

Balthazar cocked an eyestalk at his business partner.

“I never wrote a ledger, I just keep it all in here,” he said, tapping the top of his hard shell through his soft wool hat. “That might also have something to do with me not having any fingers to write with, but that’s beside the point. And back up a little—what meeting are you talking about?”

“The meeting of merchants from the guild?” Tristan said, pausing to look directly at the crab. “You remember? To nominate a replacement for Antoine as the guildmaster of the merchants?”

“Oh,” Balthazar said. “That hasn’t happened yet? It’s been months.”

“No. No, no, no,” the former drunkard replied, shaking his head vigorously from side to side, and causing his baggy cheeks to tremble excessively. “Merchants from all over need to meet in town, personally, to discuss a nomination like that. And as you should know, merchants are very busy folk to whom time is money. So finding a date in which everyone can properly travel and meet in one spot takes ages. Just imagine, everyone wants to align the meeting with their schedules, but nobody agrees to compromise, so you get a bunch of stubborn traders stuck into a stalemate of a negotiation that goes nowhere. And guild meetings have a lot of protocol that everyone has to agree to.”

“So, in other words, bureaucratic hell,” Balthazar said, “Glad I’m not part of that bunch, then. Independent merchant all the way.”

“Exactly,” said Tristan. “But if everything goes right, the meeting should happen next month.”

“And surely you're the top pick for the position, right?” the eight-legged merchant asked. “After Antoine’s schemes were exposed, and what he did to ruin your reputation came to light, surely that redeems you and shows you should have been the guildmaster back then?”

The older man’s expression turned glum.

“It’s not that simple, partner. The guild is pragmatic above all else. They want the most suitable person for the position, not just who ‘deserves’ it more. I may have been the most promising candidate back in the day, when Antoine and I were running our successful business, but in all those years since his betrayal, look at me—I’ve fallen from grace, became a drunk, didn’t practice my craft, got older, and… and I simply lost my touch for being a merchant.”

Tristan dropped his head in shame as he leaned on the counter, his shaggy hair falling in front of his face and partially obscuring it.

Balthazar frowned.

“So now you’re trying to get back on the swing of things by… studying ledgers?”

The human raised his face slightly and sniffed quietly before speaking.

“Oh, not just that. I’ve been helping Henrietta do inventory, sometimes sweep the store’s floor too, and have been adding price tags to all sorts of items all over the bazaar.”

The crab’s frown deepened.

“Right. But what about trading? You know, selling, buying, with actual clients? The main thing a merchant should do. Have you been doing any of that at all?”

Tristan’s eyes shot up to the crab, and he shook his head vigorously once more.

“Oh, no, no, no. I haven’t done any trading here at your bazaar or elsewhere, partner. I left that part of the business to Henrietta during your absence. I wouldn’t dare. What if I messed it up? What if I started causing losses due to my lack of practice? I couldn’t risk damaging your reputation like that.”

This time, it was the crab who shook his head—or rather, his shell.

“Nonsense. I can’t have a merchant partner who doesn’t do any merchanting. And you can’t seriously expect to earn the position of merchant guildmaster when you haven’t even traded a beanstalk in years. What you need is practice.”

Tristan looked at Balthazar with a gaze of hesitant hope mixed with doubt. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I’m just so out of practice.”

The crustacean crossed his pincers confidently.

“Of course I’m sure. I’m not just an expert merchant. I’ll have you know I’m also an excellent tutor now, so you’re in luck. Come on, partner, I’ll show you how a merchant crab does business.”