Apocalypse Reset: My Crab Can Heal the World!

Barns sends a message to Maria back in Dimartino. She opens it hesitantly and scans the contents.

"They caught the Corpsie," Maria informs Osmond, who stands to her left. "But that's the least of our problems now, isn't it?"

The man standing before the two of them twitches, his eyes hidden behind two thick glass lenses.

"It was so easy to get through this barrier, I have to admit," he gloats. "But my stupid stupid comrade couldn't do it. No matter. I'm here now! Here to kill every last one of you humans!"

The man is Franzel Ahrman - one of the Sentinels. The purple-bowl-cut, menacing, scheming narcissist who volunteered himself for this very mission just to prove he could do what Nazakiel could not.

And in that moment, he stood in the center of Dimartino's town square, his arms high in the sky.

"I did it! I did it! All by myself!" he cackles, leaning over himself and clutching his stomach. "It was I - the great Franzel Ahrman! Of course it would be me! All the other Sentinels are too stupid. Too caught up in their own powers. It's not about power, though. Is it? It's about this."

He taps a finger to his temple. "My big, beautiful brain. Now, you must be the Demon Lord Osmond and his bitch pet Maria. Do I have you pegged correctly?"

He adjusts his glasses. Osmond and Maria stand side by side, at the ready.

"We were prepared for Corpsie, but this is one of the Sentinels we read about, my dove."

"Good," Maria scoffs. "I've been waiting to get revenge on one of these demented fucks after what Nazakiel did."

"Oh, you're telling me," Franzel snickers. "I'd have helped you get revenge on him too. He's the worst. But that's not why I'm here - I'm getting revenge in my own way by proving that I'm better than him!"

Osmond wastes no time and fires a bolt of purple energy at Franzel. The Sentinel watches the attack and phases away from it at the last second, moving unnaturally.

Maria attacks next, screaming out her Royal Art and throwing a barrage of light-spears. Franzel sidesteps each attack like it's nothing.

"The hell?"

Franzel smirks. "Didn't you read all about me in your little dossier? I can read the future of whoever I can see. I can tell every movement you're going to make. You might as well give up now, or this fight will be quite bothersome. Let's just skip ahead to the part where I bash your skulls in - approximately five minutes from now if you keep up your stupid, pathetic attacks."

Osmond starts to glow - more vibrant than before. He shoots an array of attacks in tandem with Maria, hoping to catch the sneaky Sentinel in an unwinnable situation. But try as they might, Franzel slips through their every attack.

"I told you - I can see everything you do," he giggles, adjusting the thick frames of his glasses. "With these eyes - the eyes of Emperor Yharan himself - you're hopeless! Attack all you like!"

Maria fires off one more magicked dart at lightspeed, but Franzel dodges it before it even leaves her hand. He sticks his tongue out at her like a child.

He begins to approach them both, walking slowly but with a large knife in his hands. "I'm not a fighter like the others, so please excuse the crudeness of my execution methods. When you're untouchable like me, you really don't pay much mind to HOW you go about killing. But I know neither of you can escape because I'll have done THIS and blocked off your escape routes!"

He snaps his fingers and a cage of dark energy appears around them, locking them close together. He continues to approach, twitching and shaking.

"I haven't cut up a real human in a long time. And never a demon. Oh, but I've certainly fantasized all about it…it's not good for me. It's a stain on my genius, having to do such messy things. If only that stupid Bloodhound made it through the barrier. He was supposed to do the dirty work."

"How did you make it through, anyway?" Maria snarls.

"Oh!" Franzel pauses, posing dramatically for them. "I'm SO glad you asked, you ignorant woman. It was quite simple. The barrier repels everything, but it doesn't repel, say, AIR itself, now does it? Of course not. So how does it discriminate? What does it do? The answer is OBVIOUS, even if you barbarians could never figure it out. The barrier repels hatred, evil. So all I had to do was pretend to myself that I was coming here because I just wanted to help you all out SOOOOO much. The stupid barrier, like the stupid crab that made it, was only too easy to fool."

Osmond clenches his fists. "Maria, my love," he says quietly. "I believe our secret plan for taking out Corpsie might actually come in handy here."

"Just do it, Osmond, he's going to kill you otherwise!"

"Both of you," Franzel corrects. But before he can reach them, suddenly the courtyard is filled with howling monsters.

They pour out of all the nearby buildings - well over five hundred - a mixture of goblins, kobolds, and pig-faced orcs. They rush Franzel from every direction.

This is the trap they'd readied for Corpsie - what they were waiting for, in case the Zombie Lord showed up in Dimartino. An opportunity for them to surround it with watchful eyes and take it hostage.

But against Franzel, it also works - he can read the future of anything he can see. But what if there are so many enemies, he can't possibly see them all.

"What the-" Franzel starts, slashing the throat of the first monster to reach him. "Hell is this supposed to be!?"

He cuts them down, over and over - if he looks at any one of them, it's as good as dead. But the problem isn't his visual acuity - it's the sheer numbers.

He quickly becomes overwhelmed as more and more monsters barrel into him. Suddenly, his arms are restrained by a pair of goblins. They hold him down with all his strength as he struggles against them. Even in this situation, he doesn't go down. He's still a Sentinel, after all.

More and more swarm him, and he kills more and more in a bloody fury. But he's distracted. He can only see what's right in front of him.

And as such, he doesn't notice Osmond and Maria, both flying in the sky above him.

"Royal Art: Heavenly Splinter," Maria murmurs, readying her strongest attack - the very same one that brought Adea down.

"Demon Art: Spear of Purgation," Osmond mumbles back as they stare into each other's eyes. Their two attacks mix, a brilliant swirl of purple and gold in the air above - and in an instant, they zoom down toward Franzel.

He catches sight of it just in time, and he throws all of his strength into deflecting the attack. A wave of dark energy extends from the Sentinel and snuffs out the magic with ease.

But as Franzel stares up at the sky, the next wave of monsters surrounding him makes their move. He's distracted for a moment too long.

Goblin teeth sink into every one of his limbs at once. Kobolds nick his tendons with thin silver knives, and a thick orc hits him over the head with a wooden bat.

Franzel falls to the ground, twitching. His glasses crack on the pavement.

"No…" he says, reaching for his broken glasses. "No, no, no, you're kidding me, no!"

He doesn't get any further. He can't see shit without his glasses, so the barreling shapes toward him lack any sort of meaning.

Maria and Osmond land back on the ground to watch the carnage unfold as Franzel is brutally beaten to death by the horde of monsters meant for Corpsie.

The beating takes at least twenty minutes - as a Sentinel, he's got quite a lot of vigor to him. It only makes it all the more satisfying to Maria as she hears his disoriented wails begging for forgiveness.

It's only when the crying finally stops that Osmond commands the horde to stand down. Maria prepares one final attack.

"This is from Dimartino - a message to you and yours," she hisses. "Heavenly Splinter!"

Her magic rises from the ground and impales Franzel, rocketing him into the sky. He flies only as high as the barrier lets him as her mighty thorn of light skewers his corpse to the barrier, leaving him hanging up high in the sky.

"Wonderful work as always, my sweet, darling Maria."