Apocalypse Reset: My Crab Can Heal the World! - Chapter 56

Chapter 56: Blood In the Water
The border of the two kingdoms is littered with human corpses, some immolated, some crucified, others twisted into hideous poses like effigies. Each one of them is long gone – Barns’ Resurrection skill is useless. These were the people of Ordella. Their humanity is so disregarded that they were used as set dressing by the vampires. Despicable.

“WASTEFUL. PUNISH VAMPIRES!”

As Barns’ army reaches the beginning of the bayou, the sun overhead suddenly begins to dim. It’s only a few hours into the afternoon – the darkness overtaking the sky is unnatural.

“An…eclipse?”

Barns looks to the sun as a large shadow begins to darken its harsh light. Haima, walking nearby, hypothesizes.

“I’ve heard the twins possess powerful magic, but something like this?” her eyes watch the sun fearfully as the light is all but blotted out.

“They don’t fight in daylight.” Haima murmurs. “So they’re making their own night.”

Barns is chilled by her words, but there was no going back now.

As the darkness sets upon them, something in the air changes. As if the darkness itself were watching them. The adventuring league lights a few torches and lanterns to dispel the darkness.

They reach a crossing, but the bridge has been recently destroyed. They’ll have to trudge through the murky shallow water on foot.

“Bridge was fine when I came through,” Godrick sighs. “No helpin’ it.”

“Alright, everyone!” Barns commands. It’s fully dark now, but the torchlight illuminates their legion. “We’ll load any sensitive equipment on Clancy, and he’ll cross it over. The rest of us will go on foot. It’s about three or four feet deep, so be careful. The water looks still, but its a moving river. Don’t lose your footing.”

Clancy heads over the river with their valuable items – food, medicine, things that can’t get wet. The large crab is able to lift his body up well over the water on his stilt-like legs.

As his claws poke about in the muddy water, something begins to stir under the surface, spurred by the darkness above. Dark figures float around Clancy’s legs, but the King Crab doesn’t notice.

Clancy sets himself down on the other side of the river as the humans begin to cross. Barns leads the pack, sloshing through the water quickly, eager to get out as soon as possible.

“Barns! In front of you!”

A large animal splashes out of the water – an alligator, its mouth wide open. An arrow whizzes by the moment it emerges, shooting the alligator on the bottom side of its mouth. The arrow pierces completely through the alligator snout, forcing its mouth shut.

Barns turns around. Standing on the edge of the water is Eldrie, bow in hand. Barns is glad to see him here – he’d have understood if Eldrie was too shaken up from yesterday to participate.

The reptile wails in pain but crunches through the arrow. It lets out a high-pitched scream, odd for an alligator, as it hisses. Other gators begin to bubble up from the river.

“These aren’t just regular alligators, Barns,” Haima notes, eyeing the creatures around them. She’s in the water too, just steps behind Barns. The worst possible place for her to be – the moving water around her confuses her senses and she can’t quite tell where the alligators are from intuition alone.

“These are vampire alligators.”

The gators descend on the party, tearing through the people in the water. Screams erupt through the air as a swarm of vampire gators bare their fangs and bite, sucking the blood right out of some of Barns’ followers.

Each of the scaly reptiles has large red eyes that glow in the darkness, and their teeth are sharper and larger than normal. The color has seeped from their scales, leaving them pale.

“Clancy! Foam upstream! Now!” Barns commands, withdrawing his claws and jamming them through gator brain. The crab scuttles north and immediately starts frothing into the flowing water, mixing his raw secretions into the river. The crab juice foams up quickly, and soon a cascade of cleansing foam rolls through the party.

The alligators begin to hiss and croak as the foam reaches them, burning them alive in the water. Barns and Haima continue to fight in the middle of the river, defending those who’ve already waded in.

His Silver Rake dances through the water. Even a graze from the consecrated silver is enough to vanquish a gator – the holy light that emanates from his weapon is diabolically destructive to vampires.

On the shore, Godrick is cleaning up the gators one after another with his Asura Dance – four blades whip through the air as he glides effortless along the shoreline, each sword finding a mark over and over. Eldrie stands nearby, shooting the gators out of the water.

These vampire gators can survive multiple lethal blows, so every attack counts. With the help of the foam to distract and neutralize the gators, the humans begin to gain the upper hand. A gator swims between Barns and Haima, making a move at his legs, but at this distance Haima is uninhibited from using her magic. Even before Barns notices the vampiric beast, Haima uses her Secret Art to drain it like a juice pouch.

Barns’ team is victorious – though it was too close of a call.

They finish crossing the river, and the army couldn’t be happier that they were through. There’s a few injuries, but after a quick ‘Resurrection’ from Barns, no permanent casualties.

Haima uses her Secret Art to stop the bleeding of the injured – an excellent skill to have not just offensively, but medically as well.

As they regroup at the edge of the river, Barns and Clancy do a quick sweep for any more gators. They stop a short distance away from the others, looking at a nearby settlement. Barns holds his torch up to get a better look.

“We have to be ready for anything, Clancy” Barns says, looking at the dark farm to their right. He sees chickens picking at the ground from where he’s standing.

One of the chickens looks up, its eyes glowing deep red. And then, all of the chickens begin to glow in a red malevolent aura that only Clancy and Barns can see – the birds are filled with murderous intent.

“God damn it,” Barns mutters to himself. Before they even finish resting, the army is set upon by a flying horde of vampire chickens.