Apocalypse Reset: My Crab Can Heal the World!-Chapter 100: The Horde

Barns grips his belt, eyes scanning the field ahead. The open plains stretch out before them, eerily silent except for the distant shuffling of thousands of undead feet. The morning sun filters through the haze, casting a dull, washed-out glow over the battlefield.

He exhales sharply. ’Time to get to work.’

Three teams. Three objectives. One goal - wipe out the horde, and resurrect two thousand more souls to the Kingdom of Dimartino.

Easy in theory, right? Except for the fact that zombies don’t go down easily, and beheadings were out of the question. As such, the conventional zombie-killing methods were off-limits. At least they have a trench, already filled and frothing with foam, to lead the undead into.

Zombies are too stupid to avoid such an obvious trap, after all.

Barns and Clancy stand in the center of the operation, positioned at the heart of the battlefield where the undead will be funneled.

Above them, nestled in the branches of an giant tree, Eldrie watches from his elevated perch, his single crimson eye gleaming in the early light. His bow is drawn, an arrow notched, waiting for the moment to strike.

The source of this c𝓸ntent is frёeweɓηovel.coɱ.

From his perch, he can see the whole battlefield, and the horde from corner to corner. They were proceeding apace, slowly shambling their way toward Barns and Clancy.

It’s a rotting sea of bodies, their movements jerky and unnatural. They stretch across the entire plain, a seemingly unstoppable torrent of flesh and bone.

Clancy clicks his claws and bellows into the air once more. "ZOMBIE! PROCEED! KING COMMANDS!"

Clancy is on distraction duty - his voice was louder than anyone else’s, and for the past half-hour, he’s been screaming at the top of his lungs to guide them further and further. Now, they’re just moments away from enacting their plan.

Barns flexes his fingers.

"No better way to start the day than with some good ol’ fashioned zombie killing - eh, King?"

Clancy scuttles excitedly. "NO BEHEADING. CLANCY REMEMBER BARNACLES."

"Eldrie! Start picking off any fast ones. The last thing we need is a sprinter."

"Already on it," Eldrie calls down.

A bowstring twangs, and the first arrow whizzes through the air, piercing the chest of a ghoul at the front of the horde. It collapses instantly. Another follows. Then another. Eldrie’s careful not to cause too much bodily destruction, but each of his arrows has the stopping power to blow a hole in the zombies’ chests. His target for each - their spines.

Barns cracks his knuckles. "Alright, King. Let’s do this."

Clancy rears back and erupts in a burst of cleansing foam. The white froth spews forth like a divine flood, drenching the first wave of undead. The effect is instantaneous—where the foam touches, the rotting flesh boils and sizzles, stripping away the monstrous husks and revealing human corpses beneath.

The bodies collapse, lifeless once more.

But there are thousands more.

Barns dives into the fray. His Silver Rake claw breaks bone, his movements a whirlwind of raw strength and precision. Each swing sends undead bodies flying, limbs snapping like brittle twigs.

Above, Eldrie continues his barrage. Every shot is perfect. The former vampire’s keen instincts and steady hand make him the perfect support. Not to mention, his glowing vampiric eye has granted him visual acuity unlike anything he’s ever had.

The horde keeps coming. Even with their first round of attacks, only about forty to fifty zombies are downed. There are thousands more.

Barns barely has a moment to breathe before another wave crashes upon them.

…

Elsewhere on the battlefield…

Osmond twirls his staff, his demonic energy flaring with excitement all over his body. He thrives in battle, and this is no different. He chains an attack of condensed purple energy through the horde, dropping seven outlier zombies in a single instant.

On his end, Osmond’s aiming for the legs. Legless zombies can’t walk - and once they’ve fallen, all they have to do is wait for their foam bath.

Maria, beside him, watches the battlefield with a cold, calculating gaze. She’s not here to waste energy, and in fact, her powers haven’t fully recovered. She’s the tactician now - watching over the battlefield with controlled and refined grace. Making sure everything is proceeding apace.

Underhill leans on his gilded cane nearby, watching as a group of undead break away from the main horde, shambling toward them.

"Couple of wise guys over here, eh?" he muses, tapping the ground twice with his cane.

Then he moves.

Underhill is fast. Faster than Maria and Osmond would have ever guessed - they’ve never seen him fight before. He disappears from sight for a moment, then reappears behind one of the zombies, his cane striking like a whip. The creature’s head snaps backward with a sickening crack, its body falling limp before it even realizes what happened.

Maria raises an eyebrow. "Didn’t think he’d be much of a fighter," she mumbles to Osmond.

Underhill smirks - somehow he’s heard her, even from a distance away. "Let’s just say I keep a few tricks up my sleeve!"

The left flank moves aggressively, cutting down any zombies that veer toward Ordella. They cannot afford stragglers. Every single corpse needs to be accounted for.

And still… the horde keeps coming.

Despite their best efforts, the undead keep surging forward, gaining ground quickly. They stomp over the corpses of the fallen, and the trenches they dug out are already full, creating bridges for more zombies to shamble through.

A thousand have fallen. But a thousand yet remain.

Barns, bloodied but exhilarated, stands in the middle of the battlefield, his left arm partially transformed with the ’Claw of Death’. He slashes through the undead with ease. His hard-earned training is paying off.

He glances up to the right flank - where Godrick and Roscoe were. They should have been dropping their foam bombs by now. Did something happen? Continue your adventure at novelbuddy

And then, suddenly, a deep, gravelly wail erupts from the horde. A cry like a banshee, shrill and ominous.

And then, from the center of the remaining zombies, something rises on bony, battered wings.

A massive, hulking figure, standing twice the height of a man. Its flesh is stitched together, a grotesque amalgamation of corpses, fused by dark magic.

Its eyes glow red, burning with unholy rage.

Barns feels his stomach drop.

"What the hell is that?" he mutters.

Eldrie, above in the trees, narrows his crimson eye.

"That," he calls out, notching an arrow, "is a Zombie Lord."