Sexy Protagonist

[Froge]

The stone floor of Brennenburg castle trembled beneath his feet as he took his first steps into its dark and foreboding domain. A cold and thick mist hung in the air, and the walls were covered in dust and cobwebs. Here and there were fallen stone pillars and many pieces of crumbled debris. A stifling darkness awaited him as he moved on further ahead, threatening to envelop him in a void from which there was no return.

Fortunately, our protagonist today is not a weak, delicate, nyctophobic british man, but rather the strong and courageous Oswald Mandus, who, as his testosterone-soaked name suggests, had no fear of anything.

"RUN, FOOLISH GRUNTS," Mandus bellowed as he charged through the entrance hall of the castle, "THIS IS MANESIA NOW!"

The earth seemed to shake as Mandus roared out each word. He looked around with his lamp fully turned on, unafraid to stare into the face of any eldritch abomination that dared to attack him. Not one bit of the dreary scenery of Brennenburg Castle scared him.

Oswald Mandus calmly walked down the steps that would take him from the entrance hall into the dreaded refinery. As he pulled the door in front of him off its hinges, he was greeted with the most unpleasant sight of a big wall of red goo blocking his path. Immediately Mandus realized that this was probably a cue for him to go on an overly long item creation quest where he'd have to find some chemical ingredients and mix them together in a laboratory so that he could create an acid powerful enough to dissolve the wall.

But this was not the way of the Manesia.

Mandus calmly stepped forward and raised his fist. As if the wall of goo was sentient, or at least sentient enough to understand what fear was, it immediately parted way and disappeared off into the walls.

With a satisfied smile on his face, Mandus stepped deeper into the dark hall in front of him. It was indeed pitch black down here, but fortunately for Mandus, he never had to worry about his lamp running out of fuel. He remembered a time when lamps actually required oil in order to sustain their flame, but that was before he introduced lamps to the concept of Manesia, upon which the element of fire realized that it had better start existing longer before a certain wealthy industrialist's fist came their way.

Mandus suddenly found himself stepping into knee-deep water, and he jerked his gaze up to the dark and flooded tunnels in front of him. He saw several puddles appearing on the surface of the water as if they were a creature's footsteps. Except all of the puddles were getting farther and farther away from him, so there was no problem, really.

Not long afterwards, Mandus arrived into a quiet and serene back hall where a beautiful, albeit somewhat twisted, fountain was situated at the center of the room. He heard, to his left, the loud clanking of machinery, and quickly headed off in that direction to find out what was going on.

A fully functional elevator lay at the end of the hall, its door hanging open as if eager to serve him. This was fortunate, as he expected that he'd have to go on another boring item fetch quest to retrieve all the machinery parts necessary to fix the elevator. But since this was Manesia, his very presence must have scared the machine enough that it fixed itself for him. Maybe it was a machine run by pigs, eh, eh?-

All throughout the prison tunnels beneath the elevator, Mandus heard inhumane shrieks and frightened wailing. He saw many shadows of skulking creatures around corridors, but it seemed to him as if most of those shadows were trying to hurry away from him. And the screaming often came from those exact shadows.

He was getting very, very bored of all this walking. With hardly a second thought, Mandus punched a wall and found himself skipping at least an hour of filler content. He was, in fact, now standing right beside a rather talkative corpse.

"Help...me..." the thing whispered, and motioned with what was left of its bones towards a tank that seemed to be leaking out green fumes. Unsure of what to do, Mandus came to the only logical conclusion and punched the tank.

"Thank you, you have my gratitude. My name is Agrippa. Who might you be?" The corpse said.

"M-M-M-M-M-M-M-A-A-A-A-A-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-DUS......." Our testosterone-charged protagonist responded. "With extra emphasis on the Man."

"You want to stop Alexander? Oh, my...so Babylon shall fall, you say," the corpse continued a bit non sequitor-ly "You worry too much. Alexander is toothless without an orb. He has one? That's... that's not very promising at all. The Sanctum is basically impenetrable while guested by an orb. It could be breached by another, but... Alexander broke his, I mean my orb, a long time ag-"

The look on Mandus' face suggested that this was not going to be a problem.

"I hate to bother you further, but... if you are really going after Alexander, would you consider...taking me with you? I know it sounds ridiculous – I mean look at me. But if you find anything concerning a man named Johann Weyer, would you plea-"

"OK!" Mandus exclaimed before swiftly pulling the head off the corpse.

It was not long now before Mandus would confront the man he had fervently come all this way to hunt.

As he made his way towards the inner sanctum of Brennenburg, Mandus continued to hear terrified screaming from lurking shadows, this time of a slightly more brutish nature. They were, of course, no concern to him. Less than ten minutes later, Mandus found himself at the entrance to the orb chamber.

"I was wondering if you were going to show up," a deep and villainous voice said.

"I see Agrippa convinced you to run some errands. Tell me, is everything nice and clear now? Am I the villain? Good and evil. Such comforting concepts - but hardly applicable. Are you so blind that you see no good in me? Or evil in Agrip-wait, you're not Daniel!"

The face of Alexander the naked floating baron contorted, and he suddenly appeared extremely worried.

"I'VE COME TO SETTLE THIS," Mandus roared, instantly causing two of the pylons to fall over.

"Stop it, you are ruining it. We are so close - I beg you!" Alexander exclaimed.

You...forgot...to brew...the fucking potion...first, a voice seemed to say from within Mandus' bottomless pockets.

"I'm just like you, Daniel. A prisoner of circumstance. Trapped in a world I no longer recognise. As you gain your freedom, will you deny me mine? We are so close now. Closer than I've been for centuries," Alexander continued, seemingly out of habit.

"I TOLD YOU I'M NOT DANIEL!" Mandus replied, causing the last pylon to topple.

"No, you fool! You killed us - You killed us both!" Alexander screamed.

A hideous and shrieking roar sounded within the depths of the castle. Moments later, piles of red goo began to cover the room as the Shadow made its inevitable entrance.

"The shadow will come and destroy you!" Alexander continued, feeling suddenly a little out of line as his body began ripping away atom by atom.

Oswald Mandus, protagonist of the fearless Manesia, calmly turned around and raised his arm. The Shadow saw what was coming only too late. Casually, Mandus pulled his fist back and punched the universe in the face.