1 Foolish Soul

Pretend you care for a moment and listen to me you half-brain bastard!

That's what my mother used to say it to me when I did something wrong or not up to her standard.

I get used to hear it but never really listen to it.

But when the silence replaces that familiar tune is a really dreadful felling.

Now I lie in a pile of corpses looking up in the sky, wondering, maybe I was wrong for trying to be different. Maybe I should have listened to my parents when I had a chance. Maybe I should had be like any other warrior in my tribe.

But no, the feeling of wanting to have freedom for all my people and not just my tribe wanted me to strive for more. For more permanent solutions.

Let's go back 5 years before my doom and also most likely the doom of the world. It began with 5 beings appearing from the wild and inhospitable place of dark territory, where no life being can be there without being corrupted or undead. Nobody care about that place because the undead stayed on the territory and didn't wander like they couldn't pass some kind of barrier. Anyway they suddenly appeared with an army of a 3 billion of undead. Not very strong but really annoying. They claimed that the collapse had began and they were collecting the impure as an offering for the mighty Overlord.

Nobody beside the humans were concerned, because this army was within their territory and subsequently my village. Not near but near enough to raise some concerns.

So when the collapse began I was worried for my people. To only have them lash at me and called me traitor. Never the least I joined the human alliance as a front line of attack.

They saw me and said, "Yeah you only serve as a meat shield anyway. Good thing that you know your place". What a nice treatment to a volunteer demi-human don't you think ? Yeah that was also the reason of less that 500 volunteers of our kind. Mostly a lot of kids trying hard to prove themselves on the battlefield or seniors that knew that this threat is no joke.

Even after the unnecessary special greeting I smiled and nod. I said to myself "The place I serve doesn't matter, only the means to complete my objective, to fight for freedom."

So with my bare hands (never liked the metallic feeling) and only with leather armor, since they told me that they would never expend so much for the meat shields, fighting for my life for over 5 years came to the final battlefield.

On those 5 years of pain we were send all across of the human territory to fight the Evil Spirits Legion. At first we were only 50 millions of conscripts without much discipline or hope to survive. Our numbers dwelling campaign after campaign. A few times new conscripts humans farmers and demi humans would join to be reinforce our lines a little bit. But they would not survive long enough to come back to their homes.

Of the initial 500million only 5000 remained. As evidence of the efforts each battlefield that claimed millions at the time. They managed to dwindled the initial 3 billion of undead to 1 billion using guerrilla warfare but the undead were slowing learning and getting better. At the expense of over 4 billions of demi-humans and humans, mostly criminals, slaves or conscripts.

Finally the prophet of the Holy Kingdom had a vision of the extinction of the human race. Nobody believed him, only the king of that kingdom firmly believe it. He tried to convince other kingdoms to help it out but humans are funny creatures. Even with the treath of extinction they still blinded by the greed. They would argued that they were the only who can dispatch troops because they didn't had any borders to defend while they had to fight skirmishes with the orcs occasionally. Of course some of them wanted to exhaust the Holy Kingdom to conquer it and absorb it to their kingdom.

So the Holy Kingdom had no other choice to send their strongest troops to fight. A strong 2 billion elite troops joined the misfits of conscripts. Of course they wouldn't listened to those dirty conscripts not even their warnings of scheming undead and expect the unexpected. So most free veterans grinded their teeth and swallowed their anger for the best of the human territory some of them would leave to their home to try to defend their homelands themselves. A pathetic attempt against billions of undead.

The front line of defense was basically all slaves demi-humans and a few free demi-humans that maybe their tribes where close to the battlefield and didn't want to move out. So they came to attack the intruders.

Behind them were all the front troops of the imperial army, foot soldiers with wood shields, leather and iron armor, a small average sword tied on the waist and of course the signature spear of the Imperial army.

Past that were the paladins, all with steel and fancy armor. All the runes inscription on the armor and weapons. They used their one handmade weapons for efficiency and familiarity.

After them were the archers in rows according to their level, wooden and recurves bows, all with leather armor. A few of them with inscriptions (it's much harder to inscribe organic material than inorganic).

Finally they were the priests, and the cavalry on the side, and in the center of all them was the commander of the legion. Heard they called the Golden Sword Commander (cheese name, right?).

A total of an imposing army of 2 billion was there to make the final standing!

So why I told you all the composition of the army and the places where they were standing?

Easy, because all went to sh***.

We were expecting the evil forces of the Evil Spirits Legion on the front of the space between two giants mountains, named Demon Peaks because you can't go up there. The first 5km is all slope so you can't climb. Even if you climb past that point you don't have enough oxygen for moving properly. And even if you endure that, you have to fight giants lizards that sticks to the rocks. They are the kings of the mountains. No one can tame them,also they choose to starve than being tamed.

So we naturally didn't look up at all, only had a few routine scouts keeping check of the situation on our flanks and of course checking the front, expecting our enemy to emerge from the Deadly Peaks.

Wrong f**cking choice. They made over 100 skeletons dragons to drop gigants boulders almost the size of a small castle between the peaks killing in the process our scouts and other troop while simultaneously blocking our path in front of us. Also they trained 5.000.000 giant skeleton eagles and other flying monsters to drop big boulders while they were diving. Most of them couldn't stop in time and shattered on the ground sending bone projectiles everywhere killing our army in batches, hitting around 300 soldiers per eagle smashed. The boulders rolled and killed some others, hitting around 100 soldiers for each boulder. And not only that, 250.000 boulders opened of the total of over 2 millions. Inside them were all the elites of the evil spirit legion.

Death lord? Check. Corrupt Arch mage? Check. Fallen Angel? Check. Dark Elf Sinner ? Check. Jesus f**k. And worst of one of the big 5 was here too.

The arch lich of the big five, named Szotar shouted in his eerie and cold voice: "Rise and destroy anything that stands in our way my little minions! <Mass Death Revival>!"

Following that voice the soldiers that died, raised and bite into anyone that was near. Even corpses with only heads remaining. More than 800.000.000 soldiers killed just from the first attack raised from the dead.

But worse was yet to come.Zombies of villagers began emerging from the forest on our right and left, some of them merging in the middle before coming to us, they were making a net slowly but deadly. Not sure why there were so many of them, approximately 300million of them.

So we only had one choice, to fight for our lives. I wish I could say that we fight properly and with honor. But that was not the case, being attacked from the top by flying monsters, blocking our path between the peaks with boulders, being disorganized while the elites of the ESL (Evil Spirits Legion) killing as they pleased from the middle of our ranks, being surrounded by never ending zombie villagers, people making use of demi-humans for a chance to make a run, to only get impaled by some skeleton cavalry.

Ultimately we were defeated, some tried to surrender only to be skinned alive.

So I was there, getting mowed by thousands of zombies and attacked by skeleton soldiers like ants. Even me, with all my years of experience had no choice but getting bite to the death. Someone stop them telling them that my corpse was valuable for making a stronger undead so the left me partially complete.

I was there staring at the night sky while felling all my blood running out of my body, slowing fading my life.

So I was thinking about my parents and my choices. Regretting not having spend more time with them, regretting to had wasting so much time in things that didn't matter in the end, and most of all regretting that I couldn't make my life long dream a free world for my people and all the races that could coexist together.

So with my last breath I said with all my force that made a tremble in the battlefield "Fight for Freedom!!!"

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That shout was all my repent, hope, anger and grief that I felt all my life.

Burning my life essence only to shout a fooling sentence? Maybe but for me that was the right thing to do.

And then cold, absolute darkness. Nothing of meeting with our gods of freedom, nature, summer, or the hunt. Nothing of meeting our ancestors. Only darkness was there for me.

But never the less I continued searching for something, I didn't know what. I just felted something there for me, so close yet so far.

Searching, resting, searching. I don't know how much time I was doing that. But I kept doing it. Feeling that if I gave up, that feeling would soon be vanish and never be recovered.

Some where in the dark was a dark spirit, known as Salman, in charge of moving idle souls to the next stage, the purging and the ascension. But this one soul never stopped moving, even when was resting to replenish his soul energy from the dark, was only minutes before moving again.

Sometimes it happens, souls searching for their soulmates, searching for their family, searching for some objects. But after a few years or decades they would stop searching and made it possible to Salman to reap them and move them to the next stage.

When that happened Salman was excited,this was his only entertainment in this dark word, besides the resting place for dark spirits. But this one soul was past the point of entertainment. It was annoying as hell, it just kept going and going.

It was like this for a century, he got used to it, only checking on him once a year. To make an account of active souls in his sector.

Until one day, that a blinding light descended for far beyond his sector. Something bypassing all boundaries. The mighty law of the plane, that ruled all. But never interfering. This was something that never happened in all of Salman experience.

He immediately went near the light only to see the foolish soul being dragged up to the mortal plane. Never to be seen again. That made Salman very angry, not only he had to be accounted for the missing soul and his monthly source energy greatly reduced. He will soon fall behind his pears and even demoted for a single soul. The laws of the spirit king was never forgiving.

That was the only documented intervention of the law of the plane in all history yet.

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The law of the plane intervened only for self defense, another plane was trying to put a hero of them as a spy and needed a soul to fight that hero for the targeted body.

And that's where our foolish soul enters the frying pan.

After searching for a lot of time a light shined and took him away, getting close to a warm sensation. But suddenly a cold light intervened and another soul tried to merge him without a notice. Our little soul kept dodging left and right. They were playing a cat and mouse game inside the light slowly ascending to the warm sensation.

When the sensation was almost burning he stayed still and the other soul make a desperate attempt to merge him again. But the foolish soul moved down and the big soul disappeared into the darkness.

Finally he can rest easy, and welcome the warm sensation.

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Somewhere in the desert near the imperial borders a young half-giant woke up of a crazy livid dream a shouted.

"Fight for Freedom!!!"

All the pigs and domestic animals were immediately startled and one human and a ugly giant walked in and screamed.

"You want an early beating you buffoon?!" Shouted the angry giant.