My Weekly Refreshing Mentor Spirit

The closer he got to this point, the more anxious and uneasy he became.

"Buzz!"

And so, the two stepped together into the Teleportation Gate.

...

Continent of Conflict, this is the name the natives gave to the land beneath their feet.

They are clearly an extremely powerful race, even here where Legends are as common as dogs and Mythic Levels roam freely, under such circumstances, the Teleportation Technique should have long been a household skill. Yet, for the people of this continent, only a handful can perform teleportation.

The others, mostly commoners, exhaust their own Life Force to generate short-term combat power.

In this world where a 3-year-old must start clearing chimneys to make a living, and a 4-year-old carries a spear several times taller than themselves to go to war, even the simple act of survival is something many people don’t even dare to imagine.

The younger generation begins to fantasize, to dream of the once "unified era" told by the elders.

The elders often say that when they were young, they too lived in good times, when a guy known as the "Demon Emperor" subdued all the races of the world, establishing a warless, unified Empire.

Back then, they didn’t need to worry about when tomorrow or Death would arrive, they didn’t need to worry if they’d have to fight for a way forward when they grew old; those 14 years were the happiest times of their lives...

So says the elder, though he’s only 60, which in this world is just middle-aged; with a lifespan over 150 years, 60 really means he’s just barely an adult.

But at barely an adult, because he desperately drained his own Life Force, he’s already aged like this.

Or in this shitty world, to survive, you have no choice but to exhaust your Life Force for power, the idea that dying later is better than dying now is something they still understand.

So, barely an adult, he already has cloudy eyes, gray and withered hair, looking ready to die of old age.

"Old man, why did such a good Empire disappear?" A young person asked.

"I don’t know... I don’t know either... Why did the Empire just collapse like that?" The elder spoke listlessly, gazing at the gray, defeated world full of backwardness, deathly silence, and the endless Undead wandering the wilderness.

If the Empire were still around, would those dead creatures be so rampant?

He didn’t know, he only knew that in those days, when the Empire’s Demon Emperor died, collapse began instantly. At first, various nobles carved up the lands, claiming the people as their subjects and demanding taxes for the coming decades, swearing by the great rivers that they’d protect them.

Then, after a few years, the nobles were driven away, and a group of Generals came, collecting decades of taxes, saying it was necessary to protect their land.

After a few more years, a large group claiming to be from the "Empire Department" drove away the Generals, occupying the place, claiming they were restoring the Empire’s glory, and taxes would need to be collected for 90 years to achieve that.

Then, the Undead came, and the Empire Department saw the situation and fled, leaving these people to fend for themselves against the Undead.

He thought back to the day the Empire collapsed, the entire world cheered, shouting "The Empire is dead, the tyrant is dead," and they dismantled the Demon Emperor’s statues, destroyed all the knowledge he left behind; it left the old man bewildered.

In his daze, it was as if that immensely powerful, warless Empire appeared before him once more.

Now, this small settlement had only over a hundred people left, and none knew if they could withstand the next Undead assault. They didn’t even need a wave of Undead to come, they might not hold on and become one of the Undead themselves.

Ultimately lost, wandering their former homeland, remembering nothing, only knowing to roam their homeland, until dying under the control of a higher Undead as cannon fodder.

It’s been over 40 years since the Empire fell...

The elder thought, the Old Demon Emperor and the Empire’s legacy still heavily influenced many people. Though people used to distinguish between the Demon Race, Tree Spirit Race, Spirit Race, Beast Race... and so on.

But now, nobody talks about races anymore, because everyone has become mixed-blood, even though the Empire shone for such a brief time, many things it left behind still influence every aspect of their lives.

With races blending, no more brutal inter-faction conflicts, no more horrific slaughter, after enduring wars like noble fragmentation and warlords’ chaos, people increasingly miss the old Empire, wishing they could slap themselves when remembering how happy they were when the Empire fell.

After the Empire’s downfall, after the chaos, schools were built, the warlords still followed the Empire’s rules and styles, and they united.

Not because the warlords were kind, but because the Undead came...

After the Empire’s fall, the Continent of Conflict experienced the most brutal wars, corpses littered the ground, rivers ran with blood, and in just a decade, the population dwindled from over a hundred million to just over forty million.

Back then, he could hardly imagine what he saw; couples’ lungs really included couples, clay pot rice really had a kid in it...

Warlords, feeling the food wasn’t enough, rounded up thousands of people to keep as mobile provisions, playing with them while eating them, and after fighting, surplus individuals were used to test magic’s power, turning to a rain of blood.

Or they’d dig a pit, burying the mobile provisions alive in the soil.

No one knew if it was divine punishment or mockery; those dead suddenly rose one day with a new name: "Undead!"

A more brutal and bloody war between the living and dead began.

Their small settlement was completely surrounded by Undead, the other nearby settlements either broken or fled long ago, escaping to deeper warlord-controlled cities.

Punishment for evil? The world seems to have no such logic, those possibly causing the Undead scourge, the warlords and nobles, hid in big cities.

And because in childhood they truly learned many defensive structures and Combat Magic in the Empire’s schools, their settlement persists until now.

But he, perhaps, couldn’t hold on much longer.

"Dong! Dong!"

The bells tolled, and the people chatting nearby furrowed their brows, rushing up the earthen walls they had built.

"Undead, the Undead have come again! This time, there’s also a Bone Dragon!" when the Scout’s voice came, everyone panicked even more.

They’d already resigned to living day by day, never expecting this day to arrive so soon.

In the distance, an immense Skeleton Giant Dragon advanced, flanked by a crowd of skeletons like a herded flock of sheep, heading toward their settlement.

Everyone’s face was ashen, unable to comprehend why there’s a Mythic Level Bone Dragon here...

And now, they couldn’t even escape; if it were a few days earlier, they might have fled to the bigger cities, but now, if they dared leave the settlement, they’d only face more fervent attacks from the Undead.

They could only hold the settlement, hoping perhaps the Bone Dragon was merely passing through, perhaps the Undead wouldn’t stubbornly attack their trench.

But all thoughts were dashed, any traps the Undead directly trampled, using numbers to fill them level.

Any obstacle would be covered by climbing skeletons, forming a bone wall.

The elder saw ahead, realizing their settlement seemed to just be a speed bump on the Bone Dragon’s path; the Bone Dragon’s target wasn’t them, it was passing by, like rolling over a speed bump over their heads; the Bone Dragon’s target was something far beyond, yet they had nothing to resist, merely awaiting their end.

The settlement, it’s over...

But in truth, many small settlements like theirs disappear daily, just like them, perhaps they too will become part of the Undead.

Perhaps.