Sean is a mage from Demacia and a leader.
He is dead.
Died on the battlefield of Barue.
Before his death, he only remembered the blood rain that filled the sky, the endless tide of corpses and the swarm of spiders.
The storm and the sea of ​​blood collided violently in the air, and the undead monsters were also frantically attacking the defense line of the leader on the ground.
Finally, facing a roaring scarlet dragon lizard charging towards them, Sean subconsciously pushed away his comrades beside him...
This was the last thing he saw.
"I... am going to die?" In the last few seconds before his death, Sean reviewed his life like a kaleidoscope.
For the first 18 years of his life, he was just an ordinary Demacia farmer. Hungry and tired, very hungry every day, very tired every day, is the only impression he has of the first 18 years of his life.
At the age of 18, his life finally took a turn for the better - he awakened his magic power.
Then he was quickly arrested by the lord and taken to the Demon Forbidden Tower in Xiongdu by the Demon Hunter Corps, where he lived a "good life" with free food and accommodation...
"What a fuck!" Sean felt like he died a wrong death.
It took him a lot of effort to realize that people are not destined to suffer and that life has meaning.
He finally had ideals, pursuits and hopes.
Why did he die?
“…”
Whatever... Sean thought of the comrades he had pushed away at the last moment. At least, they should have survived.
Just die. There is no such thing as a war without casualties.
At least, he would have a lavish grave with a tombstone in the Martyrs' Cemetery in Zaun, instead of being wrapped in a handful of straw and hastily buried in the wasteland donated by the lord like his parents who passed away early.
only……
Where do people go after they die?
When the mystery was finally about to be revealed, Sean couldn't help but think of this question.
The Ionians have the most reliable answer to this question.
Because Ionia's situation is extremely special.
This is where the spiritual realm and the material realm meet. After death, the souls of Ionians will directly enter the spiritual realm and stay there for a long time, eventually entering reincarnation and returning to Ionia.
And during the annual Spirit Blossom Festival, when the barrier between the spiritual and material realms is at its weakest, the Ionians can communicate with the returning souls of their ancestors by drinking spiritual tea.
Since the souls of our ancestors have come back in person to tell their stories, this theory of the afterlife is obviously credible.
"I died in battle in Ionia, so will I... also go to the spiritual realm of Ionia?" Sean was not sure.
There have always been various versions of hypotheses about the afterlife in Runeterra.
Some people say that the god of death and the underworld are different in every region, and that the god of death and the underworld are in charge of where a person dies.
Some people say that there is actually only one afterlife in the world, and the spiritual realm that the Ionians talk about is only a part of this huge spiritual realm.
If it is the case with either of the above, then he should go to the spiritual realm in the concept of the Ionians.
But there is another saying:
The various legends about death and the underworld circulating in Runeland are actually true.
Whichever god of death you believe in is the god of death you will see; which underworld you believe in is the underworld you will go to after death.
For example, if you believe that there is a god of death, Kindred, in the world, then you will be guided by Kindred after you die.
And Sean...
He did not believe in the existence of any god of death. Because he had never seen a god of death, he was skeptical of any existing god of death.
And the underworld story he believed in was about Mitna Lachen, the territory of Mordekaiser.
Legend has it that this underworld is ruled by the great undead king Modkaiser, and all people will become his subjects after death.
As long as you are loyal to him, he will grant you eternal life in the afterlife and all the enjoyment you want. But if you dare to disobey the wishes of the King of the Underworld, you will suffer endless torture in purgatory.
This setting is terrible.
Everyone wants to go to heaven after death. Who would be willing to believe a story that would force them to serve the tyrant who has the worst reputation in history after their death?
Logically speaking, this story that does not meet the readers' psychological needs should have no audience.
But in fact, this version of the underworld story, Mitna Lachen, is the most widely circulated and most popular "No. 1" in Runeterra.
The reason is very simple:
Because no one has ever returned from the underworld described in other stories, so no one knows whether those stories are true.
But Modkaiser, this guy really crawled out of the underworld!
Mordekaiser said that the underworld is like this, and that his Mitna Lachen is the real underworld, so how can everyone not believe it?
Language is cheap. No matter how well a story is told, it is not as good as an old ancestor's resurrection.
Modkaiser successfully grasped the pain points of users, found the right track, broke through the information barriers between different fields, and used B2C direct marketing to strengthen user perception, enhance brand reputation, and expand customer base...
Faced with this combination of punches, competitors have no chance of winning.
So, now many people in Runeterra believe in the existence of Mitna Lachen.
Especially in Valoran, which was ruled by Mordekaiser for a long time, the legend of the underworld left by this resurrected tyrant has now become the mainstream understanding of the underworld in countries such as Noxus and Demacia.
So Sean believed it.
"After I die, will I really be sent to be a slave to that tyrant?" he thought worriedly.
Then, the next second...
Sean completely lost consciousness.
When he opened his eyes again, he found himself in a gray wasteland.
Chaotic whispers linger in my ears, ghostly mist entangles my body, and occasionally lost souls float by - tiny ghosts, lost in their own nothingness.
But this wasteland is not completely empty.
Through the diffuse ghostly fog, one can vaguely see that on the plateau far in the distance, there seems to be a giant fortress with walls over a hundred feet high and a hundred miles wide.
It is so majestic and huge that even from such a long distance, one can still feel its grandeur.
Rather than being a war fortress, this is more like a super-large city that has been completely fortified.
It is almost impossible to build such a majestic city in the material world. And this spectacular fortress city is almost the only place that can prove that there are intelligent life and human civilization here.
"Where exactly is this place?" Sean's heart sank.
Anyway, this is definitely not the spiritual realm of Ionia.
Legend has it that the spiritual realm of Ionia is full of birdsong and flowers, it is impossible to be such a desolate and bleak scene.
So, where did he go?
"Goddess Janna, Janna!" Sean tried to call out to Goddess Janna.
But he found that he could not feel the power of Goddess Gana at all.
Without the power of Goddess Gana, he could not perform magic, and even the thread of his own faith could not appear.
In this afterlife, his connection with the goddess Janna seems to have been blocked by the barrier between the underworld and the material world.
"Jana...she can't hear my prayers anymore?" Sean wanted to think, but he soon had no time to think.
Because he soon discovered that he did not come to this underworld alone.
There were many spirits standing behind him - they all seemed to be leaders who had unfortunately died in the previous war.
"Sean, you are here too?!" There were also comrades inside who knew him.
"Hey!" Sean felt a sudden surge of joy when he found out that he was not alone after death.
However, an accident soon followed.
Sean was just about to have a good chat with these comrades who died with him, but he found that he... had forgotten how to speak?
"Um... no, that's not right!" Sean suddenly woke up.
As a wizard, he soon realized that his consciousness was gradually becoming blurred in the bleak wind of the underworld wasteland.
No, it's not just the consciousness... it's his soul that is degenerating and dissipating!
If he continued like this, he would become like those tiny ghosts he had just seen wandering in the wilderness - completely lost in the spiritual degradation, and eventually gradually disappeared into the mist and vanished into time.
Sean instinctively didn't want to dissipate.
But he was powerless to resist.
Not only him, but also the souls of those Wind Leader warriors who appeared here with him were gradually lost in the fog of the underworld wasteland.
"No, everyone! Hold on..." Sean tried hard to call out to his comrades. He didn't want to be alone.
But even the souls of the leaders seem unable to resist the baptism of the fog of the underworld.
Finally, someone gradually lost consciousness and became a wandering soul wandering aimlessly in the wilderness.
One, two, three...more and more lost souls appeared. Sean watched them wander away, their souls gradually disappearing into the mist, heading towards the end where they would eventually dissipate.
He could only try his best to concentrate and fight against the terrible soul invasion.
Then, I don’t know how much time passed.
And since some time ago, Sean was the only one left here.
He had persisted long enough.
But his soul eventually gradually turned into chaos.
The impact of the underworld fog made Sean feel extremely tired... No, it cannot be called tired. This kind of weakness and fatigue from the soul cannot be accurately described in any language.
"I..." Then, a thought came to Sean's mind: "Why do we exist?"
Yeah, why should he insist?
He was dead in the first place. Shouldn't a dead person disappear?
What's the point of resisting dissipation, to gain eternal life?
But now he is just a dead soul. He cannot eat, drink, sleep, etc. All the material needs and enjoyments of human beings seem to have nothing to do with him.
Sean felt like he was just a piece of thinking stone. What was the meaning of such eternal life?
What is the meaning of him continuing to "live"?
"Perhaps, I should really disappear." Sean murmured to himself. He suddenly realized that his persistence was meaningless.
His struggle as a leader had ended the moment he died. This underworld wasteland with almost nothing in it did not need the existence of a leader like him.
So, Sean decided to accept his own complete death.
He was too tired and wanted to take a rest.
"Goodbye, everyone." Sean said his final goodbyes in his heart: "Kevin, Oak, Felix... you should all be alive and well, right? As long as you're alive, it's good that I saved you."
"I really want to ask you, did we win this war? Did we defeat that vampire? We..."
Suddenly, Sean fell silent.
"Wait!" He suddenly realized that there seemed to be some meaning for him to live.
As long as he lived in this underworld, he had hope of meeting the souls of those who had died later than he, and of hearing from them news of the world.
And this is important for a leader.
"Yes, I have to survive." Sean thought.
He really wanted to know whether the Leader had won the war for which he sacrificed his life.
I wonder how those comrades he risked his life to save are doing now.
This was not enough. Sean also wanted to know when Demacia would be liberated. When would the tenants and serfs who had suffered the same oppression as him be able to rise up?
Will the leader's mission to liberate all mankind ultimately succeed?
When will the seemingly unattainable Great Harmony Society, the ultimate goal of the leaders, be realized?
"I want to survive!" Sean's "ambition" is growing.
He even wanted to exist forever, until the extremely distant future, so that he could witness the establishment of a harmonious society with his own eyes.
This was something he would never have been able to see while he was alive.
The human life span is too short. And the reality is so far away from the harmonious society that the leaders want to build.
But after his death, he had the hope of witnessing the realization of that distant ultimate goal - although it was almost impossible for him to persist that long, and the hope was so slim that it could be completely ignored.
But Sean just wanted to grasp this glimmer of hope.
He wants to survive, every day he lives is a day.
If he lived one more day, he might have heard the news of victory in the war;
Had he lived another year, he might have witnessed the liberation of Demacia;
If he lived ten more years, he might see the Blue Bird flag flying across Runeterra.
If he lives another hundred or thousand years, he can ask his successor with a smile:
"Dear descendants, our times are very interesting. I'm sure your times are interesting too."
"We are still building Janna. You should already be living in Janna, right?"
“…”
Sean found the meaning of his existence.
The biting cold wind in the underworld wasteland is still howling.
The undead mist continued to assault Sean's soul, as if beckoning him to step into it and accept his destined disappearance.
but--
"I refuse to dissipate!"
"I refuse to dissipate!"
Sean's roar echoed across the wasteland.
He did it.
He was not lost, nor did he disappear, he maintained his soul!
"Keep your voice down, friend!"
“You are yelling from a place where you can see the Immortal Bastion. Are you trying to attract Mordekaiser’s Undead Knights?”
Something happened that Sean never expected.
In the almost empty wasteland of the underworld, in the seemingly endless fog of the undead, a human voice was actually heard.
And... the Immortal Bastion?
Are you referring to the city in the distance?
How come it has the same name as the Immortal Bastion of Noxus?
"Yes, you heard it right. That is the Immortal Fortress." The visitor seemed to have guessed his doubts.
The other party approached quietly from the fog and told him: "The Immortal Fortress of Noxus was originally built by Mordekaiser. Now, he is just rebuilding his empire in the underworld."
Mordekaiser...
Hearing this name, Sean's heart sank.
It turned out that he really came to Mitna Lachen, the underworld empire controlled by Mordekaiser.
"What about you?" Sean finally saw the appearance of the person who came.
It wasn't just one person who emerged from the fog, but a team.
There are about dozens of people in this team, including men and women, old and young, humans and Vastaya orcs...but it doesn’t matter, because in the underworld, everyone is a soul anyway.
The important thing is... he could actually see dozens of conscious souls in one go in this underworld full of lost souls?
"Who...are you?"
Sean looked warily at the leader of the team, the middle-aged man who had just reminded him to lower his voice through the fog.
"My name is Montero, I don't have a last name." The man smiled and said, "I'm a Zaun worker."
"I died while putting out a fire." He did not forget to mention the cause of his death. It seemed that this was the way the dead greeted each other.
"As for us..." Montero looked at his companions and said, "We are the Wind Leaders, the Underworld Chapter of the Wind Leaders Association."
"Huh?!" Sean's eyes widened.
Leader, and the underworld branch? In the underworld?
"Yes." Montero said to himself: "Friend, you should have heard of the leader, right?"
"This..." Sean was completely confused.
He didn't expect that there was a leader who had already arrived in the underworld, and had stubbornly maintained his soul, and had persisted in this endless fog of the undead from more than half a year ago until now.
Even more, the other party has pulled out a team of leaders from the underworld?
"Were these people leaders in their lifetime?" Sean was a little bit unbelievable.
"No," Montero replied casually, "There is only me and another comrade here, who was a leader in life."
"The underworld is too big. I wandered in the wasteland for a long time and never met the third leader."
"But..." He looked at his companions: "Leaders never fall from the sky, but come out from the masses."
"If I don't have companions, I can develop them myself. If I don't have a team, I can form one myself. Didn't President Levi also establish the Leaders Association by himself?"
Sean was shocked when he heard this.
Could it be that these wind-leading undead spirits standing before him were all...
"Did you develop them all from the underworld?" Sean was even more incredulous.
"Yes," Montero explained, "They are all souls enslaved by Mordekaiser."
When ordinary souls reach the underworld, they will gradually dissipate in the undead mist.
Only a very small number of people with extremely strong wills can persevere and maintain their existence.
But Modkaiser gave a third possibility - as long as you give everything to him and accept the enslavement of his necromancy, you will be qualified for eternal life in the underworld.
But this kind of eternal life is by no means a benefit.
"This underworld wasteland is almost empty, except for the Immortal Fortress, the capital city that Mordekaiser built with necromancy for him and his elite troops to live in."
"And Mordekaiser certainly won't bother to build a city for those weak souls he enslaved."
In other words, there is nothing here except the Immortal Fortress.
“All of people’s material desires cannot be satisfied here.”
"For those souls who cannot find the meaning of existence, eternal life is just a prison. And this boundless underworld is just a prison from which they can never escape."
Therefore, for ordinary people, letting the soul dissipate with the mist is actually a relief.
"But Mordekaiser would not allow them to be freed."
"The undead knights under his command never tire of galloping across the endless wasteland of the underworld, searching for fresh souls that have come here from the human world."
"Once encountered by these undead knights, the souls will lose even the freedom to dissipate. They will be marked by the undead magic by these knights and become eternal slaves who must serve the tyrant."
"You are very lucky." Montero looked at Sean curiously: "You did not encounter those undead knights. Moreover, you survived with your own strength."
"This..." Sean still couldn't understand.
If there are any that can maintain their existence in this underworld, most of them are souls enslaved by Modkaiser's magic.
So how did they break free from Mordekaiser's control and become the leaders?
“They haven’t escaped Mordekaiser’s control,” Montero explained, “but they still have their free will. So, that doesn’t stop them from becoming leaders.”
Mordekaiser almost massacred all of Valoran, and those who were killed by his undead magic later became souls enslaved by him.
Later, after returning to the underworld, Modkaiser continued to search for fresh souls in the underworld wasteland to expand his slave army...
Over the past thousand years, he has accumulated countless undead slaves in the underworld.
These hundreds of millions of undead were prepared by Modkaiser for his counterattack on the human world. He had no use for these slaves, and he was unwilling to spend too much time to place these cannon fodders who were more numerous than ants.
In addition, the entire underworld is Modkaiser's territory, a giant prison that the undead can never escape from.
Therefore, the daily life of these immortal undead slaves is no different from that of those lost wandering souls...
They were all driven out of the Immortal Fortress by Mordekaiser, and for thousands of years, they wandered aimlessly in the boundless and empty underworld wasteland.
Their only mission is to wait for the counterattack order that is never far away.
or--
"Swallowed by Mordekaiser."
Mordekaiser can strengthen his various core attributes by devouring the souls of his enemies.
Therefore, whenever he gets "hungry" or his "skills are done cooling down", he will send his men down to the wasteland to get some souls for his enjoyment, just like eating rice from his own rice cooker.
"But the undead are not afraid of being devoured by Mordekaiser. On the contrary, they will desperately crowd at the gate of the Immortal Bastion, begging the Undead Knights to choose them as tribute to the tyrant."
“Because this is also a relief for them.”
"This..." Sean felt a chill after hearing this.
He has a clear soul, but can only face this empty wasteland in eternity... He can neither live nor die, and the only way to escape is become food for the tyrant.
And for this chance to become food, you have to queue up!
What a desperate life this is!
"So, you can understand why they become leaders, right?" Montero said, "Because they need hope, even a little hope."
"I just told them that Goddess Janna can help everyone."
"They are willing to believe me and follow me - because fate cannot possibly get any worse for them."
Although Montero's voice was low, it always carried a fighting spirit.
But Sean only felt despair: "What's the point of them being willing to believe in the leader?"
These souls are still under the control of Mordekaiser's magic, and they cannot resist Mordekaiser's orders. Even if they become leaders in spirit, they are unable to take any practical action to resist Mordekaiser.
The reason they can move freely now is simply that Modkaiser usually has no time to take care of these miscellaneous soldier ants wandering in the wasteland.
“But we have the goddess Janna,” Montero said.
"Goddess Janna?" Sean just sighed: "Comrade, I am also a leader."
"You too?" Montero was overjoyed when he heard that.
But Sean didn't care about talking about comradeship. He just questioned: "The power of the goddess can't reach the underworld at all."
"And without the power of the goddess, I can't even summon ."
"This is only temporary." Montero said firmly: "Our souls are still here, our faith is still here, and the connection between us and the goddess Janna will never disappear!"
"I believe that as long as we develop more leaders in this underworld wasteland and gather the power of our faith together, our prayers will be conveyed back to the human world and receive a response from the goddess Janna!"
"This..." Sean was silent.
Montero said that he was just a Zaun worker. All his knowledge of the underworld and Mordekaiser probably came from the free popular science books of the Leader.
All of this was obviously unverified speculation on his part.
"What if you guessed wrong?" Sean asked, "What if no matter how many leaders we develop in the underworld, we still can't get a response from Janna? What should we do then?"
Fighting in a world without the protection of the goddess Janna... Sean couldn't even imagine how difficult it would be.
"Wrong, it's just a failure." Montero laughed, "And we are already dead."
"We now have unlimited time, and there are countless tortured souls in the wasteland of the underworld—"
"Don't forget, Mordekaiser was also a human being."
"He can find a way to resurrect from the underworld. We have so much time, so many people, and so many wise souls. Why can't we find a way to defeat him?"
Montero's tone was lighthearted and optimistic.
Others probably couldn't imagine that this man was going to challenge the invincible tyrant of the underworld, the ruler of this world.
"You..." Sean said in a complicated tone: "Are you really just a Zaun worker?"
"Yes." Montero nodded proudly.
"You are the person with the strongest will I have ever seen. You are too strong to be a mortal."
"You underestimate mortals." Montero's expression became serious: "Gods can defeat mortals in any condition except will."
"Also, you underestimated the Zaun workers."
"Old Zaun didn't kill us, so what's Hell?"
Sean: “…”
He finally understood why this weak soul before him, who was not even a wizard, could persist in the fog of the underworld for so long.
Then he spoke: "Comrade Montero, have you officially established the Underworld Chapter of the Leader Association?"
“Yes,” Montero said.
"Leader of the Demacia branch, Sean." Sean's hand tightly clasped his: "Apply to rejoin the team."