Maxwell Alston was closing in on three orc kingdoms that had come together to form a confederacy just to fight his undead kingdom. Which was nice to see considering the three orc kingdoms had spent the last fifty turns fighting each other before he showed up, so the fact they put aside their blood feuds just to deal with his undead army showed he was doing something right.

  He has spent his time fighting dwarves while the orcs have been fighting each other; luckily for him, there hadn't been a winner in the three-way war. Otherwise, he probably would have gotten an orc charge to the rear of his undead hordes while trying to break the dwarven strongholds. But now it was too late, as he ordered his zombies into the meat grinder that was the orcish melee weaking them before he sent in his elites units his skeletal knights.

  Maxwell began to hear the boom of his necromantic cannons in his headphones as his undead dwarves began to pummel the orcs reserves. The orcs proved they were a warrior race as they fought hard long after it was obvious that defeat was certain. The only real threat left on the battlefield were the heroes of the three different orc kingdoms.

  "Stupid heros." Maxwell said bitterly as he had to direct a massive amount of his undead forces to overwhelm the three ork heroes. Maxwell found bitter resentment filling him as he watched many of his elite skeleton knights get smashed to pieces by the orc heroes, who weren't easy to raise Eventually, to reduce losses among his elites, he had the skeleton knight pull back and the zombies go forth. Of course, the zombies were getting cut down like they were made of paper, but they held them long enough for the undead dwarves to blow them to bits.

  Eventually, under the barrage of necrotic cannon fire, the three orc heroes finally died, allowing Maxwell to declare victory, rise undead orcs, and begin to march on the capitals of the new orc Confederacy. Maxwell had been annoyed at the fact it was so hard to kill heroes with troops due to the fact he had to use troops to kill them. As the undead were a monster faction in the era of legends strategy game.

  While the monster factions offered a lot of cool game play mechanics, such as the undead ability to use any troop so long as you mixed them with the power of necromancy, their biggest drawback is that they spawned no heroes or villains, which made them rather difficult to use against civilized factions in the game. In fact, despite the interesting unique mechanics of each monster faction, most chose one of the civilized factions, which were easier to use due to their respective heroes or villains, which the player could use to devastating effects on the battlefield.

  This meant that Maxwell was in the minority as not many players played the monster factions. As such, he tended to like playing the campaign on the game rather than playing against other players. Though when he had played the multiplayer function, he had done decent enough, all things considered. Maxwell watched as part of his undead horde lay siege to one of the orc capitals, of course, without the orc heroes, as he wasn't allowed to raise them as undead.

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  He watched the animation of the orc defenders trying desperately to hold of his zombies as they scaled the walls despite knowing there were not near enough defenders to hold them off. Then the surge hit and electricity traveled through the entire computer, shocking Maxwell when it hit his computer, ending the memory.

  Maxwell took a moment to take in the feeling of victory he had before he began to run once again. As a soul, he had once been in the great river of souls traveling down it to either be sent to an afterlife or be reincarnated if he believed in that or nothing at all. Sadily though Maxwell was one of the unlucky few that fell out of the river of souls and was now forced to constantly be on the run from the many creatures that wanted to devour him.

  That's how Maxwell spent his time as one of the dead, not in heaven facing eternity of happiness with all his relatives or in hell facing punishment for his sins not being sent back to earth to live again. No, he spent his time in the darkness of the void wondering around, trying to not accidentally walk into a creature's gullet as he couldn't make out their mouth in the darkness, and that was when he wasn't running from the mass of tentacles and teeth that were the other denizens of the void.

  The few precious moments he had to himself and was not running or floating as a more accurate word to safety, he would spend reliving his memory's. Though the problem with that was the void seemed to slowly take away his memory's, leaving him remembering less and less of who he once was. The only memories he could hold onto were those associated with the moment of his death, which meant the ones he had spent playing the strategy game Age of Legends were the only ones he could seem to remember.

  So he only knew his name and how he once played a video game—not really a lot to keep a soul going when he was constantly on the run from the creatures of the void trying to not be devoured. As summoned by his thoughts once such a creature of teeth and tentacles made itself known as it came barreling after him. Once again, Maxwell floated as fast as he could in the sea of unending darkness, knowing that the chase would only end when something bigger ate whatever was chasing him.

  But as the chase went on for a while days, weeks, possibly years, it was impossible to tell in the void that Maxwell saw something that should have been impossible. He saw an opening; he saw a way out of the unending darkness. A bright portal had opened up not far from him, and a giant hand somehow made up of multiple different hands hanging from crab claws to ghoulish fingers waved him over.

  Many would hesitate at accepting the invitation of such a strange monstrous hand, but not Maxwell. He had been in the void for far too long, hunted in places where time held no meaning and millennia and seconds passed in the same breath. The portal was the first way out he had seen in a long time, and he was taking its consequences, be damned. So the soul of Maxwell Alston leaped through the portal into the new life that awaited him on the other side.