Bro, I'm not an Undead!

Chapter 1093  Meeting The Sky (3)

There were many worlds in the dark void that existed outside Aigas.

The sheer degree of variety among them was staggering, but because most living things spent their lives within the boundaries created by the Deities who made their own worlds, it was usually difficult to fathom just how broad and diverse the species and power systems that existed elsewhere in reality were.

Mana as a concept was universal, but different Divine beings wove into something that matched the vision they had for the world they wished to create; this included the supernatural power structure, the species that would thrive on their worlds and the natural characteristics of the world itself.

Other than this, almost nothing was the same, especially when considering that some Deities were stronger than others and had different ways of creating worlds.

The ones responsible for creating Actuass' home world were particularly generous when sorting the upper limits of what a living thing could achieve strength-wise.

Faaminl.

 On this world, a hunger for power that disregarded all else was never punished. There hardly ever seemed to be karma's flag over those that killed whomever they wanted to, enslaved whomever they desired and extorted as they wished for own sakes. All was fair in love and war.

Faaminl was rather rich and many exploited this, overcoming the annual wars that exploded on the sturdy surface of this world, extracting the powers of vanquished souls and reaching Divinity.

The abundance of resources, rather, their naturally quick rate of replenishment only served to increase conflict, leading to the rise of thousands of Affiliations, groups of allied individuals structured quite like Guilds in Aigas, but a hundred times more competitive and driven. These Affiliations fought to claim and defend rich lands, and the daily doses of strife created monstrous combatants.

Actuass' father had been part of one of these Affiliations. Sadly, like many other men and women who joined one, he died defending it, and his wife was not particularly shocked by this reality.

Countless widows on Faaminl shared her sentiment.

It never really came as a surprise.

Half the time, a will was set in place when one joined an Affiliation.

Following this death, Actuass' mother used the resources her husband left for her to cultivate not just her strength but to amass wealth enough to build a safe haven for her and family.

She was particularly fierce as a fighter, having learned from her husband. And perhaps because she dreaded Affiliations – for reasons so obvious – she decided to fashion herself into a one-woman army. She defended her haven on her own for years, attaining rich battle experience. She refused allies unless she had learned all there was about them in a process that lasted years. Patience was a combatant's scarcely appreciated virtue after all.

'Make doubly sure,' was her motto.

Her son, as he grew, learned from this.

One mistake could be the difference between life and death.

Actuass also grew to admire his mother's strength.

Unlike most mundane women, it was proper for children to be made to watch the bitter, savage glory of combat as they grew. To become callous and in-tune with how much control unfathomable power granted.

But that wasn't all.

Power was one thing, but a goal was another.

What was the purpose of strength without an idea to give it direction?

This too Actuass learned from his mother.

Death was the goal, but only when the time for it was sweetest.

Death was undeserved until one had hidden, dodged and escaped it countless times. Only then was one to meet death not as its victim, but as its companion.

This was what Actuass' mother believed.

For the longest time, Actuass didn't know what spurned this believe in her.

As a teen, he hadn't known that his mother's grief for her husband's common, uninspired death – same as that of billions of others – went unnoticed. Perhaps because she feared to show weakness, this bitterness manifested as a dream fashioned by months' worth of suffering in silence, enduring the pain through dreams.

Why die now?

Why die like everyone else?

How could one only live for a mere 300 years and claim that they welcome something as sacred as death?

Or perhaps it was simply ignorance?

Death to a Divine and to a mortal couldn't be the same.

Yes. Yes!

The value of one's life should be judged by how long it takes for death to catch them. Yes! This was the belief. One passed from mother to child.

However, it wasn't this ideology that attracted many powerful Affiliations to Actuass' mother.

It was her power.

Some coveted it deeply, but none other than a band of self-proclaimed 'interworld mercenaries' who called themselves Aspiring to Divine wished so much to gain such power on their side.

They, unlike Affiliations, sought to create a group of powerful experts that would ascend to Divinity and leave Faaminl as a collective instead of continuing the bitter struggle for the world's resources.

They called Affiliations 'the poor man's way to get by' and looked down on them.

Actuass' mother refused their proposal at first. Actuass was there on this day, frowning at the unfamiliar faces with broad smiles.

He was, however, absent for several secret excursions his mother went on to meet the mercenary group, where she was convinced to finally join them after she saw with her own eyes that the Aspiring to Divine leader, was a step away from reaching Divinity.

This made her yearning to leave Faaminl burn rather bright. Only after leaving it and broadening herself could she chase her ideals properly.

But, she had a son and relatives, all who were unwelcome in the mercenary group.

She would either stay with them on Faaminl or leave them in the safe haven she had created as she journeyed beyond.

Of course, she chose the latter. However, perhaps to fight off the guilt or perhaps to motivate her son, she orchestrated a plan to make it seem to her fourteen-year-old son that she was forced to leave after a threat was made to raze her family to the ground if she did not follow the Aspiring to Divine.

Whichever she had hoped to achieved no longer mattered.

After all, when watching her leave, Actuass burned with both grief and longing crying for her not to leave him.

He did not recover from this loss. He couldn't have.

However, he didn't take it lying down either.

After all, if he allowed himself to die just because there was no longer anyone to protect the haven, he would be dishonouring his mother's ideals.

What else could he do other than raise his strength through any way possible?

Hunting for treasures, stealing them, joining Affiliations only to leave brusquely without a care for the many who came chasing after him, were but a few of the things a young Actuass had to do.

But a hundred years of just this wasn't enough.

He needed more to survive latter perils.

That was why he then resorted to the most foul treacherous thing any living thing on Faaminl could do.

He went to find a Priest.

Priests on Faaminl were rare, powerful individuals. Unlike on Aigas, their powers weren't granted through classes. All of them were conduits, or rather, servants of the Alternates.

The Deities that created Faaminl were only able to create it as it was – with unnatural abundance and fewer limitations than most – only after creating creatures known as Alternates.

They were less kind versions of themselves that inhabited several landmarks on Faaminl and had certain sway over how the world worked.

On a good day, they could cause an earthquake that killed millions just for the fun of it, and on a bad day, they could infect a whole race with a plague that altered their biology and turned them into mere fishes that thrived in the sea for decades before returning to their usual livelihoods.

Priests were born attached to these Alternates and were bound to carry out their will anytime they felt the Alternate's call.

Fortunately for them, when given a duty by an Alternate, no Priest could be stopped.

It was as though they were cursed or possessed, which was an apt description when considering that the powers they were tied to were not exactly holy; but it was ironic that they were given the name Priest.

They always seemed to be protected by powers that resisted even basic Divine influence, and this also meant they had more freedom than all other residents of Faaminl.

Actuass visited such an individual. Granted, the lengths he had to go to even find one cost him six decades of his life. It was shunned upon to even interact with a Priest, but he did it anyway.

In his eyes, there was a very thin line between what shouldn't be and what should.

This world had tuned him to the extreme.

His world view became even more skewed, or rather broad, when he found the Priest he had sought for and served him for 134 years before he got what he wanted.

Indeed. As though what he had had to do before then wasn't enough, Actuass was made to do even more atrocious things to himself and others for a chance to go and find his mother. A mere chance.

Thus, it wasn't quite surprising when he burst out laughing again after hearing what she had said to him just now.

His mother, the Deitess Suzamete, had just declared that she never needed saving, that this path was the one she had longed for all along.

She had watched him toil anew on Aigas, watched every step he took, every crime, every atrocity without intervening, only to shut him down.

Actuass, as he bled profusely, coughed hoarsely.

"It's fitting, I suppose. Unlike Faaminl, you seem to have imposed some righteous Rule to punish those like me on Aigas," he said as he looked at the indescribable form of his ascended mother.

Then, his fake mirth disappeared.

It seemed there was no longer anything tying his mother to him and the other way around.

"I guess this means we can dispense with all familial connections and proceed as enemies?" he said suddenly, his voice livid with hostility.

Suzamete said nothing.

Instead she drew back and settled herself in the comfortable canvas of sky further beyond Actuass and Vohnvolt.

Actuass sneered.

"I guess I got my answer."