Bro, I'm not an Undead!

Chapter 1221  A Tale of the Four

Kaella Seinold Fe'krel, a proud, strong woman who shed away everything –  her family, her wealth, her old world – departed with hope on a course to pursue her ideals.

Her rigid, untameable stance on what life and death were, what they were supposed to be, pushed her towards similarly motivated individuals from an infamous band of mercenaries: Aspire to Divine.

She had had doubts when these people had reached out to her but soon she found that these doubts were unwarranted.

The Aspire to Divine mercenaries were the real deal.

Kaella was impressed by how vast their operation was. Because she had only seen a few hundred of the mercenaries on Faaminl, her home world, she had assumed that was all there was to them, but she had been mistaken. The hundreds she saw were just people from her own world who had been recruited before her.

As she left with them from Faaminl, wondering just how they would escape without upsetting the Rules, she was fed information she had lacked prior.

The Rules barring exit and entry from a world were exceptionally lenient when it came to the natives of said world. This was why they managed to leave Faaminl without any problems.

As for how it was that the Aspire to Divine mercenaries had managed to setup this entire recruitment process. Well...

The group was shockingly knowledgeable when it came to all things Divine and beyond.

They had ways to inspect and 'flirt' with the Rules governing a world.

For as long as needed, they would simply watch and select potential recruits from the great void using powerful detection artefacts. These seldom worked on the stronger, Rich Worlds, but for Faaminl, they worked well enough.

 To ensure smooth recruitment, the Aspire to Divine mercenaries employed small, but powerful communication tools that wouldn't be rejected by a world's Rules. These tools would be dropped close to the marked potential recruits and through these recruits, the Aspire to Divine mercenaries would conduct their operations.

Kaella had been especially excited when she was evaluated by the six thousand older, veteran members of the Aspire to Divine who received them upon leaving Faaminl. They rode a great, odd silver vessel through the great void.

They called her a great number of flattering adjectives and gave her a rank befitting of her immense strength and talent.

Soon, Kaella was handling recruitment operations while undergoing the detailed induction that preceded a promotion into the above average tier of mercenaries in the interworld mercenary group.

A lot of people had admired Kaella, wanting to befriend her, but she wasn't the sociable sort. Aside from top ranking members of the group, she didn't entertain anyone else.

There were many reasons for this, but chief among them was the crushing guilt Kaella felt from what she had left behind. Her decision to leave Faaminl was bearing good fruit, and yet she had left her son to suffer alone back on Faaminl.

This sullen fact disallowed her from doing anything but attempting to rise up the ranks and grow in power in order to reach her goal. She resigned herself to not savour the process, much less enjoy it.

This soon changed, however.

From Faaminl, the new recruits and the six thousand veteran Aspire to Divine mercenaries had been going from world to world, bringing in new members while building a steady chain of camaraderie, but after a point, the recruitment stopped.

The high-ranking mercenaries changed the course of the great, silver transport vessel and in what might have been months ( the passage of time was hard to process and quantify in the great void), the group landed on a Breaking Chasm.

Breaking Chasms were realms greater than worlds, normally conquered and inhabited by Divine individuals and Deities.

It was here that Kaella saw the true scale of the Aspire to Divine mercenaries.

There were millions affiliated with the group and over half had stepped into Divinity.

Kaella's intrigue and excitement had soared.

Her determination was fuelled.

 Years passed.

Kaella grew colder and more impressive, exploiting the resources Aspire to Divine practically handed to the talented.

Quicker than most, she reached Divinity and was invited into the Ascended Camp where all the other Divine level combatants resided.

Kaella intended to maintain her cold demeanour until she eventually reached the second highest tier of powerhouses in the Aspire to Divine – the Deities – and beyond, but it didn't work out as she hoped.

She met two rather vibrant characters who melted her chilly exterior thoroughly.

One was a delightful, kind and pretty woman named Rorsetta, and the other was a funny, smart and extremely imaginative man who went by the name Parrhaya.

Both were close friends and they spilled some of their oddly positive pressure onto Kaella through their aspirations which, while different to Kaella's own, were in no way inferior.

Rorsetta wanted to become strong so that she could create a race of living beings that could take care of their world optimally, perhaps even bettering it in various ways. She had come from a world that had collapsed because its natives had been exceptionally careless, polluting it and crushing it with needless battles.

Parrhaya, oddly enough, simply had millions of ideas that he claimed could only be brought to life when he acquired to power to create living organisms.

Kaella found Parrhaya rather... vast. Some of the ideas he propounded...

"Wouldn't it be cool if there was a world with beings that would start out at the ceiling of power in their world? How would their day-to-day lives look like? What objectives would they grow to have?" he would suddenly say.

"I never knew there could be anything sentient that didn't look human. I'd say my Deity was rather bland, imaginatively speaking. It would have been cool if my world had had other sentient species. I'm curious how we humans would have interacted with them. Sure, they'd be wars, discrimination and all that but the niche interactions beyond such foolishness... how would they look?" Parrhaya would suddenly spit.

Rorsetta and Parrhaya were the perfect pair.

Apparently, should either one of them become a Deity while the other failed, they had vowed to make the other's dream come true nomatter the cost.

Their cheer and optimism affected Kaella more than she had wanted to admit at first.

She found herself actively engaging with them whenever they came to nag her, completely shattering her cold bubble.

But unfortunately, Kaella wasn't like the two.

She didn't have a broad imagination or valiant objectives.

She had been so focused on avoiding death in order to appreciate it much, much later in her existence, that she hadn't really given much thought to aspects that a larger life entailed; creation was a theme that couldn't be torn away from a Deity's life, for instance.

But Kaella didn't think too hard on this and her friends didn't push her to obtain greater, more saintly or entertaining objectives.

Perhaps that was why Kaella never had a problem with these two friends of hers.

They bonded and grew together, though to her astonishment, Kaella found that Rorsetta and Parrhaya were in a different tier of 'talented' than she was.

They grew rapidly. Parrhaya in particular was a prodigy. Apparently, he had reached Divinity when he was only 42 years old on his home world.

He didn't brag about it, however. If it hadn't been for the work the Aspire to Divine demanded of them as Divines, Kaella would have never known how much of an oddity Parrhaya was.

Because of his free-spiritedness, she was compelled to follow him rather than to become bitter and jealous. After all, he and Rorsetta had promised to make her goal come true as well, if she should fall short in some ways.

Time passed and Parrhaya and Rorsetta became Deities before Kaella could. They ascended up the ranks but kept close contact with Kaella, who had been expecting this outcome for a while.

As much as Parrhaya and Rorsetta attempted to ensure that things between them and Kaella remained the same, the change was still noticeable. Kaella was usually left to perform her duties as a Divine alone.

Her chats with Parrhaya and Rorsetta became a thrilling dessert rather than a filling, all-day course.

Kaella couldn't have admitted it, but she often felt lonely. She had grown used to the company.

But then, a certain individual came into her life.

It was a certain man, just as charming and as broad-minded as Parrhaya. His name was Ciumin.

Because her cold shell had already been melted off, Kaella didn't push him away when he approached her. He filled the hole that had begun to emerge within her rather perfectly. He fulfilled Kaella moreso than she had thought any one person was capable of this far into her life.

She fell in love.

Parrhaya and Rorsetta didn't quite like Ciumin.

He had odd ambitions and was rather bold when sharing them with anyone other than Kaella. He too was freakishly talented and unlike Parrhaya, he basked in his talent rather than subduing it under modesty.

Ciumin's deepest desires were rather sombre but oddly reasonable. While they had a touch of darkness to them, Kaella didn't mind. Ciumin wasn't a bad person in her eyes; well, compared to what she had done to get here, he was a saint as far as she was concerned.

Kaella and Ciumin ascended into Deific power a short while later and moved up the ranks.

To Kaella's surprise, Parrhaya and Rorsetta invited her to an idea they had been concocting. Since they all had become Deities, Parrhaya suggested that they all create a world with characteristics that matched their objectives rather than setting out on their own.

Kaella found the idea delightful, but Ciumin didn't and she understood why.

Of course, because Ciumin loved Kaella, he didn't stop her from joining her friends.

However, since creating a world was a binding affair that would essentially tear the two from each other for a lengthy period, Ciumin gave Kaella a condition; he wanted to become part of the world Parrhaya, Rorsetta and Kaella were to create.

Kaella accepted wholly, but her friends were not too happy with this.

For Kaella's sake, they agreed in the end, but things went south almost immediately after the creation process started.

Parrhaya and Ciumin did not get along.

Ciumin criticised Parrhaya's ideas ruthlessly.

"What use is a bunch of creatures born with all the power in the world? Are you insane? What principle do you hope to learn from creating such a thing? And you want us all to help you? That's a waste of energy!" he would say.

"That's about as thick as I've ever seen a man get. Why are you so obsessed with standard living creatures and solving prior mysteries? Nothing in this reality is new. Go find some world that already exists with these conditions, and write a paper on your findings. This is worthless! Now, if you would listen to what I have in mind..." Ciumin would bark.

Kaella didn't know who she should support.

Thankfully, both Parrhaya, Ciumin and Rorsetta didn't allow her to butt in, but she felt awfully small when she heard them arguing while she sat some distance away, watching.

It was strange.

Everyone was here because of her.

If not for her, everyone would have gotten what they wanted.

But at same time, Kaella couldn't change the current status quo.

This proved true when Parrhaya finally had enough of Ciumin.

Kaella had never seen him so furious.

And it was then that she realised how mighty a Deity could be even in the eyes of another Deity.

The words Parrhaya said on that occasion still reverberated through her very soul.

"I have and will continue to tolerate you only because I gave my word to Kaella. I'm against throwing you out of our circle for that reason alone. But I can't stomach your attitude anymore. For Kaella's sake, I will have you linger, but I will not tolerate your outrageous opinions against my or Rorsetta's plans. For that..." he had said, and through a manner of technique Kaella couldn't understand, he sealed Ciumin in the unstable foundations of the world they had begun to create.

Parrhaya had then turned to a shocked Kaella and said:

"I'm sorry, but refusing to entertain with him meant he would take you away, right? I couldn't allow that. I gave you my word that we would make your ideal a reality. And about him... don't worry. It's not permanent. We will release him after we have enthralled ourselves with our ideas and brought you up significantly in strength."

It was these words that Kaella remembered when Aigas was completed, when Parrhaya created the dragons, the Giants and humans, when Rorsetta created the Sif, when the two became the land and the sea.

And when Rorsetta and Parrhaya were called upon by their superiors, ordered to hasten back to the Breaking Chasm where their journeys had begun, Kaella recalled how they, with great trust and faith left her with their work and hoped she would grow while protecting and bettering it.