Formless Ascension: My Affinity Is Limitless

The thick obstructive trees that filled his territory before were entirely gone, save for a few of them near the edges, just for natural scenery.

The wild brush had been mowed flat, and clean stone pathways had been laid directly into the earth.

The dungeon was no longer where they slept. It was left alone for its main purpose, which was grinding. Every member of his crew now possessed their own private quarters in functional, but aesthetically pleasing stone buildings.

There were all kinds of facilities covering both their basic needs and amenities, and even leisure.

However, the most prominent structure Uhtred had spent his money on was the stone plaza he currently stood...

Or more specifically, the array inscribed on it.

It was a high-grade [Basic Essence Gathering Array], by far the most expensive thing Uhtred had purchased from the store, costing him a hefty 750 Multiversal Tokens.

For Uhtred himself, the array’s benefits were relatively minor due to the demanding capacity of his current level. But for Diya, Dennis, and Minh Quan, the facility was an absolute game-changer.

The geometric silver lines etched into the stone constantly drew in ambient cosmic essence from the surrounding wilderness, concentrating its density within the plaza by a full three times.

The store had listed significantly more powerful versions of the array, but the price difference between them was brutal. The next step up, an intermediate array capable of multiplying ambient essence density by six times, cost a massive price of 5,000 tokens!

For now, this version was the highest that he could logically purchase without burning a hole in his wallet. There were several grades below this, so it wasn’t like Uhtred was being miserly with his money. It was still an advanced piece of faction infrastructure.

From the ambient essence draw alone, anyone who entered his territory would immediately be able to tell they had stepped into the domain of an ascender with massive cash reserves to spend on such an array.

Uhtred didn’t care about any of that, though. His focus was mainly on the growth and development of both himself and the rest of his crew, which was why he had been very hard on them this past week.

Pulling his thoughts back to the present, Uhtred looked away from his rapidly healing arm and addressed the three figures slowly pulling themselves up from the stone floor.

"You’ve improved, Diya," he said. "That last attack was good. But against an enemy with a significantly higher level, your attack as it currently is, won’t cut it. My passive physical resistance alone was enough to stall the mutation until my essence burned it away. You need to focus on shortening the activation window or making it more powerful."

He delivered the critique calmly, as if it were perfectly reasonable to expect Diya, a Level 9, to be able to bridge a thirteen-level power gap.

The poor girl stared at him through a bruised left eye, where Uhtred had punched her without a single shred of hesitation during their spar just now. Her healing essence was already visibly swirling across her cheek, cooling the inflammation and dulling the pain.

Over the past week, Uhtred had completely abandoned every last bit of reservation during their training. He gave them thorough beatdowns every single day just because he knew Diya was there to heal everyone. It was a brutal, continuous loop of trauma and rapid recovery.

The worst part was that Diya had completely adjusted to the insanity of the routine.

For a fraction of a second, a small trace of exhaustion and reminiscence crossed her eyes. She remembered the days a week before, when things were still kind of normal. But just as quickly as the look of weakness appeared, it vanished.

A small, tired smile broke across her bruised face at Uhtred’s words. He rarely handed out compliments. The fact that he had explicitly called her attack ’good’ meant she was genuinely improving, and the brutal beatdowns were paying off.

As an Epic Grade talent, she could have broken through to Level 10 already, but Uhtred did not allow her. He wanted her to consolidate her strength well before she reached Level 10.

She was currently at the threshold, and from his words just now, it seemed Uhtred was confident in allowing her to cross into Level 10 and gain access to all the System functions.

Dennis, for example, whom Uhtred moved on to immediately after her, was already at Level 8, just a level behind her.

Uhtred had been especially strict with him, perhaps even more than he was with her.

The scholar’s [Insight Adept] class wasn’t geared towards combat, but regardless, Uhtred wanted to develop him in that direction at least to give him the capability to be able to protect himself — In fact, not just to protect himself alone, but to be a pain in the ass to anyone who might underestimate him.

Finally, Uhtred’s gaze landed on Minh Quan. Surprisingly, the old Vietnamese soldier was the one Uhtred was most lenient with during their brutal daily training.

It wasn’t because of favoritism, it was simply because Minh Quan was already a combat veteran who required absolutely no external pressure to push himself to the brink of collapse.

The older man possessed a clear awareness of his own limitations. He knew his Uncommon Grade talent wasn’t enough to put him on the level of Diya and Dennis.

He wasn’t foolishly trying to compete with their Epic and Rare Grade talents. His goals were entirely pragmatic.

His primary objective was to ensure he never became a liability or a hindrance that an enemy could exploit against Uhtred, whether in this coming skirmish against the ancient variants or in other conflicts in the future.

And this also tied into his second goal: if he couldn’t match the Rare and Epic grades of the world, he was going to make sure that among the Uncommon grades, he was the strongest.

The old soldier was currently sitting at the early stage of Level 6. Compared to Dennis and Diya, his jump was not particularly dramatic.

But for an Uncommon Grade ascender who was at Level 3 just seven days ago, grinding all the way up to Level 6 was something to celebrate, especially because the difference in levels got more significant the higher one climbed.

Uhtred looked at the three of them for a long moment, giving a brief nod of approval.

"Well, you guys have gotten decent, I’ll give you that. But you still need to get better, fast. The war has already begun and humanity is losing..."

Before they could respond, Uhtred’s focus snapped away from the plaza. His head turned sharply toward the northern edge of his two-thousand-square-meter territory line.

Outside the translucent distortion, two familiar human presences were standing there, waiting silently for him to grant them permission to pass through.

They had been waiting there for the last sixty seconds while he was concluding his talks with Diya, Minh Quan and Dennis.

"It seems your friends are back," a flat, emotionless voice called out from behind him.

Zara walked out from the regional dungeon entrance, her deep blue eyes casually locking onto the edge of the territory. Like Uhtred, her heightened attributes had picked up on the two figures standing there the moment she stepped out.

Uhtred said nothing in response to Zara. Instead, he directly walked towards the border of his territory and stepped out to meet the two individuals.

"Uhtred," John Allen greeted with a short nod as Uhtred stepped out of his territory.

Michael Bush, standing next to him, also nodded in greeting, though there was a trace of hesitancy, a slight tremor to his eyes as he looked at Uhtred. It was as though he regarded Uhtred in a new, reverent light now that he knew he was looking at the strongest person on the planet.

Uhtred picked up on the politician’s hesitation with a slight tilt of his brow, but he kept his attention focused squarely on John.

"Report," Uhtred said flatly.

"We did exactly what you instructed us to do a week ago. We carried the intelligence regarding the ancient variants’ outpost and the true depth of the three-month information blackout to other sectors. But two days ago, we finally managed to make contact with a new, centralized authority..."

John paused, his throat moving as he swallowed hard, looking as if his next sentence was a struggle to say.

"There are high-level individuals running that coalition, Uhtred. Former global officials, military leaders, and an ascender who has already broken past Level 10. They have established a core base in Zone 1. And... they want to meet with you," the soldier’s tone drawled slightly at the end of the sentence.

Uhtred’s expression didn’t change, but he could already tell there was more to it than John was saying. He casually shrugged his shoulders, his voice completely flat.

"Then let them come. Why the hesitation, John? I told you a week ago: so long as the discussion concerns the survival of our species against the prehistoric variants, I am willing to sit down with any powerhouse on this planet."

"Yeah, see, that’s where the problem lies..." John Allen said, scratching the back of his neck as his eyes drifted about.

"We also told them that. We told them everything about your setup here. We told them you hold a dungeon, and that you’ve been letting the ascenders from our sector grind through the first ten floors completely free of charge to build up their levels. I even gave them the exact location of this place, just like you permitted."

John looked up, his expression a mix of frustration and disappointment.

"But they don’t want to make the journey out here, Uhtred. They refuse to come to your territory."

The soldier paused.

"Those guys... they say they’re trying to re-establish order and to create a unified spearhead against the ancient variants... but in the end this is just a political move to gauge your reaction."

"They want you to come to them instead of them coming to you..."