Formless Ascension: My Affinity Is Limitless

Thirty minutes later...

Anticipation was evident not just in Uhtred’s eyes but in Diya and Dennis, and even Zara, who was usually stoic most of the time.

The four of them stood on the teleportation circle, watching it begin to glow with a bright white light, increasing in intensity by the second.

Uhtred glanced up at Minh Quan one last time, the white light of the teleportation circle reflecting off the old soldier’s face.

The man was much calmer now. The eagerness in his eyes was replaced by an understanding of the situation. He had quickly reoriented himself and taken to his duty of ensuring the safety of the territory while they were away.

Uhtred had left specific details for him about those who could be permitted to use the teleportation circle. In particular, only people from Sector 13, people who had been vetted by John Allen specifically.

He wasn’t going to be greedy with his teleportation circle. Humanity needed as many people as possible there, people who were powerful enough or who at least thought they had a chance for whatever this trial might entail.

He gave a light nod to Minh Quan one last time, just as Diya waved with a bright smile on her face, easing the expression on the old man’s face as he watched them dissolve into bright pillars of light.

The light swallowed them whole.

Uhtred’s first thought was that he no longer had a body. There was no falling sensation, no rushing wind, nothing that told him he was moving at all.

It was as if his entire being had been taken apart, piece by piece, broken down into pure information that was being carried somewhere else at the speed of light.

The sensation lasted only seconds, maybe even less, because Uhtred couldn’t really sense the scale of time in that state.

Then suddenly his body slammed back into existence. All the scattered pieces of information reconstructed into his solid form.

He staggered immediately, nearly falling to the ground from the disorientation as his senses returned to him.

The first thing he noticed was heat. A dry, suffocating heat that pressed against his skin, completely different from the cool air of his territory back in Zone 1.

His vision swam, the disorientation from the teleportation refusing to fade immediately. He planted a foot down to steady himself, blinking hard until the world came back into focus.

Red earth stretched out before him in every direction, cracked and dry, broken only by rock formations in the distance that shimmered faintly under the heat.

The sky above was a pale, washed out orange, too bright to be natural.

It looked like Australia. It even felt like Australia in some weird, instinctive way he couldn’t explain, but there was something undeniably wrong about it too.

However, Uhtred didn’t get the chance to dwell on the weirdness too long.

The moment the disorientation cleared, a far more urgent sensation crashed into him.

His cosmic essence was leaving his body!

The sensation was so jarring because it was nothing like Uhtred had ever felt before. This wasn’t even like when he used a technique. It wasn’t gradual in any sense.

It was as if his core itself had suddenly been punctured with holes leaking cosmic essence into the air, despite his immediate effort to stop the flow.

”What’s going on?!”

Diya’s voice cut through the air frantically. She had both hands pressed to her chest, eyes wide with panic as she stared down at herself.

”My cosmic essence, it’s leaking out, I can’t... I can’t stop it!”

”Diya, breathe.” Uhtred kept his voice level, even as his own mind worked through the same problem assaulting all of them.

”Everyone calm down and observe your surroundings first,” Dennis cut in, his voice carrying an edge of forced composure even as his eyes darted between the four of them, assessing. ”Panicking will only make you burn through your reserves faster.”

He was already moving past his own confusion, the gears in his head visibly turning, piecing together the situation faster than the rest of them.

”This isn’t a malfunction in any of us,” Dennis continued. ”Diya, your cultivation hasn’t gone wrong. Look around. We’re all experiencing the exact same thing.”

Uhtred’s gaze flicked toward Zara. Her expression remained mostly unreadable, but there was a tightness around her eyes that hadn’t been there moments ago, a flicker of something close to alarm quickly suppressed.

Even she was feeling it.

”It’s the environment,” Uhtred said quietly, more to himself than anyone else, his suspicion confirmed the moment he said it aloud.

Dennis nodded sharply.

”There’s nothing wrong with our cores. It’s this place itself... it’s somehow drawing out our cosmic essence.”

Diya’s breathing slowly evened out, and she got a hold of herself. She quickly moved closer to the others as they scanned the surroundings, even with the essence leaking out of their cores.

Uhtred’s eyes narrowed as he spotted a few dots in the distance to their left, but before he could observe them more carefully, a system notice popped up in his view:

[Welcome participant #69. You have successfully joined The Trial of Ages]

[All major System functions are locked until the end of the trial period]

[Locked Functions: Multiversal Store, World Ranking Panel, Wealth Ranking Panel, Multiversal Tokens]

[Active Functions: Multiversal Streaming Channel]

[Notice: Only Merit Points and the new Trial Ranking Panel will be valid in this place. The trial ranking panel incorporates an overall rank of both the ancient variants and modern humans based on the System’s grading]

As the text arrays faded, a new panel popped up right in front of Uhtred, displaying the live rankings of every single person that had appeared in this place already.

His eyes scanned down the list, moving from number 1 all the way to number 69, where he could see himself along with the others that had just come after him.

Diya was sitting at number 70, Zara was at number 71, and Dennis was right behind her at number 72.

All four of them were clustered together at the bottom, coupled with only five other human names scattered across the list: King Alexei at number 37, Perfection at number 50, Antoine at number 53, Stormcaller at number 61, and Aiko at number 66.

Aside from those five, the rest of the entire list was completely filled with ancient variant names.

Krijn, the Neanderthal general, sat confidently at number 2 on the list.

Right below him and above him were names Uhtred didn’t personally know, but he reckoned one of those top names belonged to the Homo erectus commander, while the other likely belonged to the last ancient variant strain, the one whom humanity still hadn’t had any contact with.

Uhtred’s attention immediately refocused on the screen as the system messages continued to scroll down.

[The trial continent of Australia is separated into several stages called ages. As you can already feel from the surroundings, the trial has already begun. You are already within the first age: Hunger]

Uhtred frowned immediately, feeling his cosmic essence reserves continue to be drained.

Was this the hunger the System was speaking of? A starvation of cosmic essence?

He had just begun to question what exactly the goal of this ”Hunger” trial was when the System responded as if reading his thoughts: