Formless Ascension: My Affinity Is Limitless

”Right now, what we need is information. We need to observe and figure out what exactly the specifics of this trial are. The System was way too vague with its description, but even if we don’t find some ancient variants to give us details about what they know, we can still pick up clues on our own after a few days of observing.”

​Uhtred paused.

​”Not to mention, we sorely need to figure out a way to deal with our cosmic essence leak, or else not just you two, but even Zara and I would run dry within a day or two at most...”

​”And then there’s also the danger coming at night...”

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Nightfall. Several hours later...

Uhtred and Zara stood atop a narrow but tall stone structure, the highest point among the rocky formations where they had camped throughout the day.

Both of them took opposite ends of the narrow structure overlooking the expanse of red desert lands that stretched up to the horizon in their vision. They were keeping an eye out for any change or new development, especially in the flat sandy plains.

Night had just fallen, and it was about time the danger that had been warned about would arrive.

Several meters beneath them, in the broader areas of the rocky formations, Diya and Dennis stood, also looking across the flat sandy plains from their high vantage points. Bradley’s team was also ways away to their right, occupying a different section of the rocky formations.

Everyone was on edge, priming themselves for something bad to happen.

”There. Eleven O’Clock,” Uhtred was the one to spot a movement first, drawing Zara’s attention immediately.

Something like a black patch moved across the horizon, coming in from the northwest.

Uhtred squinted his eyes to observe it properly. It looked like some sort of shadow. It was hard to tell under the dim moonless night, even with his superior evolved vision.

The black patch moved to the north, then stalled there for several moments before suddenly turning and heading straight for their direction.

”Incoming!”

Dennis and Diya snapped to attention below, their gazes immediately following the direction Uhtred’s gaze was focused on.

”What is that...” Diya breathed out, squinting at the black patch crawling across the dark horizon.

The shape was too far to make out clearly, but the way it moved, low and spreading, sent a knot of unease tightening in her stomach.

Uhtred had spread out his perception, and moments later more details about what the black mass was resolved clearly.

His eyes immediately widened, just as Zara also realized what they were dealing with.

”That’s not one creature,” she said flatly. ”That’s a swarm.”

”Everyone get ready!” Uhtred barked out to Dennis and Diya below. ”Conserve your essence as much as you can, but be ready to fight!”

Bradley’s team, further off to the right, had also caught on. Bradley himself stood at the edge of his section of the rocky formation, fire already kindling in his palm despite his injuries.

Uhtred clenched his jaw, doing a rapid calculation in his head. His reserves were not where he wanted them, but they were enough. This was only thanks to the technique he had spent the better part of the afternoon working out.

The technique was not elegant, but for something he came up with after just three hours of prodding around, trying to understand exactly how his cosmic essence was bleeding out of him, it was commendable.

He called it the Clamp, because that was exactly what it felt like, pushing essence outward against the inner walls of his core, forcing it to press tight against the boundary instead of letting it sit loose and let the leak happen as it pleased.

At first, he had thought the leak to be something like punctures, little holes he could plug. But rather, it wasn’t like that at all. It was more like the way water seeped through packed sand given enough time, as if the structure of his core had been made somewhat porous on a microscopic scale.

Pushing his cosmic essence against the inner boundary of his core essentially acted as a coating layer of some sort. It didn’t stop the essence leak, but it made it much slower for the leakage to occur, creating a sort of barrier his essence had to pass through first.

After coming up with the technique, he had taught it to the other members of his crew.

As expected, Zara had been the first to grasp it, learning the technique in less than thirty minutes.

Dennis had been the one to take the longest. And if not for the particular nature of his class, which was focused on insight and pattern recognition, it would have taken even longer with his rare-grade talent. But still, it wasn’t particularly bad.

Diya had grasped it faster than him, but not by much, and she still had a slight grimace on her face whenever she held the Clamp for too long, which wasn’t particularly surprising, because maintaining the clamp required immense focus.

It also had a huge downside in that, so long as the technique was active, it wasn’t possible to use cosmic essence at all. No spells. No body enhancement. No nothing.

Which meant the instant Uhtred saw that black mass shift direction and start moving toward them, he let his Clamp go entirely.

Cosmic essence flooded back into circulation through his body, and the leak resumed immediately, draining him at the same steady, maddening pace as before.

There was no point conserving anymore. Not when there was something coming that wanted to kill them.

”Don’t waste a single drop more than you need!” Uhtred called down to Dennis and Diya. ”Smallest spells! Smallest movements! We make every single bit of essence count!”

But that was easier said than done.

Uhtred had not yet even finished speaking when, all of a sudden, a tremor started to vibrate through the ground beneath their feet.

”That’s not the swarm...” Dennis said with trepidation in his voice.

Before anyone could process what was happening, the rocky formations around them came alive.

Something burst out of a dark crevice behind Diya, and she barely had time to leap back before eight long, segmented legs came scrabbling out after her.

The spider that emerged was half the size of a grown man, its body covered in coarse black hair, mandibles clicking together with a wet, hungry sound.

Where its eyes should have been small and beady, they instead glowed with a full amber light that tracked her movement.

”Spiders!” Diya screamed, scrambling backward as more of them began crawling out of every crack and hollow in the rocky structures.

Dennis spun just in time to catch one lunging at his back, narrowly avoiding the swipe of a leg tipped in something that looked disturbingly like a blade.

”They’re everywhere!” he shouted, channeling a burst of cosmic essence into his fist and slamming it into the creature’s head.

It wasn’t enough to kill it outright, but it staggered the thing long enough for Diya to finish it off with a focused burst of her own.

The moment it died, three more spiders scrambled toward the corpse, their mandibles already working, devouring the body before it had even stopped twitching.

Uhtred stared at the unfolding spectacle from above, a disgusted look on his face.

”What did I expect... It’s fucking Australia ain’t it?!”