Formless Ascension: My Affinity Is Limitless

”For entities who claim to rule over ’star clusters’ and ’star systems,’ you sure look incredibly terrified the moment a real wager is put on the table. You all stand there screaming about how confident you are that I will die, yet not a single one of you has the balls to back your words up with actual merit points.”

The goading words hit exactly where he intended.

These were ancient, immensely wealthy cosmic entities whose egos were larger than planets. To be called cowards by a primitive human from a two-week-old integration world was a direct slap to their pride.

> Anuran All-Mother of Fertility: Mind your tongue, little human. You speak to entities who have witnessed the rise and fall of entire star systems while your ancestors were still learning to strike flint. We do not fear a wager. We simply despise wasteful investments.

> Nine Nether Thirty-First Young Master: Shut your primitive mouth! Name your starting bid, human! Let us see what kind of joke of a price you are trying to set for your worthless core!

Uhtred immediately focused his attention on his own status panel. Right at the bottom of his titles, his Total Merit Point balance was displayed:

9,000 Merits.

Right after he had cleared the regional dungeon back then, it had been sitting at exactly 8,081 merits. Since then, in his steady climb up to Level 23, he had earned a few minor titles that had pushed the figure up to 9,000.

He stared at the number for a second, thinking carefully. He needed to set a starting point that was high enough to fleece them properly, but not so high that the System would instantly reject the attempt due to sheer absurdity.

Finally, he decided on a figure and opened his mouth to speak:

”One hundred thousand merits. That is the starting bid.”

The stream feed erupted into a violent wall of text, but this time, the tone was entirely different. The arrogant, dismissive insults were gone, replaced by a genuine, sharp anger tinged with a deep wave of skepticism.

> Myriad Sword Ancestor of the Seventy-seventh Heaven: One hundred thousand?! You are absolutely insane! That is the equivalent of clearing a world-tier historical trial with perfect evaluation marks!

> Vengeful Grandmaster of Nyxos: The mortal has lost his mind. He thinks merits are as cheap as the dirt beneath his shoes. No damned mortal core is worth six-figures!

Despite their furious rants and absolute refusal to bid, Uhtred noticed that none of them were logging off the stream. In fact, the total active viewer count had actually ticked up by two.

They were reassessing him now, looking at his flat, unbothered expression with a new level of caution. Uhtred had not picked that number randomly. He knew exactly what he was doing.

On the multiversal scale, multiversal tokens could be accumulated through standard trade, selling resources, or managing territory commerce. If Uhtred wanted, he was sure he could raise a hundred thousand multiversal tokens on his own...

But Merit Points were a completely separate tier of asset. They could not be bought. They could not be traded or replenished through any sort of financial loopholes. They were only awarded directly by the System for achievements, titles, and breaking records.

Uhtred remembered the massive mistake he had made when he first created the paywall for his streaming channel. He had set the fee at a hundred multiversal tokens, thinking it was a massive sum, only for these entities to pay it instantly without even batting an eye.

They had complained loudly about being robbed, but their wallets hadn’t even felt the dent. That lesson had taught him that a hundred tokens was absolute pocket change to these cosmic big shots.

He was not going to let them off that easy a second time. This time, he was going to tax their real assets.

He knew merits were incredibly hard to accumulate because he had seen the absolute lack of logic behind how the System handed out titles.

When he had cleared the regional dungeon all the way to the twentieth floor, he had received a massive haul of points. But when Zara had attempted to solo run the exact same dungeon, twice in a row even, slaughtering thousands of beasts in the process, the System hadn’t awarded her a single meaningful title beyond some cheap stuff.

The System simply did not repeat its rewards for standard, predictable behavior. It only rewarded unique, paradigm-shifting actions.

Uhtred knew that if a newly integrated human like him could amass nine thousand merits in two weeks through sheer anomaly behavior, then these ancient entities who had probably lived for thousands of years definitely possessed massive reserves of merits accumulated over their long cultivation journeys.

They had the capital. They just didn’t want to part with it.

The chat remained completely stagnant, the sponsors refusing to place the initial bid in an attempt to force him to lower the price.

Uhtred glanced down at the dark, bubbling acid around his carapace island, noting the steady sizzling along the edges of the shell. He did not have the luxury to sit around and wait for them to play chicken.

”Five seconds,” Uhtred said, his voice dropping into a cold countdown. ”If the first bid isn’t placed by the time I hit zero, I am closing my streaming interface permanently. I have real work to do here, and I don’t have the time to waste on a bunch of broke entities who can only afford to talk.”

”Five.”

”Four.”

”Three...”

His counting was completely a bluff, but his tone carried so much indifference that it pushed their defensive line to the breaking point.

> FriendlyDaoistStormwarden: This friendly daoist will accept the terms of the wager. I open the bid with one hundred thousand merits.

The moment Stormwarden’s message popped up, the rest of the stream immediately turned on him.

> Nine Nether Thirty-First Young Master:Fucking—! Who the hell is this Stormwarden fellow breaking the collective front?! You better take that back else you’ll make me your enemy!