Formless Ascension: My Affinity Is Limitless

While Antoine was coming to his own realization of Uhtred’s capabilities, down in the sandy plains, the battle continued to rage.

The Wonambi Dune Strider was violently utilizing its own elemental affinities, tearing the entire landscape apart to reform the terrain into a localized death trap.

The earth beneath Uhtred’s feet suddenly liquefied, turning the hard-packed sandy ground to something more like sinking sand.

Uhtred would have been entirely overwhelmed and dragged under the surface if not for his multi-elemental flexibility.

He cast a localized frost barrier directly beneath his step, freezing the sand into solid sheets of ice to keep himself afloat.

A second later, the serpent switched to a different element, releasing a localized sandstorm towards Uhtred. But Uhtred immediately used the heat aspect of his thermal magic to split it down the middle with his battleaxe.

The intense, continuous bombardment was so crazy that even the spectators standing far away on the ridge were being heavily doused by the stray essence emanations.

The raw energy waves clipping past the dune were so dense that some of Antoine’s men had now fallen to the ground totally. This beast was in a different league entirely.

As the minutes ticked away, however, even Antoine began to question whether Uhtred would survive the battle.

His movements were noticeably slowing down, his steps getting slightly sloppier by the minute as the exhaustion of the prolonged duel, and lack of cosmic essence took its toll.

Meanwhile, the giant serpent seemed to be comfortably maintaining its massive essence output without showing a single sign of deceleration.

Then, just as the situation reached a critical tipping point where the momentum looked to be turning for the worse, Uhtred executed a bizarre technique.

His body seemed to vanish out of sight as a massive cloud of frigid ice crystals and blizzard magic exploded out of thin air, completely shrouding his position in a five meter radius around him.

”This guy... is this guy even a human at all?” one of the men on the ground next to Antoine muttered in a stunned, trembling whisper. The man hadn’t even realized he was speaking out loud, his eyes wide as he stared down at the white dome.

Antoine heard the whisper, and he knew the assessment was entirely valid.

Casting true magic — using cosmic essence to birth an element out of nothing — compared to using elemental variables in the air to cast magic, was extremely difficult.

Antoine himself only possessed a single true magic spell in his arsenal. But Uhtred had been casually throwing true magics back-to-back for the entirety of the fight...

And now, the guy had taken it a step further.

The giant serpent roared and charged down with its massive head at the snow radius, crushing Uhtred’s winter court spell in an instant.

However, Uhtred was nowhere to be found. The strike had hit nothing but cold air.

The massive serpent paused, its head twisting wildly as it tried to re-acquire its target. Antoine and his men were doing the exact same thing, their eyes scanning the battle site in total confusion.

Suddenly, a shadow fell from the sky.

Uhtred descended from above with his battle-axe aimed at the head of the serpent, the menacing blade suddenly morphing into something that looked even more deadly.

Then, with a roar, his body seemed to charge with the little cosmic essence he had left. His physical attributes were boosted to his limits as his battleaxe descended onto the center of the serpent’s head with a loud, furious slam.

The star-metal blade dug deep into the flesh, fracturing the bone beneath. A deafening, agonized howl tore out of the serpent’s throat, the sound waves rattling the loose stones on the surrounding hills.

The beast began to thrash around in a frantic, violent frenzy, slamming its head against the dunes to throw Uhtred off.

But Uhtred remained firmly anchored to the wound, refusing to fall. A deep madness burned in his eyes, one that made everyone watching begin to tremble with a sudden sense of excitement.

Seeing a lone human battling against such a titan and holding his own to the point where he was inflicting significant pain onto the beast filled not only the surrounding watchers but even Antoine with a sense of excitement that was bordering on second-hand pride.

However, it was this same second-hand pride that sat wrongly with Antoine. The fact that he was feeling such a thing from watching Uhtred defy odds was a harsh wake-up call.

Up until now, he had had a clear view and image of what he thought power was like among humans.

Uhtred had just shattered that image entirely. He had rubbed it against the floor and thrown it into the bin.

This was essentially a challenge to him, a challenge telling him that he was being complacent, that he was being comfortable with the level of power he had.

There were other terrifying people like Uhtred around the world.

Antoine’s eyes narrowed as, for a moment, just as the giant serpent was thrashing around, his and Uhtred’s gazes met briefly before the snake whipped its head sharply and began to charge towards the horizon trying to shake Uhtred off.

Silence reigned for several seconds after Uhtred and the serpent had disappeared into the horizon. No one spoke on the ridge as they all processed what they had just witnessed.

”I thank all my lucky stars that we didn’t go ahead and launch an attack on that demon of a man,” one of the men slumped fully onto his back from his kneeling position, breathing heavily.

He looked up at Antoine, his chest heaving. ”Mr. Antoine... is that how everyone high up on the global ladder is?”

Antoine didn’t answer him. He kept his arms crossed, his eyes narrowed into a hard, focused squint as he continued to stare into the empty northwest horizon where the red tracking dot was finally fading from his map interface.

The lingering trace of Uhtred’s terrifying battle still remained within the vicinity, leaving a permanent mark on his memory.

Antoine clenched his jaw, his gaze became hard.

”The next time our paths cross, Uhtred,” he muttered. ”It will be on equal terms...”

.

.

.

Meanwhile, several tens of miles away from Antoine’s location, Uhtred had finally come to a stop...

”Fuck! I let it get away!” Uhtred punched his fist against the hard sandy ground, a deep, livid scowl on his face.

”The amount of merit I would’ve gotten out of killing that beast would’ve been crazy!”

While he lamented not being able to kill the Nascent realm beast, deep in his mind he knew this was the most natural conclusion.

Right now, his essence reserves were totally and utterly tapped out, and it was a miracle that the serpent had only decided to shake him off and run away rather than focus on him for revenge.

If it had, he literally would not have been able to protect himself. He was truly and utterly spent at this point.

The only thing his body was running on was the residual adrenaline and lingering madness pumping in his veins from entire sequence of events that led up to this point:

How he had formed sub-cores within his own essence core. How the beast had vomited him out of its stomach because of the unusual emanations coming off of him due to the sub-core formation. How he had immediately begun to fight against the beast despite his meager reserves...

He still hadn’t processed just how crazy all he had done was.

In fact, it wasn’t just him. His entire multiversal streaming channel had gone utterly silent. The multiversal sponsors seemed to be trying to wrap their heads around what exactly had happened.

Even the Nine Nether Thirty-First Young Master, who was usually so vocal and dismissive, hadn’t spoken at all.

Uhtred remained on the ground, heaving and panting, with multiple injuries across his body.

His essence core ached in his chest as if it were a physical organ, though he knew it was just a phantom pain because his core craved essence ravenously.

He needed to find a source to replenish his cosmic essence reserves right now... However, before that, he needed to do something.

A vengeful glint flickered in his eyes as a devilish smile broke across his face. He pulled up his title panel and looked straight to the bottom, where his total merit points were.

And exactly as he expected, right there, his previous total of 9,000 had increased to a whopping 209,000 Merits!

Uhtred grinned.

”System,” he called out loud, not knowing exactly how what he was about to do worked.

”I would like to place a bounty.”

[Bounty Creation Initiated]

[Select the target of your bounty. Do note that 10 Merits will be deducted for this attempt as a fee]

Uhtred, still on the ground with the burning pains across his body, grinned. He was pleasantly surprised that placing a bounty was so straightforward.

The System had opened up the trial rankings, putting up a check box behind the names of everyone on the list.

He could also simply think of who he wanted to place a bounty on exactly, and no matter where they were among the 3.5 million plus participants, the System would automatically locate the individual.

However, Uhtred already knew who he wanted to place the bounty on.

”Place a bounty on Krijn’s head...”

”30,000 Merits.”

”Then for the number 1 ranked on the trial rankings, 20,000 Merits.”

”For the number 3 ranked. 15,000 Merits.”

”After that, place 10,000 Merits on every damned ancient variant from number 4 to 10.”