Formless Ascension: My Affinity Is Limitless

In a split second, the alarm bells inside his mind went absolutely wild. Without even knowing what was wrong, he instinctively raised his right arm along with his battle-axe to shield his face, protecting the most vital part of his body.

In that same split second, Uhtred felt several tiny, high-velocity perforations slam heavily into his forearm like bullets, eliciting a sharp hiss of pain from his lips.

What the fuck was that?!

Uhtred hadn’t seen a single weapon or projectile in the left hand of the Homo erectus general. What kind of magic had he just used?

Before he could begin to think further, Uhtred first tried to widen the gap between them. He leaped backward, waving his battle-axe in defensive arcs just in case the general was closing the distance to capitalize on the hit.

However, as he moved his right arm to swing the axe, he suddenly felt a dead, cold stiffness deep within his muscles.

Uhtred’s eyes widened immediately. It wasn’t just the stiffness alone. Very slowly, like an aggressive form of corrosion, he realized he couldn’t even feel his cosmic essence cycling through his arm any longer. The deadening effect was spreading from his forearms up toward his shoulder with terrifying speed.

Is this poison? Uhtred thought, his mind spinning with confusion and alarm.

He staggered slightly as he landed, feeling an utter lack of sensation from his right arm. On the surface, his skin began to turn pale at a highly visible pace, looking as if his flesh had suddenly been wrought with some sort of severe disease.

Uhtred rapidly reined in the cosmic essence cycling through the other parts of his body, congregating everything he had. He pooled the energy, including the essence that was cycling naturally within his separate sub-cores, and tried to violently push back against the spreading flow of whatever foreign substance was coursing through his arm.

He needed to stop it at his shoulder, keeping it isolated to his right arm alone before it reached his vital organs.

At this point, he was extremely vulnerable. If it had been Uhtred in the general’s position, he would have taken this exact moment of vulnerability to ruthlessly press and kill his opponent...

But the Homo erectus general seemed to be utterly assured of his magic. He took his time, choosing to revel in Uhtred’s sudden pain and confusion.

The general stood where he was, grinning deeply as he watched the number one human ranker fall to one knee. Uhtred’s star-metal battle-axe clattered onto the desert ground as he tightly clutched his right arm by the shoulder.

”Ahh. What a sight. The number one human ranker on the planet, right here at my feet,” the Homo erectus general chuckled. His hand was still pressed against the gash Uhtred had torn across the side of his stomach, but as he spoke, he suddenly pulled the hand away.

Uhtred, who was staring up at him from where he was kneeling, looked at the wound, and his eyes flickered slightly. The gaping gash had completely sealed over with a strange, viscous layer of dark red.

”Yes! Open your eyes and watch very carefully... You’ve never seen magic like this before!” the Homo erectus general cackled. He spread his left palm, which had previously been covering the wound.

Right there, floating steadily above his palm, was a throbbing orb of pure blood.

It thrummed and pulsed, expanding and contracting as though it were a living thing. The feeling Uhtred got from staring at it alone was intensely uncanny, like looking at something inherently vile and repulsive.

”It would seem you’re a triple elemental, or perhaps even a quadruple elemental mage... But so what? At the end of the day, it is just elemental magic!” the ancient general guffawed, his voice dripping with scorn.

”That is just the basic level of cosmic essence usage! The fact that you, the number one ranked human on the planet, are attuned to just elemental magic alone says everything I need to know about you modern humans!”

”Weak!” he roared, his voice echoing across the ruined camp. ”Pathetic and weak!”

”You wish to take on our clan leaders with such petty magic? You wish to exterminate us with just this alone?! You do not even understand what exactly is happening to your body right now! You humans, with that... Ah... what is it called again...?”

He paused, snapping his fingers repeatedly in mock recollection.

”Ah, yes. ’Science’. You call it science. It is no wonder the majority of you are all of the elemental type, absolutely no variety whatsoever. None of you possess attunements tailored to the more esoteric aspects of cosmic essence... And yet you think yourselves the rightful representatives of this world on the multiversal scale? What a joke!”

The Homo erectus general seemed genuinely furious, looking down at Uhtred with a burning condescension in his dark eyes.

Uhtred, in turn, simply stared back at the general. He processed the information being spewed at him, while simultaneously splitting his focus to fight against the flow of the weird blood magic corrosion. The foreign energy was trying to force its way past his shoulder into the rest of his body.

His jaw was clenched hard, knowing fully well now that the situation had become extremely dire. This was an entirely different sort of magic that he had never experienced before, one he hadn’t even thought possible until this moment.

But as he listened to the general’s rant, he remembered the start of the integration. Dennis, along with a few other intellectuals within Sector 13 back in Zone 0, had mentioned something about ”the soul” and the fact that concepts like those shouldn’t be written off in this new reality.

It seemed their theories was completely right after all.

From the Homo erectus general’s words just now, it became clear. In place of scientific knowledge, and in place of understanding the physical laws of the world, cosmic essence was manipulated with a different kind of understanding by ancient variants like this general.

The class options he had received during his own integration had to have been geared toward his primitive knowledge and perception of the world.

For ancient variants like him who possessed absolutely no concept of modern science, what else could fuel their understanding of power if not the esoteric knowledge he just spoke of? The strange, non-scientific aspects of the universe...

Thinking about it now, everything began to slot into place inside Uhtred’s mind.

That female ancient variant who had come to assassinate him three nights ago must have also been using some form of this esoteric magic, one that was even more advanced and paralyzing than this general’s blood corrosion.

Uhtred clenched his jaw, forcing his focus to return to the present. This wasn’t the time to be analyzing what he knew and what he didn’t know about what was possible in this new reality. Rather, he needed to figure out a way to get out of this situation!

He was up against a magic he didn’t understand, stuck in a heavily disadvantageous position with the blood magic deadening his arm and trying to force its way through the rest of his body... and he had no idea how to stop it!

Uhtred cursed under his breath, his eyes fixed on the grinning general before him.

Shit! What do I do now?