Formless Ascension: My Affinity Is Limitless

He had already analyzed everything he could from a distance. The only way to gain deeper insights into its internal filtering mechanics was to kill it and dissect its core pathways. But taking down a Level 24 plant-beast with a trap-laden domain was a massive hassle.

It wasn’t that Uhtred didn’t think it was possible, but he simply didn’t want to stress himself.

Uhtred had already witnessed how effortlessly the giant plant had paralyzed and consumed that high-speed hawk. Spending time to fight against this monster just for a slight refinement in filtering wasn’t worth the time investment.

This trial had a strict seven-day timeline, and he had already spent an entire day to decipher the gathering spiral technique.

Uhtred pulled up his map of the zone. He and Zara were currently positioned relatively close to the center of the region.

This deep inside the zone, very few humans or ancient variants were competing for Grotto Heavens. The vast majority of both populations were still fighting over the lower-tier Grotto Heavens near the outer border line.

A few of the stronger combatants had pushed deeper, but Uhtred reckoned that only the ancient variant generals, a handful of high commanders, and the top human rankers were operating anywhere near their current depth.

”We’re leaving this place,” Uhtred said, turning away from the Poison Titan Kelp and pointing toward the next highlighted point on his map. ”We need to push deeper before we officially claim a Grotto Heaven for ourselves.”

He calculated that he had just enough time to decipher one more specialized technique. His goal was to formulate a second method, send it back to Mateo via their scout network, and let him distribute it to the rest of the human population so the collective could level up faster.

However, Uhtred made a firm mental note: today was the last day he was going to spend catering to the collective. Starting tomorrow, he was focusing entirely on his own personal cultivation.

His position on the trial rankings had already dropped from number 4 down to number 7. Diya, who had held the number 2 spot at the end of the previous phase, had dropped out of the top ten entirely, falling to number 11. Zara was right behind her at number 12.

The structural advantage the ancient variants gained from their Inheritance Shard reward was becoming painfully obvious on the leaderboards. The steady decline that had been affecting the lower top-hundred ranks had finally reached the very apex of the standings. In fact if Uhtred hadn’t derived this gathering technique, he likely would have dropped even further down the list.

As he started walking, turning to call Zara along, he suddenly felt a distinct energy shift behind him. He spun around in surprise.

Barely five minutes had passed since her first failed attempt, but the cosmic essence radiating from Zara’s core had already completely stabilized. A clean, perfectly formed energy spiral was actively spinning around her, pulling the thick ambient essence directly toward her chest.

She had mastered the technique already.

It was surprising, but it was also to be expected. Using an already created technique was much easier than deciphering one from scratch and creating a technique on your own.

At the end of the day, Zara was a pathfinder like Uhtred. She possessed at least a Unique Grade talent, so replicating a technique that had already been explained to you within five minutes wasn’t too surprising once one thought about it that way.

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Uhtred and Zara took off, traveling for another hour before reaching the next Grotto Heaven marked on their map.

Unlike the previous location, which was guarded by a stationary plant, this Grotto Heaven was controlled by a mobile, aggressive beast — a massive, bus-sized Wombat that wielded Earth magic alongside a lethal, vibrating sonic attack. Its mastery over both elements was dangerously high.

Uhtred and Zara had no choice but to engage the creature in direct combat. They had initially attempted to subdue it without killing it so Uhtred could analyze its core pathways, but that proved to be an absolute nightmare in practice. Fighting an elite beast that could launch invisible sonic shockwaves capable of bypassing their defenses to rattle their internal organs was beyond unpleasant.

In the end, their combined efforts brought the Level 24 beast down. They systematically dismantled its defenses, severing its limbs and destroying the specialized vocal organ it used to generate the sonic vibrations.

With the beast completely immobilized, Uhtred spent several hours closely examining its internal essence pathways. He gleaned a massive amount of insight regarding how the creature processed cosmic essence.

From those observations, he successfully created a second technique.

And unlike the spiral method that could be used by anyone, this one was not intended for general use. It was specifically tailored for ascenders who possessed Earth or Metal attunements.

The technique functioned by generating a localized magnetic field around the user’s core, drawing Earth and Metal aspects out of the ambient air with high efficiency while using an opposing magnetic force to actively repel non-compatible aspects.

With a second technique created, Uhtred and Zara spent the remainder of their second day traveling back toward a human-controlled Grotto Heaven closest to them. There, they handed both techniques over to Mateo’s elite scouts.

With that completed, Uhtred’s obligation to the collective was officially finished. Mateo possessed the infrastructure to distribute the techniques across the entire human population.

However, one interesting thing Uhtred found when he was within their Grotto Heaven was that he wasn’t the only one creating techniques.

Within the span of the elapsed forty-eight hours, other techniques had spread across the human population. There were, after all, more than a hundred thousand humans still within the trials.

There were all kinds of people from different walks of life. Some of them were facing extreme situations, facing peculiar beasts, having peculiar experiences. From these experiences, a few of them had created techniques and shared their findings among the human population.

Uhtred checked out the circulating techniques and picked out two that were surprisingly well-designed. The rest were either too basic to provide any real benefit to someone at his cultivation level, or they were decent, but needlessly convoluted.

The first technique he picked out was tailored for people with a fire attunement. It required harvesting a fluid-producing organ from a Level 12 Tasmanian Fire-Breathing Devil — a fairly common beast in the trial grounds.

By applying the fluid to the skin while cultivating in a fire-dense area, the user could dramatically increase their rate of fire-essence assimilation.

The second technique was even more unusual. It was also designed for Fire elementals, but its core mechanics relied on something resembling a formation array. Uhtred was surprised to learn that certain human ascenders possessed classes specifically tailored toward arrays. The user drew a basic, circuit-like formation on the ground, placing themselves at the center to act as a lightning rod for fire essence.

Human ingenuity was actively bridging the gap. Even without an Inheritance Shard, the human race was proving why they had dominated the planet before the integration arrived.

By the morning of the third day, after Uhtred and Zara had returned to the deeper interior of the zone, the impact of these shared techniques was clearly reflected on the leaderboards.

The human rankers within the top hundred were steadily reclaiming their lost positions, pushing back against the ancient variant momentum.