Formless Ascension: My Affinity Is Limitless

The task of finding his way to the library turned out not to be as difficult as Uhtred had expected.

He had simply brought it up the next morning, maintaining his amnesiac act, and Nayu An had agreed almost immediately.

Thinking about it now, it made complete sense. He was playing the part of a warrior who had lost his memories, so Nayu An would naturally want to speed up his recovery process any way she could. Allowing him into the library to read documents that might jog his memory was an easy concession.

This outcome was far better than whatever chaos might have unfolded had he gone ahead with the emergency escape plan he had hatched the previous night.

In Uhtred’s usual fashion, he had stayed extremely vigilant throughout the night, just in case Nayu An was still suspicious of his story.

He had worked out a plan to slip out to the library and flee the clan lands before dawn, but that was strictly a backup option in case he noticed any sudden moves from the guards outside or from any of the clan members.

Thankfully, none of that had been necessary. He had gotten into the inner library without raising alarms, though the setup wasn’t exactly what he had envisioned.

Uhtred looked up from the book in his hands, casting a subtle glance at Nayu An, who was sitting across the table from him. She caught his movement immediately and offered a soft, sweet smile.

Uhtred returned a small, awkward smile, staying completely in character. He couldn’t act entirely detached anymore. To make his amnesia act believable, he had to show gradual signs of responsiveness and reciprocation toward her actions.

Internally, however, he was losing his patience.

Fuck, what is wrong with this girl? Are Heaven’s Chosen prodigies really this free? Isn’t she supposed to be out cultivating or managing some clan affairs?

She had been sitting here with him all morning, and it was nearly noon now.

When he had subtly asked why she wasn’t attending to her duties earlier, she had replied that she was ”making sure nothing happens to my soon-to-be betrothed.”

But Uhtred it as: ”There’s something off about you, and I am going to hover around until I sniff it out.”

Damn it, at this pace, the audience will soon force some mandatory choices in my face!

The vocal trolls in his stream, led by Serial_Troll_Nyx and a few others, were already stirring up the chat with scathing remarks about how boring the stream was becoming.

Frustratingly, their complaints were starting to gain traction. More and more casual viewers were getting swayed by the vocal minority, agreeing that watching Uhtred sit quietly in a library reading books was terrible content.

Uhtred could sense a mandatory choice coming, and that was something he didn’t want to see at all.

As he returned his gaze to the book he was reading, his eyes naturally crossed over the section of the library behind Nayu An.

The information he needed was sitting right there: detailed geographical maps, regional breakdowns, political structures, everything he should know if he wanted to escape from this place successfully.

These were the kinds of information a simple warrior like Jor-than wasn’t privy to. His whole life, he had been in this clan, raised on the outskirts, rising from a servant mother up to the point where he joined the outer sect.

The An clan’s dominion was an enclosed economy of a sort: a vast swath of land dominated by them alone. Save for the final battle where he perished, Jor-than had never seen anything beyond those borders. And even then he hadn’t known who they were fighting against or why the war was being waged in the first place.

He was simply given orders just like every other outer sect warrior, and he perished carrying out those orders.

I need to get those maps, Uhtred continued reading, though his mind had begun to work, trying to come up with a plan.

He couldn’t bank on Nayu leaving. Of course he knew she definitely would. But how long till then? What if she decided to stay with him all day? And then the same thing the next day? And the day after?

He didn’t plan to stay here for that long.

”Does something trouble you, Uhtred?” Nayu An’s soft voice broke through his thoughts.

He nearly reacted with a startle, but he was still maintaining a base level of awareness that allowed him to keep up his act. His brows furrowed slightly as he kicked into gear, spinning up a response on the fly.

He made it look as though he was struggling to express his thoughts, debating internally whether he should even speak.

He let out a quiet sigh, waving his hand dismissively. ”It’s nothing significant, Mistress Nayu.”

”I have told you not to call me ’mistress,’” she said, pouting slightly with a hurt look. ”And besides, how can you decide that what’s on your mind is insignificant? What if it’s a vital detail that could help you regain your memories?”

Uhtred forced an embarrassed smile onto his face. He acted thoroughly uncomfortable, looking flustered by her request to drop the formal title while simultaneously appearing reluctant to share his thoughts.

After a long, deliberate pause, he spoke in a low voice:

”Well, it’s nothing really. A sudden thought just crossed my mind... a sort of clarity, actually. I can somehow tell that I never knew what battle had nearly killed me. That I never knew who we were fighting against or what we were fighting for or whose land I nearly died in...”

Nayu An didn’t answer immediately. She kept that same gentle expression on her face, but as Uhtred glanced up to gauge her reaction, he caught a trace of calculation in her eyes.

Just like he was playing his own game, she was also playing her own game. Behind her sweet demeanor, her mind was analyzing his words, weighing his motives, and trying to determine whether his question stemmed from genuine amnesiac confusion or a hidden agenda.

”...I might be wrong, but a part of me feels certain that I didn’t know these things even before I lost my memory. It feels like a hollow gap in my mind... Maybe it’s something I used to wonder about back then, too...”

His voice trailed off towards the end, and he looked deeply troubled before he suddenly snapped back to attention with an apologetic expression.

”Ah! Forgive me, Mistr— I mean, Nayu! I shouldn’t be blabbering about such nonsensical things!”

”It’s fine, Uhtred,” Nayu said sweetly, resuming her own gentle act too. Her expression became slightly solemn and even guilty to an extent. ”To be honest, that hollow feeling is not wrong. Because of how this clan is structured, warriors like you were never given information about anything outside our lands, and most especially about missions with such levels of importance...”

Uhtred stared at her, letting genuine curiosity show in his eyes.

”It was the outer forces of the Demonic Cult’s Sword Sect...” Nayu An revealed after a brief pause. ”...We were fighting the outer forces of the Demonic Cult’s Sword Sect.”