Formless Ascension: My Affinity Is Limitless

He had come in here with one single goal, which was to observe how this serpent kept its essence from bleeding away and to reverse engineer it into a technique of his own.

He glanced down at the bubbling dark acid surrounding his tiny island.

Time was a major constraint. He couldn’t afford to sit here for days theorizing. The high-level carapace he was currently standing on was durable, but the serpent’s stomach acid was going to dissolve it anyway.

In fact, judging from what he could see, Uhtred estimated perhaps a dozen hours at most, maybe even significantly less, until the structure became weak enough that it couldn’t hold his weight any longer.

Then there was also the problem of his cosmic essence reserves.

Even though the serpent’s body insulated him from the external leak, there was still no way to replenish his core inside this space.

The serpent’s flesh was packed with dense reserves of cosmic essence, but the air within its stomach was completely hollow. The energy was locked behind the muscle walls, it didn’t just magically radiate into the air for him to breathe.

If he wanted to siphon energy to sustain himself, he would either have to violently hack into the stomach lining to drain the essence directly from the beast’s body, or slaughter it outright to harvest its crystallized cores.

But, at the same time, killing the snake right now completely defeated the purpose of his infiltration. He needed the beast alive so he could study its internal circulation to create the technique he wanted.

Killing it was completely off the table until his technique was finalized.

Which means I need to find an alternate source of essence right here, Uhtred realized, his eyes narrowing as they swept across the floating remains of beasts and humans.

It was an incredibly gory sight, but he needed to check if any of the recently devoured beasts or humans still retained their cores within their mangled remains.

It was very possible that he would find some. The giant serpent didn’t actively harvest the cores from the things it devoured. It only made sure to crush them with its massive teeth before swallowing them whole, leaving the rest up to its internal digestive system to sort out.

Ah shit... this is gonna be a pain, Uhtred frowned at the thought of jumping back into the disgusting liquid, but it was something he needed to do anyway.

However, before that, he quickly pulled up his System interface, navigating directly to the trial ranking panel to check the current status of the rest of his crew.

His eyes scanned the scrolling names, searching for Zara, Dennis, and Diya, letting out low sigh of relief as he spotted their names still on the list. They hadn’t died yet, at least.

His bold move to face the giant serpent had actually paid off, especially with his act of shattering one of the serpent’s teeth, throwing it into a frenzy.

It seemed he had made it change its focus away from the rest of his crew, allowing them to escape.

Suddenly, just as Uhtred was scrolling through the list, assured that Zara, Dennis, and Diya were still alive, his multiversal streaming panel popped up at his left.

The chat log was scrolling at high speed, and directly at the top of the feed, a familiar name was cackling in bold text:

> Nine Nether Thirty-First Young Master: Hahaha! Look at this absolute, brainlessfool! I was just checking in on you casually, but did you actually just step into the belly of a Level 25 Nascent Realm beast completely of your own free will?!

> Nine Nether Thirty-First Young Master: I already knew you had a death wish from your blatant disregard for entities who can end you with a simple flick of their fingers several times over! But this goes beyond standard mortal stupidity! You are literally just committing suicide for the sake of it!

The messages continued to pour in, filled with scathing mockery and arrogant rants.

Several other high-tier multiversal sponsors and entities who had paid the 100-token entry fee chipped into the feed, their text strings dripping with condescension.

Many of them were the exact same old foggies Uhtred had kicked out of his channel before setting up the paywall.

Myriad Sword Ancestor of the Seventy-seventh Heaven, Vengeful Grandmaster of Nyxos, Anuran All-Mother of Fertility.

They were thoroughly enjoying the sight, openly mocking his situation and stating that the top-ranked human on Earth had just managed to casually end his own life due to sheer arrogance.

They all knew a Level 25 beast wasn’t some simple mortal realm creature like the beasts Uhtred had been comfortably clearing in Zone 1.

This was an entity that had breached the threshold of the next realm. It was a qualitatively superior tier of existence, and they were entirely convinced there was no way a primitive mortal could fight his way back to the surface out of its stomach.

The young master’s name flashed across the log again, his tone shifting into a weird display of arrogant frustration:

> Nine Nether Thirty-First Young Master:Tch! Don’t you dare die in that pit, you trash! I haven’t even given you permission to perish yet! I was explicitly waiting for your backwater planet to finish its five-year countdown so I could personally send my outer vanguards to drag you to the abyssal mining camps of the Nine Nether star clusters!

> Nine Nether Thirty-First Young Master: You were supposed to suffer for decades in the sulfur moons for disrespecting my name! If you get turned into basic energy sludge by a regular desert snake, it ruins the entire entertainment value!

The young master seemed genuinely infuriated by Uhtred’s actions, spewing rants as if he actually wanted Uhtred to find a way to survive, purely so he could maintain the right to torture him later down the line.

> Nine Nether Thirty-First Young Master: What a complete waste of a Pathfinder core. To think a Unique-grade talent is going to end up as basic digestive fertilizer for a backwater worm because he doesn’t know how to run away... Pathetic.

Uhtred read through the scrolling wall of insults without a single change in his expression.

Normally, he would have reacted differently — maybe cutting the young master off mid-sentence or firing his own retort back, but instead, his pulse remained completely steady, and his analytical mind picked up on a vital piece of cosmic context hidden within the rants.

This is the second time I’m hearing someone lament about my Pathfinder core... It seems it’s actually very valuable out there in the multiverse.

He had already deduced that this Nine Nether Young Master was a legitimate big shot within the wider multiverse, likely backed by a massive, ancient lineage.

The guy had once said his family owned a star cluster, and from Uhtred’s understanding of physics, owning a star cluster wasn’t a joke at all. It was a level of wealth and power that he could not even begin to comprehend.

Whoever this arrogant young master’s family were, they owned a cluster of separate solar systems with planets of their own, essentially an entire section of a galaxy!

But despite all of this, Uhtred still didn’t care. He placed absolute trust in his own ability to cultivate and scale his power to a point where those distant entities wouldn’t be able to look down on him.

Still, despite all their grand star-cluster territory, a young master from their lineage was completely fixated on the status of his core, just because he was a Pathfinder?

Wait... I might actually be able to make this work in my favor.

A sudden, lethal idea sparked within Uhtred’s mind. He didn’t know if what he was about to do would work, specifically because he hadn’t seen anyone do it with their streaming function.

But if it worked, it would provide him with a massive advantage and leverage — not inside this stomach right now, but if he survived here and stepped back out into the open.

Without a single shred of hesitation, Uhtred opened his mouth, his voice echoing flatly across the wet walls of the stomach.

”Well, if you are all so fixated on my core...” he said, looking directly into the floating projection of the stream.

”...then why don’t you put your money where your mouth is and make a bet with me?”