Formless Ascension: My Affinity Is Limitless

So he has a daughter. Uhtred thought to himself, the realization immediately making everything click into place.

The way Mateo had been so vehement and hyper-focused on the survival of humanity was not out of some sudden, bleeding-heart altruism. It was entirely pragmatic.

If Mateo could ensure that the general population of humans across the trial grounds remained relatively stable, then wherever his daughter had been dropped, she would also find herself in a much safer environment with a significantly higher chance of survival.

It was a deeply personal goal, but it was one Uhtred could fully understand.

Hearing Mateo speak about his daughter briefly jogged Uhtred’s own memories, pulling his mind back to his own family.

He thought of his mother, who had died just a few years after birthing him, having remained constantly sick and weak from the moment he was born.

His mind flashed to the pendant she had always emphasized he kept safe. The exact same pendant that had combined with that weird orb from the asteroid, right before the System officially arrived on planet Earth.

Uhtred caught himself, realizing his mind was beginning to drift down the same paths it usually did whenever he had a quiet moment to think. The persistent, looming thought that perhaps his own father was out there somewhere in the deep cosmos.

By now, with everything he had witnessed regarding the integration, Uhtred had begun to form ideas about his father’s true origins.

He quickly cleared his thoughts, cutting off the nostalgia and assumptions to refocus on Mateo’s face. He gave a slight, silent nod, choosing not to comment on Mateo’s personal motives, nor did he criticize the man for prioritizing his own blood over every other human.

Uhtred was far too pragmatic for that kind of moral grandstanding. He recognized that for a man like Mateo, family was way more important than millions of random strangers.

Instead of dwelling on it, Uhtred simply moved straight to the next matter at hand.

”Well, I’m guessing you have some sort of concrete plan of action then?” he asked directly, leaning forward. ”If I am to come on board with this, how exactly are we going to execute it?”

Mateo didn’t waste a single second offering useless words of thanks or showing deep appreciation for Uhtred’s willingness to cooperate. They were both intensely practical men. They skipped the pleasantries and moved directly into the tactical details.

”After I noticed my daughter’s name on the list earlier this afternoon, I immediately began spreading my reach until I gathered the numbers you see out there,” Mateo explained, pointing a thumb toward the tent flap.

”It’s not only me who has figured out the true nature of this phase. There are other human high rankers who have reached the same conclusion, and they are building similar camps too.”

”Aside from the high rankers, there are even more of these camps forming across the wider expanses of Australia. It is simply the natural path for survival. Right now, I already have scouts out... people who can travel quickly and mask their presence. I’m prepared to dispatch them to the three major camps closest to us to deliver the message of our plan of action.”

”The plan is simple. You will be the flag bearer. The singular figure that every scattered human rallies under,” Mateo looked Uhtred dead in the eye. ”Just like you did with the bounties, we will utilize a continent-wide announcement to pass across information to all humans. However, we have to be smart about how we handle the other powerhouses...”

”The individuals who have the strength to form their own camps are not going to willingly concede their authority to you just because your name sits at number one. That is simply human nature. It was dominant in the old world, and it is even more volatile now. We should not even attempt to force them under your banner.”

Uhtred nodded slowly. ”Let them keep their autonomy. We just need them to fall in line with the overall plan.”

”Exactly,” Mateo said. ”The ones who will be easily swayed to march under your direct banner are the smaller, fractured pockets of humans currently starving and hiding out in the deep deserts. So, within the public announcement, it’d be best if you dictate a specific location. This assembly point will be situated close to the barrier line so they can all see it with their own eyes... see it move forward with every step we take push into the interior.”

He paused for a breath.

”And to make sure that people actually head in our direction, we shouldn’t just broadcast the location alone, but we should actively incentivize the migration.”

”Incentivize it how?” Uhtred asked.

”We promise them safety, and more importantly, we offer them techniques to stem their cosmic essence loss,” Mateo revealed flatly.

Uhtred raised a brow at that, his eyes narrowing slightly. ”Techniques?”

He knew for a fact that his own method of sealing his core and preventing essence depletion was completely tied to the unique, foundational mechanics of the sub-cores he had formed in his essence core. It was practically impossible to replicate, even if he were willing to hand the method over to the public.

Mateo caught the sharp look and kind of understood what Uhtred was thinking. He realized that his statement might have seemed as if he was asking Uhtred to provide techniques, and he could see that Uhtred had zero intentions of sharing any techniques at all.

However, even though he knew Uhtred surely had great techniques — especially because of the near-perfect stability radiating from Uhtred since he walked into the camp, a pointer to having a very superior technique — he didn’t bother to ask Uhtred about it.

”You don’t need to look at me like that,” Mateo said, waving a hand casually. ”I’m the one who will handle the distribution. Me and my people have already discovered and put together three separate techniques that can stem essence drain to varying degrees. The most advanced one we currently have can even lower the leakage by at least forty percent...”

Uhtred let out a low, silent sigh inside his mind.

Forty percent...

To the desperate masses out in the desert, that number would sound like an absolute godsend, a literal lifeline.

But to Uhtred, who was currently blocking more than ninety percent of his essence leakage through his sub-core formation, it only highlighted the massive limitations of a standard, single-core formation.

Because none of these ascenders had even begun to think of anything like a sub-core formation, they were still limited to crude techniques that allowed them to cast basic spells while bleeding immense amounts of essence.

”Forty percent is enough,” Uhtred muttered aloud, moving past the topic. ”After that, what next?”

Mateo and Uhtred — Black Sun and Red — sat across from one another for more than an hour, meticulously detailing every single aspect of the plan.

They focused heavily on how to utilize the most powerful human ascenders, specifically targeting the individuals sitting within the top one hundred of the trial rankings.

Both Uhtred and Mateo recognized that it was impossible to congregate millions of humans into one location in the middle of a barren desert. The strain on resources alone would cause a collapse before the ancient variants even attacked...