Formless Ascension: My Affinity Is Limitless

The door melded shut before Uhtred got to hear what Zara’s mind-boggling achievement actually was.

”Damn! What’d he say? ’...we have a Nascent Realm human ascender who has successfully constructed a—’ A what, exactly?!”

The fact that the Host’s words had been cut off at the juiciest part was truly agonizing.

Uhtred slammed his fist against the wall, but the smooth surface didn’t budge an inch. The room was so thoroughly soundproofed that he couldn’t hear a single thing from the outside, as if he had been completely sealed inside a separate dimension.

”Forget opening a can of worms I don’t want to deal with yet. I’m just going to ask her directly the next time I see her.”

Uhtred huffed and strode over to the sofa with a scowl.

He knew it was just his frustration speaking, and that he would likely never bring it up when he saw her next, but a man was allowed to vent when left hanging like this.

He sat down heavily on the cushion, letting out a long sigh to sort through his thoughts.

Putting the matter of Zara and her achievement aside, Handler Roy had revealed a few new things from his frantic explanations just minutes ago.

First, Uhtred was now certain that Roy knew what his class was.

The exact depth of the Handler’s knowledge remained unclear, but Uhtred was convinced the rat-man knew at least his class name: Formless.

Roy’s lecture had been a warning to him particularly. The Handler was telling him not to reveal anything about his class or give any subtle hints for the multiversal crowd to piece together.

In truth, Uhtred had wanted to drop a few hints here and there to make a statement like Roy had said. His multiversal viewers were already suspicious of his abilities, so what harm could be done by dropping a few more hints to fuel their imagination?

He was never going to outright state his class — that would be suicidal — but Roy’s reaction proved that even dropping subtle hints was playing with fire.

So, it’s a ”let them keep wondering” situation...

Uhtred analyzed Roy’s motives deeply. His multiversal viewers were far from foolish. The very fact that he had been summoned to this interview proved as much.

Especially those who had been watching him from the onset, they had seen him achieve crazy feats that went beyond standard logic over and over again — things that should not be possible based on the restrictions of class attunements.

Now that a whole year had passed on Earth, Uhtred had gotten a very clear picture and understanding of how every other ascender compared to himself.

The strict boundaries of class attunement were far more severe than he had initially realized.

Take Black Sun, for example. Uhtred had gotten to understand Mateo’s class a bit deeper, even though the man had never explicitly revealed what his class was.

It had something to do with weapons. It was why Mateo was always interested in things like guns — he even had a replica of one when he and Uhtred had first met.

Mateo’s class restricted him to fighting with weaponry alone. Generally, he could still be classified as a fire elemental, but he couldn’t actualize any high-level use of his fire magic without channeling it through weapons.

The weapons didn’t even need to be fully functional, like the gun Uhtred had seen in that tent back in the Age of Hunger trial.

The same thing went for bows. Mateo didn’t need arrows to use them.

No matter the weapon, his projectiles were always going to be made of his flames. The weapon was just the medium.

That was just one example. Uhtred could list many others. From the highly specialized elemental ascenders geared towards crafting — many of whom Uhtred had employed in his territory and who were now working for him — to even more obscure types of utility classes...

The main thing was that even Uhtred had begun to see the rigid limitations of those classes. Yet someone like Mateo, bound entirely by those class limitations, was still one of the highest-ranking ascenders back on Earth.

To a multiversal audience accustomed to strict System logic and used to gauging limitations, watching Uhtred operate forced them to repeatedly re-evaluate and re-analyze what they thought Uhtred’s class was over and over again.

By now, the earliest members of his channel had definitely come to the conclusion that he was something extremely anomalous.

Uhtred could already see this from how viewers who were previously very antagonistic and haughty had become much more amicable, even going so far as to root for him.

Out of his original viewership, perhaps only the Nine Nether Thirty-First Young Master still viewed him antagonistically.

But that went without saying.

Both he and the Nine Nether Thirty-First Young Master were purely enemies without disguise. There was no reconciliation possible between them. The young master had tried to kill him through his subordinates — the Jotuniels — and Uhtred wasn’t one to allow people who had threatened his life to live.

He let out a sigh, closing his eyes as he pondered deeply in thought.

Handler Roy was telling him to disregard all of that — to disregard all the suspicions his viewers had and basically just let them keep wondering what he was without giving any certain hints whatsoever.

Normally, this shouldn’t be an issue. In fact, Uhtred couldn’t pinpoint exactly why this was bugging him so much. It went in line with everything he had originally wanted.

He didn’t want to reveal his class to the world. He didn’t want everyone to know he was an anomaly that broke the System, yet he found that he kept thinking about this...

Why?

As Uhtred analyzed himself deeply, he realized the underlying reason.

In fact, it wasn’t so hard to decipher once he was being truthful with himself.

Whether consciously or subconsciously, at every given moment ever since the integration began and he received his class, he had been wary.

From the first time he found out he was being watched by multiversal viewers, a part of himself had instinctively put on an act.

In every single battle he had fought, in every cultivation session, in every grinding session where he was battling against beasts back on Earth, through all the trials he had been through... he was constantly aware that he was being watched.

That awareness was like a silent drone, always keeping the paranoid part of himself active, guiding his movements and actions subconsciously...