Formless Ascension: My Affinity Is Limitless

Uhtred wanted to believe the lucky kid had somehow conspired with the demonic cultivators to steal Nayu An from under his nose, but his intuition was telling him otherwise — and he had learned to trust his intuition.

The lucky kid’s matter was entirely different from the capture of Nayu An. Whoever had taken her had simply capitalized on the chaos.

Which therefore means they were wary of me...

Uhtred’s eyes narrowed.

Whoever it was, they lacked the confidence to face him head-on. Perhaps they had witnessed his terrifying speed with Slipstream Stride, or perhaps they had watched him slaughter the demonic cultivators chasing the kid...

Whatever the reason, they had chosen to avoid a direct confrontation, opting instead to snatch Nayu An from the cave as a better option.

Damn it! I really fucked up!

Uhtred gritted his teeth, and walked back to the site he had slaughtered the demonic cult cultivators.

The lucky kid was still there, sitting on a rock and tossing stones absent-mindedly at the dead bodies of the demonic cultivators.

He heard Uhtred’s open footsteps as he drew near and immediately turned his head.

"Oh? It’s still you."

Uhtred’s eye twitched. The implied meaning didn’t go unnoticed. The kid didn’t even know it was he who would arrive. His luck likely just told him that someone beneficial was coming.

Well, that’s one upside, I guess, Uhtred sighed internally, trying to see the bright side of the situation. It means that whatever I do next is good enough for his luck to think staying with me is most beneficial to him...

"Let me lay down a few ground rules," Uhtred began before the boy could start babbling again.

"I am not your friend, and you are not my friend. Do not ask me personal questions, and I won’t ask you any either. Your luck ability is the only reason you knew to wait for me, so let’s skip the nonsense and do what benefits us both then go our separate ways."

He didn’t bother making empty threats. He simply established his primary concern: preventing the kid from learning anything sensitive about his identity or background.

"Huh? I don’t mind if you ask about me," the kid offered, tilting his head with genuine confusion.

"Well, I mind," Uhtred deadpanned. "Don’t ask unnecessary questions. You clearly want something from me... what exactly, I don’t know. But if I had to guess, you strike me as someone who is just... bored."

The deduction made the kid’s eyes sparkle with excitement, but he wisely kept his mouth shut, allowing Uhtred to continue.

"You can tag along, but it isn’t going to be a free ride. You’re going to help me track down someone—"

"Oh, I know where exactly she’s headed," the kid interrupted smoothly.

Uhtred froze.

"...where she’s headed?"

"Your friend," the kid said, raising a brow. "I know where they’re taking her."

Uhtred’s expression eased slightly. The way the kid had phrased his words the first time made him think Nayu An was actually escaping on her own instead of what he had concluded.

But now that the kid had clarified further, it seemed his conclusion was spot on. Nayu An had been taken by someone... or rather some people.

"And where exactly would that be?" he asked.

The kid grinned.

"You’re not gonna like it..."

.

.

.

Nightfall. Hundreds of miles and hours of grueling travel later...

Uhtred felt as though his ears were on the verge of falling off.

While he wouldn’t deny that having the kid yap the entire day had provided him with a level of context and information about this scenario world that he would not have learned in any book or record... there was still the fact that listening to someone talk nonstop for hours was a painful experience.

Uhtred had laid down ground rules that he wouldn’t ask for any information about the kid, and the kid also couldn’t probe him for any information either.

But just like the kid had said himself, he really didn’t have any problem revealing information about himself.

He had done so very thoroughly for more than eight hours straight.

Apparently, the kid’s name was "Lucky" — a name which Uhtred considered a hilarious irony since his parents hadn’t known of his absurd ability at birth.

He was a fifteen-year-old kid — nearly sixteen, as he had aggressively corrected Uhtred multiple times. He was born to a father from one of the righteous sects and to a mother who was one of the Venerables in the Demonic Cult.

The kid’s story was actually somewhat sad, but it was one Uhtred had no time to go into.

Essentially, the kid had lived the classic underdog life, born with no apparent talent that would signal a good class once it was time for him to be integrated by the System.

Unlike on Earth, where unintegrated young humans got their integration at the age of seventeen, here, humans got integrated at age fourteen.

That had been somewhat surprising to Uhtred when he had learned of it. He remembered that just before the Tower trial, the System had also announced the integration of the young humans who had just turned seventeen the previous year.

It was something he was eager to see when he returned back to Earth. Perhaps many more talents would have arisen yet again .

Of course, he trusted Dennis and Minh Quan, along with the many skilled individuals in his Capitol of the Elite, to recruit the truly talented among the newly integrated — but that was something he would think about later. Right now, there were more pressing issues.

As Lucky continued to narrate his entire life, more and more information was being revealed to Uhtred, triggering some of Jor-than’s memories in the process.

The age difference between unintegrated humans here and back on Earth was only one of the many differences of this world compared to Earth.

In fact, there was a much more vital difference that Uhtred learned... one that shocked him very thoroughly.

The humans here... they had no Levels.

The System itself — the very same System governing the multiverse outside the Tower — did not assign Levels in this scenario world.

Lucky had never even heard the term. To him, the concept made no logical sense. Instead of Levels, progress was measured strictly through broad cultivation realms.

Of course, the people here tried to categorize it based on how far and deep a person was within each realm, but it was an unofficial grading. There were no individual Levels like with everyone else outside the Tower.

That revelation explained exactly why Uhtred’s Inspect skill had not picked up the Level of any person ever since he had entered the scenario world.

Normally, this revelation would not have bothered him all too much, but the more Lucky spoke, the more Uhtred realized there were way too many similarities between the scenario world and the multiverse outside.

Yet in some core areas, it was as if the System operated on different rules entirely.

And that was what truly disturbed him.

At first, he wanted to brush it off. This was a scenario world, after all. For all he knew, the world itself could be some conjured-up place, trying to replicate the real world outside but failing in some areas of its replication...

But then he remembered Handler Roy’s words to them before they entered the Tower:

Treat everything you see in the scenario as real...