Formless Ascension: My Affinity Is Limitless

"And why should I tell you this?" the Towermaster asked, his expression flat. "You forget I am the one conducting the interview here. Only I get to ask the hard-hitting questions."

Uhtred frowned slightly. Beneath the Towermaster’s sharp words, he could sense a subtle, hidden meaning.

The Towermaster had shut down his request on the surface, but his tone sounded as if he were trying to draw Uhtred’s attention toward something specific.

Understanding dawned in Uhtred’s eyes.

"Alright then," Uhtred said, stepping back slightly. "You may ask away, Towermaster."

The Towermaster had been deliberately calling his attention to the rules of a Tower interview. It seemed even an entity as unfathomable as the Towermaster was bound by constraints, despite this being his Tower...

...Or is it even his Tower?

He’s called the Towermaster, but he might simply be a caretaker appointed to manage the Tower...

Actually, now that Uhtred thought about it, hadn’t Handler Roy said it himself that no one knew the origins of the Tower? That no one knew who built it or where it truly came from?

Why, then, had he immediately defaulted to assuming the elf before him was the owner of the Tower?

Nah. That’s just nonsense. There’s no way the owner of such a mysterious Tower would be standing before me, discussing so casually.

That would mean I’m talking to someone powerful enough to force changes to System rules itself.

The Towermaster was unfathomably powerful, yes. But Uhtred couldn’t bring himself to see the elf as someone as powerful as that. The Towermaster was still wary of the entities he referred to as "they," and even right now, he couldn’t converse freely with Uhtred without adhering to the constraints of an interview.

The Towermaster seemed to smile lightly, as if he could read Uhtred’s thoughts and internal analysis. But the smile disappeared just as quickly as it came.

"You’re quick to catch on. At least you have that from your father’s side."

There. Again with the tidbits about my father.

Uhtred felt like the Towermaster was intentionally teasing him. He knew if he probed for more answers, the elf would divert, so he simply remained silent and waited for whatever question would come next.

"Remember to keep the word ’Origin’ outside of your vocabulary as you answer my questions," the Towermaster began, his tone serious.

Uhtred gave a curt nod.

The Towermaster continued:

"To my knowledge, Origin was split into two fragments. The Eternals — the race your father belongs to — possessed the first fragment. The second was lost in the Fifth Great Multiversal War," he explained. "Which begs the question.., how then were you able to assimilate Origin as a whole?"

Uhtred processed the Towermaster’s words quickly. So many heavy pieces of information with crazy implications had just been dropped, but he filed them away for the moment and responded.

He chose his words consciously, careful not to say the word "Origin" or even imply it in any explicit way.

"Well, I don’t know which half is which," Uhtred said quietly. "But based on what you just said, I already possessed one half long before integration ever happened. It was a pendant given to me by my mother before she passed away."

His voice softened, his gaze growing distant for a brief second.

"She told me it was the only thing my father left behind for me."

"Hmm..." The Towermaster rubbed his chin in thought, calculation flickering behind his eyes as he slotted this new detail into his vast knowledge.

"And the second fragment?" he asked.

Uhtred’s focus snapped back to the present.

"It literally fell out of the sky seconds before the System arrived on our planet."

That answer caught the Towermaster visibly off guard. His brow furrowed, his eyes fixing on Uhtred in silence for a long, heavy moment before he spoke again.

"...I take it that piece was shaped like an orb?"

"Yes."

"How did he..." the Towermaster muttered under his breath, staring into the distance as if unraveling an ancient puzzle. For the first time, a look of genuine confusion crossed his ethereal features.

He looked up abruptly, his eyes narrowing. "On your status panel... what race is registered there?"

Uhtred raised an eyebrow. "Human, of course."

That answer seemed to puzzle the Towermaster even further.

"What do you know about System Integration Cycles?" the elf asked.

Uhtred immediately recognized where the conversation was heading. The Towermaster intended to explain the mechanics of the Integration Cycles, but needed to frame the topic through a question to navigate the interview restrictions.

"Absolutely nothing," Uhtred replied frankly.

"Well, since you know nothing, allow me to shed some light," the Towermaster said, nodding slowly. "There are currently three hundred and fourteen integrated universes across existence, including your own. This means there have been three hundred and fourteen different integration cycles. And across all three hundred and fourteen cycles, no entity has ever been able to predict which universe would be integrated by the System next — not even the Sovereign of Foresight, Anon."

He fixed a piercing look on Uhtred.

"Yet your father clearly knew which universe was slated for integration next. Not only that, he possessed the foresight to breed across indigenous species within your universe, selecting races with the highest genetic compatibility to the Eternal bloodline. He then narrowed those races down to the single one capable of remaining dominant — suppressing the Eternal traits just enough to deceive the System when integration finally arrived..."

He paused, observing Uhtred’s reaction.

"If I had to guess... the reason your mother died was because of your birth, was it not?"

He did not wait for Uhtred to confirm it.

"How you are even alive is a miracle in itself. You must have nearly drained the life out of your mother from inside the womb."

Each word the Towermaster said made Uhtred more and more silent. The elf was bringing up things that he himself had suspected ever since he was young.

Even without having this context of his father’s origins, he had always suspected that he had something to do with his mother’s death.

Freja... That was his mother’s name.

She had been a gentle, beautiful woman — the kindest person he had ever known. Yet for as long as his memory served, she had been frail and sickly.

Cancer and a weak constitution, she had always told him with a soft smile.

However, Uhtred had always been very intuitive ever since he was young. Even at that early age, he had suspected that he had something to do with it and that she was only trying not to make him feel guilty.

The Towermaster continued, his tone remaining flat, completely devoid of emotion.

To an entity of his stature, the actions of Uhtred’s father — seeding countless worlds, leaving behind a trail of failed, monstrous offspring and dying mothers across centuries until the desired outcome was achieved — elicited no moral outrage.

"Even with a vessel as compatible as her, your mother’s body could not endure the strain. Nurturing the seed of an Eternal within a mortal body was simply too heavy a burden to survive."

Uhtred’s breathing grew ragged, his chest rising and falling in sharp, uneven cycles.

The Towermaster finally paused, noticing the strain of his raw words on the young man. It was only then that he seemed to realize how deeply his words had cut.

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