Chapter 156: Andronian Inheritance Shard
The messages ended, and Uhtred closed the interface.
Ignoring the intense protests from every muscle in his body, he forced himself to stand. The injuries from the previous battle throbbed relentlessly, and exhaustion weighed heavily on every part of him, but he rose nonetheless.
Beside him, Zara stood at almost the exact same time. Her face was still pale from the strain of the previous battle. She had barely begun replenishing her reserves of cosmic essence before the System’s announcement interrupted her, yet she got to her feet without complaint, refusing to show even a fraction of the fatigue she was clearly enduring.
Before heading toward the Zone 3 boundary, Uhtred walked over to where the shattered fragments of his battle axe lay scattered across the ground.
He crouched and picked up the pieces of star-metal one by one, turning each fragment over in his hands. For a brief moment, he considered whether his Metal Magic could fuse them back together into something usable.
The thought lasted only a second before he dismissed it.
The weapon had originally been forged by a different race entirely, people with exquisite craftsmanship, trying to do a simple patchwork wasn’t going to cut it.
More importantly, the star-metal itself had already suffered structural damage. Simply forcing the fragments back together with Metal Magic could never restore the integrity of the original weapon.
If he reshaped it now, the axe would almost certainly fracture again the moment it collided with another powerful opponent.
He wasn’t about to enter the third trial relying on a weapon that might fail him at the worst possible moment.
Even so, he opened his spatial storage and carefully placed every fragment inside.
There was no way he was going to leave it behind.
The battle-axe had accompanied him through nearly every major fight since the integration began. In reality, only a month had passed, yet it felt much longer than that. Every day since the System descended had been filled with constant battles, near-death experiences, and desperate struggles for survival.
He had bought the weapon for fifty Multiversal Tokens back then.
Looking back now, it had been one of the best investments he had ever made.
But now, without the axe, he no longer had a true physical weapon. That meant every battle from this point onward would depend almost entirely on his magic to accomplish what the axe had previously handled in close quarters.
Maybe it’s for the best, Uhtred thought.
Looking back, the battle-axe had slowly become something of a crutch. More often than not, it encouraged him to close the distance and fight enemies head-on, even in situations where his elemental affinities would have been the smarter option.
Now he no longer had that luxury.
Going forward, his fighting style would naturally shift toward magic, forcing him to rely more heavily on the strengths he had spent so much effort cultivating instead of defaulting to brute force whenever the opportunity presented itself.
With that thought, he moved on.
Together, he and Zara walked the last mile to the border before finally crossing into Zone 3.
The moment they did, the difference was immediate.
The thick ambient essence that had surrounded them throughout their entire week in Zone 2 vanished almost instantly, dropping back to what Uhtred could only describe as normal.
Except normal no longer felt normal.
After spending seven straight days immersed in essence so dense that cultivating felt comparable to absorbing beast cores directly, the ambient essence of Zone 3 felt almost empty by comparison.
Walking into it was strangely reminiscent of stepping back into the Age of Hunger trial grounds, even though it wasn’t at all. In reality, this was the normal level of cosmic essence that permeated the main continents.
Uhtred paused and drew a slow breath as his core instinctively adjusted to the sudden change in density.
For a brief moment, he genuinely wondered whether the main continent had always felt this barren.
His perception had simply changed.
His thoughts drifted toward the hundreds of thousands of human Ascenders still back in Zone 2. The lower-leveled survivors who had managed to reach the second trial grounds were effectively going to receive two more weeks of cultivation inside one of the richest essence environments they had ever experienced.
Ordinarily, reaching this level of cultivation speed would have required months, perhaps even years, of saving Multiversal Tokens to purchase beast cores, repeatedly risking their lives inside dangerous dungeons, and hunting powerful beasts.
Zone 2 had handed all of that to them for free.
When those survivors eventually returned to the main continent after the trial ended, the average strength of humanity was going to be vastly different from what it had been only two weeks earlier.
Entire settlements would suddenly find themselves filled with cultivators who had advanced far beyond what should have been possible in such a short span of time.
Even though the vast majority of them would still remain in the Mortal Realm, the collective increase in humanity’s overall strength would be impossible to ignore. It would fundamentally change the balance of power across the continent.
As Uhtred’s thoughts lingered on the continents, he also briefly thought about the essence-gathering array he had installed in his territory before leaving for the trials.
It tripled the ambient essence in air within the array. At the time, he had viewed it as a genuine strategic asset, one that would steadily strengthen both himself and his territory over the long term.
But now, after experiencing the Age of Abundance trial grounds firsthand, the comparison was almost laughable.
Compared to what every surviving human ascender had just received for free over the course of a single week, the array’s effect seemed almost insignificant.
He pushed the thought aside.
There was nothing to be done about it now.
Both he and Zara pulled out their Andronian Inheritance Shards at the same time. The System had stated that the shards could only be activated after crossing into Zone 3.
Now they had.
They activated them.
For several long moments, silence hung between them as they stood at the boundary of Zone 3, absorbing the records the Andronians had left behind.
As the records unfolded inside their minds, the expressions on both their faces gradually grew grim. What the Andronians had documented about Otherworlders in general was astonishingly thorough.
It painted a clear picture of an invading force that was not only highly organized but overwhelmingly superior in nearly every aspect of warfare.
The exact details of what Uhtred and Zara learned from the Inheritance Shard remained a mystery for now, but from how tightly Uhtred clenched his jaw, it was obvious that the contents were anything but encouraging.
"We need to pull back first," he said. His voice remained calm. "Going in headfirst, especially with our current reserves, is just asking to get killed."
Zara nodded, her expression unusually pensive. After everything they had just learned, even she understood that this wasn’t something they could afford to rush.
She had only managed to reach this deep into Zone 2 because of her spatial magic and because Uhtred had shouldered the overwhelming majority of the fighting.
Right now, neither of them were in peak condition.
She still needed to advance into the Nascent Realm, and they both needed time to recover, cultivate, and restore their depleted reserves before confronting an enemy of this caliber.
And that was exactly what they did.
After finishing with the Inheritance Shard, they returned to the Grotto Heaven they had claimed earlier and immediately resumed cultivation, quietly replenishing both their stamina and their cosmic essence.
While they cultivated, Uhtred began carefully planning their next moves for the coming two weeks.
He understood now that the Age of Convergence Trial was never simply another test devised by the System.
It was a necessary step.
The modern human faction and the ancient variant factions had spent the past two weeks locked in bitter conflict, but against the Otherworlders, neither side stood any real chance alone. The System wasn’t merely encouraging cooperation.
It was forcing it.
It wasn’t going to be a pleasant alliance, especially at the beginning, but it was necessary.
Uhtred already had a somewhat amicable relationship with the Neanderthal general, Krijn. Out of all the ancient variant leaders, Krijn was the one he trusted the most, even if that trust was only relative.
The only person he expected to have friction with was the female ancient variant general.
Even so, he intended to work through it.
He tried to focus on his cultivation for the time being, however, his thoughts kept drifting toward the next phase of the trial. He was already considering how he could locate the ancient variant generals before they stumbled into unnecessary conflict with one another when his eyes suddenly snapped open.
He had sensed a disturbance.
Beside him, Zara’s eyes also opened, and without exchanging a single word, both of them turned toward the same direction.
The bushes ahead rustled and a massive figure stepped through first.
The Neanderthal general, Krijn.
His broad frame parted the thick foliage with ease as he emerged into the Grotto Heaven. A moment later, another figure stepped out from behind him, using the opening he had created.
The female ancient variant general.
Uhtred’s eyes narrowed immediately, locking onto her smaller figure, seeing her more clearly for the first time.
It seemed the two generals had found them first.