Battlefield Reclaimer, Ch 41: Essence System (Patreon)

The crystal spiral of flame condensed in front of Sam into the familiar diamond-edged blade. His Essence Shield dissipated as the attack sliced forward, heading for the spiders in a wash of spiraling flames.

KkrriiisshhHH.

The five spiders in the new wave huddled together in the same defensive reaction as the others, but this time they weren’t so close that they got tangled together. Their legs were braced, digging into the stone, and their carapaces shone as red stripes surged out to form a shield.

When the Essence Blade hit, it ripped through the barrier with a crackling explosion that threw the red and black flames back in a wave. It continued on as it blasted through the pack, scattering them across the hallway in a hurricane of disintegrating, serrated limbs.

The two in the center of the pack were ripped in half and the sections flew apart to the sides of the tunnel, but loud chitterings and angry clacks came from the others as they tumbled across the stone, their remaining limbs flailing for purchase. They slid to a stop in a scatter of legs and chitin, twitching as they tried to rise.

Jeric and Krana sprinted forward as the spell faded away, lunging toward the survivors with their hammers raised. Multi-toned notes sounded out a dull tattoo, accompanied by the screeching sounds of chitin dragging across the floor and the hiss of serrations tearing at defensive shields.

Sam’s eyes narrowed as he looked past the pile. His essence was down to 11 and he had the feeling that this wasn’t over yet. He could feel something else, farther down the tunnel, that felt more challenging. There was a stirring in his blood that fed him the information, similar to the killing intent when he saw the spiders.

Now that these two waves were dealt with, they had a moment to regroup, and theories began to connect in his mind as he looked toward the spiders and then turned his attention to the feeling in his blood. That desire to destroy them didn’t feel like it was coming from the World Law. The pressure from that was all in the notifications it sent and the demand to eliminate the threat to the seal.

This feeling was from something inside of him, a part of his nature. He looked down at his hands, flexing his talons, which curled into deadly, ebony claws. The edges were sharp and glittering, like diamond. He usually forgot about them unless he used them to engrave a design, but their real purpose was for rending.

The feeling wasn’t there when he faced the gnomes or rats, ...just these Outsiders. He wasn’t sure what that meant. There was something about them that made him want to kill them.

Did people feel the same when they saw him? After a moment, he shook his head. His father or Krana would have mentioned that. This was something unique.

Even if that was separate, however, this battle against Outsiders was making things clear to him. Ismela’s attack on him had been automatic and the guards didn’t trust him, ...and apparently that was normal.

Perhaps they were even being reasonable about it, if Outsider attacks were common. Anyone who had fought Outsiders like these spiders or heard stories about them would react in exactly the same way. Killing them was necessary to protect the world. Without her vision, even Krana would have thought the same about him.

That meant even if there were no notification to tell people to kill him..., they would do it anyway out of habit. It wasn’t a comfortable idea. Given her upbringing, perhaps Ayala was showing remarkable restraint and trust in Krana just by talking to him.

He’d thought that the church would be against him because of his appearance, but this was making it clear that it was more than that. Everyone would try to kill him. Looking like an Outsider was more dangerous than he’d thought.

Life in Aster Fall was clear cut. You were either with the world or against it. That was what being Defiant meant. Up until now, he’d only planned to get home, holding the idea in his mind as a hope that once he did that, everything would be alright. Now, he wasn’t so sure. He could put his family in danger just by being near them. Perhaps...he shouldn’t go home.

It felt like something was tearing inside his heart.

He needed to finish the illusion amulet, but even if he could get it to work, there was no guarantee that it would be perfect. He didn’t have the full pattern and he wasn’t at the Second Evolution like the original enchanter.

Perhaps he should find a place to stay on his own, just communicating with his family via messages? It would be a sad life, but if he could figure out the illusion....

He’d never thought of himself as someone who was hated before. It was a hard thought for the boy from the village who had just wanted a few spells and some extra silver.

Sam shook his head as he looked up and down the tunnel, pushing the thought away. Right now, he had to focus on the present. For the moment, it was silent. They had moved far enough away from the cavern that it was no longer visible.

“Take the experience from those,” he called to his father and Krana as they continued to finish off the half-dead spiders. At the same time, he walked towards the five from the last wave.

He bent down and searched the spiders, pulling the threads of experience into himself. He needed more essence and auras, since he wasn’t sure how many spiders were left.

The experience hit him in a rush as it bubbled merrily through his blood, flowing in every direction. It tingled in his fingers and ran through his hair with electric ripples. A notification followed, different from anything he’d ever seen before and with more weight.

You have used your Class abilities to defend Aster Fall from an Outsider Threat.

You Are Acknowledged, Battlefield Reclaimer.

You gain 100,000 Class experience.

You have reached the maximum daily experience from an Outsider incursion at your Level.

Congratulations. You have gained two Class Levels. You are now a Level 31 Battlefield Reclaimer.

Total Experience: 290,475 / 296,000.

You have gained two Levels. You are now General Level 31.

Total Experience: 293,475 / 296,000.

You gain +2 Intelligence, +2 Aura, and have six free points to distribute.

[You Have Gained the Trait: Acknowledged. You need to assist in sealing 10 Flaws to remove Defiant.]

Then the notifications paused. It felt like the World Law was waiting to see what he would do.

He wasn’t sure what it wanted, so he looked down at the spiders again, searching through them with Crystal Focus to see if he’d forgotten something. As he did, he felt something strange. Part of the killing intent he’d felt when he saw the spiders was still circulating through his blood, demanding that he seize something from them.

He reached out for it instinctively. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he wanted it. There was some type of energy there that felt familiar, something that was just starting to separate from them, and it belonged to him.

He ripped it out of them as he called it to him.

Sparks of scintillating energy rose up from the spiders’ corpses. They were rippling black stars, striped with red like the spiders’ chitin, and they burned with a strange fury. As they flew towards Sam, they began to change color, turning crystal blue by the time they hit him. He felt them settling into his blood.

Each of the stars was a miniature lightning burst filled with explosive power. They felt almost like experience, but their energy was much more domineering. It was battle and thirst, blood vengeance and terror, conquest and satisfaction. The stars burned with furious sizzles that ran through his muscles, filling him with a sense of victory and might.

He stretched upward, his back crackling, as he let out a wolfish grin. His expression morphed for a moment, looking sharp and deadly, before it settled back to normal.

One more notification appeared as the World Law made up its mind. It was in the archaic style and extremely ornate, with silver borders and scrollwork decorating the edges of the letters.

Racial Ability Identified: Essence.

Total Essence Gathered: 5 / 1,000.

The notification was followed a moment later by the World Law’s verdict, the cold announcement echoing through all of reality around him as strongly as when it had ordered him to prison.

Your Existence as an Essence-Based Inhabitant of Aster Fall is Authorized.

Then it was gone, leaving behind only the question of what it had meant, along with the sizzling sense of conquest that slowly faded away.

Sam looked down at the spiders and then at his talons, flexing them as he considered what had just happened. The sparks that rose out of the spiders were obviously essence, which had entered his body in a way very similar to...experience.

His thoughts clicked along at lightning speed as everything he’d learned recently began to fit together. To speed it along the way, he threw all six of the new points into Wisdom, taking it to 21.

The difference between 10 and 15 had changed his thinking, and this should help even more. It would also boost his chance to reclaim auras. As long as he had enough of those, his essence pool could be refilled.

The urge to destroy the spiders and claim what was theirs had faded, but he could feel the same sensation coming from further down the tunnel. There was even a trace of it back where they had killed the first spider now. Absorbing those stars had enhanced his awareness of it.

Sam looked up towards the hidden sky, searching for the World Law, as he considered what it thought of all this. It hadn’t threatened him this time, it had just told him that he was authorized. When he’d claimed the essence, it had felt like it was waiting for him to do it.

His mind raced along. If monsters were formed from the parts of Outsiders that stayed behind, like Ayala had said.... He glanced at the spiders. He had claimed not only their experience, but also their essence, and their auras were next. Three types of energy, but most people only claimed one.

Were the essence and aura the ‘soul’ of Outsiders that the church talked about, that eventually gave birth to monsters? If that was the case..., maybe he was cleaning up the world somehow and helping the World Law, which was why it had acknowledged him.

It felt like these sparks of essence were a separate experience system. It was slower than the one he was used to, and the energy was qualitatively different, but the process was similar.

He had the feeling that this was how Outsiders leveled up.

They used essence instead of experience. That was why there was a feeling of hunger from the spiders when they saw him and also why he felt an urge to kill them and take their essence.

He would have to wait and see what happened when he gathered 1,000 sparks, but he was confident that it would confirm his guess. It had to be some sort of level.

As for the ornate notifications..., he’d seen them before, every time he did something related to his class or essence skills. There had to be a reason for that, like it was easier for the World Law to use notifications that already existed than to make up new ones for him.

Were the old notifications from an essence-based system and the normal ones from the experience-based system? If so, that meant essence-based individuals had once existed on Aster Fall, just like him.

The question was what had happened to them and if it were connected to why Outsiders kept invading. The church’s doctrine didn’t have an answer for that, at least not that Ayala had explained, which meant there was more to the story.

The conclusion was obvious. Essence and experience had once existed together on Aster Fall. Both systems still worked, but something had happened to exile or kill most of the essence users, either the war that Ayala had mentioned or a Breaking.

Clearly, the experience users had won that war and set up the current system. Now, essence users were returning as invading Outsiders. The name suggested they didn’t come originally from Aster Fall, but the archaic notifications implied they had once been accepted.

There had once been a period where the two sides worked together and the World Law had given notifications to both.

His thoughts spun along, coming to a final conclusion as he considered what happened to the Outsider energy if only the experience part of it was claimed. The essence and aura had to go somewhere. He was able to gather auras from monsters, which suggested that those passed through the process of genesis intact....

But he’d never felt essence from a basalt gnome or other monster. There was experience, but no essence. If they were really the remains of Outsiders, something was happening in between.

He glanced toward the spiders again as it started to make sense. These had experience, essence, and auras. If people claimed experience from them, and then when monsters were formed, they had auras and experience again, but no essence....

Maybe the World Law was converting the essence into experience somehow..., a form that it could use more easily. Then, when people killed a monster, the process was complete and the experience flowed to them and to the seal.

At the same time, if a monster killed an adventurer and seized their experience, was that like the essence fighting back? Was that why they were always hostile?

From what he could see, the people of Aster Fall didn’t have essence or auras. Those only came from Outsiders. But Outsiders also had experience.... If the two systems were completely separate, they shouldn’t.

Were Outsiders somehow gaining experience when they broke through the seal and arrived here? If the seal was constantly being damaged, perhaps that was where the energy was going and why the World Law needed it back.

It was strange to think of the entire world as a battle between two types of energy, but that was where his thoughts took him. He had the feeling that the entire history of Aster Fall and the World Law itself was somehow entwined with that conflict.

Unfortunately, as he reached that point, he ran out of evidence to connect. His thoughts began to turn in a circle, which was frustrating, since he felt like he was onto something. He had to conclude his analysis with a single, self-evident fact.

His existence proved that the two systems could operate together.

He shook his head, forcing himself to turn to the other information in the notification. Despite gaining the maximum experience, there was no Dauntless trait. The spiders were too weak for that. The 100,000 experience limit was also daily. He wasn’t sure if that had to do with physical limits or if the World Law was just taking the excess to use for the seal.

He moved on, touching the closest spider as he searched for the half-real thread of energy that was its aura. It didn’t take him long to find it.

It was a rebellious, angry flame that tasted of ash and sulphur, surrounded by darkness that crushed down on top of it and wrapped around like chains as it held the flame inside. The darkness was full of struggle, fighting to consume the flame, and the flame resisted, burning it away as it tried to devour the darkness in return.

You have encountered an unknown aura.

Do you wish to Reclaim it (31% chance) or to Identify it?

Your Fire Affinity has boosted your chance to Reclaim this aura by 10%.

He chose to Identify it.

Identification is 50% complete.

He moved on to another one. A moment later, the struggle between the rebellious flame and the devouring dark returned, each struggling to conquer the other. He identified this one as well, and just like the other, it burned away to nothing in his grasp.

You have Identified an Aura.

Aura of Rebellious Flame.

As soon as the name came to him, it clicked, instantly making sense with the feeling of rebellion in the spider’s aura. He turned to the others without wasting any more time.

You have encountered a known aura.

Aura of Rebellious Flame.

Do you wish to Reclaim it (61% chance)?

He nodded as he accepted it. He’d been at 50% for Basic auras before, when his Wisdom was 10. Now that it was at 21, he had added that directly to it.

Of the three remaining auras, the first and second slipped into his storage, but the third incinerated itself in a struggle to escape him, burning away to nothing.

He had already taken too long, so he sprinted back to the first spider that had died, leaving its experience alone as he reclaimed the aura and essence from it. Then he ran back towards where his father and Krana were. On the way, he picked up his spear. He might need it if he ran out of essence.

When he returned, he was just in time to see Jeric and Krana splitting the experience between themselves, which meant his realizations hadn’t taken that long. A brilliant shimmer of energy flickered around them as they gained several levels, their bodies shifting slightly as the new attributes changed them.

If they had hit the maximum, his father should be around 31 now, with most of his free points in Charisma. As for Krana, she had been Level 15 before. From what he knew, Seer was one of the rare primary classes that got Class experience for nearly everything, whether it was combat, crafting, or utility skills. 100,000 experience should have boosted her up to level 26 or 27.

She must not have been in many battles before this, at least not with anything around level 20. Perhaps she’d been sheltered behind the two guards, or perhaps they’d taken all of the experience for themselves.

Leveling through combat was so fast that it almost felt like the World Law wanted combat classes to be at a certain level of experience. Sam frowned as he glanced at the Outsider spiders scattered across the tunnel in front of him and slowly nodded.

Perhaps it did.

With everything he had just realized, it made sense. The World Law was arranging the experience rules so it could quickly train up combat classes to fight Outsiders and monsters, and then it slowed them down again with the daily maximums so it could use the excess to repair the seal. People didn’t even need to know it was happening. They would just thank the World Law for all of their early gains and be even more dedicated to it.

Sam pulled his thoughts back to the present, reserving his judgment. Right now, he was killing Outsiders too, so he couldn’t blame the World Law for encouraging it. However strange the world was, Aster Fall was his home and he wasn’t going to let a bunch of spiders attack it.

He stared down the tunnel, searching for the sources of essence that he knew were down there. They still had to find the flaw where they had emerged.

As his father and Krana finished taking the experience, he moved forward and reclaimed the auras. Of the five, he only got two, which was unfortunate, but at the same time, he ripped the essence out of them, taking it for himself. He did it quickly when he touched them, so that it didn’t make a show. Another five points of essence flew into his bloodstream, zipping along with explosive emotions.

He pushed it down, letting it settle into his blood. He had five Auras of Rebellious Flame and one Aura of Basalt now. That would have to be enough. As he felt what was ahead, he combusted all five of the new ones, bringing his essence pool back up to 25.

“Let’s go,” he said, looking towards his father and Krana as a new spiral of crystal flame condensed around him. “This isn’t over yet.”