“Now he asks an important question. But I swear, if you think that thing you did in the quarry was swinging a weapon then I will just shut up and wait my three years while you rot. You do know that rock walls don’t move or attack, don’t you?” Hilde’s exasperation came through clearly.
At first, Kyle was taken back by the snark in her tone, but then he found he couldn’t stop laughing. He tried to keep it quiet so as not to wake his hosts, but eventually he thought back to her, “So what you are saying is ‘brick no hit back’? Can you say that in an Asian accent?”
“War God or not, I will not be mocked. Do you want to learn what you need to know or not?”
Kyle struggled to get his laughter under control. It really wasn’t that funny, but apparently the stress of first the World Series, then apparently being murdered and reincarnated, or whatever this was, had finally gotten to him. Finally, he said, “I apologize, Hilde. I guess I’m just not that funny. I’m used to everyone laughing at my jokes ‘cause I was buying dinner.”
“One thing that your former self was known for was not tolerating sycophants. You would do well to remember that about yourself. It is better to surround yourself with those who will tell you the truth rather than what you want to hear.
“Now, I will accept your apology this time and we will move on. You need to learn skills. As common sense should make clear, you can learn some skills by dumb luck and practice, but other skills will also require a teacher. A trainer can perhaps see the mistakes that you make even if you can’t. I saw in your memory that you had great respect for several men that all shared the name, or perhaps title, Coach.
“Then there is something called a Skill. These are ways of interacting with the world in a way that I didn’t see in your memories of Earth. But we can talk about those later, after you have learned the basics.”
Kyle could just hear the capital ‘S’ the last time that she said Skill. “So what you are saying is that I need to learn to walk before I can run.”
“Yes, something like that. As to your question about gaining essence, you will no doubt remember how I showed you your character sheet?”
Kyle nodded, even though the conversation was going on inside of his head. “Uh huh.”
“There are three things to see first. They include your typed essence, which is obviously War. As you can see, you are at 11/50. Then secondly, there is your Raw Essence. Finally, there is your conversion rate.
Think of your Raw Essence as the base energy inside of you. It controls some things, such as how long you will be able to fight and so on. These humans here mostly have twenty to thirty raw essence in them at a time. Some might have up to one hundred.
Then consider your typed essence to be what powers your Skills and Divine Abilities. It was War Essence that you used when you smacked the wall today, even if you did it instinctively rather than intentionally. That also shows you that essence can be channeled into a simple physical act, although typically only tier four beings and higher can do that. The limits on how much of that you can have at any one time is much lower, but we already talked about that.
As for your conversion rate, that is how quickly you can convert raw essence into a typed essence. So, for example, if you were to use a Skill which cost one point of War Essence then you would convert raw essence into War Essence in one second to replace that. Again, most trained mortals will have a conversion rate somewhere near one per minute, perhaps as much as five per minute.” Hilde stopped her lecture to make sure he understood.
“So, I have a lot more raw power than a regular human, and can use any Skills I learn with much greater frequency,” Kyle said.
“Yes, but before you get a big head, you should know that I expect any of your siblings would panic if their raw essence supplies ever fell below one million, and that they all have a conversion rate of at least ten, if not higher. It isn’t like they advertise those sorts of things though,” Hilde said.
“And how do I gain essence?” Kyle asked again.
“There are three primary ways. The simplest is that you can absorb it from the world around you. Given your nature, I expect that even in a low-density area such as this, you are still absorbing raw essence. There are many areas both on Verden and on other planes of existence where essence is much more plentiful. The only place where there is no essence is the void. And even vile creatures like fiends still rely upon essence to survive.
“The second most common way is to kill monsters and higher tiered beings. It is possible to absorb some of the essence from them. Just as with the high essence zones, the essence gained can be raw essence, or in some cases you may be able to gain typed essence, but that is rare.
“The third and most potent method, although the rarest, is to find artifacts or divine fragments. They can contain great amounts of both raw and divine essence as well as potentially imparting Skills or Divine Abilities, depending upon which we are talking about. Probably best not to
