"Tell me what you know of essence. I guess we should start there." The alien said begrudgingly.

He was met with the same blank stares as before.

"You've got to be kidding me. You're telling me you don't even know what essence is?" Exasperation was clearly getting the better of the thing.

"Is it the experience that levels us up?" Mark said. For a shot in the dark, it wasn't that bad of a guess. I had no idea what the alien was getting at and had no better idea to throw out there.

"Sigh, yes it is what levels you up. I mean do you know what it is?" The alien almost seemed defeated by this point.

"I think it would be better if you explained it like we knew nothing. There was no essence or mana or magic before this 'Great' System kidnapped us." I said with implied air quotes about this so-called 'Great System'. Sensing the Q and A going nowhere fast, I thought to expedite the process.

The alien had a sharp intake of breath and quickly muttered something under his breath.

"Do not so casually blaspheme in the presence of The Great System. Many cultures would kill you where you stand just for thinking that." Cypteris said gravely.

I didn't know how true that statement was, but for the sake of not upsetting the alien, I apologized. It wouldn't be good to have the teacher mad at me, I did enough of that in school and it never ended well.

It took a moment for Cypteris to gather himself before he refocused on the task at hand.

"I'm gathering that you originated from a world devoid of essence and mana, yes? No magic of any kind?" Cypteris said.

When everyone nodded to his question he seemed relieved, "Ignorance I can fix, stupidity not so much."

"Essence is the fundamental energy of the world and it governs everything in existence. Mana is birthed from essence and everything produces small amounts of it. Your planet must be so new that it had yet to begin producing it in large quantities for you to absorb."

I wouldn't call millions of years new, but what did I know?

"Essence, Aether, energy of the Heaven and Earth, all names for the same thing. Different cultures call it different things but it is most widely known as essence. Every living creature uses essence to improve themselves in some way from insects and beasts to all sentient life, like me and you." He said.

"You passively accumulate essence without consciously having to do it when it is present in the world, and everything in existence has some of it. Your world, as young as it is, still had a small amount of it, as do you. It's just too small to be expressed in any way."

"Now that you know what essence is, the next step is what you do with it. To gain a 'level' you must accumulate a certain amount of essence in your soul, be it from taking it from others by killing them, transferring the essence, or absorbing it from an outside source. Do note that your soul can only hold so much essence before it is full. So there is a maximum level that you can reach."

"It's akin to a well. Your soul is the well and it can only hold so much water. Water being the maximum level it can hold. The way to increase this maximum, is to dig a deeper well, or enrich your soul. This is done in various ways but just know that it happens naturally over time. Everything you do slowly grows the well that is your soul. Every interaction, every battle, even just living."

"Every action improves the well a different amount and it varies from person to person. A pacifist won't get as big an improvement from battle as a warrior will. Now enough about that. You now have the essence, what do you do with it? You then use it to improve yourself in some way, i.e. stat points."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

It was all making sense so far. If you count universal energy accumulation and soul wells as making sense. You gain essence and then use it to increase your stat points. Easy.

Wait. We didn't use it to increase our stats, the System does it for us. It seemed others started coming to the same conclusion that I had and scrunched up their faces in confusion.

"Ah, I see you've caught my error. Good. Yes, I am aware that the system is currently taking care of that part for you and if you're lucky, it will continue to do so." Cypteris said.

"The Great System above all else, is fair. It will not pamper you and hold your hand as you progress through the ranks. You must prove you are worthy of its help."

"There are certain requirements that must be met to keep The Great System's assistance and there are three ways to prove yourself worthy. Those being the three ways to improve yourself besides leveling. I won't get into the specifics because that's a long way off for most of you as the first bottleneck tier is advancing to rank E."

"While it is pointless to tell you the requirements now, it's not pointless to inform you of the three ways to gain power. Maybe some of you will attain them early. Mind, Body, and Spirit make up all of what you are outside of your soul, and they are the very same paths to power."

"Mind refers to enlightenment, or comprehension, based on how you look at it. As you have probably seen on your status sheets, this refers to Laws. There are myriad different laws that govern existence and you have comprehended none. That is why that section is blank."

Some hands shot up like everyone was back in grade school and they had to ask a question.

"Now before you ask, no, I cannot help you gain enlightenment. My job is just to tell you that it's a possibility. Laws range from the elemental laws of water and fire, all the way to more esoteric laws of karma and fortune."

Huh, karma is real?

"Body, the easiest of the three. Not saying that it's easy to improve, but it's more commonly improved than the other two. Body has the most widely known methods of improvement, but they all boil down to two main ways. Mana cultivation and body refinement."

I didn't know what either of those were but the alien didn't seem to care and went straight on to the third path.

"Spirit is the hardest of the three to improve and it's also the most personal, having the most differences from person to person. It is also the most powerful of the three, the only drawback being it has the fewest levels of advancement, or realms if you want to call it that." The alien muttered the last bit like calling it a realm was wrong.

"Now while The Great System will let me tell you that, it won't let me expand on it. It gets a bit touchy about the newly integrated after the Failed Integration."

"What? Why? That doesn't help us any if you don't tell us what they are?" Granddad voiced his complaint.

"That's precisely the point. It wants to test you and see what you are capable of without undue outside interference. The only reason it lets me tell you this much is so you know that the option is there. It's not so much of leading a horse to water as it is showing the horse water exists."

The alien went on to inform us of various other things that were considered basic. Like what settlement pylons were and the different levels they had to all the ranking there were for humans.

There were eight ranks all the way up to godhood. G->F->E->D->C->B->A->S. H wasn't included in that list because only species from worlds without essence started at H. Like us.

Apparently, that's why we increased stats through training so quickly. It was our bodies adapting to the essence and mana in the air that improved it so quickly. Cypteris said you could still improve stats with training in later tiers but it was seen as a waste of time by most and time was better spent elsewhere.

Affinities were a thing that everyone had and some even had more than one. They could range from a specific element like wind or water, or could be more broad like weather or storm.

Having a storm affinity meant any skill that involved water, wind, or lightning was empowered compared to just one element. It was more rare to have that kind of affinity and most just had a single element.

Cypteris even said that it was possible to attain more but it was extremely expensive and reserved for the elite who worked for rich powers.

There was more that was talked about but it was so much it started to hurt my head. I knew Abigail was absorbing this like a sponge so if there was something I didn't know, I could ask her.

The 'class' went on for a few hours and it was probably the best 20,000 points ever spent. Even after the apocalypse, I found myself back in class. It was a lot of information to get through and some of it was extremely helpful.

It took 25 days but we finally got some of the answers we were waiting for.