Luke sat within what he was told could only be his soul. However, Luke didn’t like what he saw because in reality he saw nothing. There was weight to it though similar to the weight of essence that flooded the world around him. This was different though, he could tell as he felt the flow of it revolving around himself. He reached out intrinsically and felt that it was malleable, so malleable he felt he could roll it up into a ball and throw it.

“It's unlike the essence around us, however still the same. Is it alway this easy to manipulate it”?

“Manipulate how, you should be able to feel a flow, revolving typically in some sort of pattern. That is what most feel” Sean said with a little more curiosity than before.

Technically the flow was able to be touched and that's how people channeled it through their meridians or their body to manipulate it. It was rarely someone could grasp and shape it within the soul.

Luke felt around himself able to shape the essence within his soul, not identifying a flow of any sort; it felt more like a constant stream within himself. Like there was no direction to it. It sat there as a vessel to be shaped and used nothing more, nothing less.

“Well to me there is no flow, it's just a tangible substance that as I concentrate I feel like I could make it into anything”.

Listen to me now, “You tell no one of this, not a single person if you can help it. You tell them that the flow has some pattern to it and you stick to that direction”. Sean said it was more a command than anything else.

“I understand”. Was all Luke could say, understanding that something he did seemed to be above the norm.

Sean took some time to rethink his approach, if he could force essence through to his body instead of redirecting a flow then theoretically the kid could put an untold amount of essence in any part of his body. That should be impossible, but thinking about it further. There are those in power who have an uncanny way of using their essence. Maybe this was how sages became sages.

“Okay moving on, let's do something simple. What I want you to do is take the essence you are able to affect. To me it seems easy for you to reach out and feel it. For the majority of people in this world we have to redirect our natural flow of essence to the body part or parts that we wish to affect or enhance. For you I want you to grasp just the smallest amount of essence and apply it to your arm letting it permeate from your shoulder to your fist”.

Luke, listening to the direction, did what he was told. He let the essence wash over him within his own void space. He felt for the ethereal substance that was the energy all around him and he grabbed just the smallest amount. It felt like taking a drink of water from the ocean, it was a negligible amount of power from his total store of essence, and allowed that to permeate his arm from the shoulder down to his fist as instructed. The process of grabbing the essence was easy however when applying it to his body was something else entirely.

It was like the essence had to cross some threshold to take hold in his arm. It wasn’t as easy as grabbing the essence from his stores but knew that if he had to do a similar feat on the fly it would not be easy.

“I did as you instructed, It feels like my arm is primed. It's really the only way I can describe it "energized”.

“Do you feel it leaking anywhere or is it maintained within the arm”. Sean asked as Luke opened his eyes to take in his instructor.

“I can’t tell if that helps. All I feel is that my arm is energized, feeling it now I can tell you I have felt this before”. Luke's thoughts went back to his wrestling match with Killgore. This feeling of an energized limb was exactly how his body had felt when he had thrown the young man.

“That's not unusual, however for you it must have been recently you have not had access to essence within your world. It doesn’t matter though. I want you to keep the essence within your arm and move over that tree there”. Sean pointed at what looked like a giant Oak tree not five yards away from their little fire pit area.

Luke and Sean walked over to the tree. Luke, doing everything in his power to keep the power in his arm from dissipating. He felt it though that if he lost concentration the power that he had allowed his arm to take on would slowly flow out of him to join the ambient energy.

“Alright, not a joke but punch the tree kid. I assure you with all that energy running through your arm you shouldn’t hurt yourself from this, doing more harm to the tree than anything”.

Luke hesitates now, imagining his arm breaking and this all being some elaborate ruse by Sean to teach him some arbitrary lesson. However, he knew that he needed to trust the man somewhat, I mean he had taught him so far and hadn’t killed him in his sleep.

Luke took a posture similar to how a boxer would form what he remembered seeing on tv. Feet shoulder width apart, thinking about moving momentum from his hips through his arm. He cocked back, and with every ounce of his power punched the center of the tree.

Thud.

“Well there you go kid you successfully manipulated your internal essence to enhance your body in some way”.

Luke opened his shut eyes embarrassed that he had shut them in the first place and looked at the damage to the tree. What he saw wasn't as impressive as he thought it would have been, but he was glad that there was no residual pain in his arm, and a noticeable little indentation marking the hard tree's bark.

“Now again but this time flood the arm with more power”.

Luke took to his tance again, closing his eyes and grabbing more power than before. This time instead of a small amount he grabbed a bucket worth the ethereal substance and let his arm permeate with power. Cocking back he unleashed his arm against the tree, however as he was twisting to connect with it. He felt something in his arm give way, a loud audible crack was heard by both men. Luke arm recoiling against the tree like an accordian.

Sean had watched the boy and felt the power flow off of him as he infused his arm with way more power than his body could handle at this point in his path. Though the body was more resilient than it would typically be in a no essence environment. You still needed your body to hold up to the strain of containing a vast amount of power, as you progressed in stages of power your body could take more. However, for the young recruit his body was not ready for the influx of power; he had just started the use of essence and hadn;t built up any tolerance.

“Owwwww”. Luke screamed as he held his broken arm close to his body, sinking to his knees from the pain.

“Well when I said add more power, I didn’t mean that much. Your body isn’t used to handling that much yet, remember every time you use essence just like when trying to manipulate it around us it has a consequence. Your body hasn’t been trained to handle power so that power broke your body”.

Sean said this bit with Luke not hearing much of it at all as he creaddled his broken arm. Im Crippled… was the only thought that permeated his thoughts.Then as he was about to wallow in his own self pity he felt a warmth encompass his arm and the bones seemed to fuse together. The feeling was uncomfortable but as he felt his bones begin to feel normal the pain subsided almost all together.

Luke looked at his shoddy mentor and noticed he looked to be concentrating, and he felt like something was coming from his own body into Lukes.

Sean, noticing his gaze, his eyes opened, “What I did was take some of my essence and allowed it to invade your arm. Thankfully you're naive enough to allow others' essence to flow within your body, but I am able to heal this wound for you. Something to note is that there are those who have the ability to implant their own essence within you acting like a poison breaking down your body and soul from the inside. We will go over essence protection at a later time but for now let my essence fix your arm, and we will move on”.

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The morning then progressed with Luke attempting to enhance each part of his body finding an adequate amount of essence that his body could take without it causing harm. Luke had only managed to break each leg, part of his spine, and his neck at one point but all said and done he felt good about his progression.

“So when do we get to the abilities portion of using essence”. Luke said as they sat around their campsite taking a quick mental break as their bodies didn’t need to eat. A concept Luke was still having trouble getting his mind around.

“Like I said before, abilities come from the manipulation of essence through the meridians around your body. What I said earlier still holds true that your meridians are blocked by something. You will not be able to use abilities till that block is gone, and even then without knowing your true affinity I couldn’t gauge what those abilities would be. Everyone, even those that share an affinity have different abilities. Let me ask you this: when you go within our souls what do you see.

“I see nothing, it's like a giant sea of black”.

Sean, stroking his chin thought for a minute. “That could be so many things when you say sea do you mean actual water or just black in all directions”?

“Black in all directions, no water. It's like when you look up at space and see just black, or if you close your eyes”.

I see Sean said with his brow coming together in a serious expression.”To be honest I have no idea, typically some find something tangible within themselves that they see. My first time I saw a storm cloud, and as I have progressed that's changed into a hurricane of a storm. When you get to the Academy they will help you with visualization techniques that will help you narrow down what you are seeing”.

Sean finished his sentence and stood, “Now that you can grasp enhancing your body, we need to move. We are still on schedule but now the next test comes. You will need to constantly reapply essence to your body as we navigate the land”.

Luke got the gist of what he was saying and noticed Sean was clearing up the area making it look like they were never there.

“Try your best to keep up with me, I will keep a pace that I believe you can handle, and don't worry about too much your one goal is to keep on my tail as we run. I will continue to use my power to keep creatures from being in our way”.

Now that Luke thought about it he noticed that he hadn’t seen or even heard so much as one animal, not even a bird. He almost thought that the planet might not be inhabited by anything other than people like Sean. However, glimpsing further in the distance, about as far as he could see he could make out through the forest what looked like a bird, so I suppose there are some animals after all.

“Now focus, pull from your energy and pump it through your legs and your different parts of your body. Try to intrinsically feel what you need to do as we run. It will take a bit but don't get too behind me”.

Within the next moment Sean shot off at a dead sprint that would make elite olympic sprinters look slow in comparison. Luke did as he was told and from the training he had prior applied the right amount of essence to his body and took off after Sean.. He kept pace as best he could navigating over the forest terrain at a speed he only thought possible by cars.

As they traveled Luke let his eyes wander over the countryside. He didn’t see many animals except for the occasional deer, and then some deer like animals that instead of antlers they had tusks and horns. They were only seen at a distance but that gave away to Luke that there were definitely life forms not seen on the one he grew up on.

As they ran one thing also occurred to Luke as he looked around in some spots there seemed to be charred remains of trees, and grass. Broken rocks here and there. Also what seemed to be an unnatural chill as they ran through some of these areas. Luke filed it in the back of his mind to ask Sean when they got a chance to stop.

That stop didn’t come till much later. Luke was baffled at the speed and distance they made within what couldn't have been less than four hours later. Luke was panting, even though he knew technically he had no reason to breathe anymore looking at Sean, wondering why they had stopped.

They had settled just outside one of the areas that seemed to have an abnormal chill permeating its area, with leaves burnt here and there and trees that looked toppled by something other than the wind.

“You needed a break, while your body can handle that pace we were going, the mental ability to keep infusing the body takes some time to get used to, you may have not noticed it but we slowed down considerably over the last 20 kilometers or so”.

“Thanks, I guess I didn’t notice, just trying to keep up with what I could as we ran, but do you mind if I ask what happened to that area over there”. Luke said he pointed over to the down trees, and scared the ground.

“That there was evidence of a battle either between essence users, or an area where a small pocket opened up and it deposited a creature or things within this world”.

“Oh” was all Luke could say, not still fully understanding.

“You could call that area, war torn, and an area that has had its essence stripped typically feels like what you would have felt. As if the area was cold. This typically indicates a pocket world, or space opening up which takes a toll on the ambient essence in the area. Over time the essence will come back and the area won't feel as cold or broken but that takes time. There are places on this planet that have still not gone back to normal after Sages have fought. They can use their affinities to directly affect the ambient essence within the world. Which brings me to another lesson that we should get too”.

“ That would be Power structure right”, Luke said trying to be a good student.

“Very good, yes. The power structure of this world can be broken up like this;

Recruits are the lowest level of hierarchy within the world, they are those like you. New to their power and or abilities. Typically they understand the basics of manipulating their essence to enhance there bodies, and for some can use their abilities to a certain degree.”

“The next stage of development is Silver rank. These are those people who pass a trial after their training in the Academies. They have all of the basic understandings of their abilities, can infuse their bodies to five times what they could at the recruits stage, and are considered the lowest level in the Gods Dominions. There are those that will never advance pass this stage because there souls do not have the ability to do so”.

“I could never advance past this you are saying”.

“For some this is the best they can hope for, there is use for those at this level but they will have the highest rate of death within this world. They are fodder for those essentially more powerful”.

Luke looked at his mentore a little concerned not wanting his path to end just as it was beginning.

“The next stage is Gold. These individuals not only know their abilities inside and out but they have had a quantifiable shift in the way they handle essence. They have essence control down to a degree that is staggering. To reach this level they must identify the shift within their soul and alter it to become stronger. Some even do not survive the shift. However, this control allows them to tap more into their strength and expand their affinities”.

Luke looked at Sean, “What rank are you”?

“I am a high level gold, hoping to eventually reach the next stage. Golds have the role of being in charge of both recruits and silver ranked individuals they can be seen as leaders of a company of squads of silvers”.

“I see and how long did it take you to reach gold”? Luke asked wondering if that's something he could achieve in what seemed like could be a short lifespan to come.

“It took me about 50 years or so to step out of the Silver rank, however when I was Silver I was part of a group that worked more on acquisition than actual fighting. When I began to use more of my abilities and understand essence more it took about five years to reach this level, though I had a natural aptitude for essence control”.

“Not to get too sidetracked, let's move on”. Luke says nothing more, deep in thought.

“The next stage is Diamond, these individuals have not only superior control of essence, but can to some degree affect the world around them. They do this by applying their affinity to the world to enhance their abilities. Taking what is in their soul and forcibly altering the ambient essence. I can not speak on this ability as I am unsure how it is done, but from what I am told it takes an insane control over essence, and typically some natural treasure from a broken world to help facilitate the change. These individuals are also called Generals and in the Dominono of Korack there are four of these individuals. Which you will learn more about at the Academy”.

“The last two stages of potential development are Sages, and Gods. There is not much known about these individuals other than they can directly affect the world around them, using the essence that flows all around us as a weapon. The world has somehow broken and is manipulated by their authorities. What seperates a Sage and a God is simple form there. Power. Power is what separates really all the ranks. There have been occurences of a recruit breaking into gold after a life or death scenario having a good grasp of their fundamentals. However, this is almost unheard of”.

Luke was deep in thought going over all the information. He felt as though he was finally learning something of this new world. He may have only been in the world for a short while, but anything he could glean to gain an advantage he knew was important.

“Alright up, let's get moving”. Sean said as he stretched his body about looking at Luke.

Luke got up stretching limbs that were no longer tired as before, but feeling like he needed too, and watching Sean bolt forward at an insane speed again went through the process of enhancing his body and shot after him. Feeling like he was gaining some grasp to this enhancing of his body