Divine Beast Ascension

Chapter 84: Second Lesson: Essence Type

After Oli’s fight with the lynx, no one else dared to fight him. They had decided that it was best to slowly climb the ranks and take one of the three seats over time.

A couple of people challenged Karos later when they were near the top of the class, but they did so mostly for the experience.

Yeter was the only one who fought Karos seriously, surprisingly forcing Karos to give it his all. But, in the end, Yeter still lost and kept the fourth seat.

Ania let them all know that this would happen in the middle of every moon, that way everyone understood that there were always more chances to grow. After that, she dismissed everyone for the day.

After class, Oli was able to test out his full strength on Ania and Vloz in the magicite mine. Of Course, he couldn’t even scratch them, so it was all for Oli to test his full strength and learn to control it.

This was especially true for his new soul abilities.

If Oli was unable to control his soul arts, he may accidentally kill someone because they have little to no soul strength. Since Oli had only completed the first level of the Infinite Torment technique, it wasn’t deadly to anyone that was adept or higher. But anyone Oli’s age and plane could easily die if Oli were to go all out.

.....

That was the danger of soul arts.

The next two weeks went by rather smoothly. Oli spent his time cultivating, spending every other day with Netra to cultivate dark essence together.

Oli was very happy with the cultivation rooms. Thanks to the formations, his dark essence was catching up with his earth essence. Once they were equal in strength, it would be much easier for Oli to make a breakthrough and become a peak-novice cultivator.

On the first day of the new moon, all students made sure to arrive early. They all wanted to hurry and start the next lesson.

“Oh my, it seems that you’re all ready to get started,” laughed Ania as she walked into the classroom.

“Teacher, we’re all excited for the new lesson. Finally, we can do something new!” yelled Yeter.

“So, does that mean you were unhappy with the last lesson, Yeter?”

“N-no, of course not, ma’am!” Bowing low, Yeter hoped that he didn’t get himself in trouble all over again.

“Well, at least your ready for today’s lesson and discussion.” She handed out the class cushions. Then, taking out her own cushion, Ania sat in front of them all with a big smile. “Does anyone remember what today’s topic will be?”

“Ummmm...”

“Essence type!”

One voice broke the mumbles of the classroom.

“Very good. So, to start, I want you all to answer this question. What is essence type?”

Ania let them all concentrate and think for a minute. In no rush, she looked around the room, choosing who would be the first to be called. With that decided, Ania called out, “Netra, what is essence type?”

The fox nodded. “Teacher, essence type is what we say to describe the different powers essence can have. For example, I can wield dark essence. With it I can hide in shadows, making myself practically invisible.”

“Good.”Ania then looked around the class and asked, “How many different kinds of essence types are there? Does anyone know?”

The students all looked at each other with dumb faces. Without ever communicating with a lot of different races of beasts, it would be impossible for them to know that.

“Teacher,” Karos raised his tail and asked, “There should be seven types.”

“And why do you say that, Karos?” asked Ania.

“Because the library has seven different sections, all separated by essence type.”

She chuckled, “Very good, Karos. I’m glad someone was thinking and realized that. There are, in fact, seven common types of essence.”

“Common types...” Karos mumbled to himself. “Teacher, what does that mean?”

“Common types are the types of essence most commonly seen in the world. They have the most techniques and battle arts and are easily discernable. By knowing all the common types of essence, usually, that’s enough knowledge to save your life,” explained Ania.

“How so?” Oli asked, intrigued by any information that might save his life at some point.

“Before I explain that, I need you all to name the common essence types. Go ahead, shout them out.”

“Lightning!” shouted a lynx.

A frog smiled with a proud chest. “Water!”

“Earth!” yelled Yeter.

“Dark,” said a fox, not daring to compete as the loudest against Yeter.

“Umm... Fire!”

“Bird beasts use wind essence, right?”

“Oh, if there’s dark essence, then there should be light essence too!”

It took the class a few minutes after they finished naming the types they had personally. After they finally guessed them all Ania nodded.

“Good, now pay attention to what I’m about to say. Remember, this could save your life one day,” reminded Ania. “Each common essence type has a natural weakness and a natural resistance. In order, this is how they overpower one another: water overpowers fire, fire overpowers wind, wind overpowers earth, earth overpowers lightning, and lightning overpowers water. Does that make sense?”

Yeter tilted his head. “Um, Teacher, how can wind overpower earth. Isn’t that impossible with earth essence’s hard defenses?”

“A good question, but you couldn’t be more wrong. Wind essence is all about speed. Wind essence users have speed to evade and speed to attack, as well as the ability to fly for increased speed. Earth essence can’t contain the wind and can be torn apart if the wind essence is used properly. Make sure you keep that in mind, or you’ll be in trouble when you meet a wind user,” explained Ania.

Karos glance at Oli while asking, “So, does that mean that I’ll always be at a disadvantage when facing Oli’s earth essence?”

Oli gave a nervous chuckle, curious what his mother would say.

“That’s one way of putting it, yeah.” Ania shrugged her shoulders. “But that doesn’t mean you’ll be at his mercy. With your lightning essence, it wouldn’t be too hard to just dodge all of his attacks, right?”

“Hmm... I see your point. I’m just unlucky I guess...” Karos stated in a low voice, letting only those at the front hear him.

“As you all might have guessed, dark and light essences are both effective against each other. So dark users, please be careful when facing a light user,” warned Ania. “You’ll be very strong against their defenses, but they’ll also be able to break your defenses just as easily. Against the other common essence types, dark and light have no weaknesses.”

A smile showed up on Netra’s face, happy to know that. It meant that her clan had no natural enemies in the entire territory.

That was also when she remembered Oli and his dual essence type abilities. With two different essence types, doesn’t that mean he wouldn’t be at a disadvantage in strength no matter who he faced?

She turned to Oli and gave him a strange look. When she saw that he was unaffected by the discussion, Netra refrained from speaking. Wondering if Oli was right about the danger of being a dual essence user, Netra decided to learn more before trying to expose Oli.

“Teacher, you said those were the common essence types. Does that mean there are other less common essence types?” Oli asked the question that was coming up in everyone else’s minds.

Ania smiled, happy to see her son so sharp. “Correct, there are still rare essence types. If you encounter any cultivators who use any of these types, and they’re not at a lower plane than you, be very careful around them.”

“The natural power within these essence types can’t be compared to common type essences,” explained Ania. “There are five rare essence types and they’re usually found in the powerful bloodlines of cultivators at the king plane.”

“King plane? What’s that?” asked a wildebeest in the back.

“The king plane is what comes after the perennial plane. Such cultivators don’t rule a territory, they rule a region that’s over at least one hundred territories or more.”

That answer rocked the hearts of the weaker cultivators, who couldn’t even comprehend what the perennial plane was.

Those like Karos and Yeter were better off, only getting more excited after knowing that such strong cultivators existed.

“There are five rare essence types. The two weakest are sound and illusion, which are only slightly stronger than common essence types. The other three cancel each other out and are the three strongest essence types known in the world today,” continued Ania. “There’s life, death, and nature. Life is able to overcome death, while death can overwhelm nature, and nature can create life. That’s how it should be remembered.”

“Don’t fight anyone with these essence types. At your level, the difference in essence type alone is enough to get you killed.”

Silence filled the classroom as the students committed that to memory.

With squinted eyes, Oli was distracted by a thought he had. He remembered reading through the cultivation manual that Trada left him and something in there didn’t quite line up with what his mother was saying.