Essence

In a red hallway with gray patches was a boy in red fought several ugly green creatures, every swing of his two crude spears was concise and sharp, every step fluid and smooth, every dodge light and flowing, as the boy moved between the ugly green creatures he would reap their lives one by one.

Every move was elegant yet fatal as the boy moved in a beautiful dance of death. and as the last of the green creatures fell, the boy stopped his dance as he stood in the middle of the pile of gore, of the bodies of those he had killed and of those he had not. he looked up to the roof as if he could see through it to the sky above, his eyes fading from blood red to ocean blue, not that he knew about this. however, unlike before, his eyes had a spark, a spark of life, a spark of emotion, a spark that he was eager to feed and grow.

The boy in red, Alan, walked over to the crack in the floor he watched as it slowly closed, but just before it fully closed a small red gem, about the size of a baby's first, came out of it. Picking up the gem a small stream of information flowed into his head.

The crack was called a world breach and the creatures that came out were called monsters, and the green monsters' names were goblins, and apparently, their goal was to expand the world breach to accommodate stronger monsters that would grow the breach faster and repeat this process until the world was devoured and brought in to the 'beyond'. The stone itself was called a true bloodstone and would only form after all the monsters connected to a breach were killed, each one was dependent on the breach so every bloodstone was different, but they all would give the same knowledge to whoever got a hold of one.

If Alan wanted to properly use the bloodstone he needed to 'bind' it, which was a process in which he would absorb the bloodstone and all its power, but this came at a risk, if the binder was not compatible with the stone they would die. After absorbing this knowledge Alan decided to bind the stone, as for if it killed him He did not care, the only thing that he correctly cared about was 'feeling' something after so long of being deprived of emotion.

Binding the stone was relatively easy for Alan as it was on the weaker side, although he didn't know its power he knew how strong it was, from the information he was given, the bigger the breach the stronger the stone. Considering the breach he closed was only about two meters at its widest, the stone shouldn't be all that strong.

There were three ways to bind the stone, The first was to absorb it using 'essence', something he would gain access to by naturally awakening, which he had no clue what that was, absorbing a false bloodstone, which would form in breaches once they got big enough or in the bodies of strong monsters, he would also gain access to it after binding the true bloodstone.

Seeing as he could do none of those two things he went to the next option, a ritual, these could only be performed by someone who already had access to essence, so that was a no-go to. Lastly was to just absorb the stone, this could be done one of two ways and was the only way to bind a true bloodstone without essence, the first way was to eat the stone and the second was to 'cannibalize' the bloodstone with an already bound true bloodstone.

Realizing that he could only bind the bloodstone one way, he put it in his mouth before swallowing. As soon as it passed his throat he felt a burning sensation spread throughout his entire body, but that soon passed into a cool refreshing feeling. After about a minute or so the refreshing feeling ended and Alan reserved a new stream of information.

The bloodstones power was 'aura', which simply allowed him to use essence without any spells, normally someone would need to use a spell model along with the required magic circle and incantation to use essence, for instance, someone who had just recorded a 'fireball' spell model could use essence to form the magic circle and cast a fireball, an incantation would be used for those inexperienced in the spell to help in the process of forming the circle but was not necessary.

Alan on the other hand, so long as he understood how to manipulate his essence to form the individual components of a spell, could cast them without the spell model or magic circle. While the information he reserved did not explain what a spell model or magic circle was, he could understand how useful this power would be in the future.

He also found out what his trait 'perfect harmony' meant, exactly that, perfect harmony. The burning sensation he felt at the beginning after eating the true bloodstone was because his compatibility was nil. there was none, normally he should have died as the bloodstone and his body were like oil and water, except for truly extreme circumstances they would not mix in any way, but his 'trait' was said circumstance.

His body would 'harmonize' with anything that interacted with it to perfectly accommodate it, a way to explain this would be water, it would always change its shape to accommodate its container, a normal person's body was said container, if there was too much water it would spill out and be waisted, or if what you where putting in the container was too dangerous, like putting molten lava in a glass cup, the container would break.

Alan's body, however, was the water. It would conform to the 'container' with maximum efficiency, the 'container' being whatever it interacted with. For instance, when his body came in contact with the bloodstone, it realized that it didn't 'fit' so it changed so that it would 'fit' the 'container' with no waste. Which resulted in a 100% and perfect compatibility with the bloodstone, meaning none of its essences was wasted and all aspects of its power were fully absorbed into his body.

looking into his body, something he was able to do thanks to his 'aura', he realized there was something different about it. There was a small 'stream' of energy flowing through it, this was probably his essence. Trying to move it around, Alan realized it was easier than he thought it would be as just by thinking about this he wanted it to move it would do just that.

After playing with his essence for a bit he realized that the goblin's bodies felt different, now that he had essence he could tell that the goblin bodies had essence in them too. With his newly found knowledge about his 'trait' and seemingly perfect control over his essence, he wanted to try something.

Reaching down and grabbing the goblin's body, he tried to use his 'aura' to control its essence instead. Focusing on the feeling of moving his own essence he tried to apply that to the goblin's essence. This was difficult for two reasons, firstly it was not his essence and secondly, it seemed to be 'inert' in the goblins body. But just as he was about to stop he felt a tiny shift in the goblin's essence, and as soon as that tiny part moved, he felt he had control of the goblin's entire reserve of essence.

Making sure he had a firm grasp on its essence he pulled it into his own body and tried to 'merge' it with his own. As he tried he felt a tiny prick of pain, but immediately after that the goblin essence seamlessly merged with his own, increasing it by about 30%. So he could keep track he decided to quantify the amount of essence he had, if his original about was 10 then the goblin gave him about 3 meaning he now had 13.

Walking over to the other goblins' bodies he began to steal their essence too. Grabbing the second goblin's body he tried to connect with its essence, but surprisingly, the moment his hand came in contact with the goblin's body, its essence seemed to flow into his body and merge with his own essence on its own without him having to do anything. That goblin had about 2 essencese so now he was up to 15.

From what he could tell his body 'harmonised' with the 'outside essence' slowing it to be freely combined with his own and controlled by him. The reason why he didn't need to 'harmonize' with every goblin essence was that his body would instantly 'conform' to any essence that was foreign to it. this meant that so long as the amount he absorbed in one go was less than or equal to the amount he had in total, it would freely merge with his own.

As for if it was greater, instead of his essence gaining control over the foreign essence, the foreign essence would gain control over his. And as that essence of a corpse had nothing controlling it he would end up losing control over all his essence until he absorbed enough the normal way from bloodrocks to the point that the amount he had control over was once again bigger than the inert amount. Once he was done absorbing the essence from the dead bodies he had a total of about 32.