[Shrubley, the Monster Adventurer] Chapter 30 – Everything Essences

“Now, moving on to the eight types of essences,” the Countess told the group gathered in the training room. “In no particular order you have Red, Green, Blue, Purple, Orange, Yellow, White, and, as we all know, Black. Each and every essence in existence belongs to one of the eight above, and the same goes for every spell.”

Drawing his awareness within himself, Shrubley could sense the subtle contrast between his Nature and Curiosity essences lurking in the background of his mana.

It was like being able to feel color without seeing it.

How peculiar! Shrubley couldn’t quite wrap his leaves around the concept, but that didn’t stop that from being the impression he picked up.

Nature was Green, and Curiosity was Black. Their powers were specialized for different purposes. He was able to discern that without looking at any Shardscript telling him it was so.

When he first walked into Taamra to become an adventurer, his senses had not been that capable. He barely understood what his lone Black essence was back then.

And now, Shrubley had two essences bound to his spirit. One that granted the ability to learn and wield essences from his opponents in the midst of battle, and the other that fortified his shrub body with durable bark armor.

He wondered what kind of Nature and Curiosity essence abilities he might gain in the future.

Cal hugged his bony knees to his chest. “And color essences can evolve? My Red essence might become something more?”

“Yes,” Lady Haalften answered. “Just like monsters, essences evolve into greater and greater heights of power.”

Shrubley immediately wanted to know more about what the vampyr let slip, which was the existence of monster evolutions.

He didn’t like to consider himself a monster. He was a hero, after all, no matter his heritage, but he understood that others tended to trust their eyes before their hearts. Technically, “monster” was his creature category. His [Monsterfolk] racial ability practically proclaimed that to be the case.

But Shrubley didn’t want to push his luck by interrupting his teacher once again. The Countess was already prone to irritation and anger. He sympathized. Being hungry all the time with no end in sight couldn’t be easy.

I would truly enjoy learning more about essences as well, Shrubley thought to himself. Patience wasn’t ingrained in him, but he would try.

The same couldn’t be said for his fellow monsterfolk. Slyrox put her mitt into the air. Shrubley hoped she would at least stay on topic this time.

The Countess stared at the koblin, then sighed. “Fine, what must you ask before I continue?”

“What’re the… differences between… the essence types?” Slyrox notably paused between a couple words.

To Shrubley, how the koblin spoke didn’t seem to come naturally.

Is Slyrox trying to talk more like us?

He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. On one twig, it was helpful to be able to easily understand one another. And on the other twig, however, self-expression was paramount and equally important.

“I was getting to that.” The Countess put her big fists on her hips. “The skeleton among you has a Red essence.” Her ruby attention fell on Cal. “Tell us what it does.”

Cal nearly fell to pieces on the spot. His arm popped off, and he hastily snapped it back into place.

The Countess lifted a dark brow in his direction, tapping her foot impatiently.

“Ah, well…” Cal audibly swallowed. How, nobody knew. Not even him. “Red essence is offense. Just like Red magic. R-right?”

“I don’t know how you have managed to get this far, honestly I don’t.” The Countess shook her head. And Awakened as they were too. That was rare. Awakenings usually only happened to particularly strong or powerful monsters. These three were Mundane for Darkness’ sake!

She glanced sharply at the slime. It was easy to momentarily forget about that simple creature. Considering Smudge to be Awakened was a stretch, but technically, that slime had managed it too.

Then again, just because the slime was simple didn’t mean it wasn’t Awakened. A stake was just a bit of sharpened wood, but it could fell a Diamond Ranked vampyr. Simple should never discount danger or potential.

The slime blinked out of sync.

Though, she admitted to herself, sometimes it’s harder than others.

“However,” the Countess continued. “He’s right. Red essences are among the most prevalent and popular because they cover a very large and key component of magic and warfare: offense. Anything you want to do with it, if it’s Red, it’ll be there to hurt something.”

“As for the rest….” She motioned at the orbs of Darkness in front of each of them. “Take my Darkness essence, for example. When I received it, it was a Yellow essence. That’s the only thing that doesn’t change. The color of essence is static.”

Technically true,her thoughts told her. But they don’t need to know about bicolors yet. That’s more advanced. If they make it to Pandaemonium, they’ll learn it there.

“Why does that matter?” Shrubley asked. He reached a twiggy limb out to the orb and poked it gently. The cool, inky surface rippled like a pond struck by a pebble.

Slyrox watched Shrubley’s orb of Darkness with interest, then played with her own. Her mitts grabbed at the floating essence, stretching and squashing it into various shapes.

Eyes half-lidded, the Countess watched them with mild amusement, though she made sure to keep the expression from her face. No need to let the little monsters know that she thought they were somewhat cute.

“Because each essence color stands for a classification. The first group of colors is pretty standard. Most essences fall into one of these three: Red as we’ve already covered is offense, Green is support, and Blue is defense.” The Countess waited to a count of five, but only got up to 2 before the expected interruption happened.

“What are the rest, then?” Shrubley asked.

Smudge shifted forward, oozing over the orb of Darkness. It floated within his gelatinous mass, giving it lift and letting the creature hover in the air like a pink balloon with a core of Darkness.

“Chilly-chilly!” Slyrox exclaimed. She had never quite grasped the way the Havior said “cool”, so she used the kobbiespeak equivalent.

Shrubley couldn’t help but tense, his leaves crinkling with concern for the slime. The Countess had yet to explain what Yellow essences could do. Additionally, that Darkness orb was a conjured form of some type of power completely within the vampyr’s control.

Perhaps it was harmless either way, but within the slime was some bit of the Countess’ power. It might ordinarily be meant to inflict Darkness damage, or even something else entirely.

And yet, both the essence and the slime appeared to be unaffected to Shrubley’s senses. It was as if the creature and the essence just happened to be occupying the same space at the same time, despite the digestive juices that were evidently within Smudge.

“As I was saying,” the Countess continued, largely ignoring the slime’s antics, “the aforementioned colors are often referred to as the ‘Order Sphere’. These colors, Red, Green, and Blue, instill order onto our world. Everything has a logical flow to it. You condense order into Red to form a sword of fire, or into Green to empower yourself with, for example, skin that turns hard like bark, and a shield of warding from Blue is just a fancy way of making air or light harden upon command.”

It’s not as simple as it seems then, Shrubley realized. Even though my Nature essence is Green, which is supposed to be the support type, it can still impart defensive effects. So why isn’t it Blue?

For a wonder, nobody bothered to interrupt her. The Countess seized on the silence like a leopard on its prey. “Meanwhile, Purple, Yellow, and Orange are the opposite. They are considered the ‘Chaos Sphere’. They increase chaos in the world. That doesn’t mean they’re bad, but these tend to be a bit more unpredictable.”

She motioned to the Darkness orb. “Yellow, for example, causes Afflictions. These can range from a simple thing like making something float.” She nodded at Smudge. “That’s technically an affliction. So is turning a person’s blood to fire.”

The Countess smiled as that got the appropriate gasps from her students. “Purple essences are responsible for summonings, and Orange represents dimensional magic and abilities.” She paused, watching and wondering.

Ah, there it is,she thought, seeing the spark of thought in Shrubley’s yellow eyes. It was remarkable how intelligent he was for being a mere plant monster. “You have something to share with the class?” the Countess asked.

Shrubley fiddled with his strange hand-like branches and twigs. “I did not wish to speak out of turn.” At an impatient gesture from the Countess he continued, “That seems a lot like the first set of colors.”

So he did manage to spot it.

Not a lot of students could, and she wouldn’t have expected a newly Awakened monster to be able to express its thoughts, much less articulate like Shrubley.

“You’re right,” she told him. “Red and Blue are connected and practically two sides of the same coin. They alter the same forces in different directions, and in the same way Purple and Orange use the same forces. The powers over space and location are both present with the two colors, and each Sphere has a third color that adds something extra. The Chaos Sphere tends to have a negative aspect, though you would be wrong to think that Yellow always applies a debuffing effect, while the Order Sphere tends to have a positive aspect.”

Something wet dropped from the air onto Cal and Slyrox both. The pair looked up at the still floating Smudge, then at the [Slime Goop] on their forms.

Cal struggled to wipe it off, whereas Slyrox attempted to loot it and put it away into her [Kobbie Bag], a bulging satchel stitched with a variety of patchwork materials.

The bag had the look of something well cared for and much loved to Shrubley.

The pair shared lukewarm success in their attempts.

“Pyuu!” Smudge cried in amusement.

“That’s not nearly enough colors,” Cal said.

The Countess motioned with her hand and Smudge was brought down to the ground, the Darkness orb fading to nothing inside of him. “That’s because there are only two Spheres, and each contains 3 core colors. Those of you who, like Cal, can apparently do basic math will notice that there are two colors missing.”

“White and Black,” Shrubley said.

“Correct. White essences are involved in the healing and recovery arts. They are very rare and highly sought after. Most people manage to turn Greens to something akin to White, but it never works as well as the proper color. And Blacks are unique in that they are, well, unique. Fitting, really.”

Slyrox lifted her hand again.

“No questions,” she told them. “Now that we’ve gone over the basics, it’s time for a pop quiz!”

Though Shrubley had never attended a proper school, he felt the sort of cold dread shared among every student across the Shardrunes in every universe that ever existed, from the most mundane grade schoolers on Earth to the advanced Magi at Stowhr.

It was pop quiz time, and he wasn’t prepared.