Death... and me
chapter-1940-30041322

"Essence Races?" Rean couldn't help but ask. "Are they like spirits?"

"Kind of." Frasco didn't totally agree. "There's one main difference between them and the spirits. No, that's not correct. It's not like all spirits are purely made of energy. Some of them do have bodies. Anyways, the main difference is that the Essence Races don't have an actual soul."

"Does that mean they didn't have sentience?" Fay was the first one to think about it.

"No, no, no." Yet, Frasco shook his head. "They did have intelligence and sentience. It's just that their memories, emotions, and things like that were kept inside their essences. The Essence Races truly didn't have any members with a body. It was all about essences with sentience but no souls. In a certain way, you could say that the essences were the souls themselves. You could think of them as walking souls."

"Essence..." Rean and Roan had access to World Essence in the Soul Gem Dimensional Realm. They even accumulated quite a bit in the last two decades, which Rean intended to use in their Web Divine Armors in the future. Not only that, but the system once rewarded the twins with Universe Essence as well. They used it in their dantians back then.

Frasco continued, "Another huge difference between the Essence Races and spirits is that the Essence Races have absolutely no use for Divine Energy in cultivation. Spirits have a plethora of different requirements for cultivation. Nevertheless, Divine Energy is still needed for their cultivation to grow. It's more correct to say that the spirits are closer to the humanoids and demon beasts than they are to the Essence Races."

Roan pondered over it for a bit before asking, "Does that mean they didn't use Divine Energy for anything at all?"

"Not really," Frasco replied. "They used their Essence to control Divine Energy when they needed to fight. In the end, Essence Energy, or so we called it, was too hard to gather. The air around us is full of Divine Energy, and that was the only thing available in most cases for the Essence Races. To them, Divine Energy was useless for cultivation."

"Another point is the number of Essence Race members. Do you think spirits don't have a lot of members? If you think they don't have a lot, then the Essence Races didn't even have a hundredth of the numbers of the spirit races nowadays. They were an incredibly odd power. Too difficult to be born."

"Where do we find this Essence Energy you talked about?" Roan asked right after.

Frasco laughed in response. "Hahahaha! You can't! At the same time, you can." Frasco then extended both his hands to the sides. "All around you, there is Essence Energy. Yet, the concentration is so small that we can't even feel it. That's also why Essence Energy of any type is extremely expensive. The Essence Races, which were one of the few options available to acquire Essence Energy, are not around anymore."

Rean immediately nodded in response. He, more than anyone else, knew just how good Essence Energy was. In fact, he considered it even more important now that he had heard Frasco's story. "How come they disappeared then? If they controlled the northeast side of the Realm of Gods, they surely had the strength to back it up."

"They did," Frasco agreed with Rean. "However, they were the first ones to be attacked by the devils. I told you before, didn't I? It's not like they have real souls. The devils need the power of souls to hasten their cultivation, so the Essence Races were nothing but a hindrance to their plans."

Rawor quickly raised his hand after that. "Senior Frasco, why did the devils decide to attack them first, then?"

Frasco already expected that question. "To be honest, I'm not sure. However, the majority believed that since the northeast had a mix of demon beasts, humanoids, and spirits, it was easier to attack. That side of the Realm of Gods was weird in a way since it had all three races, but none of the three really launched any large-scale conquests against the other. You could say that was also due to the Essence Races not allowing such big conflicts in their home."

"One thing that we do know is that the northeast side has a higher concentration of Essence Energy in the air. Well, it's still pretty much imperceptible for anyone other than the Essence Races. But don't get me wrong. This higher concentration of Essence Energy in the area increases the power of the Essence Race by a lot. I would say they only lost to the Devil Race that quickly because their numbers were really low."

Fay understood something else. "So that's why you haven't seen anyone from the Essence Race on our side, right? There was simply not enough Essence Energy around for them to use, so none of them entered the humanoid, demon beast, or spirit races' territories."

"Well said." Frasco nodded at Fay with a smile. "Their strength fell sharply when they got close to the other three territories. You probably wouldn't see even a shadow of them in the continents bordering the other three races' territories. It's normal that you've never seen a member of the Essence Race. Even I haven't seen a single one since the devils entered the northeast side."

Roan still didn't think that it was that easy, though. "Even if the Devils killed most of the Essence Race members, there's bound to be some alive here and there in the northeast side. The Realm of Gods is just too big in the end."

Frasco shrugged his shoulders in response. "You are probably right. Especially since the Essence Races don't reproduce. They're born from the Essence Energy of the Realm of Gods on that side. Even if you truly wipe every one of them out, more would eventually appear in corners you simply don't expect. The conditions for it to happen are hard, but at the same time, they could happen literally anywhere there."

Rean took the chance to ask something else. "What about their variants? From the looks of it, there isn't just one."