NOVPUB
Chapter 39: What Is Essence? 1
Today was the 19th of April 2025, and it had been around a month since the first appearance of the IUAS and its ensuing entrance proceedings. The world had long somewhat stabilized after the various explanations from the first hundred who returned and were interviewed extensively by the press on what they saw as well as experienced.
Chief of them was actually Felicia, not only due to her prominent Rothschild bloodline, but also due to her high ability rating. While many news outlets would have paid any price to get Damon on their screens, he had been busy with the issues surrounding the human race to bother with global politics.
But what people had heard from the others alone got the blood of every human boiling, especially when Felicia explained their status and predicament.
When Ambrose first appeared, the biggest fear hidden within each human being’s heart was how they would be treated by the clearly technologically superior aliens who found them. While there was mention of a Galactic Union and a legal system, that was not enough to reassure most people.
Many envisioned doomsday scenes akin to the famous Independence Day, but without the miraculous human spunk to save the day.
However, it seemed that Felicia’s words confirmed the long-forgotten theory of ’humans are space orcs,’ with our race being the chosen ones of the universe!
Able to uniquely awaken abilities above the A-grade, were we not the ones destined to rule all, the ones born in the image of God?
On this day, Felicia was accepting another interview, one that was receiving much more viewership than before due to the fact that the Essence Augmented Reality Instances would descend upon Earth in exactly an hour.
As a European woman of English descent, Felicia naturally handled most of her interviews through the British Broadcasting Corporation, and today wasn’t any different. The anchor was a mature woman who had handled many such big case interviews on the station for many years, and today was also no different.
"Hello everyone, my name is Sarah Lindsay, and I run the Global Watch Show. Today, we have again our dear friend Mrs. Felicia Rothschild, affectionately called the deputy Prime Representative of the human race, on with us to talk about Essence’s opening and what it means for the world," the anchor greeted the moment they were live, showing a gentle and winsome smile to the camera.
"Thank you, Felicia, for coming here again on short notice. Without your insight, we’d be much unable to comprehend our current standing within the Galactic Society we’ve been thrust into," Sarah said kindly as she turned to Felicia, who smiled as well.
"It’s my duty. Our family motto is Concordia, Integritas, Industria, which stands for harmony, integrity, and industry, something I live up to. For the harmony of the human race, it is imperative that I let everyone know the details they lack so as to minimize conflict due to ignorance," Felicia responded charmingly, her hands placed on her lap.
"Excellent, because there is a lot we still do not know. For example, what exactly is Essence?" Sarah continued after checking her teleprompter on the side.
"A good question. Essence is an Augmented Reality Simulation created based on the rules and dangers of the Chaos Realm, the place we are supposed to explore on behalf of the Universe Will after our 20-year grace period expires," Felicia answered easily.
Sarah chuckled. "Yes, Madam Deputy, we do know that much already. The real question is, what exactly is Augmented Reality? What does it mean, and how does it work?"
Felicia paused to align her words carefully before explaining it in a way she hoped many could understand.
"Imagine walking down the street when suddenly, a shimmering portal opens before you. Through it, you see a battlefield overlaying reality—ghostly warriors clashing where pedestrians once stood, ruins replacing familiar buildings. If you step inside, you’re no longer just an observer; the augmented reality instance engulfs you, syncing the digital and the physical. A sword strike in this realm sends pain through your real body, and injuries sustained here linger beyond the illusion."
"This is a hyper-immersive AR dungeon, where the digital world isn’t just projected onto reality—it anchors itself to it. Every movement, every action has tangible consequences. The environment shifts dynamically, drawing you deeper into a fabricated yet physically impactful scenario. Fail to escape in time? The instance may collapse, leaving real scars—on both your body and your mind."
"It’s more than a game—it’s reality rewritten, a second layer of existence that bleeds into the first," Felicia concluded while gesturing to help buttress her point.
Sarah seemed to understand but still glanced at her teleprompter. "So what are the benefits and detriments of this Augmented Reality Simulation?"
"It depends on which aspect you are taking into consideration, so pardon me if I speak for quite a bit. Firstly, the version of Essence that we will be experiencing here on Earth is not the actual true version. You could say the version we are going to be given is akin to a tutorial, much easier with many beginner-friendly settings."
"The first of them is that death is not permanent. You can die in many ways within the real Essence, but in our localized version, you will be sent into an intangible state and suffer a penalty to your strength upon resurrecting."
"The second is that there are active guidance and hints in crafted AR instances. Usually, in the real Essence and in the Chaos Realm, you can only see your character panel, but in our localized version, there will be occasional prompts giving you background history of the AR instance as well as your goal to succeed in the form of tooltips."
"The third one is that worldly essence gain is uniform throughout the instance. In the real Essence, the higher your level, the less worldly essence you gain from completing a kill or objective than you would have at a lower level. In ours, whether level 1 or level 10, you gain the same amount of worldly essence from a level 1 enemy slain."
Felicia gently tousled her hair, making Sarah and the crowd focus subconsciously upon its messy locks. "However, there are limitations too. The premier being that AR instances are region-locked, and only those who live within that region can access such AR worlds. So if you live in Europe, you can only access AR instances that appear in Europe."
"Secondly, if you fail to complete the objective in time, you will be expelled from the AR instance. Real Essence Instances do not last a set amount of time but replicate an area of the Chaos Realm, but our localized version will be short-term events based on tumultuous events in our race’s history within that area."
Felicia glanced at the camera with a knowing smile. "Now, as for the rewards, they are plentiful. Even though access to our Essence instances is restricted to only humans during this 20-year period, this restriction will be lifted afterward, allowing us to charge any fee we want to allow any alien to explore our realms."
"All of this is predicated on the value of our Essence instances, though, and each of them is ranked based on value. They follow the same grading as that of abilities, from F to EX, which corresponds to the difficulty of the realm against its lucrativity. The higher the difficulty doesn’t always mean the realm is lucrative, just very challenging, and a lucrative realm could be a walk in the park, almost a bonus area."
"Now, let’s talk about how you can benefit. Firstly, there are the Worldly Essence gains you can make from exploring Essence with your real body, which is what you will need to level up and increase your stats. During the 20-year period, you can freely raise your level as high as possible, but even with the tutorial benefit I mentioned above that equalized worldly essence gain, it doesn’t reduce the actual requirement necessary to reach the next level."
Felicia made a gesture of two parallels stacked against each other vertically. "If it takes you, say, 100 units of worldly essence to go from level 1 to level 2, then it will likely increase to requiring you to need 200 units of worldly essence to get to level 3."
"So our most important and easiest period to level up will be within these first 20 years, because after that, you can only sparingly gain levels in the real Essence and through exchanging discovered Chaos Essence from the Chaos Realm."
"After worldly essence comes the monetary rewards that come from two aspects, which are mainly Excavation and Livestreaming. I’ve seen a lot of people asking about these two specifically online this past week, so I will explain what they are in just a minute." Felicia said, after which she paused to drink some water, allowing the entranced Sarah Lindsay to shuffle her documents with embarrassment.
