Yep, speaking about the King's Location one. I was messing around with a new save and can't remember how many seconds I had left before the Hero showed up. But I was able to complete that ending on a fresh run with no essence unlocked.
Now that's impressive. I ended up relying on the mana -> essence conversion because I was flying a bit blind up until that point. I figured out that the key was to touch the stone and learn magic after I read the requirement was Holy Resistance. I'm not sure why that action has a cap of 20 when there's no benefit to getting more than 10 resistance and it doesn't lead to anything else after.