I had observed the fight between the commander and the cloaked figure with interest. A fight between two elementlists was not common.

The number of elementlists in this world compared to the number of people is very little.

To become a elementlists you would first had to have a meditation technique and those were not candies that you would get at the side of the road. Meditation techniques were secret techniques that were created by people in ancient times so they could break the soul barrier (the limitation on the size of the soul of every being.The difficulty of breaking the soul barrier differs from specie's to specie's. For ex the difficulty of a beastfolk breaking the soul barrier was higher but this was natural. In exchange for their increased difficulty of breaking the soul barrier their physical attributes were higher than those of humans. )

Then you had to successfully plant an elemental seed on your soul , but that was not as easy as you thought. The resources that you had to use to keep your vitality at an acceptable level because of the drainage that the meditations 1st stage(the stage where you needed to convert your vitality in order to increase your soul) were not something someone who wasn't an elementalist could obtain. The beasts who had formed blood cores were rare but most importantly they were very dangerous and lived in very dangerous places like the Forest of Hundred Perils.

You had to remember unlike my birth planet Earth in this planet named Itoka the dominant specie's were not humans but higher beings whose lifespan exceed a thousand years. They were there when humanity was still living in cages and the concept of a human elementlists was just a pipe dream. If humans or any other intelligent race broke the balance that had existed for thousands of years these ancient beings that were on top of the food chain and that were considered "Natural Disasters". They would rain destruction on the ones who broke the rules so even the Empires couldn't deploy their troops into places like The Forest of Hundred Perils because one of those beings lived in the depths of it and it didn't take intruders lightly.

To plant a elemental seed in your soul you had to first correctly break the soul barrier and the information on how to do that was only (mostly) possessed by elementlists. If you didn't break the soul barrier in the correct way you would have wasted a lot of effort any time for nothing. If you failed in this step you would become weak physically and mentally, you get the picture.

The forces who possesses the greatest number of elementlists is the royal family and the nobles who swore allegiance to the crown. These people were the defendants of the people who first created and then perfected the meditation techniques that are used today.

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I had observed the two elementlists fight to gain any insight into their method of attack and their techniques. Their strategies for what technique to use in what situation and what technique to not use.

For ex, the commander in his frantic state because he couldn't get a single attack in ,had missed the slight fluctuating of the opponents elemental energy. This fluctuation was the sign that the opponent was using a technique and for the type of opponent he was fighting (an elementalist who cultivates in the element of darkness and is capable of using different illusionary techniques) he should have focussed his soul power to his eyes.

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The way people who cultivate in the element of darkness deploy their illusion is they plant a soul basses suggestion on the desired target so he would confuse people or objects with different things. This is how the cloaked figure made the commander believe he was impaling him instead of the Innocent city guard. This type of technique didn't change the appearance of the user but only fooled the perception of the target.

The soul was intricately connected to the brain and if the opponent planted a suggestion on the soul that he was someone else the brain would interpret this as the truth and for a human reality was only the brains interpretation of the stimulation of our senses(sight,touch, taste,smell,sound;our five main senses or our most notiaciable ones) from the environment.

So if your brain told you something was hot you believe it's hot and maybe even feel the heat even if that something was only room temperature. You can fool your brain.

In contrast with ones who cultivate on the element of light they could create copies of almost anything by shaping the light element into something you could touch. They could create objects and even living beings. From afar you couldn't spot the difference but if you were able to touch them you would feel no temperature of any sort of texture except for a smooth feeling.

The light types could create hard physical copies and the dark types could trick the mind. From this point of view the dark types illusions were more powerful but in reality they were not that omnipotent.

If the opponent prepared in advance,had a strong enough will, had some type of countermeasure or his soul was overwhelmingly bigger, then the illusion would fail. In the case of the light types their illusion was unaffected by most of these conditions.

For elementlists who didn't have these precautions concentrating a substantial amount of soul power to the eyes could expose their illusion. This technique of concentrating soul power was a common way of enhancing the vision but also making the elementlists be able to see the elemental energy of the opponent and by the size and color of it they could discover the opponents strength and element.

So if the commander had used this technique he would have seen that the person he stabed didn't have any elemental energy and for a illusion to be active the caster had to rile up the elemental energy inside him so he would be pretty notiaciable.