“However, if you choose the most common path of an elemental warrior, it will be hard. Even your secondary elemental affinities of water and wind make it almost impossible. There would still be a chance if your secondary affinity was fire to match your bloodline affinity.”

Mwana felt deflated hearing this. It was good to have talent with the sword, but elemental affinity was still one of the most important bases for martial arts. He understood that while a person’s primary affinity was the main element they were aligned to at birth, the secondary affinity referred to the elements one was second or third best at. The secondary affinity was usually determined by 2 major laws: the cycle of elements and the birth of the elements. On the first law, the cycle of the elements would start with earth, water then rested on earth, it would then connect to the air before rising and forming clouds and then it would strike down as lightning before being absorbed into the earth. Fire could be said to be buried by the earth on one end on the other end, wood would grow from the combination of the 4 elements of life [earth, water, wind, and lightning] and while in contact with air, the wood would give rise to fire.

As for the birth of the elements, it mainly depended on which elements resulted in the creation of another element. Usually ones secondary affinity was the elements adjacent to their primary affinity. As the vice-head explained it, “If you have lightning as your primary affinity, your secondary elements will be air and water because that is what clouds are made off. If water is your primary, your secondary will naturally be earth and wind. For earth element affinity, the secondary would be water, fire, and in some rarer cases wind.”

The old man’s words were not new knowledge but still enlightened the 3 boys. On seeing the little boys looking more ‘enlightened’, the old man nodded in satisfaction. He had indeed fulfilled his role as a teacher today.

“Herein lies the question, what if your elemental affinities don’t complement each other? What would be the result?”

For this question, Damu who had been quiet most of this time took it upon himself to answer, “If you have lightning and earth as elemental affinities, the earth will ground the lightning thus restraining it. Same for water and fire, these two elements restrain each other. In rare cases where one has earth and wind affinities, earth would hinder mastery of wind type spells and lightness skills. As for the extremely rare wood attribute, a secondary affinity for fire will make it hard to practice wood type healing techniques but fire type attack techniques will be even stronger as wood feeds fire.”

“Good, good, good!” The old man exclaimed with a smile, “It seems you brats are not wasting your time in school.” He then asked while looking to Mwana and Cheza, “Anything to add?”

“For earth and fire coexisting together, the earth will ‘bury’ the fire creating an oven like effect to ones techniques which delays them but eventually produces extreme heat. This type of warrior would be the strongest in fire attribute techniques and spells with their only weakness being a slight delay to their techniques.” This time, it was Cheza who replied. After listening to his answer, the old man also shared some of his own thoughts. For a time, the little pond turned into a debate space with the 3 boys and the old man bouncing ideas off each other and discussing hypothetical scenarios.