Now, how to summon this missing twin? Rick mulled over it a little bit before he got Struck by a brilliant bolt of inspiration.
In this world, mages and warriors had a distinction. Mages fought with their minds, and warriors with their bodies.
This essentially meant that mages would have their reservoir of power in the glabella and warriors in their dantian.
One didn't get to chose whether they were a mage or a warrior. One simply excelled at mage tasks or warrior tasks.
Mage tasks were scholarly ones, ones that required the exertion of mental prowess, like studying, research, alchemy and other such practices.
Warrior were the other side of the coins. They excelled in tasks that had more to do with the physical world like combat, blacksmithing, and hunting.
This wasn't to say that mages were smarter than warriors, or warriors stronger than mages. In fact, holding deliberately spread preconceptions like these were a quick way to die.
For example warriors excelled at anything physical, including investigation and situational awareness. This made them excellent in police work and in setting up strategies.
In fact some warriors were quite like the legendary detectives of Earth, able to derive an entire sequence of events from a single clue.
Mages often stuck to administrative roles. They excelled at logistics and administration.
In theory, this should have led to a balance of power, with mages holding the offices and with warriors holding military power. In fact some countries held this system. Valenthir was not one of them.
But that was irrelevant and a tangent that Rick's strained mind went on in an attempt to distract itself. He shook his head and refocused.
The reason he thought of this was because of the mechanism of power progression in the world. It wasn't overly complicated.
The first step for both mages and warriors was to be mundane. This is where one pushed themselves to the limit in both mage and warrior tasks. This is because until awakening, one could never know with a hundred percent certainty what one was talented in.
There were techniques that were used to push one to the limit of their capabilities as a human, and move on to the next step. For knights, it was their Martial Techniques. A fully qualified Martial Technique wasn't just a simple book. It was a legacy.
Martial Techniques were scarily comprehensive, from fighting moves to dietary requirements, they were like a dogma to the warrior. No warrior ever awakened without at least a modicum of willpower.
For mages, it was a Spiritual Technique. It was the equivalent of a Martial Technique for mages. It even contained a set of meditation techniques and breathing exercises. It even had physical exercises because a mage's mind had to be rooted in a solid foundation!
The next step was the first in specialization. It was awakening. This process actually began in the mundane stage. It was fairly common for one to show affinity for one path more than the other pretty early on.
This was pseudo awakening. One would show mysterious power but not fully step through the threshold. Many never did.
The next step was to double down on one's strengths. One's affinity for a specific power came from a multitude of factors. In fact this was one of the basic arguments for nobility.
Bloodline influenced one's awakening. In fact nobles above Marquis almost always awakened. Another influence was also one's technique. But one could argue that after enough time of a family practicing a technique it was almost one and the same.
One would show traits of a warrior, with an affinity geared towards their awakening. Of course some pairings were more desirable than others. Awakenings were highly individual and therefore hard to standardize.
For example the Albrechts were know to have an affinity to golden flame, but the Baron in particular had an affinity towards healing, but he was a warrior. So it was self healing.
His elemental affinity suited him to be a mage, but his character and individualism made him a warrior. So he was left with that.
Of course it was more nuanced than that. But that was neither here nor there.
In training, Irik never excelled in any particular path. This was why people said he didn't have talent. In fact, he had high scores and a high compatibility score for both.
Instead of saying that he didn't have any talent. It might have been better to say he was talented in both!
And so he remembered that his core was supposed to be at the position of his dantian, but for some reason was at his solar Plexus. This was already strange to him and highlighted how unusual his awakening was.
So his solution was, if awakening as a warrior was incomplete, why not awaken as a mage also!?
The young man immediately sat down and proceeded to get into meditation position. He had awakened his white fire while performing the warrior moves for the Bright Martial Technique.
He instantly, and with well practiced ease slipped into a state of emptiness, where it was just him, and the void of his mind.
The Bright Meditation technique usually had them visualize a brilliant, golden sun. But he knew that that wasn't going to cut it. So instead he made a modification.
This was highly dangerous, but his situation put him past caring for the danger. Instead of a golden sun, he imagined a black sun.
Instead of tongues golden fire, the sun radiated something else. Despite being black, it somehow provided light.
He got a sort of sense, like the fire wanted to convey something to him. He could sense sentiments of chilling cold, a cold that could freeze space itself. The black fire that left dust made of tiny ice particles instead of ash.
This was the Nether Flame.
The moment he had the realization, a clump of black fire lit up in his head, just like his white fire core. They didn't take any physical space but were still there, almost like they were out of phase with his reality.
The clump quickly smoothed out and turned into an orb. Instantly the heat and pain in his head grew infinitely more manageable. He opened his eyes to see that a hulk of a man was walking towards him radiating an impressive pressure.
It seemed he had finished just in time.