Quick Lesson on Elemental Alignments with the courtesy of Dylan

"Atlas! Hey! This is the second day in a row that I am waking you up. At this point the readers will think that this is my only defining personality. Wake up!"

Dylan pulled and shaked Atlas' body to wake him uo as he casually broke through the fourth wall. As expected of the [----]. It took around a minute or so for Atlas to actually wake up as he had been very exhausted last night cultivating the nine nether frost source.

"-Augh? It's morning already?"

"Indeed it is my dear friend. In fact the homeroom is about to begin in 8 minutes. So get up and dress yourself, or we will be late in the very second day of the school."

Dylan had already woken up, eaten breakfast and taken a shower. He had also gotten dressed and was ready to go to school. However, he hadn't waken up Atlas before this as he knew that Atlas was cultivating last night.

Surely, he hadn't actually believed that Atlas was taking a mere ice bath, he wasn't that stupid. Dylan knew that although this friend of his wasn't the most hardworking person in terms of cultivation, he stil knew that there were times when Atlas seriously cultivated by himself.

Atlas' cultivation certainly wasn't the most outstanding part about him, as he was only an advanced practitioner stage mage. His forte was his strong memory and comprehensive abilities. Dylan could still remember the day when both his and Atlas' ancestor praised Atlas for his strategical prowess when the two had taken a test in middle school.

Atlas had gotten the highest score out of all of the alliance members in the test, and the Laural noble family had thrown a banquet as celebration. As their families are also friends, even his ancestor was invited to the banquet, and the ancestor had of course attended it. The old ancestor didn't have a reason to reject, as it had been some time since he had last seen his old friend, Atlas' ancestor. Thus the two ancestors drunk together, gave the younger generation some pointers, and praised who needed to be.

Dylan himself had also gotten an above average score, yet not as good as Atlas. He of course wasn't jealous of his friend, as both of them had different things they were good at. Dylan was good at cultivation, while Atlas was an academic genius. That day, he was very happy, maybe even happier than Atlas himself, since his best friend had attained a number one spot in quite a difficult test, and out of all their peers in the alliance as well.

Atlas wasn't only good at studying a single subject. Math, science, and basically all of the other classes that didn't require him to have a strong physique, were all aced by him. He was also able to proficiently play few music instruments, and his noble etiquette was very refined. If he was born in a world without cultivation, he would surely be the main character of that world. It was only his personality was somewhat secclusive, and didn't allow him to make friends with others unless they approached him first.

Dylan knew, however, that Atlas had indeed not truly satisfied with this. Since Atlas was born with alignments to wood and water elements, he had a physique that leaned towards that of pure yin. This caused Atlas to have a somewhat weaker body and rendered him unable to practice weapon and martial techniques when he was young. Atlas had a very late start in terms of practical usage of techniques when compared to his peers, and this had bothered him for a while. At least, this was what Dylan could feel.

In this world, a total of 18 elemental alignments were known to exist. However, humans could only posses alignments out of ten certain elements. These elements were further divided in to two categories.

Those of yang based: Fire, Earth, Thunder, Light (aka Holy), and those of yin based: Water, Wood, Wind, and Ice. Gold elemental aligment also existed, and could either be of yin or yang based depending on the person's gender. There was also an element that didn't belong to these two categories, and existed separately. That unique element was the Fate Element.

The eight other known elements the humans couldn't posses alignments for were: Poison, Darkness (aka evil), Spirit, Berserk, Dust, Gravity, Shadow, and Space. Few other races could have some these alignments, but there was only one race to have the Space elemental alignment. The people of that race all possed the space alignment innately, and could teleport freely.

Fortunately, there wasn't any sighting of such a fearsome race within the last thousand years, and many thought they went extinct. There were also no current cultivators known to possess gravity alignment in the entire world, as such an elemental alignment was only seen when a mysterious powerhouse had directly increased the earth's diameter.

Although it wasn't known what race that powerhouse had belonged to, the  powerful human cultivators of that time noted that none of them possessed the power to achieve such a feat, even if they were to all act together. They also included that the elemental fluctuations at the time didn't belong to any of the known elements, but was similar to the magnetic relation of earth's gravitational force. Thus, they decided to name that element the element of gravity.

Returning to elements concerning human cultivators; men could cultivate yang-based elemental alignments in an easier way when compared to women, and it was easier for woman to cultivate yin-based alignments when compared to man.

Consequently, men cultivators who possessed yin-based elemental alignments had weaker physiques due to the conflicting forces within the body. The same situation would also occur for women cultivators who possessed yang-based alignments. In fact, if these two conflicting forces were to go out of control, the cultivator could even die.

For those who possessed two elemental alignments of opposite categories (one yin, one yang) they could use special techniques to form a balanced relationship between the two, which would provide a significant boost in power.

But for people like Atlas who possessed two yin-based alignments while being a male, or vice verse if they are a women, cultivation would be quite though even if their natural talents weren't low. Since this was the case, Dylan had respected Atlas' privacy, and let him cultivate in peace, as well as get enough rest before waking him up just before they could barely make it in time.