Born with Dual Elements (Part Two)

The void of his Inner World began to glow with the faintest glimmer. Mo Fan reached out with his senses — and suddenly discovered a tiny, tiny patch of Stardust had appeared within the emptiness.

Joy surged through him.

Stardust was everything to a mage. It was the fundamental measure of a mage's cultivation, existing within the Inner World itself — and the greater the expanse of void it occupied, the higher the mage's power.

Within the Stardust, something was already lit: a small patch of purple, so tiny it was truly dust against the vast expanse of his Inner World. But that was enough. The textbooks were perfectly clear — any Stardust at all in the Inner World, no matter how faint, meant the Awakening had goddamn *succeeded*.

*Ha! Who said I was going to fail my Awakening?*

*Looks like I succeeded just fine.*

*I'd kill to see the looks on Zhao Kunsan's and Mu Bai's faces right now.*

Hm?

Wait — what color is the Stardust?

Not red. What a shame — not Fire Element after all.

Red Stardust meant Fire Element. Cyan Stardust meant Wind Element. Brown Stardust meant Earth Element. Blue Stardust meant Water Element. Gold Stardust meant Light Element. Purple Stardust meant...

*Holy—*

Mo Fan froze entirely.

*Purple.*

His Stardust was purple. His Stardust was *actually purple*.

"Oh my god — someone in the next class just Awakened Lightning Element!"

The shout rang out across the grounds.

"What? Lightning Element?! Good grief, what kind of karma do you have to rack up to be that lucky?"

"Where? Where? Oh wow, look at that purple — absolutely stunning. I bet Class 7's homeroom teacher nearly had a heart attack."

"Ughhh, just kill me. Why did I get Water Element? Why couldn't I have Lightning? Don't anyone try to stop me — I'm heading for the rooftop."

"Don't bother. The fall won't kill you — there's already a whole pile of Light Element kids piled up down there."

"This Lightning kid is going to blow everyone else out of the water!"

One Lightning Element student, and the entire school erupted.

If Fire Element was the top pick for any common-born mage, Lightning Element was simply heaven's gift — the perfect first element. Its power surpassed Fire's in sheer dominance, granting a mage terrifying combat ability even at the Basic-Level Mage stage: enough to take on multiple opponents alone. Teachers had run the numbers, and of all students who Awakened Lightning, more than half went on to break through to Intermediate-Level Mage — and that was only counting those who didn't squander it.

The magic middle school exam had already eliminated roughly sixty percent of all magic students, leaving only forty percent to proceed as Awakening candidates. Of that group, another sixty percent would likely be filtered out over three years of magic high school, never managing to cast even a single spell.

Out of fifteen hundred incoming freshmen across the entire school, exactly *one* student had Awakened Lightning Element. That alone was enough to show just how extraordinary it truly was.

Every pair of eyes snapped toward the boy from Year One, Class 7. By happy coincidence, he was dressed in purple — which only made the faint, crackling arcs of violet lightning from his Awakening all the more striking. Cool and composed, radiating a cold confidence, he became the focal point of over a thousand students and teachers, and the whole campus ignited.

"Hm? Why is it so loud?" Mo Fan slowly opened his eyes, the elation on his face impossible to hide.

But when his eyes finally focused, he found his teacher — who had just been watching him — now craning his neck toward the neighboring class, completely transfixed.

Mo Fan turned. Every single classmate behind him was staring the same direction.

*What is going on?*

*Where is everyone looking?*

It didn't take him long to piece it together.

Apparently Class 7 had a Lightning Element student — and at the exact moment Mo Fan's own Awakening was unfolding, every eye in the school had locked onto that guy who'd beaten him to the punch by half a step.

Mo Fan stared at the purple lightning arcs still dancing across the Awakening Stone in front of him, his expression deeply aggrieved. *God, I really want to smack my homeroom teacher upside the head and tell him: what are you even jealous of Class 7 for? I'm Lightning Element too, you idiot — just as overpowered, just as incredible!*

He was about to speak when the Awakening Stone — which should have been finished — blazed with stellar light once more, flowing toward his palm like blood rushing through veins.

Mo Fan's eyes went wide.

*The Awakening is supposed to be over. Why is the Stone activating again?*

He tried to pull his hand back, but the surge of magical energy had already spread from his palm throughout his entire body.

Heat.

A wave of scorching heat.

Mo Fan had no idea what was happening, but something was pulling him back into his Inner World — where he could feel a second power pushing its way in.

In the void of his Inner World, the purple Stardust still shimmered faintly in its small corner, as if hungry — wanting to be fed, to be made brighter, more radiant. That was his Lightning Stardust, the power he had just awakened moments ago.

But a second awakening force came crashing in like the first, slashing a breathtaking arc of flame across his Inner World — like a burning meteor streaking through the dark. Mo Fan shuddered to his core.

"This... this is..."

A field of *red Stardust* had appeared in his Inner World.

For a moment he was stunned. Then he plunged headlong into a euphoria that bordered on madness.

*Fire Element.*

He had just Awakened a second element — *Fire*.

Dual elements.

He had actually Awakened *dual elements*.

At the Basic-Level Mage stage, every student was supposed to Awaken only one element. Born with two was virtually unheard of — the odds made Lightning Element's one-in-a-thousand chance look generous by ten thousand times over.

*Dear god.*

Mo Fan felt like happiness had knocked him clean off his feet.

Lightning alone would have sent him over the moon. Fire on top of that — making him born with dual elements — and he was on the verge of tears.

Having studied magic theory, Mo Fan knew exactly what this meant. An extra element was a head start from the very beginning, and the cultivation of each element was entirely independent.

It was like a massively multiplayer game where every other player was stuck grinding on a single account — and he had two. Better yet, both accounts merged into a single character. The resulting power wasn't a matter of one plus one equaling two.

*This is incredible.*

*Born with dual elements — Lightning and Fire. I want to see someone try to stop me.*

The shame and guilt he'd carried over his father selling the house — it all vanished in that instant. Mo Fan knew, with absolute certainty: if he trained hard and cultivated both elements, he would stand above every mage of his generation.

*The Mu Clan with their centuries of heritage? Their celebrated ice lineage? Can any of that match being born with dual elements?*

Ha! Ha ha ha!