"I would like to say that discovering the flow of world energy and devising a suitable breathing technique was just the natural consequence for a mage of my talent after Salaark Awakened me, but the truth is that I wouldn't have ever succeeded by myself.
"Before his death, Krishna Manohar and worked together to crack the secret of Awakening. I have to admit that if not for his ingenuity and my knowledge of Alchemy, we would have failed.
"It took us a while to understand that his problem was that his mana core was both static and overloaded with mana whereas mine filled me with so much power that it blinded me to the presence of world energy.
"There is a reason most fake Awakened never manage to understand how a breathing technique works despite knowing about its existence.
"Once a Guardian Awakens our cores and removes the impurities in our bodies, the resulting mana flow is so intense that even the world energy released by a mana geyser gets smothered to the point we can barely sense it.
"I lived for years above mana geysers. First as a simple fake mage and then as a fake Awakened, but my own core always stopped me from perceiving the geyser's power without Life Vision.
"As a fake mage, the many impurities necessary to suppress my core also shielded me from the external energy.
"As a fake Awakened, I had no more impurities but my natural mana flow was an even better insulator. That's why Manohar and I devised a potion that would trigger the mana flow for him and one that would suppress it for me."
"You and Manohar were friends?" Scarlett was flabbergasted by the unlikely alliance between the god of healing and the god of death and their genius.
Awakening was indeed more difficult the more one was powerful since the combination of impurities and mana made perceiving the world energy nigh impossible.
It was the reason kids and weak mages were more likely to Awaken. A developing body was burdened by a limited number of impurities and a still-growing core opposed little resistance to the world energy.
In the same way, a weak but experienced mage would have few impurities, a core far from being overloaded, and experienced the connection with the world energy via his spells enough to be able to perceive it, if the conditions were favorable enough.
"I'd say more like colleagues, but to honor Manohar's memory, you can consider us friends." Balkor sighed, thinking back at his tumultuous relationship with the late god of healing. "His definition of friendship was so loose that he considered murder attempts like a handshake."
A thin smile appeared on his face but the Blood Magus quickly shook it off.
"Only one more question." The Sekhmet felt more intrigued by the complex personality of the man who she was now convinced was more than just a bloodthirsty monster.
"It took me hundreds of years to learn how to switch light and darkness. I pride myself in being a damn good Forgemaster, yet I've never even come close to learning Creation Magic. How did you do it?"
"Switching light and darkness was actually pretty easy." Balkor shrugged. "During my studies of Necromancy, I've researched the darkness element deeply, and ever since I fought against Manohar for the first time, I understood the potential of the light element."
The Blood Magus conjured holograms of his family that he quickly coalesced into hard-light constructs.
"I learned Light Mastery on my own like I did with the rest, by observation. Once you know that something is possible, it's not just a matter of if, only of how. So, after Manohar showed me his ability to switch light and darkness, I only had to find a way to do the same.
"I was already a good Forgemaster before meeting the Overlord. My troops needed quality equipment to face the Royal Forgemasters and Spellbreakers or even the advantages that undeath given them wouldn't have sufficed.
"So she only gave me a few lessons about the few things that I wasn't aware of before showing me her Creation Magic in battle. Once again, it was only a matter of how to do it.
"As for Void Magic, I must admit that if I hadn't already learned from Manohar how to switch light and darkness and from Salaark how to make the elements flow into each other while Forgemastering, I would have never succeeded.
"Don't be fooled by Void Magic's apparent simplicity. It's actually really hard." Balkor conjured a small ball of lightning but even while focusing on a single element at a time barely half the air was converted into earth.
Scarlett nodded, knowing that what seemed a trivial accomplishment to him was actually a testament to the Blood Magus' genius. She could see with Soul Vision and her Guardian senses the still lingering chaos in Balkor's mind.
To achieve his revenge, the god of death had studied and researched all branches of magic. Yet due to the limited time and resources at his disposal, he had been forced to focus on what he needed for his Valors and neglect the rest.
After giving up on his revenge, Balkor's had filled the gaps in his self-taught education under Salaark's tutelage but that knowledge was useless without a direction.
Balkor had been content with his life as a Feather and that had stopped his improvement.
Salaark had noticed it and showed Creation Magic to him in order to stimulate the Blood Magus. Her demonstrations would have been pointless to a lesser mage whereas Balkor already possessed all the pieces he needed to reinvent Creation Magic, he just had to put them together.
The same thing had happened for applying Void Magic to light and darkness first and now to the rest of the elements. The god of death had accumulated an outstanding amount of knowledge during his short life.
Thanks to that, his brilliant mind needed just a spark of inspiration to find a practical application to that knowledge. Giving up on his revenge was what had allowed Balkor to make his true potential bloom.
It had given him the time and means necessary to put order to the chaotic mass of notions he had accumulated. His ability to learn new branches of magic with apparent ease was only due to the time he had spent turning mere learning into understanding.
Many mages had access to the same tomes he had studied but very few could derive the underlying principles that made magic work.
"I'm ready for my first Void Magic lesson, master." The mighty Guardian gave the puny human a small bow, recognizing both his superior intellect and the truth behind Salaark's words.
She would learn nothing from Balkor unless she put aside her grudge and admitted to herself that the Blood Magus was her better. Otherwise her contempt would clog her ears and her resentment cloud her mind.
She needed humility to acknowledge her current limits and pride to give everything she had during her study so that the student would soon surpass the master.
"Good." Balkor was a little surprised by the Guardian's humbleness and what he could only perceive as sudden mood swings.