In the Five Element Continent, as implied on its name, the majority of the people were cultivating the nature energy which was differentiated into 5 main nature elements. The five nature elements consisted of wood, fire, metal, earth and water. This energy was called element energy.
The division of the empires in the continent itself was based on these element energies. Each of the empire occupied specific region that provide suitable boost to their specific element energy cultivation. The Empire existence itself originated from the geographical conditions that existed on their area. Alongside with the suitable nature's condition, it would provide tremendous advantage on the cultivation of the correct element.
The forested area on the northern part of the continent birthed the Northwood Empire which was dominant in the Wood Element cultivation. The Northwooden, with their wood based cultivation, would hardly be defeated in their forested domain. Similar case happened to any other Empire on the continent, this lead to the equilibrium balance of power between the Empires.
The cultivation of the element energy in the Five Element Continent was divided into two main branches of cultivation. Some peoples cultivated element energy by manipulating the element and used them to attack or defense by channeling the element to a studied rune or matrix. These peoples called themselves Mage.
Other groups of people, instead of manipulating the element, they tried to use the element energy to refine their body in order to make them stronger and faster. These groups of peoples called themself Warrior.
Since ancient time there was a conflict between both paths of element energy cultivation. Each branches considered their self better than the other. That classic ideology competition between the mage path and warrior path was one of the reasons of the Ancient Great War that happened on the Five Element Continent hundred years ago.
Each path had its own advantage. Mage required high threshold for the cultivator in term of talent and element affinity, but the following cultivation path would be relatively easier and faster. For Warrior, element affinity was not a deciding factor for the cultivation. But the path was arduous to cultivate, thus very few of warrior achieved higher level on the continent.
Thus Mage had more elite cultivator than Warrior on the same level. During the Great War, by the advantageous in term of quantity on their rank, Mage path won over Warrior path.
As a result, on the current era, Mage became an ideal cultivation path on the continent. Each of the element affinity genius would take this path. Unlucky guys born with lower element affinity would take the Warrior path or forgone their cultivation's journey.
On the political and business field, high levels Mage would take the role position in commands with the Warriors was given responsibility as a guard or cannon fodder's soldier. Similar cases happened also on the army.
In nature, the Five Element Energies were always available naturally to be cultivated. To the cultivator for both paths, the element energy itself was represented as colored lights scattered on the nature. Water element represented by purple lights, fire element with red light, earth element with yellow light, metal element with white light and lastly the wood element with green light.
Although the element energy was available naturally on the surrounding, that element energy itself was generated on the separate dimension. That dimension was called Element Energy Dimension. Until today, the higher leveled Mage worked hard to ravel the mystery of this still-unknown-dimension. Other than for research purposes, there was a question remained hanging on each cultivator's mind on the continent, is it possible for the dimension to stop generating element energy one day?
During the awakening ceremony, instead of collecting and absorbing the element energy from the surrounding environment, which was less pure and scarcer, the examiner would use element sensing formation to connect the real word to the element energy dimension.
Although the element energy on the continent was still abundant, till today, cultivator were working and figuring out a way to directly cultivate the element energy from the element energy dimension.
Natural element energy was highly dependent on the nature environment. For example, on the Rivermountain Kingdom and all other kingdoms on the Northwood Empire was basically abundant of wood element energy. That was because the empire region was filled with forest area. Thus the wood element energy was very rich in the empire.
In the entire Northwood Empire, only on Northsea Islands Kingdom which was a kingdom consist of islands, would have water element dominant in nature rather than wood element. The richness in wood element over other element energy in the empire led to the prominence of wood element mage and warrior. The cultivators focused on wood element would have faster cultivation rather than other element. Not to mention during battle or war, the availability of element energy on the environment would provide tremendous advantage to the wood cultivator.
For above various reasons, wood element became major element on the Northwood Empire, including Rivermountain Kingdom. Most of the nobility would possess major affinity to the wood element. The education system also provided more emphasis to cultivator majoring in the wood element.
Each of the element energy had its own characteristic. Wood element provided tremendous vitality to the cultivator, it had good recovery ability and regeneration. Wood element also had medium defense and offense. In general the wood element provided a balanced approach to the cultivator.
Wood element was dominant against earth element but would be suppressed by metal element. Water element would provide support to the wood element and wood element itself would provide support to the fire element. Although it seemed simple, the nature connections of each element energy affect the relationship of Empires on the continent heavily.
During battle, each cultivator normally would take extra precaution to the element relation. These had become common practice and studied thoroughly in the academies on the Five Element Continent.
Other than the common five elements, in some cases, special elements were also can be found on Five Element Continent. Water element might have possibility to evolve to become a rare ice element. Unlike the softer water element which had low defense and offense, the ice element was a special element that had very good defense and offense capability.
In other cases, the metal element would evolve to become lightning element, although the defense characteristic would be lower, but the offense of lightning element was the best compare to other elements.
Although rare case of element evolving were happened, but the element energy that had been cultivated by those cultivator was similar to the basic element on the nature. Ice element cultivator would remain absorbing water element from the nature. There was no independent ice element separated from water element. Thus the nature element energy remains consisted of five elements.
The evolution of the element was mostly happened on the body of that specific cultivator. That was called unique body constitution on the continent. So, although two persons absorbed similar water element, due to the unique body, one of them might evolve the element to become ice element.
Above case were rarely happened on the continent. Each of the special cultivators with unique body constitution would be hunted by the nobility, they would be considered rare even among genius.