Nathan nodded his head and looked serious as if he was about to be imparted some legendary or military-grade secret. Seeing her son so serious, Natalie could not help but giggle a bit at her overly serious 4-year-old.
"What I am going to teach you are just the basics along with some of my own insights that I have gathered over the years. To start off, there is a difference between magic and ki users based on their innate talent.
Both are very rare to find though. 1 out of every 10 thousand men and women will be ki users. This is already very rare. As for magic users, they are even rarer, especially in men.
For every 100 women that are ki users, there will only be a single female mage. As for male mages, it is rare to find 1 in every ten million ki users. There are plenty of countries that do not have a single male mage currently living in them."
Natalie paused to catch her breath. She explained a large amount of information in a short time. Nathan, being a good son, brought her over a glass of water for her parched throat. Natalie happily took the glass before continuing her explanation
"Now I will go over the two types and the rare third type. What determines a person type is where their core has been formed. Ki manipulators have their core form within their heart and it produces ki. Mana manipulators have their core form within their brain and it produces mana.
The rare third variants are dual users called Riders. These are individuals who form two cores when they awaken, one in their heart and the other in their brain.
Ki manipulators are called mystics. They use the ki they produce to do a variety of things but there are 3 main abilities. They are passive, internal, and external use. What someone is able to do with ki depends on their innate talent.
Talent levels of mystics are determined by their ki's/core's color. From lowest to highest: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. The levels are further divided by brightness: bright, moderate, and dark.
Passive ki manipulation is the ki that reinforces someone's body. This makes one naturally grow stronger due to the ki in their body. The more one trains their ki, the better their body becomes.
Internal ki use is when a person actively forces their ki throughout their body, armor, or weapons. This increases their natural abilities to a higher degree based on how much control a person has.
The downside is that too much ki would cause one's body or items to break down rapidly. The best way to counter this, is to work out more and improve one's control so that they can maximize the use of their ki.
External is the rarest and only those with the highest amount fo talent and training can achieve. Those who can use external ki are able to increase their attacks by a large amount, create barriers, or even use long range attacks.
Those who control mana are called magi or mages by most. Magi control the elements and mana to produce a variety of effects. Magi also have levels of innate talent but we determine them by the shape of the core for magi. They are from lowest to highest: sphere, cone, pyramid, and cube.
Magi cores are divided into 4 levels unlike the 6 levels of mystics. This makes it a bit more difficult to classify who is stronger in general but for the most part, magi defeat mystics. This is due to all magi being able to use long range attacks as well as elements unlike the mystics who can only attack at a distance using bows or by having very high talent.
Magi are able to use spells from any elements but usually stick to a specialty since they feel a 'connection' to those elements or just have a preference. Take myself for example. I prefer using spells of the wind element since they just call to me.
There are 8 elements in total with each having their own specialty. I'll save you their specialties for later but as for the elements, they are: water/ice, fire, wind, lighting, earth, light, darkness, and nature.
The last ones are the riders. An ancient race created machines called golems. No one knows why or who created them, but riders are the only ones able to use them. We even tried to put a mystic and a mage inside of a single golem to have them work together to move it but the golem went on a rampage and nearly wiped out 3 whole cities before it could be stopped.
A single golem can take on archmages if they are skilled enough or armed with the right spell enchantments. Golems are very powerful but few can use them due to their harsh requirements which make countries and races fight over people with the ability to be riders.
The hidden 4th category, commoners Invalids as most arrogant mana/ki users call them. These are users who have none in a single or more main category."