The actual process of fusion happened by taking one ability of each base affinity, and combining their symbols into one. This would effectively create the first rank thundersnow ability while also providing Erik with insights into the basic understanding of thundersnow.
Since this was the first time Erik was attempting to fuse affinities, he didn't actually know if he had to do this for both his Runebound system and his Arcanist system to gain access to the affinity, but he wasn't about to test it out.
After all, he did know for sure that it would surely count as brining his systems out of balance, and he didn't ever want to suffer through that again.
Luckily, his ability to do two things at once would help out here as well. Naturally, it would slow his progress down a little, but it wouldn't be too bad. He still expected to finish within a month, even though most people would take far longer to fuse third-rank affinities, if they even succeeded at all.
