Chapter 608
The jester was digging inside one of its ears with its fingers in boredom.
“Technically, there are no levels for Concepts,” the jester said.
"Theoretically, you couldprehend a level five Concept while being a Peak True Mage, and it would only be marginally more
powerful than the level one Concept."
"The goal is to learn everything about a given thing. The more you know about a thing, the stronger you be."
“Let''s take water, for example. The generally epted level one Concept for a Water Affinity is Drop, as in raindrop. You know
how drops form, how they act, and what they do."
"The generally epted level five Concept for a Water Affinity is Ocean. You effectively know the power of a huge body of water.
You know what makes it an ocean and what makes it different from rain, rivers,kes, and so on."
“However, if you only know what oceans do but don''t know how anything else works, it''s not really that useful. A real ocean has
streams inside it, and you don''t know what they do if you didn''tprehend the level four Concept of a Water Affinity, Stream."
“An ocean also produces and receives rain, which means you need the level two Concept, Rain, and to properly use that, you
need the level one Concept, drop."
"So, while you could use the more general knowledge of an ocean, youck all the specifics."Belongs to ? n0velDrama.Org.
"Think of it as a car but without an engine, tires, seats, and so on. It''s the thing thatbines basically everything, but it''s not
really that useful if stuff is missing."
"Theoretically, you canprehend the Concepts in any order you want, and higher level Concepts don''t necessarily need to be
that much harder toprehend."
“Let''s take the generally epted level two Concept Rain and the level one Concept Drop, for example."
“Usually, youprehend Drop, and then youprehend Rain. Comprehending Rain is much more difficult than
comprehending Drop. You could say the difficulty toprehend Drop is a one andprehending Rain is a five."
“However, if you focus on Rain first, it would be easier toprehend than if you were toprehend Drop first and Rain
second."
"Quite unintuitive, eh?"
Shang didn''t react, but he agreed.
That made no sense.
"That''s because thebination requirement switches ces," the jester exined.
"When you firstprehend Drop and then try toprehend Rain, you are alsoprehending the method tobine the
two. Bybining them, Drop is increasing the power of Rain, and Rain is increasing the power of Drop."
"So, whenprehending two Pure Concepts of one Affinity, you actually are not learning two things but three things, two
Concepts and a way to fuse them."
"If you were toprehend Rain first, it would have a difficulty of five because you would have toprehend Rain without
knowing what an individual Drop does, making it very difficult. After that,prehending Drop would have a difficulty of about 3.5
due to also having toprehend thebination."
"In short, this means you canprehend a level two Concept before a level one Concept, but it would be needlessly difficult
and inefficient.”
"But it is possible."
Shang nodded. "So, about my n..."
"Well," the jester said, "Entropy is a bit special."
"There''s no sense in me having to keep its first four Concepts secret since you already guessed them. If | were to put a level to
them, | would say Temperature is the easiest, followed by Twilight, followed by Addition, followed by Subtraction."
“But inparison to water, for example, these four Concepts don''t lead into one another."
“For water, Drop leads into Rain, leads into River and Lake, and those two lead into Ocean. For water, the first two are basically
mandatory toprehend first, but you could decide if you want toprehend River or Lake next. Rain leads into both of them,
and they don''t particrly need each other."
“Understanding River is a bit more difficult than understanding Lake, which is why River is generally epted as the level four
Concept while Lake is the level three Concept, but you could alsoprehend River first and Lake second."
"That is the case for your first four Concepts."
"All of your first four Concepts are separate, but they all lead into the fifth one together."
“Naturally, as soon as you know one,prehending the others will be harder."
“Let me put it into numbers. Comprehending Temperature first would be a one, Twilight would be a two, Addition would be a
three, and Subtraction would be a four. If you were toprehend them in order, it would be 1, 5, 15, 50. If you were to
comprehend them in the order you are nning on, it would be 3, 7, 12, 45."
“Luckily, your mind is already on the level of a High Mage, while everyone else has toprehend level one Concepts while
being on the level of a True Mage. Comprehending Addition first would be a bit easier than a True Mageprehending a level
one Concept, butprehending Subtraction second would be more difficult than learning a Pure level two Concept. It would be
about as difficult asprehending a Mixed level two Concept."
"In short, you have to achieve a level in Magic that would make you above average for a Peak High Mage."
“Luckily, you have about 640 years of longevity left, which is much more than any High Mage has toprehend the same
thing."
Then, the jester grinned. "But that isn''t even everything, is it?"
"You also have toprehend two more Imposes for the two new States you want to create, and those Imposes have to be so
powerful that they epass two of the Imposes that you already created."
“And then, when everything is finished, you even have tobine everything and transform your World Connection, which will
be very difficult."
"The Path you have nned is very difficult, but | have to say, it''s a very strong one."
"That should answer your question, right?" the jester asked.
Of course, the jester didn''t need to wait for an answer.
"Good, then, good luck!"
And the jester vanished.
Shang didn''t move for a while as his mind thought about his path to the Sixth Realm.
Finally, it was clear.