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 could comprehend 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 become."
"Let's take water, for example. The generally accepted 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 accepted 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, lakes, 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't comprehend 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, you lack all the specifics."
"Think of it as a car but without an engine, tires, seats, and so on. It's the thing that combines basically everything, but it's not really that useful if stuff is missing."
"Theoretically, you can comprehend the Concepts in any order you want, and higher level Concepts don't necessarily need to be that much harder to comprehend."
"Let's take the generally accepted level two Concept Rain and the level one Concept Drop, for example."
"Usually, you comprehend Drop, and then you comprehend Rain. Comprehending Rain is much more difficult than comprehending Drop. You could say the difficulty to comprehend Drop is a one and comprehending Rain is a five."
"However, if you focus on Rain first, it would be easier to comprehend than if you were to comprehend Drop first and Rain second."
"Quite unintuitive, eh?"
Shang didn't react, but he agreed.
That made no sense.
"That's because the combination requirement switches places," the jester explained.
"When you first comprehend Drop and then try to comprehend Rain, you are also comprehending the method to combine the two. By combining them, Drop is increasing the power of Rain, and Rain is increasing the power of Drop."
"So, when comprehending 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 to comprehend Rain first, it would have a difficulty of five because you would have to comprehend Rain without knowing what an individual Drop does, making it very difficult. After that, comprehending Drop would have a difficulty of about 3.5 due to also having to comprehend the combination."
"In short, this means you can comprehend 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 plan…"
"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 I were to put a level to them, I would say Temperature is the easiest, followed by Twilight, followed by Addition, followed by Subtraction."
"But in comparison 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 to comprehend first, but you could decide if you want to comprehend River or Lake next. Rain leads into both of them, and they don't particularly need each other."
"Understanding River is a bit more difficult than understanding Lake, which is why River is generally accepted as the level four Concept while Lake is the level three Concept, but you could also comprehend 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, comprehending the others will become 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 to comprehend them in order, it would be 1, 5, 15, 50. If you were to comprehend them in the order you are planning on, it would be 3, 7, 12, 45."
"Luckily, your mind is already on the level of a High Mage, while everyone else has to comprehend level one Concepts while being on the level of a True Mage. Comprehending Addition first would be a bit easier than a True Mage comprehending a level one Concept, but comprehending Subtraction second would be more difficult than learning a Pure level two Concept. It would be about as difficult as comprehending 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 to comprehend the same thing."
Then, the jester grinned. "But that isn't even everything, is it?"
"You also have to comprehend two more Imposes for the two new States you want to create, and those Imposes have to be so powerful that they encompass two of the Imposes that you already created."
"And then, when everything is finished, you even have to combine everything and transform your World Connection, which will be very difficult."
"The Path you have planned is very difficult, but I 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.
