Percy had spoken softly, knowing that the deity could easily hear him. She obviously wasn’t physically present inside her internal world, but she was perfectly aware of everything happening within it.
“Are you familiar with the peak factions’ system for measuring a mage’s fighting strength?” Aje asked, her voice echoing from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
Percy nodded. “A newly promoted deity with a single common element would be an Eleventh Circle mage, right?”
“Correct,” the goddess confirmed. “Branching out into a new element adds another circle – or grade, depending on how you choose to think about it – as does mastering all the available concepts of an existing element.”
“Does each element have the same number of concepts?”
“Four,” Aje said. “The first is the foundational concept necessary to add the mana type into one’s internal world, while the other three are auxiliary concepts – the same ones that a god’s children can inherit as blessings, or that mortals and deities can extract from a Ring of Sacrilege. Mastering just one or two of the auxiliary concepts still helps, but the benefit is much smaller than perfecting the element.”
Percy pondered over the implications, quickly identifying a problem. “But there are so many combinations of common affinities – thirty-one by the time one reaches the end of Elemental Acquisition, if I’m not mistaken. If every element raises your grade when you first obtain it, and a second time once you complete it, wouldn’t a god at the peak of that stage be something like a Seventy-Second Circle mage?”
“Not exactly,” the goddess replied. “For common elements and their combinations, quality is far more important than quantity. A deity’s grade only increases when they comprehend their first composite affinity, the first three-element combination, and so on. Additional common elements are merely the prerequisites for the more complex affinities.”
“So, somebody at the peak of Elemental Acquisition who possesses no rare affinities will ‘only’ be a Twentieth Circle mage?”
The goddess chuckled. “Sort of, but that’s still nothing to scoff at. Grades in the Concept realm scale exponentially, just like they do for mortals, so the difference between a Twentieth Circle mage and an Eleventh Circle mage is even larger than that separating a Brown insect from a demigod. Also, there are a few additional factors to consider.”
“Such as?”
“Internal worlds grow passively over time, even if their owner never bothers to master new concepts.”
Percy recalled Phoebe mentioning something similar. “Doesn’t that mean that younger gods can never catch up to deities who are millions of years old – even if they possess more affinities?”
“They can,” Aje said. “Gods only gain a free grade about once every million years, and they are limited to a maximum of three using this method, for reasons that I won’t get into right now. It helps, but everyone gets stuck at roughly the same baseline after mastering all the common elements, so the number of rare affinities still plays a major role. Those elements all contribute separately, regardless of how many a god has comprehended.”
Running a few mental calculations in his borrowed head, Percy estimated that the likes of Aje and Lanthaniel – who he estimated to be younger than a million years old – were Fourteenth Circle mages, as they had fully mastered their first common element and their first composite element.
Julius – his host’s deceased mentor – on the other hand, had only been an Eleventh Circle mage, since he had ascended with a single common element and hadn’t even mastered it.
Nephthys had probably been a Twelfth Circle mage at the height of her power, as she had also attained divinity with a single element – albeit a rare one – yet had managed to fully flesh it out.
Meanwhile, Phoebe had to be an Eighteenth Circle mage. She had mastered the mind affinity and two common elements, yet she had only comprehended her third – without completing it. Furthermore, she had certainly lived for well over a million years, but Percy didn’t think that she had reached two.
Someone like Ishkuria would have to be either a Twenty-Second or Twenty-Third Circle mage. The complete mastery of the five common elements and all their combinations had guaranteed the first twenty circles of strength, and Percy was sure that she had lived for longer than two million years, though he didn’t know whether she had reached three.
“What about the strongest gods in the universe? It should currently be those who have reached the peak of Elemental Acquisition after ascending with a single rare element, right?” Percy asked, estimating their ceiling to be around the Twenty-Fifth Circle.
“That’s a close enough guess, but it ignores two other factors: external concepts and people who can punch up. Don’t forget that this is ultimately a system for classifying a person’s fighting strength,” Aje corrected him.
He didn’t interrupt, waiting for the goddess to elaborate.
“External concepts don’t come in bundles like those tied to certain affinities. Each directly elevates a god’s strength by a single circle,” the Gallimian deity explained.
Percy frowned, realizing that he didn’t know enough about the topic to calculate the strength of the most powerful gods accurately. He had only heard of external concepts related to magiscript and alchemy, but the former had only been comprehended by Metatron, and the latter was still hypothetical.
“What about gods who can punch up? How much of a gap do the best of them close?” he asked.
“Three circles – pretty much the same that the most powerful mortals can manage. In fact, it’s usually the same mages who used to be called ‘paragons’ in the Colour realm that might maintain their advantage after their apotheosis – depending on the source of their strength,” Aje explained.
Taking the new information into account, Percy tried to revise his estimates to the best of his ability. Assuming that the peak factions had a former paragon at the pinnacle of Elemental Acquisition, and that the same person had ascended with a rare affinity before eventually mastering an external concept as well, they would qualify as a Twenty-Ninth Circle mage.
This should roughly be the current ceiling – give or take a step or two – until the strongest deities with two rare affinities managed to surpass the current leaders of the Moirai and the Void Hand, touching the Thirty-First Circle. If the stars aligned, Zurvanai might even make it all the way to the Thirty-Third Circle – thanks to Percy.
‘That’s insane,’ Micky noted. ‘To them, even somebody like Ishkuria would be no different from an ant. And there is a similar gap between Ishkuria and Lanthaniel or Aje.’
Percy nodded grimly, realizing that the Concept realm spanned a far vaster range of power than the Colour realm. And that was without anybody even approaching its theoretical ceiling. What if someone were to master every rare affinity and external concept in existence?
However, he also felt somewhat content in the knowledge that he might be able to leapfrog over several grades with his own apotheosis. Just comprehending all the elements that he, Micky, and Nephthys currently possessed would boost his strength by something ridiculous – like six circles – in an instant.
That was without even mastering his affinities, acquiring new ones, or taking any other boosts like the Focus that he was going to commission into account. There were simply way too many avenues to keep raising his strength as a deity…
“What about the size of an internal world?” he asked, pivoting to an adjacent topic.
“Ignoring gods who can punch up, every other boost that I have mentioned roughly doubles the internal world’s diameter per circle, while the volume and mana capacity increases by a factor of eight. A deity’s strength still only triples though, much like the difference between mortal grades. That’s because only the quantity of a god’s mana goes up, while its quality remains stuck at the same level as a demigod’s.”
That more or less aligned with Percy’s observations about the internal worlds he had visited, with one exception. “I couldn’t help but notice that yours is a little larger than it’s supposed to be, based on everything else you have said. Is it because of the stronger domain that you had during your ascension?”
“Yes. Obatala created his Decree with the intention of giving our people access to a certain external concept. Our potent willpower is just a manifestation of that effort, though none of us has managed to fully comprehend it. Thankfully, the incomplete concept still elevates our strength by roughly half a grade.”
Percy suddenly found himself quite interested in talking to the titan about this. His main body had produced an even more powerful domain after his fusion with Micky, so he couldn’t help but think that he was closer to mastering the external concept Aje was talking about than the Gallimians.
“Final question: what’s up with the pure affinity? I was told that it works a bit like a rare element, but that doesn’t explain why everyone is trying their best to get rid of it.”
He didn’t want to keep pestering the Gallimian goddess as she’d already given him plenty to think about, but he couldn’t contain his curiosity. This was important information that would determine what he should do with his second core.
“That’s mostly correct. The issue is that the pure affinity seems to be missing an auxiliary concept – nobody has ever managed to comprehend more than two, which leads to a couple of additional problems. The strongest pure deities fall something like half a grade short of those with rare elements. That’s not necessarily the end of the world in and of itself, but entering the Elemental Acquisition stage with an unstable internal world makes it significantly more difficult to progress through it.”
“If their internal world is unstable, isn’t that proof that the final auxiliary concept exists?” Percy asked, pointing out the most logical explanation.
“Clearly,” Aje conceded. “But that hasn’t helped anyone to discover it. Demigods with the pure affinity always face a difficult choice,” she said, not bothering to elaborate.
She didn’t have to, as the paths stretching before such mages were obvious enough. They could acquire a common or composite affinity before ascending, to make their life easier at the cost of lowering their eventual ceiling as gods. Alternatively, they could keep the pure affinity anyway, which in theory would raise their ceiling by a grade and a half. In practice, it might end up stinting their growth even more severely.
Finally, they could acquire a proper rare affinity, maintaining an even higher ceiling without the added difficulty. It was the only “good” solution, assuming that their faction was rich enough to pamper them.
‘Well… damn. I’ve still got no idea what the right answer is,’ Percy admitted to his fellow aspect.
Giving up on the pure affinity felt like a mistake, since he wouldn’t be able to acquire those concepts later. On the flip side, keeping it would make his entire journey in the Concept realm much harder than it had to be. Replacing it with a rare affinity was obviously better as he currently was, but he didn’t know how many additional cores or aspects he might have by the time he was ready for his apotheosis.
Percy and Micky discussed the matter from every possible angle over the next few days, though they were no closer to a decision when Tiberius informed them that he had awakened a metal affinity, nor when Aje alerted them to the fact that they had reached Gallimus.