Chrysalis

After so many years and so much study, you'd think that there would be widespread agreement over the advanced aspects of the System, cooperation across kingdoms providing a deep reservoir of shared knowledge to draw from. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. From the famed Tower to the Academy in Los, these august institutions of learning hoard their secrets like squirrels storing nuts for winter. The deeper initiates are forced to swear binding life oaths to ensure secrecy.

I like to amuse myself by imagining that each of these bodies is protecting the exact same information from each other, never realising that they have nothing unique, but alas that is sadly unlikely. It is for this reason that classification of even the most basic Skills and magical structures within the System are different almost everywhere you go. When combining this with the System itself being inconsistent from individual to individual in terms of what becomes unlocked and when, teaching someone exactly how Skills will progress throughout their life is a difficult task indeed.

Take magic for example. Essentially all can agree on the basic elements, though they aren't always known by the same name: earth, wind, water, fire. Fantastic, simple, we all get that. Each of these elements has an advanced form, we all agree on that: stone, gas, ice, blue fire. Excellent. The basic elements can also be fused, either by combining the Skills or manually melding the two mana types together during casting. This produces the fused elements: fire and stone form lava, fire and water form steam, fire and wind produce ember, water and earth creates mud, water and wind makes sleet, earth and wind makes dust. All-together, these are considered the 'basic elements' of magic on Pangera. The entry level. The baby stuff. Generally speaking, all mages will advance from working extensively with these elements as soon as they can, falling back on them only for the sake of efficiency or necessity.

So. What comes next?

more in-depth forms, like death or life. It's a fascinating thing to consider, and I personally don't believe that

• from a lecture provided by teacher Tony Sooka

I'm eager to test this and see how far it can go. Creating the constructs is an interesting process in and of itself. Each construct, despite being essentially a 'fake brain' made from mana, has to be linked to an actual, functioning, organic brain. It only takes a little bit of thinking for me to work out why. Despite being intricate and fiendishly complex, though not on the same level as the omni-elemental construct, there's no chance that a magical construct could ever hope to match the processing ability of literally trillions of neurons linked together. If it were possible to create a mana construct that complex and powerful, what

taking on some of the functions and processes in order to alleviate the strain and

limit. I can push them to three, but the strain means that the third mana brain isn't really being efficiently used. The larger sub-brain can handle three quite well, which is handy. So in effect, I've gone from being able to handle three separate threads at once, to being able to handle seven! A huge leap! Although I can't say that my ability to process mana and spells has

spin the mind constructs up at a moment's notice, but

see how well I can