193 Chapter 7 (1/2)
Souls? What did I know about souls? Apart from folk-tales and speculation… nothing really. If I were to take a gander, I would guess that they were some sort of spiritual entity that was central to our personality. A lot of theories about what happened to us after death also mentioned souls. So, maybe they were what was left of us when we were corpses rotting six feet underground. If souls existed, did the afterlife exist too? What about reincarnation? What about the Gods? Were they more than words on paper and figments of popular imagination?
Isabella's query raised a tidal wave of speculation in my mind – my mind leaping from one idea to another like a rabbit chased by a fox.
Restraining my mind, I answered her honestly. ”Nothing definitive.”
She nodded appreciatively. ”It's good that you have an open mind and haven't let popular perception colour your outlook. Pre-conceived notions are really hard to get rid of.”
”Anyway,” she continued. ”A soul is nothing but another state of mana. You know how mana changes its state and upgrades in density with each promotion of the mage's Tier? Gaseous mana at Tier 1, liquid at Tier 2, semi-solid at Tier 3, solid at Tier 4, crystalline at Tier 5… and during the promotion from Tier 5 to 6, the mana undergoes another transformation. The mind crystal shatters and collapses to a tiny point out of which a translucent phantom figure emerges. The figure looks like our true self – that is, the image we have of ourselves in our own mind.
”The nomenclature of the Tier system is good for localizing the comparative power of a mage… and for logistics. A tier 2 mage is expected to be stronger than a Tier 1 and if I tell you that there are a hundred Tier 1s and ten Tier 2s in the opponent's army, you can easily get an idea of their collective strength.”
I nodded in agreement. When I had served under Marshal Tauros at the walls of Firang, he had taught me some back of the envelope calculations to judge the relative strengths of two armies. As the mana capacity of a mage was directly proportional to their tier -- Tier 2 mages having twice as much mana as Tier 1s and Tier 3s thrice as much -- we could get a rough estimate of collective strength by summing the number of soldiers in each tier multiplied by the tier number. Then force multipliers like a defensive wall or advantageous terrain would be considered to further refine the estimate.
”But the naming system leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to describing what the Tiers involve.” Isabella continued. ”In that respect, I feel that the Huaxian naming system is more comprehensive. Tier 1 is known as the Body Refining stage, Tier 2 is the Qi condensation stage, Tier 3 is the Foundation Building stage and Tier 4 and 5 are the Core Formation stages – Solid Core and Crystal Core respectively. A Tier 6 Demigod, in their system, would be a Nascent Soul practitioner.”
Suddenly, she shifted topics. ”I heard that you had the –” holding a palm up horizontally, she tilted it to one side, ”- fortune -” then to the other, ”- misfortune of observing an Elemental in its natural habitat.”
”Yes,” I replied. ”It was when we penetrated into the heart of the Dungeon of Gun. It was a relatively young elemental – practically a baby by their standards – and it had already been tampered with by Miyagi Vulpine, otherwise, neither Ceres nor I would be here to see you. Even then, we lost the Princess of the Wolves in there. It was an experience to be sure. An unforgettable one.”
”Hmm, and what did you notice about the Elemental's mana usage? As far as I have inquired, you had that mana sense at that point in time. You must have used it to gauge the Elemental.”
”I did.” I acknowledged. ”I noticed the Elemental absorbing all the mana around it in a vortex and then turning it into fire mana. It felt like I was seeing a whirlpool of fire… a flaming tornado.”