Levelling#
tier is an original term
Spoiler
Article contains spoilers: Full Series
After acquiring a specialization, a user may level themselves up to receive more benefits from it as well as make themselves more powerful in general.
The “levels” are referred to by tier - Tier One, Tier Two, etc. You can level up by gaining experience. The primary source of it comes from monsters, which are unnaturally large stores of physically manifested metaphysical energy generated by the Governance. Absorbing experience energy generates an influx of ‘knowledge’ (analogous to experience points) for the soul to consume and use to permanently upgrade itself on command. Alternatively, non-combat oriented users may buy experience from vendors, but monster-slaying is ultimately the basis of all experience gathering. This is because the easiest way for the Chaos to distribute stable and balanced sources of magic was through monsters.
Combat specializations are considered the base of the Governance, creating experience by killing monsters. Next up are farmers and craftsmen, who buy generated experience, level up, and use their bonuses from levelling to multiply the experience they had bought. Further on, a tax on craftsmen and farmer experience is taken and given to the governing specializations, who use it to strengthen the nations, from which a further tax is taken at the end of each year for the Apotheosis.
Experience points may be bought and sold, and an individual can extract their experience points on command. However, extracting too many can cause the individual to regress in tier, which is extremely dangerous. Extracted experience maintains an affinity to its original owner in some way, though this is highly undocumented (and allows for some crazy plot twists…?).