A level-twelve psionic? The phrase struck Pan Long as vaguely familiar.
He thought hard for a while before remembering it came from an old game.
That game series had been wildly popular when he was young—so popular that anyone who played games knew of it. But as the saying went, "No reign lasts forever." Once the game company fell into the hands of a group of Indians skilled at making slide decks and spinning stories, it went downhill. In the end, it collapsed completely; not even the Grand Federation era's entertainment boom could save it.
In that game, there was a power called Psionic Power. Humans divided beings who possessed it into ten levels, with level ten being the highest they could study and master. Beyond that, power they could measure but not study or master was classed as level eleven, while power too great to measure was classed as level twelve.
In other words, a level-twelve psionic was not "one level stronger than level eleven," but "so strong their power couldn't be measured." Only one level-twelve psionic was explicitly acknowledged in the whole story: a female agent who bounced between the heroes, villains, and neutral faction before ultimately becoming a god.
How had this world come up with psionic levels too? What standard were they using to rank psionics?
Curious, Pan Long asked a server at the inn where he was staying.
The server did not find the question strange at all. "The Tower of Babel only introduced the standard recently. I remember one issue of the newspaper explained it in detail..."
She soon found that newspaper for Pan Long.
Nearly half a page of the paper was devoted to explaining the psionic levels:
Level 0: Unawakened. Whether Awakening would come through Innate aptitude or later Psychic Infection, anyone