How exactly does the spending of Dreams to strengthen connections in Golden Sky Stories work?

Question

To clarify, I have read the book and on page 61 there is a section that specifies the actual cost in Dreams to strengthen a connection to each level, cost to strengthen connection to;

1:
5 Dreams (0 with Impression Check)

2:
5 Dreams (0 with Impression Check)

3:
5 Dreams

4:
8 Dreams

5:
12 Dreams

However, the book does not seem to go on to specify that you have to go from 1 to 2 (or 2 to 3 if you did well on a connection check) before you can increase the value further, even in the text above the table it only seems to maybe lightly imply how this works (and at least to me, when I read it, it could be implying one of two ways for it to work).

In other words, I don't know for sure that you have to increase your connection's value by one point at a time which would mean you have to pay every cost except the two first ones (because you can waive those ones through a check) to get all the way up to five.

My question: is the rule that you do indeed have to pay for every single level of connection before you can pay for the next one, like I suspect, or can you skip them if you save for enough to pay 12 Dreams immediately for a level 5 connection?

Answer 1

The rules do not specify. It's probably safe to assume that the game won't break regardless of which way you play it, however, the example on page 81 shows Riko's player spending 5 Dreams to increase a connection from 1 to 2, which would seem to indicate that you need to do it in steps (which would be the traditional reading of the rule in any case) since otherwise she would probably increase that connection directly to 3.