Referring back to the "skill points" thread a few days ago, I asked on Age Community and got an answer from ES_Paragon. He didn't know at first, went away and checked then said:
"From what I am told "skill points" is the number of levels gained during the game. This does not include levels gained at the postgame screen, from award or bonus XP."
So there we are. It is HC levels after all, but doesn't necessarily tally with the levels you actually gain from a game. Kapranos was very nearly right.