Deji commanded over the phone that the Rank 4s join the front lines to secure the retreat. Mira jumped from building to building toward the front lines and dived toward the center of the undead charge.

As she dove she drew Havoc Night, she landed on a Rank 2 undead who was squashed and began to weed the undead away. The undead stopped attacking the low Ranks and tried to swarm her from all sides but they were very unsuccessful. The moment they came within arm’s reach of her they lost their heads, she was the blurring blade of a blender and they were the fruit and vegetables.

The low Ranks retreated with the Rank 3s while the Rank 4s fought until the low Ranks were out of sight. Once the low Ranks were gone, Deji ordered a retreat and the Rank 4s jumped away from the horde, jumping from building to building in a direction that was different from the low Ranks path of retreat.

The Rank 4s traveled too fast for the low Rank undead to follow so the undead were only left with the option of running after them in the general direction they went. When the Rank 4s were out of the view of the undead they regrouped and joined the low Ranks again.

The Rank 4s came back to the low Ranks covered in silver and green blood, none of them had wounds. Deji had ordered through the phones that they should march north for an hour and rest for 8 hours after that.

The army marched as ordered and set up camp after the hour of marching. The high Ranks were called for a meeting and as Mira was heading to the meeting place she saw something she hadn’t noticed, undead bodies were being carried in huge carts by Rank 3s to the back of the camp. She thought ‘So that’s why they didn’t help to secure the retreat even though it would have been faster if they did’

She entered the building they were to meet in looking around for her team members. She was excited, since she always fought solo when she was training, and working together with others had been a very pleasant experience for her. She found her team members at the head of the group, Funmi smiled when she saw the excitement on her face.

She got to where they were and Funmi said “How was it?” with an expectant smile. Mira answered “It was great! I was nervous that I would mess up for a while but I somehow made it”, they high fived and got into their place.

When everyone came in, the meeting started, Animasawun announced the report of the dead and injured members as well as the amount of undead corpses that was acquired. The numbers of injured and dead were small enough for them to continue the raid and the amount of undead corpses was optimum, by their next raid all the carts would be full and would require transport to the sanctuary.

The meeting concluded and the high Ranks dispersed, when the time for rest ended it was night time, the army marched south heading as if they were heading back to the location of the previous skirmish that happened in the morning. The army maintained the battle formation as they travelled this time because the undead could attack at any moment.

On their way there the encountered stray undead and did something Mira wasn’t expecting. Instead of killing the undead they captured them, they ambushed them with greater numbers, cut their limbs off at the ankles and tied them up.

Some undead died in the process but they were very few. The army marched away from the location of the previous skirmish and headed west, they stopped a few kilometers from the border of the undead territory and the high Ranks went ahead while the low Rank killed all the undead at the same time.

Mira asked Simi why they did that and she explained “The minds can sense when some undead die, not all of them though. In a situation like this these undead are used as scouts so the minds monitor them. We can’t identify the specific undead the minds are monitoring so we capture them and kill them all at the same time to confuse the minds. The minds can’t sense the location of the undead or see what they see so it confuses them a lot when we do this”

A repeat of what happened the previous morning played itself out again, except this time the Rank 1s used night vision goggles as they couldn’t see in the dark.

The battle went off script when the sighting of a Rank 4 was reported. 4 Rank 4 undead were seen and the Rank 4 High Humans descended in an effort to secure the retreat, except this time the low Rank undead didn’t attack. They left the area, making way for the new undead to have their fight.

The undead that came forward were riding undead horses, Mira’s IP identified them; 3 [Rank 4 Hive Prodigies], 1 [Rank 4 Hive Genius] and 4 [Rank 3 Hive Tricorn].

These were undead that Mira had never fought before, she looked at the faces of the other Rank 4s, they were shocked too, they had never seen such undead.

Mira was a little tense when she saw their faces, this meant that she was in an actual situation where she could die and Jade wasn’t around. She quickly hardened her resolve, she wasn’t going to rely on him forever and she needed to be able to face the unknown without him being there to protect her that was also the result of her freedom.

The Rank 4s grouped up into their individual groups and faced the undead; Deji’s team facing two undead, one being the genius. The prodigies were 8 feet tall and had smooth purple exoskeleton that covered them like armor.

They all had weapons which was something Mira had never seen herself but Jade had told her that he had faced undead with weapons, she remembered the name of the undead Jade talked about but there were many discrepancies the undead that had weapons that Jade fought were Rank 5 Hive Gladiators while these were Rank 4 and the one’s Jade faced weren’t riders.

The Prodigies’ weapons were whip, dual long swords and glaive, made of the same material as their exoskeleton. Pentagon was facing the one with dual sword long swords, Fox was facing the genius and the glaive wielder, and the Diamonds were facing the whip wielder.

The genius carried no weapon, it had no exoskeleton, it was very lean compared to the muscular look of the prodigies and it stayed at the back of the prodigy formation, directly behind the prodigy with a glaive.

The Tricorns were Rank 3 undead that they had never seen too, they had purple exoskeleton, their muscles were very taut and they had three horns, 2 on the top left and right and one above their snout, the horse also had no eyes or ears.

As if by tacit agreement, the battle commenced. The genius stepped back while the prodigies rode forward, the Rank 4s charged at them with the defenders in front and the attackers in the back, their weapons covered in auras of different colors.

{Excerpt from the article ‘Ranks Demystified – by Avatari’}

{Ranks, that number that you just want to increase but find it so hard to do. When the IPs were released the Rank became a way of identifying who was more important for most human and monster communities. This article explains the details of what Ranks are and what I presume their purpose is.

For humans Rank identified the class of monster or undead a person has killed, it indicates the danger level of the person and the strength of the person but in some cases it is very inaccurate at representing the actual strength of a person.

It is possible to kill a creature and get 60% of the encode (Be the main reason the creature died) without outclassing the creature in stats. Creativity and circumstances can affect whether a person can win a fight with a creature. For instance, if a person exploits another creature’s weakness and kill it in the process it doesn’t mean the person is stronger than the monster even if the person solo kills the monster.

Another situation where Rank is terrible at showing the capabilities of a person is when a person improves stats or uses an improved weapon. If the person is capable of killing a higher Rank creature than before with the new stats or weapon the person’s Rank will not show this hence it doesn’t perfectly identify the killing capability of the person.

For Humans I believe the purpose of the Rank is to show the History of the person’s kills, it is a tag. It is not an assessment of any kind and a lower Rank person can kill a higher Rank person if some conditions are met.

For monsters Rank is an assessment of strength, the more stats a monster gets the higher the monsters rank will become. The Rank of monsters is decided by the kill en-code of the monster with is derived from the monsters stats.

Now because a monster has a certain amount of stats with amounts to a Rank doesn’t mean a creature of a higher Rank can kill it. The stat physique as well as the monster’s proficiency in using those stats, are what decide whether the monster is killable by a creature or not.

For instance if a High travel speed long ranged poisonous Rank 4 monster fights a high strength, endurance and energy short or medium range Rank 6 creature the Rank 4 monster has a good chance of winning. The Rank 4 monster will win only if it maintains its distance with the Rank 6 creature and if the Rank 6 creature doesn’t have a good answer for its poison. It would take a while but the Rank 4 monster would win.

The issue here is that from my experiments, the Rank 4 monster will not become a Rank 6 monster even if it kills one due to its low kill en-code, where as a Rank 4 human would have become a Rank 6.

Hence one must exercise caution to assess a monster’s traits before being confident about engaging the monster and killing it.

As a whole Rank is just a simplified way of the IPs showing us where it assumes we (Monster or Human) are on the food chain/en-code chain. It doesn’t denote how important a creature is to the community it stays in.

A Rank 2 inventor, researcher or scout is just as important as or more important than a Rank 5 combatant depending on how capable the person is.

The relation between a monster or a person’s kill en-code and Rank and how they affect each other is detailed in my article ‘Kill En-code’}