The following morning the party of monsters were set to their plan at first light. Zild and his ghostly chaperone were left in the room at the inn, with a promise from Thoz to the innkeeper to come collect “his luggage” before sundown in case the room needed to be booked to someone else. He didn’t want to have to lug a backpack full of slime around all day and risk it being discovered while he sat through his adventuring lecture at the guild.

Speaking of, when they arrived at Outpost Omega there were actually several teenage brass plate adventurers there for the lecture as well. Interspersed in this group were a few of the older new registrants who were just on the edge of qualifying as a copper plate, as well as a few older individuals who couldn’t read or write well enough to fill out quest information by themselves. The classes at the guild catered to all of these people well enough, so Thoz and Prisaela did not stand out too much.

The lecture itself was incredibly boring and dense for Thoz, he had no interest in the interpersonal relationships of humans and their subtextual communication, so everything he heard was taken at face value. Prisaela on the other hand was able to get numerous examples of how humanoid mortals interacted with one another and what they valued. Things like trust and honesty seemed almost implicitly valuable to them.

The class also gave humans an excuse to help and educate one another. Humans placed quite a bit of value on sharing information and orating history and knowledge between one another. If they passed all these learned skills between one another, it actually started to make a bit of sense how such an objectively weak and expendable collection of races had managed to survive through the divine war.

The information they spread around was a bit hard to track at times, but it proved within reasonable form that the humans were capable of helping each other survive just by speaking to one another. Prisaela had to ponder on this for a moment, because everything she knew as a monster pointed to survival of the fittest and the individual, but humans had a strong sense of species preservation beyond just self preservation. A sense that was absent in most monsters. A true monster would just as quickly eat a member of their own species as they would a deer or rabbit, the deciding factor was ease of the hunt and not special ties.

She also learned that humans had a tendency to call almost anything a “monster”, even things that weren’t monsters. If an animal got too big, or too vicious, or learned how to use magic, it was automatically a monster as far as humanoid civilization was concerned. True monsters like shapeshifters, dragons, undead, and others were in there as well of course. The strangest part was the classification of things that were definitely not monsters being called monsters too, beings from other realms outside the mortal and hell planes. Faeries, fragments of divinity shed by gods, the occasional left over Extra, even creatures from the machine realms.

It was fairly obvious that humans called anything they didn’t understand “A monster”, making monster a catch all term for anything that isn’t humanoid or mortal. This led to a lot of misunderstandings and miscommunication among mortals, so the various adventuring guilds that had later unified into the global “Outpost Omega” collective had come up with their own ranking scale system to better understand relative ability and power.

Monsters fell sequentially in the following ranks:

SS - Reserved for monsters and creatures teetering on the edge of omnipotence or divinity.

S - Monsters classified as global threats that held the potential of ending human civilization entirely.

A - National level threats capable of wiping out entire countries.

B - Regional threats that could destroy multiple cities.

C - Local threats that could destroy an entire city.

D - Rural threats posing danger to smaller towns and villages

E - Wild threats endangering groups of people

F - Individual threats when faced one on one

G - Weak monsters that only became threatening in groups

Unranked - Animals with strange powers that weren’t dangerous enough to be ranked yet still being considered a monster.

This system then resulted in ranks for adventurers, and on average a monster needed an adventurer of a higher rank to defeat it, or a group of adventurers of equivalent rank. There were of course some exceptions to this for monsters that worked exceedingly well in groups, or when previously undiscovered or unknown monster variation popped up, but it served as a decent guide. Each rank has a corresponding metal for plates.

S (Orichalcum) - Were the adventurers that had stepped closest to the edge of the divine themselves. They were not yet fully immortal in most cases even if they had extremely elongated lifespans. None who ever made it past this point and ascended to another level of power continued to work as adventurers so there was no need for a higher rank. Less than 0.1% of adventurers ever achieved this level. A team of Orichalcum adventurers was your only hope if an SS monster set its sights on you. A single S rank had a chance of defeating an S rank monster single handedly depending on the matchup.

A (Adamantine) - Adamantine heroes are the stuff of legends, heroic parties that band together to defeat monsters beyond comprehension of the common man and save nations from the brink of destruction. On their own they serve as bastions of defense for entire countries at a time. Approximately 1% of adventurers ever reach this level.

B (Mithral) - A Mithral ranked party is often a matter of national pride, capable of protecting from all but world ending danger and at times pacifying entire regions single handedly. By population about 10% of adventurers fall into this category, but many only right before they are forced to retire of old age. The exponential decrease in numbers from each rank of adventurer heavily underlines the many guild members that are forced to retire or just tragically die before advancing any further.

C (Platinum) - Are local icons and minor celebrities in their own respect. A Platinum ranked party in a well defended city can hold it under siege for days at a time, and a single C rank guild member is usually enough to protect a town or village from anything that would do them harm. 15% of the guild is in this category and they are where the concept of “Professional Adventurers” come from, as many of them make enough from a single quest to support themselves comfortably for weeks at a time.

D (Gold) - Are often the rank and file guild members of any branch, or in extremely rural occasions, the highest ranking member. Roughly 30% of applicants reach this level before they’re forced to get another job to support their income and give up on being a hero.

E (Silver) - Is actually the largest portion of the guild, approximately 45% of permanent members. It’s considered the lowest rank, as everyone starts at copper or brass but is promoted upon completion of five quests or a full training course at the academy. Lower ranks are not counted as full members and do not always stay as members of the guild.

F and G (Copper + Brass) - Copper adventurers are new applicants to the guild that have not gone on five quests or completed a full academy training course. Brass plates are reserved for children either currently attending the academy of apprenticing under another higher ranking member.

*

This detailed ranking system meant that members of the guild did not often go on quests they could not handle, and as a result deaths in the line of duty were far less frequent than even a few generations ago. Some pointed questions also garnered Prisaela some interesting information. Apparently a monster that ranks up from a lower form without naturally being born in their current version counts as a rank or two higher from accessing previous knowledge and skills. These rare specialists are not considered a large danger though as it does not occur in the wild with any frequency.

Thozronnath was deeply insulted at his current form being considered a C-Rank monster at most. Prisaela kept it to herself when she found out doppelgangers were only E rank in most cases.

Once the class was over, they departed out into the city while most of the other students stayed around at the guild. They had the voucher for their room and board tonight, and with not enough time to run any quests there was no real reason to hang about at the guild. Those few hours could be spent better elsewhere, getting revenge.

“The Devil of the forest” would be making a visit to Rovale for the first time, and the criminal element would get the full brunt of his hospitality. Of course there was only so much that could be done in a single evening, so they needed to get creative.