Vile Evil Hides Under The Veil

"Keeeee!"

A sharp and high-pitched scream was heard in the surroundings as it fought the effects of Roo's croak. Something was angry at the baby crow for trying to flaunt his skills in front of the butcher.

Crack!

Thump!

An unexplainable suppression was detonated in the surroundings all of a sudden. The suppression was not entirely related to mana. It was a form of mental suppression that could cloud the minds of low-ranked entities who are exposed to it.

The soldiers that were made to be a part of the perimeter detail were the first group of people that got exposed to it apart from Altashia. Arjun was among those who could identify this phenomenon within seconds.

"This… a demon beast is evolving!"

Arjun thought of Roo at first. But then he felt that the feeling he got wasn't something he could relate to Roo. This beast was from a different hierarchy.

"This feels like… an epic-tier demon beast! Damn it. I hope it doesn't belong to any of our opponents. I have to see and check it out."

Arjun said and instructed a few of his fellow soldiers. Then he disappeared from his position and started approaching the source of this newfound potential trouble.

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The rankers of Anfang had categorized beasts into multiple categories– common, uncommon, mutant, epic, legendary, and lastly mythical. The categories or tiers were based on how much of a threat the beasts belonging to their respective categories posed to normal rankers or urban settlements. Common beasts were the least threatening and could be handled by local forces if the beast region or area within the Badlands needed subjugation.

Uncommon beasts were those who needed special arrangements otherwise their special attributes carried the risk of causing casualties.

After mutant beasts, rankers' teams had to be careful when dealing with subjugation. Their strengths couldn't be predicted by normal standards. One of the boars Eren's team had fought and slain belonged to this category.

Epic and legendary tier beasts were normally limited to Badlands. Rankers' teams rarely ventured too far into the Badlands because they feared such beasts. If legendary tier beasts were the king of their regions then the epic tier beasts would be those who were vying for that position in their next evolution.

In general, ranker teams - including those from the army and guilds - encounter creatures of the mutant category at most. Epic tier beasts would normally be handled by special forces present within the armies and guilds.

No matter which kingdom or establishment, rankers of Anfang would not mess with legendary beasts willingly. Because battling with them was bound to turn into a catastrophic event for all the parties involved.

The slaying of legendary beasts could not be done by one team or army. Various forces within any establishment's army and guilds would work for hand in hand to deal with this level of threat. Typically, a ranker would at least need to be in a C-Rank to be part of such a legendary raid.

Mythical beasts were exactly that... mythical. Forget about messing with them. Establishments would surrender their regions to such beasts without even trying their luck at fighting for them. If any of such beasts decided to attack human settlements, then kingdoms would forget all their grievances and come together to deal with such an existence. That's because their survival depended on them.

Both mana beasts and demon beasts could be categorized this way. It's just that the dangers would increase multifold per category when it came to demon beasts due to their crowd control abilities.

Then there were special cases. Or to be specific, certain families of beasts were labelled with a particular category. This was done without taking into account the level of threat they might or might not pose to rankers and their settlements. That's because some bloodlines carry a higher threat potential than others.

Normally, low ranking beasts don't exceed the mutant tier standard no matter their ranking status. That's because establishments could arrange appropriate response teams with ranking status corresponding to the beasts to deal with them most efficiently.

There were few standards of measurement in place other than this vague generalization that would help the ranker distinguish between the beast categories. Calculating the rough BTP estimates using the artefacts was one way. The BTP limits for each rank were different for beasts. There was a larger difference between the initial and final stages of the ranking for the beasts than between human rankers'. The bottleneck difference per BTP was also significantly large.

Rankers would often use artefacts when they were doing their recon missions to find out which rank, type, and category of beasts they were dealing with. This was the primary method to formulate subjugation missions.

The intensity of psychic waves the demon beasts could produce would attest to their categories. The more intense their psychic wave was, the more crowd control abilities they would possess, posing a much higher level of danger.

It was said that each of the demon beasts carried the potential within them to become the progenitor of their race or type. Crowd control was limited for the other races. But for their race, such high-ranking demon beasts would be able to obtain total control over all their lower-ranked kin. This was what made them different from being referred to as mana beasts.

Even monsters on individual levels were categorized the same way. As a result, the monster subjugation mission tended to consider monster tribes as a whole instead of just individual monsters.

Plus, monsters were less likely to travel into urban areas or enter urban territories by leaving their tribes alone unless a coup had taken place. So monster subjugation missions were often limited to the area near the boundaries of the Badlands where the exiled members were forced to go.

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Altashia's demon beast was called WindFire Jackdaw. Just like his master, he too had an affinity with fire and wind. It was an ideal match for the warrior. It would grow and eventually step into the epic category when it becomes a high-ranking entity. Further category progression would depend upon the beast's potential as a demon beast and his luck.

But Eren's hatched egg released such intense psychic waves that Arjun could confirm that it belonged to the epic category at its birth. He wasn't sure who had captured such a beast.

Arjun told the rest of the rankers to stay alert. He then approached the tower, which had suddenly become a focal point for all of the rankers present at the orc camp.