As soon as the two men were out of sight of the blood soaked clearing, Jeffrey resumed his speech about monster ranks.
“Right. I left off at Ruler rank monsters, which are some of the most powerful creatures that you are ever likely to see. However, there is one more above that that you might hear of. Monarch rank monsters are incredibly powerful, with the requirements for that rank not only being at the C Rank, but also holding an entire universe under your dominion. Such creatures are quite few and far between. Last I checked, they numbered in the low tens of millions. This is because very few monsters are allowed to get to this stage in this day and age. Most of the promising monsters are killed off by enterprising adventurers.”
“Wait, tens of millions is a low number? That seems quite high to me,” Sam asked.
“On a multiversal scale, yes. Remember that there are tens of billions of universes in this Multiverse. For only twenty or thirty million to be owned by monsters is a small percentage. Also, the number of people in a rank exponentially decreases as you climb up them. There are innumerable G and F Rankers in the Multiverse, but only a few hundred trillion E Rankers. Past that, it gets even worse. There are less than 200 A Rankers in the entire Multiverse. Then again, that’s just as well. People with that sort of power should not exist.”
“I assume those statistics can be used as a gauge for how difficult it is to reach those ranks?”
“Yes. Only about one in fifty G Rankers make it to F Rank. Barely one in ten thousand make it to E Rank, and it just gets larger from there. Your chances of even making it to C Rank are so astronomically small that most just give up before they even have started. Then again, there can only be so many galaxy wrecking creatures around before things start going downhill. Most of the higher rankers were culled during the Age of Blood, and their numbers are only returning now.”
“It seems like we have a long road ahead of us,” Sam said, adjusting the boar's head on his shoulder. ‘However, I have faith that we can make it there.”
“That faith might be shaken when I tell you about the higher ranked monsters,” Jeffrey replied, smiling. “Monarch Tier is the last tier in which monsters are somewhat easy to find. After that, creatures become semi-mythical in nature. Most cultivators who have made it to that point rely on the deaths of other people for essence, rather than hunting down elusive monsters. After Monarch Tier comes the Potency rank. Creatures at this rank are like forces of nature, able to devastate universes in the span of a few years. Most of them are in hiding, but I know of a few who hold small empires in the Multiversal Fringe. Well, I have heard of their existence. I don’t actually know much about them.”
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“Are they all this rare because people hunt them down to the point of extinction?” Sam queried.
“Actually, that is wrong. The main reason for that is because monsters of that tier are able to alter their forms, to a degree that they can fool almost anybody. Most of them assimilate into the factions of the Multiverse, pretending that they are just normal cultivators.”
“Oh. Well, it will be a very long time until I have to worry about anything else though,” Sam replied, smiling. It would be such a long time that he might not even remember this conversation by then. Sam realized that he really had no idea about the timescale of the ranks.
“Jeffrey, before we continue, can you tell me how long it takes to rank up generally?”
“You’re finally wondering that then, huh? That was one of my very first questions when I began my training. But it doesn't matter. Usually it takes about five years to reach F Rank for an average cultivator, as in one that lives in the integrated Multiverse where opportunities to level are few and far between. From there it takes about a century to reach E Rank. After that, the time becomes immense, with millennia dedicated to reaching D Rank. C Rank takes upwards of a hundred thousand years, and B Rank upwards of ten million. Finally A Rank. The only cultivators to even reach that level are all billions of years old, with some of them, like Altari, being even older. It will truly be a long time before you have to worry about any of that.”
“That’s a lot longer than I was expecting. I can barely even fathom those timescales in my head,” Sam said. Thinking about living for a thousand years was already hard enough, but a million? That was true brain breaking material there.
By that point, what sort of creature would he even be? Certainly not the same Sam Atlas that he was now. Even worse, would he be the only one to even reach those lofty heights among his faction members? He had far more advantages than any of his companions did. If anyone was going to reach the higher ranks, it would be him. All it would take was his humanity to do so. Then again, was he even human now? His body had long been changed by the System to something other, something that could bear the stress of leveling. It was safe to say that he was no longer a member of his old race, no matter what his interface said. In any case, it was definitely something to think about.
The conversation came to a halt for a few minutes, in which time both men thought about the heady implications of what they had been discussing. Contemplating eternity was not an easy task, especially for mere mortals. Even for true immortals, it was one of the most existential threats. At a certain point, any being other than the most sublime of cultivators would succumb to insanity. It was down to their will as to when that would happen.