About: Ranks

When the world of humans first began specializing in raiding "dungeons" and worlds beyond their own, via "gates" / portals, several governments and business organizations decided to coalesce together into a centralized authority for deciding upon handling and benchmarking all the new "heroes", "adventurers" and dungeon "hunters" that were emerging from the mass population. Similar to IUPAC, SI, and CERN, they have member nations and embassies all across the surface layer of the Earth with further plans to open bases in subterranean regions underground alongside other planets or galaxies on an interstellar level.

Though they appear to have authority, their rankings are only a rule of thumb for the general public to measure the quality, power and threat level of a hero. After looking at multiple options for creating the "grade boundaries" for the ranks, the Council had decided to settle on the levels and heuristics that are in use today.

Ranking Boundaries

published by the Board of Earthly Regents Council – BERC

O rank = Omniscient = beyond P-rank
P rank = Predator = beyond S-rank

S rank = Sovereign = top 10
A rank = Apex = top 100
B rank = Baron = top 1000
C rank = Champion = top 10,000
D rank = Dominator = top 100,000
E rank = Expert = top 1,000,000 (million)
F rank = Forerunner = top 10,000,000
G rank = Gladiator = top 100,000,000
H rank = Hobbyist = top 1,000,000,000 (billion)
U rank = Unranked = top 10,000,000,000

X rank = Unworthy = top 100,000,000,000

Starting from the baseline level of H rank for hobbyists and amateurs for labelling even the weakest of humans who have decided to register their name in the official dungeon hunter records, the scales are on orders of magnitude with the ranks being assigned by the numerical rank rather than a qualitative or independently quantitative one. This means that even if there were 100 heroes worthy of being S-rankers, they would be assessed with further sub categories like fame, number of dungeons raided, number of people rescued, or even academic qualifications and certifications - just to ensure that only the top 10 are chosen to be S-rankers.

The ranks are also dynamic, with changes occurring daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, etc. A hero who is a yearly A-ranker could be fluctuating between A and B ranks during a week, or even between their numerical values jumping to values within the range of #101 to #1000, e.g. 677 on Sunday, 645 on Monday, 555 on Tuesday, 920 on Wednesday, in terms of daily ranks. Ranks shift automatically if either the person themselves performs a new activity worthy of attention or if anyone else across its rank group performs something. If an A ranker with rank #11 suddenly becomes #10, that means the S-ranker who was previously #10 will now move down to become an A-ranker with #11-th position.

Ranks on yearly charts still show their current rank as of last year (updates occur every New Year), and the same goes for monthly (updated at the beginning of every month), weekly (on every Sunday), and daily (0:00 am GMT+0). Outside of Earth, only the yearly ranking system seems feasible enough to follow.

Individuals are only ranked if they have an official registration at BERC. If, for example, some solo leveling hero thinks he likes to operate outside of the "grid" and is significantly as strong as S-rankers, he will not have any numerical ranking on any of their lists but instead a threat level rank of S (meaning it would require S-ranker heroes to defeat him) or above. Usually non-humans are not eligible to receive ranks by BERC due to certain stakeholders of the organization belonging to the Akamine guild whose sole purpose is to eradicate all other non-human races (calling them "demons") out of reality, to bring the "old Earth" back to how life used to be before the Broodent elves introduced magic and lifted the Cradle Veil from the celestial space surrounding Earth.

Ranks in a way are not fully accurate measurements of power and should only be considered to be an estimate of a person's abilities.

As with human nature, some adventurers are not fond of receiving too much attention, so they are likely to pay BERC bribes to intentionally lower their ranks and make them appear "weaker" and "ordinary".