Durant Steel Ant
This was a monster-class E-ranked creature that Raze had stumbled upon while exploring the forest in the last few days.
To explain the ranking system used by the tower for monsters, one would need to understand that every monster had one rank and class.
The rank of a monster represented their personal strength and had almost nothing to do with their race.
It ranged from F to SSS rank, making up a total of nine different rank classifications.
It was fairly straightforward and didn't take much effort to comprehend.
The more interesting classification started in their class, which, contrary to the rank, had nothing to do with a monster's personal strength and everything to do with their race.
It ranged from.
1.Beast
2.Monster
3.Predator
4.Abomination
5.Tyrant
6.Disaster
7.Titan
8.Unholy
9.Eldritch
Strangely enough, just like the rank system, even the class system only had nine classifications, but Raze just choked that up to coincidence and nothing more.
A good example of the use of this classification would be the monsters on this floor.
For example, the feral beast that Raze had almost died against was a beast at the F rank.
It was the same for the goblins on this floor.
Hearing this one might notice a discrepancy with this logic, as when Raze first entered the second floor, he saw a single feral beast almost killing five goblins at the same time.
How does that make sense if they are both of the same rank and class?
The reason for that is pretty simple: the body of a feral beast is made for combat with ferocious fangs and claws, not to mention that it is fully in tune with its natural instincts, allowing it to exert its full potential in combat.
The same wasn't the case for goblins, whose bodies weren't made for combat.
Goblins were a naturally weak race, and they were never supposed to be strong individually, but what they lacked individually was more than made up in their numbers, thanks to their high breeding rate and cooperative nature with their fellow kin.
So ultimately, it wasn't fair to compare an individual goblin to other races.
However, that didn't distract from the fact that the goblins on this floor weren't in tune with their natural instincts, which led to them all being individually weaker than they were supposed to be.
By nature, goblins as a race are supposed to be very primitive, crude, and violent, but their gaining intelligence, however rudimentary it might be, and establishing order for their race doomed their individual potential in combat.
But then again, that was a very biased assessment, as while intelligence may have killed goblins individual potential, it created potential for them as a race.
A perfect example of this was their ability to use weapons as well.
To better understand, one needs to look no further than the goblins on the first floor, who, even when given basic knives, just mindlessly rushed towards the humans and got killed without achieving anything.
Even when they were close enough to use their daggers, they preferred to use their bare hands since that was natural to them.
Raze didn't even want to imagine if he and the other humans had to face the goblins on this floor instead of the mindless ones on the first floor.
Ultimately, the conclusion Raze reached was that a monster with intelligence will always be scarier than a monster without it, even if the latter is technically stronger.
Anyway, the TLDR of the rank system for Raze was that even if the rank represented individual strength, class was more important in determining a monster's threat as it represented its intelligence and unconventional abilities.
Of course, the tower ranking wasn't absolute, just like every other ranking.
There were always exceptions, and this ranking was no different.
But still, it was a pretty good metric and helped understand the monsters inside the tower better.
Anyway, he was getting off topic; he needed to focus on the durant steel ants today.
They were all extremely powerful, at least compared to other species on this floor.
Raze didn't even think he could kill one of them.
And yet, despite their impressive individual strength, they were actually pacifists and were very few in number, barely totaling even 50 on the whole floor.
It was maybe their low population and pacifist nature that made them extremely protective of their offspring and display irrational, aggressive behaviour when threatened.
Which is what Raze exploited today to orchestrate this attack on the goblin settlement, which created a perfect opportunity for him to sneak in.
He had waited for the ants to fall asleep to sneak into one of their caves and steal their eggs.
Weirdly enough, for these monsters, it wasn't the queen giving birth but rather all the males, and it was the queen's job to hunt for everyone.
Raze was a bit baffled by the whole idea and felt a bit disgusted, even trying to wrap his head around it, and eventually just gave up.
In total, he had stolen three eggs, and hid them near the goblin settlement, a bit further behind it.
Thanks to the ants ability to smell others of their kin, they were able to smell their children's scent in the area and attacked the settlement, thinking goblins had stolen their children.
Now one might wonder what was up with his weird and almost horrid appearance.
Over the past few days, Raze has done some experiments and learned that goblins have very poor eyesight during the day.
Everything was overly blurry to them, kind of like someone with glasses trying to see without them, but much worse.
So instead of their eyesight, they relied on smell.
Which is why he had covered himself in goblin blood from the goblins he had in his inventory, which made him smell goblins.
It felt and smelled very abhorrent to him, but he had to bear with it.
As for the goblin's ears, he just cut them and attached them to his normal ears to make them look elongated.
They looked very weird, but due to the goblin's blurry vision, he was able to get away with it.
Also, while he didn't ever think he would say this, thanks to his not-that-tall height, he didn't stand out, which allowed him to sneak in without arousing any suspicion, especially during a moment of crisis like this where everyone was panicking.
The first phase of his plan had gone flawlessly; now all that was left was finding and killing the goblin heir.