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Spoiler Alert Spoiler Alert: WARNING! This page happens to contain a lot of heavy spoilers that are all originated from the Overlord Light Novel series written by the author Kugane Maruyama. To every Anime-only watchers and Manga-only reader out there viewing this warning, please mindfully consider your decision first before choosing to expose yourself on reading the information below. If you're not currently up-to-date with the main source material in the official books, do consider staying away from the page for non-spoiler sake until you actually read it first ahead of time.



Adventurers

Amidst the ranks of the adventurers

Adventurer (冒険者 boukensha) is a job that exists in the New World. The adventurers receive and solve requests accepted by the Adventurer's Guild. The main roles of adventurers involve hunting down monsters, providing protection for important figures, collecting rare materials, etc. Usually, adventurers would not concern themselves with other states of affairs, yet there are exceptions in special cases.

Background

The history of adventurers dates back to 200 years. After the fight between Evil Deities and Thirteen Heroes was finished, human nations suffered from social chaos and devastation. At that moment of crisis, the Adventurer Guilds were established. This gave them a new purpose for hunting down monsters and helping other people around the world.[1]

To be an adventurer, one must register at the Adventurer's Guild. So far, there are currently about 3,000 adventurers working in the Re-Estize Kingdom. Within that amount, there happen to be 600 of the adventurers that are ranked Platinum and higher.[2]

Theoretically, adventurers' jobs also include ventures into ruins and unexplored regions of the New World. In practice, however, most of their works revolves around exterminating monsters.

Sorcerer Kingdom

After E-Rantel became part of the Sorcerer Kingdom, the local Adventurer's Guild fell into decline, as their jobs had been taken over by the far more effective Undead. However, Sorcerer King Ainz Ooal Gown wanted to keep Adventurers around to serve a new purpose under his rule.

To do so, he decided to change the very concept of Adventurers into what he thought they should be: "Explorers of the unknown," like the name implied. This time around, they would be fully funded by the Sorcerer Kingdom. As the idea garnered support, the guild's duties was eventually taken over by the Sorcerer Kingdom several months later.[3]

Rank and Difficulty

Adventurer Rankings

Adventurer Rankings

Adventurers are primarily classified by the rank given to them officially by Adventurer's Guild. The naming of one's rank follows by the varying metals used in the adventurer's licensed plate legally (used as identification). Moreover, a dog tag-like plate is given to all who register at an adventurer guild.

Additionally, the material that one's plate is made out of depends on one's rank as an adventurer. All new adventurers recently registered into the Adventurer's Guild are given the lowest rank which is copper plate. When an adventurer's rank increases, so do the color of their plate changes as well as more missions made available to take on with a higher difficulty rate.

The rank of an adventurer increases by passing a test of the Adventurer's Guild. Basically, the rank increases step by step, but if an adventurer achieves a major feat, it is possible to pull up his or her rank several steps at a time.[4] Becoming a high-ranking adventurer assures better income, reward and social position and the highest ranked, the Adamantite adventurers, are treated as heroes, regardless of their nationality.[5]

The plate that served as proof of an adventurer's status was made using the same type of metal that corresponded to the rank of the adventurer.[6]

There are also difficulty levels given to monsters or quests. The higher the level an adventurer and their group become, the more difficult the quest are available to them. However, there is an unspoken rule among adventurers that one should never judge an opponent merely by their difficulty. This system was created so that people don't lose their lives recklessly attempting to do dangerous missions beyond their ability.

  • F Class: 1~10 - People who are skillful at handling weapons can fight against monsters with this difficulty (ex: Normal goblins).
  • E Class: 11~20 - Monsters that can't be beaten by a normal person, only by a trained person. (ex: Ogres)
  • D Class: 21~30 - Needs veteran soldiers or Silver adventures to deal with.
  • C Class: 31~40 - Gold rank adventurers or elite troops.
  • B Class: 41~50 - Platinum rank adventurers and above can deal with them.
  • A Class: 51~60 - A rank that an ultra-elite warrior or Mithril rank adventurers can manage.
  • A+ Class: 61~70 - Orichalcum Adventurers that use 4th tier spells are here.
  • A++ Class: 71 ~ - A rumored difficulty level that is suitable for an Adamantite adventurer which is around 90.
  • Everything that is difficulty 100 and above is considered to be above humanly possible.
  • The La-Angler Lava Lord is around 140.
  • Evileye, Entoma and the other Pleiades are around 150.
  • Legendary undead like Night Liches are also considered around 150.
  • Demiurge (as Jaldabaoth) and Ainz (as Momon) are seen as around 200+, but as their levels were too high, Evileye could not accurately judge them. Platinum Dragon Lord seems to be around this level as well.[7]

Parties

With the exception of Darkness, Adventurers are known to follow a basic four-man group pattern. There are occasionally ones of five or even six people, but as the number increases the more difficult it is to unite the opinions of the group, so an average leader would have a limit of four people. 4-man parties generally comprise of a warrior, magic caster, healer and the vanguard.[8]

Monsters have various special abilities depending on their type. In order to face as many kinds of monsters as possible, adventurers normally form parties of people with different skills. Low-ranking adventurers cannot work higher-level jobs, so parties are generally formed by adventurers of similar ranks.

For financial and other reasons, low-ranking adventurers tend to cluster together at certain inns. On the other hand, high-ranking adventurers cluster at others, so that makes it easy for adventurers to find compatible party members in the places where they're staying.

As adventurers, one would live under the same roof and experience danger together, so falling in love was common within the group. There was a high chance of a team where such relationships occurred separating. One of the reasons was that one could not be trusted to make calm decisions over who to save first whenever teammates are endangered in a dire crisis. If there was unease, and one of the weapons of the adventurers, teamwork, was unusable, those adventurers would lose their lives on the next adventure. So teams were either gender-based or love was forbidden. There were many cases of a couple causing the adventurer group to separate.[9]

Social Standing

High-ranking adventurers earn incomes that match their ranks, but no matter how much an adventurer makes, they have a hard time earning people's respect. Of course, there are instances when someone receives gratitude for a job they've done, yet that seems to be more directed at the individual who performed the service rather than them as an adventurer. If regularly employed soldiers are like full-time employees, then adventurers are like temp workers.

Since an adventurer’s power is an existential threat to rulers, adventurers are hardly even praised by their own nations.[10] In countries where the army has the capacity to take care of monsters without their help, adventurer status is even lower. The social status of adventurers suffers greatly in countries that don't need them, like the Slane Theocracy and the Baharuth Empire, as both nations handle monster subjugation with their respective national armies. There are no adventurers in the Slane Theocracy, and the standing of adventurers in the Baharuth Empire has been falling ever since the current emperor, Jircniv came to power.[11]

Ideology of High-ranking adventurers

Because human beings are weak, they live cooperatively, evolving to overwhelm with numbers. It was in that mechanism is what compels adamantite-ranked adventurer’s reasoning, developing into something like a messiah complex, which in turn leads to helping many weak people (of the same race) therefore, those who actively ruin a country rarely appear. Maruyama admits that adamantite adventurers in a country are theoretically dangerous since few parties from their respective nation can actually pose a threat in stopping them, though acknowledges at the same time that it will likely never happen. However, Maruyama urge readers to be aware of the possibility that this does not mean they cannot kill the weak.

If there is indeed a scenario where they would have to save so many weak people at the cost of sacrificing a very few lives, they could calmly kill one or two individuals without problem. And if the adamantite adventurers are seized with an obsession of trying to save a country from falling to ruin, they would aim to overturn the nation with as little blood shed as they can while hoping for the best outcome available. According to Maruyama, adventurers are not always often born with that way of thinking. More so, there's one portion of strong people who does in fact exhibit a different mental illness where they see a distinction between the weak and themselves so the Messiah complex may not develop.[12]

Ability

There was a type of ability called ‘Danger Perception’ that experienced adventurers with discovery-based skills are capable of doing. Just as the name stipulates, it was an ability which enabled the detection of danger.

This ability was split into two types. One type was not reliant on the person's reasoning or observation, but merely reliant on their senses to trigger awareness. The other type was an awareness which was reliant on reasoning and observation accumulated from experience.

However, the former can be described as a sixth sense internal feeling, and the latter can be described as one which was derived from the small changes in the surrounding— one derived from minute changes in sound and smell. The latter would be naturally improved on the battlefield and during solo adventures, even if it were not intentionally trained. It was obtained through experiences by placing oneself in dangerous situations.[13]

The profession of an adventurer was a highly competitive one, to have one's ability doubted—especially by the commissioner—could heavily impact their future career. It would then be necessary to display their strength. Adventurers use numbers to gauge the difficulty level of monsters.[14]

A lot of new adventurers started out as porters and the Adventurer's Guild encourages them to make connections with other veteran adventurers as it would help them in the future.[15]

Known Adventurer Groups

Sorcerer Kingdom

  • Darkness: Adamantite Adventurer (Formerly the Re-Estize Kingdom)
  • Rainbow: Mithril Adventurer (Formerly the Re-Estize Kingdom)

Re-Estize Kingdom

Baharuth Empire

Dragon Kingdom

Karsanas City-State Alliance

Roble Holy Kingdom

Argland Council State

Trivia

  • In the Web Novel, brass was the metal representing the lowest rank and was given to newly registered adventurers.[16]
  • Many adventurers actually dreamed of adventuring, but many died in the process or broke down in face of reality.
  • By adventurer ranking standard, Gold is the highest rank a normal human like Climb without talent can attain. "Capped at Gold" was the saying that best described them.[17]
  • The Slane Theocracy was the first country to develop the Adventurer's Guild system. Over time, their Adventurer associations became obsolete, but other countries continued to adopt the practice.
  • The adventurers of the Sorcerer Kingdom are different from the adventurers everywhere else in the world. The ones from the Sorcerer Kingdom are true adventurers, unlike the rest who are just monster-hunting mercenaries.
  • Although adventurer members usually consist of humans, there are a few adventurer teams that employ non-humans in their groups such as Fang Long of Silver Thread Bird and Evileye of Blue Rose.
    • With the dawn of the new adventurer guild within the Sorcerer Kingdom and its pro-unity stance between all races, its been shown that by the time of the Fall of the Re-Estize Kingdom, Demi-Human and Heteromorphic Races within Adventurer Team have now begun becoming the norm as the guild and the human adventurers have begun becoming more open to the non-human races.

References

  1. Overlord Volume 05 Chapter 2: Blue Roses
  2. Overlord Volume 03 Chapter 3: Confusion and Understanding
  3. Overlord Volume 10 Chapter 1: The Sorcerer Kingdom of Ainz Ooal Gown
  4. Overlord Volume 02: Epilogue
  5. Overlord Volume 03: Epilogue
  6. Overlord Volume 07 Chapter 1: Invitation to Death
  7. Overlord Volume 06 Chapter 11: The Final Battle of the Disturbance
  8. Overlord First Half Chapter 16: Adventurers
  9. Overlord First Half Chapter 53: Invaders Part 1
  10. Overlord Volume 06: Epilogue
  11. Overlord Volume 02 Chapter 1: The Two Adventurers
  12. Syosetsu Blog Post: March 30th 2013
  13. Overlord First Half Chapter 49: War Part 9
  14. Overlord Volume 07 Chapter 2: Butterfly Entangled in a Spider's Web
  15. Overlord First Half Chapter 37: Investigation Part 2
  16. Overlord First Half Chapter 20: First Request Part 2
  17. Overlord Volume 05 Chapter 1: A Boy's Feeling

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