Someone could have hidden most of their strength. Someone else might have displayed an unusually powerful trump card during the evaluation period and received a ranking above what they could normally maintain.
Others might have improved tremendously since then. Some could have stagnated.
The result was that even among the Top 1000, there were plenty of people occupying what Michael considered false rankings.
A person ranked 300 could potentially possess enough strength to defeat someone ranked 180. Likewise, someone ranked 90 might not actually deserve to remain anywhere near that position.
That uncertainty became considerably more dangerous the closer one moved toward the Top 100.
Michael had already suspected that the monsters there were on an entirely different level. The Fourth Layer gathered countless extraordinary Rank Four existences from different civilizations, realms, races.
