Mysterious Beings

Mysterious Beings (怪人, Kaijin), or simply Monsters, are terms used to refer to non-human creatures that pose a threat to society.

There are numerous unnamed monsters.

Overview
According to Dr. Genus, humans can naturally become monsters from a desire to transform into something else through their bad habits, a complex or a burst of dissatisfaction with their regular selves. They begin their transformation due to their environment that triggers an abnormal cell reaction. Mysterious Beings can also be artificially created through the power of science such as Marugori. Non-human life can also be transformed into a mysterious being through factors such as pollutants, environmental changes and genetic engineering. Some mysterious beings are naturally born to begin with and did not undergo any transformation such as Pureblood as he came from a bloodline of ancient vampires or Boros and the Dark Matter Thieves as they were aliens to begin with.

It appears that like real life humans, Mysterious Beings in the series breathe by inhaling Oxygen and emitting Carbon Dioxide.

Generally, when a human transforms into a monster through an obsession, their transformation is related to their obsession such as Devil Long Hair. On the other hand, Monster Cells transforms humans into Mysterious Beings by building upon the current talents of the user. This method of transformation comes with the cost of losing the ability to grow further. According to Choze who ate a Monster Cell, a drug is secreted in the brain which removes the morals of the user. Mysticism can also be a mean for human to turn into Mysterious Beings like in the case of Sword Demon Executioner as he sold his own soul to his blade and turned into a monster.

Monsters first started appearing more frequently in the past 15 years. It is still unknown what their actual purpose is, but it seems that most of these creatures are hostile towards mankind, wreak havoc in the cities and terrorize the citizens. Some of the mysterious beings come from human backgrounds who were turned because of their obsession for certain things. For example, Crablante was turned into a Mysterious Being for eating too much crab or Fist Fight Djinn for his thirst for fighting. Furthermore, another alternative method for humans to be turned into Mysterious Beings is through the ingestion of Monster Cells provided by the Monster Association.

Mysterious Beings are especially concentrated in Z-City and Q-City. These monsters are the reason the Hero Association was founded by Agoni.

Some Mysterious beings have created an organization similar to the Hero Association to oppose them, showing they can work together if they needed to. Mysterious Beings also seem to be able to detect the distinctive auras of other monsters as large numbers of monsters headed to Z-City to join the Monster Association.

Some certain Mysterious Beings or parts of their body can be edible for humans as seen when Saitama ripped off all of Kombu Infinity's leaves to cook his Miso soup and suffered no ill effects afterwards. Another example is Garou, who ate a monster's arm and similarly suffered no ill effects.

List of known Mysterious Beings by Disaster Level
Dragon= Demon= Tiger= Wolf= Unknown=

Types of Mysterious Beings
There are numerous types of monsters, and some monsters belong to multiple categories.

Natural Type: They are sentient races that have been dormant and/or living in seclusion from the surface world.
 * Seafolk: The Seafolk are a race of beings that have come from the sea to take the surface of the earth for themselves.
 * Skyfolk: The Skyfolk are a race of beings that have come from the sky to take the surface of the earth for themselves.
 * Subterranean People: The Subterranean People are the self-proclaimed "True People of the Earth". They live under the earth's crust, but grew too numerous in numbers and planned to take over the surface.
 * Terror Lizards: The Terror Lizards are dinosaur-like creatures that have come from mountains to take the surface of the earth for themselves.
 * Vampire: Ancient bloodsucking creatures with a long history.
 * Forest Tribe: A race of beings of unknown origin that have come to revive the lost greenery with fertilizer made of human corpses.

Unusual Type: The most bizarre type are the Mysterious Beings that were normal individuals whose change happened through performing an action obsessively.
 * Ugmons: Ugmons are grotesque creatures created from ugly humans.

Extraterrestrial Type: They are sentient beings beyond the planet Earth, coming from outer space. All members of the Dark Matter Thieves belong to this type.

Artificial Type: Normal beings or individuals which through scientific means gained superpowers or mutations.
 * Mutant: Mutants are creatures created through genetic modification.
 * Robot: Robots with artificial intelligence that pose a threat to humans are treated as Mysterious Beings. G4 is one such example.
 * Cyborg: Cyborgs are cybernetically enhanced living beings.

Humanoid Type: Mysterious Beings who are hard to distinguish from regular humans in terms of appearance. Do-S, Gale Wind, and Hellfire Flame are part of this type.

Non-Sapient Type: Some Mysterious beings are just feral beings with no higher brain function, similar to that of a wild animal.

Human Type: A human who is designated as a monster without actually becoming one. Garou and Homeless Emperor are two such examples.

Infused Type: Mysterious Beings who are the result of a human or animal consuming the uncooked flesh of a monster. For example, a human who has eaten a Monster Cell or the crows who ate the Beast King's flesh. Several have displayed the ability to switch back and forth between their human and monster forms.

Disaster Levels
Mysterious Beings are assigned disaster levels to estimate their destructive potential. The levels are as follows (in order of increasing threat level): Wolf, Tiger, Demon, Dragon, and God. Although the disaster level system was created to estimate the threat levels of Mysterious Beings, it can also be applied to other threats, such as the Giant Meteor and villains like Garou. They give heroes and citizens an estimate of what level of danger to expect.

It should be noted that several considerations are taken when determining a disaster level. Considerations include aggressiveness, difficulty in extermination and combat prowess. Disaster levels sometimes do not correctly indicate how threatening they are to human society and thus do not truly represent their individual combat prowess when compared to one another. As such, some beings are stronger than the other while having the same disaster levels, such as Gouketsu and Bakuzan. While both dragon levels, the former can easily defeat the latter.

Disaster levels can be incorrectly assigned. These may be due to the Mysterious Beings hiding their strength such as Withered Sprout, ignoring context-dependent factors such as suitability to the particular event or an individual defeating monsters without reporting their true level of strength. While heroes engage monsters, they sometimes must update the Hero Association on the correct threat level. While some heroes stick to attacking weaker Mysterious Beings to maintain their ranks, defeating a high disaster level monster is very influential on hero rankings. Many heroes challenge these powerfully ranked monsters to move rapidly up the hero ranks such as Stinger who rose to A-Class within six months.

Trivia

 * Despite being considered a God level threat by fans, during a Q&A section with the original author, it was stated that Boros is above Dragon. This could mean that Boros is in an unknown level between Dragon and God or indeed a God level threat, but it was still never specified.
 * Orochi was similarly described by Murata.
 * Wolf is never used or even considered a disaster level in the anime.
 * This is most likely due to the near lack of Wolf monsters in the manga at the time.
 * God level threat is represented by a Fenghuang, which is rather ironic, since the Fenghuang is often associated with high virtue and grace and denotes positive connotations.