WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Ranking of Kings Episode 5, "Intertwining Plots," now streaming on Funimation.
In his lifetime, King Bosse was ranked seventh among all the kings. His successor, King Daida, is ranked 90th. While the new king craves power and desperately wants to improve his pitiful situation, in Episode 5 of Ranking of Kings, Daida discovers just how he could gain his father's power -- and it's just too horrible and disgusting for even him to go ahead with it. The more is revealed about Bosse's power, the less it seems like those at the top were as upstanding as they seemed.
So how does one acquire Bosse's strength? First, Bosse's frozen corpse is ground up into goo. This goo is formed into a ball which, when heated by the sun, hardens to form an egg inside. Once this egg is hatched, a gigantic bird emerges and is promptly decapitated. The body of the bird is burned so the ashes form a green crystal, while the blood leaking from its severed head is collected in a chalice. The crystal is dropped into the glass of blood, and the new king must drink the disgusting concoction in order to acquire the old one's power.
Every aspect of this feels inherently wrong. Daida has thus far been easily manipulated by his magic mirror, but seeing this process play out, the young king actively rejects the mirror's instructions and refuses to drink the blood potion. Though Bosse's backstory has yet to be revealed, it seems he actually drank such a potion, or otherwise engaged in other dark magic, for his strength -- the demon that emerged from his dead body in Episode 3 is evidence of such.
Ranking of Kings Episode 5 also implies that the dark magic associated with Bosse's power is also responsible for placing a curse on Bojji. After a dramatic rescue from the Gate to Hell by Kage, who was secretly in Bojji's backpack protecting him all along, the prince and the shadow fall unconscious from cursed gas spewing out of the Gate. The two are dragged to the castle of yet another strange king, who notes that the cursed gas couldn't hurt them because they were already cursed.
The king describes Bojji as being "a giant who had his power taken." If Bosse's strength and enormity is something transferred through unnatural and demonic means, it seems his son was made weak and small as part of a trade-off. Kage's curse is more mysterious; it seems he has an "altered form" and was "met with divine disfavor." Ranking of Kings continues to introduce more interesting aspects of its mythology and new dimensions to its characters every week.
New episodes of Ranking of Kings premiere Thursdays on Funimation.