Due to the whole treason affair involving Fracton and his cronies, I was stuck staying in the city of Balse for a while. Naturally, with plenty of time to kill, I decided to pay a visit to the local Hunter Guild.
Money is an absolute necessity if you want to get by in this world. And the quickest way to earn that money is to become a hunter and take on a few quests.
For someone like me, who longed to travel the world on a whim, acquiring a hunter qualification was practically inevitable. Besides, before being swallowed up by that dungeon, I had held a deep, burning admiration for hunters anyway, so I had always planned on registering sooner or later.
Balse ranks among the top five largest cities in the Amelia Kingdom. The reason for its size is the nearby monster den known as the Silke Sea of Trees. This vast, dense jungle stretches across the southern side of the Great Silke Forest, an area where virtually no monsters appeared when we passed through it.
Hunters from all over the world flock to this city in search of the high-level monsters roaming the Silke Sea of Trees. In other words, this place is one of the world's premier hunter paradises.
I stepped into a four-story building located right along the main thoroughfare in the center of Balse. This was the Hunter Guild.
From the entrance, the left half of the building served as a tavern, while the right half was dedicated to quest boards and similar facilities.
Walking straight up to the reception counter, I approached a woman with long blonde hair tied back in a single ponytail.
"I'd like to register as a hunter. Is that possible?"
I got right to the point.
The woman scrutinized me from head to toe with an impolite stare for a moment before answering with a practiced business smile.
"The registration and examination fee is ten thousand Aul."
Ten thousand Aul. If I remembered correctly, the average monthly income for a commoner was around eight thousand Aul.
Instead of a parting gift, my grandfather had handed me a hundred thousand Aul as operating funds for my time in the imperial capital.
Ever since acquiring Complete Memory, I had made a habit of periodically organizing the contents of my Item Box. Because of that, I already knew the exact location of the bag containing the money I had brought with me before getting swallowed by the dungeon.
I pulled the bag out of my Item Box and began rummaging through it for the coin purse, when—
"Is that an Item Box?!"
The blonde receptionist gasped, her face going pale. That was a mistake. Come to think of it, back out in normal society, an Item Box was considered exceptionally rare. I had already been saddled with the absurdly ill-fitting post of Royal Guard as it was. The last thing I wanted was to stand out even more and invite needless trouble.
"No, you're mistaken. This bag—well, I just unhooked it from my waist."
"B-But just now, you pulled it out of thin air—"
"Are you sure your eyes aren't playing tricks on you? I don't possess a skill like that. You can verify it yourself during the examination. Above all, what reason would I even have to hide it? Don't you agree?"
"Well, that might be true, but..."
Yes, yes, she seemed convinced enough. That's the way. Honesty—or at least appearing honest—is always the best policy.
"Here is the ten thousand Aul. Please take it."
"Ten thousand Aul. Received in full. Next, allow me to examine your Gift and status."
This was the same type of crystal I had touched back at the temple. If Gifts were left to self-reporting, countless people would lie, so this was a perfectly reasonable precaution. For someone like me who wanted to avoid being saddled with any more nuisances, having my incompetence officially confirmed and made public was actually far more desirable.
The real issue was the status appraisal that followed the crystal's Gift assessment.
In this world, the gap between the weak and the strong was massive. Piecing together what I knew from before entering the dungeon with the knowledge I had now, my maximum strength without the God-Sealing Gloves likely placed me among the world's upper echelon. Thinking back, no matter how gifted someone might be, there was no way the legendary Ashburn would ever bestow the title of Sword Emperor upon a swordsman of mere middling caliber. Hard as it was to believe, the current Sword Emperor's strength was undoubtedly considered elite by this world's standards.
Of course, that didn't mean I thought this world was populated entirely by weaklings. After all, there was the legendary Hero, the Four Great Demon Kings, the mighty dragonkin who stood as the strongest race, and plenty of other monstrous powerhouses out there... or so there should be. Lacking accurate information at the moment, it would be dangerous to grow careless.
With that in mind, it was hard to say where an average status of 100 actually ranked. For that matter, I wasn't even sure if their appraisal system matched mine. Still, that evil spirit claiming to be the Spirit King had mentioned that a status of 100 meant you could hold your own pretty well...
If so, to keep things consistent with my Gift, having a low status would be for the best. Why not use the God-Sealing Gloves to drag my numbers down to the low teens? That way, I would look like nothing more than a fresh-faced novice, and it wouldn't raise any eyebrows. Yeah. Let's go with that.
I used the God-Sealing Gloves to calibrate my average status to 12. Then, I placed my hand on the crystal.
"T-The World's Most Incompetent?!"
The receptionist's shrill shriek echoed through the entire hall.
"Ah!"
She hurriedly clamped her hands over her mouth and looked around, only to find the curious, rapt stares of every hunter in the room pinned on her.
A wave of hushed whispers immediately broke out among them. It was glaringly obvious what they were gossiping about.
"I-I am so sorry!"
She bowed deeply in apology, and just as I was about to tell her it was no big deal—
"Hey, did you hear that?! That brat's Gift is The World's Most Incompetent!"
A tall, sharp-eyed blonde man strode toward me, peered at the crystal over the receptionist's shoulder, and shouted to the room. Boisterous laughter and mocking jeers erupted from the group that appeared to be his party.
He wore a red-and-white outfit tailored for mobility, with a massive greatsword slung across his back. By the looks of it, he was a swordsman, just like me.
"Hey—Raiga, stop it!"
The receptionist's eyes flared with anger as she snapped at him, but I raised my right hand to wave it off.
"No, don't worry about it."
If this had happened before I was dragged into that dungeon, I probably would have felt some sting of humiliation. But after all I'd been through, I wasn't about to get worked up over the taunts of a brat nearly a hundred thousand years my junior.
"Raiga, if you pull a stunt like that again, I'm reporting you to the branch manager!"
"Yeah, yeah, fine. Man, Mia, you're way too uptight. Why're you sticking up for a god-forsaken loser anyway?"
Pouting sullenly, he turned on his heel and sauntered back to his friends.
I see. So this Raiga fellow had a thing for Miss Mia, did he?
Ah, the bittersweet awkwardness of youth. Yeah, couldn't care less. It didn't matter to me in the slightest.
Regardless, thanks to that young man's loud mouth, everyone in the room now viewed me as completely worthless.
Perfect. Couldn't be better. If I kept letting word of my Gift spread like this, and then found a suitable replacement to serve as Rose's Royal Guard, the people around me would pave the exact path I wanted without me lifting a finger.
"I'm truly sorry for blurting it out like that..."
Mia repeated her apologies, looking thoroughly dejected.
"No, really, it's fine. In fact, feel free to tell everyone."
I gave her a confident, smug thumbs-up. Mia stared back at me in stunned disbelief for a few seconds before furrowing her brow.
"Are you... the kind of person who gets off on being degraded?"
She just had to go and say something so utterly slanderous.