When Ilza Harnish—a B-rank hunter operating mainly out of the city of Balse—was having a drink at the guild after returning from a routine monster subjugation, she heard the guild receptionist Mia let out a wildly panicked cry.
It seemed Mia had accidentally blurted out the Gift of a boy who had come to register as a hunter, and she was in an absolute fluster over it.
Apparently, the boy's Gift was "The World's Most Incompetent." What a terribly unlucky kid.
Still, while she pitied him, the hunter trade was fundamentally a meritocracy. Barring extreme exceptions, it was no exaggeration to say that one's future was dictated entirely by their Gift. With such a useless Gift, making a living as a hunter would be an uphill battle. That was what she idly thought.
Shortly after, the boy himself revealed that he possessed a Stat Boost item, throwing the guild into an uproar. An item that boosted one's abilities themselves was something she had never even heard of. At worst, it would easily fetch the price of a national treasure.
Naturally, the hunters in attendance began chattering away, saying whatever they pleased about the kid.
Sixty percent of the talk was sheer curiosity about where he got it and what it could do, while the remaining forty percent was petty jealousy that a greenhorn possessed something so extraordinary.
Noticing a select few whose eyes gleamed with ravenous greed,
"Looks like I might have to clean this mess up,"
she muttered under her breath.
Sure enough, the moment the boy left the guildhouse, Mia came rushing over to ask if she would keep an eye on him for the time being.
Mia had a strong sense of responsibility. If the boy were attacked now, she would surely blame herself for exposing his Gift in public. Mia was always doing favors for her, so Ilza readily agreed without a second thought and slipped out of the guild.
Erasing her presence, she watched the boy from a distance for a short while. Just as Mia had feared, thugs were already tailing him. Perhaps due to the kingdom's unstable state, that sort of scum had grown far too common among hunters lately.
Intending to take a shortcut, no doubt, the boy ended up ducking into a deserted back alley, of all places.
As expected, the thugs surrounded him. Just as she moved to jump in and help, the boy turned the tables, effortlessly beating the gang into the dirt.
"Wh-what in the world...?"
Ilza squeezed the words out from her bone-dry throat.
"Was that... martial arts?"
It had to be. Yet it was far too detached from any martial art Ilza knew.
His movements were entirely impossible to read. He wasn't particularly fast, by any means. It should have been plain to see, yet before she even realized it, the thugs were flying through the air and crashing to the ground. Given how incomprehensible it was, she felt it would have made far more sense if someone had told her it was magic.
There was only one thing she knew for certain: no matter how many times she challenged that boy to a fight, she would never win.
Besides—
"He noticed me, didn't he?"
Ilza's Gift was "Agent"—an ability specialized in espionage. It was a special-class Gift that unlocked a wide array of useful skills, such as disarming dungeon traps and picking locks.
A major feature of that Gift was Concealment, an ability that completely erased one's presence. Even so, the boy had locked eyes directly onto Ilza back then. As if asking, Aren't you going to come at me?
Since her Concealment skill had been functioning properly, she figured it had to be some kind of sixth sense that caught her. And that was a height reached only by those who had survived hellish battlefields beyond anything Ilza could imagine.
Only a total rookie who had never crossed the Death Line once would watch that fight and still write him off as an incompetent, powerless novice.
Most likely, that boy never possessed a Stat Boost item to begin with. If anything, it was the exact opposite. For someone wielding such godlike combat technique, a power rating of 1 was far too unnatural. The initial power rating of 12—the average for a mid-tier hunter—was still far more believable. Yet when measured a second time, it had dropped to 1.
In other words, the boy could adjust his power rating at will. Whether through an item or the effect of an ability, she didn't know, but that boy's Gift was definitely not "Incompetent." It was something far more monstrous.
"A monster who slipped right into this boring everyday life, huh?"
Fascinating! Things had just gotten extraordinarily interesting! If she could recruit that boy into her party, she might finally reach the Ancient Temple said to lie in the deepest depths of the Silke Sea of Trees.
Surveying the Ancient Temple was the long-cherished dream of Ilza and her fellow Treasure Hunters. She had already earned the merit points required to advance to A-rank. All that remained was the special promotion requirement, and submitting an exploration report on those ruins would clear it in one stroke. Her promotion would be guaranteed.
Since the boy didn't seem particularly keen on hiding his strength, it would become common knowledge sooner or later. Once that happened, everyone would arrive at the exact same conclusion Ilza had.
Hunting was a profession where wealth and glory scaled directly with true ability. As long as someone was powerful, whatever Gift they held was irrelevant. The only fools who judged people purely by their Gift were Amelia-born hunters. Soon, scouts from all sides would come swarming in, making him almost impossible to recruit.
Right now, however, while everyone still believed him to be useless, forming a party with him should be simple.
"In that case, gathering intel comes first."
Trying to recruit him without knowing anything about him was a non-starter. She would start by prying some details out of Mia.
"Yeah, today's my lucky day!"
Stifling the excitement and joy pounding in her chest, Ilza broke into a sprint back toward the guild.