Four figures passed through a dilapidated gate, creaking with the light push of the wind.

It was Kano, Grechen and two other children.

The town was exactly what he expected, a village that was called a town. There was a tall statue with blurry features, at the center holding up a strange instrument. The town was very ordinary and was what you’d expect from a small borderline town, you could make out the black sea through the houses in the distance and each building was constructed with the same materials.

There seemed to be less than a hundred buildings or perhaps just a bit over a hundred.

There was a faint aura of evil from the sea but a warmth emanating from the statue made it feel even more minuscule.

“Let's go, hurry!” Grechen grabbed his hand and pulled him along after.

Kano’s head spun around taking in the sights, a few townspeople passed by every now and again sporadically, with smiles on their faces and cracked skin, it was both them and their wares which caught his attention.

They were pitifully few vendors selling odd things, he recognized a few of them as variants to existing herbs, plants, and rocks but others were unfamiliar.

A blue thorny rosebush, Yellow cracked stone with pale green veins, live fish that didn’t need water to swim about, chained fingers of weird creatures, talismans with weird drawings and a handful of others had no impression in his mind.

If only my ability was a pure identification ability…wait technically it’s kind of an identification type but I’ll have to experiment later, among the Great Blessings us earthlings have, the first use of our ability is arguably…well all of them are good to be honest. Although the first use might be connected to the talent awakening stone. I’ll have to pay the equivalent price each time afterwards which I definitely can’t afford in my situation.

Kano recalled the endless praises the teacher gave; he was from the religious faction who believed they were blessings from some unknown god, but he was outnumbered by the scientific faction who believed it was merely a byproduct of a strange phenomenon which happened to benefit them.

Although the teacher was responsible for the topic, it always came up somehow and everyone had their own views on the matter, aligning themselves to different factions. There were various other minor beliefs but those were the main factions.

Honestly, Kano felt most had merits, but he didn't know or cared which was true, just the benefits and facts were what mattered.

High level abilities usually couldn’t be fully supported by the mortal body, for instance the A-038 Blue Devil didn’t allow full transformation while a quasi-professional, at most a single body part could be transformed and only every few days for a period at that. The weakness immediately after the use of such an ability was also a big drawback in critical situations. Even if you were a professional you might not be able to completely transform unless you were second order.

However, the Great Blessing bypassed this mortal restriction for the first use of your ability, therefore an awakener of Blue Devil would be able to achieve complete transformation once, despite not meeting the basic requirements. This was a game changing hack that tutors stressed the significance of.

Several courses were aimed at reminding earth flag bearers to fully take advantage of all the blessings. When, How, Who, What, Where. Every detail and the best and worst situations to keep in mind.

For instance, when using the free ability initial blessing: being forced to use it and not even getting the chance to, stood as the two unfortunate kings.

Kano had wanted to immediately use his ability, but words have power especially in his case, he had to be extra careful in what he asked his treasure map to locate, in order to ensure it was the best possible item, therefore he wanted to mull over his choices beforehand. Having a bit of knowledge on the environment however vague could prove helpful. The feedback he got from his ability had him picking the X marking the spots. So being careful to squeeze the best out of what he can do was vital.

Loud noises chirruped in the air yet oddly none of them were advertising their product. He turned to Grechen,” Oh that? You’re the first ‘real’ outsider in years y’know, even the merchant ships that occasionally pass are the same faces every month. So, there’s no need to advertise, you just set up a stall and they either come to you or you go to their house directly.”

“Little Grechen! so it’s your band of troublemakers, I see you have a new face among you, is he the one you brought back from sea?” A middle-aged man selling weird seashells called out to their crowd.

“Uncle Mills. Yea I’m showing him around town, we’re going to stop by the church to have Pastor Gayil look at him.” Grechen answered in a bubbly tone.

Kano planned on staying quiet as usual so after nodding hello, he was about to continue looking around before his vision was blocked.

“You sailed the seas all by yourself…are you really human, not some weird human shaped fish?”

‘Who are you calling a fish!’

“Yea..why isn’t he dead?’”

‘My bad I survived, really!’

“Are you sure he’s not a ghost?”

‘You are a ghost! Your whole family are ghosts!’

“He shouldn’t be a weird, the goddess light is still on in our village, any weird would catch aflame, stronger ones would, goddess forbid, just shatter the statue. Plus, Old Faru explored the seas in his youth, only Pastor Gayil is above him in terms of knowledge, if he was a weird, he’d know.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Saw, Relle, what say you? You guys have some medical and weird knowledge from your ancestors.”

The crowd that had gathered around Kano quickly discussed while infuriating him beyond measure. He took a deep breath to calm himself down.

‘I’ve been on edge recently after my arm was ripped off, happy thoughts. Happy thoughts.’

“Well, his physique is extremely weak; his muscles, bones, blood, and flesh are extremely feeble. His arm is freshly lost but he has no symptoms of weird infected.”

Despite being poked and prodded by two ugly old men, Kano’s mood was surprisingly good. Of course, he would prefer a cute girl poking him, but he was a freshly escaped prisoner who didn’t have to worry about being hunted down in all directions. Life was good; once he left the pain and triggering emotions he gained while getting to this point. Letting go of his past worries nad burdens felt like a mountain wa slifted off his back.

“Gramps Saw, Gramps Relle, we have to get going now.” Fortunately, Grechen rescued him seeing him being in the spotlight.

“You’ll have to ignore their forwardness. Like I said you’re the only foreigner on this island in years, only merchants and worshippers to Sister Quellis come by usually, the merchants don’t even actually dock, most of the time you have to meet them out at sea if you want something, Sister Quellis is pretty and a saintess candidate, so ugly boys from other nearby islands come look when they have nothing to do, old people with devout beliefs to Lady Sharahan, Praise be the Moon, also come visit her since she’s kind of her spokesperson, sailors, adventurers and others also stop by to ask for cleansing spirit water to wash away curses and such! We’re actually good friends, she says-”

Grechen went on one of her very long monologues again, part of the reason Kano didn’t like hanging out with her, but he had adapted now and knew when to zone out while she blabbered away.

‘Saintess Candidate? That sounds important. If it was anybody else, they’d jump at the chance since she’s likely a high-quality crew member but-’

Kano wryly smiled thinking of his own personality. He was capable of self-reflection and knew he was not only unappealing to girls, but his charms and overall persuasiveness were nil. There were classes on how to trick…well how to gain new crewmembers when they don’t like you, have anchors such as family members and so on but he didn’t listen to them. In retrospect, that was very foolish of him but the posh nobles enjoyed that class the most and so he couldn't help hating it.

“Are you thinking about Sis Saintess? The first time I saw her, I was blown away by her beauty. It drowns the moons and miniatures the suns!” The short green-haired chubby fellow called Timo nudged Kano and spoke with butterflies in his stomach.

Before Kano could voice his thoughts, the other tall black-haired boy did it for him, “Miniatures the suns? Drowns the moons? Did you think of that yourself or did you see it in a poem and forget you suck at reading? There’s no way that’s what it said.”

“Did too Theno!... then again it might have said, flowers bloomed in my heart seeing your face, my love’s light is is—gentle as the moonlight? Sapphires…Light of the sun illuminates…miniature? Well, I got at least half of it right I think, it praised her beauty just fine!” The chubby Timo massaged his temples before puffing his chest towards the two in triumph.

‘No, you didn’t’ Kano and Theno thought in unison.

“Well what he’s TRYING to say, is that words cannot describe how beautiful she is, unfortunately she’s older than us and already an adult so even the unmarried and wifeless uncles want to compete, Grandma says her beauty is irrelevant, she has big breasts and butt and great child bearing hips, fortunately, she’s a nun so she won’t get married and we can always see her at the church! She’s even an official priest who’s an exalt. With how powerful she is even outside of our island; her priest path must have been guided by at least a Great Knight glow! That’s what Uncle Robin says.” Theno quickly pushed aside the abysmal attempt of Timo on trying to describe their resident saintess and felt the onus was on him to explain.

“Great Knight glow? What’s that?” Kano saw the window of opportunity and jumped through it; he missed the chance with Old Faru, but a kid wouldn’t think so much.

“You don’t know? Oh, they must call it different where you’re from. Basically, the lights of the gods and goddesses have many forms, in the abyss of darkness and drudgery of weirdness, hidden in the shadows, you need a light to guide your path to power and fight against the darkness and its children of evil. There are lights that came to on their own over time and those directly from blessings of deities, the brighter the light or glow the stronger the path. A Soldier light lights up a room, A leader lights up a house, a knight lights up a few houses but a Great Knight can light up a whole village! Uncle Robin says each three ranks is a watershed and afterwards it drastically changes no matter what it is, after great knight though I don’t know what they are.”

“It was named after the army ranks in some distant empire, apparently the empire still exists somewhere out there.”

“Oh, I see.” Kano curtly replied. This was clearly another rehearsed recital from someone else. It was practically just repeating what they said which was more reliable than Timo but still not 100% reliable.

So, the army ranks were basically a reflection of quality like their own system of Black Iron, Withered Bronze, Peerless Silver, Glory Gold and so on.

“Sis Saintess is not a saintess but a saintess candidate, but we all treat her like an actual saintess, if there is one then they’ll be no better than her. Sis Saintess even conserves the village protection light by deactivating it at certain periods in the night and vanquishing the evil spirits all by herself. Uncle Robin says those of the Priest and Paladin Holy paths are even a natural counter to Weird and Ghosts, which is why they have such strict requirements to be one of them, the core ship sailor positions have decent resistance against the weird, but their advantage is the sea, other professions are not bad, but they likely have perfect and imperfect counters to them, so the Holy paths and Sea paths are the two supreme paths. He says there are four other Supremes, but they are a lot rarer. So, Sis Saintess is a full package, beauty, strength—”

“What are you guys on about?!” Grechen finally stopped her soliloquy and realized a separate conversation was going on.

“Nothing!” Timo and Theno jumped like their cat tails were stepped on.

Grechen eyed them suspiciously while looking between them and Kano before continuing her job of introducing everything and everyone.

“That’s Uncle Telr you go to him for boat problems and parts, That’s Uncle Willow an herbalist, and…” Kano passively listened while making note of important persons, but he kept squeezing the two knowledge resource packs beside of him. The saintess whatever wasn’t important, but she was linked to so many interesting nuggets of knowledge.

“Is the church the Saintess apart of really impressive?” He quietly whispered seeing Grechen pull ahead a bit.

“Impressive? Of course, it’s impressive! They not only have a big headquarters on the largest Three Seasons Great Island, but that specific branch isn’t the core of their power. They sent reputable disciples like nuns and paladins in trainings, and candidate saintesses all across the sea region to spread their beliefs and recruit followers and gain offerings to send back. This strategy of not focusing on a specific area but taking the best parts and allocating them in key places however few is far better than greedily sending people everywhere or staying focused in one region!” Theno eloquently dictated once more.

“Say, who is your Uncle Robin?” Kano asked feeling that name was the other voice hidden within Theno’s words.

“He’s a merchant why?” Theno stared suspiciously, feeling there was a hidden agenda somewhere but couldn’t put his finger on it.

“Oh…nothing.” Kano smirked in response. That explains a lot actually.

“That Uncle of yours is sure— wait?!”

A lightning bolt flashed inside his mind at that very moment.

-Search for the highest-ranked professional scroll I can obtain and use within the novice area.

That was his initial command he planned to give his ability if he wasn’t inspired in this journey, without gaining any critical knowledge or the knowledge didn’t affect his decision. It was better to get the scroll and later find the inaugural material and other supporting materials. The scroll was the source of excavating professional skills. Without the right ratio of mixtures and order of ingredients as well as the ceremonial procedures and magic circles, even with a Golden Legend ranked Inaugural material you could end up weaker than your peers.

‘I’ve been looking at his all wrong! My ability’s use isn’t singular. It’s a map that I can ask to lead me to treasure! But why can’t there be more than one treasure instead of the specific one i need!’

Kano immediately knew where to go from there, sure asking for all treasures he can obtain and use might pose problems or even crowd the map and possibly overload his ability, but his mental strength needed to be able to handle the basic use of just using the ability, Marking the treasure on his map, didn’t just tell you where it is, it had other information too, that aspect of the ability enhanced the burden on his mental power even further.

‘But what if I filter the results! Treasures of Starry Legend and above are definitely few! Even if it’s just a handful, focusing on getting them would be the right move, if there’s a lot even better, I’ll prioritize the highest one and still have great treasures to find after!’ If it works not only, would I get the answer to the age-old mystery: What’s above Starry Legend? I’ll also have proof in my hands for my own use!’

The downside was that he likely couldn't choose a professional scroll anymore for the choice was no longer in his hands.

Kano couldn’t hold back and wanted to use his ability immediately! He couldn’t wait a second longer.