The Special Nature of Special Skills
The sight of Ian leaving the Red Brazier was heavy beyond measure. Though his stomach was full of freshly grilled lamb skewers, the grim news from Roscal had already sunk his mood deep into the earth.
With those leaden steps, he arrived at the errand runners’ guild—only to encounter a face he was truly glad to see. It was the tall, solidly built senior adventurer Zenon and his companion, a mage whose presence radiated pressure even from a distance.
“Oh? Zenon!”
Ian called out loudly toward the man’s back, unable to hide his delight. At the sound of his voice, Zenon, who had been in serious conversation with the receptionist, turned his head.
“Ian. It’s been quite a while.”
“Yes, it really has. A few days ago I went to the inn where you were staying because I was curious, but they only told me you’d left for a labyrinth expedition. I never expected to meet you again this soon.”
That was when it happened. The monocle-wearing mage who had been staring at him with curious eyes the entire time finally lost his patience. He made his staff vanish somewhere and jumped into the conversation.
“Wow! So you’re the errand boy who passed the captain’s ridiculously high standards in one go!”
“Uh… yes?”
The mage strode forward with his light gray hair fluttering, grabbed both of Ian’s shoulders, and thrust his face close.
“…Whoa!”
Startled, Ian’s entire body stiffened like stone. Meanwhile, the nameless mage’s clear water-blue eyes sparkled strangely as he scrutinized Ian’s brown irises as if trying to peel them apart. Unable to endure the oppressive gaze any longer, Ian squeezed his eyes shut. Only then did the mage finally release his shoulders and step back.
“Hmm, hmm! What clear eyes! No wonder our captain took a liking to you!”
Ian hurriedly retreated in case the man tried to grab him again. Zenon, who had been watching the absurd scene with a slightly furrowed brow, finally exploded.
“Hey, Lucas! How many times have I told you not to act like a lunatic! You absolute nutcase!”
“Ahahaha! Captain, you’re saying the obvious again. All mages are a little crazy, you know!”
“Ugh, this is my life.”
Zenon pressed a hand to his forehead with a pained expression, as if Lucas’s antics were nothing new. In the meantime, the so-called ‘mad mage’ Lucas had silently crept up beside Ian once more.
“Anyway, as you just heard, my name is Lucas. Lucas Belmont! What’s yours?”
“Um… I’m Ian River.”
“I see, Ian! I heard from Captain Zenon that you took a request to gather whitefoot flowers. Have you found any leads yet?”
“Pardon? I finished the whitefoot flower gathering request about a week ago.”
“……Huh? What did you say?”
At that moment, a strange glint flashed in Lucas’s eyes. Ian also sensed the mage’s demeanor shift to something cool and serious, and looked at him with a puzzled expression. Lucas blinked slowly as if thinking deeply, then suddenly asked.
“How far did you search in the western forest? Don’t tell me the whitefoot flowers were blooming right at the entrance?”
“No. There’s a small pond deeper inside the Arsilen Forest, past the center. They were blooming by that pond.”
The moment Ian finished speaking, Zenon approached in an instant and linked arms with him.
“Hmm, Ian. Let’s go to a quiet teahouse and have a proper talk.”
“What? I came here to pick up a new low-rank request.”
“Come on! You can do low-rank requests anytime. Opportunities to have a relaxed conversation with a senior adventurer like me don’t come often.”
It sounded reasonable enough, so Ian nodded before he could think twice. As a result, he was practically dragged away and soon found himself inside an upscale teahouse with private rooms. The sound of Lucas’s highly excited laughter following behind sent a chill down the back of his neck.
Inside the teahouse, the three of them entered the deepest private room and ordered three cups of herbal tea. A strange silence fell over them for a moment. Ian was distracted by the luxurious wooden interior and subtle fragrance he had never seen before, while Zenon and Lucas were each busy calculating something complicated in their heads.
Eventually, it was Zenon’s low voice that broke the silence.
“Ian, how many days did it take you to find the whitefoot flowers?”
“Hmm, about three days, I think.”
At that answer, Zenon’s eyes sank into a deep violet as he stared intently at Ian.
“Three days… You managed to expand your search all the way to the heart of the Arsilen Forest in that short time? Did you head straight for the center from the beginning?”
Ian was simply puzzled why Zenon had been so fixated on the gathering period since earlier. He answered with a slightly dazed expression.
“No, I searched carefully starting from the forest entrance. Actually…”
“Actually, you have a ‘Detection skill’ that lets you find the target instantly, right? Right?”
At Lucas’s sudden interruption, Ian nodded honestly.
“Yes, that’s correct. As expected of veteran adventurers—your insight is incredible.”
“Whoaahaha! No way! You really have a Detection skill?!”
Lucas shouted, his body shaking with uncontainable excitement. At that moment, Zenon’s rough hand mercilessly smacked the back of his head.
“You idiot! Keep your voice down!”
“Owww! That hurts! Did you make your hand out of steel, Captain?!”
Lucas clutched the back of his head, tears welling in his eyes. Zenon ignored him with a cold face and turned back to Ian.
“Ian, you… you don’t seem to realize just how rare that Detection skill of yours is.”
“Huh? No, I had a rough idea. It’s not an attack skill, after all.”
“But it’s not a simple daily-life skill either. The detection ability you possess belongs to the category of ‘special skills.’”
“Special skills?”
Ian’s eyes widened in genuine surprise. In truth, he had only read about as much knowledge on skills as one book’s worth—and that had been a very basic introductory theory book meant for children. Seeing Zenon’s serious expression, his heart sank.
Wait a second. Now that I think about it, Pelua from the Owl Bookstore also said that Perfect Bubble was an incredibly special skill. And now Zenon is saying that even Detection is a special skill? Don’t tell me… Positive Aurora is no ordinary skill either?
Are all three skills I possess actually rare skills?
Ian’s mind went blank. He didn’t know whether he should consider this luck or a threat to his safety. As if reading his confusion, Zenon spoke in a slightly gentler tone.
“Hey, don’t overthink it. We’re not the kind of guys who’d go around blabbing your secrets everywhere.”
“Ah, no…! I’m not suspecting that. It’s just that I thought I was an ordinary person, so suddenly being told I possess special skills left me flustered.”
“Hmm, well… that makes sense.”
Zenon nodded, then suddenly grinned and added,
“Still, if the rank is low or the detection range is terrible, it wouldn’t be that special. What rank is yours, and how wide is the range per activation?”
“It’s rank 5, and the detection range is about 500 meters.”
“Meters… what? What’s that?”
Ian flinched and shut his mouth for a moment.
Oh no. It said “meters” in the skill window, so I assumed it was a unit used here too! The System must have translated it for my convenience!
Before Zenon could find it strange, Ian quickly spread his hands about a meter apart and explained the length.
“Ah, it means it can search a diameter equal to this length added together five hundred times.”
“Huh? Wait… so that’s about 500 ser (500m)?”
Lucas also let out an astonished gasp, as if he could hardly believe it.
“Rank 5 with a detection range that wide? What about the duration?”
“Thirty minutes.”
“Ooh, the duration is on the level of a mid-grade skill. Still, that’s impressive all the same. With that kind of range, you wouldn’t lose to most high-ranking search specialists. Well, there aren’t many search specialists in the world to begin with.”
At that moment, a polite knock on the door broke the silence. With Zenon’s permission, a maid wearing a long black skirt and a pure white apron entered quietly, carrying a silver tray.
On the tray were fragrant herbal tea and plates of golden-brown, high-class fruit pie. She set the teacups and plates down in front of each of them without making a sound. Then she gave a light curtsy and left with quiet steps. Ian felt a strange sense of wonder at the sight of a real maid whose restrained elegance was nothing like the exaggerated versions in subculture.
But Zenon, for whom the main topic was more urgent than the scene before him, spoke up less than a few seconds after the maid left.
“So, Ian. Aren’t you curious why we’re so surprised and excited about your Detection skill?”
“Uh… yes. Looking at the atmosphere, I’m really starting to wonder. Do you need to find something?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“Is it a guild matter? Just to be clear, I have absolutely no intention of stepping foot inside a labyrinth.”
At Ian’s firm words, Zenon’s eyes hardened with brief regret before relaxing again. Still, he skillfully hid his emotions and continued in a calm voice.
“It’s not a personal matter for our guild. It’s something more official, something that concerns the safety of many people.”
By now, one word had risen clearly in Ian’s mind.
“Dark crystals……”
At his almost groaning murmur, Lucas’s eyes flashed.
“Exactly! The moment our guild came out of the labyrinth, we were secretly summoned to the lord’s castle. They asked us to join the effort to track down and destroy the dark crystals.”
“But why the Shield of Thorny Vines Guild out of all the many exploration guilds?”
“Because we’re the best…! Or at least that’s what I’d like to say, and it’s true, but actually our guild master was an academy classmate of the lord’s daughter.”
“Wow, really?”
“Yeah. They graduated from the upper academy in the capital, Arcadium. Anyway, that’s not what’s important. The situation in the Ephel Mountains has gotten so bad that even the knight order has been deployed.”
Ian felt the fingertips toying with his teacup tremble faintly.
“So… you accepted the mission?”
Zenon nodded in place of an answer.
“That’s right. The city needs to stay peaceful so we can stay comfortably and focus on labyrinth exploration.”
“I see……”
Ian gave a short reply and firmly closed his mouth. A heavy sense of burden was already crashing over him like a tidal wave. Beside him, Lucas was making a fuss about how the lord had offered two thousand gold and top-grade mana stones worth a thousand gold each as completion rewards, and that they would give Ian five hundred gold and three stones as his share, but none of it reached his ears.
Eventually Zenon calmed the excited Lucas and formally invited Ian to join them.
“Let me be clear. If you come with us, we will risk our lives to protect you. The knight order and soldiers heading to the Ephel Mountains this time will act as a massive bait to draw the attention of the bone monsters. All we have to do is use that opening to find the place where dark mana flows most thickly. With your Detection skill, we should be able to locate the crystals much faster.”
Zenon paused as if catching his breath, took a sip of herbal tea, and then drove the point home with a decisive voice that left no room for refusal.
“We depart in two days. We’ll be waiting outside the north gate at seven in the morning.”
With those final words, Zenon stood up. Lucas also jumped to his feet in a hurry, snatched up a piece of the pie he hadn’t even touched, stuffed it into his mouth, and followed his captain out.
Left alone, Ian stared blankly at the tea leaves in his cooling cup. An outrageous reward of five hundred gold and top-grade mana stones, paired with an extremely dangerous mission with a high injury rate. Despite the quiet elegance of the luxurious room, his heart sank helplessly into a deep swamp of worry.