Prologue

I blinked.

Once. Twice.

The office was gone. Not just the cubicle, but everything—the hum of coffee machines, the disappointment of unread work emails, the sticky mouse pad.. Instead of my off-white cubicle walls, I stood in nothingness—not just empty space, but a bleached void that gnawed at my vision.

And right in front of me was her.

She called herself Luminara... a goddess. She hovered mid-air, her bare feet dangled like a kid on one of those park swing sets. Her dress shifted between strange shades of white—not glowing, just indecisive. A halo gleamed over her messy curls.

"Oh good, you're not screaming, and you’re just in time too!"

I rubbed my neck, still sore from staring down at now meaningless reports.

"For… vaporization?"

"Reincarnation!" Her wings flapped with urgency. "Check your stats!"

A floating screen appeared:

NAME: SHIRO HOSHIKI

STR:10 | DEX:10 | INT:10 | LCK:5 | [UNDEFINED]: ∞ (Goddess Blessing)

"There's an unnamed skill with a glowing border and an infinity symbol," I noted.

"Very astute of you!"

"But hang on a second, I fix spreadsheets for—"

The void lurched.

"Ahem! Moving on! You, Shiro Hoshiki, have been granted the opportunity to start anew in a wondrous and fantastical world. And as a token of my generosity, I’ve given you a special skill to help you thrive!"

"A special skill?" I perked up a little. "Like magic? Super strength? Maybe a cool sword that makes me ridiculously OP?"

Luminara winced. "Ehhh… about that."

A bad feeling crept up my spine. "What do you mean, ‘about that’?"

"Soooooo," she stretched the word to an annoying degree. "You actually do have an overpowered skill… It’s Hunting."

I blinked. "Hunting."

"Yep!"

"Like, bow-and-arrow, tracking animals, living-off-the-land kind of hunting?"

"Bingo!" She shot me with finger guns.

I stared at her. "That’s my special, god-tier ability?"

"Mhm!"

"Hunting." I repeated.

"You say that like it’s a bad thing!"

"It’s just… I don’t know, I was expecting something a little more—" I gestured vaguely. "Flashy?"

"Oh, no worries! It’s not just any hunting skill. It’s THE ultimate hunting skill. You are the greatest hunter that the world will ever see!"

"…So I’m basically a glorified caveman."

"Wow, okay, that’s a little reductive—"

"You could’ve given me literally anything else—sorcery, swordsmanship, hell, even an encyclopedic knowledge of alchemy—but no. You made me into some high fantasy hunter person!"

"Oh nonsense! It was an accident!" she blurted out.

I froze. "Excuse me?"

Luminara coughed into her fist, looking anywhere but at me. "Ahem. So, funny story. I was supposed to distribute your stats more… evenly. But I may have—completely by accident, mind you!—dumped all your potential into hunting. Everything else is… well, average."

"You fat-fingered my character sheet!?"

"I wouldn’t put it that way—"

"I would though! How do you mess up that badly!? Do you really mean to tell me that I could have been the next legendary hero, but instead I wound up getting min-maxed into being the best elk tracker in existence?"

"Look, let’s focus on the positives!" she said hastily. "You’ll never go hungry! And survival will come naturally! Plus, you have just enough crafting and homesteading knowledge to build a comfy little life for yourself!"

"Oh, wonderful!" I threw up my hands. "So I don’t even get to be an adventurer? I’m just gonna be some weird hermit ‘buddy-man-guy’ who lives in the woods, single-handedly wiping out the deer population?"

"Well, I wouldn’t phrase it like that—"

"This is the worst isekai setup I’ve ever heard! Also, uh... my luck is 5?" I jabbed at the flickering stat screen. "That's so tragic, man!"

Luminara hovered cross-legged, idly plucking glowing feathers from her mismatched wings.

"Haven't you heard? Underdogs are trendy!"

"This isn't a sports montage. I died scrubbing metadata from Excel sheets."

"It’s not tragic! It's transitional!" She conjured a promotional hologram of rolling green hills. "Look! The Land of Altheria! Only 30% less existential dread!"

The hologram glitched. A pixelated wolf ate the hills.

I crossed my arms. "Pass."

"WaitwaitWAIT!" Her wings beat frantically. "Fine! You get unlimited carry weight!"

"You made that up!"

"So what? I'm a goddess! I'll give you my blessing!" She snapped her fingers. My inventory screen appeared:

∞/∞ SLOTS

I blinked. "That's... suspiciously generous."

"See?" She grinned. "And you can name your skills! Make them sound cool!" The newly named

"Ultimate Hunting Bullshit Cheat" skill pulsed on my sheet.

"There we go."

"Rude! Here—" She grabbed a celestial quill, her tongue poking out as she scribbled—

CURRENT SKILL → Nighthunter’s Stalker Gambit (Ultra Rare)

"New mechanics and a better font, see?" She preened.

"It still says ‘identifies animal droppings’ in the tooltip."

"But sparklier!" Her smile faltered.

"Luminara," I said slowly. "Why are you rushing this?"

"Because I—" Her halo fizzed. "I recommended you! The Pantheon thinks mortals need training wheels, but you’re different. You’ll thrive out there scrappy and…" She eyed my combat stats. "...runty."

I hesitated. "Different how?"

Her voice dropped conspiratorially. "Off-record? Earth was breaking you. Stale coffee and passive-aggressive HR emails? C'mon now." She gestured wildly. "Dig a trench! Poop in the woods! Live authentically!"

"...That’s your pitch?"

"I practically ate a self-help podcast and regurgitated it onto you! You'll be fine!"

"Gross."

TELEPORTING TO: ALTHERIA (Tutorial Zone)

"Hey, wait—your ‘goddess of new beginnings’ title just updated to ‘probationary goddess—’"

"GO FORTH AND HUNT!" Her voice cracked.

Light swallowed me; I was alone again.