“Man, this is boring…”

Staring blankly at the ocean, I realized just how tedious this was. We had been out at sea for a while now, but there was no reason to expect anything that required an escort to happen right away.

“Wanna go fishing?”

Rio, stroking Nir’s fluffy fur, pulled a fishing rod out of her dimensional storage.

“Fishing, huh…”

As usual, the rod had no reel. It seemed pretty inconvenient for fishing from a moving ship.

“Oh, how about we go ask those guys about that appraisal incident from before?”

Noticing my lack of enthusiasm for fishing, Rio put the rod away and suggested another idea.

“Oh, yeah, this might be a good chance.”

“We haven’t seen them these past two days, after all.”

The city was large enough that we hadn’t run into them again. There were a number of people around, but with the background noise of the moving ship, it was unlikely anyone else would overhear us.

Rio and I headed toward the stern of the ship where the four-man party was gathered, with Nir following close behind.

As we approached, the appraisal user—Kant—noticed us and tensed up, causing the other three to turn their attention toward us as well.

“W-what do you want?”

He looked slightly wary, though the other three seemed more irritated than anything.

“Oh, we just wanted to ask about something we didn’t get the chance to before.”

“…Something you want to ask?”

“Yeah. We were wondering how much of our information Kant was able to see with his appraisal.”

“Ah… that…”

He seemed to remember and looked off into the distance.

“That’s why I keep telling you not to appraise people so carelessly…”

The one who muttered that was Gim, the quietest of the four. I remembered him trying to rein in his party back at the guild.

“That’s true. Just like we noticed being appraised, there could be monsters that can sense it too.”

I hadn’t encountered one myself, but I couldn’t say for certain that they didn’t exist. After all, we could sense it, so why not monsters?

“…Yeah, I’ll be more careful from now on. So, about what I can see with my appraisal…”

“Yes?”

“It shows name, race, occupation, and current status. Then, there are the stats.”

Hmm, sounds like it’s the same as what I see.

“HP, MP, Strength, Endurance, Agility, Dexterity, Mental Strength, Magic Power, and Luck. Those nine stats are displayed.”

Taking over the explanation, the red-haired Beryl seemed rather pleased with himself.

Yep, looks like the information is the same. I wondered if the numerical values were also the same.

“Could you tell me what numbers you saw?”

“Huh?”

Kant widened his eyes and stared at me before glancing at his party members.

“…Is it okay to say this here?”

“Hey, he’s asking, so might as well tell us too.”

“Yeah. Just telling us not to mess with them without an explanation isn’t convincing.”

“Haha…”

Each of them reacted differently, but it seemed they had kept the information to themselves. They didn’t seem like bad people.

“It’s fine. I’m curious too.”

“Alright… Just don’t freak out too much.”

With a gulp, Kant finally spoke the numbers aloud.

They were almost identical to what I saw when appraising myself—only a slight difference of two or three points.

“Wha—?”

“Huh?”

“Oh, crap…”

The three of them froze after their initial reactions.

Rio, satisfied with the numbers, nodded to herself.

“O-our stats are barely a tenth of yours…”

One of them muttered, and the others snapped back to reality.

“No way, are you sure your appraisal isn’t bugged?”

“Why are you just C-rank adventurers…?”

So, I was more than ten times stronger than them, huh?

I had been freely using my appraisal on everyone, but after that incident, I had started holding back—at least in the guild. I also hadn’t appraised the other six members of this escort group.

“Wow, there’s that big of a gap?”

“Y-yeah… My Strength is around 1,100. Back in the capital, I once appraised an S-rank adventurer, and only one of their stats had barely reached five digits…”

Oh. S-rank adventurers barely reach five digits?

Wait… Five digits… only?

Well, my mentor did say not to rely too much on numbers. I should stay on guard.

“And Rio’s MP is in the six digits… That’s just monstrous…”

Well, her magic growth rate is a hundred times the norm, after all.

“Who the hell are you two, really?”

Hearing that question, Rio and I exchanged glances.

“We’re just regular adventurers from the countryside.”

There was no way I was going to say we were summoned from another world. This was the safest answer.

Then, Rio clung to my arm, pressing herself against me.

“Yeah, we’re just a married couple traveling together.”

“Guh!”

“Damn it!”

“No way!”

“Arghhh!!”

The four of them groaned in despair, but I ignored them. Maybe this would help distract them.

“Oh, right.”

There was one more thing I needed to keep secret.

“Please don’t go spreading Nir’s race name around, either.”

“Huh? …Wait—!”

Kant suddenly turned pale upon realizing what I meant.

Looks like he hadn’t appraised Nir back at the guild. Good thing I mentioned it.

…Or maybe I shouldn’t have. Did I just make things worse?