Gift-user

**Gift-user** (異能者, *Inō-sha*?), also known as the **Gifted**, is a person who possesses one or more Gifts. These extraordinary capabilities are predominantly found among individuals of noble lineage.

## Description

Gift-users are human, and while they could never become gods, they far outstrip the average person in every respect. They have extraordinary physical abilities that is only reserved for users with superpowers. Supernatural abilities generally enhance one’s body, making it resistant to injuries and disease. Gift-users’ superior physical abilities put them on a completely different level than ordinary individuals. Because they are so much hardier than the average person, there are no risk of a Gift-user dying, even though a Gift-user is caught up in a huge explosion. However, their wounds could still be in a terrible state. The stronger the Gift, the more it strengthens the physical abilities, as is evident how strong someone possessing the Usuba Gift, the strongest Gift of them all, despite their age being a disadvantage when fighting against a Gifted younger opponent.

As only the Gifted are able see the Grotesqueries, they are the ones who hunt them and dispatch them with supernatural attacks, which is the Grotesquerie's sole weakness. Because of this, families with Gifted people have long served as the Emperor’s retainers, and are mobilized for anti-Grotesquerie missions when needed. Women in these families, however, are not expected to battle Grotesqueries themselves, so some of them, like Kaya Saimori, never much cared about mastering paranormal crafts.

Other than the families themselves being sent for missions, there is also a dedicated Special Anti-Grotesquerie Unit, an elite squad within the Imperial Army that has been formed to deal with supernatural incidents. All members of the unit are Gifted, possess Spirit-Sight and often other paranormal powers as well, and are almost exclusively of noble birth.

The powers of the Gifted are not only indispensable for combating the Grotesqueries, their special abilities are also extremely valuable in battles against humans. Because of that, they’d always played a significant role in suppressing riots and keeping peace within the empire.

Due to their importance and indispensability to the empire, the Gifted enjoy high social status. By ridding the land of Grotesqueries these families have rosen to prominence and made a name for themselves many generations ago, becoming firmly established in the nobility. Generally, the loyalty of these families to their country and emperor is very strong. If it wasn’t for the emperor’s protection, it was very likely the Gift-users would be turned from heroes who protected the country into heretics. These apprehensions would only grow stronger in the current era, where advances in science has begun to make people question both Grotesqueries and Gift-users.

People born with the Gift are always descendants of these families. For an individual born in a Gifted bloodline, possessing the Gift or not decides your fate and status in the family. Many families place high value on the familial expectation of inheriting the Gift, as demonstrated by Shinichi Saimori's rejection of Miyo Saimori, when she was still a toddler. He believes that if she was born to a family of commoners, she’d be loved, but to the Saimori family, she is just a disgrace. Miyo's case of being cast aside and becoming a victim of domestic abuse doesn't stand on its own, as those situations happened often. Many of the Gifted families were unscrupulous in their treatment of the Giftless, whom they considered failures.

In order to improve the bloodline, many noble families would arrange marriages between the Gifted.
Some families, like the Usuba family, avoided intermarriage with other Gifted families so that their Gift would remain confined to their bloodline.

Gift-users are enormously powerful, so the government strictly surveil their whereabouts. If any of them got involved in criminal activity, the country would swoop in to deal with them before it becomes a major incident. Currently, there are unlikely to be any Gift-users whose whereabouts are unknown, including those who have gone overseas. All Gift-users have a bare minimum amount of their actions supervised by the government. If something happens, the state could look into the movements of every known Gift-user.

Many of the renowned Gifted families still live in the old capital, and the knowledge of supernatural abilities and techniques hadn’t yet fallen into obscurity as it had in the Imperial Capital. However, the Gift runs the risk of being exterminated by ‘science’ and other drivel. With fewer Grotesqueries, there's no need for Gift-users to hone their skill. Due to Western cultural influences and the advancement of technology in the empire, more and more people are denying the existence of the Grotesqueries, whose numbers had also begun to dwindle. Consequently, the demand for talented Gift-users who could hunt down such creatures had been falling. With the situation being as it was, it was unavoidable that the Gifted families without any noteworthy talents would become less adept at using them. Even Kiyoka Kudou, celebrated as the best of his generation, wouldn’t have ranked among the top Gift-users of times past. Any type of supernatural ability has become exceedingly rare, with Gift-user births declining for decades.

An **artificial Gift-user** (人造異能者?) is someone who is not born with the Gift, but gained Gift-like powers later in life through some medium. In their experiments in the outskirts of the village near the Kudou villa, the Gifted Communion used a vial filled with fiend blood for bestowing artificial Gifts on ordinary humans. The Gift-users with postnatal supernatural abilities have eyes that turn red.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6  Novel, Volume 1 Chapter 1
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2  Novel, Volume 4 Chapter 1
3. ↑  Novel, Volume 5 Chapter 2
4. ↑  Novel, Volume 4 Chapter 3
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1  Novel, Volume 5 Chapter 4
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5  Novel, Volume 1 Chapter 2
7. ↑  Novel, Volume 1 Chapter 5
8. ↑  Novel, Volume 1 Chapter 4
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1  Novel, Volume 2 Chapter 3
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1  Novel, Volume 1 Chapter 3
11. ↑ 11.0 11.1  Novel, Volume 3 Chapter 6
12. ↑  Novel, Volume 3 Chapter 5