This is just the base system - it’s like any other distribution’s base install except that we don’t have an official ‘installer’; Gentoo distributes tarballs that users unpack following the guidance in the handbook.
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After unpacking the system image you can install a binary kernel, have portage compile one for you, or manage it manually (but still let portage fetch sources)
It may be best for me to simply attempt to install Gentoo in a VM to see for myself, but, out of curiosity, how does the base image differ from something like the .iso that Arch Linux distributes to allow you to install the distro? So, if one were to install a binary kernel, would they still need to initially compile anything? Or could one theoretically do a full Gentoo install without the need of compiling?