I shrugged. “A little should be fine. I’ll show you some human junk food. It doesn’t have any nutritional value anyway, so this will actually be better. Just… how exactly do I activate a Brand?”

“With your mind, of course,” Gora explained. “You may use a gesture if you wish, but all that is needed is a mental desire to bring about any of the effects your Brands are capable of producing. Mastering a Skill or Brand takes practice; using it does not. If you want to use Manifest Inspiration, I’m told it works best when creating specific objects that you are familiar with.”

“Okay then, hold on. I’m going to make something.” I closed my eyes and concentrated. I imagined myself walking into a grocery store and leaning down into the refrigerator and grabbing a 12-pack of classic Coca-Cola. I felt a weight in my right hand. I opened my eyes. There it was. A case of coke!

MP: 639 >>> MP: 584

“Nice!” I said, holding up the case.

“That is… human food?” Gora asked uncertainly.

“Dun’t look like food,” a hunter commented.

I dropped the case on the table and cracked it open. “It is food,” I promised them. “We humans just like to use something called packaging. It’s great. Trust me. The can keeps in the carbonation.” I pulled out a ruby red can and popped it open. “It’s a drink,” I said. “See?” I took a sip. After so long with bland rissian fish jerky and oatmeal, it was like little flavor faeries were dancing on my tongue. I offered a can to Gora. “Here. Try one.”

“It’s cold,” Gora said as he took it. He held it upside down and glared at it.

I grabbed his can and flipped it around for him, then popped the top. “Just take a sip before you judge it. Trust me. You’ll love it.”

“Why does it make that strange popping sound? Food does not make sounds like that.”

“That’s just how the cans are designed,” I explained. I took another sip of my can. “Just like this,” I encouraged him. I reached in the case with my other hand and pulled out two more cans. I tossed each of the hunters one. “Here. You guys aren’t scared of them, are you?”

Once I shamed the first hunter into trying it, they all gave their cokes a chance and gave enthusiastic exclamations. “It hurts my tongue!” Gora complained, though he said it with excitement. One hunter tried just chugging his down and ended up coughing and burping as I tried to describe what “carbonation” was.

“I must say,” Gora admitted. “I was apprehensive at first, but these are fantastically tasty. Can I have another?”

“Keep the whole case,” I told him. “I can always make more. Just be sure to drink them before they dissolve. Consider it a small thanks for helping me out. And for the free belt.”

I said my goodbyes and headed back out to the front. Gora followed me and brought a can of coke with him. “Vareen!” he said excitedly to the attendant at the front counter. There were a few other customers in the shop looking at items, but Gora paid them no mind. “You must try this. You must! It is an ogre drink called a ‘can’. Vince just manifested a few of them with his new Brand.”

“No,” I corrected him. “It’s in a can. It’s called a ‘coke’.” I didn’t bother correcting the ogre comment. Getting called an ogre was just something I was going to have to get used to. I left them to it and headed for the exit. As fun as it was to share something cool from Earth, I was feeling eager to get back to the Adventurer’s Guild so I could start ranking up.

When I stepped outside, the two guards at the door returned my three daggers. “Changed yer mind about sellin’ em?” one of them asked.

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“Turns out they weren’t really worth anything,” I explained. “I’d rather just keep them.” They seemed to accept that answer without reservation.

I walked casually until I was out of sight of the large purple tower, then darted into the nearest alley. After checking to make sure there were no bandits lurking in it, I pulled out the daggers from my backpack. What had I been thinking? Sell them for money? They were evidence. Of course they would want a receipt. The Brokers were too reputable to resale stolen items. No. Even if these things were useful for self-defense, holding onto them like some kind of trophy was just plain stupid. They needed to disappear. Permanently. For all I knew, there were Skills out there that could track the possessions of missing persons. It would be idiotic to think otherwise with how many unique Skills there were out there. For ideas on how to get rid of them, I clicked on my character menu for my complete list of Skills. The only thing besides Manifest Inspiration that looked promising was Fireball. The description read:

Fireball. Active. 10 MP. A ball of flame appears safely in your hand, which you may throw.

Melting down the blades seemed a safe option to get rid of them, but Fireball sounded more like a molotov cocktail. There was no way it would get hot enough. That meant I’d have to use Manifest Inspiration. According to its description, it had an MP cost of fifty-five.

With my current level of MP, I could cast it a bunch of times, but I still didn’t want to be needlessly wasteful. It wasn’t like I could just commit another murder if my MP got low. Ideally, I’d make something with a single activation that could destroy all the blades. The limitation seemed to be only my imagination. So how would I destroy the daggers if I could imagine anything? A forge, of course. I’d seen videos online of a guy who did blacksmithing. He had a mini propane-powered forge. That seemed perfect.

I thought back to the last video I’d seen with that forge in it. I visualized it in my mind, closing my eyes to better concentrate. It was mounted on a stand with a circular bowl turned on its side where the flames were concentrated. At the bottom, a tube led down to a propane tank. I imagined the device just as I’d seen it in the video, already on and burning hot. I heard that unmistakable ripping sound of burning exhaust start from nearby. It sounded kind of like the idling engine of a jet. I opened my eyes and saw the propane forge was sitting right there in front of me, already burning just like intended.

MP: 583 >>> MP: 528

Heat radiated out of the device, filling the dark alley with a red glow. I wasn’t really a blacksmith, so I didn’t try to get fancy. I just tossed the daggers into the open bowl of the forge. There was a knob near where the propane tube connected. I turned it to “High”. There was no reason to be stingy with imaginary propane that would only last an hour. Even though the forge was only temporary, the effect it would have on those daggers would be permanent. If there was any evidence still on them, surely it would be burned away. It seemed fine to leave the contraption running. It would keep burning for another hour, at which point the forge would dissolve and the melted slag that was left of the daggers would drop to the ground, completely unrecognizable. There was no way I was going to sit around that long to babysit the process. It was set up, it was doing its thing, it didn’t need any input from me.

Something bothered me about the MP level that had popped up when I used Manifest Inspiration the second time. I’d gotten an update when I’d made the cokes and I could swear the number had been different. I went into the settings for my overly and as soon as I started looking for it, I found an option to pull up a running history of my MP usage.

MP: 471 >>> MP: 640 (Consume Vitality) MP: 640 >>> MP: 639 (Overcharge Drain) MP: 639 >>> MP: 584 (Manifest Inspiration) MP: 584 >>> MP: 583 (Overcharge Drain) MP: 583 >>> MP: 528 (Manifest Inspiration)

“Overcharge Drain”. Damn. It seemed I couldn’t just maintain a massive MP bar indefinitely. Once it was overcharged, it would start draining on its own. If I didn’t find some way to use my extra MP, I was going to lose it.