“Wait, hold on,” I told Gora and Ferrith. “I think I have to finish installing this.” The most natural thing it seemed for me to do was to click the “yes” option, but I didn’t have a mouse, so I just held out my index finger until it hovered in front of the text box. I touched the “yes” box and felt a click under my finger, almost like it was a physical thing I could interact with. “You guys can’t see this too, can you?”
“Only you,” Gora confirmed. “Some people take some time to figure out how it works. Let me know when you can read that Brand.”
After selecting “yes” a cartoony icon of a skull and crossbones appeared at the bottom of my vision along with a gear in the top right corner. It really was incredibly intuitive. The gearbox seemed to me like the way to adjust settings, so I was sure that’s actually what it would do. I tried pointing to the Brand on the page in front of me to see if that would get it to give me information about it. A pop-up appeared.
Would you like to translate this Brand?
[Yes] [No] [Cancel]
Beneath those options there was a check box that said “Do not ask me this again.” I checked that box before selecting “yes”. A text box appeared beneath the Brand that read:
Spray Acid. Active. 10 MP.
Breathe out to safely exhale a spray of acid that inflicts Minor damage.
“Spray Acid!” I announced excitedly. “That Brand is Spray Acid!”
“Very good,” Gora said. “You figured it out.”
Each Brand took up half a page, so I clicked around to the other three the pamphlet was currently open to. They read, “Acidic Touch”, “Acid Toss” and “Acid Resistance” respectively. I didn’t even bother reading their descriptions, since the names seemed to already be a general description of what they did. The main thing I noticed was that Acid Toss was significantly more expensive than the other combat Brands.
“This is incredible,” I said. “What other things can it do?”
“Well, any information your brain takes in the Brand can process, so the limit is really your imagination,” Gora said. “Personally, I use it to track my MP levels and take notes about clients at work.”
As soon as Gora mentioned tracking MP levels, two bars stretched across the bottom of my vision; one red, one blue. The blue one looked roughly three times as long as the red one. I reached a finger up and clicked on the blue bar. A pop-up expanded to display the values.
MP: 180/96
“Uh, I think something is wrong with my Brand,” I reported to Gora. “It’s reporting my MP levels as nearly double the maximum value.”
Gora’s head cocked back. “It does?” he asked. “I assure you, Vincent. I use this Brand every day and it has never displayed incorrect information about my own body.”
“Do you have some kind of Brand that can let you check my MP levels?”
“The best I can do is estimate of your vitality based on your appearance. What is the overlay telling you?”
“It says my MP is 180 out of 96.”
“Could be his Skill,” Ferrith volunteered. “That was the other thing Clarice wanted to get a report on. He doesn’t seem to know what his does.”
“I’ve just been using it to help fall asleep at night,” I explained. “I’m not even sure if that’s what it’s supposed to do or not.”
“Yes, that is a problem I’m equipped to handle,” Gora said. “Though it’s usually children that need help with this sort of thing…” I tried not to read into that comment too much. Gora leaned across the table that separated us. “Give me your hand, please.” I complied. Gora grabbed my right hand with both of his, rubbing the palm vigorously with his thumbs. “Hmm,” he said. “That’s strange. I’ve never seen this before.”
“Never seen what before?” I asked. “Is it bad?”
“Not necessarily. Just strange. What I’m reading here is that your Skill allows you to convert vitality to MP. I sell a Brand in one of my books that does exactly the same thing.”
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“You do? Ferrith! You told me every Skill is unique.”
“They are,” Ferrith insisted.
Gora frowned. “Not yours, apparently. I’m very sorry, Vince. Perhaps it’s related to your coming here from another world.”
“Well, is it a good Skill at least?”
“Above average,” Gora reported. “It’s Category Three. Some high-level adventurers find it useful, but only in combination with other Brands. It is one of the only ways to overcharge MP, so I’m not surprised you managed to do that by accident. You say you’ve been using it to sleep? Tell me. Can you fall asleep without it?”
“Uh… I think I might have the first night I was here, but since then, it’s been the only way I’ve been able to sleep at night. It just knocks me right out.”
“Overcharging your MP will do that,” Gora explained. “Just as losing MP makes you sleepy, high levels of MP will stimulate your mind unnaturally. If your MP is currently twice your baseline, you could drain it off by staying awake for the next two days.”
“Is that safe? Is it like chugging a bunch of caffeine, or is it the same as real sleep?”
“I’m not sure what ‘caffeine’ is, but it’s not quite the same as real sleep. Your body will become lethargic. I don’t recommend you actually do it.”
“But what if I can’t sleep at night without it? Because I can’t.”
Gora pressed his lips together and shook his head like he’d just heard a particularly foolish statement. “Vince… do you realize what you are doing to yourself? You are leeching away your own life force until it becomes so weak you put yourself into an uncontrollable coma… And you are doing that just to sleep! I—I just… I won’t pretend to be a priest, but I really don’t think that’s healthy.”
“Yeah, well. Neither is cancer,” I said. That put a stop to Gora’s lecturing. It was kind of like a superpower and wasn’t the first or last time I’d pulled the “cancer” card to shut someone up. Gora looked away, clearing his throat as though something had just distracted him.
“Why don’t I show you the Brand I have that’s just like your Skill so you can see for yourself,” Gora offered. He reached across to the pamphlet in front of me and started flipping through pages. I watched Brand symbols flip by: Icicle Spear, Phantasm, Chain Lightning, Manifest Inspiration. That last one sounded interesting. I almost asked Gora to flip back to it, but instead a pop-up offered to solve the problem for me.
Do you want to view stats for the Brand “Manifest Inspiration”?
[Yes] [No] [Cancel]
I clicked “yes” and an information box appeared in my vision, giving a basic description of the Brand.
Manifest Inspiration. Active. 55 MP.
Temporarily create a mundane object from your mind.
My eyes almost bulged out of my head as I read that description. The potential of that Brand seemed limitless. I could make guns! Even bombs!
“…the one you have,” Gora was saying. I tried to catch up to the conversation. He had the pamphlet open to a different page, displaying a Brand that he was pointing to insistently.
“Sorry, this is the one you say I have?” I asked. I clicked on it. A description popped up.
Spend Vitality. Passive.
You may convert your HP to MP. HP lost in this way cannot be magically healed.
Gora pointed lower on the page. “As you can see here,” he explained, “we rank it as a Category Three Brand and it’s priced at 947 Crosses. Very respectable. Most Brands are only Category One.”
“Okay,” I replied. “What is so weird about it, anyway? I’m sure plenty of people have duplicate Skills.”
Gora shook his head. “No. They do not. Similar, yes, but never exactly the same.”
I shrugged. “Well, it’s new to me.”
Gora shook his head sadly. “It’s unfortunate that you won’t be able to sell me your—”
“Listen, Gora. There was another Brand I saw that I’m interested in.”
He perked up. “There is? Which one?”
“Manifest Inspiration. What can you tell me about it?”
Gora’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead. “A man of expensive taste, I see,” he said as he flipped back through the pamphlet. “That one is a Category Five. I would suggest snatching it up quick; we’re in talks with the Artificer’s Guild about making it restricted. They don’t need it, of course, they just don’t like anyone else being able to make things. Ah. Here it is.” He showed me the page, and I compared the handwritten description to the one my Brand provided.
“Wait, objects you make with it are temporary?”
“And non-magical,” Gora volunteered. He laughed. “No free Buster Blades, I’m afraid. But what you lose in power, you gain in versatility. Need some rope to cross a ravine? Spill food on your pants before a hot date? Manifest Inspiration will save you.”
“Are there limits? Could I manifest a house?”
“Ha, ha. No.” He held his arms apart about the width of the table. “Maybe this big? Smaller, if you make something heavy. You’d have to ask a Skill Scholar for a breakdown of the exact rules.”
“What about a bomb? Do you have those here?”
Gora scratched his temple. “I’m not getting a clear translation of that word. You mean a device that will explode? No. I said you can’t make magical objects.”
“Not magic, a mundane bomb,” I insisted. “You know what? Never mind. It sounds like it would work. How long do the objects you create last?”