“0.94 hours, I would guess. But there is a lengthy approval process for this Brand, as it can make temporary gold. Kalador puts heavy restrictions on that sort of thing. They need to know you won’t try to abuse it to swindle merchants. And, uh… do you have 2,788 Crosses, Vincent?”

I pulled out one of the three coins from my pocket. “Is this a Cross?” I asked.

Gora shook his head. “Twelve of them together would be.”

Ferrith sat up from his seat. “That’s enough,” he said. “We’re done here. If you want to do your own shopping, you can come back later. On your own time.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to buy a Brand yourself?” Gora asked. “Since you were here last, I got in a support Brand that would be perfect for you. It toughens the skin of nearby allies.”

“My ogres are tough enough,” Ferrith said. “No thanks.” He moved for the door. I got up to follow.

“Come back any time,” Gora called after us.

“I really want that Brand,” I told him. “As soon as I get the money together, I’m coming back for it.” I still had no concept of how much money that particular Brand was, but the potential to manifest objects at will was too great to pass up. For all I knew, I could just imagine a syringe full of “cancer cure” and heal myself.

“I hope you do!” Gora said. “I’ll tell Vareen to put you on the short list. No appointment necessary.”

I said a quick thanks and followed Ferrith out into the hall. As soon as the door shut behind us, Ferrith scoffed. “There is no short list,” he said. “He says that to everyone. I only asked for an appointment so we wouldn’t have to wait as long.”

Walking out of the Broker’s Guildhouse, I felt like a whole new world had opened up to me. Ferrith’s disparaging comment about Gora didn’t even bother me. I’d met salesman like that before. I followed Ferrith out of the guildhall on autopilot, not really paying attention to where we were going, focusing instead on the menus of my new Information Overlay Brand. The gear icon in the top corner opened an entire set of menu options. I had options to turn on or off automatic voice translation, text translation, I could turn off critical damage alerts, display buffs and debuffs… there was even an option to estimate the HP of other people based on their appearance. After looking through the first set of options, I clicked on “Advanced Options” just to see what was on it. The first one had a setting with a sliding scale that controlled the rounding of numbers. It was currently set to round all translated measurements to the nearest 1/100th of equivalent measurements I was familiar with.

“That was it!” I blurted out. “This whole time!”

“What was it?” Ferrith asked me. I swept aside my menu with a gesture to see him staring at me with squinted eyes, like he thought there was something wrong with me. It looked like he was in the middle of getting his possessions returned to him from the Hunters at the front of the store.

“Oh. Sorry,” I said. “I just figured out how to stop you from telling me a bunch of weirdly specific numbers. I’m going through the menu on my new Brand. It’s got tons of features.”

“O… kay,” Ferrith said. “Don’t shout like that in here unless there’s a real problem. The Hunters get jumpy.”

“Sorry. I forgot where I was.”

After receiving his things, Ferrith popped on his helmet, then slung both his sword and bag over his shoulders. While he did that, I changed the setting on number rounding so I would speak and hear figures that were familiar estimates to both parties.

From the Broker’s Guildhouse, Ferrith led us back through the residential area to the center of town. Once I could see we were just retracing our steps, I opened my settings menu again to fiddle with the options. Estimating other people’s HP didn’t seem useful, so I left that off, but asked it to always display the numbers on my own HP and MP bars. After that, I backed out and finally clicked on that skull and crossbones symbol in the bottom left of my vision. That opened up a description.

Debuff: Cancer—Stage IV Strength: -2 Stamina: -4 Dexterity: -1 Maximum HP: -8% Estimated Remaining Lifespan: 6 months, 8 days, 4 hours, 41 seconds 40 seconds… 39 seconds… 38 seconds…

I closed that menu. I felt a cold sweat run down my back at being faced so directly with the prospect of my own mortality. Seeing my new Brand trying to guess how much time I had left to live wasn’t something I was interested in seeing. I’d had a ton of doctors try to do it, and so far none of them had been right. The idea that this new magical ability was probably more accurate than a medical doctor only freaked me out more. I was fine with doctors telling me when they thought I was going to die. Doctors were wrong all the time. But would this new magic have that same flaw?

I went back into the settings menu and found an option to not estimate my remaining lifespan down to the second. I didn’t need to see a literal ticking clock. Rounding to the nearest week seemed fine to me. While in a deep menu—which seemed like it got deeper as I thought of options it seemed like the Brand should display—I found an option to display a little “status” icon on my main HUD. After backing out of the options, I found a little stick figure man in the bottom right corner. Clicking on that opened up a menu with my personal stats. It provided estimates of all my vital statistics, like strength and dexterity, but what really interested me was a list at the bottom labeled “Available Skills”. I clicked to expand it. There were two Skills listed.

Available Skills: Information Overlay. Passive. Process and translate all information seen or heard in an understandable format. Consume Vitality. Active. 0 MP. You may convert HP to MP. HP lost in this way cannot be magically healed.

That was odd. I’d only just found this menu, but despite having the same Skill that Gora had shown me in his pamphlet for some reason, my Skill had a different name. Why name it differently if it was the same thing? I wanted to read the description of the other Brand again to see what the difference was, but I’d forgotten to take one of Gora’s pamphlets with me. Just as that thought entered my head, a menu popped up in front of my vision.

Would you like to add a glossary of known Brands to your main HUD? [Yes] [No] [Cancel]

Once again, my new overlay demonstrated why it was the most expensive translator on the market. Simply amazing. It was like having a computer in my head. I clicked “yes”. An icon of a book appeared in the corner of my vision next to the little stick figure man. I clicked it to pull up a short list of all the Brands I’d seen and identified. All the acid Brands were on there. I scrolled down to the Brand that was supposedly identical to my own: Spend Vitality. I read the description again.

You may convert your HP to MP. HP lost in this way cannot be magically healed.

No. It still seemed the same. I went back and clicked on my status screen to pull up my Skill again. I read it closer this time, trying to see what I was missing.

You may convert HP to MP. HP lost in this way cannot be magically healed.

There it was. Right in front of me. I hadn’t even noticed. Even Gora hadn’t noticed! The descriptions were not the same. One word was missing from my Skill’s description. One word, but it opened a world of possibilities.

“Holy crap!” I exclaimed, stopping dead in the middle of the street. I didn’t even know where I was. As I looked away from my menus, I found Ferrith and I were back on the street with the merchant shops.

Ferrith turned back to me, eyes flat with what I could have interpreted as boredom, though I was certain at least a little impatience was mixed in. “What now?” he asked.

“My Skill!” I said. “I was just looking through the menus on my—Well, doesn’t matter. I think it might actually be good! Like, really good!”

Ferrith sighed. “What? Are you going to say you can choose how long it puts you to sleep? I think Gora was right. You shouldn’t use it for that.”

“No, that’s not it. My Skill has an MP cost of zero.”

Ferrith shook his head. “No, that’s not how it works. Passive Skills don’t have MP costs.”

“It’s not passive. It’s active. I activate it to drain HP… but it doesn’t have to be my HP!”

Ferrith quickly glanced left, then right. There were just a few strangers walking by, but none of them seemed to be paying us any mind. “Are you saying—”

“Well, if I’m understanding this right… maybe we shouldn’t discuss this on the street? Can we go somewhere private?”

Ferrith pointed to a nearby alley between what looked like a candy shop and a hat merchant. “Over there,” he said. When we were alone he looked up and down the alley to double-check. “Okay, shoot. What did you want to tell me about your Skill?”

“Well, based on what my new Brand is telling me about it, I think it could suck the life out of other people. Kill them too, maybe. I’m not sure, maybe it stops at putting them to sleep. That isn’t something you rissians would call black ma—”

Ferrith clamped his hand firmly over my mouth. “If you value your life, you won’t finish that sentence. This is exactly the type of question that gets people around here killed.”