Thousands of lines of text streamed through my vision. It wasn’t the void, but I was so blind it might as well be. I staggered on my feet and attempted to catch myself, flailing wildly as rapidly flowing text obliterated my vision. My hand impacted something solid, and I clung to it. I nearly fell several times as I fought an inevitable sense of rotation until it felt as if I was clinging to the handhold upside down, straining against it to keep my feet planted on the floor.

“Matt!”

It took me a second to realize. That was Kinsley, sounding as freaked out as I felt.

Then the floor started to shift beneath me.

“Can’t… make anything out.” I said through gritted teeth. “It’s like it’s throwing every merchant ability at me simultaneously. Maybe every ability, period.”

“Can you filter it?” Kinsley shouted, her voice unnecessarily loud.

“Don’t know.” I panted. Thank christ I hadn’t tried this on the fly. It would present an obvious point of weakness to anyone who was watching. All they’d need to do was wait for me to read someone and plan accordingly.

“Try.” Kinsley urged.

I wanted to, but there was too much white noise to strategize. “What are we even looking for?”

“Uh. Hold on, hold on, let me think.”

“Think faster.”

Kinsley fell silent, as I experienced the sensation of enduring a rollercoaster without a seatbelt.

“Oh!” She finally said. “I need a way to pad inventory and make it less likely to run out of stock. If that even exists.”

At least a third of the text I was reading faded out, the entries rapidly disappearing pixel by pixel. There were still an overwhelming number of entries. They scrolled slightly slower than before, but were entirely illegible.

“Be more specific,” I said, gagging as my breakfast staged an escape attempt. “I think it’s narrowing down the options.”

“Um, something that would appeal to crafters.”

Nothing changed.

“Too vague,” I snapped.

“An ability that would provide a benefit to crafters that sell through me.”

The text slowed to a crawl, nearly throwing me off. It was possible to read the options now, though the feats with longer descriptions still slipped past before I could finish them. Still, it was easier to adapt now that my focus wasn’t split between reading the options and not falling over.

Slowly, the text began to fade, the real world filtering in. I’d drunkenly clung to a metal trunk across the room from where I’d previously been standing.

Determined not to waste the charge, I closed my eyes and honed in on the text.

I rattled off the information to Kinsley as I read, not trusting myself to commit the description to memory.

Gravity seemed to kick back in, and I staggered to the couch, the sense of nausea fading far more slowly than I’d like. Kinsley was still jotting the last of what I said onto a notepad she’d found god knows where.

“Absolutely excellent. Especially if the decrease in degradation is small. Every merchant is going to take that, but I have one hell of a lead, and any crafter who isn’t an idiot will buy in if I’m not too greedy with the split.” Kinsley muttered. “Better to offer generous deals and lock down exclusivity while I can. But hot damn, that’s expensive.”

I nodded, and immediately regretted doing so as the world nodded with me. It was by far the most expensive feat I’d ever seen. I had to wonder if it was due to the obvious benefit of the feat itself, or if the price of feats at higher levels was significantly inflated.

“Not to sound like an ungrateful ass, but was that all?” Kinsley asked, peering over her notepad.

Right. was supposed to give me a more profound insight into the class and ideal progression, not just info on a single feat. I vaguely recalled long blocks of text in the original scrawl that were too drawn out to be feat descriptions, but the blocks themselves were utterly indecipherable.

“Just that, I think. Not sure why it shafted me on the rest.”

“From what I’ve heard, and my own personal experience—” Kinsley jotted down a few more notes, then placed the notebook in her inventory. “—Vocations are god fucking awful at the start. And while that might have been somewhat pointless if the feat was cheap—like obviously I’m going to take a perk that good—it’s anything but. That one level between visibility and being available for purchase would have screwed me if I didn’t know it was coming. Could have taken six more levels to unlock.”

I cocked my head. “Yeah, I see how that’s useful.”

“Is this going to be a Matt thing or a Myrddin thing?” Kinsley asked.

“Definitely Matt. It’d be wasted on Myrddin.”

“Hoped you’d say that. I’m gonna give you twenty-five-k for each member of the Merchant’s Guild you do this for. Some mercenaries too, if they’re willing to extend their exclusivity.”

“Give me a second to recover before you start merchandising me.” I grumbled.

Kinsley pressed on as if she hadn’t heard me. “I’ll pitch the Adventurer’s Guild on it as well. The more people we get you in front of, the faster you’ll level the vocation, and the better off we’ll be.”

I agreed, though Kinsley was still thinking faster than I could manage at the moment. “Your pricing seems overinflated.”

“My ass. It’s easily worth that, if not more. You need to streamline the process—maybe get a Q and A document for people to fill in, so you can have a specific target before you go to ear-infection land—but almost everyone with the means would pay to get some of the system’s many blanks filled in.” Kinsley squinted. “Hell, tons of people would probably throw money at you just for the additional information section alone on feats they already have. And you should absolutely raise the price of that motherfucker when it levels, and you gain more functionality.”

I said nothing, as my thoughts returned to the imminent meeting with the Suits.

“Don’t die, Matt.” Kinsley said. “Seriously. None of this matters if you screw up and croak. These people aren’t messing around.”

“Good talk.” I staggered to my feet, vision still swimming. “I’m gonna go find a bucket.”

“Don’t let them get a rise out of you.” Kinsley called after me.

“Yeah yeah—Where the hell is it? I could have sworn there was one around here.”

Kinsley glanced away. “I may have tossed the bucket.”