“Wait!” he said. “Wait! We can talk about this!”

I leaned over him and placed a hand on his cheek. “Shh,” I said. “We already talked. It’s time for you to go to sleep now. Maybe you’ll be less of a jerk in your next life.”

The warmth and life started to flow out of him and into me as soon as I willed it to happen. He mumbled one more protest, then his eyelids sagged closed. I turned my head. I didn’t want to watch this play out. Killing with my Skill was still only a theory. I told myself I was just going to test that theory. Maybe he would stop at 1 HP and wake back up after a night’s sleep. That thin hope was not to be. Though I looked away, I couldn’t stop from feeling the way his skin sagged and withered beneath my hand. Or the way my MP shot up to a new all-time high. It was so easy. Too easy. Almost like holding down the trigger on a video game controller and watching some other kid’s avatar die. Once he was asleep, he didn’t moan, didn’t protest.

MP: 393 >>> MP: 471

Something gave way when I sucked out the last point of MP. The cheek I’d laid my hand against, which had quickly wasted away to skin and bones, crumbled under my fingers. I looked back, afraid of what I’d find, but too curious not to. What I found where he’d been a few moments ago was a pile of fine black dust. I didn’t remark on it as being anything particularly special. I was still new to Earris, but somewhere deep in my mind there was another me seeing this through eyes that had watched my other self crumble away to that same dust after he was killed. That version of me practically screamed, but no sound came out. I was forced to relive the world through the eyes of my other self and had no means of reacting.

“That’s… interesting,” I said to myself. “I didn’t know I could do that.” Turning things to dust hadn’t been mentioned in the overlay description. I couldn’t decide if it was some magical property of my Skill or just the natural consequences of whatever really happened at a molecular level when I drained MP. A brief memory of a chemistry teacher talking about entropy and low-energy states popped into my head unprompted. Or… maybe it was prompted? It seemed like my brain was bouncing ideas around like mad with all the MP I’d pumped into it. I was remembering things I shouldn’t—like the memory of playing with toys when I should have been too young to retain any of it, or parts of a lecture from over a year ago that I’d half slept through—I was also forming new connections between disparate facts that I was pretty sure I normally wouldn’t have. It would take some getting used to, but so far I didn’t see what the downside could possibly be, besides getting addicted to the feeling of having an overcharged MP bar.

All that was just a distraction, though, from the fact I was trying desperately not to think about. Not only had I just killed my first thing-bigger-than-a-housefly, but I’d definitively proven in the process that I did have a black magic Skill. It would be pretty hard to argue intent with the church when my Skill literally turned people to dust. I mean, Ferrith had shared a story with me of a girl that got killed just for making people feel sick! It was lucky for me that turning a body to dust just happened to be about the best way possible to hide the evidence of my crime.

I walked over to the two remaining muggers. “Sorry about this,” I told their unconscious bodies. “But if it’s you or me. I choose me.” I dusted them both. It was easier the second and third times. That bothered me.

MP: 471 >>> MP: 640

The amount of MP I could pull out of bodies that I’d already drained to unconsciousness was astounding. Watching my MP bar stretch further across the bottom edge of my vision made me wonder if there was even a true maximum. When it hit 500, the bar split into two, the last 140 points starting a new bar that was stacked under the first one. In theory, there would be a limit to how much I could stack those bars before they would impede my vision, but I suspected the overlay would change its function to accommodate, like it had so many times already.

I gathered up the empty clothes of the failed muggers and shook the dust out of them. In the process, I found a Triple Cross sewn into the lining of one of the pants. I added it to my growing collection. The alley already had some mud on the ground, so I just sort of kicked the dust around until it was spread out evenly. It didn’t look terribly suspicious, and with nothing else left behind, I couldn’t see how anyone would possibly notice something amiss about the alley if they walked right through it. After the next bit of rain or morning dew came, the dry dust would likely blend in completely with the rest of the muck.

On my way back to the main street, I dropped the bundle of clothes in a refuse dumpster that stunk of rotting meat. It seemed unlikely anyone would go digging in there, and even if they did, the clothes hadn’t been in the best condition, so wouldn’t look too out-of-place. Yes, it seemed I’d committed the perfect triple-homicide. Mother would be proud.

No. Wait. Not perfect. Those damn medallions! I still had them in my back pocket. What was I thinking, holding onto them? They had unique identifying numbers on them! That was the type of stupid stuff that got people caught. I’d go in, probably find a bent penny in one of their lockers and somehow trigger an alarm, then I’d be left trying to explain why I had the guild medallions of three men that had recently turned up missing. No. Whatever wealth they might or might not have had stored away at the guild wasn’t worth the risk. I took the medallions, snapped them in half, then walked back up the alley to the next alcove over to drop them in a different dumpster. Before I did, I rubbed them down for prints, feeling like a paranoid idiot for doing it, but not willing to take the chance after all the procedural crime dramas I’d seen. That wasn’t to say I was addicted to them, but I’d seen enough to know leaving fingerprints on evidence of a murder was a rookie mistake. I’d be shocked if rissians had figured out fingerprints, but they’d shocked me a couple times already.

All traceable evidence disposed of, I brushed myself off and headed back out to the street. An old man was pushing a cart filled with rolls of textiles when I came out. He eyed me suspiciously, so I gave him an overly friendly wave. “Mornin’ mister!” I said, doing my best to sound like the nine-year-old boy rissians expected me to be.

“Shouldn’t be out this early without yer parents, boy,” the old man said.

I nodded. “Couldn’t agree more, mister,” I said. “Couldn’t agree more.” If I’d waited until more people were on the street, I might have been able to avoid the whole… kerfuffle. Yeah. That’s what I’d think of it as. Not a “stupid idiot prance down an alley after a masked man that ended with me unwillingly becoming an actual serial killer”. No… It was just a kerfuffle. A mistake. And one I wouldn’t make again, no matter how nice it felt to walk around with an MP bar that had grown to six times the size Marketh intended.

The rest of my short walk to the Broker’s Guild was uneventful. No muggings. No murders. When I reached the front steps, I found two of those Branded hunters on duty at the doors. Their hoods were pulled down low so the top half of their faces were obscured, as seemed to be the usual way for them. “Gettin’ an early start?” one of them asked me.

“Something like that,” I replied.

“Arms up,” the other one said. “Turn around.” I did as instructed, then he plucked the three daggers out of my waistband. “You tryin’a sneak these in?” he asked. He didn’t sound mad, just amused.

“No,” I said. “I thought that’s why you search us before going inside.”

“Yeah, well, if you know you got any weapons on ya, we appreciate turnin’ em over before we ask,” the other hunter interjected.

Of course! The daggers! They were the last piece of evidence that might tie me to those missing adventurers. Not a significant piece, but still a piece. “Actually,” I told them, “I was hoping to sell those. All three of them.”