The other adventurer tentatively grabbed a single chip, licked it, then popped it in his mouth. “S’good,” he said with crumbs speckling his lips. He reached into the bag for more.

“Have as much as you want,” I encouraged. I held up another bag. “Anyone. Come help yourself. Free food!” Saying that got a few butts off benches to come see what the fuss was all about, even if it wasn’t strictly true. Free? Yes. Food? That was debatable. I flashed Dealla a smile as she found the courage to try some. She took a tiny nibble from the corner of an orange, cheese-encrusted triangle. She raised an eyebrow when that “extreme” nacho flavor hit her tongue. As adventurers started grabbing bags, I let them know they could help themselves as I pushed through to the counter. I shoved bags aside and found another result of my experiment. The 12-pack of coke had been conjured after all. Another clue as to the limitations of my new Brand. Now all I’d have to do is count how many—

Would you like a count of how many bags of doritos are in the room? [Yes] [No] [Cancel]

I clicked “Yes”. I got the answer the easy way. 67. I’d have to do more experimentation later to see if the limit was volume or mass. I thought maybe I could make it rain five pound dumbbells from the sky, but I’d obviously have to try that somewhere else. I pulled out a coke, popped the top, and pushed it across to Dealla. The room was getting raucous as more grizzled combat veterans tasted the height of human food innovation and were overcome with cackles of delight. A few of the Beast Breakers even wandered in from outside, but as much as I didn’t like them, I didn’t think trying to exclude them would go over well.

“The flavor is so… strong!” Dealla said as she tried the drink. “It hurts my mouth.”

“You get used to it,” I said. “Have as much as you want.” I reserved one can for myself. I demonstrated, cracking open the pull tab and taking a gulp. “This is how you open them. Give them to whoever you want. All this food is going to disappear in an hour, anyway. I just need to get into the locker room real quick.”

“Oh! Of course!” Dealla had to wade through bags of chips to reach the vault door.

“That’s the guy!” the tall mohawked rissian said to a small group of companions. Aside from him, there were two more guys and two more girls in his group. “The chip guy,” he clarified.

I gave the group a wave. “Have as much as you want!” I told them. As Dealla let me in the back room, the last thing I saw was a rissian in pursuer beast leather with orange cheese dust all over his face, trying to feed a single dorito to Bitsy, the lizard. She opened her eyes and snapped it up, proving she had the gluttony to match her girth.

Alone in the locker room, I located my drawer and popped it open with my guild medallion. Inside, I found everything as I’d left it: a single glittering mark and my iPhone. I added the emergency coin to my pouch, increasing my Cross total to 653, then dropped the whole thing into my locker. There was no reason to walk around with money anymore. I had already discovered what a risk that could be during my attempted mugging. I now could create food and water anytime I wanted, and it was doubtful I’d need to purchase supplies when most things could be conjured by Manifest Inspiration. Carrying cash in this world just seemed like a needless risk. As for my phone, I got an idea about how to keep it charged. I closed my eyes and imagined my laptop with a USB cable coming off the side and activated Manifest Inspiration one more time.

MP: 448 >>> MP: 393

My laptop appeared in my hands. It was exactly how I remembered it, complete with the joke sticker on the back that Jacob had bought me that said “Live, Laugh, Love”. I booted it up, and it actually ran. Everything was exactly as I remembered. The “9” key even stuck when I typed in my password from the time I’d spilled coke on it. I’d been meaning to clean it for a while, and it seemed my laziness had followed me to this other world. The battery was at 100%. That meant even with plugging in peripherals, it would take more than an hour for it to die. It gave an alert that it couldn’t locate a Wi-Fi signal. “Yeah, good luck with that,” I told it. I plugged in my phone and saw the charging battery symbol appear on the black screen. Now time would have to tell whether the electricity provided by a conjured object would disappear when the laptop did. I suspected it would not, but decided to leave my phone off until the laptop evaporated, just in case.

Once I was sure it was working as intended, I closed the lid on my laptop and stuffed it and my phone in my backpack so the phone could charge. While I was at it, I remembered I hadn’t summoned any potatoes in a minute, so I added three more to the bag.

MP: 392 >>> MP: 380

I was still bleeding MP. I couldn’t spend it fast enough. If I got the levels down closer to one hundred, I thought maybe the bleed rate would slow down. I’d had a nearly double MP bar a while back and hadn’t noticed it draining off noticeably. While I was looking in my backpack, I saw the waterskin that had been included with my kit. I figured I might as well fill it up. I opened up my character menu and read the description of my new water Brand.

Condense Water. Active. 2 MP. Condense clean water from the air into your cupped hands.

It wouldn’t exactly solve my MP problem, being that cheap, but it was still worth seeing how it worked. The Brand on my back for conjuring potatoes was tapped out. I readied my waterskin, cupped my hands, and triggered the Condense Water Brand.

MP: 380 >>> MP: 378

My hands grew ice cold, which was a shock. Water quickly beaded on the surface of my palms. In a few seconds, my hands were full. I poured the water into the waterskin for later. It did kind of defeat the purpose of having a water-on-demand Skill if I just carried water anyway, but I wasn’t so frail yet that I couldn’t handle the weight. When the water stopped condensing on my hands, they were still cold and wet. I blew on them and rubbed them together to get the circulation going. That’s when inspiration struck. I had two problems: cold hands, and hot Brands. Using my Brands would make them burn hot, but I wondered if I couldn’t just hold my cold hands over the Brand I wanted to activate to keep it from overheating. One hand on the water Brand, one hand on the other one. In that way, I might be able to activate both until I ran out of MP. I’d have to test that somewhere that wouldn’t leave a mess on the ground.

Before I left the locker room, I pulled my clothes off and put my spider silk tunic on underneath everything. I knew the Beast Breakers were just bitter because they had to give back the money they stole from me, but their comments about me wearing a wedding dress weren’t entirely unwarranted. The spider silk tunic was white, silky, and very large on me. It was practically a short dress. It didn’t seem like they were making up the part about it being intended to be worn under other armor. I didn’t have other armor, so I’d settle for just wearing a normal long sleeve shirt and pants over it. I still used the belt. Maybe having hidden armor beneath my clothes would cause someone to underestimate me. Rissians, it seemed, didn’t need much excuse to do that.

Once I was dressed again, I left the locker room. The mess was crowded with excitement. I could hear the murmurs of conversation and laughter behind the door and had to knock three times before Dealla heard me. Outside, everyone was eating doritos. They’d filled bowls with them, passing them around. It seemed word must have spread, based on how the size of the crowd had doubled in the five minutes I’d been gone. Dealla still had half a dozen bags stashed behind the counter and she had to run and stop an adventurer from grabbing one as soon as she got the door open. “Not those!” she said. “Those are mine. Go ask the others if you want to try some. I have friends coming to pick these up.” That started a heated negotiation to buy a bag from her for a penny, then two when she refused.