Chapter 43: Selling Warnings

Reinhard stood in the middle of Marvello with the Mirror of Possibilities in his hand. He had the idea, and he had even named it. Selling it, it turned out, was a completely different problem.

He had expected it to be easy. That was his first mistake.

He spotted a well-dressed man walking out of an equipment store and stepped into his path. "Would you like to see your possible future?"

The man stopped. He looked at Reinhard, then at the Mirror, then at Reinhard again. "Are you a fortune teller?"

"No."

"Then what exactly are you selling?"

Reinhard raised the Mirror slightly. "A warning."

The man stared at him for several seconds, and then he laughed. "Good luck." He walked away.

Reinhard watched him go. Fine. The man didn’t believe him, and that was reasonable, completely reasonable, actually. People shouldn’t trust some random man standing in the middle of Marvello with a creepy mirror.

Another Awakener walked past. "Interested in seeing a possible future?"

"No."

Another. "Want to know what happens if you take your next mission?"

"No, thank you."

Another. "I can show you..."

"No."

Three rejections in under two minutes. Then an elderly woman walking past slowed down, looked at Reinhard with deep sympathy, and dropped a coin at his feet.

Reinhard stared at the coin, then at the woman, then back at the coin. He had been in Marvello for two hours, he had already made more than a million dollars, and someone had just mistaken him for a street performer.

He picked up the coin. It was still money.

Reinhard looked around. Millions of credits changed hands on these streets yet nobody wanted to spend five minutes looking into a mysterious mirror.

Maybe the problem was his explanation.

He considered it.

No. Maybe the Mirror looked too suspicious. He looked down at the dark silver frame. Also no. Maybe these people were idiots. He immediately reconsidered, because that was unfair.

He sighed. "They’re rich idiots."

Much more understandable.

He raised his voice. "You people have millions to throw around, and none of you have enough curiosity to spend five minutes on something?"

Several people looked over, and Reinhard folded his arms. "I’m literally offering you information about your own future, and you’re walking away because you think I’m weird?"

Nobody answered.

He gestured at the enormous medical district. "Have you looked at this city?"

A few people laughed, and Reinhard nodded. "Exactly. This place is weird."

He lowered the Mirror. He wasn’t getting anywhere. He needed ten million before the auction started, the Merchant King’s Lens could make him money but not fast enough, and Emily needed those materials. Apparently, selling the future was a lot harder than it sounded.

Reinhard started walking, half-listening to the conversations around him as he moved through the district, talk of expeditions, artifacts, danger zones, routes, missing teams, and failed missions. Then one argument caught his attention.

"I told you we should have taken the eastern route."

"That route had twice as many monsters."

"Exactly. That’s why we should have known."

Reinhard slowed down.

"We lost three people because nobody knew what was waiting for us."

Reinhard’s expression changed. He had figured this out an hour ago, standing right in this district, and he had forgotten it the moment he started talking. Nobody here wanted to hear about their future someday. They wanted to avoid making a terrible choice today, which mission to take, which route, which expedition, which artifact.

So stop pitching it like a fortune.

Before he could finish the thought, a voice came from behind him. "You’re approaching them the wrong way."

Reinhard turned.

A man stood several steps away, wearing a black suit under a long dark coat, his black hair neatly kept and his golden eyes carrying a quiet confidence.

But it was his mana that caught Reinhard’s attention. It was far stronger than anyone else’s he had sensed in the district.

Interesting.

The man’s eyes flicked to the people Reinhard had tried to approach, then to the Mirror. "You’re talking to the right people," he said. "But you’re selling the wrong thing."

Reinhard raised an eyebrow. "Then what do they want?"

"Something useful." The man stepped closer. "Awakeners make dangerous decisions every day. Which mission, which route, which artifact, which expedition."

His gaze settled on the Mirror. "They don’t need someone to tell them whether their future will be good or bad." He looked straight at Reinhard. "They need to know what they’re walking into."

Reinhard stared at him. That was exactly what he had just been thinking. "Have you been watching me?"

"For a while."

"How long?"

"Long enough."

Reinhard narrowed his eyes. Annoyingly vague. "Were you here for the coin?"

The man’s mouth twitched. "I was here for the coin."

"Great."

The man glanced at the Mirror. "Can it actually do that?"

"Do what?"

"Show someone what they’re walking into."

"That sounds like doubt."

"It is." His faint smile widened. "But I’m interested."

Reinhard studied him. "What do you want to know?"

"What does the Mirror show?"

"A possible outcome of a decision you’re considering."

"Can it show me anything I ask for?"

"If it responds."

"How accurate is it?"

Reinhard shrugged. "It isn’t a prediction." He paused. "It’s a possibility."

"That isn’t an answer."

"It’s the only honest one."

The man tilted his head. "Can you choose which possibility I see?"

"No."

His eyebrow lifted. "Then how do I know you aren’t showing me something meaningless?"

"You don’t," Reinhard said, and went on before the man could reply. "But you get to decide whether what you see is worth acting on."

For a moment, the man didn’t speak, and then his interest became genuine. "Show me."

Reinhard smiled. "Now that’s a reasonable customer."

"You seem pleased."

"I’ve been rejected a lot today."

"I noticed."

"Then you understand why I’m happy to finally meet a sensible person."

The man almost laughed. Almost.

Reinhard raised the Mirror, and its dark surface rippled like water.

An unfamiliar landscape appeared, twisted terrain stretching into the distance while strange currents of mana crawled through the air in patterns Reinhard had never seen. Even without understanding the place, he could tell it was dangerous.

The scene shifted, and the man standing beside him appeared in the Mirror, leading a group of Awakeners through the broken landscape.

"That route..." the man said quietly.

Reinhard glanced at him. "You recognize it?"

The man didn’t answer. He kept watching as the expedition moved deeper, and then something went wrong. The Mirror didn’t show what happened, only the aftermath. The expedition had failed.

The scene shifted again, and the man stood alone where his people had disappeared, regret filling his face.

"I shouldn’t have sent them."

The Mirror went dark, and neither of them spoke for several seconds.

"The Hollow Meridian," the man finally whispered.

"So that’s the name," Reinhard said.

The man turned sharply. "You knew about that place?"

"No."

"You knew I was considering sending a team?"

"No."

His gaze sharpened. "Then how?"

Reinhard lowered the Mirror. "I told you what it does."

The man stared at him. "Three possible futures..."

"Yes."

"It isn’t guaranteed?"

"No."

That answer seemed to matter more than anything else. A fixed future would have been a sentence, but a possible future was different. It was a chance to change his decision before he made it.

The man looked at Reinhard. "How much?"

Finally.

Reinhard thought about all the people who had walked past him, and he realized he had absolutely no idea what something like this was worth. "One million."

The man’s expression didn’t change. "Five."

Reinhard blinked. "Five million?"

"Five million."

Did I just undercharge by a factor of five? Reinhard kept his face perfectly calm. "...That was a test."

The man looked at him. "Of course it was." He took out his phone. "If what I saw keeps me from making that mistake, five million is cheap." He paused. "And if it saves even one of my people..." He didn’t finish.

Reinhard’s phone buzzed.

[$5,000,000 Received.]

Reinhard stared at the notification. Hours of flipping items with the Lens had earned him less than a million dollars of profit, and one conversation with the Mirror had earned him five. I really should have tried this earlier.

[Current Balance: $6,675,000.]

It still wasn’t enough.

But he now had an extra tool for making money, a vast amount quickly.

The man turned to leave, and after a few steps, he stopped. "One piece of advice."

Reinhard looked over.

"Don’t call it fortune telling."

"Why not?"

The man glanced back at the Mirror, and his golden eyes met Reinhard’s. "Because you’re not selling dreams." He paused. "You’re selling warnings."

Then he walked away.

"Warnings," Reinhard repeated quietly, and a smile spread across his face. "That’s what I’ve been calling it."

He slipped the Mirror back into his Inventory. His new business had a name and a stranger who agreed with it, and more importantly, it had its first customer.

What Reinhard didn’t realize was that his first customer had already started doing something far more valuable than paying him. People had been watching.

"Wasn’t that Lucien?"

"I think so."

"What was he doing with that guy?"

"Did that guy just sell him something?"

"I heard something about the future."

Reinhard looked over. One Awakener was staring at him, another was whispering to a friend, and then a third turned around.

Reinhard sighed. "Please don’t tell me the rumor is already spreading."

It was. A few minutes later, an Awakener walked up to him. "Is it true?"

"Is what true?"

"That you can show someone a possible future?"

"Sometimes."

The man’s eyes lit up. "Can you show me mine?"

"Depends."

"On what?"

"On whether the Mirror likes you."

The man froze, and Reinhard kept a perfectly serious expression for two full seconds before he smiled. "I’m joking."

"Oh." The man visibly relaxed. "Then how much do you charge?"

Before Reinhard could answer, someone else stepped forward. "I’ll pay two hundred thousand."

The first man spun around. "I asked first!"

"Three hundred."

Reinhard’s eyes widened slightly. Oh.

A third person pushed through the growing crowd. "Five hundred thousand."

Five minutes ago, he couldn’t get anyone to even look at the Mirror, and someone had tipped him a coin. Now people were bidding against each other before he had even explained what he was selling.

Marvello really was full of rich idiots, but he decided to keep that thought to himself, mostly because there were now too many of them.

Reinhard let them bid for a few more seconds, just to see where it stopped, and then he raised one hand. "One at a time."

The crowd went quiet, and Reinhard smiled. "Let’s start with the important question." Every eye turned toward him. "What decision are you most afraid of making?"

For the first time all day, Reinhard felt like he had found the right business.

And somewhere near the back of the crowd, someone was already typing a message.

A man in Marvello can show possible futures.

Lucien paid five million to see one.

Find out who he is.