“I know,” he whispered, staring at his gray screen. “I saw the number.”
He was not playing a fantasy game anymore. He was auditing a spreadsheet.
He laughed. A strange, broken sound in an empty room. He jumped off a cliff. No fall damage number. He let the crab kill him. No death number. The world was quiet. Pure. He could see the grass, the sky, the particle effects of his own spells without the arithmetic overlay.
“I’m not,” he lied. He was . But not the Details! window pinned to the right of his screen. No, those numbers he could ignore. The real poison was the floating arithmetic blooming from every target like dandelions in spring. He couldn't see the ground effect for the torrent of 14,231 , Crit! 29,877 , 8,452 . The boss, some giant rock elemental with a name he'd already forgotten, raised a stony fist. Kaelen knew he should move. But a fresh cluster of 9,874 —his shield slam—exploded from the thing's chest, and for a half-second, he felt the strange, hollow satisfaction of seeing his contribution quantified.