Chương 136: The Normal One

Meno had expected the extraction to involve a safehouse, uncomfortable questions, and at least one serious person demanding to know exactly what Carl Sorell had managed to get out of him. Instead, the tactical guy dropped him on a downtown sidewalk. The descent ended fast enough that Meno barely got his feet underneath him before the harness released.

The man gave him one shove to stop him from falling over, fired the compact flight system on his back, and shot upward between the buildings like he had somehow unlocked Desync in real life. Meno watched him vanish into the night, then gave up trying to process the last hour. The adrenaline had already burned itself out, leaving him with ringing ears, an unhappy stomach, and the kind of exhaustion where every problem could wait until after sleep.

The Pearl was close enough, so he did not have to add another long walk to a night that had started with pizza and somehow escalated into corporate kidnapping and a tactical assault on a skyscraper. When he finally opened the door to his suite, Aurelia was pacing across the living room while Vivi sat half-asleep on the sofa behind her. Aurelia looked nothing like the version that had spent hours trolling him on stream. The moment she saw him, the tension in her face broke into open panic.

"Meno! Where have you been?! They told me you left the hotel. We need to talk. My father saw your sim data—" Meno raised one hand while closing the door behind him.

"It's all good. Relax."

"All good?" Aurelia stopped pacing.

"You don't get it. This is serious."

"I know. I just met with him." Meno slipped off his shoes and pushed them aside with one foot.

"It's sorted. We came to an understanding. Also, sorry for not letting you talk to me earlier. I was an idiot and totally misunderstood everything." Aurelia looked too stunned to interrupt, so Meno added, "Still, your performance on my stream was a bit much."

"Sorted? How could it possibly be sorted?" She followed him farther into the suite, clearly unable to fit his answer into whatever scenario she had been expecting.

"This isn't a joke, Meno. I know my father. This isn't something he would just let go."

"Well, I'm here, aren't I? Telling you it's all good." Meno started toward the bedroom.

"I really need to go to bed right now." He passed Vivi and stopped long enough to point at her.

"You're fired, by the way." Vivi chuckled without looking especially worried.

"I technically work for Brad, sooo you have to fire him first." Meno considered the effort involved in replacing Brad, finding another manager, explaining his life to some agency full of suits, and then finding another PR person willing to deal with him without turning into a new problem.

"Great. Guess you aren't fired then." Brad was eccentric, but Meno had known him before the stream blew up. That tiny amount of genuine history was probably worth more now than it had been when they met, and Meno already had enough corporate distractions without voluntarily adding an agency full of strangers to the pile. Aurelia followed him into the bedroom anyway.

"Meno, talk to me. Your record triggered every red flag they have. My father was livid. He thinks somebody hired you to mess with him." Meno closed the bedroom door behind her.

"Look, I know. Thank you for trying to warn me. Seriously." He turned toward Aurelia, keeping his voice as clear as possible despite wanting nothing more than to fall onto the bed.

"But there's no reason for you to worry anymore. You can go home."

"I am worried. You sound delusional, and none of this makes sense. If you think your fame or money can protect you from him—""Aurelia." Meno waited until she focused on him properly.

"I'm not someone your father can mess with. Not anymore. If you don't believe me, go talk to him. That's all I can say." The reassurance did the opposite of what he wanted. Aurelia's expression shifted between confusion and fresh panic, and Meno understood why. From her perspective, some streamer she thought she understood had disappeared in the middle of the night after being targeted by her father, then returned acting like Carl Sorell had somehow lost the confrontation. There was no safe explanation.

Oxy had seen one security detail and immediately realized something about Meno's situation was dangerous. Telling Aurelia that armed people had just blown out every window in her father's penthouse, disabled his guards, threatened him, and flown Meno away would not make her calmer. It would only create questions Meno could not answer without dragging her deeper into something she was already too close to. So he changed the subject in the most useful way available.

"Also, tell your father that next time I see him, he better have blueberry juice. It's rude to offer guests that hundred-year-old fermented poison. My build is weak against damage over time." Meno walked toward the bed.

"And his penthouse sucks. He should really get those windows looked at. They aren't safe." Aurelia just stood there. Meno collapsed onto the bed in his clothes and was asleep before she could find another question. He woke hungry and nowhere near rested enough. The phone said 3 PM, which meant most of the day had disappeared and he needed to get back into Veyrath before the leaderboard moved without him. After last night, the capsule also felt like the safest place in his life.

The old pizza shop had officially joined the list of places he was never visiting again. Meno left the bedroom and found Aurelia gone, which was good. Vivi was still there, which was less good. She sat at the living-room table with her laptop open, typing aggressively. The moment she noticed him, she brightened with far too much energy for what Meno considered an early 3 PM morning.

"Yesterday was great. Engagement metrics are completely off the chart. I was right to let her in." Meno slowed on his way toward the bathroom and gave her the emptiest look he could manage.

"People especially loved the Honeygrave collab," Vivi continued.

"He isn't as big as you, but he's universally liked, which is useful because half your viewers seem to actively dislike you based on the comments. Aurelia's presence also caused some kind of drama with Oxy. I have no idea what that's about. I knew you guys hooked up, but I didn't think it was anything serious."

"Drama after eight PM. I need a shower, my beauty-morning steak burger, then sufficient XP before I deal with any of your content ideas." Meno started walking again, then stopped and looked back.

"Why are you still here? Did you decide to move into the second bedroom or what?"

"I'm working, obviously. Do you have an office I can use?" Vivi gestured toward the laptop.

"I also need to be able to talk to you to do my job. If I leave, you'll just ignore my calls." Meno thought about it for half a second, then continued toward the shower.

"True." Yesterday had contained enough nonsense for several weeks. There was no value in unpacking any of that before food, so Meno decided to pretend most of it had never happened. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. Once he felt vaguely human again, he ordered a steak burger to maintain the rotation. The restaurant was almost empty, and while waiting he checked the screens for Honeygrave's stream, expecting to see whether the dungeon groups had found anything new overnight.

Honeygrave was offline, probably asleep after running the prison all morning. BrineSaint was live and doing PvP, which was strange enough to pull Meno back toward the bar.

"Any idea why BrineSaint is doing PvP?" The bartender glanced toward the screen, apparently already caught up on everything Meno had slept through.

"He hit Level 63, and two members of his party had real-world commitments. He's going for the top spot on the Karma leaderboard while they're away. His Mythic I amulet gives ten times Karma, I believe. You designed that one, didn't you?" Meno remembered the item immediately.

"That didn't get changed into Reputation gain when Karma got split? That's crazy. Also had no idea there was a PvP leaderboard."

"The item remained unchanged. The leaderboards were added this morning. There's one for negative Karma as well, although that functions more like a bounty board." On the screen, BrineSaint and the remaining members of his group controlled a rocky island while Silverwake players occasionally came out of a dungeon entrance and became eligible targets.

"So how long has he been farming people there?"

"Only an hour. His issue is that he can only attack equal- or higher-level players without losing Karma, and most eligible players are Silverwake members exiting that dungeon." The bartender shrugged.

"I suspect it's more for content than efficiency." Meno nodded toward the screen.

"Have all the other three Saints been rescued already?"

"Yes. There's a twenty-four-hour countdown for Fractera's world-state progression now. Lore-wise, the Saints are praying for a divine boon to establish a foothold on the surface. It should unlock tomorrow around noon."

"Thanks for the info." Meno went back to his table just as the burger arrived. The staff at The Pearl were becoming more useful than expected. Every time Meno vanished into Veyrath for ten hours or slept through half the day, somebody downstairs seemed capable of giving him the condensed version of whatever mattered. He should probably make Vivi do that officially. Things were moving too quick. Guilds had people collecting discoveries, checking patches, testing mechanics, and passing everything around.

Party players naturally filled each other in while playing, but Meno had millions of viewers shouting cooked information at him, which was not remotely the same thing. He finished his steak burger and went back upstairs, where Vivi was still working at the same table. This time Meno stopped beside her instead of walking past.

"What are you actually doing?" Vivi perked up.

"Posting your stuff everywhere, responding to comments, politely declining sponsorship offers that are trying to lowball you, discussing details with serious ones, filtering interview requests, fanning gossip for engagement. I also made you a website so people can find all your stuff from one place." Every part of that sounded horrible. Maybe Vivi was not as useless as Meno had thought.

"Cool." He headed toward the capsule.

"Don't tell me you want to spam that dungeon for the next ten hours." Meno looked back.

"Why?"

"Because it's terrible content now. You solved it. Everyone has seen it. If you lock yourself inside the same dungeon all day, you'll bleed viewers."

"Yeah, I get it, but I want to hit seventy. Do you have a better idea?"

"Go to one of the other prisons."

"That's inefficient. I'd have to learn the whole dungeon again for basically the same XP and same gear rarity. Two hours wasted for no real gain."

"You don't need to hit seventy yet. You're way ahead. Go to Fractera, explore, and wait for the countdown there. That's new content."

"I want to hit seventy." Vivi looked at him like she was waiting for an actual explanation.

"Why?"

"It's a higher number than sixty-nine."

"Seven to eight million viewers is also higher than the three to four you're going to get if you spend all day repeating the same dungeon." Meno leaned against the capsule.

"Whatever. They'll come back once I'm close to seventy. Everyone wants to see the class progression. Doing content on the spot when it makes sense is one thing, but I'm not going to get held hostage by the viewer count. That's not the rank one mindset."

"It's the mindset that earns more money."

"Doing just fine, I think."

"You have the potential to become a billionaire. You aren't anywhere close yet." Meno understood the argument. He just did not care enough for it to change the plan.

"This is the part people always complain about and don't get. The boring part is what lets the cool part happen later. You farm the levels, gear, routes, whatever, then when something important happens, you're ready. That's all." Vivi still looked unconvinced.

"I'm logging in now. Do not let anyone into the suite without my permission. Seriously."

"Okay, boss." She sounded far too cheerful. Meno climbed into the capsule, started the stream, and gave viewers a few minutes to arrive before loading into Veyrath. The dungeon island was tiny and now known to several major groups, so checking the rankings before spawning into a possible PvP pile seemed sensible. The global leaderboard opened.

[Launch Leaderboard | Global Level Rank] [1] PrayerBeadGod — 69 | False Hero Titan | GC | GraveMistake [2] Thorn — 64 | War Anchor Dominion | RB | Stormhold [3] HGLovesMerry — 63 | Rot Savant Astral | SC | No Guild [4] Kestrel — 63 | Prism Detonator Eternal | RB | Crownfall [5] BrineSaint — 63 | Dawn Bastion Paragon | RB | No Guild [6] Pike — 63 | Terra Channeler Tempest | RB | Highbanner [7] Moon — 63 | Mercy Herald Devout | RB | Silverwake [8] VantaRush — 63 | Tempo Blade Oracle | RB | HypeForge [9] SlopDog — 63 | Royal Headsman Eternal | RB | Stormhold [10] JaxxonVale — 63 | Rift Warlock Myriad | RB | No Guild Something was way off.

Everyone below Meno had compressed into the Level 63–64 range far faster than normal five-way XP splitting should allow. If ordinary five-player groups were simply clearing the prisons, more Stormhold players and members of Honeygrave's party should have been scattered through the rankings rather than all that XP concentrating near the top again. Solar had introduced a new dungeon reward system, and somebody had already broken it. The second thing that caught Meno's attention was Honeygrave's name.

HGLovesMerry Apparently yesterday's stream had damaged Honeygrave's relationship badly enough that he had converted his character name into an apology banner. Meno hoped he used the free rename from the previous update, because walking around as HGLovesMerry for the next month would be savage if they broke up anyway. Stormhold had also pushed another player into the top ten at Oxy's expense. Meno lingered on that longer than he wanted to.

Vivi had mentioned Oxy drama earlier, but getting involved sounded like an excellent way to create more of it. Oxy had told him she wanted nothing to do with him anymore. Then again, Aurelia had told him basically the same thing. Meno had completely lost confidence in his ability to tell when leave me alone actually meant leave me alone. The XP funnel was easier to understand. He opened Honeygrave's stream page, searched the recent clips, and found one titled EZ FUNNEL almost immediately.

The strategy was simple enough that Meno was annoyed before the clip even finished. Honeygrave's four party members intentionally died when the final memory phase triggered. Death did not remove them from the accumulated dungeon XP split, so everyone still received the normal share of everything earned earlier in the run. The Prisoner reward worked differently. The surviving player received half of the final encounter's XP instead of the usual one-fifth.

Since a huge portion of the dungeon reward came from that last boss, the group could funnel the most valuable chunk into one player while barely sacrificing anything else.

"Why would it work like that?" Meno could see what Solar had intended. If four players genuinely died near the end and the final person somehow clutched the dungeon alone, rewarding the survivor with extra boss XP was a pretty good system. In theory. In practice, top players had needed about five seconds to convert the comeback mechanic into an optimization strategy. Meno's phone-link started ringing before he could decide how badly Solar needed another patch. Thorn. Meno accepted, still looking at the clip.

He had started wondering whether Thorn considered them actual friends now or simply saw PrayerBeadGod as an extremely useful connection for Stormhold. Probably both, but it did not matter much.

"Hey!" Thorn sounded unbearably pleased with himself.

"You see that? Two. We have two players in the top ten. Stormhold rising!" Meno pulled the ranking back up and found the entry Thorn was obviously calling about. [9] SlopDog — 63 | Royal Headsman Eternal | RB | Stormhold"I do see it. Does he bark?"

"Very funny. He's only eighteen and really good. Two-handed warrior DPS. Eternal is broken good for damage once the fight is solved."

"For me, the Eternal option was basically make one mistake and die. Same thing for everyone?"

"Pretty much. Toxic as hell, skill floor is brutal, but it's the best raw-DPS evolution." Thorn hesitated.

"Maybe Titan beats it. No clue."

"Since you called me to brag, you might as well tell me what each evolution does."

"Just look it up. I'm not your assistant."

"Very helpful. Thanks. Anything else you wanted besides plugging Stormhold?"

"Yeah. Streamline is holding a party Friday for the top fifty. If you refuse the invite, I'm going to fly to Vernova and kidnap you." Meno went completely still, because yesterday that would have been a normal Thorn joke, but today he was reasonably sure several extremely serious people were monitoring his communications after Carl Sorell's penthouse had turned into a tactical breach site.

"Uhm. Maybe cool it a bit, okay? Definitely don't say things like that." Thorn went quiet for a beat.

"Thorn was joking," Meno added quickly, speaking less to Thorn than to whoever might be listening.

"I'm going on my own free will. This will not be a kidnapping at all." Thorn started laughing.

"You're acting weird."

"I am the normal one here. Okay, I have XP to farm. Bye." Meno ended the call before Thorn accidentally threatened anything else. Spectacularly unfortunate timing. He genuinely did not want Stormhold getting raided because its guild master had picked the worst possible twenty-four-hour window to make a kidnapping joke. With that handled, there was nothing left except Level 70.

The dungeon would take hours, the XP gain would be terrible, and Vivi was probably right that viewership would drop once people realized Meno intended to repeat the same solved route all day, but none of that changed the number. He settled deeper into the capsule, brought Veyrath forward, and let the rest of the distractions fall away. Ten hours of dungeon farming stood between him and Level 70. Time to lock in.