Chương 193: B2 Chapter 192: Full Paladin

They were ready to leave the basement, which meant Boleno had chosen the perfect time to become a music critic. He followed them toward the elevator while analyzing Maximum Pump: Veyrath on Fire in exhausting detail, directing most of his advice at Thorn. Something less aggressive would appeal to a broader visitor demographic next time, the messaging could be more welcoming, and the Culture Department would be happy to provide guidance before any future Vernova-related production.

Thorn nodded along on autopilot, with nothing in his face suggesting a single word was making it into long-term storage. The elevator doors opened, and the same government investigator who had escorted them into City Hall stepped out with a taser already raised. She shot Boleno before anyone could react. Electricity cracked through him and folded him onto the floor as the investigator swung the taser toward the others, making Thorn take one step back.

"You stay back," she said.

"Mrs. Sorell, come with me. The cameras will come back online soon." At least Aurelia looked as surprised as Meno felt.

"What is this?" she asked.

"You guys are doing this again?" Meno said.

"Kidnapping me once wasn't enough?"

"Vibes going down real fast," Thorn said.

"Doing what?" the investigator asked.

"You are unharmed. You can stay here and explain the situation while we leave. Mrs. Sorell, step into the elevator." Carl Sorell had learned absolutely nothing. Going after Meno directly had failed last time, so now Meno and Thorn were standing in a restricted government basement beside an unconscious official while the cameras happened to be offline, which meant Carl had invented inverse kidnapping. The setup was obvious enough.

Meno could not claim he had never been here when Maximum Pump was already online, three signed forms had his name on them, and Boleno could identify everyone involved the second he woke up. If security came down before the cameras returned, Meno would have to spend the next several hours explaining all of this to people who definitely did not care about his actual objective. Cooked.

"This sucks, but whatever," Aurelia said. Aurelia stepped into the elevator like she had accepted the situation, then shoved the investigator forward the second she got behind her. The woman spun with the movement and snapped the crackling taser toward Thorn's chest. Thorn slipped outside the line by half a step, planted, and drove a right hook into her temple. She dropped beside Boleno.

"Good read," Aurelia said.

"Shut up!" Thorn shouted, then immediately bent and grabbed the taser.

"This is great," Meno said.

"Is your father this stupid on purpose, or is he taking special classes?"

"Tell me about it. And do not think for a second this has anything to do with me. I just did what you asked." Aurelia stepped out of the elevator.

"Maybe next time don't ask favors from your ex-kidnappers after blowing up their penthouse and threatening their existence."

"I wasn't threatening anyone. That was the soldier security or whatever."

"Focus!" Thorn said.

"What are we going to do now? Call your guy and ask for advice." Meno started pacing. Boleno would be the one asking big questions nobody wanted to answer. The investigator was irrelevant; she was part of the setup, would not talk, and had already admitted the cameras were temporarily offline. They just needed to manufacture a situation where Boleno had to risk his own Chain against famous streamers with millions of fans. He had too much stacked to throw it away creating trouble for himself.

The trick was making sure he had no reason to either. They did not need to convince him nothing had happened. They needed whatever explanation they gave him to be easier than investigating the truth. In other words, attacking Boleno was the wrong mechanic. Make pursuing the issue lower his own DPS and he would stop moving on his own.

"The play is obvious," Meno said.

"We don't do anything stupid. Every mechanic designed to make you move exists to lower your DPS."

"A bit faster, would you?" Aurelia asked.

"We don't have all day." Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

"Boleno got stunned first, so he should wake up first. We lie down next to them and taze ourselves. When he comes around, we're victims too and all the aggro moves somewhere else." Meno pointed at the unconscious deputy.

"We're his responsibility down here. Even if he manages to blame us, he still takes a bad mark for letting it happen. Blaming another department costs him less." The solution locked in.

"Full Paladin," Meno said.

"Max reflected damage."

"Love it," Aurelia said.

"There is zero chance I am electrocuting myself on purpose." Thorn tased her before she finished, then caught Aurelia under the arms when her legs gave out.

"That felt good," he said.

"You do me next. I am too scared." Meno took the taser while Thorn stretched out beside Aurelia and braced himself. The first shock failed to drop him, while the second made his whole body seize without knocking him out. Meno tried again, and the third finally left Thorn limp on the floor. Now Meno had to do the part of the plan that had sounded much better when it involved everyone else.

He lay down beside Boleno, fitted the taser into the deputy's hand, and adjusted his grip until Boleno's finger rested over the trigger. Then Meno pressed the electrodes against his own side. This mechanic was trash. He took one breath, closed Boleno's finger around the trigger, and the world vanished. Meno woke in a bed under a white ceiling, surrounded by white walls. City Hall infirmary. Boleno was pacing beside the bed.

Thorn and Aurelia were still unconscious on separate beds nearby, fully dressed and taking longer to recover from the stun. The moment Boleno noticed Meno was awake, he hurried over and dropped into a panicked whisper.

"I am so sorry, Mr. Varsh. Faulty electrical wiring caused a discharge. Even the cameras were knocked out. I've already filed a report against maintenance. Terrible oversight. Completely unacceptable." Then Boleno winked at him. Aggressively. Right. Boleno had found the optimal play. Electrical nonsense, cameras disabled by the same fault, maintenance takes the blame, and nobody has to explain why three famous streamers got dropped inside his restricted server room.

"No problem. All good."

"Yes, yes, thank you." Boleno leaned closer.

"Although the circumstances of how it could occur are unclear, there is no further need to delve into this deeper. The investigator corroborated the unfortunate accident. If the maintenance department cannot find the source of the issue, it will only highlight their incompetence, not ours." He hit Meno with one more desperate wink and left with considerably less panic in his movement. Full Paladin worked. Aurelia woke next and started laughing before she was properly upright.

The laugh kept spilling out after the funny part had ended, sharp enough around the edges that Meno stopped finding it funny too.

"Meno, I hate you. I hate you. I hate you." She pushed herself upright.

"Before I met you, I was constantly bored but content. Now I can't stop moving. That's the only time I feel alive. You ruined me." Thorn came around beside her.

"Let's not do this again. I can still feel it in my balls." They got themselves functional enough to sign the discharge forms, confirmed that they were responsible for themselves, and finally escaped City Hall. Meno had Connect open before they reached the front doors, and the music video was already spreading fast.

THORN DROPPED A NUKE blond girl in pajamas full of sass STORMHOLD RISING ZERO BOSS KILLS 1 MUSIC VIDEO EZ COMBACK PBG filming his own diss track CHEST MONDAY LEGS SOMEDAY Aurelia repping PBG shirt in zero durability mode RESPECT break the chain??? lmaooo who wrote this CHAIN NEVER BROKE VEYRATH DIED FOR THIS the flip-flop dodge was cinema does the chick stream? she looks less fake than the usual random guy in the back looked like he wanted to call security they rented a data center for this?

streamers are the worst Thorn can actually rap FIRE Aurelia looks like she got kidnapped on the way to bed MAXIMUM PUMP MAXIMUM GAIN IS STUCK IN MY HEAD HELP VERNOVA JUST WON THE INTERNET bring Veyrath back cowards Meno showed Thorn the reactions, and Thorn looked satisfied enough to consider the content objective cleared. When they reached Aurelia's car, she opened the trunk again.

"No," Meno said.

"I'm walking back." Thorn and Aurelia took the car while Meno headed toward The Pearl on foot, finally free to call Grandpa without Boleno hovering nearby. The heartbeat network was why they had gone through all of that. It had better have produced something, because Meno was running out of leads. Grandpa answered.

"Good news and bad news. Which one do you want first?"

"The first," Meno said.

"The good news is irrelevant. You already know it." Meno waited.

"The bad news is that I isolated her heartbeat signal from the tampered footage, synced the timing, then tracked her to a car heading toward the bus station and north toward Fenferro." That sounded extremely useful until Grandpa continued.

"The access we scraped only covers sensors inside the city limits, so I lost her there. She could have gone to Fenferro or kept going north along the coast. That's it. Go find another girlfriend. Bye." The call ended, but Meno kept walking with the phone against his ear for another few seconds. They had gone through all that trouble just to learn Rina had left the city. Whoever had scrubbed her from surveillance was not going to leave her sitting somewhere obvious inside Vernova.

They knew enough about tracking systems to erase camera footage, which meant getting beyond the city's heartbeat coverage was basic execution. The obvious raid route after reading the guide ten times. Grandpa should have known that too. Meno finally lowered the phone as the problem shifted. Grandpa had downplayed the risk before sending him to City Hall, even joking that getting Meno caught might buy him extra time on the LinkSync project. At the time, it had sounded like normal Grandpa nonsense.

Now the joke did not fit. If Morlando learned that Grandpa had deliberately helped Meno access a restricted government network, there was no deadline extension waiting at the end. Grandpa would get hammered for it. So why send Meno into City Hall for data that was always likely to disappear at the city limits? The kidnapping made more sense than Grandpa's decision. Meno kept walking toward The Pearl while the whole encounter refused to resolve.

It felt like entering a raid where every boss had spawned in the same room instead of waiting politely behind separate doors. Rina, the scrubbed footage, her hidden phone, Pete, Carl's people, Grandpa. Everything overlapped and none of them lined up. Meno needed to stop playing from everyone else's callouts and get back to The Pearl to inspect the security footage himself. If they thought they could treat him as a useful idiot, they had learned nothing.