Chương 194: B2 Chapter 193: One Level Above

Meno stopped halfway back to The Pearl. He could return to the hotel, confirm Grandpa had lied to manipulate him, and get shut down in two seconds. Or he could save the trip and assume Grandpa had. The Pearl was one of the most watched buildings in Vernova right now. Feltforge had already confirmed they could access almost every unsecured device inside it, and the undercover people around the gaming hub had one job: keep track of Meno, BrineSaint, and Kestrel.

Even if he got into the security system and found footage proving Rina had simply walked out on her own, they would know he was onto their bullshit. Going back was predictable, and predictable was the problem. An old MMO player named ParetoMaximalist had written something years ago that Meno never managed to forget: If you focus on your biggest problem, you have an 80% chance to lose.

Meno had been focusing too hard on Rina herself: where she went, why she left the phone, whether she had been kidnapped, and what route she took north. Those were all downstream questions. He needed to move one level higher. Why? Option 1: Rina had simply stopped being interested in him and left. Cleanest explanation. Meno had mostly rejected it because of the hidden phone and the missing scheduled post. Option 2: Rina had been a honeytrap and got pulled out once her job was done.

Option 3: same as option 2, except the extraction had been designed specifically to make Meno chase after her. Option 4: Rina had been blackmailed, most likely through Pete, and whoever controlled her wanted the same result as option 3. Three out of four paths led to the same question. Who? Even option 1 became irrelevant if he was wrong about it. Every top player understood that being wrong instantly was better than being right after a hundred hours of theorycrafting.

You picked the highest-value line, tested it, and adjusted before everybody else had any data. Senfestra was the obvious candidate. They did not need to know he had piloted the KKF used to rescue Katlyn Zent from Antarctica, or even know exactly what Feltforge had pulled him into. They operated on the same shady layer, and Morlando was not the only person with a functioning brain. There were not many truly top-tier VR players on the planet.

Senfestra's own KKF showcase had been a disaster, and if they wanted better pilots for their military VR program, recruiting from the top of the ladder was the obvious move. Meno was clearly the best available. Rina could have been there to get close to him, map his habits, and prepare an offer. Even without knowing the specifics, Senfestra would have noticed that something around Meno did not add up, enough to realize another corporation had gotten there first.

Walking straight into Senfestra and demanding answers would be a massive self-own. If option 3 or 4 was real, showing up personally would confirm every theory they had about his involvement in Antarctica. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. He needed a third party.

Someone with enough leverage that neither Feltforge nor Senfestra could casually mess with them, and enough visibility that asking one question would not immediately reveal everything. Meno could also post publicly on Connect that Rina was missing. Millions of people would start looking, the government would get dragged in whether anybody liked it or not, and every camera between Vernova and Fenferro would start getting checked. The problem was that Grandpa had just used Meno to get inside City Hall's server room.

If whatever happened down there was dirty enough, Feltforge could frame Meno and have him arrested in about two seconds. Veyrath had collapsed, Meno was harder to control than ever, and Rina disappearing gave them a perfect excuse to tighten the leash. Grandpa could have improvised the whole thing, or Morlando could have ordered it from the start. The rank-one move was to stop thinking inside the cage everyone else had already built around him. Only one company he knew fit the profile. Hyperion.

Soma had massive reach and put VR capsules in millions of homes, but the capsules were still only the interface. The real juice was what people used them to control. The issue was that Hyperion was scary. Feltforge was mainly an AI software company, while Senfestra was a major conglomerate with a piece of almost every industry. Neither of them outright specialized in military hardware. Hyperion did.

Meno had already seen Senfestra trying to build its own machines, and the others would be working on their own versions too. None of them looked remotely as advanced as Hyperion. Nobody was going to openly mess with Hyperion over one streamer unless they had a very good reason. Going there would also set off alarms for both Feltforge and Senfestra. Perfect. Now Meno just needed the trip to look natural. After the raid, he had collected everybody's personal numbers, so he called Karmabeast.

"Sup, bro?" Karma answered.

"I am so bored. What are we supposed to do now? Arayu wouldn't let me visit her in Solena." Karmabeast had just handed him the perfect excuse.

"Same," Meno said.

"My girlfriend just dumped me too, by the way. Poof. Gone. I still owe Arayu an introduction to Thorn, so you get another shot in person. Final duel against Thorn."

"Bit sus. Are you trying to help me or ruin it? Also, are you about to fly here?"

"I thought I would visit. I need some space away from here. Everything in the hotel reminds me of Rina. You don't want me to? You can use it as an excuse."

"I guess," Karmabeast said.

"What do you think I should wear? I don't think Arayu likes my rank-two T-shirt, but I don't have anything nice."

"Good thinking. Order a suit and shirt, full set. Get the same for me and Thorn, plus something that works for Aurelia. Use a stream image for the sizing. Ah, and sunglasses for everyone with green tint. I like those. Masks for Skyline too. Don't cheap out." Karmabeast went quiet for a second.

"Are you on something? What the hell? I am not your personal shopper."

"Ah, okay. I guess I can just fly to Solena instead and visit Arayu with Thorn. Too bad you were busy. Anyway… bye."

"No, no, no, no. You missed it, totally. I just meant I am not good at shopping, but I will figure it out. But Aurelia too? How am I supposed to buy clothes for a woman? Never unlocked that skill."

"I don't know. Ask your mom. We'll get there tonight. Bye." Meno hung up before Karma could produce another excuse. That handled the cover. Meno had just been dumped, Veyrath was gone, and he was visiting a friend in Skyline with Thorn while giving Karmabeast another shot at Arayu. Totally legit when nobody knew what to do with themselves anymore. He called Aurelia next, and she answered almost immediately.

"Are you waiting for me to leave?" Aurelia asked.

"That's why you aren't back yet? Very heroic, Meno. Can you stop trying to be lame on purpose?"

"No. I just realized that with the music video done, there is nothing for us to do here, so I want to visit Karmabeast in Skyline. I need you to charter a private jet or ask your father, then meet me with Thorn at the airport."

"You can't be serious. You want me to ask my father again after that little stunt? Also, why would I want to go anywhere with you?"

"You can go back to your flat and stare at the capsule if you prefer, but you just told me you only feel alive when you're moving. Also, I assume if you're on the plane, it won't fall out of the sky." Meno kept walking.

"But we don't need your father. I'll pay for it. I just have no clue how to rent a private jet, and I don't want to involve my manager. You know this stuff." He stepped around a group blocking the sidewalk.

"So, Aurelia, can you cut the noise? Cut the act. You can't make me hate you no matter how hard you try. If you truly don't want anything to do with me, then just go home." The line went quiet for a few seconds.

"Thorn is complaining that you want to fly him back," Aurelia said.

"He just got here. He wanted to go to the beach."

"Tell him Stormhold is rising, not sinking into the ocean." Meno hung up, hailed an autocab, and set the airport as his destination. If anybody could predict what he was doing after all that, they deserved to stop him.