Chương 208: HyperionGuestAccount

Hyperion had assigned Meno the highest-damage, lowest-DPS trainer he had ever met. The guy was called Kunt and drove him completely insane. Every morning, Kunt planted himself beside whatever machine Meno was using in Hyperion's gym and screamed instructions into his ear through an accent thick enough that Meno understood maybe sixty percent of it. He was big, with enough muscle to make most people look twice, but nowhere close to Thorn. More natural, less committed.

Kunt was throwing away perfectly good Damage modifiers while still taking the Action Speed penalty from muscle brain. The injections Hyperion kept giving Meno had also become an excellent demonstration that science was real and effort and dedication were secondary. Four days after waking, he was already in better physical shape than before the coma.

His legs worked properly again, most of the weakness was gone, and Kunt had progressed from supervising basic movement to screaming because Meno refused to perform exercises at whatever slow tempo the program demanded. Meno had asked one of the doctors what blasting his body with steroids, electrical stimulation, and whatever else they were pumping into him would do to his lifespan. The answer had been: Inconclusive. Usually that meant good.

Meno remembered reading something about it in one of his mother's magazines as a kid. Maybe You Deserve It. Maybe Glamorous Happiness. He could not remember the title, only that science people seemed perfectly willing to announce good things on their own but needed citations and three disclaimers before admitting anything bad. The doctor had provided no citations, so Meno was basically saved.

Two days before Excrinon: Grave of Masters launched, Hyperion finally discharged him from the hospital wing and let him move back into the guest-floor penthouse with Aurelia. Meno found his phone almost immediately and checked his bank account. +900, 000, 000 credits. That pissed him off a little. After Xarr's entire speech about what Meno had done for Hyperion and humanity, the bastard had not sent the money to his mother like they agreed. Classic. Technically, Meno had said if we die.

He had survived, so Hyperion had exploited the wording and held the payout until he woke up. Corporate tooltip abuse. Meno called his mother and sister next and informed them that the pump was still on. He explained that he had merely taken a short break to recharge for the next title. Neither appreciated the joke, but happiness was confirmed anyway. Once that was handled, Meno called the final boss. Chadculator answered sounding offended before Meno had even finished saying hello.

"What do you want? You disappear and ignore my emails, then call when you need something. I am big streamer now. I am busy. I get over 100k views consistently. I don't have time to do chores for you."

"I was in a coma."

"Hah, right. You never streamed since Veyrath even once. Good vacation? I saw Rina dumped you for Solver. How is that? Loser." Rina and Solver. Meno still had absolutely no idea who Solver was as a person, but he suddenly hoped the XMelter was real because Chadculator deserved to experience it. That one did damage. If Chadculator was right and Rina had simply appeared with Solver afterward, then Senfestra really had used her as a honeytrap with zero shame. Her public work made the rotation easy to sell too.

New partner, new content, audience moved on. Smart and extremely scummy. Meno would have to warn Solver eventually.

"Yeah, I had to settle for Aurelia. Can you believe that? Huge downgrade. She couldn't even beat you in Minesweeper."

"Hey!" Aurelia called from across the room.

"You said it was okay." Meno gave her a thumbs-up and pointed at the phone.

"I am the best," Chadculator said.

"You can't beat me in anything that revolves around numbers."

"You cheated," Meno said.

"Yes." Meno pumped one fist into the air, threw the phone onto the table without remembering the call was still active, and crossed the room as fast as his recovering legs allowed. He caught Aurelia around the waist, lifted her off the floor, and managed one weak spin before his body reminded him that four days of miracle medicine did not erase six months of coma for free.

"You did it." Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. Aurelia caught his shoulders, still trying to understand why he was celebrating.

"What? Oh. It's true."

"Yes. He admitted it. He's cheating, which means you're rank one because you weren't." Aurelia went still in his arms as the meaning landed.

"Yes. I…" Her voice started rising.

"I did it. Six months, Meno. I did it. I AM RANK ONE." That deserved celebration. Meno carried Aurelia toward the nearest bedroom and kicked the door shut behind them, leaving Chadculator abandoned on the table with the call still active. They had a lot to catch up on. The sex was incredible. Aurelia had clearly been wrong about several previous balance complaints. There was plenty to grab, plenty to hold onto, and no meaningful DPS loss anywhere Meno could identify. Rina's Massive-weapon build had been overkill.

Aurelia specialized in uptime. Sometimes getting the boss-kill notification late counted as winning twice. The next day, Brad immediately tried to organize a birthday party. That was how Meno discovered he was twenty-eight. He had completely forgotten birthdays existed. Meno told him that sleeping through most of the year invalidated the level-up and the party could be delayed until further notice. Then he called Vivi. She sounded ecstatic to discover she was not unemployed after all.

Vivi confirmed she had collected all his belongings from The Pearl, updated him on approximately six months of business activity he had not asked about, then nearly blew out the speaker when he mentioned using an alternate Streamline account for the Excrinon launch. Meno hung up. He did want to stream. Streaming had become part of playing for him, and there was something satisfying about having the entire climb documented from Level 1 onward.

But going live on his main channel after disappearing for six months would summon at least a million people before he even finished character creation. Meno did not want that yet. Veyrath had launched when almost nobody knew who he was. He had fewer than ten real viewers, and no expectation that every button he pressed would become a clip. He wanted a little of that back, and if that was selfish, fine. Aurelia would stream on her own channel anyway, so the disguise had a short expiration timer.

Even leaking through her should keep the audience below a million for a while. Good enough. Meno opened Streamline and created a new account. HyperionGuestAccount The same humiliating name Hyperion had forced on him during the tragic Minesweeper Omega 5 climb. Xarr could hardly complain. After giving Meno the whole you will always have a place at Hyperion speech, objecting to a Streamline username would be incredibly awkward.

The old man had trapped himself like a pro, and Meno intended to extract every possible advantage from the mistake. Never interrupt your opponent when they are making a mistake on Tuesday because the peach trees bear fruit on Wednesday. Basic strategy. The next problem was: food rotation.

Meno had spent days surviving on synthetic recovery garbage loaded with substances that used numbers instead of letters, so he immediately ordered a three-pepperoni pizza, a standard steak burger, another steak burger with green pepper sauce on the side, and the largest jug of blueberry juice Hyperion could locate. Preferably made from Earth blueberries. The food was good. Aurelia had trained Hyperion's chef properly while he was gone.

Good crafting deserved feedback, so Meno asked Eyxim to pass along his compliments. She responded with a huff that contained absolutely no delivery confirmation. Unacceptable. Meno demanded access to the kitchen floor. Eyxim could not produce an actual rule preventing him from thanking a chef, so several elevators later he was standing inside one of Hyperion's kitchens. The chef was an older woman who reminded him enough of his mother that Meno immediately realized he needed to go home. His mother beat him to it.

She flew to Skyline before he could arrange the visit and hugged him for several hours of accumulated cooldown time. Meno let her. She liked Aurelia too, which was a major improvement over the Rina situation. The two got along almost immediately, and Meno was glad to see his mother happy. When she finally left, Meno wanted to send her more money. She had already forbidden that. According to her, the previous million was enough for a very long time. So Meno sent a million credits to Lysa instead.

His sister could complain after receiving it all she wanted; he wanted her to have it. With everything else finally handled, launch day arrived. The XAnnihilator waited inside Meno's bedroom with its polished black shell open, as if it had been counting down the same timer he had. Meno had not felt this pumped in a long time. Going through a wormhole did not compare to VRMMO launch day. They were not even in the same universe.

If the Astatine System, some machine intelligence, fake notification, alien robot, or anything else on the other side bothered him today, Meno was going to climb into an XTachyon and pay it a personal visit. Launch day was sacred. The energy drinks were already lined up while Aurelia stood beside her own capsule checking the setup.

"I should play solo," she said.

"You can do your usual thing. I don't want to hold you back, and if we stay together everyone will drive me insane spamming carried."

"Nope, that's lame. We can split later, and you won't hold me back at all." Meno leaned against the edge of his capsule.

"How many people have experience piloting SpaceAssault Frames in space? Not many. I'm still going for rank one, but I don't feel like I have anything to prove to viewers anymore. The noise definitely isn't stopping me from playing with my wife." Aurelia froze before a nervous laugh escaped her.

"Wife? Meno, really? I don't remember you asking me to marry you." Meno stepped closer.

"Doesn't matter. Don't you remember? My chat married you to me a long time ago."

"True." Aurelia smiled.

"I'm giving you some slack because you're currently brain-damaged, but if you want me, you have to work for it. I want a nice ring and a scenic proposal."

"Fine. I'll make a reservation on fake Earth. Next time we cross the wormhole, I'll do it there. It was a dark place. I think only you can shine some light on it."

"Stop with the cheesy lines. You're driving me nuts."

"Okay, then I'll tunnel through fake glass Mars, grab the lightbulb in the middle, and use it as a ring." Aurelia considered that.

"Hmm. Asking you to get rank one in Excrinon is too easy. How about you make Solar shut down the game again, then you can ask me. Until then, forget about it."

"That's evil, and I love you."

"Oh, this again?" Aurelia said.

"I'm not sure yet. Sorry. Still looking to see if I can find someone better." Meno grabbed his chest and fell backward onto the bed like his Chain had broken with nothing left to save it. The theatrics were stupid, but the damage was real enough. This time Aurelia followed him onto the bed, settled over him, and rested her hands against his chest.

"I love you too." For one dangerous moment, Meno forgot launch day. Then his brain recovered enough functionality to remember the timer and realize missing launch was now a real possibility. That was unacceptable. Meno grabbed Aurelia. The perfect DPS rotation had never been more important, because launch would not be missed under any circumstance.