Chương 48: No UI For This

Aureliana stood beside the black SUV. Her blond hair lay over her left shoulder, smooth and deliberate. She wore a pale blouse tucked into a short black skirt, with heels that made the sidewalk look cheaper by comparison. Aureliana looked him up and down once.

"Well. That went about as well as I expected." Meno rubbed his face, then remembered the makeup and stopped.

"Can we not?"

"I was going to ask whether you meant move on." His lungs emptied. The plaza noise moved around them: shoes on polished stone, distant traffic, the soft hydraulic sigh of the Streamline doors behind him. Meno wanted, very badly, to be inside Veyrath killing anything with a health bar. Monsters did not ask about typos. Monsters stabbed, burned, cursed, poisoned, or exploded. Simple problems. He sighed.

"I don't know what I meant. I just typed. I'm an idiot. Sorry." Aureliana watched him for a second, and some of the sharpness in her face eased.

"Okay. Now come with me."

"I need to get back to Veyrath," Meno said.

"I don't have time for whatever this is. I'm doing no drama for at least a month."

"I know," she said.

"I will take you home." Meno narrowed his eyes.

"Why?" Aureliana looked away for half a second, toward the SUV, and for once the polished expression did not hold perfectly. Her shoulders lowered by a fraction.

"Honestly?" she said.

"I need your help with my class. I got to level nine, but I also want to go for Titan I. It seems impossible." Meno stopped with his mouth half open. That was not what he had braced for. His brain latched onto the escape route immediately.

"Are you sure?" he said.

"You might complain later that this is no different from relying on others to carry you." Aureliana crossed her arms.

"I will still play solo. I need advice, not someone clearing content for me. BrineSaint has people analyzing things for him. Kestrel has a team talking in his ears all day. How is this a carry?"

"Well, it's not," Meno said.

"But you were the one who told me to leave you alone when I was trying to help."

"I was still angry at you, okay?" Her eyes sharpened, but the edge was tired now.

"Then you wanted to move on."

"Oh." Meno looked at the ground.

"Okay." A beat passed. Then the safer, more cowardly part of him woke up.

"But I will need to be compensated." Aureliana's posture changed immediately.

"Compensated how?"

"You have to meet my mom." Aureliana blinked once, then laughed. It started small, then slipped out of her control. She turned slightly away, one hand lifting to her mouth, but the sound kept coming, sudden and helpless and almost relieved. Her shoulders shook, tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, and for the first time all evening, the space between them felt less armed. Meno stood there, increasingly worried he had somehow used the wrong social mechanic again.

"What is so funny about this?" he said.

"She wants to meet you because you tolerated me for more than a day." Aureliana tried to answer, failed, and laughed harder. Finally, Aureliana drew in a breath and wiped carefully beneath one eye.

"Okay," she said, still smiling.

"Sure. I will meet her." Meno pointed at her like the deal needed witnesses.

"You said it."

"I did."

"Good. Contract accepted."

"Please never say that again." They got into the SUV. The inside was the same quiet black leather trap as before, dim lighting and polished surfaces, the kind of interior that made Meno afraid to touch anything. Aureliana sat beside him with her hands folded in her lap, looking straight ahead. The silence loaded the previous ride back into Meno's head: the word friend, the door slam, the stairs, the pillow, the promise in the dark. He shifted once, then stopped because the clothes rustled too loudly.

"Just to be clear—""Oh, shut up, Meno." Aureliana looked out the window, but there was a curve at the edge of her mouth.

"Since when do you care about rules?" Meno stared at her for half a second. Then he chuckled despite himself.

"Fair." Traffic slid by outside, city lights breaking across the tinted glass. The Streamline tower receded behind them. Meno tried not to think about Stacy's face when he said the AI could not classify a stool. Aureliana broke the silence first.

"By the way, what you said about OxideChoir in the interview is going to be trouble." Meno frowned.

"What? Why? I don't have time to teach her." Aureliana closed her eyes for one second.

"Idiot. She meant compare notes as in a date."

"There is no way she meant that," Meno said, too fast and too careless.

"I already like someone else." The words settled between them before Meno realized what he had done. Aureliana turned her head slowly.

"Me?"

"I misspoke," Meno said.

"I am sending OxideChoir a message the moment I log in." Aureliana's smile grew.

"Sure you are."

"Sure," Meno said, with no usable defense left. He looked out the window after that because eye contact had become a debuff. The rest of the drive passed in a silence that was almost comfortable, which made it suspicious. Meno could not decide whether to enjoy it or start checking for traps. When things went well, disaster usually waited around the next corner with a nameplate and a special mechanic. The SUV stopped outside his building. Meno opened the door and stepped out before he said something stupid.

"Thanks for the ride." Instead of answering, Aureliana got out too. Meno looked at her.

"What are you doing?"

"I told you I wanted your input on my class," she said.

"I was serious. We can just talk."

"I get that, but we can talk online." Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"I don't want you to turn me into content."

"I never did that," Meno said, starting toward the door.

"It was my chat. You know that." She walked beside him anyway, through the lobby that smelled faintly of old cleaning chemicals. The elevator was still too slow, so Meno took the stairs without thinking. Aureliana followed, her heels clicking on the steps with too much confidence for a building where the third-floor railing had been loose since before his current lease.

"My apartment sucks, by the way," he said.

"It's fine. I saw it on your stream already." Meno opened his door and immediately wanted to close it again. The Soma-X7 dominated the living room. Around it, reality had not improved: laundry half-contained near a chair, old takeout bowls forming a defensive settlement by the desk, the previous rig leaned against the wall like an obsolete skeleton, cables tucked only where they had become trip hazards. Aureliana stepped inside.

Meno watched her look at the capsule, then the desk, then the bed through the open doorway, then the table. Her face did not do anything dramatic, and that made him feel more judged.

"I was busy," he said.

"With bowls?" He grabbed two mismatched glasses from the cupboard, rinsed them too aggressively, filled them with water, and brought them to the small table. One chair had a shirt on it, so he moved it to the laundry pile with a straight face before they sat. Aureliana took a sip from the glass.

"So. My class." Meno leaned back, thankful for the topic.

"What's the issue?"

"I've been using your suggestion to tank hits with the shield. It works, but it slows down my kill speed." She set the glass down.

"I went to the same earth elemental you killed in Emberhollow. I can avoid some attacks, or I can power up. I can't avoid the AOE, survive the normal hits, and charge long enough to do meaningful damage at the same time."

"You went to that thing?"

"Yes." Meno rubbed his forehead.

"That is not something you can kill with your class unless you abuse the hell out of it."

"You aren't helping." Meno stood and started pacing because the room was too small for the problem and his legs had already committed. Aureliana did not interrupt him. That helped. He moved between the table and the Soma-X7, avoiding the old rig, stepping around one cable, eyes unfocused. Heavy Striker. Power Strike. Plus one hundred percent damage per second. Shield equal to twenty percent max HP while powering up. Taking steps broke the power-up. Shield break broke the charge. Two-handed weapon only.

Earth elemental. Tremor patterns. Big slam. Ground AOE. Heavy hands. Slow but punishing. The thing he had killed through Compound Swing and raw repetition. Meno stopped.

"Can you trigger your power-up midair?" he asked.

"While falling?" Aureliana leaned closer to the table, one finger resting against the glass.

"I think so. I can always trigger it. It just cancels if I take a step afterward. If I am falling, I am not taking steps."

"That's the important part."

"But I can't precharge infinite damage before combat and unload it," she added.

"Combat state change cancels the charge. Otherwise I could stand somewhere for an hour, stack infinite damage, and let someone pull monsters at me."

"Good. The AI isn't completely drunk."

"It sometimes is around you."

"True." Meno paced once more, then stopped again.

"I might have a way, but it's going to feel ridiculous." Aureliana folded her arms.

"It always does with you." Meno chuckled once. The sound felt strange in his apartment after the day he had just had.

"Here's what you try. Forget fighting it on the ground. Your shield is useless against its damage. You need to dodge almost everything. The only time you deal damage is when you use the monster's own body as the route." Aureliana's face shifted from irritation to focus.

"That sounds insane." Meno pointed at the table like it was the elemental.

"When it does the hand slam into the AOE, you don't fight the attack. Jump onto the hand as it comes down, move to the wrist, then the forearm, then the shoulder. From there, jump as high as you can. The moment your feet leave the shoulder, start Power Strike."

"Correct. You jump as high as you can and start charging while falling. Extend the two-handed mace in a horizontal dive, not straight overhead. If you're good at the jump, maybe you get four seconds of charge before impact."

"Four seconds?"

"Two up and two down. The key is weapon reach. You don't fall straight into its chest where it can swat you. You come in from an angle, and the mace connects before your body enters full grab range."

"You want me to jump up and then fall onto the monster while charging."

"Yes."

"That is your plan."

"Yes."

"And after I hit it?"

"The moment you hit, start another power-up to get the shield back for the landing. Push away as the hit connects, then get your legs under you before you touch down. If you stomach-plant the ground, the impact will eat a twenty-percent shield and keep going." Aureliana stared at the glass of water for a second.

"Four seconds of charge is still only four hundred percent damage. It will take forever."

"I never said it would be easy," Meno said.

"My class ramps better. Yours deals higher damage faster if left alone, but you are never left alone. Trying to trickle it with one-second charges while dodging on the ground is worthless. Your weapon will break before you do anything."

"I have a few spare Common II two-handed maces."

"Good. You'll need them." She leaned back, thinking.

"The charge only cancels if I take a step."

"That's the thing to abuse," Meno said.

"Falling is not stepping. Getting thrown might not be stepping either. Sliding is dangerous unless your feet stay off the ground. So the loop is jump, charge, fall, hit, shield immediately, land, reset. You cannot miss the jump even once. If you do, the elemental gets a clean punish." Aureliana's mouth curved into a smile.

"This is going to look ridiculous."

"Yeah," Meno said.

"It will be ridiculous until you kill it. Then it becomes genius. It's always the same." She looked at him for a moment, and the smile softened into something he did not know what to do with.

"Okay. I will try it."

"Good." The room went quiet again, but the quiet had changed. It had weight, but it did not press down the same way. Aureliana lifted her glass and took another sip.

"What are your plans now?" she asked.

"Since your stream will actually make money." Meno sat back down.

"No plans. I'm extremely bad at the real-world part."

"I noticed."

"I might get my contract canceled in under a day."

"You should consider moving to The Pearl's gaming hub," Aureliana said.

"They have an entire floor for immersion suites. Private rooms, restaurant access, laundry, cleaning, secure storage, staff support." Meno remembered Honeygrave stealing fries in a tank top at a luxury hotel.

"I met Honeygrave there. He said it was great. Probably too expensive."

"I can help, if you want."

"I'll pay for it myself." The words came out defensive enough that both of them heard it. Aureliana did not push.

"Okay. You don't have to refuse everything from me out of principle. I really don't mind." Meno laughed once, awkward and honest.

"I won't refuse everything. I just don't want to feel useless. I would still accept nice clothes from you, among other things." Her eyebrows rose.

"What else?" Meno considered that seriously, because she had asked and because his brain had a backlog of minor suffering.

"Food, definitely. I need vitamins. Wireless earphones for the new phone. My towels have holes in them. Need new bedsheets. A better pillow, because I punched this one too many times. New toothbrush. Shaving kit, because this one is dull. The smelly thing people put on themselves with a cool scent."

"Cologne?"

"Maybe. Good kitchen stuff. I hate these plastic spoons. A few plates. Could use a new keyboard and monitor. Maybe a portable streaming setup. A new chair." Aureliana listened with growing disbelief. Then she laughed again. It started smaller this time, then grew until one hand covered her face and tears gathered in her eyes. Meno sat there offended on behalf of the list, because this was practical. These were real items. His apartment had problems a civilized person with money could solve in under twenty minutes.

"What?" he said.

"You asked." Aureliana nodded, still laughing.

"I sure did."

"I gave a reasonable list." She wiped under one eye and shook her head.

"You are impossible."

"Yes," Meno said.

"So anyway, I need to get back to Veyrath." Aureliana's laughter faded into a smile.

"Do you want me to leave?"

"What? I never said that." Her smile shifted.

"Don't worry. I was just kidding." Meno walked her to the door and opened it for her, one hand still on the knob after she stepped into the hall. Aureliana did not leave right away. She turned back under the weak hallway light, close enough that he caught cinnamon in her hair, faint and warm beneath the cleaner smell of the building. For once, there was no stream between them. No chat. No system prompt. No safe little box around what was happening. Meno forgot what his hands were supposed to do.

"What?" he asked, because apparently survival instincts could only do so much. Aureliana smiled, small and almost nervous, then rose onto her toes and kissed his cheek. Her lips were warm for less than a second. Long enough to ruin him anyway. She stepped back before he found a response, smoothing the moment into something casual with impossible confidence.

"Good night, Meno." Then she turned and walked down the hall, leaving him in the doorway with cinnamon still in the air and no usable interface for any of it. Meno stayed in the doorway for ten full seconds while his traitor brain looked for an achievement popup. Nothing appeared. He stepped back into the apartment, closed the door with extreme care, and screamed.

"Yes." Then, louder, because the first one had not been enough:"Yes." He grabbed the pillow off the bed.

"Yes." The celebration took over from there. He jumped once, twice, spun toward the bed, and threw himself onto it hard enough for the frame to complain. His legs kicked against the mattress like he had lost every remaining adult restraint. He rolled onto his back, hugged the pillow to his chest, and shouted at the ceiling.

"Raid boss down. I am the best. I am literally the best." Soft knocks hit the door. Meno went still. Every drop of blood in his body tried to leave by separate exits. He sat up slowly, hair ruined, shirt twisted, dignity murdered in private and resurrected directly into danger. The knock came again, gentle enough that denial had nowhere left to hide. Meno walked to the door like he was approaching a raid chest that might be a mimic and opened it a crack. Aureliana stood there smiling, holding a black bag.

"You left your old clothes in the car." Meno took the bag with both hands.

"Thanks." Her smile widened.

"Raid boss?" she said.

"Really, Meno?"

"I meant—" Aureliana laughed and turned and left before he could finish.