Chương 115: Big Pump Man

Meno watched Thorn narrate his Replacement options to his own stream while the ship cut away from Naraltan. It felt strange being near another streamer doing the exact same thing he usually did. Thorn stood near the mast, shield on his back, voice pitched toward explanation and authority. His reasoning sounded cooked already, but Meno wanted the data. Replacement mattered. If it could roll class-evolution-themed skills, that changed the whole Essence economy.

"Can you share the options so I can see?" Meno asked. Thorn glanced over.

"Just open my stream."

"Don't want to infect my capsule with a virus." virus stream Stormhold malware big pump firewall open it coward"You—""Calm down," Meno said.

"My stream also wants to see."

"Then they can open my channel," Thorn said.

"You have over five million viewers currently. I have seven hundred thousand. Do you think this makes sense?"

"Yeah. Nobody wants to watch a walking target dummy." Thorn swiped his shield at him. Meno casually jumped aside, landing near the rail as the shield cut through empty air. Thorn's face tightened, but he swallowed whatever insult came next and went back to presenting options like a professional content creator. Meno sighed, brought up a stream overlay, set it so his viewers could see, and opened Thorn's channel. One glance at Thorn's chat showed the difference between their communities.

Meno's chat was a nest of degenerates, clip addicts, and people who wanted him to die because it would be funny. Thorn's chat was a wall of big pump man, option 1 for max rep, watch spike with 2, and pump stream when. He had captured the gym crowd perfectly. Meno read the first option. [Option 1: Bulwark's Revenge] Your next weapon attack deals 1000% weapon damage. For each successful block before activation, this attack deals 100% increased damage, up to 10 stacks. Stacks are consumed on hit. Cooldown: 10 seconds.

"That's actually seriously good," Meno said.

"Eleven thousand percent damage at max stacks with a ten-second cooldown?" Thorn kept looking at his own menu.

"Thorn is definitely not picking this one," Meno added, "because it deals damage." Thorn looked sideways.

"That's right. Defensive value is zero."

"At least you know yourself." Meno moved to the next option. [Option 2: Negation Strike] Your next weapon attack deals 1000% weapon damage and removes 1 debuff from you. Your shield becomes charged, causing your next successful block to block 1 spell projectile. The shield charge lasts until consumed or combat ends. Cooldown: 10 seconds.

"Option two is zero DPS, one spell projectile block, and a dispel. Garbage."

"Do you know how hard it is to get spell block if your class isn't specialized for it?" Thorn asked.

"Whatever. That logic is like trying to patch a sinking ship. Play to your strengths."

"I agree," Thorn said.

"I wasn't about to pick it. Option three is clearly the play." Meno read it. [Option 3: Sacrificial Dominion] Replace your weapon with a war banner for 10 seconds. While active, the banner pulses every second, dealing 1000% of the replaced weapon's damage to hostile targets in short range. This damage can hit airborne targets and generates high threat. While inside the banner's radius, you and allied players gain 50% increased Movement Speed.

Additionally, 50% of damage taken by allied players inside the radius is redirected to you. Can be canceled. Cooldown: 30 seconds.

"Dominion was your class evolution, right?" Meno asked.

"Yes."

"It's weird you got a Dominion skill as Replacement. Makes me think there are other Infernal skills I can roll that weren't in the base package." Thorn nodded once, clearly more interested in his own future clips.

"This one pumps," Thorn said.

"Above four targets, it does more damage than option one. It works as an AoE taunt, a melee reposition, and a save, with short-range damage transfer and movement speed."

"If your raid groups up with this active and eats an AoE, you might get one-shot."

"Skill issue. I'm picking it." Meno looked at the tooltip again.

"Much better than my previous channeled melee projectile nonsense," Thorn added.

"I would still take option one. If you upgrade it, the cooldown will probably go lower. Tank trash on top of a boss, and you can dish serious single-target DPS."

"Yeah, another melee attack I can't even hit you with."

"Not everything is about me." Thorn stared at him until Meno shrugged.

"Option three lets melee play more aggressively," Thorn said.

"Overall party damage goes higher. Also, I never play solo." Meno nodded and closed the stream overlay. There was no point arguing further. Thorn made sense inside his own playstyle. He was a raid tank guild master, and damage that improved his group's uptime mattered more to him than a personal smack he could miss against fast targets. Meno still wanted the eleven-thousand-percent hit, but Meno also solved social problems by detonating warlocks. The ship travel was annoying.

They could not sail straight toward the main continent. Tall rock shelves split the Jagged Sea into narrow routes, forcing the priest at the helm to constantly adjust direction. The water looked open until it suddenly wasn't, and every wrong turn threatened to trap them between stone walls, with monsters above and whatever lived below. Birds perched on the high shelves, mostly between level seventy-one and eighty-seven. They attacked on sight. Stormhold knew how to handle them by never stopping.

Thorn stood near the center and caught each swoop on huge shield angles while the warlocks layered slows into the birds' dives. The priest kept the ship moving, cutting between shelves before the monsters could settle into repeated attack passes. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. Meno did not have much to do, which made it useful to watch.

Thorn explained that tier one ships were nearly unusable for this exact route: too slow, too fragile, and too easy for monsters to pin down, especially around Naraltan. That clarified why Chadculator and the others had been farmed so hard by the Jagged Sea. They avoided octopuses because the tier two ship stayed fast enough. Even so, it took over half an hour to reach Serpent's Wake Coast at the southeastern edge of the main continent. That was better than Meno expected and still irritating.

Half an hour was real time gone every trip. The value of Stormpath rose in his eyes, not because it helped him leave Naraltan, but because returning there without repeating this ride suddenly sounded less useless. The ship reached shore, and Serpent's Wake Coast spread ahead: level forty-to-fifty terrain full of wet stone, sea mist, and memories Meno wanted deleted. Sunken Spire was somewhere below. Underwater nonsense lived here too, and he had no desire to touch any of it again.

Thorn dismissed the ship into the round orb, spoke briefly to his guild members, then removed them from the raid and converted it into a two-person party with Meno. The moment the others left the raid, their names turned hostile to him. For half a second, Meno thought Thorn had tried something. Then the three warlocks and priest summoned a large stag mount together and rode away without speaking. Their hostile color remained, but their body language said they were done being exploded today.

Thorn summoned his own stag.

"Get on. It has High Speed. Much faster than your low-speed bus."

"Can you show me the tooltip?" Thorn shared it in party chat. [Red Bastion Gilded Stag] Speed: High Control: Medium Jump: Low Capacity: Medium Red Bastion privilege. Medium capacity allowed a full party of five players to ride, and High Speed meant crossing zones without losing half the day. The only consolation was Low Jump. Based on everything Meno had done with mount jumping, Jump was the stat most likely to break the world when abused. The Gravewurm was slow.

It also stayed combat-viable because High Jump turned terrain into options. Meno climbed onto the stag behind Thorn, and the mount launched forward. Serpent's Wake Coast blurred around them. The monsters barely aggroed. Smart ones fled when the level gap registered, and dumb beasts got avoided by Thorn with clean adjustments. The stag's Medium Control showed in every turn. At the border of Thormire Wilds, Thorn cut north along Sunscar Canyon, then past Crystal Step Basin.

Southreach sat nearby, hostile to both of them, so the route made sense. They emerged into Redreed Frontier next, and the level ten-to-twenty zone was packed to the gills with low-level players. People stopped mid-fight to gawk as the two level sixties flashed past on a gilded stag. A few funny idiots tried to jump in front of the mount to grief them. Thorn avoided them easily. Meno promised himself he would buy the fastest tier three mount possible.

Then he remembered tier two required twenty-five thousand Karma and tier three required five hundred thousand. He had around sixty-eight thousand, which made tier two realistic and tier three a distant rich-person problem. Waiting for five hundred thousand sounded painful. Maybe speed first for tier two. Abuse later. Thorn kept going north until Templefall Hollow opened ahead. Meno had not been here in what felt like ages.

The zone still looked strange, with gray broken ground, floating stones, and strips of land curling into the sky. The level sixty colossus was nowhere in sight, which disappointed him. Someone else might have already killed it, and he resented that because he kind of wanted to test Infernal on it. Traveling through Templefall was smoother than expected for one reason. Players were everywhere. It was the only level fifty-to-sixty zone, and the place was packed with top guild members farming XP.

Most were Red Bastion players from the major guilds, which meant they could not attack Thorn. Meno was different. The truce party setup protected him from Thorn, not the world. As they passed, Crownfall ranged players started taking potshots at Meno. Thorn shouted immediately.

"DON'T MESS WITH ME!" that worked it did not work dad tank voice Thorn mad It did not have much effect. A level fifty-two Crownfall archer named Azzoro lined up a shot from the side. Meno had nowhere to dodge while mounted behind Thorn, so he jumped off before the arrow could hit him. The stag slowed as Thorn cursed. Meno fired False Wings and rocketed toward Azzoro. The archer dashed back. Meno triggered Pump Infernal, broke immediately for Break Infernal, and let the two-second speed burst tighten the gap.

Pursuit struck the archer mid-retreat, dragging Meno in. Two seconds later, Azzoro was a corpse. [Karma Gained: 10] [Gold Acquired: 500g]"Thanks for the donation." free gold Crownfall tax Azzoro mad bad snipe nice try Thorn circled back and picked him up.

"It's always Egofall," Thorn said.

"These idiots need to learn a lesson. Maybe I should switch our guild faction." Meno settled onto the stag.

"You can change factions?"

"Yes, but it has a long cooldown, zeros your Karma, and vendor items from the old faction stop working. Gear included."

"That's rough. What level of gear are you in anyway?"

"Mostly Epic III." Meno glanced at Thorn's shield. That explained some things and not enough others. They rode the rest of the way in silence. Near the center of Templefall Hollow, Thorn angled the stag onto a floating strip of road that curled upward. The mount climbed the impossible path toward a suspended rock island where a swirling portal waited. Players crowded around it, entering, exiting, arguing, streaming, inspecting each other, and pretending not to stare at Meno and Thorn arriving together.

Luckily, nobody attacked. Either they were too busy, too smart, or too aware that Meno could delete most of them in seconds. Thorn dismounted and stored the Mountstone.

"Okay. We should post it on socials and put it in the stream title. Wait half an hour so viewers can arrive before we start. Otherwise, it's a huge waste." go now NO WAITING content edging start trial Meno checked the time.

"1: 07 p. m. Saturday. Pretty good time to start."

"I still need a thirty-minute break," Thorn said.

"Gotta get my shake in." Meno turned slowly.

"Shake? Are you about to drug yourself?"

"It's protein, idiot." protein trial big pump man shake buff Thorn prepot gym raid"Fine. I'll be back in half an hour." Meno logged out. The XPro opened cleanly, and the hotel suite greeted him with soft light instead of peeling walls. He climbed out, opened his neglected Connect profile, and posted without overthinking. World First Titan Trial in 30 minutes He added the stream link, got into slippers, and left the suite for the tenth-floor communal area. The lounge had a few people inside.

Two guys he had never seen were eating pasta, both in their twenties, and both waved at him with their mouths full and forks in hand. Near them sat a girl about Meno's age with painted pink hair, hoodie over shorts, bare feet tucked under her chair, sipping tea. The look she gave Meno was ugly enough to make him double take. He had no idea what her problem was, so he went to the bar. The staff member behind it had been watching Honeygrave's stream on the wall.

Honeygrave's party was crawling through a cavern, clearly already on Fractera, and the staff member snapped to attention when Meno approached.

"How is the new zone?" Meno asked.

"Anything good?"

"Sorry, sir," the staff member said.

"I should have been paying attention."

"It's fine. So how is it?"

"He is looking for a dungeon, like everyone else. Fractera is strange. The surface is a flat plain with fracture lines where players can climb down. Most paths are dead ends, and there are no NPCs on top to guide people toward useful entrances." Meno looked at the stream. Honeygrave and his party were moving single file down a narrow stone descent.

"So people are just searching everywhere for good entrances?"

"Yes. The ones that lead to dungeons, or anything valuable."

"Sounds annoying. What are the monsters like?"

"Not sure. Honeygrave hasn't fought anything since I started watching. He keeps going down, getting stuck, climbing back up, and choosing another crack to descend." The staff member smiled faintly.

"Exciting. Feels like real exploration."

"Uh," Meno said.

"That's one way to put it." He looked at the menu, then gave up.

"Can I get a steak burger with blueberry juice?"

"Of course, sir. The chef has already been notified about your unusual burger preferences. It should be here in five minutes."

"Oh, he has?" Meno said, pleasantly surprised.

"Certainly. He has been working hard to perfect it."

"That's cool to hear. I am looking forward to it." Meno sat at a table where he could see the room, but the pink-haired girl was still looking at him. He gave it twelve seconds, failed to ignore her, and asked, "What is your problem?" She did not answer immediately. Instead, she set her tea down, stood, and crossed the lounge barefoot to his table.

The hoodie and shorts combo did not make her look less aggressive, especially when she planted both hands on the tabletop and leaned in hard enough that Meno pushed his chair back to create distance. This was starting to look like a PvP situation.

"Does the name JustrelaxPete mean anything to you?" she asked. Meno frowned.

"No. Should it?" Her eyes narrowed.

"Do you know how long it took to convince my brother to try Veyrath? He gets scared even by virtual violence. Then you run him over with your Gravewurm in Rillpost." Meno's memory supplied a small, unfortunate clip: a low-level player, a road, a Gravewurm, and a decision made at speed. She leaned closer.

"Do you think that is normal behavior? Do you think you can just do anything? He hasn't been able to log back in since." Meno sat there like an idiot.

"Oh," Meno said as the memory finished assembling.

"That."