Chương 160: Chapter 159: Browsing History

Rina's smile froze for half a second, and the chandelier above them suddenly became the most interesting object in the entire atrium. Meno looked from her to Thorn and back again, much more interested in whatever the giant man had just admitted to paying for.

"Wait. Subscriber to what?" Thorn's mouth pulled into a grin.

"Stop acting oblivious. You can't embarrass me. I have no shame." He turned toward Rina before Meno could push further.

"Rina, you look great. Can I get a selfie?" That helped. It confirmed Meno was the only person in the conversation who did not know what Rina actually did. He could have forced Thorn to say more, but Rina had already recovered and stepped beside the much larger man with practiced ease, moving like she had taken this exact picture with strangers a thousand times. Thorn raised his phone, leaned down enough to fit both of them into frame, and looked far too pleased with the result.

Meno decided he deserved equal treatment.

"Can I get a selfie too? How about a sub? Any subs going on around here for your date?"

"Man, stop acting jealous. Let me have my moment," Thorn said. Thorn finished the picture before giving Rina her space back. She returned to Meno's side and leaned close enough that her lips almost brushed his ear.

"Don't be silly. You don't need a sub."

"Sure. Whatever that means." Thorn's amusement shifted into confusion.

"Wait, you really don't know? I can't tell if you're making fun of me or not." Rina turned sharply toward him.

"Can you not?"

"Yeah, no. You should've told him. That's not cool." Before Rina could stop him, Thorn opened an app on his phone, tapped through a few screens, and held it toward Meno. The answer became obvious immediately.

"Oh. Okay." Thorn tried to pull the phone back, but Meno caught his wrist before the screen disappeared.

"Are there any more? Let me see." Rina took the phone cleanly out of Meno's hand and returned it to Thorn. The look she gave both men made it clear the discovery had already gone far enough.

"Yeah. Now you know. I do adult content." Her voice stayed controlled, but the ease from a few seconds earlier was gone.

"I'd hoped it would last a bit longer, but this is what always happens." Meno had expected something much more complicated.

"That's it? I also do adult content. Haven't you seen that leaderboard?" A vein rose at Thorn's temple.

"Asshole. Enjoy that while it lasts. Stormhold is rising. We'll push you out of the top 10. No, top 100. Even top 1000! We aren't taking shit from you on the leaderboard." Thorn turned toward the nearest bar before Meno could answer.

"I need a drink." He stormed off through the crowd. Rina remained beside Meno, trying to read his reaction and clearly getting nothing useful.

"You don't mind?"

"Of course I mind. I have a family-friendly image to maintain." Rina planted both hands on her hips.

"Can you be serious for a second?"

"Sure. How many views do you get? I didn't realize you could make that much money from that kind of stuff."

"A lot less than you, but they actually pay."

"Yeah, I really need to get on that somehow. Maybe I can paywall World First attempts or something. Not sure if Streamline even allows it. I'll need Vivi to look into it." Rina shook her head.

"You are weird."

"Yeah. Anyway, no more drama." Meno let the joke drop before she had to ask again.

"Yes, you should've told me, and yes, I need to talk to my mom to see if she's okay with it. But that's all." Rina's face changed completely.

"You need to do what?!" Meno broke first.

"Pff. You should've seen your face. I was kidding. Let's go. I want to talk to BrineSaint." He caught her hand before she could decide whether to hit him and pulled her deeper into the atrium. They stopped at the nearest bar first. The area was packed with people Meno did not recognize, which did not prevent most of them from recognizing him and Rina. Greetings came from several directions as they moved through, some enthusiastic, some cautious, and a few openly hostile.

Meno ignored as much of it as possible and focused on the real problem: maintaining a healthy rotation in all things.

"We should switch to Honeyjuice. There's no way the champagne here is as good as the stuff on the plane. I don't like downgrading in rarity. That's lame." Rina seemed more relieved than she had a minute earlier, though part of her was still deciding whether his reaction was genuine or whether he was forcing himself to act casual.

"You know Honeyjuice isn't a thing."

"It is now." The bartender, a young woman who had clearly never heard of Honeyjuice either, had to survive several minutes of Meno explaining a drink that did not exist. It needed to be yellow, strong enough for top-10 players, and more interesting than champagne. That was not enough information to make a cocktail, but she treated the problem like a challenge and kept adding things until the metal shaker qualified as a serious crafting attempt. The finished Honeyjuice looked suspiciously like orange juice.

Rina approached it with caution, took one sip, then gave a small approving nod. Meno tried his own and got hit with citrus first, then menthol, then a sharp pepper finish that had no business working as well as it did. He gave the bartender a thumbs-up, took Rina's hand again, and went hunting for BrineSaint. The most obvious thing about the Streamline event was that there were far more than fifty people inside.

The ranked players might have been the excuse for the gathering, but the atrium was filled with executives, brand staff, managers, representatives, and assistants. Meno tried to keep a low profile while moving through them, which became impossible with Rina beside him. They eventually spotted BrineSaint on a black sofa in one corner with the rest of BrineTime. His platinum-blond wife sat beside him, and the five-player group looked much calmer than the louder clusters filling the center of the atrium.

Meno was heading straight toward them when Rina pulled him aside into a quieter pocket near one of the columns. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"We need to talk this through. Now." Meno stopped fighting the direction she was pulling him.

"Until now, you didn't want to talk about it, and that's fine. We're both content creators. I get it."

"No, you don't. You would do the exact same thing even if you weren't streaming."

"That's true, but I still stream." Meno took a sip of Honeyjuice while considering the distinction.

"If you can handle me locking myself inside a capsule for days and not returning your texts, there's no issue on my end." Rina lowered her voice.

"Yeah, but that's not all, is it? The guards. The plane. Something is off." Meno glanced across the atrium. One guard had vanished into the crowd so cleanly that he had finally managed the low profile he should have had from the start.

"I was only half joking when I said I also do adult content. Just not your version of it." He drank again.

"If you want safe and boring, you got the wrong guy." Rina held his gaze for several quiet heartbeats, then lifted her Honeyjuice and took a much larger mouthful.

"Then it's settled." Meno raised an eyebrow.

"Is it?"

"Yes."

"Good." He took her hand again and immediately redirected them back toward the bar, where he finished his drink and instructed the bartender to send eight Honeyjuices to BrineSaint's table. Only then did they approach. BrineSaint looked mostly the way Meno remembered from before, but real life made the mismatch harder to ignore.

He had a broad, naturally strong build, like he could carry bags of soil around all day without calling it exercise, plus the rustic face and solid posture expected from a dad in an expensive gardening commercial. None of that fit someone competing at the top of a VRMMO ladder. His wife was the bigger surprise. Meno had expected someone with the same homely, practical energy.

Instead, the platinum-blond woman beside him was much more polished, dressed in a restrained white outfit and carrying herself with enough confidence to stand out even in the crowded atrium. The other four men, Burst, Fletch, Nock, and Hush, shared a calmer, older energy than most players Meno had seen tonight. None looked older than their early thirties, but they seemed settled in the way long-time teammates did, past the need to perform for each other.

Meno had met them in Veyrath, but that did not help much with matching real faces to names. He solved the problem by assigning the tallest one to Burst. The man had support-player energy: broad awareness, calm posture, and the general look expected from somebody monitoring five bars at once. Meno walked directly into their conversation.

"Hey! Cool to meet you all. I'm the guy who threw you into that worm, remember?" Several expressions around the sofa tightened, so Meno pointed toward Rina before anyone could answer.

"This is Rina." Then he pushed the tall guy sideways enough to make room on the sofa, dropped into the new space directly across from BrineSaint, and pulled Rina down with him. She made a small surprised yip and landed partly on top of Meno before rearranging herself. BrineSaint's face barely changed, which made sense because even in real life, getting a reaction from him looked like a serious challenge.

Pike might be rank 3 today, and Kestrel could occasionally jump BrineSaint during good farming windows, but Meno did not expect either of them to remain his main competition to Level 100. BrineSaint was the dangerous one, because he could repeat the most boring optimal strategy in existence for days without getting distracted, offended, or tempted into doing something funny. Meno wanted to know what annoyed him, and more importantly, what interested him. He turned toward the woman beside BrineSaint.

"Are you MathWife? You used to be quite famous in my stream at one point." BrineSaint answered before she could.

"Can you be a bit more respectful? This isn't VR. You can't just do whatever you want." The woman smiled before Meno could defend himself.

"Hey, PBG. I'm Celeste. Nice to meet you. I actually like MathWife. It's very flattering, although I'm not very good at math." Meno checked the rest of the table while she spoke. Nobody seemed angry enough to become a problem. One man was missing a tooth, which was strange because anyone in the top 50 could afford to replace it. Another had a goatee and looked halfway asleep, while the third wore gloves indoors and had already returned most of his attention to his phone.

The tall man shifted where Meno had crowded him.

"You're definitely good at math, Celeste. I'm Burst, by the way. Nice of you to sit so close. Could've pulled over a chair."

"Have to stay close to the support for the buff, right?" Rina giggled before catching herself, while Burst gave Meno the kind of look that suggested support buffs had limits. That solved one identification problem. The remaining three were the Deadeye gang. BrineSaint finally gave Meno something approaching a reaction.

"You are exactly the same in real life." The man wearing gloves looked up from his phone.

"Yeah. Even your girlfriend fits. If I hadn't known what you looked like, I would've picked you out as PrayerBeadGod in five seconds." He gestured lazily around the group.

"I'm Hush. The guy who refuses to fix his teeth is Nock. Next to him is Fletch." Nock ran his tongue briefly across the missing tooth.

"It's my brand. Makes me instantly recognizable." Fletch scratched his goatee.

"Thanks for that Red Bastion chaos, PBG. I was about to buy a new bow and you blew up the vendor." He shifted his attention toward Rina.

"Also, to be polite, nice to meet you. I haven't seen any Rinas on the ladder. You top 50 under an alias? Let me guess, MiriTopPrincess from Crownfall. I get that vibe." Rina shook her head.

"I play Veyrath, but only for fun. I'm not in the top 50." Meno looked offended on principle.

"You've got to be kidding me. What do you take me for? Date a Crownfall player? I have standards. I would never." He looked around the table.

"You seriously don't know her?"

"Whatever you say." Fletch shrugged.

"No, I don't. Should I?" Meno checked the rest of them and found the same reaction. They had found Rina's safe zone. She seemed strangely pleased by that, which Meno did not fully understand. Maybe her marketing was bad. If four highly online people who lived inside capsules had no clue who she was, her reach had obvious holes. That had to be fixed, because it probably explained why she was poorer than him. The drinks arrived before he could fix her brand for free.

A server placed eight yellow Honeyjuices on the low table, and Rina immediately took over the introduction with enough enthusiasm to sound like an art-gallery guide presenting a newly restored masterpiece.

"This is his invention." She pointed toward Meno.

"He calls it Honeyjuice. Honeygrave flew with us on Meno's jet, and it was inspired by Honeygrave's girlfriend, Merry. It's spicy citrus." Rina picked one up, so Meno did too. The BrineTime group showed less courage until Celeste selected a glass, tasted it, and smiled. She nudged BrineSaint verbally rather than physically.

"You'll like it." That was enough for BrineSaint to take one too, which finally let Meno get to the reason he had crossed the room.

"So. Did you guys find a dungeon?" Burst cautiously smelled the Honeyjuice before answering.

"Yeah. There's one on every layer. We're farming the Layer 3 dungeon. It's decent, but loot caps at Relic III. Ancient I starts on Layer 4."

"Is Relic III better than Legendary III?" Fletch scratched his goatee again.

"Better stats. Damage Tier caps at Legendary III, so weapons are meh. Armor is worth it. Ancient I is a big jump." Nock picked up the explanation.

"If the raid is open, Layer 4 gear is bait. Ancient is just normal-track Legendary IV through VI, which means worse. Go in with full Relic III, kill the first bosses, and replace it with raid drops." That was useful.

"Do you know how much Reputation you need to buy Legendary IV from the faction vendor?" Hush answered without putting down his phone.

"Maybe five hundred thousand, but somebody needs to clear the raid before it unlocks. Same thing happened with the Lost Temple. Legendary gear only showed up after you killed Vervenzal." BrineSaint finally drank some Honeyjuice and set the glass back down.

"That is unconfirmed. There is a strong possibility they will not appear on vendors at all." Meno did not like where that went.

"Why?"

"Because of you." BrineSaint said it with the same flat certainty he used for everything else.

"You make gold too easily. That lets you progress faster than intended, and when you progress, the world state progresses with you. The AI wants to slow you down. False Hero was a clear signal." That was not a fun thought. Raids were the main source of Legendary gear, and crafting could reach some of the same equipment, but plenty of the important recipes came from raids too. Meno had been assuming he could bypass that by abusing Reputation and buying upgraded gear once the faction vendor reached the next bracket.

If Solar removed that shortcut, he would have to raid. Worse, after Meno had deleted Vervenzal and made the entire raid irrelevant, Solar had every reason to make sure no future raid boss could be soloed through one stupid interaction. Meno was about to ask what BrineSaint expected from the first Rimvolen boss when Celeste shifted the table toward Rina.

"So, what should we have known you for?" she asked. Her tone stayed friendly, though her eyes briefly moved over Rina's outfit.

"I'm curious. You are dressed quite provocatively, if I may say so." Not this again. Meno had finally reached useful Layer 4 information and had no interest in spending another 10 minutes circling the same reveal.

"Check your husband's browsing history." Celeste turned toward him, confused.

"Why?"

"I don't know. Just a hunch." BrineSaint answered without looking at his wife.

"There is no need to do that." Celeste's attention shifted to him immediately.

"Why? You don't want me to check it?"

"There is nothing to check." Rina pressed her face into the side of Meno's neck, shoulders shaking as she tried not to laugh. Celeste stayed on target.

"Then I can check it, right?" BrineSaint did not answer. He took a large drink of Honeyjuice instead and set the glass down with the firm finality expected from a man who had no intention of continuing the conversation. Burst mirrored his tank and drank too, correctly recognizing that his leader had entered a dangerous mechanic. Rina finally rescued them.

"I'm a content creator."

"She does porn," Meno clarified. Burst sprayed Honeyjuice across the table. Hush immediately picked his phone back up and started researching, while Nock and Fletch both leaned closer to see his screen. Celeste's attention returned to BrineSaint with considerably more weight than before.

"You didn't clean your browsing history, did you?" BrineSaint faced the crowd and avoided every pair of eyes at the table. His shoulders stayed squared, his expression settled into calm resignation, and for one heroic second he resembled a man accepting an unwinnable boss phase.

"I was busy."