Chương 177: Rank One Orangutan

After getting out of the capsule, Meno ran into an unexpected problem. There was nobody useful to restream. Every Veyrath creator was sitting in front of the same black shutdown screen, so sending nineteen million viewers somewhere else would only let them watch another streamer complain about it being offline. His audience deserved better: educational content. Meno left the Veyrath category and started browsing until he found the Vernova Zoo channel sitting at 142 viewers. Perfect.

He opened it and found an enthusiastic middle-aged woman in glasses crouched beside an orangutan. She held up a tablet displaying two pictures and waited for the ape to choose between them. One showed a spade. The other showed a shovel. The orangutan took the decision seriously. Its finger drifted between both pictures, slowed in the middle like it was deliberately building tension, then snapped onto the spade. Meno was impressed. Clearly it had identified the higher-DPS option.

This was exactly the kind of high-level decision-making his audience needed, so Meno restreamed the zoo channel to 19, 663, 111 viewers. The woman's tablet pinged. She checked it, froze, then fell backward onto her ass beside the orangutan. The ape immediately stood and reached down to help pull her back up.

KESTREL STREAM 142 TO 19 MILLION LMAO zoo lady got stream sniped ask him to rank Prestige Hoarders rise up must teach ape bro would pick Destroyer 100% Satisfied that his viewers were receiving proper enrichment, Meno left his setup behind and collected Rina from the living room. Getting food turned out to be a debuff. Rina's biggest personality flaw was her constant effort to interfere with Meno's food rotation.

This time she gave him a look that killed any argument early and ordered chicken breast with steamed asparagus. When the plate arrived, Meno became suspicious. He had never eaten asparagus. The green stalks looked like something aliens would try to scam humans with to test how much suffering they would willingly endure before revolting. Rina insisted they buffed Maximum HP. Meno told her he only cared about damage modifiers, and she threatened to sleep in her own room.

Meno knew when to take one step back so he could take two forward later. The asparagus tasted like salty water, exactly how he imagined grass would taste after a fresh spring rain. The whole experience reminded him of the orangutan, and Meno wondered whether Rina was about to start showing him pictures to name vegetables. When they got back to the suite and she asked for his expert input, Meno was mentally prepared. Rina had apparently been productive while he streamed.

She had taken a collection of very non-family-friendly photos around the living-room couch and wanted Meno to pick the five best for her subscriber page, an exclusive club that included Thorn and still somehow did not include Meno. After successfully producing his first Prestige tier list, ranking things by power level felt natural. Meno judged each pose by how dangerous it looked. Worse weapon angles meant more danger, and Thorn was exactly the kind of player who stood still and let danger come to him.

Naturally, the most threatening poses ranked highest. Rina listened with a completely serious expression. A face-down pose with her knees tucked beneath her while she smiled toward the camera went straight into SSS-tier. It looked like the kind of Crowd Control that might pierce Mush. A standing shot taken from a low camera angle joined it. The angle made the camera feel like a shark circling beneath her, one second away from launching out of the water.

A frontal shot with Rina crouched low, knees spread and eyes locked straight into the lens, earned SSS-tier too. The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. The crab-walk pose landed in SS-tier. The final shot, taken from behind while she balanced herself on the couch, only made S-tier because Rina had clearly been fighting the photo timer. Without somebody else controlling the camera angle, her DPS uptime was inconsistent.

Meno refused to rank anything below S-tier, and Rina accepted the results before posting all five. Afterward, they found a better use for the couch and eventually fell asleep. Meno was not worried about getting banned this time. If Solar wanted him gone, it could have banned him instead of shutting down everything, which was reassuring enough. His phone woke him at ten AM. Rina shifted beside him as Meno answered.

"Hey, Mom." Rina scooted closer and, to Meno's surprise, spoke toward the phone.

"Heeey, Mom too."

"Oh, Meno, am I disturbing you? Who are you with?"

"Nope, all good. It was my girlfriend." Rina's eyebrows lifted for half a second before a smile took over and she kissed his neck.

"I'm just glad you're doing well, Meno," his mother said.

"Thank you for the gift too. You shouldn't be spending so much on me." The gift. Meno had almost forgotten about the silver flatware he had ordered for her what felt like a lifetime ago. Had it really only arrived now? Delivery was slow.

"It was nothing. Do you still work for that Sorell company?"

"Yeah, I still work there. It just hasn't felt right lately." She paused.

"Sometimes it feels like they don't really care what I do anymore. I've thought about finding something else, but it's hard to walk away from the pay." That was all Meno needed to hear. After Carl had dragged her name into the penthouse conversation, Meno wanted her out of Sorell anyway. If she was already thinking about leaving, perfect.

"I think you should quit. You don't have to work anymore. I could've helped sooner. I'm sorry, I got caught up in everything." He opened his banking app while she answered.

"Meno, don't send me any money. You need it for yourself."

"I really don't." He sent her 1, 000, 000 credits. His balance dropped to around 3. 1 million, putting him below Rina again and costing him rank one. Normally unacceptable, but this was his mom. Rank could take the hit.

"Meno!" his mother blurted.

"This is too much, honey. Where did all this money even come from? I know your stream is popular, but you haven't been doing this for that long."

"It's not that much, trust me. I probably already made more than that selling shirts, which I haven't even received yet. There is also the Streamline payout coming soon. That should also be more, then I get sponsorships all the time and will make a lot more soon." Meno closed the banking app.

"You can quit your job. If you need more, just call me."

"Meno, you didn't have to do this." Her voice grew quieter.

"Thank you, son. I mean it. Thank you." Neither of them spoke for a moment. Rina stayed quiet beside him.

"You know your sister has been complaining about all that stuff you sent over. She says she isn't running a warehouse, and you still haven't gone to pick any of it up." Meno had completely forgotten. He vaguely remembered asking Vivi to handle it, which probably meant he had thought about asking her and then never actually done it.

"I'll deal with it soon. I'm at The Pearl, so I'd need storage for most of it anyway. Lysa can donate whatever I don't need. I mostly care about the personal stuff, and that Soma-X7 should still be worth at least 10, 000 credits used."

"I don't want you throwing away things you might care about later. I'll go through it and donate the rest."

"Thanks, Mom. We should meet soon too. I want to introduce you to Rina." Rina lightly smacked his stomach.

"Yes, that would be nice," Rina said toward the phone.

"Did you say Rina? You don't mean the famous one?" Meno already knew where this was going.

"Yes, pink hair. How do you know her?"

"Meno." His mother's voice tightened.

"I've seen her in the news a few times, and it wasn't exactly good news." Beside him, Rina rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling.

"That's fine," Meno said.

"Meet her first, then decide what you think."

"I'm not trying to tell you how to live, Meno. I just worry because everything changed so fast. You went from barely getting by in that small apartment to being famous, making millions, and meeting people you never would've crossed paths with before. That's a lot for anyone to adjust to, and I just want you to be careful."

"I get it, Mom. I'm sure when my Chain breaks, you'll be there to save it."

"I can't believe I understood that." A little warmth returned to her voice.

"I do watch when I have time, you know. Take care of yourself, Meno."

"Bye, Mom." Meno could hardly blame her when the call ended. Everything around him had moved absurdly fast lately, and his mother had only just started seeing where it had carried him. Rina did not shake it off as easily. She went quiet beside him, shoulders drawing inward while she kept staring at the ceiling. Meno bumped his shoulder against hers.

"Don't worry about that. Come on, shower. I'll help you get an SSS-tier picture for today, then we have a podcast."

"It's easy for you to say that." Rina turned her face away and bunched part of the sheet in one hand. His mother had landed Crowd Control after all. Meno climbed out of bed, came around to her side, then slipped one arm behind her back and the other beneath her knees before lifting her cleanly off the mattress.

"Meno!" Rina protested, but her arms went around his neck on instinct as he carried her toward the shower.

"Relax. DPS is the best support. You burn through the bad part fast enough, and there's less time to overthink it."