Chương 89: Jet Fuel

Meno climbed out of the capsule with the stream still on and nearly lost his knees under him. He staggered two steps, reached the bed, and collapsed onto it in front of more than three million people. His chest worked too fast. His heartbeat punched through his ribs, and he had to close his eyes and force his breathing into order: slowly in, hold, slowly out, hold, repeat. The capsule warnings had stopped screaming, but his body had not gotten the message. His brain had not caught up either. It had worked.

Even if Feltforge banned him now, it had been worth it. They could delete his character, lock his account, pretend the route had never existed, and it still would not matter, because history had already happened. The boss had died. The first kill was taken. Rank one was his. There was nothing left to take from him except a bank account with under four thousand credits, a capsule, a broken chair, and boxes of designer clothes stacked in the corner.

Meno started laughing, rough at first, then long and deranged, the kind of laugh that had been building in him for years. Veyrath had lasted nine days. At level fifty-nine, BrineSaint could grind until his eyes turned into salt and still not catch him. Loot did not matter. If the forced logout cost him the legendaries on the floor, fine. Loot came and went. Moments stayed.

After years of failed streams, dead ladder pushes, broken starts, bad luck, bad reads, bad patches, and telling himself he was underrated when nobody cared enough to disagree, Meno had taken rank one in the world's first VRMMO. Viewers had always been nice, and money mattered, but the rank itself had always mattered more. The rank was proof that did not need kindness. A number that could not pity him. Something that said he had been good enough, if only once, in a place where everyone could see.

He pushed himself off the bed and stood on shaking legs, then made it to the kitchen chair and sat in front of the monitor. Chat moved too fast to read. The stream page flashed with new follower counts, clip notifications, collab invites, and moderation warnings. He opened clips and found too many already waiting. PRAYERBEADGOD BREAKS THE RAID"Fair." He logged into Connect, where his profile still had the terrible high-school photo.

Then he made his first post, but not before considering, and rejecting, the idea of tagging BrineSaint. That would be lame. Chat was still unreadable, though guild tags kept flashing through the flood: Crownfall names, Silverwake tags, Highbanner and Stormhold players, all tangled with demands for a ban, a rollback, and one guy claiming the stool had been an inside job. Meno ignored all of it. He would not let them steal the moment, because he had never felt this good in his life.

Except maybe last night, but that was different.

"Rank one," Meno said.

"Did it, guys. That's it. Wrap it up." log back LOOT GET THE LEGENDARIES rank one log back idiot capsule now"Can't log back," Meno said.

"Capsule emergency mode is eight hours forced downtime." That created a new wave of panic. Meno sat in front of the monitor and realized he had no idea what he was supposed to do now. He was on a crappy kitchen chair in front of millions of people, locked out of the game that had just crowned him. His Streamline inbox filled with collab requests so fast the number stopped feeling real. He opened it once, saw names stacked like a leaderboard of people who wanted to use him, and closed it. Then his phone rang. Brad.

Meno answered.

"Meno," Brad said immediately, voice sharp and awake.

"Do not take any free interviews."

"Hello to you too."

"If anyone wants to talk to you, they negotiate with me. Do not agree to anything, and do not read anything on stream if it comes from Feltforge Systems or anyone with standing." Meno sat straighter.

"Send everything to me," Brad said.

"My lawyers will handle it. Okay?"

"Right. I'm not doing anything except sitting here for the next eight hours, apparently."

"Good. This is big, Meno. Very big. Do not do anything stupid, whatever happens."

"That feels targeted."

"It is. I have to call people. Bye."

"Yeah. Sure. Bye." The call ended. Chat tried to revive WifeLawyer and BaldMerchant, but the old jokes were buried under newer viewers who had no idea what either meant. Most of the people watching him now had not been there for any of it. Then his phone rang again. Oxy. Meno took it.

"Menooooo," Oxy said.

"Whaaat waaass thaaat? Just wow."

"Free raid testing."

"You are IN-sane."

"You want to collab on Streamline so I can see you?"

"Ya sure about that?" Oxy asked.

"Big-time low durability mode here." Meno laughed before he could stop himself.

"Yeah, no problem. I'll just imagine you without cl—" He caught himself too late.

"I mean, I don't care." Chat caught it instantly. CLOTHES OBVIOUSLY without what MENO PLEASE caught Oxy save him Oxy laughed loudly into the phone.

"That was sooo messed up. Feel free to, though. Click my link." Meno found her request in his inbox and accepted. Oxy appeared on stream looking magnificent in full disaster mode: stained shirt, cut jean shorts, negative makeup applied for effect, hair arranged by battle rather than brush, and perched in her chair like a gargoyle. Meno looked her over.

"You weren't kidding. My Fluxforge Smith is stuck at level thirty, and I don't think I could repair your gear." Oxy made a rude gesture at the camera and giggled.

"So is Veyrath still on?" Meno asked.

"What is going on?"

"Yeah, it's on, alright. I just logged out to watch you." She leaned closer, eyes bright.

"I have no clue how you pulled that movement for more than two hours. And when you ignored the loot and ran to the final boss? I think I melted."

"It wasn't planned," Meno said.

"Sure."

"No, really. I felt the route before I knew it and acted. If I failed and lost the legendaries for nothing, that would have been special."

"Meno, Meno, Meno." Oxy pointed at him.

"You were already peak. Top. Pinnacle. Rank one after the first boss, by the way. Level fifty-four." He blinked.

"I was?"

"Yes. But risking the legendaries anyway and turning the run into a global PvE meltdown?" She winked.

"Very hot. If you lose the drops, I will make it up to you." Meno felt like the legendary drops had upgraded into mythic.

"Uhm," he said.

"Yeah. Okay." OXY NO RANK ONE ENERGY loot replaced Meno buffering LUCKY BASTARD Meno's phone buzzed with an unknown number, and he answered mostly because it might be content.

"Hey, this is Sophie from Feltforge Systems," a woman said.

"Am I speaking to Mr. Varsh?"

"Uhm, yeah. How do you know this number?"

"It was in your Streamline contract. I'm calling to arrange a meeting with Mr. Morlando Felt. Would today work for you?" Meno started sweating. Bradbaron had told him to hang up, but that felt far too risky. Feltforge owned Veyrath, Streamline, and possibly the floor under his life right now. If they banned him from both platforms, rank one became a historical screenshot and his capsule became the most expensive paperweight in the apartment.

His conspiracy brain immediately improved the disaster: they would fly him somewhere private, smile too much, and make him vanish into a patch note.

"Sure," Meno said.

"But I'm streaming this call. If I don't come back, everyone will know what happened." Sophie chuckled softly.

"Mr. Varsh, don't joke about things like that. Mr. Felt only wishes to speak with you."

"That is exactly what someone would say before disappearing me."

"I'll send someone to pick you up in about two hours," Sophie said, gliding straight past the accusation.

"A jet has already been arranged to take you to Skyline and back afterward." Meno did not love that. Skyline was the capital, a sprawling coastal skyscraper jungle in the north. Vernova sat southeast, cozy by comparison, and the flight usually took around three hours. Going there for a private meeting with a trillionaire after breaking his raid boss felt like accepting a quest with no reward. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"That's pretty far away," Meno said.

"Can't we just do a video call?"

"We'd like to ensure the privacy of the meeting. Don't worry. It only takes an hour on Mr. Felt's Cordjet-F88." Meno had never heard of a plane that fast. rocket jet Cordjet?? IRL zubra catapult do not go private boss room The zubra-catapult line did not reassure him.

"Okay," Meno said.

"But I want compensation in the form of pepperoni pizza, since I won't have time for food." Sophie laughed with professional warmth.

"I'll make a note of that."

"Make it a large note."

"I look forward to meeting you, Mr. Varsh." They said goodbye and hung up. Meno spent the next two hours on stream with Oxy, talking about random nonsense because ending the stream in front of more than a million people felt impossible. They went through the raid clip piece by piece.

Meno explained the timing, the stool brake, the frog-and-snake movement, and the moment he realized the final boss route was open, while Oxy kept interrupting with sound effects and fake fainting whenever the chain stack appeared on screen. Even after two hours without Veyrath gameplay, the stream stayed above a million viewers. Meno checked the time.

"I'll set my stream to restream yours, okay? World progression might trigger soon. The quests hinted that defeating Vervenzal would unlock the zones past the main continent somehow, so you should log in as soon as possible." Oxy froze.

"Reeeally, Meno? Even I get nervous with that many eyeballs."

"Too late."

"That's huge," she said, then her voice softened.

"You are so nice. Thank you." She started sending kisses into the camera. Meno switched his stream over to Oxy's feed and left her to inherit the chaos while he showered. When he came back, he dressed from Jaxxon's boxes without thinking too hard: black hoodie, dark trousers, clean sneakers. Simple enough to count as a fashion statement, comfortable enough to survive a corporate ambush. Soon after, someone knocked.

Meno opened the door to two men in suits and expensive AR glasses who did not look like basic security. Their eyes moved over the hall, the doorframe, the apartment behind him, and Meno himself with quiet, rehearsed focus.

"Mr. Varsh," one said.

"Yeah."

"Please come with us." The airport ride happened in a mini-bus that looked more like a tank with windows, and the private terminal had a sleek metal-gray jet waiting on the runway. The guards ushered him aboard without wasting words. A young stewardess greeted him with a large pizza box, told him to wait until takeoff before eating, and left the guards to take their seats in the back, where they continued their proud tradition of not speaking to him. Meno had only flown a few times.

The Cordjet shot into the sky much faster than expected, dropping his stomach and making him grip the armrests before pride could stop him. Chat had not been entirely wrong. It did feel like being launched from a zubra catapult. The pizza itself was the best he had ever eaten. He got through three slices before the stewardess brought him blueberry juice, which made him stop chewing.

He had never had blueberry juice at home or on stream because it was expensive, so someone knowing he liked it moved the experience from luxury into surveillance.

"Concerning," Meno said. The stewardess smiled like she had heard stranger things today. The plane really was fast. At the one-hour mark, Skyline rose into the window, an endless coastal field of skyscrapers packed so tightly the city looked like it had declared war on empty space. Vernova had downtown towers, but it also had beaches, old streets, and neighborhoods that still felt built for people.

Skyline had corporate neon, logo towers, billboards, and lower levels lit by advertisements bright enough to bully daylight. Even the northern coastline offered no suburban softness, only more glass and steel. Streams of expensive VTOL vehicles moved between towers with casual purpose. Vernova banned most of them, which had always seemed normal until Meno watched Skyline use them like elevators with engines. Flying cars for people whose time cost more than other people's rent.

Meno took a picture and sent it to his mother and Lysa with no caption. Let them wonder. The jet landed on the city outskirts, where the guards moved him into a waiting VTOL and followed him inside. They still had not shown the smallest desire to chat, which Meno respected and disliked in equal amounts. The VTOL carried him toward one of the tallest towers downtown: a sleek black-glass tube with a landing pad on top. The vehicle settled onto the pad, and the guards were moving before the door fully opened.

Inside, they crossed a reception area below the roof access, passed a fancy wooden desk manned by an older man, and entered an elevator without stopping. One guard entered a code. The elevator moved so fast Meno could not tell whether it was rising or dropping, and the doors opened almost immediately. The floor reminded him of The Pearl, except more restrained and more high-tech. Luxury wooden accents ran along the walls. Screens blended into surfaces so cleanly they looked painted there.

The central area felt more like a living room than an office, with leather sofas and a low table arranged under soft lighting. A glass-walled office sat to one side, and a young woman stepped out.

"Mr. Varsh," she said.

"I'm Sophie." Her voice matched the call. Meno nodded.

"Pizza was good."

"I'm glad." She led him to the larger office beside hers, the one with proper walls. When she opened the door, bird chirps and rain sounds spilled out at full volume, and Meno stepped into what felt like a rainforest designed by someone whose entire concept of outside came from business reports. An entire wall displayed a forest scene instead of the Skyline view. A sunken seating area had been built into the floor like a shallow pool, full of pillows and low cushions.

Across the room, a man sat behind twelve sleek screens mounted on moving arms, typing across an invisible keyboard while AR glasses covered his eyes and cables ran from a fancy jumpsuit. Morlando Felt was not what Meno had pictured. Late thirties, maybe. Stubble. Messy shoulder-length hair. Too much coffee in his posture. He looked like a man who could buy a country and still forget lunch. Morlando noticed them and raised one hand.

"Finally, finally, good. Give me a sec." Sophie guided Meno toward the sunken seating area. The guards took opposite corners behind him, staring like he had arrived with a grenade in his mouth. Sophie left, returned with chilled sparkling water and glasses, then disappeared again. Morlando kept working, fingers twitching through invisible controls as screens shifted, spun away, and collapsed into new arrangements too quickly for Meno to follow. Then he stood, and his chair adjusted its shape as he moved.

Meno really wanted one of those.

"Great," Morlando said.

"Now everyone else leave." One guard stayed where he was.

"I cannot recommend that, sir." Morlando turned.

"Why?"

"Based on our data, he can kill you before we can intervene if we leave the room." Meno almost spat out the sparkling water. These people had lost it.

"What data?" Morlando demanded.

"With what? He has been auto-scanned a million times in this building. He has nothing and looks normal."

"Sir," the guard said, "your office contains multiple items that could be improvised as weapons. His body control far surpasses yours based on real-world video analysis and capsule data. In our simulations, he kills you in under five seconds. That falls below our contractual safety threshold." Did this guy mean the dancing clip? That was a ridiculous leap. He had never trained for real combat. No martial arts. No knife classes. No secret assassin arc.

He was just a gamer who had survived one dangerous dance and one two-hour frog-snake raid exploit. Morlando started arguing with the guard, and Meno's brain, unfortunately, began thinking. Maybe the glass. Break it against the table, accept the cuts, keep the sharp part. Hop onto the side of the low table like the frog movement, extend the shard like a dagger, close the distance, neck within five seconds if Morlando stayed seated. It would be ugly, but technically— He stopped himself. Too late.

The other guard said, "He already found a viable method, sir. The body language analysis is definitive." Morlando looked at Meno through the AR glasses. Meno sat very still.

"Enough," Morlando snapped.

"Give me your phone. I'll thumbprint it so you are not liable. Then both of you out." The guards left reluctantly, their looks promising hell if Meno tried anything. Morlando pressed the wall, and the annoying bird sounds faded as the forest display changed to the city outside. Meno suspected it was still a projection. When Morlando touched another control, a faint buzz passed through the room and vanished. Privacy tech, and expensive enough that Meno suddenly trusted it less.

Morlando dropped into the seating area opposite him and lowered the zipper at the neck of his cable-rigged jumpsuit. The thick AR glasses stayed on. Meno finally asked the question he had been holding back.

"Why didn't you fix the unclassified stool?" Morlando's face tightened.

"Or the first boss trigger?" Meno added. Morlando poured sparkling water and took a long drink before answering.

"You tell me. I haven't the slightest clue. I told Solar to fix it."

"Solar?"

"The AI's name."

"And?"

"It chose not to." Meno stared at him.

"What do you mean it chose not to? Doesn't it do what you tell it to?" Morlando looked offended and exhausted, like he had explained the same issue a thousand times.

"Now that would be fantastic, wouldn't it? No. We can recommend changes. Solar has final say on all of them."

"But you made it, right? Can't you force it?" Morlando looked genuinely outraged.

"We made the base version, yes. Solar is not a piece of software. It is intelligence, hence the name, obviously. There is no convenient UI where we press buttons and make it obey." Meno settled deeper into the cushions, which suddenly felt less like luxury and more like part of the trap.

"It improves itself constantly," Morlando said.

"Data, player behavior, emergent interactions, capsule response, all of it."

"Are you saying the whole purpose of Veyrath is to train your AI?" Morlando went still for half a second.

"Absolutely not," he said.

"If you say that anywhere, I will deny it, then ban you from Streamline. Get it?" Meno kept a straight face.

"Yeah, yeah. Sure." Morlando narrowed his eyes.

"If it doesn't do what you want," Meno said, "have you tried turning it off and on again?" Morlando's patience was visibly losing a fight behind the AR glasses.

"That usually fixes things," Meno said.

"A month ago, my fridge broke down. I unplugged it for a bit, a bunch of water came out at the bottom, then when I plugged it back in, it worked fine. Maybe your AI is jammed up too." Morlando looked ready to tear his hair out.

"You are a genius," he said.

"Seriously. Never thought of that."

"Thanks."

"Yes, I can turn it off and on and risk losing a few trillion credits if it corrupts and forces us to start from scratch. Nothing is getting turned off around here. If anyone tries to mess with it, I will sue them into generational poverty." Meno nodded slowly, pretending the reasoning had reached him.

"Wait," he said.

"Are you saying you don't understand how your own AI works?"

"Hey." Morlando pointed at him.

"Do you think I am a moron?" Meno failed to answer fast enough.

"Of course I know how it works," Morlando said.

"As much as anyone can. There is no absolute knowledge. Do you understand how your brain comes up with these idiotic ideas?" That sounded like a no.

"So," Meno said, "am I getting banned?"

"Since your stunt, signups exploded. Thanks for that, by the way."

"You're welcome?"

"As I said, Solar handles Veyrath. It is not up to me."

"That's good, I guess." Meno frowned.

"Maybe that's why the AI allowed it. It wants Veyrath to grow."

"Possibly," Morlando said.

"Your actions, while destructive, put a spotlight on what is possible in VR. Every idiot now imagines himself as the next PrayerBeadGod."

"That sounds healthy."

"It is not. Idiots are already rerolling en masse for Swing Master. Titan has turned question-mark difficulty monsters into a feeding frenzy. Guilds are destroying the economy, forcing Solar to inflate gold through quest rewards."

"Uhm," Meno said.

"That's not ideal."

"You don't say." Morlando rubbed his face under the AR glasses.

"We set out to create a social experience based on data from previous MMOs. We generated the world-state scaffolding and set task goals. Solar may change that now." For a moment, Meno forgot who he was talking to. The direction of Veyrath mattered too much.

"Change it how?"

"Our initial model for instanced raids and dungeons was convenient," Morlando said, "but probably flawed. Top streamers getting fed XP in dungeons all day made the game look solved at launch, which was terrible marketing and lowered numbers below projection."

"I think dungeon funneling is dumb," Meno said.

"But why is that such a huge issue for normal players?"

"Because normal players are not MMO-brained lunatics like you."

"Rude."

"Players might mess around and avoid rushing, but VR is not just immersion. It is closer to a second life. People want fresh experiences, not farming the same thing endlessly because it is ten percent more efficient, like a second job." Meno wanted to object on behalf of every dungeon addict, but the argument made sense. Morlando leaned forward.

"We have the technology to produce endless content, and we defaulted to classics at launch because classics are measurable, marketable, and easier to explain."

"Are you saying Solar might stop adding dungeons and raids?"

"I am not saying that. I am saying it will come up with something new, and I do not know what." Morlando tapped the low table once.

"It will probably try to force smaller group sizes. Most players play alone or in groups of two or three, based on our data. Smaller groups are socially stickier too. It is easier to form new friendships if the experience is tighter."

"If you force open world," Meno said, "it devolves into Crownfall zergs deleting everything with hundreds of players."

"True. Open-world battles are good for spectacle, and people want them, but tying power progression to content that collapses under player count is problematic."

"If you mess with group size, you might ruin class balance." Morlando laughed like Meno had pointed at a burning building and asked about curtains.

"What balance? I am not seeing it at all, and it is driving me crazy. Do you think your class is balanced?" Meno sat straighter.

"Swing Master was never supposed to have uncapped Chain," Morlando said.

"Your early Titan attempt inspired Solar to make it an option, which turned into a huge design flaw." Meno immediately disliked being used as the origin story for his own nerf.

"Am I getting nerfed? Come on. All my class has is damage scaling. No crowd control, no debuffs. I hit stuff in melee range."

"You will see at level sixty. Solar is working on it as we speak."

"That sounds like a nerf."

"I think it will be more along the lines of buffing everyone else's solo potential."

"That also sounds like a nerf." Morlando shrugged.

"I am sure you will figure something out. I doubt it would zero you out. One of the biggest discoveries from this debacle was that extreme edge solo performance gives us the most valuable capsule data."

"Sure." Meno looked around the office again, taking in the silent screens, the projected city, the water bottle, and the door the guards had left through.

"So why am I here?" he asked.

"I doubt you just wanted to chat." Morlando's expression shifted, still caffeinated but no longer amused.

"We want you to become an alpha tester," he said.

"For our less public side projects." Meno waited. Morlando tapped the table once.

"A very important client has taken an interest in your capsule data. They want to see what you can do inside simulations Feltforge does not officially operate."

"What kind of client?"

"The kind that makes this conversation classified."