Chương 123: The Most Obvious Thing Happened

Meno woke sometime during the night too hungry to make sleep work twice. He wandered out to The Pearl's restaurant area and ordered pizza for variety, adding fresh bufala mozzarella because the bartender said it would be better. Meno had no idea what the difference was, but better was enough. If he kept eating steak burgers every time he got hungry, eventually they would stop feeling special. He made it halfway back to his room, stopped, and returned to order a steak burger anyway.

Technically, the pizza had already broken the rotation, so the burger should be fine. While he waited for the food, Meno put on BrineSaint's stream. The guy was just farming gold, running bounty loops so his party could upgrade their equipment before pushing progression again. It was terrible content, and BrineSaint still held more than three million viewers through sheer team chemistry. After watching for a while, Meno figured that was the trick.

BrineSaint only narrated in small bursts, mostly giving viewers useful tips, while his teammates carried the dead space by talking, joking, and arguing among themselves. The farming itself looked mind-numbing. Northspire bounty board, highest-paying gold bounty, mounts, Templefall Hollow, required monsters, reward, repeat. Efficient. Somehow fine with five people making noise over it. Still, the money was difficult to ignore.

Nobody bothered BrineSaint's party at all, and because they were farming mostly high-level monsters, BrineSaint looked like he was making around 50k gold per hour. Multiply that across five people, and the party was pulling around 250k gold per hour. That made Meno wonder if Fractera needed some kind of world-state progression before its own bounty system or proper routes opened up.

Everyone had been searching for dungeons and good fracture entrances, but maybe there was something else they were supposed to switch on first. The bounty board also reminded him of one small, tiny, completely harmless oversight. Vervenzal had a first-kill-only royal bounty worth 5 million gold. Meno had forgotten to claim it. He started sweating almost immediately. If his suspension somehow invalidated the bounty, it would be tragic.

He needed that money for a proper ship, especially since all the dying lately had reduced his personal gold to around 150k, which was not enough for anything serious. He still had Legendary III items he could sell, but he was no longer sure that was a good idea. Selling powerful equipment made money quickly, but it also meant handing build-defining gear to the competition. Meno finished his second dinner and went back to sleep. Living inside a hotel was convenient, but the quiet had edges.

The Pearl was cleaner, bigger, and better than his old apartment in nearly every practical way, yet the shoebox he had been evicted from had somehow felt more like home. Heavy knocking woke him the next morning. Meno washed his face, ran a hand through his hair, and opened the door to find a young woman outside with shoulder-length orange hair and a nose ring. She wore a white blouse, a light-blue short skirt, and high heels, with a large garment bag hanging from one arm. She smiled the second he opened the door.

"Uh, hello?"

"Meno! Nice to meet you. I'm Vivi Kessler, your new PR assistant." She offered her hand. Meno looked down, registered the orange-painted fingernails, then looked back at her face, briefly unsure whether somebody was trolling him.

"My what? Who are you? Are you an adult?" Vivi kept smiling.

"Yes, I'm an adult. I'm nineteen. Brad Kessler is my uncle. Sorry for the confusion. It was kind of last minute."

"I need to confirm that with him. One sec." Meno closed the door and called Brad. Brad answered with entirely too much energy.

"Good morning, my favorite superstar!"

"Who is Vivi?"

"She's great, right? Much better than hiring an outsider. She's up big time on what young people are into these days. I'm too old to vibe-check your image."

"Sure. Could've used a heads-up." Brad ignored the complaint.

"I'm a genius, by the way. Managed to push your Sorell contract to one point five million. Do well today and other high-tier clients will follow. No point diluting your brand with small potatoes." That part Meno liked.

"That's great. So about Vivi. Isn't she a bit young for this?"

"What? You don't want forty-one-year-old me managing your style and image, do you? This requires a woman's touch. One that can push your appeal with the opposite sex." Brad sounded like this should have been obvious.

"We ran the numbers. Your audience is ninety-eight percent male and mostly under thirty. Which is gold, but we can do better than two percent female. You've got that wild look. It just needs polish." Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators! Meno stared at the wall.

"Image? Style? Appeal? What the hell are you talking about?"

"Just let her do her job. It's all going to be great. I have to bounce. My breakfast is getting cold."

"How much am I paying her?"

"Fifty thousand a month. Practically free."

"WHAT?!"

"Bye, talk later." Brad hung up. Meno stared at the phone. Fifty grand a month meant six hundred thousand a year. He was being scammed for sure. Then again, Brad had just negotiated one point five million for a single commercial, so maybe the scam had math behind it. Meno had no idea anymore. Either way, if Vivi turned out to be bad at her job, he was firing her whether Brad liked it or not. He went back to the door, opened it again, shook Vivi's hand this time, and let her inside.

"So all sorted?" Vivi asked.

"Good. Let's start. We need to get you ready for the shoot. I already have a car waiting downstairs."

"Okay, let me change, then we can go."

"Not yet. First, I need your Connect login. Your social media is deeply neglected, so I'll be managing your profile from now on. Then I need to give you a haircut, shave, cut your nails, fix your face, and put you in the clothes I brought." Meno looked at her.

"What are you on about? I thought you were PR. Are you also a barber?" Vivi laughed.

"Stylist, PR. Don't worry, I know what I'm doing." Meno spent the next two hours learning to hate the day. Vivi had not been joking. She went through the entire list with cheerful violence, and Meno discovered very quickly that his opinion on necessary did not matter much. He wanted to cut his own nails because having somebody else do it felt extremely weird, but Vivi was not having any of it.

She produced a full manicure set from her bag and went to work while Meno repeatedly questioned why his fingernails mattered when he was supposed to be driving a car. After that came his face. Vivi spent fifteen minutes applying creams, checking his skin, and messing with his eyebrows until Meno started wondering whether he was still asleep and having some kind of nightmare. The haircut was the only part he could not really complain about.

Vivi was very good at it, even if Meno normally preferred leaving his hair messy because it took no effort. She cleaned it up without changing it enough to make him look unfamiliar. She clearly knew what she was doing. After the first half hour of arguing, Meno mostly lost the will to fight back. Every disagreement seemed to make the process take longer, so he eventually decided surrender was the fastest route to freedom. When Vivi finally finished, she pulled a suit out of the garment bag.

Meno looked at it with immediate suspicion.

"Why do I need to wear a suit? I thought I was going to drive a car."

"This is for a high-end brand commercial aimed at rich people, Meno. Your notoriety and skill will sell the car, but you need to look like one of them. Get it? There's also a photoshoot."

"I don't get it at all, but fine. I thought authentic and real was better." Vivi chuckled.

"Yeah, that's amateur hour. It is not." Meno started changing into the suit while she continued inspecting him.

"You also need to buy an expensive watch. I couldn't get one because Brad only gave me a hundred thousand as allowance for today."

"That much?!" Meno looked at her.

"What is the watch for anyway? The clock on my phone works just fine." Vivi put both hands on her hips.

"That's very endearing, but try not to say stupid stuff like that in front of the clients, okay? Get one for at least half a million later. For today, it's fine. They'll tell you what to wear anyway."

"That makes no sense. Then what is the suit for? You just said I have to look the part."

"The suit is for the clients hiring you, silly. They need to feel like it was money well spent. You can't show up in a hoodie and jeans. That's unprofessional, and it will make people try to lowball you constantly." Meno had thought he would show up, drive the car, get filmed, then leave. Vivi was somehow turning the entire thing into a networking event. He started considering whether he could get himself banned from commercials too. That would solve most of the problem.

Before they left, Vivi made him sign a stack of papers. Meno actually read them because he did not trust Brad enough to assume there was nothing dangerous hidden inside, then followed her downstairs once everything was done. A black sedan waited outside The Pearl with a bald, middle-aged driver who introduced himself as Peter. Vivi handed him the garment bag, and the three of them left for the racetrack. During the drive, Meno kept smelling his hands.

The cologne Vivi had put on him followed every movement, and between that, the suit, the haircut, and whatever she had done to his face, he felt like a different person wearing his account.

"Don't do that," Vivi said.

"When we get there, shake hands with everyone and smile. Don't do anything they say unless I okay it first." Meno turned toward her.

"Am I allowed to make any decisions today? I thought I was the boss here for some reason."

"Meno, look at me." He looked at her, although his attention settled on the nose ring because her eyes were a little too intense.

"You are the boss."

"Okay."

"You are also not allowed to make decisions during promos. This is what you are paying me for. If we let your gamer brain take over, we'll constantly be putting out fires. The goal is to make this as easy as possible without stepping on anyone's toes. Can you do that for me?"

"Sure. Brain off, I get it. But I'm not very good at following instructions."

"I know. It'll be a learning process for both of us." Vivi studied him for another moment.

"I notice you're not looking into my eyes. Always look people in the eyes, okay?" Meno finally looked directly at her, only for Vivi to reach over and grab his hand.

"What are you doing?"

"Getting the awkward out of you before we get there. Establish physical contact fast. Offer a handshake, don't just stand there. Okay?" She released him and started taking notes on her phone. Meno shook his head because this was beyond annoying. The racetrack sat on the outskirts of Vernova, and the drive took around half an hour. As the city thinned around them, sections of track started appearing beyond the roadside, which was the first part of the morning that looked remotely enjoyable.

Then Peter drove into the complex. The Sorell Motorsports people were already waiting outside the main building. Around fifteen of them stood together in business attire, backed by a small army of technicians, camera crews, assistants, and other staff moving around the paddock. In the middle of them stood Aurelia Sorell, wearing a blue dress and holding a thin tablet. Meno had seen this coming from a million miles away. Of course she was here. Apparently, he just could not catch a break outside Veyrath lately.

Peter stopped the sedan, and Vivi stepped out first with the professional smile she had been trying to teach Meno all morning. Meno followed, looked once at the waiting Sorell group, then leaned toward her before she could start walking him over.

"I don't want to talk to her or any of them. You handle it." Vivi looked completely confused.

"What?" Meno was already walking toward the building. He passed straight by the Sorell people without stopping, leaving them confused while Vivi stayed behind to deal with whatever explanation came next.