Chương 144: Off Rotation

By the time Meno reached Westmarket again, even he had to admit there was nothing useful left to accomplish tonight. Fractera still had not progressed, his new class needed gear before he could test half of it properly, and his stomach had started making increasingly aggressive arguments against another hour inside Veyrath. More importantly, his brain felt like it had been running on reduced settings ever since the city siege.

He had spent ten hours farming the same dungeon, razed Northspire, built the highest bounty in the Veyrath, unlocked a god, changed classes again, discovered the Black Market, acquired a cursed pet, solved his own raid boss, and somehow still had not eaten since the steak burger before all of that. Sleep was probably overdue. Meno said goodbye to chat, promised nothing about when he would wake up, then logged out and killed the stream.

A quick shower made him feel slightly less like he had been trapped inside a capsule for an entire day. He changed into comfortable clothes, grabbed his phone, and opened the suite door to go downstairs for breakfast. A woman stood directly outside, with pink hair and a face Meno recognized instantly. JustrelaxPete's sister. He closed the door in her face, and the lock clicked.

Meno stood there for several seconds, considered whether he had imagined the whole thing due to sleep deprivation, then decided to give her time to understand the message. Two minutes seemed generous. When he opened the door again, she was still there. Now she looked offended. Meno closed it again. This time he took out his phone.

Hotel security was the obvious solution, but calling people to remove her felt excessive when the last time they had met she had mostly just been furious about what Meno had done to her brother. Maybe she wanted another argument. Maybe she wanted an apology. Meno was currently incapable of producing either correctly, so he called Jonas instead.

"Meno?" Jonas sounded like someone whose brain had not yet accepted being awake.

"It's 6 AM. I was sleeping. Is this an emergency? Your sister is still asleep."

"Six, yes. Breakfast time." Meno leaned against the door.

"And maybe. I'm not sure how to handle a situation and whether I should call hotel security." There was a long pause.

"What situation?" Meno explained JustrelaxPete. The original kill, the sister confrontation, Pete apparently quitting Veyrath because Meno had scared him badly enough, and then the unfortunate discovery yesterday that Pete had returned to the game only to stand directly in the path of him escorting a Colossus toward Northspire.

"And then I killed him again." Jonas was quiet for another moment.

"That's it?"

"What do you mean, that's it?"

"Just apologize." Meno frowned at the phone. Jonas continued before he could object.

"Look her in the eye, try to act sincere even if you don't mean it, ask her name, maybe invite her to breakfast. Give her a shoutout on stream. I don't care. Can't you handle basic human moments on your own?"

"No. That's why I called."

"I still need another hour of sleep. Leave me alone." The call ended, and Meno looked at the phone in betrayal. No, he could not handle basic human moments right now. His brain had been melted by a Black Market full of items clearly designed by a troll. He had also spent part of the night fighting himself with a Mythic bow he had never fired before, so his social skills were currently somewhere in negative Karma territory.

Still, calling security was probably too much, so Meno sighed, opened the door a third time, and found her exactly where he had left her. When she opened her mouth, Meno spoke first.

"Why do you paint your hair pink?" The anger on her face stalled.

"I mean, it looks good. Makes you look younger." Meno studied her more closely, trying to apply Jonas's advice in whatever form remained possible.

"How old are you anyway? Maybe twenty? Nineteen? Or twenty-four? Hard to tell. I think twenty." Her expression changed from anger to disbelief, and Meno continued because stopping now felt worse.

"Agility build too. Do you go to the gym often, or only while you're staying here?" She blinked, and Meno finally remembered the most important part.

"Oh, and what's your name?" The woman looked like she had prepared herself for an entirely different conversation and was now trying to find her way back to it.

"It's Rina. Just... can you shut up for a moment?" Meno nodded.

"I just wanted to thank you." That was not what he expected.

"Really? For what?"

"Pete finally gets how ridiculous his VR fear was." Rina folded her arms, although the anger had mostly left her face.

"You coming toward him with that giant rock monster and then killing him again should have made it worse, but apparently he thought it was cool. Now he wants to be like you." If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Meno tried to understand the logic and failed. The guy had quit because Meno scared him, returned, got erased again, and somehow reached the conclusion that PrayerBeadGod was now inspirational. This felt like a setup.

"Uh. I guess that's good." Meno glanced toward the elevators.

"I really need to eat, though. Do you want to join?" Rina relaxed immediately.

"Sure. What are you ordering?" That question required serious thought. They started toward the communal area while Meno reconstructed his food history.

"Steak burger." He frowned.

"Wait, no. That's off rotation. I had that last, after the pizza." The pizza had technically been salami and disappointment, but it still counted.

"Yeah. Definitely pizza."

"You cannot." Meno stared at her, waiting for the joke to appear, but Rina looked completely serious.

"If you're about to go to sleep, you need something light." They reached the restaurant area while Meno was still processing the attack on his food schedule. A female bartender was working this time, probably finishing the end of the overnight shift.

"I think I can," Meno said.

"Absolutely not. This is the least I can do to save you from yourself." Rina walked toward the bar before he could stop her.

"I'm good with food and dieting. It's important for my job to stay in shape." That sounded suspiciously like she had volunteered herself as his nutrition manager without permission. Before Meno could object, Rina ordered something in a language he did not recognize.

"Two Uova al Tartufo, and blueberry juices. Extra large." Meno looked at her like she had just griefed breakfast.

"Rina, look, this is a bit much. I want my pizza. I don't know what the hell you just tried to summon from the kitchen, but it sounded like a demonic ritual." He pointed toward the menu.

"I'm trying to be nice here, but don't get between me and pizza." Rina laughed, caught him by the arm, and pulled him toward a table.

"Don't be silly. You'll love it." Meno allowed himself to be moved mostly because he was too tired to escalate a breakfast disagreement. This was another setback, possibly worse than Fael. The steak-burger-and-pizza rotation had been interrupted by a real-life stream sniper before sunrise, and Meno was starting to wonder whether Sinseeker's supposed curse had somehow followed him out of Veyrath. That was a chilling possibility. Once they sat down, Meno remembered what she had said about her job.

"You said you need to stay in shape. Why?" Rina adjusted herself in the chair.

"What do you actually do? I thought you streamed Veyrath and that's why you're staying at The Pearl. This place isn't cheap."

"Oh. No." Rina shook her head.

"I don't stream Veyrath. I only play that for fun. I produce a different kind of VR content."

"What kind?" Meno tried to think of other games large enough to support Pearl-level hotel spending.

"Another title? I don't think anything else is comparable in size right now. Some kind of simulator?" Rina's face went slightly red, and she grabbed a napkin to fan herself.

"You could say that." That did not clarify anything.

"Sweet of you to worry, but I'm doing just fine. We don't need to discuss it. I'm sure it's not something you're interested in." Now Meno was even more confused, because everyone in his life had apparently started speaking like quest NPCs, and nothing this breakfast saboteur said made any sense. The food arrived before he could interrogate her further. Meno looked down at the plate and immediately disliked its presentation. Soft eggs sat beside avocado and greens, with thin pale shavings scattered over the top.

It looked like something people fed goats in nature documentaries when they wanted to prove the goats were living better than humans. The blueberry juice helped. It was cold, actually tasted like blueberries, and immediately improved his mood enough that he stopped considering ordering a pizza separately.

"So what is this thing that ruined my rotation?"

"It's basically soft eggs with avocado, greens, and shaved white truffle." Rina picked up her fork.

"High protein, good fats, actually healthy." Meno poked at the greens.

"It looks like eggs with grass on top. What's the truffle? I don't even see it. Some kind of spice?"

"It's an expensive mushroom. Brings out the flavor." Meno took a cautious bite. The avocado barely tasted like anything, the greens were acceptable because there were not enough of them to become offensive, and the truffle added something earthy that his exhausted brain mostly interpreted as garlic dirt. Annoyingly, the entire combination was decent.

"I don't get it. If you're doing some kind of VR simulation, why do you need to keep your real body in shape?" Rina took her time answering.

"I don't only do things in VR, you know. And authenticity matters. You can't look one way in one place and completely fake it in the other." She gave him an uncomfortable look.

"Can you just drop it? I don't really want to talk about this." That was incredibly weird, so Meno tried the most obvious explanation.

"Are you rich and spending your parents' money, and you're too embarrassed to admit it? I'm fine with that. I have great amounts of experience with people like that these days." Rina almost choked on her food.

"That's not it at all." She clearly had no intention of elaborating, and Meno finally decided it was her business. If she made money online, he could always look her up later. Nobody who produced public content was truly mysterious for more than thirty seconds of search. He finished the strange egg dish, drained the last of his blueberry juice, and felt his brain finally begin shutting down for real.

"Okay, I'm done. I need sleep. My brain is one big zero right now." Rina looked down toward her feet, which was another unexpected change. The last time they met, she had been fierce enough to confront him over her brother without hesitation. Now she seemed strangely nervous.

"Uhm." Meno waited.

"Can I get your number?"

"Phone?" Rina looked at him.

"What for?"

"You know." She brushed some pink hair away from her face.

"Maybe we could go out and do something together later." Meno blinked hard. His exhausted brain tried to decide whether she was asking him on a date, trying to use his fame, or setting up something else entirely. Considering she had refused to tell him what she even did for work, the whole thing felt like another trap.

"You want to go on a date?" Rina gave him a small, awkward smile.

"But you weren't even willing to tell me anything about yourself."

"I'll tell you after. Promise." Her smile became more embarrassed.

"I just don't want you to get turned off before we even have a chance to know each other." Meno had no idea what to do with that sentence.

"That makes absolutely no sense."

"Yeah. Complicated stuff." Rina looked away briefly.

"But I'm not a gold digger."

"Well, someone who knew how to dig gold would actually be very useful right now. I'm having a huge shortage."

"Uhh…" Meno rubbed at his face. He really could not deal with this at 6 AM.

"Fine. There's this Streamline party on Friday that I really don't want to go to, but apparently I have to for reasons. You could tag along if you want. I don't really have anyone else I'd invite anyway." Rina brightened so quickly that the awkwardness disappeared.

"That sounds great!" Meno immediately felt obligated to add the warning label.

"Just in case you're doing this because I'm famous, you should know I'm pretty toxic right now and a lot of people hate me. Also, it's dangerous to be around me, so I think you should reconsider." He paused.

"I don't want complaints later that nobody warned you." Rina did not seem particularly concerned.

"Fame is dangerous on its own, right? I get that. I have to deal with it constantly."

"That's not really what I meant." Meno was thinking more about being kidnapped from pizza shops and tactical operators entering skyscrapers through windows, but explaining that would create problems he did not want. He caught the second part instead.

"Wait. Are you actually famous? How have I never heard of you?" Rina looked embarrassed again.

"About that... I'll tell you after the party. Please don't look me up online before then." Meno looked at her like she had just handed him another hidden quest.

"Promise?" He had reached the limit of his ability to handle mysterious women for one morning.

"Fine!" Meno tapped his phone against hers to exchange contact information and stood.

"See you later, mysterious woman." That got a laugh out of Rina. Meno returned to the suite, undressed, and collapsed onto the bed before anything else could happen. He set an alarm for 6 hours and dropped the phone beside him. When he woke up, Fractera should finally be opening, and the road to Level 80 could begin. Hopefully nothing got in the way first.