Chương 159: Chapter 158: Pew Pew Step

The entire group packed into a VTOL waiting beside the Cordjet, and a few minutes later the aircraft lifted almost straight up from the airport before turning toward Skyline's forest of towers. Meno still had no idea why anyone liked the city. From above, it looked even more wrong: dark glass, gray steel, neon advertising, elevated traffic lanes, and skyscrapers packed so tightly that entire streets lived in permanent shadow.

Corporations treated building height like a ladder race, each tower fighting to be taller and more obnoxious than the one beside it. Meno had never understood why they had not expanded outward and built proper suburbs. VTOLs made distance barely matter anymore, yet Skyline had chosen to stack everyone vertically until the place looked like a server rack for humans. Rina settled against his shoulder as the city slid underneath them, and Meno let himself relax into the seat.

Whatever this was, it had escalated much faster than he expected, but at least she was keeping it casual instead of trying to define anything after one flight and several glasses of champagne. Meno had no clue whether anything serious would come from it, and for once that felt fine. Tonight was supposed to drag his brain away from Veyrath long enough for him to come back fresh and push hard again. Blowing off steam had turned out to be useful. Most of the others had found the same strategy.

Honeygrave and Merry were still mostly composed, but everyone else was somewhere on the champagne ladder. Vivi was the worst offender, currently resting her head in one twin's lap while continuing a conversation that had clearly stopped requiring complete sentences. That was not especially professional for the person who had spent all afternoon lecturing Meno about networking, but he did not care. If she managed to sweet-talk sponsorship people later, great.

If she failed because she was too busy flirting with Jammon, Ammonia, or whichever twin she had selected, Meno would survive. Sway had the opposite problem. He had not stopped talking since takeoff.

"We should just put something together tonight," he said, leaning forward from the opposite bench.

"Twenty people isn't even that many if the major groups cooperate. We have five, HypeForge can bring ten, and BrineTime another five. We could be in the raid tomorrow." Merry had already told him twice to stop discussing Veyrath.

"We are going to an event," she said.

"Can we spend one evening without planning a raid?"

"That's the entire point of the event." Meno almost agreed. The newly unlocked Road to Rimvolen raid had been sitting in his head since he woke up, because clearing it was mandatory if he wanted Rimvolen access and Level 105 to 134 content. Rushing straight in after Layer 4, though, would be stupid. His gear had fallen behind his level. Sinseeker was still ridiculous, but Legendary IV Damage Tier only put its raw weapon power around the start of the Level 90 bracket.

Meno was Level 89 now, and he had sprinted past multiple gear checkpoints by leaning on mechanics, movement, and Tyrant scaling instead of proper upgrades. That worked until the Level 100 Balveth Champion showed what happened when a monster had enough stats to turn one bad reset into an instant Defiant proc. Earlier in Veyrath, Meno could beat almost anything by playing better, but Fractera had reminded him this was still an MMO. Gear mattered. So did preparation, which was deeply inconvenient.

Potions existed, but spending gold on temporary effects still felt disgusting. Engineering existed too, although Meno's main experience with bombs was watching his ship burn. He had never seen anyone use them for dungeon farming, probably because they were too expensive. The problem was time. Every hour spent doing research was an hour not gaining XP. Annoying bind. Sway was still talking about raid compositions when Meno noticed the black bags again.

One guard sat in the passenger area with them while the other two had moved forward near the pilot, and all three bags had come aboard the VTOL. Extension pack remained a mystery, and Meno's half-drunk brain kept finding the phrase much funnier than it deserved. He turned toward the guard across the aisle.

"What's the location?"

"Streamline Tower. Downtown." That explained why the aircraft was heading straight into the densest section of the skyscraper jungle. Meno shifted his attention toward the twins. Vivi had claimed one as a pillow, leaving the other available for interrogation.

"Ammonia, you guys are Snipers, right? How do you set up for maximum DPS? Your class is slow." The twin frowned.

"Set up what? Where?"

"I'm curious how your ranged brain works. I just run around firing Sinseeker and the arrow lands anyway, but you actually have to aim and plan movement between shots." Ammonia seemed to need a moment to adjust to being asked a serious question.

"Yeah. I mostly do pew-pew-step. If I take two steps in a row, I lose a ton of DPS. Me and Jammon usually set up on the same side too. Makes it easier for Sway to position the boss without accidentally griefing one of us, so we move together. Pew-pew-step." Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. Meno considered the rotation.

"Why not pew-step-pew-step?"

"Too defensive. Merry handles the damage so we can plant more."

"So you're trading damage taken for extra DPS." Meno leaned forward slightly.

"Why not drop the healer, add another DPS, and step more? Wouldn't the party still do more damage?" Ammonia laughed once.

"Maybe until you need a healer and don't have one because nobody leveled it."

"BrineSaint uses an Architect instead of a Seraph. That should be more damage, right?"

"Yeah, but BrineSaint is also a paladin, and even then he's going to need real healing for the raid. There are unavoidable mechanics, you know. Unless you exploit or cheese everything." Meno heard the jab and let it go, mostly because it was not cheese anyway. It was superior strategy.

"Yeah, but how much do you guys raid right now? Zero is my guess." Meno gestured loosely toward Honeygrave's end of the VTOL.

"And why stack two Umbrals while giving up damage for crowd control? That made no sense when I was looking at your classes. You guys keep getting ahead, then falling behind again." Ammonia glanced toward Honeygrave before answering.

"Honey does a lot of damage, but he's squishy. If he rips aggro, we need a way to save the pull. If he dies, the entire run can be wasted because Merry doesn't have a resurrection."

"Seraphs don't resurrect?"

"Only Heralds get out-of-combat resurrection. Seraphs are more Mana efficient, so we get less downtime." Meno immediately found another problem.

"But if you kill the boss faster with more damage, the healer spends less Mana anyway. I still feel like the logic doesn't work. Peace Anchor is also one of the lowest-damage tanks from what I read. If Honeygrave can actually pull aggro, pairing him with a tank that barely hits anything sounds bad. A Juggernaut would hold better through damage." Sway stopped talking about raid alliances long enough to look offended on behalf of his class. Ammonia only shrugged.

"Maybe. It's not like we can reroll now. In hindsight, sure, but when we picked our evolutions, none of this was mapped. Everybody was guessing. I hope there's some way to fix classes later." His expression sharpened slightly.

"Would've been nice if Naraltan still existed." Meno raised both hands.

"Hey, that is completely unconfirmed. The AI said it was gone until Level 100. It might come back."

"I don't think it will." Ammonia shifted against the seat.

"You had what, fifty-plus Essences banked? Those were meant to be hard to get. If Naraltan came back exactly as it was, you'd instantly max all your abilities and be twenty levels ahead of second place the next day. The AI isn't going to allow that." Meno went quiet because he had not considered that. Would Solar really be petty enough to keep an entire progression system deleted just because Meno had hoarded resources? Yes, without hesitation. Maybe he should recommend a personality upgrade when he saw Morlando.

Rina lifted her head from Meno's shoulder.

"Can you guys stop theorycrafting? When do we get there? I'm thirsty." The answer was five minutes. The VTOL cut between towers, passed close enough to several rooftop gardens that Meno could see people moving below, then banked toward one of the thickest buildings in the district. Streamline Tower was not the tallest structure in Skyline, but it covered enough ground to look less like a skyscraper and more like someone had built an office district vertically.

They landed on the roof, and once everyone climbed out, Honeygrave came over while Merry collected her jacket behind him.

"Thanks again for the bird, man. Huge save."

"Don't worry about it." Meno glanced toward Merry.

"Maybe work on getting your girlfriend to generate less threat." Honeygrave chuckled under his breath.

"Work in progress. She's usually not like this, but she really doesn't like you. I don't know what to do about it. Sorry, man." Rina stepped closer and pointed behind her own earlobe.

"Do it here." Honeygrave immediately laughed, while Meno looked between them with no idea what he had missed.

"What?" Neither explained. Great. They crossed the rooftop toward a glass elevator structure, where one of the guards stopped beside Meno before the doors opened.

"They should go ahead." Meno understood what he meant. Morlando wanted him alone, but everyone else had already started filing into the elevator, and Rina stayed beside him with her hand still linked through his.

"Just go. I'll catch up in a second." She did not move, and the guard offered no help when Meno glanced his way. This was clearly a problem outside his contract, which made him a traitor and left Meno with the easier decision.

"We should move the meeting until after the event, before we leave. Tell him I'm too drunk to deal with anything right now." The guard considered that.

"I don't see how that helps."

"Cool. Ask anyway." He stepped away from the elevator and spoke quietly into the comm on his wrist, returning a moment later.

"Accepted. Meeting moved."

"Great." They entered the next elevator together, and a few seconds later the doors opened into a huge atrium packed with people. The center of the tower had been carved into one broad open floor, with four bars around the edges and a crystal chandelier hanging above the crowd. Several stories of balconies overlooked the main space, and a short marble staircase on one side led to a raised platform clearly intended for speeches later. Meno had about two seconds to appreciate the venue before someone noticed him.

"If it isn't the famous PrayerBeadGod!" The voice carried over the nearby conversations. Meno located Kestrel almost immediately. The Crownfall leader wore a black shirt and looked just like he did in Veyrath: a scuffed viking. Beside him stood a man roughly the size of a small house, his white shirt stretched so tightly over his chest that Meno wondered if it was about to explode. Thorn. Kestrel gave Meno an unpleasant smile.

"I knew you were a degenerate, but I hadn't taken you for that kind of guy." Meno had no clue what he meant and even less interest in finding out, but Rina stiffened beside him and tightened her hand around his arm, trying to redirect them toward the larger crowd. Thorn lifted one enormous hand toward him, then turned back toward Kestrel.

"Shut up. That's rude. We haven't finished talking. You can cause a scene later." Kestrel looked away from Meno.

"Friendly greeting. More than he deserves." Meno started pulling Rina toward them anyway, then noticed the three Feltforge goons following several steps behind with large black bags still in hand. So much for low profile. He stopped and pointed toward the nearest guard.

"What happened to invisible security? Take those bags and set up somewhere you can pew-pew-step. You heard the expert. Two steps in a row and your DPS falls off."

"Affirmative." The guard accepted the instruction with disturbing seriousness, then signaled to the other two. They spread toward separate sections of the atrium, each carrying one black bag toward a different corner. Meno watched them go.

"They didn't listen. Ammonia said the Snipers should stay together in case the tank moves." Amateurs. By the time Meno turned back, Kestrel had disappeared into the crowd. Annoying, but temporary. The event lasted hours, and the extension packs were now deployed around the room, whatever that meant. Meno caught himself thinking about their setup again and realized how far the champagne was pushing his brain off the road. He headed toward Thorn, who somehow became larger with every step closer.

Cameras had not conveyed the scale properly. Thorn was already tall, but the sheer amount of muscle packed onto him made every doorway near him look underleveled.

"Dude, you're even bigger in person." Meno gestured toward Rina.

"This is Rina." Thorn shook his head.

"I know, man." Meno paused when Thorn's attention shifted toward Rina.

"I'm a subscriber."