Chương 33: The Shape of Almost

Meno checked the viewer counter after the sandworm collapsed, because apparently even survival had a second health bar. Viewers: 321, 084. For a second, the number did worse damage than the worm had. His fingers tightened around the Common III sword, still hot from cutting dream-flame hide, while his brain split the count into excuses before it could become hope. BrineSaint viewers. Obviously. Multistream leeches, drama tourists, people waiting for him to embarrass himself next to the peak in Veyrath. Still.

Three hundred thousand people had watched him throw the rank-one player into a worm's mouth. BrineSaint stood near the corpse, silent, coated in slime and ember mucus with golden light still leaking between the cracks in his armor. In the distance, the archer kiting the Sleepwalker shouted again.

"It's still here!" The cloaked figure kept walking across the dunes, slow and patient, dragging a circular patch of burning dream sand with it. The archer backed away in a wide curve, firing ice-tipped arrows that vanished into the heat without making the Sleepwalker twitch. [Hostile: Sleepwalker | Type: Dream-Touched Humanoid | Threat:??? | Trait: Dreamer] Meno looked away first. His HP was still crawling upward from critical, and the dream-fire stuck to his screen edge like a warning he had earned.

One graze, one careless step into the burning radius, one random pellet from an evolved monster that no longer existed, and he would be back at the shrine with another padding missing. The worm's corpse had broken into crystal-laced fragments, blackened plates, and cooling sand-glass. Three loot glints pulsed inside the pile. Meno crouched and reached in before anyone said a word.

[Dream-Burned Fire Essence Acquired] Quality: Rare III Type: Evolved Crafting Material Dream-Burned: Increased effectiveness against Sleepwalkers, Dream-touched enemies, and servants of Vervenzal. He put one crystal into his inventory and stood.

"Assist tax." ASSIST TAX HE TAXED BRINESAINT RARE III LOL take all three coward BrineSaint slime pov"Go ahead," BrineSaint said. Meno glanced at the other two essence crystals, then at the Sleepwalker.

"We should definitely kite that thing into more worms and farm these." His own sword answered before BrineSaint could. The blade edge had gone dark red in three places, and little flakes of dream-burnt metal came off when he shifted his grip. The evolved fire effect had chewed through the weapon worse than carving Kaerthalan's claw. Meno lowered it.

"Never mind. My weapon won't last. I could throw you in again, but I'm not sure you survive long enough without my DPS."

"We are done here for now," BrineSaint said. The dead archer came running back from the shrine, breathing hard, sand spraying under his boots. BrineSaint did not look at the corpse pile again. He looked at his party.

"The XP is not worth the effort. My party needs more levels." Meno inspected him because the disease survived every situation. [BrineSaint | Class: Dawn Bastion — Level 36 | Ability: Radiant Aegis] Of course he had leveled too. Meno had done his cute little stunt, gotten one level, and helped push the machine forward another step. He told himself he had only done it because he felt like it. Because he had wanted to test the worm. Because BrineSaint failing at something had been too interesting to leave alone.

The kiter shouted from farther out, voice thin over the wind.

"What is the plan? This thing is still following me!" BrineSaint turned his shield toward the Sleepwalker's burning circle, measuring distance. He was calm enough that Meno could almost hear the spreadsheet forming behind his eyes. Then BrineSaint said, "PrayerBead, that throw was sloppy." Meno's head turned slowly. BrineSaint continued, like this was a raid review instead of a public insult in front of millions of viewers.

"A better angle would have prevented the tooth damage while I fought for stable position. My damage was constrained because I had to play safe to survive. Also, if you had shouted first, I could have saved my cooldown for the mouth." Meno smiled without warmth.

"Right. How about I throw you on top of the Sleepwalker now? Avoid the ground effect, drop straight from above, maybe preload your shield with retribution damage, then bang. Worth a try." He tapped his chest with two fingers.

"Also, it's PrayerBeadGod, or Meno if you prefer. Please don't call me PrayerBead, or I'll start calling you MathHusband." BrineSaint's face changed by one degree. MATHHUSBAND HE FLINCHED rank 1 took damage say spreadsheet husband BrineMath confirmed don't poke the machine BrineSaint ignored the name with visible effort.

"Retribution stacks do not last long. It would be difficult to maintain enough stored damage during the drop." Meno pointed toward the kiter.

"Look at that thing. Sleepwalkers probably only take damage inside their dream radius, or whatever that burning circle is. The circle does constant damage, but if you just charge in, you won't take enough hits fast enough to build real retribution. Your class is tank-first, your DPS is too low, and your archers can't stand in there. Neither can I. So we preload your damage outside the circle, then drop you on its head." StillBurst, BrineSaint's support, stepped closer from the worm wreckage.

He had a narrow face and tired eyes, his patience worn thin by too many reckless people surviving his work. [StillBurst | Class: Hymn Architect — Level 27 | Ability: Chorus Surge] Meno pointed at him.

"Then before impact, StillBurst boosts it as much as he can." BrineSaint's shield lowered a fraction.

"My point stands."

"No, it doesn't." Meno started pacing because the idea had teeth now, and teeth meant it might work.

"Here's the stupid version. We kite that thing below the dune proper, then go up top. I flag PvP on your two archers and hit them with my half-broken Common III sword. Their gear is good, so they should live. When the stack is high enough, I tackle you off the dune, angle your shield toward the archers, and they shoot you while I keep my chain alive by tapping your legs." The surviving archer, a lean frost-bow player with a shaved sidecut and sand stuck to one cheek, stared at him.

[PaleFletch | Class: Frostdraw Ranger — Level 27 | Ability: Ice Volley]"Nothing about this is simple," PaleFletch said.

"Hitting a shield, falling, then repositioning before impact?" BrineSaint looked toward the Sleepwalker, then the dune slope, then his party. His eyes moved without panic. Damage, risk, repeatability. Meno could see him rejecting half the idea and storing the other half anyway.

"Too many moving parts for a one-off attempt," BrineSaint said.

"But it is worth it for data." That should have been satisfying. It mostly made Meno aware of his HP again.

"I need recovery. Bandage, potion, anything. I have nothing." StillBurst tossed him a small blue-gold vial without ceremony.

"Drink. Out-of-combat regeneration." Meno caught it and drank. [Potion Consumed: Duneleaf Recovery Draught] HP regeneration increased for 60 seconds. The effect hit fast, warmth crawling through his chest and arms. Expensive. Definitely expensive. PaleFletch peeled away and ran toward the kiter to explain the route. Meno, BrineSaint, StillBurst climbed the nearest dune, boots sinking into hot sand.

The third archer returned from respawn a moment later and joined them at the top, a compact woman named GlassNock with a silver bow and no patience left in her face. [GlassNock | Class: Prismshot Ranger — Level 26 | Ability: Threefold Volley]"Kick the DPS from your party first," Meno said.

"Otherwise they can't flag PvP and shoot your shield properly."

"I know," BrineSaint said. The kiter brought the Sleepwalker beneath the dune in a long, careful arc. The dream circle moved with it, turning the sand black-red under each slow step. It walked like the world should adjust around it. Meno opened BrineSaint's stream as a small overlay, different angle only, chat disabled for sanity. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

[HushDraw | Class: Volleywright Ranger — Level 26 | Ability: Suppression Volley] He watched HushDraw pull the Sleepwalker beneath the dune, StillBurst take position near the lower slope, and the two archers spread at the top behind BrineSaint. Then he stepped up to PaleFletch and lifted his sword.

"Arm out." PaleFletch looked at BrineSaint. BrineSaint nodded.

"Wonderful," PaleFletch said.

"I've been promoted to training dummy." Meno cut him lightly across the forearm. [PvP Encounter Initiated] You have damaged non-hostile players. The chain started. Meno kept the cuts shallow, targeting armor edges, bracers, places with enough resistance to count and enough protection to avoid real damage. PaleFletch hissed once after the seventh hit, then locked his jaw and held still. Meno did not read chat. He heard it moving, felt it moving, but he let it become weather. Swing. Contact. Reset. Swing. Contact.

Small step. No greed. His whole body wanted to speed up because people were watching and the plan was stupid enough to deserve haste. He slowed down instead. [Compound Swing | Chain: 50 | Damage: +500%]"Switch," BrineSaint said. GlassNock took PaleFletch's place with a sour look.

"If my armor breaks, I'm killing you before Crownfall does." Her gear was better than the sword deserved. The blade rang against leather and mail. Meno stayed shallow, clean, boring. Sixty. Sixty-five. Seventy. The Sleepwalker reached the bottom of the dune. StillBurst lifted both hands, watching angles. Meno's count touched seventy-five in his head. He angled toward BrineSaint.

"Ready." BrineSaint stood at the dune edge, arms spread, shield forward, looking deeply unhappy with the posture. Meno struck his armored leg. Seventy-six. Then he launched himself forward and tackled the rank-one player off the dune. The world dropped. Sand fell away under their boots. Meno hooked one arm around BrineSaint's torso and kicked off empty air with False Wings, making the jump bigger and uglier.

As they lifted, he twisted behind him and slashed BrineSaint's leg again with one hand still locked in the armor straps. Seventy-seven. BrineSaint did not fight him. That helped, and made the whole thing nerve-wracking, because BrineSaint trusting the movement meant Meno had to actually execute. They tilted sideways above the burning dream circle. The archers fired. Ice arrows cracked into BrineSaint's raised shield, one after another. Gold light thickened across the shield face as Radiant Aegis ate the impacts.

Meno could barely hold on. Wind, sand, heat, and falling weight pulled the world into a bad angle. Another cut to the leg. Seventy-eight. Once he forced BrineSaint horizontal, the archers stopped firing. Meno activated Panic Pump. [Technique Activated: Panic Pump] [Compound Swing | Chain: 178 | Damage: +1780%] [Current HP set to 1] The whole world became dangerous.

"Side block!" BrineSaint adjusted instantly, shield snapping to the left as Meno hauled himself up along his back. Meno drove the sword into the shield with everything the chain had made out of trash iron. Gold light erupted. The Common III blade shattered down the middle. [Chain Broken: Weapon Break] Meno caught BrineSaint's back with both hands, swung his legs up against the falling body, and used his final False Wings step like a downward stomp.

His feet hit nothing, found pressure, and launched BrineSaint harder toward the Sleepwalker. StillBurst's buff landed at the last instant, golden light wrapping BrineSaint's shield bright enough to blind the edge of Meno's vision. BrineSaint struck the Sleepwalker shield-first like a falling sun. The explosion erased the dune slope in white-gold fire. Meno landed in the dream-flame hazard with one HP. [Death | Dream-Flame Hazard] [Respawn: Melrai Dunes Shrine] [Dropped: Apple x1] He did not waste a breath swearing.

The Common III dagger came out of inventory as he sprinted off the shrine platform before the respawn glow fully faded. It felt like an insult in his hand: too short, too light, too honest about what he had left. He pulled BrineSaint's stream larger in his vision while running. The impact had worked. Not enough, but it had worked. The Sleepwalker's health sat around forty-five percent.

Its cloak had torn open where BrineSaint hit, revealing a pale mask beneath and black flame crawling under the surface like worms under glass. BrineSaint fought inside the dream circle, shield glowing, mace leaving golden marks across the Sleepwalker's body as the burning sand chewed at him every second. The Sleepwalker lifted one long hand, and dark symbols snapped into BrineSaint's armor. Meno crested the dune and saw the fight in person again, but stayed outside the circle.

Going in with a dagger would be suicide without even the dignity of contribution. Panic Pump had reset with the death, but one HP inside that fire meant instant death, and a Common III dagger at Chain 100 was still a poor man's joke. BrineSaint purged one debuff with a flare of white-gold light. Two more settled on him. His movement slowed. His shield raised a fraction late. The Sleepwalker drifted backward, not retreating exactly, and the circle shrank.

On the stream overlay, BrineSaint's status panel was visible for a breath. Slow. Attack delay. Cooldown regeneration disabled. Dream pressure. Burning damage amplified. StillBurst stood outside the radius with both hands raised, trying to push buffs through the edge. BrineSaint triggered his major recovery. His HP surged back to full, golden light wrapping his armor again. The Sleepwalker clapped. The entire dream circle sucked inward. Fire, sand, and black light collapsed into the cloaked figure.

For one instant, the desert around it went dead calm. Then the stored dream detonated outward in a ring of black flame. BrineSaint vanished in it. The Sleepwalker disappeared before the smoke cleared. There was no kill prompt, no loot, no objective update, only empty burned sand and a party standing too far apart to pretend the attempt had been close enough. StillBurst lowered his hands.

"Almost," he called from below. Meno exhaled through his teeth.

"My hit was too weak to carry the burst." BrineSaint returned from the shrine at a jog, clean again, expression unchanged.

"The retribution stack was insufficient," BrineSaint said as he reached the dune top.

"Four bow attacks, one medium hit, one large hit from you. Not enough. The monster also hard counters my class. Drain-sustain caster, persistent area pressure, debuff stack, low block value." Meno sheathed the dagger because looking at it made him poorer.

"Yeah. Also, they're probably all different. Area effect changes the flavor. The worm got fire-evolved because the Sleepwalker dragged dream fire through it. Another one might make ice, rot, gravity, whatever nightmare nonsense the AI feels like making."

"Maybe." BrineSaint looked across the burned sand.

"We have enough data. This has taken too much time, so we are leaving. Fighting question marks is inefficient. Normal threats, repeated, work best."

"I disagree. At least go for High threat." Meno looked him over.

"Aren't you embarrassed fighting normal monsters?"

"No." The answer landed flat and immovable.

"The progression curve exists for a reason," BrineSaint said.

"If you keep relying on creativity, you will lose." Meno laughed once.

"I just need a good sword. Then you'll see."

"Join a guild. They will give you a sword." BrineSaint's gaze flicked to the dagger at Meno's side, then back to his face.

"Without a team, you will not keep up."

"Hah. The way I see it, your team is holding you back. They were good for dungeon packs and funnels, sure. For that?" Meno nodded toward the burned circle.

"Pretty much useless." PaleFletch made a noise like he wanted to object and also wanted to keep his job. BrineSaint did not look offended. He looked like Meno had made a math error in public.

"They are specialized for area-of-effect farming, not single-target question-mark encounters," BrineSaint said.

"There is no single solution for everything."

"The world event will mess with your farming."

"No," BrineSaint said.

"It helps me. It slows the guilds. Otherwise their resource funnels would start ramping soon. Now they have to split attention between raid pressure, Sleepwalker containment, crafting, territory response, and public panic. I can farm in peace." Meno's smile thinned. BrineSaint continued, calm as a knife in a drawer.

"I will be the first to reach level one hundred. Without a doubt."

"You think that's the level cap? It hasn't been confirmed."

"It is unknown," BrineSaint said.

"But it is a number people care about. Even if it is not the final threshold, it is the finish line for the first part of this race." That sounded so reasonable Meno wanted to reject it on principle. He remembered Honeygrave saying BrineSaint's wife handled the route: sleep, meals, targets, downtime. Tilt, clip-chasing, and bad arguments on speakerphone had all been stripped out, leaving a man walking toward a number while everyone else invented ways to bleed. Meno shifted his weight.

"I wanted to ask. Your class hasn't changed at level thirty. I thought there was a class evolution. Why is that?" BrineSaint gave him the first small smile Meno had seen from him.

"You will find out soon."

"Annoying answer."

"These experiments were interesting." BrineSaint adjusted his shield strap.

"In the future, I do not require your assistance unless I specifically ask for it in advance. Do you understand?"

"Not really. I mostly do whatever I feel like doing."

"That is well established." BrineSaint's voice stayed calm, which somehow made it more cutting.

"It may work in early levels. As encounters become more complex, it will fail." Meno pointed toward the vanished Sleepwalker.

"You still think of this game as an MMO. It's not. It's a VRMMO. You won't be able to stick to safe farming forever. Once you feel the heat for real, you'll have to adjust, and your underleveled team will hold you back."

"That has never happened before."

"This game hasn't happened before."

"I will deal with it if it does," BrineSaint said.

"And my team is better than you give them credit for. They play exactly the way I want them to play. When the need changes, they will change with it." Meno opened his mouth. BrineSaint cut in.

"How did you unlock that triple jump? There is no evidence Swing Master should have it."

"Titan II level twenty-five passive. False Wings." Meno shrugged like he had not chosen it over the sane option while chat begged him to stop.

"You just have to solo kill question marks. The game tracks what you do, how you play. Like I said, this isn't an MMO. It's a world that keeps evolving. I'm not even sure the AI has the whole progression tree preplanned. It seems to throw stuff around based on vibes." BrineSaint watched him for a long second.

"I saw the clip of your Titan I," he said.

"That achievement is a waste of time. Designing items you cannot obtain is pointless. The resurrection orb you made will likely be impossible to craft for at least a year." Meno's eye twitched.

"Did you see the other one? The necklace I made for my gir—" He stopped too late, then recovered badly.

"Friend." Chat, which had been following every word, turned predatory. GIR GIRLFRIEND CONFIRMED WIFE NECKLACE MATHHUSBAND VS WIFE ITEM he said gir BrineSaint's expression did not change.

"I saw it. That one is much better. I already have people looking into it." Meno stared at him.

"Wait. You think that one is better?"

"Obviously. It saves time on karma farming. Time is the most important resource." Meno's suspicion sharpened.

"You know what high karma does?"

"I do."

"I guess you're not telling."

"No."

"Cool." Meno looked toward the shrine, then the desert horizon, then his own interface clock. His sister's party waited in the real world like a social boss with no dodging.

"Anyway, I have to go. My sister is holding a party tonight. If you're in Vernova, you can come if you want." BrineSaint looked at him like Meno had offered to trade him a wet napkin for his shield.

"I am not. I also have a schedule."

"Cool. Nice meeting you. Try not to be too sad when I take your rank later, but now I'm logging out. Bye." He logged out before BrineSaint answered. The Soma-X7 opened around him with a soft seal break, and real air hit his face. His apartment looked dimmer than Veyrath, smaller than the dunes, and much less interested in his opinion. His body arrived a beat late, bringing hunger and a hollow tremor in his thighs from too much False Wings and too little food. The stream was still on. Viewers: 309, 772.

Meno stared at the number, then at the chat flooding over his monitor. MATHHUSBAND LORE BRINESAINT CALLED YOU INEFFICIENT YOU LOGGED BEFORE HE COULD REPLY GO TO PARTY CAM no sword btw level 28 dagger main arc"I'll be back tomorrow," Meno said, because if he kept reading, he would say something that survived forever. He ended the stream. The room went quiet so fast it felt fake. Meno set a wake-up alarm on the new phone, checked it twice, then collapsed onto the bed.

His last clear thought before sleep took him was that BrineSaint had a schedule, a team, and people researching karma. Meno had a dagger, a party invitation, and no idea how to talk to Aureliana in person without making a mess. Somehow, the Sleepwalker had been easier.