Chương 6: The Catapult Route

Meno came back from white silence into blue cave light and distant stone thunder. For one second, his hands tried to keep holding an interface that was gone. The mythic design space had vanished. Emberhollow returned with dust in the air, a red sword durability bar, one Splintered Prayer Bead in his bag, and a raid boss walking somewhere outside the cave. Viewers: 7, 184. Then 6, 882. The number moved in ugly chunks, still huge and already bleeding.

repair sword idiot guilds are reacting live go outside coward Meno flexed his right hand. Pain answered from the real one inside the rig, stiff through the wrist and into his thumb. His avatar felt steady enough. His body was cooked.

"Chase the Colossus," he said.

"Yeah. Great call. I'll also parry the sun." The cave trembled before chat could answer. Dust fell from the ceiling in a thin gray curtain. The blue shrine flame bent sideways, then straightened. Far beyond the mouth, Emberhollow groaned with the deep, slow pressure of stone waking under stone. The boring world had returned with teeth. He needed repairs, money, food, sleep, and information. The order changed depending on which part of him screamed loudest.

"Find outpost," he said.

"If this zone has a fortress, camp, hermit, anything, we use it. No fights." no content? content is surviving moron ONE BEAD STREAMER red sword red sword red sword viewers leaving LUL Meno hated noticing the count. He moved out of the cave low and slow, keeping the mountain wall to his right. The Emberhollow Colossus stood far off across the broken badlands, a shifting mass of amber-veined stone dragging itself through the zone. Each time it moved, fragments broke loose and hit the earth. Some stayed rocks.

Some unfolded into shardlings and rushed anything nearby. Meno gave all of it distance. A shardling crossed a wash below him, its jagged body low to the ground, amber cracks pulsing through its limbs. [Hostile: Emberhollow Shardling | Type: Elemental | Threat: Lethal | Trait: Swarm] Meno waited until it disappeared behind a ridge. Another tremor opened a hairline crack across the slope ahead. He stepped over it one foot at a time. Viewers: 5, 913. Then 5, 402. He told himself that was still impossible.

An hour ago, nine viewers had felt like the universe had signed his eviction notice. Five thousand people watching him sneak along a wall should have felt like victory. Attention leaving always sounded louder than attention arriving. From a high ridge near the mountain edge, he saw a road below. It cut through the orange dirt in a hard black line, half-buried by dust, running away from the Colossus toward a small fortress built into a choke point between two slabs of dark stone.

Beyond the fortress, a steel gate sealed the next pass. Past that gate, the land rose into a colder plateau under darker clouds.

"Anchor found," he said. Meno descended with both hands free. The road felt quieter than the rest of Emberhollow, which meant only that death had better manners there. Shardlings moved far behind him. The Colossus shed another distant stone fragment, and the impact rolled through the ground under his boots. The fortress grew uglier up close. Black stone walls. Iron ribs across the gate. Watch fires in metal baskets. A few NPCs moved on the battlements.

The place looked less like a settlement than a refusal to evacuate. Two armored guards leveled spears as Meno approached. The first had a narrow face and a rust-marked helm. The second was broader, younger, and already glancing at Meno's sword like it had offended local standards.

"Halt," the narrow guard said.

"State business and sponsorship."

"Sponsorship?"

"Pass, writ, banner, escort, coin of passage." The guard's eyes dipped to Meno's starter clothes.

"Any recognized reason for us to let you enter."

"I'm leaving the active event zone." The younger guard snorted.

"That is a reason for you. We require one for us." Chat loved that. npc bribe check AI economy confirmed corrupt pay him one prayer bead Meno's patience scraped bone.

"A giant elemental is shedding murder rocks behind me."

"We saw," the narrow guard said.

"Which is why the gate stays managed."

"I need repairs."

"Repair stall is inside."

"Then let me inside."

"Gate protocol has associated hardship fees." Meno stared at him.

"You mean bribe." The younger guard coughed into his fist.

"Hardship is broader." Before Meno could spend the last of his self-control on a felony experiment, someone coughed inside the gatehouse. Both guards straightened. An older man stepped into view, armored in dark plate scuffed silver along the edges. His hair was gray, cut close. His shoulders looked square enough to hang doors from. He looked at Meno, then at the dust caked into his clothes, then toward the Colossus beyond the road.

"Open it," he said. The narrow guard swallowed.

"Commander Dask, we were confirming—""You were fishing." The old man's voice stayed level.

"Open it before the fool outside becomes paperwork." The gate groaned inward. Meno stepped through, careful to keep his face blank. Commander Arven Dask gave him one more look.

"If you brought the earth with you, leave it by the road."

"I try not to keep pets."

"Good. We shoot strays." The gate shut behind him. Inside, the fortress was smaller than it looked from the ridge. A repair stall sat under a canvas awning. A vendor counter leaned against a wall of stacked crates. A command room had its door open to a map table weighed down with knives. Bunks lined one side of the inner yard. The sealed steel gate toward the next zone dominated the far end like a judgment.

Near a raised platform, a woman in oil-stained engineer leathers argued with a swarm of compact creatures hauling ropes, tools, chalkboards, buckets, and smoking metal parts. The creatures had zebra-like heads, bright dark eyes, and little humanoid bodies that moved too fast for trust. One dragged a wrench twice its size. Another kicked a bucket into position, chirped, and pointed at a cracked brass gauge as if personally offended by it. wtf zebra gnomes new race confirmed is the AI bugged?

The machine above them looked like a catapult. Barely. Meno stopped walking.

"No," he said. The engineer turned. She had short black hair and a grease stripe across one cheek.

"You haven't heard the offer," she said.

"I saw the machine." The nearest zebra-headed creature snorted at him and chalked a mark on a board. Chief Mechanist Talla Venk slapped the board down.

"Zubras. They dislike being categorized by the timid."

"Do they talk?"

"Constantly. Rarely with words. Usually with improvements I cannot afford." A Zubra chirped, sprinted across the platform, and tightened a bolt until the entire frame hissed steam. Meno looked away from the machine and tried the vendor first. The vendor was an elderly woman in a quilted coat with hard eyes and a soft voice. That combination made him trust her less.

Her counter held dried roots, dull knives, waxed packets, cracked flasks, and prices written in chalk that looked negotiable in the direction opposite him. Meno placed the Dustbound Core Fragment and three Weathered Stone Shards on the counter.

"What are they worth?" Her eyes sharpened for half a second before her face caught up.

"Strange rubble," she said.

"Dangerous to carry. I can take the core for fifty silver. Shards, ten each." Chat turned into a courtroom. SCAM core launch elemental mat ask crafter don't sell to grandma cartel Meno tapped the core fragment.

"You smiled with your eyes." The vendor's soft voice stayed soft.

"People imagine expressions when they want higher prices."

"I need repairs."

"Then you need coin."

"I need fair coin."

"In Emberhollow, fair coin includes the part where I survive owning what you sell me." She was good. Market baron energy in a fortress coat. Meno hated that he respected it. He took the materials back. At the repair stall, a bored armorer inspected his sword and whistled once.

"Common II. Red durability. Edge stress. Hilt strain. You used this on a wall?" The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Something like that."

"Full repair: more coin than you have."

"You didn't ask how much I have."

"I can see your boots." The armorer was correct. Meno left before the man developed additional vision. The fortress had no answer except the stupid catapult. He found Commander Dask by the sealed steel gate, reading a report while two soldiers argued quietly over a broken lantern. Beyond the bars, the darker pass waited under a cold wind.

"What's past the gate?" Meno asked. Dask did not look up.

"Restricted road."

"To where?"

"Places that prefer living visitors."

"I need through." That got Dask's eyes up.

"You need a pass from the capital." Meno felt chat inhale. QUEST probably a chain he hates this do the quest coward Meno ignored the scroll of betrayal.

"So it's a paperwork gate."

"It is a steel gate because paperwork kept dying." Dask folded the report.

"Emberhollow is unstable. Old roads are compromised. The pass beyond leads to zones where fools become bones. The capital issues passes after confirming people have gear, purpose, and enough judgment to avoid turning patrols into search parties."

"I killed the Dustbound Elemental." Dask waited. Meno's mouth closed. He wanted a workaround. A crack, a bribe, a wall route, some ugly jump a speedrunner would find by dinner. Dask watched the thought form.

"There are always ways around gates," Dask said.

"The reason I do not name them is that I still have soldiers who enjoy quiet nights."

"Useful."

"You are alive. That is me being useful." Meno left before he liked the man. Chief Mechanist Venk was waiting by the catapult with both hands on her hips and three Zubras measuring him with rope. One measured his shoulder width. One measured his boot. One held the wrong end of a helmet up to his face, chirped, and rotated it like that solved anything.

"Capital?" Venk asked.

"What does it cost?" Her face brightened.

"Free." Meno narrowed his eyes.

"Why?"

"Willing human experimental subjects are rare." Chat exploded with pure joy. FREE BECAUSE YOU ARE THE PAYMENT take catapult take catapult ask survival rate"What's the survival rate?" Meno asked.

"Current or historical?"

"Current."

"Improving."

"That's not a number."

"That is because numbers frighten volunteers before the straps are secure." A Zubra climbed his leg, slapped a chalk mark on his shoulder, and jumped down before he could kick it. Venk continued briskly.

"The Zubra Launch Array sends you to the capital. One way. The catching spell is mostly aligned. Arc correction has stabilized since the goat incident."

"The goat died?"

"The goat arrived in three locations. We learned a great deal." Meno stared at the machine. He needed the capital auction house. He needed player money, repairs, a real market, and a place where selling one elemental core did not depend on an NPC with soft voice robbery. The road back through Emberhollow was a mess. The gate required a pass. The catapult was free. Of course the correct play was the insane machine.

"Fine," he said.

"Capital." The Zubras swarmed. Straps hit his chest, thighs, arms. Chalk lines crossed his clothes. A helmet landed crooked over one eye. Someone hung a little brass plaque in front of him full of liability text. He got as far as "voluntary bodily trajectory" before a Zubra yanked it away and replaced it with a mouthguard. Venk paced beside the launch cradle, checking gauges as Meno was hauled into the catapult.

"Instructions," she said.

"Keep limbs inside the launch vector. Do not fight the first burn. If you see two capitals, aim for the larger one. Scream only after the second arc correction; before that it wastes air." Meno bit down on the mouthguard.

"This is the worst travel system I've ever paid nothing for."

"Thank you."

"Not praise."

"Still going on the wall." The array fired. Meno became ammunition. The platform vanished beneath him. Emberhollow dropped away in a brutal rush of orange and black. The first burn shoved him into the straps hard enough to flatten thought. Wind tore at his face. Arc magic flashed around his body in pale bands that looked much less stable from inside them. Chat became unreadable streaks. He passed over the badlands and saw the Colossus from above, huge and slow, shedding shardlings into cracks of amber dust.

Beyond it lay the orc valley he had crawled through underleveled. Firepits smoked like tiny wounds. The river flashed silver. The farmlands spread in neat lines crowded with player dots. The forest road bent toward Rillpost, then farther off toward the starter lands and all the places where he had been dying to boars while the leaderboard ran away. The scale of his wrong road unfolded under him. He had crossed all that at Level 5 with a bad sword and a trash bag full of junk.

"Idiot," he tried to say around the mouthguard. Then the magic envelope misaligned. Flame crawled up his sleeve. For one stupid second, he looked at it like the fire might reconsider. It did not. Meno caught fire. Pain filter or not, burning sucked. Heat bit through his arm, then his side, then his back as the arc flare wrapped him in orange. He screamed exactly before the second correction because rules written by catapult engineers deserved disrespect. The stream found religion in cruelty.

HE'S ON FIRE FLAMING SWING MASTER ARRIVAL SUCCESSFUL??? ZUBRA AIRLINES this is peak content scream after correction bro The capital rose ahead: walls, towers, banners, rooftops, plazas, bridges, and far too many places to land badly. The catching spell caught him in the technical sense. It slowed him enough to survive. It failed several customer-service categories.

He hit a side square, skipped once across paving stones, bounced off the lip of a dry fountain, rolled through a vegetable cart, and came to rest in a shallow smoking crater between two statues of people who looked disappointed to be associated with him. Critical HP. Capital Zubras poured from a nearby archway with buckets. Water hit his face. Sand hit his chest. An unnecessary blanket smothered him from the left. One Zubra patted out a flame on his boot while another wrote on a slate.

A third planted a tiny flag beside his head. The flag read: ARRIVAL SUCCESSFUL. Meno shoved the blanket off.

"Your stupid catapult set me on fire!" The Zubras ignored him. One looked at his smoking sleeve, chirped, and added a checkmark to the slate. Viewer count spiked again, then started falling like it had remembered gravity. By the time Meno staggered upright, coughing smoke and dignity, the stream sat at 1, 126. By the time he found the auction house, it was 882. That number was still more people than he had ever held outside a disaster. It felt like loss anyway.

The capital auction house was a marble building full of shouting players, polished NPC clerks, and floating listings that updated faster than he could price shame. Meno smelled like burnt cloth. His health bar had crawled above critical through natural recovery. His wrist throbbed in the real world, and his stomach had started making practical threats. He stepped to a listing terminal and placed the elemental materials in the sale tray. Chat regained its old personality through market panic.

don't underprice bid only short duration crafters will snipe Meno hated that they were useful. He listed the Dustbound Core Fragment as bid-only, starting at fifty silver, one-hour duration. No buyout. Then he listed the Weathered Stone Shards separately, starting at fifty silver each, one-hour duration, also no buyout. Maybe that was smart. Maybe he had just invented a new way to be poor with witnesses. The auction clerk, a thin NPC with ink-stained fingers, glanced over the listing and arched one brow.

"Confident pricing for unknown stone."

"Emergency pricing."

"Those are often siblings."

"Will they sell?"

"They will be seen." The clerk tapped the terminal.

"Seen items attract buyers. They also attract questions."

"I'm getting used to that." The first bid landed on one shard before he finished speaking. Then another on the core. Meno's shoulders loosened a fraction, and his body used the opening to remind him it was furious. He opened stream controls.

"I'll be right back. Stretch. Food. Auction timer is one hour." momentum killer don't leave now no sleep"Thirty minutes max," Meno lied. He logged out. The apartment returned dim and hot around him. The VR rig released his arms with a soft mechanical sigh. Sweat had soaked the back of his shirt. The room smelled of cheap plastic, old fabric, and overworked skin. His right wrist resisted when he tried to flex it. His back hurt in a way that made standing feel like a negotiation.

His eyes were dry enough that blinking scraped. He had only used his arms in-game, but his mind had still collected the debt. The grocery bag still sat near his door. Rice. Eggs. He stared at it longer than he needed to. His phone had missed messages. His mother. Lysa. Unknown numbers. Platform alerts stacked so high the screen looked broken. He called his mother before he could think his way out of it. She answered on the second ring. Background noise hummed behind her, maybe a bus, maybe the break room at work.

"Meno?"

"Yeah."

"I saw clips," she said.

"People are sending them to me." He rubbed his left hand over his face.

"That's weird."

"It is very weird." He almost laughed. The sound came out tired.

"You did well," she said. For a few seconds, he had nothing sharp to put between himself and them. He looked at the cracked phone screen, at the grocery bag, at the ring light still glowing over his dead chair. His throat tightened in a way he could not blame on the VR rig.

"Yeah," he said.

"Maybe."

"I mean it." Her voice softened, then steadied in the way it did when bills entered the room.

"But I need you to hear me. One night with people watching is not the same as a plan. You still need something stable. You cannot do this forever." There it was. Measured. Reasonable. Loving. He heard dismissal anyway.

"I finally get something real, and you're already moving the goalpost."

"I'm trying to keep you standing after the clip is over."

"The clip isn't over."

"Meno—""I have auctions running. I have people watching. I have an actual account reward nobody else had. Can you give me one hour before telling me it doesn't count?"

"I did not say that."

"You meant it." The silence on the line hurt worse than an answer. He knew he had stepped wrong. He knew it while his anger still had both hands on the wheel. His mother said, "Eat something." He hung up. Regret arrived before the call screen finished closing. He did not call back. Lysa's text sat underneath the missed call list. Lysa: Your clips are everywhere. Are you okay? Meno opened the platform instead of answering. The main kill clip had passed one million views.

A short version with louder captions had more. His own channel had gained followers in bursts that looked fake until he refreshed and they stayed. Titles crawled across his feed. BROKE STREAMER SOLO KILLS??? BOSS SWING MASTER IS BROKEN? FIRST MYTHIC DESIGN CREDIT TRIGGERED LIVE MENO'S LAST WORD WILL START A WAR He should have felt good. Instead, he watched other people explain him. The Meta Desk had already clipped him into a segment.

Sera Voss sat under clean studio lights in a pale jacket, sharp-eyed and elegant enough to make panic look like a lower-class habit. Mina Calde sat beside her, warmer smile, softer voice, and the kind of timing that turned kindness into a blade when needed. Behind them, footage of Meno clinging to the Dustbound Elemental's arm looped in slow motion. Sera tapped a stylus against her tablet.

"The clip is spectacular. I don't think anyone disputes that. A Level 5 Swing Master converts a Threat-unknown elemental kill into Titan I and the first known Mythic Design Credit. That is launch history." Mina leaned forward.

"It is also one of the messiest routes we have ever seen. Repeated deaths, junk-drop padding, no repair planning, no party support, and a weapon nearly broken on completion. Fascinating content, questionable process." Meno's jaw tightened. Sera continued.

"The bigger question is whether Swing Master is secretly overtuned. Any class that can scale a Common II weapon into a Threat-unknown solo kill deserves scrutiny."

"Scrutiny," Meno said to his phone.

"Try playing it." Mina smiled at the clip as his avatar barely cleared the Tremor-Slam.

"The cost was extreme, but viewers see the endpoint. If Compound Swing stacks high enough, we may be looking at a class with poor early pacing and absurd ceiling."

"Poor early pacing," Meno repeated.

"I died to pigs." He stood too fast, wrist flaring as he grabbed the counter. The rice bag crinkled under his hand. Swing Master was miserable. The elemental kill had taken deaths, timing, route failures, junk-padding, red durability, and a chain long enough to turn his real body into a complaint. A normal class could farm actual XP, clear quests, join parties, and keep pace without turning every kill into a slog. An archer might have found pathing and killed the elemental safely.

A caster might have kited from terrain. A proper group would have turned the Dustbound Elemental into a breeze. But he had killed it. That part mattered too. The Meta Desk cut to BrineSaint. The rank-one player moved through a dungeon corridor with a tight support squad around him. Shield forward. Healer behind. Two damage players rotating cleanly. BrineSaint himself fought calmly, no wasted steps, no shouting, no ego leaking through the footage.

Sponsor graphics sat on the overlay like they had always belonged there. Sera nodded.

"This is still the cleanest rank-one candidate. Controlled dungeon chaining, support efficiency, and now a major launch sponsorship confirmed." Meno's stomach turned. Kestrel_Crownfall came next. A command overlay showed feeder parties, quest handoffs, resource funnels, and scouts reporting routes. Kestrel's voice was clipped, calm, and busy. The segment did not show heroics. It showed a machine. Mina said, "Crownfall is demonstrating why organization wins launch windows.

Kestrel is not solo for even a second, and that is the point." JaxxonVale followed, laughing under perfect lighting, turning a near wipe into a sponsor read without losing pace. His chat filled half the screen. His party carried the mechanical load while he transformed discovery into a show. OxideChoir's footage looked stranger: a team moving through an early world event with experimental positioning, marked sigils, and calls nobody on the desk fully explained.

Honeygrave's group looked slower but impossible to shake, built around support control, recovery, and clean survival once deaths became expensive. None of them were alone. Guilds. Squads. Analysts. Crafters. Scouts. Viewership machines. Sponsors. People holding aggro, counting resources, watching maps, selling the story while someone else repaired the cracks. His mother's voice returned in the worst possible place. You cannot do this alone forever.

Meno closed the broadcast when Sera started discussing BrineSaint's sponsor details. For one hot second, he wondered who might call him. A million-view clip. Mythic design. Titan I. Thousands live. Surely somebody would want his name on something now. Then the enforcement notice replayed in his head. Account-bound design rewards may not be sold, brokered, delegated, externally contracted, or used as proxy purchases. If money arrived right after Meno's Last Word, what would the AI see? A sponsor? A proxy purchase?

An after-the-fact reward? Would a real company risk touching him while the system had just written law in public because of his inbox? The thing that made him valuable had made him radioactive. He turned the phone face down. He wrapped his wrist in a cheap compression sleeve he had bought during a shooter grind two years earlier and never used correctly. Then he cooked rice badly, fried one egg too hard, and ate standing because sitting felt like admitting the session had ended.

He told himself he would nap for fifteen minutes. Just enough to make the auction timer safer. Just enough to stop his hand shaking. Just enough that his mother's voice stopped sounding like proof that victory had already expired. He set an alarm. He lay down beside the VR rig with the compression sleeve tight around his wrist and his phone on his chest. When he woke, the room was darker. His phone showed an auction alert buried under messages. One hour had passed. Meno sat up so fast his back spasmed.

"Of course." He grabbed for the rig, wrist stiff, stomach dropping toward the floor. Fifteen minutes had become an hour, because apparently even his body had started griefing him.