Chương 63: Cursed Dice

Meno woke after eight hours with a dry mouth and his phone trapped under one shoulder like it had tried to escape during sleep. For several seconds, he stared at the ceiling, trying to remember which body had the lightning burns. Then his stomach complained, and every heroic thought left. He grabbed his phone and considered texting Aurelia. Calling felt too much. Texting felt cowardly.

Asking chat would have solved nothing, but his mouth still half-formed the question before he remembered he was alone in his apartment with the stream off.

"Right," he muttered.

"No council of idiots." He opened email instead, because avoiding one problem by finding another had carried him through most of his twenties. Spam filled the top half of the inbox: fake interview requests, guild offers, clip channels asking for permission they had already ignored, and one message claiming to represent a vitamin company that wanted him to fuel the grind with masculine clarity. He deleted that one without opening it. Then a subject line caught him. Sponsorship Offer — Herder Chocolate Meno sat up.

A real sponsor should have felt good. Money was money, and his channel had once been hungry enough that he would have read ad copy for a folding spoon if it paid rent. He opened the message, skimmed the polite brand language, found the number, and called before his courage could rot into overthinking. The line clicked.

"Hey, this is Steve from Herder. How may I help you?"

"Uh," Meno said, because professionalism had not loaded yet.

"This is Meno Varsh. You guys sent me a sponsorship offer. Is this legit?"

"Ah, Mr. Varsh," Steve said too quickly, like the name had been waiting on a screen.

"Yes, we're glad you called. We'd like to offer you a limited sponsorship. Two classic bars a day, eaten on stream." Meno looked at the phone.

"Oh," Meno said.

"I have to actually eat it? I thought this was a banner thing. Logo in the corner. Maybe a coupon code."

"Yes," Steve said.

"We would like you to eat it live and encourage your chat to spam our brand name. We pay one thousand credits for thirty-five to fifty thousand concurrent viewers, and five thousand if you are above fifty thousand, based on viewership at the time of the segment." Meno rubbed his face.

"What about above one hundred thousand? Also, you realize I have to log out to eat. That is a huge bother."

"Five thousand is the maximum we can offer, regardless of viewership."

"That sounds like a scam," Meno said, honestly.

"I really don't like your chocolate. Do I have to eat it?" The call ended. Meno stared at the phone, stunned. For a moment, he could not tell whether Steve had been a real sponsor, a clever troll, or a brand employee wounded by chocolate disrespect. Five thousand credits for eating bad chocolate was still five thousand credits, which made his mouth feel traitorous for rejecting it.

Then he remembered he would have to stop the stream twice a day, chew on camera, and ask chat to scream HERDER, so he deleted the entire event from active memory. He called Aurelia before he could decide against it. The line rang three times.

"What is it, Meno?" Aurelia answered.

"I am playing."

"Uh, hey." His voice came out too eager.

"Nothing. I just woke up and wanted to check how you were doing."

"You could have opened my stream."

"Oh," Meno said.

"Yeah. That's true. Sorry. Bye."

"Wait." Meno froze with the phone still near his ear. Aurelia sighed, and he could hear game audio faintly behind her.

"I am sure you haven't eaten yet. I'll send a car for you. Let's have dinner at The Pearl. I need a break anyway."

"About that," Meno said, looking toward his kitchen with no conviction, "I was about to order food and log in."

"Are you saying you don't want to come?"

"No," Meno said immediately.

"I'm coming."

"Good. Bram will be there soon." Meno blinked.

"Your bodyguard? Wait. Was he your tank before?"

"Yes. Now get ready. I want to finish this level before you arrive." The line went dead. Meno stared at the phone again. Bram had been the quiet tank. Rich people apparently made their bodyguards tank in-game too, which was efficient in a way that made Meno want to complain and take notes at the same time. He took a fast shower. Afterward, wrapped in a towel and still damp, he opened his closet and discovered the real boss fight. No clean clothes. Veyrath had eaten his week.

Laundry had become a pre-launch myth, a ritual performed by calmer civilizations. The clothes Aurelia had bought him were technically wearable, but enough real-world panic and sweat had soaked into them that they smelled faintly sour and defeated. Only one outfit had survived: swim shorts and the shirt, which Meno pulled out with two fingers. The front showed a glamorous woman looking over her shoulder with a cocktail in hand, her smile far too confident for the white cotton carrying her.

Curved text above her read: "Better late than never, baby." On the back, below a pixelated loading bar stuck at ninety-seven percent, the shirt declared: "Late Bloomer." His sister had given it to him as a joke.

"There is no way," he said. There was, unfortunately, a way. The choice sat between smell and dignity, and dignity had been underperforming all week. Meno paced his apartment, held the shirt up, put it down, checked the old clothes again, regretted checking them, and finally opened a kitchen drawer. A single die sat near a pile of takeout sauce packets.

"Even number, I wear the clothes Aurelia gave me," he said.

"Odd number, I wear the clean stuff." He rolled. Three. Meno stared at it.

"One more try." He rolled again. Three.

"What?" He picked it up, narrowed his eyes, and rolled a third time with more force. Three. Meno went very still. The die had no business looking smug.

"Broken," he said.

"Obviously broken." He threw it at the wall. The die bounced off, rolled across the floor, tapped the baseboard, and landed on three. Meno stared down at it.

"That is impossible. I have negative RNG." The die had spoken. Meno dressed in the swim shorts and the joke shirt. Black shoes made the whole thing look like a man had lost a bet at a beach wedding, so he chose slippers with no socks, which somehow completed the damage. When things weren't going well, his father used to say, compensate with confidence. Thinking about him soured Meno's mood before he even reached the door. The black SUV waited outside the building. Meno climbed in, and Bram did not look at him.

If he had an opinion about the shirt, his face hid it well.

"So you're Bram?" Meno asked.

"Are you still leveling, or did you quit?" Bram started driving without answering. Meno looked out the window.

"Great talk." The ride to The Pearl carried him through Vernova evening traffic, city lights sliding across the SUV windows while Meno tried not to think about BrineSaint, Titan Trial candidates, Herder Chocolate, or the fact that he was about to walk into an expensive restaurant dressed for the beach. The valet took the car without blinking. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Bram led him inside.

The lobby staff glanced at Meno's shirt, then at Bram, then decided employment mattered more than curiosity. Meno kept his shoulders loose and walked like this had been a deliberate choice made by someone impossible to embarrass. It almost worked. They entered the elevator and went up to the tenth floor. Meno expected a corridor of private rooms.

Instead, the doors opened into a broad central space that looked like a luxury restaurant, a greenhouse, and a gaming lounge had been blended together by someone with unlimited money. Tall greenery lined the walls between massive screens showing different streams, a polished bar ran along one side, and two side corridors led deeper toward capsule rooms. The place was empty except for one staff member behind the bar. Bram finally spoke.

"This is The Pearl gaming hub's community lounge. Restaurant and bar. Capsule rooms are through the side corridors, one to five capsules per room. Sit down and wait." Then he left down one corridor, presumably to retrieve Aurelia. Meno sat, and the room immediately made him aware of his slippers. After thirty seconds, sitting still became worse than moving, so he stood and walked to the bar.

The staff member was watching one of the large screens, where BrineSaint's stream showed a bright city of tower platforms and water channels. Eastveil.

"What is he up to?" Meno asked. The staff member straightened quickly.

"Sorry, sir. I was distracted. What can I get you?"

"No, it's fine," Meno said, glancing at the screen.

"The stream. What's BrineSaint doing? Is he past fifty yet?"

"Yes, sir. He reached fifty and has been doing quests since then. It is quite strange." Meno's hunger paused.

"Quests? Why is he doing quests?" Meno looked at the screen harder.

"I think he wants to craft some kind of karma amulet. I have only been watching for the past hour." BrineSaint was speaking with a shady NPC under a platform staircase. The buildings behind him rose on circular supports with houses and gardens sitting high above canal water. His shield hung on his back instead of his arm, which already meant he was in town mode. Meno's brain tried to melt through several conclusions at once. Marielle's Little Aureliana. The Mythic amulet design. One thousand percent karma gain.

BrineSaint had said he had people looking into it, but Meno had expected curiosity, not the rank-one player abandoning XP time for quest chains. The raid wall had stopped him. Or karma mattered for faction choice. Or the mount quest. Or a subclass. Or something worse BrineSaint had found before Meno had even claimed his bounty gold. Meno wanted to log in immediately, but his stomach disagreed loudly.

"Can I order food here?" Meno asked.

"Of course, sir. What would you like?"

"Two steak burgers with fries and two huge blueberry juices." The staff member paused.

"Sorry, did you mean hamburgers?"

"No. The kitchen will know. I ordered it once already. Just put a steak in a hamburger."

"What kind of steak, sir? Filet mignon, ribeye, strip, T-bone, porterhouse, sirloin?" Meno stared at him.

"Which one do you recommend?" The staff member considered it with more seriousness than most raid leaders applied to positioning.

"Probably ribeye. Good fat and juiciness."

"Yes," Meno said.

"Good. Let's do that. Two. I'm meeting someone."

"Certainly, sir." The staff member picked up a phone and relayed the order with professional calm, as if ribeye in a bun had been a reasonable request from the beginning. Meno returned to the table and sat where he could still see BrineSaint's stream. The shady NPC handed BrineSaint a sealed box, and Meno added twelve more questions to a brain that needed food, not mystery. Five minutes later, Aurelia appeared from the right corridor. Meno forgot the screen. He had never seen her like this before.

Baggy gray sweatpants, plain gray T-shirt, no makeup, no jewelry. Her long blond hair had gone wild from hours inside the capsule, flattened in some places, flaring in others, twisted into damp loose ropes that caught on her shoulder. To Meno, she looked more like a real person than ever before, which made him more nervous, not less. Until now, some stupid part of his brain had treated Aurelia like a dream. The sweatpants killed that defense. The messy hair killed it harder.

Suddenly she was just there, tired and real, and he had to be a person in front of her. Meno stood too fast.

"Hey. You look great." The moment the words left his mouth, he saw the prompt fail. Aurelia's eyes sharpened.

"Sorry I didn't spend half an hour getting ready for your audience. And what are you wearing? Are you going to the beach? That shirt should be burned.

'Better late than never, baby.' Really, Meno?" Meno's hands came up.

"No, no, this is the only clean thing I had. It's a joke from my sister." He turned around and showed her the back before realizing that showing her the back might have made it worse.

"Late Bloomer," Aurelia read.

"With a loading bar."

"It's stuck at ninety-seven percent."

"I can see that."

"You misunderstood," Meno said, turning back.

"I wasn't complaining. I meant I like the way you look. It feels safe." Aurelia stepped closer.

"Safe," she repeated.

"Was I frightening before?"

"No, I mean—" She laughed quietly.

"Just shut up." Then she stepped closer and kissed his cheek. Meno's thoughts jammed in place. Returning a cheek kiss felt too distant, like something people did when they were pretending not to know each other very well. Leaving it unanswered felt wrong. So he hugged her. Aurelia stiffened for one beat, then her arms came around him. Meno held on longer than he should have. She smelled faintly of cinnamon and sweat, warm and human in a way perfume never was.

His hands stayed careful against her back, but his chest tightened anyway.

"Okay," Aurelia said softly.

"You can let go now."

"Ah. Yeah." He released her. At least she was smiling. They sat across from each other, and Meno tried to remember how people behaved when they had slept, showered, and dressed for dinner.

"I already ordered food," he said. Aurelia folded her hands.

"What did you get?"

"Steak-burgers, obviously." She covered her face with one hand.

"Sure," she said.

"Why not?" A voice rang from the corridor behind her.

"PrayerBeadGod!" Meno turned. Honeygrave came weaving toward them in gray sweatpants almost identical to Aurelia's, a white tank top, two gleaming earrings in each earlobe, and short cropped hair dyed bright yellow instead of blond. Meno raised his voice.

"Just call me Meno, please." Honeygrave reached the table grinning. Aurelia looked at him like a fly had learned speech.

"Hey, man," Honeygrave said.

"My chat told me you were coming here. No clue where they got that info." Meno looked at Aurelia.

"Did you stream our call?" Aurelia lifted her brows.

"Why are you looking at me like that? You also stream everything." Honeygrave hooked a thumb toward the corridor.

"Ayy, am I a bother? Should I bounce?"

"It's fine," Aurelia said.

"Sit down, say what you want, then leave." Honeygrave chuckled and took the seat beside her. Meno was not a fan of the seating choice, but saying so would make him seem too jealous for someone wearing swim shorts at The Pearl. Honeygrave leaned forward.

"So I saw your Titan. Crazy stuff. I'm not going with you if you thought about asking." Meno blinked.

"You wouldn't? It can unlock subclasses."

"No way," Honeygrave said.

"I am not risking my character. The way you do things, I would probably die, then you would figure out how to complete the Trial solo anyway. I would never live that down. It would destroy my stream."

"How about you just don't die?" Meno asked. Honeygrave looked at Aurelia and lightly tapped her shoulder.

"Funny guy, eh?" Aurelia looked at the spot he had touched, then brushed her sleeve like removing dust.

"He is right. I didn't realize you were such a wuss." Honeygrave laughed.

"That is not going to work. I am immune to ego stuff. I always pick priest archetypes. Fits my personality. Solemn and wise." Aurelia's smile turned thin.

"That certainly fits."

"So anyway," Honeygrave said, unbothered, "what I wanted to tell Praye—Meno right here is that he should try to convince BrineSaint. That is the correct choice." Meno frowned.

"Why? I was thinking Moonwake. She is at least a healer. She can heal herself and not die while I figure out the rest."

"Come on, man. That makes way too much sense for you." Honeygrave grinned wider.

"Obviously I want BrineSaint to delete his character." He laughed at his own answer. Meno did not.

"Oh," Meno said.

"So you gave up on the competition?"

"What are you saying? Of course I compete. But if we can make him do something dumb, that's part of it."

"There is no way he accepts," Meno said.

"BrineSaint plays safe. Besides, I don't want him losing his character. That would cheapen rank one. I want to beat him properly and leave him on the leaderboard in second place." Honeygrave leaned back.

"Still talking big. Last time I checked, you weren't even top ten."

"Yeah," Meno said.

"But I'm catching up. Look closer."

"I saw you hit forty-two," Honeygrave said.

"You just entered the slog bracket. Above forty, leveling slows hard. Thirty-to-forty Normal threats gave one percent. In the forty-to-fifty bracket, you need around twenty Normal threats for one percent, and they have to be decent ones. Some are garbage." Meno waved that away.

"I don't care about Normal threat XP. I don't get why everyone is obsessed with it. You have a full party. Why not farm harder content? Even JaxxonVale was doing that lame dungeon-pull, party-leave, reset gimmick."

"Because harder content is not magically better," Honeygrave said.

"XP split five ways hurts. Our parties are underleveled, so anything too strong turns into a time sink. You expect me to pull one Lethal threat at a time, spend ten minutes fighting it, watch teammates wipe, and barely scrape out a kill?"

"Yes," Meno said.

"Just faster and with less dying." Honeygrave shook his head.

"Sounds good on paper. We tried it. Over twelve hours, messy routes lose hard. People get tired, people screw up, people tilt. Ends up about twenty percent worse." Meno stared at him like the word people had been used as an attack.

"What does your Rot Savant even do?" Meno asked.

"You said priest archetype. Are you support?"

"Nah, man. Damage over time caster. I specialized for AOE burst like JaxxonVale, not single target, so higher threat is not ideal."

"That makes sense," Meno said.

"But what are you doing about the raid lock? Even if everyone hits sixty, nobody gets past the wall until Vervenzal dies." Honeygrave shrugged.

"That is a good thing. Crownfall will figure something out. Meanwhile, I can take a vacation and recharge for the next stretch." Aurelia tilted her head.

"You should worry about falling behind in more than levels if someone else solves it first. Raid gear will matter. Legendary equipment is vastly superior to anything before it. Meno's gloves are proof." Honeygrave looked at Meno's shirt, then back to Aurelia.

"I'm fine holding top ten. Beating BrineSaint is impossible, and guilds have too much annoying crap on their plate. I'm not losing sleep over falling behind later because my gear is worse." Meno leaned forward.

"You're still thinking of Veyrath like a classic MMO. It isn't. Look at the class balance. Everything is broken or whacky or waiting for someone to break it. If raid clears give subclasses, those players might beat your XP per hour with half the effort while you're still grinding the same route." Honeygrave's grin softened for the first time. Honeygrave looked toward the screens for a few seconds, where BrineSaint was still talking to NPCs in Eastveil.

"Yeah. The subclass thing messed me up. Class upgrades outside levels? That's nasty."

"Still skipping the character deletion ritual?" Aurelia asked.

"Still skipping." Honeygrave pointed at her.

"Very much skipping." Meno nodded.

"I wouldn't take you anyway. Your rot AOE build is useless for a duo trial. We would fail." Honeygrave threw both hands up in fake outrage.

"Now that you say it like that, I kind of want to do it."

"No you don't," Aurelia said.

"True." Honeygrave stood, already smiling again.

"Cool talking to you guys. Still, try BrineSaint. If he bites, the whole race opens up. I'm bouncing back. Cheers." He left toward one of the corridors, earrings catching the screen light as he went. Aurelia watched him go.

"He is really annoying." Meno looked after him.

"He told me he earned his way up from nothing. I think he's scared that reaching for more means losing what he already has." Aurelia's voice quieted.

"Yeah." The food arrived before the silence could settle. Two large plates hit the table, each with a ribeye folded between glossy buns, the meat too thick for the bread and leaking juice down one side. Fries spilled around them in golden piles, salt clinging to the edges, and two huge glasses of blueberry juice sweated cold rings onto the table. Aurelia looked at the steak burger, at the ribeye pressing out from the bun and shining at the edges, then picked one fry from the pile and took a small, careful bite.

"They should really name this after you," she said. Meno was too hungry to defend himself. He grabbed the burger with both hands and took a bite large enough to make Aurelia's eyes widen. The steak was hot, fatty, and too big for the bun, and sauce ran over his thumb before he could stop it. He chewed with zero dignity and washed it down with cold blueberry juice. Aurelia gave him an outraged look. Then she shrugged, picked up her own burger with both hands, and bit in. The bun dented under her fingers.

Sauce squeezed out around the ribeye, warm and glossy, and slipped down her chin almost immediately. She froze. Meno looked at her. She looked back, still holding the burger, with a strip of ribeye trying to escape one side of the bun. For the first time since he had met her, she looked exactly as messy as him. He decided not to say that. They ate in silence for a while, both too hungry to perform manners and too aware of each other to ignore it completely. The fries vanished faster than they should have.

The blueberry juice hit cold enough to wake up parts of Meno that sleep had missed. Meno spoke around a half-finished bite.

"Pretty good?" Aurelia tried to answer. A piece of ribeye slipped from between her lips and landed on the plate with a soft, wet tap. She looked down at it with quiet dread.

"Yeah." Meno swallowed, took another bite, and wasted his next breath immediately.

"So about that reward you mentioned…" Aurelia wiped sauce from her chin with slow care.

"After we eat." Meno started eating faster.