Master of Lust-Chapter 330 - -

Chapter - 330

Rick didn’t hesitate. He dropped the venison.

"DROP THE ACT!" Rick roared, his voice amplified by the Kitchen Tyrant skill. "EVERYONE DOWN!"

The kitchen staff, conditioned by hours of his abuse, hit the floor instantly.

Rick vaulted over the pass. He ran to the service door leading to the ballroom. It was sealed tight. Reinforced steel.

"System!" Rick yelled. "Give me a breaching charge!"

[Inventory: C4 (10kg)]

He slapped a brick of C4 onto the door hinges. "Fire in the hole!"

BOOM!

The door blew inward, twisting off its frame. Rick sprinted through the smoke, into the service corridor, and burst into the Grand Ballroom.

It was chaos.

The Sleepy Hollow gas hadn’t deployed yet—the ice swan was still holding its integrity by a thread—but the panic was real. The billionaires were scrambling, overturning tables.

Silas Warner stood calmly at the head table, surrounded by his four Elite Guards. He looked at Rick as he burst in.

"Ah," Silas said, smiling. "The chef. Or should I say... the Chaos Agent."

Rick leveled his MP7. "Call it off, Silas! Open the doors!"

"I’m afraid I can’t do that," Silas said. "You see, Mr. Smith, you assumed you were infiltrating a robbery. You aren’t. You are infiltrating a funeral."

Silas gestured to the room. "These men... they are parasites. They betrayed me. They killed my grandson through their incompetence and greed. Did you think I called this Conclave to negotiate? I called it to clean house."

He looked at the Elite Guards. "Kill everyone. Start with the Senator."

The Guards raised their weapons.

"NO!" Sharon screamed from her position by the door. She opened fire, her MP7 chattering.

The bullets sparked off the Guards’ armor.

"Nadia! The Swan!" Rick yelled. "Break the Swan!"

Nadia, who was ducking behind a serving cart, grabbed a heavy magnum of champagne. She stood up and hurled it at the ice sculpture.

SMASH!

The Swan shattered. The core was breached.

The Sleepy Hollow gas pellets hit the air. They hissed violently, sublimating instantly into a thick, heavy, white fog that rolled off the table and spread across the floor.

"Masks!" Rick yelled, pulling a rebreather from his inventory and slapping it onto his face. Sharon and Nadia did the same.

The gas hit the guests. Senator Moretti, already weakened by the nano-swarm gastric distress, folded like a cheap suit. Volkov slumped onto the table, face-first into the venison. Within ten seconds, every billionaire in the room was unconscious.

Except Silas.

Silas pulled a small, sleek oxygen mask from his pocket and pressed it to his face. His Elite Guards did the same, their helmets sealing automatically.

"Clever," Silas’s voice boomed over the speakers, muffled by the mask. "Gas. But you missed one variable."

The floor of the ballroom shook.

BOOM.

A massive explosion rocked the foundations of the Chateau. Dust rained from the ceiling. The chandeliers swung wildly.

"What was that?" Sharon yelled over the comms.

"That," Rick said, looking at his HUD, "was the front door."

[System Alert: Perimeter Breached.]

[New Faction Detected: The Iron Legion.]

[Leader: Valerius.]

The main double doors of the ballroom—the ones Sharon had been guarding—were blown inward by a shaped charge.

Through the smoke and the sleeping gas stepped a nightmare.

It was Valerius.

He looked different. He was wearing a heavy, powered exo-skeleton suit that whirred and hissed with every movement. His cybernetic eye glowed a furious crimson. Behind him poured a stream of heavily armed mercenaries in grey urban camo—The Iron Legion.

Valerius looked at the room. He saw the sleeping billionaires. He saw Silas. He saw Rick.

"You lied to me, Rick Smith," Valerius boomed, his synthesized voice shaking the glass. "The codes you gave me... they were a trap. They locked my forward team in the kill-zone."

Rick shrugged behind his mask. "I said I’d get you inside. I didn’t say I’d make it easy. You’re welcome for the exercise."

Valerius raised a massive, arm-mounted rotary cannon. "I am going to liquefy you."

Silas Warner laughed. He actually laughed. "Valerius! You predictable cyborg filth! You fell for the bait!"

Silas pressed a button on his remote.

The wall behind the head table slid open.

It wasn’t an exit. It was a weapon bay.

Two Auto-Turrets unfolded from the wall, tracking Valerius’s forces.

"Kill them all!" Silas roared.

The room erupted into a three-way crossfire from hell.

Valerius’s legion opened fire on Silas’s Elite Guards.

Silas’s turrets opened fire on Valerius.

And Rick, Sharon, and Nadia were caught in the middle of a meat grinder.

"TO THE KITCHEN!" Rick screamed, grabbing a table and flipping it for cover as plasma rounds and bullets chewed up the air.

"We can’t go back!" Sharon yelled. "The shutters are down!"

"We aren’t going back to hide!" Rick yelled, checking his drone feed. "Mickey just ate the lock! The Vault is open!"

He grabbed Nadia by her blazer. "The vent! In the kitchen! It leads to the Vault! We have to go down!"

They scrambled, crawling under the crossfire. Bullets shredded the ice swan, sending shards scattering. The sleeping billionaires were getting shot in their sleep—collateral damage in a war of egos.

They reached the blown-open service door. They dove into the kitchen.

It was empty. The staff was gone.

Rick ran to the walk-in fridge. He ripped the grate off the wall. The vent shaft was dark, narrow, and smelled of Freon and rat droppings.

"It’s too small!" Sharon said. "I can’t fit in there with gear!"

"You have to!" Rick said. "It’s the only way to the Vault! And the Vault is the only place in this mountain that can survive what’s coming!"

"What’s coming?" Nadia asked.

Rick pointed at the ceiling. The chandeliers were shaking. The boom-boom-boom of heavy ordnance was getting closer.

"Valerius didn’t just bring guns," Rick said. "He brought air support. He’s leveling the building."

Suddenly, the kitchen door—the one leading to the loading dock—slid open.

Standing there, calm as a monk amidst the apocalypse, was The Huntsman.

He wasn’t wearing his dishwasher uniform anymore. He was wearing his beige windbreaker. He held a long, curved blade in one hand and a detonator in the other.

"Going somewhere, Mr. Smith?" The Huntsman asked pleasantly.

Rick stepped in front of the girls. "You’re supposed to be washing dishes."

"I finished," The Huntsman said. "And now, I am going to finish you. Silas pays well. But Valerius pays better. I switched sides ten minutes ago."

Rick blinked. "You sold out Silas?"

"I am a freelancer," The Huntsman shrugged. "Loyalty is a fluctuation in the market."

He raised the detonator. "I rigged the kitchen gas lines. One press, and we all become... flambé."

Rick looked at the detonator. He looked at the vent. He looked at his inventory.

He had one card left to play. The Pandora’s Box.

[Item: Pandora’s Box]

[Status: Ready.]

"You like surprises, Huntsman?" Rick asked, reaching into his pocket.

The Huntsman’s eyes narrowed. "I hate them."

"Too bad."

Rick pulled out the small, ornate wooden box. He didn’t open it. He threw it.

He threw it right at The Huntsman’s feet.

"Catch!"

The Huntsman, moving on pure instinct, kicked the box away before it could land.

But the box didn’t need to be opened by a hand. It just needed impact.

The box hit the wall. The lid popped open.

[System Effect Triggered: RANDOM CHAOS.]

[Effect Rolled: 042 - ’Gravity Well (Localized)’]

A singularity the size of a golf ball opened up where the box had hit the wall.

It didn’t explode. It sucked.

A massive, violent vacuum instantly pulled everything in a twenty-foot radius toward the wall. Pots, pans, knives, vegetables, and The Huntsman were yanked off their feet and slammed against the masonry with the force of a car crash.

The Huntsman was pinned to the wall, his arms and legs splayed, held there by crushing gravity. The detonator flew out of his hand and was sucked into the singularity, where it was crushed into dust.

"WHAT IS THIS?!" The Huntsman screamed, struggling against the invisible hand of physics.

"Science!" Rick yelled. "GO! INTO THE VENT!"

He shoved Nadia and Sharon into the shaft. They wriggled backward, disappearing into the dark.

Rick looked at The Huntsman, pinned like a butterfly.

"Stick around," Rick said.

He dove into the vent feet first.

As he slid down the metal chute, he heard the Gravity Well collapse with a thunderous POP, dropping everything—including the assassin—to the floor.

Then came the explosion from the ballroom. The floor above them disintegrated.

They were falling into the dark, toward the Oubliette, while the world burned above them.

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