Chapter - 325
The kitchen of Alpine Delights Catering was not a place of joy. It was a stainless-steel gulag located in a nondescript industrial park in the valley below Gstaad. The air smelled of reducing veal stock, fear, and the ozone tang of a System Skill download completing its neural integration.
Rick stood at the head of the pass, wearing the bio-synthetic mask of Henri Vancroft. It was a perfect fit, the cool gelatin moving seamlessly with his own expressions. But it wasn't the mask that made the twenty assembled chefs and porters tremble; it was the aura of absolute, unhinged culinary violence radiating off him.
Rick blinked, the final packet of data from the 'Michelin Warlord' skill book settling into his hippocampus. He suddenly knew the exact pH balance required for a spherified olive and the precise moment a lobster felt existential dread.
He picked up a spoon, dipped it into a simmering pot of bisque, and tasted it.
