“Huff… So hungry.” Vivian felt like her stomach was staging an armed rebellion.
Especially after the “Versailles Hall of Mirrors Hundred-Meter Dash” and the “Big Head Syndrome Impromptu Performance,” her blood sugar had crashed through the center of the earth.
“Don’t touch that.” Cicero slapped away Vivian’s claw reaching for the roast chicken.
“That’s a rock.” He leaned against the door frame, using a handkerchief to wipe the dust from his monocle.
“It smells like rosemary roast chicken.” Vivian swallowed hard, staring intently at the golden bird on the stove.
“That’s an olfactory fraud.” Cicero slid his glasses back onto his nose.
“This is a projection of the ‘Grand Kitchen.’ Everything here is essentially either stone or leftover concepts.”
Vivian refused to believe it.
She waited until Cicero wasn’t looking and jabbed her finger hard into the thigh of the roast chicken.
“Crack.”
The sound of a fingernail snapping.
That “juicy” chicken leg was as hard as a slab of granite.
“Hiss—!” Vivian shook her hand in pain, teary-eyed. “Turning food into stone—this is the cruelest mockery of the working people!”
“Louis XIV.” Cicero replied flatly, inspecting the ventilation duct in the wall.
“It’s said that the Sun King lost all his teeth in his later years, and saw every food as stone. Since this illusion is built on the ‘memory of the old dynasty,’ it naturally inherited this resentment-filled setting.”
“Damn feudal residue.”
Vivian clutched her stomach and slumped dejectedly against a massive brass worktable.
Even if it was an illusion, the sense of decadence was still suffocating.
The room was big enough to fit half a soccer field. Above their heads hung countless copper pots, each polished to a shine, like golden full moons suspended overhead.
Huge stoves lined up in a row, the air thick with the smell of oil smoke and spices.
These were the obsessions left behind by the chefs who worked themselves to death to satisfy the king’s appetite.
“We need to find the ‘node’ quickly.” Cicero’s voice echoed in the empty kitchen.
“After the Hall of Mirrors collapsed, the automaton will definitely reboot its defense system. It’s way too quiet here.”
“I want to hurry too,” Vivian said weakly.
“But I’m so hungry I don’t even have the strength to open this door. If someone handed me a baguette right now, I could use it to knock open the gates of Versailles.”
“Only a baguette of the mind.” Cicero tapped his head. “Overcome physiological needs with willpower.”
Before he could finish, a strange sound came from deep within the stoves.
“Sss… sizzle sizzle…”
Like butter melting into a hot pan.
Then came a rhythmic chopping sound.
“Thud, thud, thud, thud.”
Cicero whirled around, cane across his chest. “Careful.”
Behind the once-empty stoves, a mass of white steam slowly rose.
The steam didn’t dissipate but gathered together as if alive, eventually forming a huge human silhouette.
He wore a filthy white chef’s uniform and an absurdly tall chef’s hat.
But above this figure’s neck sat an enormous onion.
Spicy juice trickled down the onion’s layers, and in the folds, a split had formed—like a mouth.
“Why an onion?” Vivian couldn’t help but complain. “This is really unromantic.”
“Because Louis XV hated onions the most.” Cicero retreated quickly.
“That’s a wraith formed by ‘rejected ingredients.’ Things like that usually have a nasty temper.”
The Onion Chef seemed to have heard Cicero’s words.
From the split in its mouth came a roar, like boiling water lifting a kettle lid:
“The soup… is cold!!!”
With that furious bellow, two rusty cleavers appeared out of nowhere in its previously empty hands.
“Uh… Chef,” Vivian tried to reason, “we’re not here to eat, we’re just passing by…”
“Not eating?!”
The onion head was clearly enraged. Its body swelled, onion juice splattering everywhere.
“Not eating… is… wasting food!!”
“Thud!”
A cleaver spun through the air, embedding itself deeply into the brass worktable where Vivian had just been leaning, the blade biting deep.
“Isn’t that a little illogical?!” Vivian dove under the table, clutching her head.
“Legends have no logic, only obsession!” Cicero swung his cane, batting away another flying knife. “It thinks you’re a picky guest and wants to mince you up!”
“I’m not becoming meat sauce pasta!”
Vivian crawled desperately under the table.
Above her, metal clashed in an endless barrage. The Onion Chef’s blades rained down with reckless abandon.
Cicero, nimble as he was, struggled to maneuver in the cramped kitchen.
“Vivian! Find its vessel!” Cicero shouted. “It must be anchored to a piece of kitchenware!”
“There are thousands of pots here! How am I supposed to find it?!”
Vivian poked her head out—only for a sharp paring knife to whiz past her nose, slicing off a lock of her hair.
“Damn you!”
Now Vivian was angry.
Hunger and terror sent her adrenaline surging.
“Screw it, I’m taking you on!”
She ignored the idea of finding a vessel and grabbed randomly at the nearby shelf.
Her hand landed on something heavy—a massive red copper frying pan. Judging by its size, it was probably meant for frying ostrich eggs.
The handle was wrapped in heatproof leather. The instant she gripped it, Vivian was overcome by a strange sensation.
It was as if… this pan was always meant to be in her hand.
“Muscle memory” took over her brain. She hefted the pan reflexively, the motion so practiced it was as if she’d trained at New Oriental for eight centuries.
By now, the Onion Chef was charging right at her.
Its huge body blocked the light. Cleaver raised high, onion juice dripping down onto Vivian’s face, stinging her eyes.
“Do it again!!!”
The Onion Chef roared, cleaver slashing down.
“Dodge!” Cicero shouted from a distance.
Vivian didn’t dodge.
She bent her knees, powered from her waist, and gripped the giant frying pan with both hands—swinging it upward like a baseball bat in a perfect arc.
“Take this——!!!”
“CLAAAAAAAAANG——————!!!”
A thunderous crash.
The sound was vast, clear, and lingering, like the bell of Sacré-Cœur ringing right in their ears.
Cicero’s eardrums rang with pain—he had to clamp his hands over his ears.
Time seemed to stop.
The falling cleaver hung frozen in midair—then snapped in two.
And that all-powerful Onion Chef…
Its face was squashed tight against the bottom of the frying pan.
With such a huge impact and force spread over a wide area, its entire head structure underwent irreversible deformation in an instant.
In plain terms, it got flattened.
From a solid 3D onion, it instantly became a 2D onion sticker plastered to the pan’s underside.
“Physical exorcism, kid.”
“Uhh…” The onion let out a deflating hiss.
Then the massive steam body deflated like a balloon that had lost its support, quickly dispersing.
Only a filthy chef’s uniform remained, drifting softly to the floor.
The kitchen fell silent again.
Only the frying pan still buzzed faintly.
Cicero, hands still clamped over his ears, mouth agape, had finally lost his usual look of total control.
He looked at the crumpled uniform, then at Vivian—still in her swinging stance, panting hard.
“…What is that?” Cicero pointed at the pan in Vivian’s hands.
“A holy relic blessed by the Vatican? Or a hidden weapon of the Freemasons?”
“It’s a pan.”
Vivian set the pan down—“clang!”—it smashed a dent into the tiles.
Cicero stepped over, cautiously prodding the pan with his cane.
“This makes no sense.” He frowned.
“Wraiths are spirits. Physical attacks usually go right through them. Unless this pan has a ‘concept’ strong enough to override the illusion’s rules.”
He peered at the bottom. Beneath a thick layer of grease, he found a blurry engraving.
He rubbed at it with his gloved finger.
It was an emblem—an iris and a crown intertwined.
“Knew it.” Cicero straightened, looking complicated. “This pan was used by Louis XV himself.”
“Huh?” Vivian’s eyes went wide. “That king moonlighted as a chef?”
“Louis XV was a cooking enthusiast. It’s mentioned in unofficial histories,” Cicero explained.
“This pan has the ‘will of the king’ infused in it. In this illusion, the concept of ‘king’ outranks ‘chef.’ So you didn’t defeat it with physical force—you defeated it with ‘workplace hierarchy suppression.’”
“Beating an employee with the boss’s pan. That’s real capitalism,” Vivian commented.
Whatever the principle, the monster was dead.
As the Onion Chef dissipated, the impenetrable illusion around them began to waver.
The ingredients that looked like stone grew dim and gray, like faded old photos.
And behind the stove where the Onion Chef had stood, a little door flickering with light appeared.
It was a dumbwaiter.
“Let’s go—that’s the node to the upper level.”
Vivian slung the frying pan over her shoulder—the feel of it was just too good, she couldn’t bear to part with it.
“You planning to carry that?” Cicero raised an eyebrow.
“If we run into that automaton again, I can serve up a teppanyaki.”
They squeezed into the narrow dumbwaiter. Vivian had to stand the pan upright in her arms, hugging it like a giant shield.
Just as Cicero pulled the lift rope, Vivian felt the frying pan in her arms tremble lightly.
Almost as if the pan was delighted to be held by her.
“Boss,” Vivian blurted out, “do you think there’s such a thing as a ‘pan spirit’ in this world?”
“Even toilets could have souls,” Cicero said, hauling on the rope. “But I suggest you don’t form a deep emotional bond with a pan. That sounds pretty perverse.”
The lift stopped.
This was the King’s bedchamber, the very heart of the illusion.
“Ready? What comes next won’t be as easy as smashing cucumbers.”
Vivian tightened her grip on the frying pan, taking a deep breath.
“As long as I don’t have to work overtime on an empty stomach, I’ll handle anything.”
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