My Milf Conqueror System

Chapter 180: The Blood Price

[Jake’s POV]

The upper levels of Isabella Vane’s mountain fortress were a war zone.

When Darius and I kicked open the heavy steel door leading out of the elevator shaft, the pristine, sterile white corridors we had seen in the sub-levels were gone. The air was thick with gray smoke, the smell of pulverized concrete, and the deafening, rhythmic thud-thud-thud of heavy artillery impacting the exterior walls.

Katarina Volkov wasn’t just creating a distraction. She was trying to level the mountain.

"Status!" I barked into my earpiece, praying the lead lining in the lower walls hadn’t permanently fried the comms.

Static hissed for a terrifying second before Claire’s voice broke through, tight and frantic.

"Jake! Thank God. We lost your signal when the vault went into lockdown. Are you clear?"

"We’re clear," I said, moving down the smoke-filled corridor, my assault rifle raised. "The physical ledgers are ash. But Isabella wasn’t in the compound. She set a trap. We’re fighting our way to the surface now."

"You need to move faster," Sofia’s voice cut in, cold and authoritative. "Katarina’s assault team is taking heavy casualties. Isabella’s garrison has deployed automated heavy machine-gun turrets on the roof, and they have a secondary PMC quick-reaction force moving up the mountain road. If you don’t extract in the next five minutes, you will be trapped inside the perimeter."

"Understood," I said. "Where is the extraction point?"

"North courtyard," Claire said rapidly. "Katarina blew a hole in the outer wall with an RPG. Her armored G-Wagon is waiting right outside the breach. But the courtyard is a kill box, Jake. Isabella’s men have it locked down from the second-floor balconies."

"We’ll clear a path," I promised.

I cut the comms. I looked at Darius. He was bleeding from a shrapnel cut above his left eye, his suit was ruined, and he was down to his last two magazines. He looked like a man who was just getting warmed up.

"North courtyard," I said. "We have to push through the main atrium."

We moved fast, abandoning stealth for pure, aggressive momentum. We didn’t have Oracle to predict the enemy patrols, but the chaos of Katarina’s assault had thrown Isabella’s garrison into disarray. We encountered two small squads of mercenaries in the corridors, but they were looking outward, expecting a breach from the snow, not an attack from their own basement.

We dropped them before they could even raise their rifles, moving over their bodies without breaking stride.

We reached the heavy double doors leading into the main atrium.

I kicked the doors open.

The atrium was massive, a sprawling, multi-level space with a glass ceiling that had been completely shattered by Katarina’s artillery. Snow was falling through the ruined skylight, mixing with the thick gray smoke of the battle.

At the far end of the atrium were the massive glass doors leading out to the north courtyard.

But standing between us and the exit were a dozen of Isabella’s elite PMCs, using overturned marble tables and decorative pillars for cover. They were laying down a withering barrage of fire into the courtyard, keeping Katarina’s extraction vehicle pinned down.

"They have the high ground on the balconies," Darius noted, ducking back behind the doorframe as a hail of bullets chewed through the drywall next to his head. "If we run across the open floor, they will cut us to pieces."

"Then we don’t run across the floor," I said, my eyes scanning the ruined atrium.

I looked up. A massive, ornate crystal chandelier hung from the center of the ceiling, suspended by a thick steel cable. It was positioned directly over the primary cluster of mercenaries using the marble tables for cover.

"Darius," I said, pointing up at the ceiling. "Can you hit that cable?"

Darius looked up, his eyes narrowing as he calculated the angle, the distance, and the wind whipping through the shattered skylight.

"I have one armor-piercing round left in this magazine," Darius rumbled. "It will be enough."

"Do it on my mark," I said, pulling the last flashbang from my tactical vest. "I’ll draw their fire. When they look at me, you drop the sky on them."

I didn’t wait for him to argue. I pulled the pin on the flashbang, took a deep breath, and dove out from behind the doorframe, sliding across the polished marble floor of the atrium.

"Contact rear!" one of the mercenaries screamed, spinning away from the courtyard doors and raising his rifle toward me.

I hurled the flashbang directly at his feet and rolled behind a shattered stone pillar just as the entire PMC squad opened fire on my position. Bullets chipped away at the stone, showering me in razor-sharp fragments.

BOOM.

The flashbang detonated, blinding the mercenaries on the ground floor.

"Mark!" I roared.

Darius stepped out from cover, raised his MP5, and fired a single, perfect shot.

The armor-piercing round struck the heavy steel cable suspending the chandelier. The cable snapped with a sound like a cracking whip.

Two tons of crystal, steel, and wiring plummeted from the ceiling.

It crashed directly into the center of the mercenary formation with a catastrophic, deafening explosion of shattered glass and crushing weight. The marble tables were pulverized. The mercenaries beneath it were instantly crushed, their screams silenced under the avalanche of crystal.

The remaining guards on the second-floor balconies froze in sheer shock, staring down at the ruined center of the atrium.

"Move!" I yelled, breaking from cover and sprinting across the open floor.

Darius was right beside me, laying down suppressing fire at the balconies, forcing the surviving snipers to duck behind the railings.

We hit the massive glass doors leading to the north courtyard, shattering the remaining panes with our shoulders, and burst out into the freezing Swiss night.

The courtyard was a nightmare of blood, snow, and fire.

Katarina Volkov’s mercenaries were fighting a desperate, losing battle against Isabella’s superior numbers. The snow was stained dark red, littered with the bodies of men in white winter gear and black tactical armor.

At the far end of the courtyard, a massive hole had been blown through the outer stone wall. Idling just outside the breach was a heavily armored, matte-black G-Wagon. The passenger door was thrown open, and Katarina herself was standing behind the door, firing an assault rifle into the courtyard to provide cover.

"Get to the truck!" Katarina screamed over the roar of the gunfire, her blonde hair whipping wildly in the wind.

We sprinted across the blood-stained snow.

Bullets whipped past us like angry hornets. I could hear the supersonic cracks snapping inches from my ears. We were completely exposed, running a fifty-yard dash through a fatal kill box.

We were ten yards from the breach when my luck finally ran out.

It didn’t feel like a punch. It felt like a white-hot iron rod had been driven directly through my side.

The high-caliber sniper round tore through the gap in my tactical vest, punching through the flesh just above my right hip and exiting out my back. The sheer kinetic force of the impact spun me around, knocking my legs out from under me.

I hit the freezing snow hard, the breath exploding from my lungs in a ragged gasp.

"Jake!" Darius roared.

The massive bodyguard didn’t run for the truck. He stopped, turned around in the middle of the open courtyard, and stepped in front of me, using his own massive, armored body as a human shield. Bullets sparked and thudded against his Kevlar vest, but he didn’t flinch. He raised his rifle and fired back at the balconies with terrifying, mechanical precision.

[Ding!]

[Critical Injury Detected.]

[Massive Blood Loss Imminent.]

[Pain Suppression: Maximum Output Engaged.]

The agonizing, blinding pain in my side suddenly dulled to a cold, distant throb. The System couldn’t heal the wound—Oracle was gone, and the regenerative protocols were offline—but it could shut off the pain receptors long enough for me to move.

I gritted my teeth, tasting copper in my mouth, and forced myself up onto one knee.

"I’m up!" I growled, grabbing my rifle and using it as a crutch to haul myself to my feet.

Darius grabbed me by the harness of my tactical vest, practically lifting me off the ground, and dragged me the last ten yards through the breach in the wall.

We collapsed into the back seat of the armored G-Wagon just as a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into the stone wall behind us, showering the vehicle in debris.

Katarina dove into the driver’s seat, slamming the door shut and hitting the accelerator before she even had the vehicle in gear. The heavy tires spun in the snow, gripping the asphalt, and the G-Wagon launched forward, tearing down the winding mountain road away from the burning fortress.

I slumped back against the leather seat, pressing my hand hard against the bleeding wound in my side. The blood was hot, soaking through my sweater and staining my fingers dark crimson.

Darius sat beside me, breathing heavily, his eyes scanning the dark tree line for pursuit.

Katarina looked at me through the rearview mirror, her icy eyes wide with adrenaline and a fierce, terrifying respect.

"You look like hell, Mr. Hart," Katarina laughed, a breathless, manic sound. "Did you get what you came for?"

I looked down at my blood-stained hands. I thought about the burning vault, the destroyed ledgers, and the voice of Isabella Vane echoing down the elevator shaft, promising a war that would never end.

"I burned her ledgers," I said, my voice raspy and weak. "But she wasn’t in the mountain."

Katarina’s smile vanished. "She survived?"

"She survived," I confirmed, leaning my head back against the seat and closing my eyes as the exhaustion finally began to drag me under. "And now, she has nothing left to lose."

The blood price had been paid. We had crippled the Queen of Europe.

But the war was far from over.