CHAPTER 176: MAXIMILIAN’S RAGE

His chest heaved as if he’d just finished running a marathon. His face was beet red. His tailored white suit was clinging to his sweaty skin like a straightjacket.

"That’s better than our record! And we spent billions on ads! BILLIONS!!!" he shrieked, pacing like a lunatic in front of a frozen holographic projection displaying the metrics of the latest viral phenomenon.

The video:

[Taming a Sexy Boss Monster]

Uploader: Valhalla’s Sinners

Views: 342,781,139

Engagement: Off the charts

Income: ...don’t even ask

Maximilian clenched his teeth so hard that it sounded like some bones were cracking.

He could already see the numbers...

Based on his analytics department’s rough—but terrifyingly accurate—calculations, that upstart channel had pulled in at least 400,000 USD in raw, unfiltered profit in just twelve hours.

And that’s what made it so utterly infuriating.

There was no ad spend.

No algorithm boost.

No agency deals.

No celebrity cameos.

No big-name pornstars.

No press tours.

Just a catgirl in heat and a cocky bastard with a camera.

Worse still? There was no company infrastructure behind them.

No shareholders to split profits with.

No stakeholders demanding quarterly reports.

No board meetings, no compliance teams, no legal departments choking ideas before they breathed.

No actors to pay, no editors to credit, no producers to manage the logistics.

Hell, they didn’t even have a video editing department.

From the looks of it, they probably cut and stitched the footage themselves while laughing their asses off.

Not even equipment costs! That was the biggest slap in the face. They were running around in bottom-of-the-barrel, common-rarity gear, like a bunch of goddamn poverty-tier dungeon runners. Their armor was the kind he wouldn’t let his janitors wear.

Maximilian could buy their entire combined arsenal—every piece of scrap metal—in a blink. Hell, he could buy it ten times over just from the resale value of one of his limited edition bathrobes.

But it didn’t matter.

Because they didn’t need gear to win.

They had eyeballs.

They had hype.

They had that filthy, electric, viral magic that no corporate strategist could replicate.

And worst of all?

That "nobody" was now somebody.

A very, very rich somebody.

And Maximilian had a front-row seat to his own empire being threatened by a man who didn’t owe a single soul a damn thing.

It made his blood boil in places he didn’t know blood could reach.

"That rat-dicked little parasite is making half a million dollars by raw-dogging a cat monster and calling it content?!"

Maximilian’s voice cracked with disbelief. His hand trembled around the stem of a thousand-dollar crystal wine glass until it shattered in his grip, blood mixing instantly with the spilled vintage. Shards lodged into his palm, but he didn’t even flinch.

His breath hitched. Then came the scream.

He lunged for the bottle rack and ripped off a long-necked reserve, the label hand-painted by an artisan monk from the Mist Peaks. Worth twenty grand, minimum.

With a choked snarl, he smashed it against the wall so hard the neck embedded into the plaster.

Not enough.

He grabbed another. And another. Bottles rained like bombs across the office. Ruby-red liquid and green shards pooled across the imported marble, painting it like a war zone.

And Maximilian?

Sweating. Bleeding. Screaming.

"Do you know how much we spent to break that record?!" he shrieked at the ceiling like it owed him answers. "Two billion dollars! In ad campaigns, influencer contracts, AI-curated tags, geo-targeted smut marketing! We built a fucking empire to reach those numbers!"

"And that little punk, that nobody with dick cheese and the budget that couldn’t buy him a used condom is pulling half a mil?! He just walks in with a few whores, a cat bitch, and a disgusting boner and gets 340 million views in twelve hours?!"

He kicked over a marble end table. His foot hit it wrong, leading to the toe of his foot cracking sideways. He barely noticed.

Blood dripped from his ruined hand. His hair was wild, stuck to his forehead. His chest heaved with labored, primal gasps.

Behind him, standing silently like a statue sculpted by a vengeful god, was none other than Alexandra.

The woman who’d, much to her greatest sorrow, quickly found herself so successful in the awakened porn industry she was becoming ChronosX’s "leading actress."

His live-in mistress.

His personal pet.

... And his greatest captive. Nyx’s friend, with whom the pink-haired woman nearly shared this cruel fate.

Her icy features betrayed nothing. She appeared stoic, detached, the perfect picture of calm professionalism.

But beneath that mask?

Oh, she was grinning.

Grinning like a wolf watching its hunter bleed out from a trap of his own making.

’Rat-dicked?’ she mused inwardly, voice silken and wild. ’Is he talking about the guy with the fucking nine-incher I caught multiple of my ’colleagues’ admiring in the bathroom stalls?’

She had to bite her cheek to keep from smiling.

’And cuck? Kaiden Grey? Really? Is he referring to the same Kaiden who fucks Nyx—his little crush—like he owns her? The one who’s made that slutty goddess with that horribly sinful body scream his name in surround sound, calling him her ’one and only Master’?*

She wanted to laugh. Right now. Loud and mad.

Instead, she kept still. Kept quiet. Watched the rage spiral with glowing, vindictive delight.

’Squirm, you bloated toad. Squirm and foam and burn. This is what it looks like when you lose control. And now that I’m not on the receiving side... It’s fucking delicious.’

She lived for these moments. It made every humiliating scene she had to film for this pig feel worth it.

Maximilian stormed toward the glass desk, smashing his fist against the digital interface.

"This can’t be happening! I’ve crushed rivals for less. Who is that nobody?! Where the hell did he come from?!"

He started pacing again, snarling under his breath.

"I’ll bury that little cockroach. I’ll drown his channel in copyright claims. Porn ban notices. Fucking plagiarism lawsuits if I have to!"

He spat the words like venom, storming back toward his desk with trembling fists. His fingers hovered over his holoscreen interface, ready to pull every corporate string at his disposal.

But then... he paused.

His hand froze mid-air.

A cold breath hitched in his throat.

"...Shit."

A flicker of realization hit his brain.

The Awakened Media Platform wasn’t under any one nation’s jurisdiction. It wasn’t beholden to his legal team, his shell companies, or even the highest government agencies he funneled money into.

None of the governments had that power. No one could touch an Awakened Creator’s content.

He couldn’t delete Kaiden’s channel.

He couldn’t copyright strike it.

He couldn’t even throttle the algorithm—it wasn’t human-run.

"F-Fuck!" he hissed, eyes wide, jaw twitching.

All he could do was watch. Powerless. Watching that glorified amateur and his budget-harem rake in power, attention, money, and fans like a goddamn natural disaster while he, Maximilian, Mastermind of ChronosX, sat there choking on his own billion-dollar wine fumes.

His face turned red. Then purple.

Then he corrected himself with a seethe so bitter it could sour steel.

"Fine. Fine. I can’t touch him there... but I don’t need to."

He leaned over the desk, glaring into the holoscreen as if Kaiden himself were on the other side.

"I’ll use my connections to ruin his life outside the platform. I’ll crush his housing license. I’ll strangle his mana permits. I’ll drag his ass through the dirt until the whole world sees him for what he is, a broke, talentless, monster-fucking fraud. A shit-eating pimp."

The veins on his neck pulsed like they were about to burst.

He didn’t care if it sounded insane. Hell, he was insane.

Because Kaiden was untouchable in there.

But out here?

Out in the real world?

He was still just another citizen.

And Maximilian was a god.

With very long arms.

His tirade was reaching its peak just as the doors to his office slammed open with a metallic clang.

His assistant, pale-faced and panting, ran in, holding a trembling tablet in his hand.

"Sir! Bad news!"