My Scumbag System Chapter 536: The Stray Dog Steps Into the Light

Nel hovered somewhere in the back of my consciousness like a cat watching a bird from a window, mercifully quiet through most of it. She surfaced once, briefly, to tell me that Nike’s satisfaction levels were running high and that the divine betting pools had shifted significantly in my favour since I’d announced the Cabana choice. Then she retreated. Even the gods knew when to let a man think.

Maki was conspicuously absent, which meant she was either sulking somewhere because I’d refused her request to ride to the finals on my shoulder in cat form, or she’d found someone to terrorise in the stands. Fifty-fifty odds either way.

At the sixty-minute mark, Braxton appeared in the doorway. He looked at the tactical display on Natalia’s phone, at the diagram Isabelle had drawn on the back of a tournament bracket, at the ring of women arranged around me with expressions ranging from focused to ferocious.

He looked at me.

"Don’t lose," he said.

Then he left.

Emotionally complex mentorship, right there.

The tunnel to the arena was longer the second time.

Not physically longer. But there was a quality to the walk that hadn’t been there before, something pressing down on my shoulders or expanding in my chest, a weight that had nothing to do with gravity and everything to do with what waited at the end of it. The crowd noise was already building somewhere above us, filtering down through layers of stone and steel and reinforced concrete, a distant roar that grew louder with every step forward. My Tori-Sense prickled constantly at the edges of my perception because twenty thousand people represented a of moving bodies generating a of unpredictable kinetic energy, and my ability didn’t know the difference between a thrown punch and a thrown commemorative foam finger.

It was registering everything as a potential threat, which meant my brain was fielding a constant low-level alarm that I had to consciously suppress.

Isabelle walked beside me, her posture perfect, her expression serene. Her footsteps were completely silent on the concrete, which was just showing off at this point.

"Ready?" she said, her voice quiet enough that it wouldn’t echo.

"No."

"Good." Approval, packed into a single word. "Overconfidence is the leading cause of preventable deaths among prodigies."

"What’s the leading cause among former guild leaders who abdicated their throne to hang out with the reject pile?"

She glanced at me, and for just a fraction of a second something that might have been amusement flickered in those deep red eyes. "Excellent taste in company," she said, and there was something in her voice that might have been warmth if it weren’t so carefully held back. "I made my choice with full knowledge of its consequences. I assessed the variables, calculated the cost, and acted accordingly. I’m exactly where I chose to be."

"Philosophical."

"Accurate," she corrected, and her tone suggested there was a meaningful difference between the two.

The light changed ahead. The tunnel mouth was bright with afternoon sun pouring in, and through it I could hear the crowd properly now, not muffled and filtered but raw and immediate. Maximus Hype’s amplified voice was already working the stands, building energy, laying out the narrative.

"The FINAL match of today’s team events, ladies and gentlemen, the UNPRECEDENTED third finalist situation that nobody saw coming, two teams that EARNED their way here through blood and ice and spite—"

Isabelle slowed slightly at my side. "How did you want to play the entrance?"

"Like I owned the place."

"You didn’t own the place."

"The crowd didn’t know that."

Her lips pressed together. Not quite a smile. Something adjacent. "Walk in front," she said. "I’ll follow three steps back. Let them see you clearly before they see us as a unit."

I stepped into the light.

The sound hit first, a wall of noise that was more physical pressure than anything else at that volume, twenty thousand people recognising something they’d been waiting for all afternoon. My name came back at me from a thousand different directions, different cadences, different pitches. from the upper sections. from the eastern stands where the more formal crowd sat. Unintelligible screaming from everywhere else.

I walked toward the platform without hurrying.

Reyna was already there.

She’d changed her jacket, the crimson combat suit freshly adjusted by a team that had clearly spent the intermission doing touch-ups. Her hair was back in a tight braid rather than loose, which meant she was thinking about close-range possibility. Smart. Her emerald eyes found me the moment I cleared the tunnel entrance, and she did the thing where she looked at me the way a problem solver looked at an interesting problem—like the issue wasn’t whether to engage but how.

Kira stood two steps behind her and to the right. Paler than before, moving slightly too carefully, which meant the concussion protocols were doing work. Reyna was going to carry this fight.

Isabelle materialised at my shoulder with that specific silence that made people in her vicinity feel vaguely haunted.

Maximus Hype was describing our combined record. I tuned it out.

Reyna said something to Kira, low and in Spanish. Kira nodded once.

Then Reyna looked back at me and did something I didn’t expect. She grinned. Not the sharp, predatory grin of someone preparing to dismantle me, but a real one, honest and a little reckless. The kind of grin that said this was the fight she’d been waiting for since the Crucible and she was genuinely glad to be standing in it.

Something about it punched through my careful read of her and landed as something almost like respect.

Almost.

Professor Hanae walked to the centre of the platform. The crowd quieted with impressive speed, the silence falling over twenty thousand people like a collective held breath.

"Standard rules apply," she said, her small voice somehow carrying to every corner of the arena. "Non-lethal force. No Aspect attacks targeting the head or spine. Match concludes when both members of one team are incapacitated or yield." She paused. "Try to leave the platform structurally intact. The repair budget for this year is already significantly exceeded."

She stepped back.

The arena held its breath.

Reyna shifted her weight to the balls of her feet.

I tightened my grip on the bat.

Isabelle’s spear ignited at the tip with green wind energy, the sound of it a high, clean note cutting through the silence.

Hanae raised her hand.

In my ear, through the bone-conduction piece Natalia had insisted I wear, I caught the faintest sound of five women leaning forward in their seats. One sharp breath. The creak of a railing being gripped.

Hanae’s hand dropped.