My Scumbag System Chapter 543: Sloppy Toppy and the Spear of Judgment

Natalia noticed me first. Her purple eyes locked onto mine with the intensity of a targeting laser, tracked down to my ribs, assessed the damage, calculated recovery percentages, and arrived at a verdict that apparently satisfied her because some of the tension left her shoulders. She didn’t smile. Natalia Kuzmina did not smile before fights. She compressed all available warmth into a singularity behind her sternum and used it as fuel.

But her hand twitched. Toward me. Just for a second.

Skylar noticed me second, which was unusual because Skylar noticed everything first. She pushed off the wall with that boneless feline grace that made her look like she was made of liquid shadow and walked toward us without hurrying. Her violet eyes moved between me and Isabelle, processed the tactical implications of our partnership, and apparently found them amusing.

"Well, well." Skylar stopped three feet away. "The Stray Dog and the Abdicated Queen versus the Ice Queen and the Phantom Blade." She cocked her head. The motion made her pink highlights catch the light. "This sounds like a pay-per-view event."

"It literally is," I said. "Twenty million viewers and counting."

"Mhm." Skylar stepped closer. Close enough that I could smell clove cigarettes and whatever expensive thing she put in her hair. Close enough that Natalia’s temperature signature spiked on the edge of my Thermal Vision. Skylar tilted her chin up and looked at me through her lashes with an expression that belonged in a bedroom at two in the morning, not a combat staging area forty minutes before a nationally televised fight.

"You know," she said, keeping her voice just low enough that Isabelle would have to strain to hear, "if you let us win, I’ll give you that sloppy toppy tonight."

My brain short-circuited for approximately 0.3 seconds.

"That’s bribery."

"That’s incentive." She ran her tongue across her lower lip. Slowly. With the deliberate pacing of someone who knew exactly what she was doing to my cardiovascular system. "And it’s not just me. Natalia’s already on board."

I looked past Skylar to where Natalia stood. My girlfriend, my Rank Ten Covenant, my first and most dangerous conquest, met my gaze and gave me the smallest nod. A confirmation. A promise. The kind of silent communication that only worked between people who had mapped every inch of each other’s bodies and psychological vulnerabilities.

Natalia’s mouth curled at one corner. Not quite a smile. More like the beginning of one that she refused to let form because she knew I’d find it devastating. Which I did.

"Both of us," Skylar continued, her fingers walking up the center of my chest, each point of contact sending the Nectar of Devotion humming through my skin. "At the same time. Your room. After the broadcast crews pack up." She tapped my sternum once, hard enough to feel through the combat suit. "All you have to do is throw the match."

A threesome.

With Natalia and Skylar.

In the same room. Together. Competing to outdo each other.

My imagination produced a high-definition preview reel that included Natalia’s possessive grip and Skylar’s infuriating grin and the sounds they both made when they stopped pretending they weren’t desperate for more and the way their bodies would look tangled together with mine in the dark. Natalia’s ice-cold hands and Skylar’s warm mouth and the Nectar amplifying everything until rational thought became a luxury none of us could afford.

There is a reason my weakness is beautiful women. The System knew it. Apollo knew it. Aphrodite had built an entire divine quest line around it. Every single person in my life knew that the fastest way to compromise Satori Nakano’s tactical judgment was to put him in a room with someone who smelled good and had dangerous eyes.

And now there were two of them making me the same offer at the same time.

The temptation was real. Not the hypothetical, philosophical kind of temptation that people talked about in ethics courses. The visceral, blood-pumping, pants-tightening kind that made my pulse hammer against the inside of my wrists. I could already feel it. The way Skylar would look at me from beneath her lashes while Natalia grabbed my jaw and turned my face toward her instead. The silent war they’d wage over who got to be on top. The moment, inevitable, where one of them would break composure first and the other would make her pay for it.

My brain said yes.

My body screamed yes.

Every molecule of Nectar in my system lit up like a switchboard at the mere possibility.

But Isabelle stood four feet behind me. I could feel her gaze on the back of my skull like a sniper’s dot.

Isabelle Okoye. The Abdicated Queen. S-Rank potential. Fujin’s chosen vessel. A woman who had rejected the most prestigious guilds in the country because she found them morally repulsive. A woman who had watched me build this entire operation from scratch, who had seen every manipulation and lie and calculated seduction, who had walked beside me into a Gate and trusted me with her life.

If I threw this match for a threesome, Isabelle would beat my ass.

Not metaphorically. Not emotionally. She would literally take that spear and introduce it to parts of my anatomy that I needed for the exact activities Skylar was currently proposing. Isabelle had standards. She had principles. She was one of exactly three people in this entire academy whose respect I could not buy, bribe, or seduce, and she’d chosen to partner with me because she believed I deserved it.

Throwing a match to get laid would vaporize that respect instantly.

And worse, it would prove every single thing the Sentinels said about us true. That the Onyx Hounds were rejects who didn’t take anything seriously. That our Number One ranking was a fluke built on hype and social media tricks. That Satori Nakano, the Stray Dog, was exactly what Julian Valerius always claimed he was: a nobody playing dress-up.

I leaned down until my mouth was level with Skylar’s ear.

"Best offer I’ve gotten all week," I murmured.

She made a sound. Low and pleased.

"But I’m going to have to pass."

The pleased sound died.

"Because Isabelle would literally murder me. Like, physically. With a spear. In the arena. On camera."