My Scumbag System Chapter 685: A Proposition Between Predators

I grinned and pushed through the doors.

Braxton’s training chamber was a wide open space of reinforced concrete and hanging equipment, scarred with the marks of a hundred failed exercises. He was standing in the center of it, unlit synth-cigarette dangling from his lips, watching me with those tired eyes that saw way too much. He looked like a man who’d been up for three days straight and had stopped caring about it around hour thirty.

"You’re back," he said.

"Miss me?"

"Like a hole in my head." He flicked the cigarette between his fingers. "You disappeared for three days. No word. No explanation. The VHC’s been sniffing around asking questions I don’t have answers to, which means I’ve been lying to some very dangerous people to cover for a student I’m not even sure I like."

"You like me."

"I tolerate you. There’s a difference." He walked a slow circle around me, studying me the way he’d studied me before, cataloging. But this time something in his expression sharpened. "Huh."

"What?"

"You’re different."

"Everyone keeps saying that."

"Because it’s true." He stopped in front of me, close enough that I could see the scar tissue at the corner of his eye, the old wounds of a man who’d survived things that killed better Hunters. "The last time you stood in this room, you moved like someone hiding what they were. Careful. Restrained. Like a guy walking through a museum trying not to knock anything over. Now you move like the whole building belongs to you and everyone in it should be grateful you haven’t torn it down yet."

Damn.

Braxton didn’t miss much. That was the problem with a survivor. They’d learned to read the signs of dangerous things because reading those signs was the only reason they were still breathing. Every scar he wore was a lesson in what happened to Hunters who ignored the small tells, the shifts in posture, the way prey stopped acting like prey. He’d built his whole life around noticing what other people missed, and that instinct didn’t switch off just because the thing in front of him wore a student’s uniform.

"That’s a lot to get from watching me walk twenty feet," I said.

"I’ve been doing this a long time, kid. I’ve seen a lot of Hunters come through those doors. Most of them are exactly what they appear to be. Loud, scared, hungry, or stupid. Usually some combination of all four." He put the cigarette back between his lips, letting it dangle there unlit like it always did. "And then, once in a while, somebody walks in wearing a mask so good it takes me weeks to see through it. You wore yours real well. Better than most. Better than kids twice your age with twice your reasons to lie."

"Wore. Past tense."

"Yeah." His eyes narrowed, the lazy half-lidded look sharpening into something that had nothing lazy about it at all. "Whatever you did the last three days, you stopped bothering to hide as hard. Which either means you got sloppy, which I doubt, because sloppy people don’t survive Black Gates and come back looking like they got a good night’s sleep. Or you got so strong you stopped caring whether people noticed." He blew out a long breath he wasn’t smoking, the way a man exhales cigarette smoke out of pure muscle memory. "I’m betting on the second one. And that scares the hell out of me. Because I know what people who stop caring turn into."

The chamber was quiet. Just the low hum of the wards buried in the walls, the faint electric thrum of containment protocols that never fully switched off, and the distant hiss of the ventilation cycling stale air through the training levels below us.

I could’ve lied. I was good at lying. It was the one skill I’d carried across two lives, honed to a razor’s edge in both. The King of the Glass House title had made me even better, sanding down the little tells that used to give me away, and Devil’s Advocate wrapped every falsehood in a warmth that made people lean in and to believe them, that turned deception into something that felt like comfort. I could’ve spun Braxton a neat little story about accelerated development and Black Gate exposure and residual energy saturation, dressed it up in enough half-truths to pass, and let him nod along the way everyone else had.

But Braxton wasn’t everyone else.

Braxton was A-Rank. A survivor. A man who’d looked at the corpse pile that was the Onyx Hounds and seen something worth building anyway. He’d covered for me with the VHC. He’d thrown me at monsters and pulled me out of the fire and threatened to send me to Dr. Death for the crime of pissing him off, and underneath all the exhaustion and the whiskey and the not-quite-caring, he’d been on my side.

Some part of me, the part that was still Satori Nakano, the part that had spent eighteen years desperate for a father figure who wouldn’t leave, wanted to tell him the truth.

The part that was Kaelen knew better.

The truth was a weapon. You didn’t hand your weapons to anyone. Not even people you trusted. Especially not people you trusted, because those were the ones who could hurt you worst if it came to that.

"You’re right," I said. "I got stronger. A lot stronger. And I stopped hiding it as hard because I’m tired of pretending to be less than I am."

Braxton studied me. Waiting for more.

"That’s it," I said. "That’s the whole answer you’re getting."

"Uh-huh." He didn’t push. That was the thing about Braxton. He knew when a door was locked, and he didn’t waste energy banging on it. "You know what the VHC does to Hunters who develop too fast?"

"They study them."

"They study them." He nodded. "And then, when they can’t figure out how the study works, when the numbers don’t add up and the growth doesn’t match the models, they get nervous. And nervous people with power do stupid, dangerous things." He held my gaze. "You’ve got maybe six months before somebody up top decides you’re a problem that needs solving. Less, if you keep pulling stunts like the tournament. You need to be ready for that."

"I’m working on it."

"Work faster." He turned away, walking toward the equipment rack along the wall. "That’s why I called you here. Not for a heart-to-heart. I don’t do those. I’ve got a proposition."