My Scumbag System Chapter 707: The Spider’s Test

"I can’t." His voice was very small. "The sensor array maxed out. It just says ERROR and then a skull emoji, which I did not program into the firmware."

"Helpful."

"I’m sorry."

"Don’t be sorry. Be somewhere else." I stepped off the B-Rank’s chest and walked toward the thing filling my intersection. "All of you. Fall back to secondary positions. Nat, hold the barriers from maximum range. Skylar, you too. Soomin, Emi, Jacob, south. Now."

"No," Natalia said.

"Nat."

"I said no." Her voice was iron. "I can see the energy signature from here and it’s reading A-Rank High. You are not fighting that alone."

"I’m not fighting it alone. I have a bat and no self-preservation instinct. That’s basically a tag team."

The creature took a step. The ground flexed under its weight. A fire hydrant burst somewhere to the left, spraying water in an arc that caught the dawn light and turned gold.

"Soomin," I said. "Tell the Fox I have a job for her."

The comm went silent for two heartbeats. Then the Fox’s voice came through, and it was the voice of something that had spent centuries craving a worthy fight.

"Tell me."

"The left flank. When I commit forward, it’s going to swing with its right arm. That’s the stronger arm. The range is too long for me to dodge and absorb simultaneously. I need you to redirect the swing. Claws on the wrist. Pull it wide. Three seconds is all I need."

"Three seconds." The Fox purred. "I can give you five."

"Skylar. When the Fox moves, the smoke goes into its face. Every layer. Blind it."

"Love it when you talk dirty."

"Akari. Chains on the ankles. Don’t try to hold it. Just trip it. One second of instability."

"Darling, for you? Two seconds and a curtsy."

"Emi."

"Here."

"Keep everyone alive."

"That’s literally my entire personality."

I took another step. Then another. The creature tracked me with those old, old eyes. Up close I could see that the bone spurs on its shoulders were carved. Symbols. Running in spirals from base to tip. The same symbols I’d seen on the walls in the integration chamber, the same script the entity used when it wanted to write something permanent.

Someone had made this thing. Built it with deliberate, methodical precision. Put those markings on its bones—carved with purpose, with meaning—and then placed it behind a Gate with the patience of a spider spinning a web. And then they’d waited. Waited for me to arrive. Waited for me to recognize what it was. Waited to see what I would do when confronted with something that shouldn’t exist.

This was the test.

The thought arrived without emotion, without panic, just raw data slotting into place. This was the answer to the unknown number’s message. This was what someone had deliberately placed beneath a daycare center, in a neighborhood where families lived and children played. Not to kill those children. To kill me. Or, more accurately, to see if I could kill it. To see if I was ready for what came next. To see if the System’s chosen candidate could handle the real game.

The creature raised its right arm. The movement was slow, deliberate. A guillotine beginning its descent.

I activated Steel Body. The transformation was instantaneous—my skin went diamond-hard, every cell in my body temporarily transmuted into something that physics had to negotiate with instead of commanding. For ten blessed seconds, the world couldn’t touch me. For ten seconds, I was invincible. Ten seconds was an eternity in a fight. Ten seconds was all I needed.

I sprinted forward into the gap between its massive legs, the bat cocked back and angled low, the Ring on my finger screaming with accumulated heat. Behind me I felt the Fox explode off the community center roof in a blur of white fire and ghostly tails that trailed like comet tails across my peripheral vision, felt Skylar’s smoke surge forward in a tidal wave of phantom darkness that would swallow the creature’s vision, felt Akari’s chains sing through the air like golden harp strings plucked by divine fingers, aimed with mathematical precision at ankles thick as oil drums.

Everything we’d drilled in the warehouse. Everything Natalia had designed on her tablet during our late-night planning sessions, sketched out with the same ruthless efficiency she applied to everything in her life now. Every piece of the formation working exactly the way it was supposed to work, built to hold a line and break a charge and create a single, perfect window for one person to get close enough to do real damage.

Everything converging on three seconds of opportunity.

I reached the creature’s right leg and swung.

Spatial Cleave went through the knee joint at the exact moment Akari’s chains bit into the ankle and the Fox’s claws sank into the wrist of the descending arm. The creature’s weight shifted. Its right leg buckled. The arm swing went wide by four feet, exactly where Soomin’s Fox had pulled it.

I planted my feet and drove the bat upward into the underside of its pelvis with everything I had. Thirty-one percent Strength bonus from the wolf swarm. Rockstar Made’s permanent growth from the B-Rank. My hidden baseline of 7,750 pushing against the ceiling of what Level 3 allowed. Ember ignited at the point of contact and Spatial Cleave layered on top of it, splitting flesh and bone while fire poured into the gap.

The creature staggered.

Steel Body expired. I felt the vulnerability flood back into my skin like cold water. The creature’s tail, which I had not accounted for because it had been hidden behind its body, whipped around and caught me across the ribs with the force of a speeding truck.

I flew.

The last thing I registered before hitting Natalia’s ice wall was the sound the creature made when it realized its right leg was no longer functional. It was the same sound the entity had made in the void when I’d chosen the third path, that same low vibration of surprise from something ancient encountering something new.

The ice caught me. Cracked but held. I slid down the frozen surface and landed on all fours in the gutter, ribs singing their familiar song of protest. The regenerator brace hummed. Rockstar Made flagged the hit as life-threatening and another five percent stacked onto my permanent growth, which meant the tail strike had been strong enough to kill most A-Ranks outright.

The creature turned toward me on one good leg.

"Oh, good," I said, spitting blood onto someone’s driveway. "You’re pissed off now."

From the roof, Emi’s voice cut through every comm simultaneously. "Cortisol dropping again."

"Told you."

I stood up.