My Scumbag System Chapter 718: A Mortal Who Can Kill a Titan

The king of the gods sat on the throne at the chamber’s apex. His beard had gone white three eons ago and stayed that way because Zeus had decided white conveyed authority better than the original black. His eyes contained storms. Actual storms. Lightning flickered behind his irises when he blinked. He wore a suit. Always a suit. Zeus had adopted mortal formal wear approximately forty years ago after attending a VHC gala in disguise and deciding that double-breasted Italian tailoring represented the apex of aesthetic achievement across all dimensions.

The chamber fell silent.

Apollo measured his words. Speaking to Zeus required understanding that the king of the gods processed information through three simultaneous filters: strategic utility, personal entertainment, and whether the speaker’s argument threatened his authority. The trick was satisfying all three.

"I believe the boy is the best candidate we have produced in fifty thousand years of running this program." Apollo kept his voice level. "His integration stats surpass every previous attempt by a factor of three. His combat growth rate exceeds our projections. His social infrastructure, the network of bonded individuals he has constructed around himself, provides a force multiplication effect that our models cannot fully account for."

"The women." Aphrodite sat up on her couch, her hair settling into a deep burgundy that indicated she had stopped being amused and started paying attention. "You mean the women."

"I mean the Ensemble." Apollo pulled up a holographic display that materialized in the center of the amphitheater. Six profiles arranged in a constellation around a central node that pulsed with familiar golden light. "Natalia Kuzmina. Rank Ten Covenant. Telekinetic with A-Rank ceiling and soul-bonded permanence. Emi Aoyama. Rank Ten Covenant. Support healer with the highest sustained output of any first-year student in three decades. Skylar Amane. Rank Ten Covenant. Illusionist and infiltration specialist. Celeste Vance. Rank Ten Covenant. S-Rank potential cryokinetic and direct connection to the VHC President. Akari Miyamoto. Rank Ten Covenant. Chain manipulator and intelligence asset. Reyna Cabana. Recent addition. A-Rank combat specialist and sister to the CEO of Olympus Rising."

The profiles rotated slowly, each woman’s face illuminated in golden light.

"Six women. All soul-bonded at maximum rank. Each provides Schema Point generation, tactical capability, and emotional stability to the central node. Together they create a support structure that allows the subject to recover from injuries that should kill him, process information faster than his nervous system should permit, and maintain psychological coherence during encounters with entities that have driven S-Rank Hunters insane."

"You built him a harem." Artemis’ voice could have frozen magma.

"I built him a court." Apollo smiled. "Every king needs one."

"The boy is not a king." Hera spoke from her throne beside Zeus with the cold authority of someone whose opinion outranked the room’s combined IQ. The queen of the gods wore her displeasure like jewelry. Her dark hair was pinned with clips made from solidified time, and her eyes held the particular fury reserved for husbands who agreed with other women’s sons about anything. "He is a mortal child playing with power he does not understand, surrounded by girls he manipulates through biochemical coercion."

"The Nectar of Devotion was evolved specifically to eliminate coercion." Aphrodite’s voice sharpened. She stood from her couch for the first time, and the chamber noticed. Aphrodite standing meant Aphrodite had stopped playing. "I oversaw the upgrade personally. The current formula amplifies genuine emotion. It does not manufacture it. Every woman in that Ensemble chose him with full knowledge of what he is and what he has done."

"They chose a boy who lied to them for months." Hera’s gaze did not waver.

"He told them the truth. He sat in a room and showed them the System. He explained the bonds. He revealed the Nectar. And they stayed." Aphrodite’s hair had gone platinum white, the color she wore when she intended to win an argument by force rather than charm. "Natalia Kuzmina watched him confess to manipulating her and responded by demanding he take her to bed. Skylar Amane heard about the chemical hooks and kissed him harder. Emi Aoyama learned the System turned their intimacy into currency and said she would pay any price to stay. That is not coercion. That is love."

"Love is a weapon," Ares said. "The best weapon. It makes people fight harder and forgive faster than anything in my arsenal."

"On this we agree." Aphrodite looked at the war god with an expression that contained more history than most mortal civilizations. They had been lovers for eons. Everyone knew. Zeus pretended not to notice because the alternative was acknowledging that his wife was correct about something, and that particular concession had destroyed three previous divine administrations.

"Enough about the boy’s romantic life." Poseidon’s voice rolled through the chamber like surf against stone. The god of the sea had been silent throughout the debate, sitting in his throne with the patience of something that measured time in tidal cycles. His beard was blue-green and smelled of salt. His trident rested against the armrest, its three points containing enough concentrated divine energy to split a continent. "Brother. You asked us here to decide whether the Nakano subject is ready for acceleration. We have debated his romantic attachments, his father’s research, his integration metrics, and his combat performance. We have not discussed the actual question."

Zeus nodded once. The storms behind his eyes brightened.

"The Titan barrier degrades. Our projections give us thirty years before Kronos achieves breakthrough. The entity that calls itself the Architect has been manipulating Gate patterns across Valoria for three months, and its behavior suggests it anticipates the same timeline. We need soldiers. We need champions. We need something that has never existed in the history of divine warfare."

Zeus looked at Apollo.

"We need a mortal who can kill a Titan."

The words settled over the assembly like snow on a battlefield.

Apollo felt the weight of them. He had known this was coming. He had designed the entire Scumbag System around this inevitable moment. Every Gacha pull, every quest, every divine sponsorship and romantic subplot had been calibrated toward one purpose: creating a being capable of standing in the gap between mortal and divine and surviving long enough to swing a bat at something that predated the concept of death.

"Can the boy do it?" Zeus asked.