My Scumbag System Chapter 719: The King’s Decree

Apollo considered lying. He considered framing the answer in probabilities and hedging language and the kind of diplomatic evasion that kept divine councils functioning across centuries. He considered telling Zeus what the king wanted to hear.

Instead, he told the truth.

"I don’t know."

The chamber stirred.

"His integration is unprecedented. His growth trajectory suggests he could reach S-Rank equivalent within a year and something beyond our classification system within three. His Ensemble provides force multiplication that our models cannot fully simulate. But Titans are not Gate spawns or Academy prodigies or A-Rank Anomalies. Titans are fundamental forces of reality. Kronos does not fight with fists or lightning or strategy. Kronos fights with entropy. He unmakes things. He reverses causality. He turns the future into the past and watches it rot."

Apollo stood from his throne. The starlight followed him.

"I cannot promise that Satori Nakano can kill a Titan. I can promise that he is the closest thing to a viable candidate we have produced in fifty thousand years. I can promise that his will is genuine, his connections are real, and his capacity for growth has not yet reached a ceiling I can identify. And I can promise that if we do not accelerate his development now, while the window exists, we will not have time to develop another candidate before Kronos breaks through."

Silence.

Athena’s armor caught the golden light. Ares’ fists clenched and unclenched. Aphrodite’s hair cycled through three shades of red. Hermes stopped tapping his sandals. Hephaestus paused his clockwork model. Artemis’ bow hummed with tension.

Hera watched her husband.

Zeus watched Apollo.

"The boy walked into the entity’s domain and chose a third option that has never existed," Zeus said. "He rejected both full transformation and total rejection. He built something new from the wreckage of two identities."

"Yes."

"His mother did the same thing. Twenty-three years ago, Kimiko Nakano faced the same choice and found a path no one anticipated."

"Yes."

"The Nakano bloodline has a talent for breaking our expectations."

"That is why I chose him."

Zeus stood. When the king of the gods stood, reality adjusted its posture. The clouds shifted. The light changed. Every divine being in the chamber felt the gravitational pull of absolute authority asserting itself.

"Accelerate the program. Give the boy what he needs. Open the doors he requires. If he finds Sublevel Eleven beneath the Apex Tower, let him find what waits there."

"Father." Athena stepped forward. "If the VHC discovers what we have been doing through their infrastructure, through the Gates we have been manipulating for twenty-five years, the political fallout alone could..."

"Let it fall." Zeus’ voice carried lightning. Actual lightning. A bolt arced between his irises and left afterimages on the marble columns. "Kronos does not care about politics. The Titans do not observe treaties or honor accords. When the barrier breaks, everything burns. The VHC. The guilds. The academies. Every mortal institution that humanity has constructed since the Rupture will be kindling for the fire that follows."

He looked at Apollo.

"Your boy is our best hope. Make sure he survives long enough to become what we need him to be."

Apollo bowed. Not deeply. He was still Apollo.

"And Apollo."

"Yes, Father?"

"The women. The Ensemble. They are not decorative."

"No."

"They are load-bearing."

Apollo smiled. Because Zeus, for all his faults and betrayals and catastrophic romantic decisions, understood something that Athena with her strategies and Ares with his weapons and Hera with her proprieties never would.

The boy was strong. The boy was growing. The boy had faced cosmic horror and emerged carrying a piece of it like a trophy.

But the boy survived because six women loved him enough to stand beside a monster and call it home.

"They are the strongest part of the structure," Apollo said.

Zeus nodded once and sat.

The council dissolved into smaller arguments and side conversations. Hermes cornered Aphrodite about betting odds. Ares challenged Athena to a war game that she accepted with contempt and obvious excitement. Hephaestus resumed his clockwork calculations. Artemis vanished into the forests that bordered Olympus, her bow humming with opinions she would never voice publicly.

Apollo returned to his throne and pulled up the mortal viewing interface. The familiar golden display materialized, showing a small room in a building on an island in a world that had no idea what was coming.

Satori Nakano sat on a couch eating onigiri with motivational sesame seed faces while a naked cat woman demanded tuna and an immortal snail traversed a terrarium with the confidence of something that had nowhere to be and all the time to get there.

Natalia Kuzmina was already drawing formations on a holographic display three rooms away, her purple hair glowing faintly where the white streaks caught the light.

Emi Aoyama baked something in the kitchen. The scent of cinnamon drifted through digital reconstruction.

Skylar sharpened her knives in a corner.

Soomin sketched flowers in the garden.

Somewhere across an ocean, Reyna Cabana trained on a rooftop, her crimson hair catching a wind that smelled of salt and ambition.

Apollo zoomed in on Satori’s face. The boy looked tired. He looked battered. A bruise darkened his jaw, and three cracked ribs painted shadows across his posture.

He looked alive.

Six days until the Skeleton Key recharged. Six days until Sublevel Eleven. Six days until the next Chapter of a story that Apollo had started writing six months ago in a dead boy’s bedroom with a single notification and a ball-crushing penalty for failure.

Apollo reached for his lyre. The instrument materialized in his hands, warm and responsive, its strings vibrating with the particular frequency that mortal ears registered as inspiration.

He began to play.

Below, on a volcanic island in the middle of an ocean on a world that sat three dimensional layers above a prison containing the most destructive forces in existence, a boy with a bat and six women and a cat and a snail prepared to walk into the belly of the beast.

The Titans stirred in their chains.

The walls thinned.

The clock had started.

Apollo played faster.