My Scumbag System - Chapter 303

Chapter 303: The Satori Show
He didn’t look at Original Satori. Didn’t acknowledge him at all. His attention was fixed entirely on me.

“In the dungeon. When that thing launched its attack at the healer.” He took a step closer. His boots didn’t splash in the water. They walked on top of it. “You had a clear angle on the core. Two seconds to line up your shot. Instead, you threw yourself in front of a death beam for a girl you’ve known for, what, a few weeks?”

“She’s an asset.”

“She’s a liability.” His voice was flat. Cold. The voice of a man who’d cut out every emotion that couldn’t be weaponized. “You broke three ribs. Punctured a lung. Nearly died. For what? Sentiment? Heroism?”

Original Satori piped up from the water. “Yeah! You could have died! And then I would have been dead forever! Do you even think about anyone but yourself?”

We both ignored him.

Kaelen circled me slowly. Evaluating. Judging. Finding me lacking.

“The old me would have used her as a human shield. Distracted the boss. Created an opening. That’s what assets are for. You burn them when they’re useful, and you move on.”

“The old you died alone in a gutter,” I said.

His knife stopped twirling.

“What did you just say?”

“You heard me.” I turned to face him fully. “The old Kaelen Leone, the legendary solo operative, the man who trusted no one and used everyone… he died bleeding out in an alley with a knife in his back because he ran out of people willing to take bullets for him.”

His jaw tightened.

“I built a kingdom,” I continued. “In two months, I’ve accumulated more loyal allies than you managed in your entire career. Natalia would burn down the VHC if I asked her to. Skylar killed a monster for me. Emi would follow me into hell with a smile. Soomin literally transformed into a nine-tailed fox to protect our position.”

I stepped toward him. He didn’t flinch. Of course he didn’t.

“I didn’t save Emi because I’m going soft. I saved her because she’s mine. And a King protects what’s his. That’s the difference between us. You were a Warlord. You took territory and burned it down when you were done. I’m building an empire.”

His eyes narrowed.

“Empires fall.”

“Everything falls eventually. But I’ll be damned if I go down the same way you did.”

For a long moment, we just stared at each other. Two versions of the same consciousness. The ruthless pragmatist who’d forgotten how to want anything except survival, and the scumbag who’d learned that wanting was the whole point.

“Pathetic,” Kaelen said finally. “Both of you.”

“Excuse me?” Original Satori sounded offended. “I didn’t do anyth—”

“That’s the problem.”

The mirrors started to vibrate.

All of them. Every shard in that infinite sky began to hum, a frequency that bypassed my ears and went straight into my skull. The black water rippled outward from some invisible epicenter.

Original Satori grabbed his head.

“Wait… I remember… before you came…”

Static filled the air. The hissing, crackling noise of a television between channels. Of reality buffering.

“I didn’t die,” Original Satori whispered. His voice had changed. Less whiny. More… confused. Frightened. “I… I made a deal. I heard a voice. It asked me if I wanted to trade. My potential for… peace. It said I could rest. It said someone else would carry the weight.”

The water under my feet turned ice cold.

“What voice?”

“I don’t… I can’t remember the…” He clutched his skull harder. “It was bright. It was so bright. And it told me that a hero was coming. Someone who would take my place. Someone who deserved…”

Kaelen’s knife had stopped moving entirely.

“A deal,” he said slowly. “I didn’t make a deal. I was pulled. Ripped out of my body mid-heartbeat. No warning. No negotiation. Just…” He snapped his fingers. “Gone.”

The pieces started clicking together in my head.

Two souls. One vessel. One too weak to carry the weight of his own potential. One too dangerous to be left alone.

“It wasn’t random,” I said. “This body, this specific family, this exact set of circumstances… it was a targeted insertion.”

Original Satori looked up at me. For once, his expression wasn’t resentful. It was scared.

“We were cast,” Kaelen said quietly. “Selected for our specific psychological profiles. Merged and placed into a narrative that would maximize…” He trailed off.

“Entertainment value,” I finished.

The shattered sky above us seemed to darken.

“Who’s the casting director?” I looked up at those frozen mirror shards. “Is it—”

The sky exploded.

Gold light poured through the cracks between the mirror shards. Not gentle light. Not warm light. This was the light of a dying star, of a nuclear blast, of something so powerful that looking at it felt like staring into the heart of creation itself.

Original Satori started screaming.

His body dissolved. Not melted, not faded. Dissolved. Like a character being erased from a scene, pixel by pixel, layer by layer.

“Wait!” His voice was getting smaller, more distant. “I remember! The voice said its na—!”

Gone.

Where he’d stood, there was nothing. Not even a ripple in the black water.

Kaelen looked at the descending light with an expression I’d never seen on that face before.

Contempt.

“Figures,” he said. “Even the afterlife has censors.”

He turned to me. For just a moment, something almost human flickered in his eyes.

“Don’t disappoint me.”

Then he raised two fingers to his forehead in a mocking salute.

The gold light took him too.

I was alone.

The light was getting closer now. The mirrors were shattering one by one, their fragments vaporizing into golden mist. The black water began to boil around my ankles.

And then a hand reached down from the sky.

Not a normal hand. This thing was the size of a building. Fingers like pillars of burning bronze. A palm that could have crushed mountains into dust.

It descended toward me with the slow inevitability of a guillotine blade.

I couldn’t move.

“SPOILERS, DARLING.”

The voice was everywhere. In the water. In the air. In the marrow of my bones. It was Apollo, but stripped of the playful avatar, the cute persona, the game-like interface. This was the god behind the mask. The Director behind the camera.

“WE DON’T READ AHEAD IN THE SCRIPT.”

The hand covered my vision.

Gold light.

Gold pain.

Then nothing.

“You’re getting warmer. But if you peek behind the curtain again… I’ll blind you.”

I was falling.

Falling through layers of reality. Through dreams and memories and things that might have been.

“Now wake up. Your girls are waiting.”