My Scumbag System Chapter 542: The Seventy Percent Solution

The dical bay slled like antiseptic and regret.

My ribs had their own heartbeat now, a dull throb that pulsed sowhere between "freshly tenderized steak" and "got hit by a truck driven by a very angry woman with crimson hair." Emi’s hands pressed against my torso, her healing aura washing over in warm green waves that felt like sinking into a hot bath after getting your ass kicked in the rain. Which, taphorically speaking, was exactly what had just happened.

"Three fractures partially healed, one reopened from the Julian fight, and your shoulder was six milliters away from full dislocation." Emi’s sapphire eyes burned with the specific intensity of a dical professional who had watched her patient do sothing monuntally stupid on live television. Her antenna strands bobbed as she spoke, catching the fluorescent light. "You absorbed a direct lightning construct to the solar plexus."

"In my defense, it worked."

"In your defense, you’re an idiot."

I loved when Emi got an. It happened so rarely that each instance felt like witnessing a solar eclipse. A solar eclipse that could heal your bones and then lecture you about calcium supplents while doing it.

The green light pulsed brighter. Sothing clicked in my chest, not painful exactly, more like a joint popping back into alignnt after being wrong for so long you forgot what right felt like. The Cryo-Lich Ring’s damage from Reyna’s final assault faded from my nervous system in stages. Emi frowned, pushed deeper, and the last of the acute damage dissolved into manageable soreness.

"Done." She pulled her hands back and wiped them on her pants. "You’re at maybe seventy percent. That’s the best I can do without another four hours and a nap."

"Seventy is plenty."

"Seventy is not plenty. Seventy is what happens when you fight three separate opponents in one day and absorb enough electricity to power the eastern seaboard."

I stood. The room tilted for half a second before stabilizing. My body felt heavy in that specific way that ant I’d burned through reserves I didn’t know I had, but nothing scread or popped when I rolled my shoulders. The regenerator brace humd contentedly beneath my shirt, doing its quiet chanical work.

"I need to be on that platform in forty-five minutes."

Emi opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"Promise you’ll dodge at least so of the attacks this ti."

"I promise I’ll dodge the ones that don’t make stronger."

She punched my arm. It actually hurt, which was either a sign that Emi had been working out or that my body was running on fus and spite. Probably both.

I kissed her forehead because she’d earned it and because watching her blush still gave a dopamine hit that no gacha pull could replicate. She made that little sound, the one she only made when I caught her off guard, a tiny inhale that ended sowhere between surprise and satisfaction.

"Go win," she whispered.

I left the dical bay and turned the corner into the corridor that connected to the competitor’s staging area. Isabelle leaned against the far wall with her arms folded across her chest and her spear propped beside her like a sentry. Her wine-red hair caught the overhead lights, and her posture conveyed the specific brand of regal impatience that only people born to ridiculous wealth could pull off naturally. She wore her combat gear like it was a ballgown, every buckle and strap in its proper place, every seam aligned with geotric perfection.

"Your ribs?" she asked, without looking up from whatever invisible point on the opposite wall held her attention.

"Functional."

"Functional is not the sa as healed."

"Functional is the sa as good enough."

Isabelle’s red eyes slid toward . "We’re about to fight your girlfriend and your... other situation."

"Other situation" was the politest way anyone had ever described Skylar.

"I’m aware."

"And you’re prepared to fight them seriously."

"Isabelle, I just broke Julian Valerius’s hand in front of the entire country and then convinced Reyna Cabana to yield through a combination of environntal destruction and hitting her really hard with a baseball bat. I am prepared to fight literally anyone who stands between and this tournant win."

A pause.

"Even Kuzmina?"

The question hung in the corridor like smoke from one of Braxton’s cigarettes. Because that was the real issue, wasn’t it. Not whether I could beat Natalia in combat. The math said yes. My hidden stats sat at 6,250 across the board, my Kinetic Absorption stacked temporary buffs that pushed into territory most A-Ranks couldn’t touch, and I had abilities she didn’t know about. Steel Body alone could tank anything she threw at for ten critical seconds.

The question was whether I would.

"She’d kill herself if I went easy on her," I said. And ant it.

Isabelle made that sound again, the one that lived in the ambiguous space between approval and pity. She picked up her spear and fell into step beside as we walked toward the staging area.

The room was louder than I expected. Not with voices, but with energy. The kind of electric tension that filled a space when everyone in it knew violence was about to happen and they were either going to participate in it or watch it very closely.

Natalia and Skylar stood near the far bench.

Natalia wore her purple combat suit like war paint. Her hair was down, the white streaks from our Covenant bond catching light in a way that made them look almost alive, pulsing faintly at the temples where her power pooled thickest. The Cryo-Lich Ring glowed steady blue on her finger. Cel’s custom gloves covered her hands, the reinforced material designed to channel cold fifteen percent faster than bare skin. She looked like winter itself had decided to enter the tournant and brought a bad attitude.

Skylar leaned against the wall beside her in head-to-toe matte black. Her indigo and pink hair fell in a deliberately ssy cascade that scread "I woke up like this" while clearly having been styled with surgical care. Her trench knives sat in their thigh sheaths, the non-reflective carbon fiber blades invisible unless you knew where to look. She had her headphones around her neck, not on her ears, which ant she was paying attention and wanted everyone to know it.

My two queens. About to try to rip my face off in front of twenty thousand screaming people.