My Scumbag System-Chapter 347: Status Report From The Other Side

The rankings board glowed in the dim office of Professor Anya Petrova, casting silver light across her pristine desk. The number one slot burned like an accusation.

ONYX HOUNDS - 847 POINTS

Below it, in what should have been their rightful place, sat the Argent Sentinels at 612.

Anya’s crystalline Aspect flickered at her fingertips, tiny shards of ice forming and dissolving in rhythm with her barely controlled fury. She had built the Sentinels from nothing. Forged them into the perfect embodiment of everything a Hunter should be. Clean. Professional. Marketable.

And now they sat in second place behind a pack of mutts led by a boy who fought with a baseball bat.

Julian Valerius stood at attention before her desk, his posture impeccable despite the shadows carved beneath his eyes. Three weeks since the Necropolis incident. Three weeks since his world had crumbled around him. The golden prince looked more like tarnished bronze these days.

"You wanted to see me, Professor?"

Anya didn’t turn from the rankings board. "Do you know what I see when I look at this, Mr. Valerius?"

"Our current standing, ma’am."

"I see failure." The word cracked through the air like breaking ice. "I see a guild that has dominated these rankings for seven consecutive years now bleeding members to lesser houses. I see Kenjiro Kobayashi wearing Cobalt Viper colors. I see Monica Von Astrom and Celeste Vance eating dinner with the Hounds like they belong there."

Julian’s jaw tightened. "The transfers were... unavoidable circumstances."

"Were they?" Anya finally turned, her piercing blue eyes fixing on him with surgical intensity. "Or were they the natural consequence of a leader who forgot what it means to lead?"

He flinched. Actually flinched, like she’d struck him across the face.

Good. Pain was a teacher. Perhaps the only one Julian had ever needed.

"The VHC inquiry cleared us both," he said, though his voice carried less conviction than usual. "The official record shows—"

"I don’t care what the official record shows. I care about results." Anya gestured at the board. "First place, Mr. Valerius. For the first time in the program’s history, the Onyx Hounds sit at the top of the rankings. Do you understand what that means?"

"It means we need to work harder."

"It means everything I’ve built is being undermined by a single student." Her voice dropped to something dangerous. "Satori Nakano. A boy who entered this academy as a Zero. A boy who should have been expelled in his first week. A boy who somehow convinced the President of the VHC to personally commend his ’tactical awareness.’"

She let the words hang in the frozen air.

"He took Celeste Vance from us. The President’s sister. An S-Rank potential who was supposed to be the crown jewel of our recruitment class." Anya’s fingers drummed against her desk, leaving tiny frost patterns on the wood.

Julian’s hands curled into fists at his sides. She could see the knuckles whitening.

"What do you want me to do about it?"

"I want you to remember what you are." Anya stepped closer, her presence filling the space between them with cold authority. "You are Julian Valerius. Heir to one of Valoria’s great families. You possess a Quantum Disruption Aspect that can neutralize any opponent’s greatest strength. You were born to lead."

"I know what I am."

"Do you? Because the boy I see before me looks like someone who has forgotten." She reached out, adjusting the collar of his uniform with the detachment of a sculptor examining flawed marble. "The Nakano boy is dangerous because he makes people believe in him. He turns weakness into strength. Failure into opportunity. That is his gift."

Her eyes met his.

"Your gift is making people understand their place. Reminding them that there is an order to this world. A hierarchy. And at the top of that hierarchy are families like yours. Like mine." She released his collar. "The Hounds may have won this battle. But wars are not decided by single engagements."

Julian straightened, something hardening in his expression. The lost boy retreating behind the mask of the prince.

"What do you need from me?"

"I need you to stop sulking and start scheming. The inter-guild tournament begins in six weeks. Every point matters. Every victory counts." Anya returned to her desk, settling into her chair with regal grace. "Nakano has built something with those people. I want you to break it."

"And if breaking it proves... difficult?"

A thin smile crossed Anya’s lips. "Then we don’t break the team. We break the man."

She waved her hand in dismissal.

Julian bowed slightly and retreated toward the door. He paused with his hand on the handle.

"For what it’s worth, Professor... I haven’t forgotten what he did to me. What he took from me." His voice carried an edge that hadn’t been there before. "Satori Nakano will pay for every humiliation. I’ll make certain of it."

The door closed behind him.

Anya studied the rankings board for a long moment, watching the numbers pulse in the darkness. Then she opened her tablet and began composing a message.

Some problems required surgical solutions.

And she knew exactly which blades to sharpen.

Across the Atoll, in the gleaming tower that housed the Scarlet Phantoms, Professor Satoru Takamura threw his head back and laughed.

The sound rattled the training equipment mounted on his office walls. Weapons from a dozen different fighting styles hung in neat rows, each one representing a technique he had mastered and discarded over his career. The man himself looked more like a retired cage fighter than a professor, all corded muscle and battle scars barely hidden beneath his open-collared dress shirt.

"First place!" He slapped his knee, grinning at the student seated across from him. "The damn Hounds are in first place! Oh, Anya must be absolutely losing her mind right now."

Reyna Cabana did not share his amusement.

She sat with her legs crossed, crimson hair cascading over shoulders that had graced the covers of twelve different Hunter magazines in the past year alone. Her amber eyes, usually warm with practiced charm, had gone cold as she studied the rankings displayed on Takamura’s wall screen.

"This isn’t funny, Sensei."

"It’s hilarious! Seven years! Seven years those silver-spoon idiots have sat at the top, looking down at everyone else like they own the place." Takamura wiped a tear from his eye. "And now? Now they’re eating the Hounds’ dust. I might frame this ranking. Put it right above my bed."

"You’re missing the point."

"Enlighten me, then. What point am I missing?"

Reyna uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, her posture shifting from casual to intent in a heartbeat. "Celeste Vance. Isabelle Okoye. Both of them are now in Onyx House."

Takamura’s grin faded slightly. "So?"

"So those two, along with myself, were considered the three most promising female freshmen in the entire program. The Big Three, the gossip blogs called us. Three girls from influential families with S-Rank potential, destined to shape the next generation of Hunters."

She let that sink in.

"Celeste transferred from the Sentinels under circumstances no one will explain. Isabelle rejected every elite guild that recruited her and chose the Hounds willingly. And now both of them are taking orders from a boy who didn’t even have an Aspect six months ago."