The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Chapter 465: 465 | Wavelength [GACHAPON BONUS]

It was this. The card game. The laugh. Camille forgetting to be aggressive. Felicity’s head on my shoulder. Even Petra pretending the appendix mattered. Even Vivienne watching me choose.

The System couldn’t monetize that. It had no gauge for a good evening. So it dropped a quest that would have set fire to the good evening in exchange for skill points and a gacha pull, and I looked at the trade and did something I almost never did.

I declined.

Not out loud. There was no button. But I made the decision in the place where decisions live, and I felt the interface register it the way it always did, with a flat cold acknowledgment that carried no judgment and somehow radiated judgment anyway.

〘 QUEST STATUS: DECLINED 〙

〘 DEFIANCE POINTS: +40 〙

〘 CURRENT DEFIANCE: 40/50 〙

〘 NOTE: The Scumbag’s Path has no guardrails. You chose this path. Consequences will scale accordingly. 〙

Forty. Ten short of the Penalty Quest. One bad decision away from the System building me a scenario specifically designed to put me in the exact position I was currently avoiding, except worse, and without the preparation I’d have if I just did the thing now.

I felt the debuff settle in immediately, subtle, a heaviness at the base of my skull and a faint dulling at the edges of my reflexes. Nothing dramatic. Just the sensation of my body dropping a few percent below optimal, the System’s way of reminding me that avoidance had a price and it was collecting.

"Belmont," Petra said. "You’ve gone somewhere."

"He does that," Felicity said. "His eyes go flat and his jaw locks and he stops blinking. Percy does it too, except Percy mutters."

"I’m not muttering," I said.

"You’re doing the other thing. The scarier one." Felicity’s voice stayed soft, but that blue-eyed attention she deployed on parts of me she’d decided mattered had arrived full force. She was reading past the performance to whatever ran underneath, which was Oracle Feed information I couldn’t tell her about and a decision I’d already committed to in the space where decisions live. "You just made a decision."

I looked at her. Then at Camille, watching from her position on her elbows. The competitive edge from earlier had softened into something gentler, something I didn’t have a frame for.

Then at Petra still stationed in the reading chair, her planner clutched tight against her chest. Her neck had gone pink in a way that spread past her collar, the flush climbing with the specific quality of someone who’d stayed past the time her own stated reasons permitted.

Then at Vivienne, who’d closed her tablet and simply watched with that green-eyed calm of someone who’d calculated that whatever was happening here was worth more than any data she’d collect elsewhere tonight.

Four women. Cards scattered across my bed. That sake bottle still sweating condensation on my nightstand. A quest I’d declined on purpose. Forty Defiance Points registering in my peripheral interface like debt I’d personally invited to my door.

I felt Oracle Feed processing their positions, their stress markers, the way Vivienne’s bioelectric signature had settled into observation mode while Felicity’s remained bright and present. Camille’s showed that specific pattern of someone consciously managing their breathing. Petra’s carried traces of elevated cortisol wrapped around genuine interest wrapped around the framework she used to pretend neither existed.

The room smelled like sake and the lingering sweetness of whatever perfume one of them wore and possibility that cost me something concrete to generate.

"I made a decision," I said.

"Care to share it with the class?" Petra’s tone carried an edge underneath its flatness, want pretending to be procedural inquiry in the way she pretended most things.

"No," I said. "But I’ll tell you what we’re going to do instead."

Camille straightened from her recline. Felicity leaned forward with that full-body curiosity of hers. Petra’s pen stopped its restless tapping against her planner’s cover. Vivienne’s smile appeared, the specific one she saved for variables that exceeded her initial modeling.

I collected the scattered cards from where they’d landed, squared the deck against my palm with more deliberate motion than the action required, and held it up in the space between the four of them.

"We’re going to keep playing," I said, meeting each pair of eyes in sequence. "All five of us. And nobody’s shirt is coming

Silence.

Then Camille laughed, low and genuine, the unguarded version. "You’re insane."

"I’m effective."

"Those aren’t mutually exclusive," Petra said, and it was the second time someone had used my own line back at me, and I decided I liked it better coming from her than I wanted to.

Felicity took the deck from my hand without ceremony. The shuffle was practiced, hands moving with the kind of unconscious precision you only get from years of needing something to fill time. She dealt five spreads across the desk in quick succession, cards snapping against wood with an efficiency that said she’d made a decision about how this was going to go.

"Wavelength," she announced. No preamble, no room for negotiation. Pure directive wrapped in that bright register she used when she’d already committed. "Five players. Lukas guesses first since he thinks he’s so galaxy-brained about this." A beat, then her attention swung sideways. "And Petra, babe, if you’re staying in that chair you’re playing, because I literally cannot with the idea of you sitting there doing your whole judgmental observer thing while the rest of us are trying to vibe."

Petra’s gaze tracked down to the cards Felicity had slid in front of her position at the desk. Then up to me. Then around the room in a slow deliberate sweep that was absolutely calculating something I wasn’t going to be told about.

The warmth hit her the same way it had hit me when I’d first walked in. Four people who had independently decided this space was worth occupying. Four competitive, intelligent, genuinely dangerous women who could have been literally anywhere else in Halloran’s sprawling campus right now, and had chosen here.

She reached out. Collected the cards with two fingers.

"Fine," she said, and pulled the hand toward herself with the specific care of someone handling something she’d decided not to break yet. "But I want it noted that this game has structural problems and I’m only participating under protest."

"Noted and ignored," Camille said immediately.

"Now deal with it."

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