My Scumbag System-Chapter 284: This Dungeon Has Terrible Feng Shui

I stepped through the Gate and immediately regretted every life choice that had led me to this moment.

The transition felt like being dragged through ice water before being spat out into a dark, cold hell.

My stomach lurched violently, twisting in on itself like a wet rag being wrung dry. For one terrifying split second, my body forgot how to be a body. Muscles twitched without commands. Lungs seized mid-breath. My heart stuttered like a broken metronome searching desperately for its rhythm.

Then reality reassembled itself around me with all the gentleness of a sledgehammer to the skull.

I was standing ankle-deep in frigid, murky water that immediately soaked through my boots and turned my socks into cold, clinging nightmares.

The chill crept up my legs with malicious intent, settling into my bones like it planned to stay awhile. But the cold was nothing compared to the stench.

It hit me like a freight train loaded with corpses.

Stagnant water. Ancient mold that had been cultivating its own civilization for centuries. And something worse—something that smelled like rotting flowers and decaying meat had a baby in a sewer, and that baby had grown up, died, and been left to ferment in the summer sun.

The air was thick with it, coating my tongue and the back of my throat with a taste I knew I’d be scrubbing out of my mouth for weeks.

"Well, this place is a real fixer-upper," I said, my voice echoing off stone walls that loomed in the darkness like disapproving giants.

The words bounced back at me, hollow and small against the oppressive silence.

"I bet it would look great with some throw pillows and maybe a few scented candles. Perhaps a little potpourri. Actually, a lot of potpourri. An industrial quantity of potpourri."

We stood in what appeared to be a massive stone antechamber—the Dry Vestibule, if my briefing notes were anything to go by, though ’dry’ was clearly a relative term in this waterlogged hellscape.

Pillars rose from the murky water like the ribs of some long-dead leviathan, their surfaces encrusted with barnacles and strange, bioluminescent fungi that pulsed with a sickly rhythm. They stretched upward, supporting a vaulted ceiling that was lost somewhere in the impenetrable shadow above.

Gothic arches connected them in patterns that hurt my eyes if I looked too long—geometry that seemed to bend in ways Euclid would have taken personal offense to.

The only light came from scattered patches of weakly glowing moss that clung to the walls like dying stars, casting everything in an eerie blue-green pallor. It turned the water black and gave my teammates’ faces the complexion of fresh corpses. Real encouraging ambiance.

The rest of my team materialized behind me one by one, each ripped through the dimensional membrane with their own unique flavor of suffering.

Emi arrived first, stumbling through the tear in reality like a drunk leaving a nightclub at 3 AM. She doubled over immediately, hands on her knees, her blue hair falling forward to curtain her face as she fought to keep her breakfast where it belonged. The green tinge to her usually healthy complexion suggested it was a close battle. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Soomin came next, and the transformation was jarring. The moment she hit the water, her whole body jerked like she’d touched a live wire. Her pink hair seemed to stand on end for a moment before settling, and she clutched her stomach and whimpered, her gradient-blue eyes wide and glassy with something that looked disturbingly like recognition.

Even Raphael’s signature rooster-crest of blonde hair seemed to droop a little when he emerged, his amber eyes blinking rapidly against the sudden darkness. But true to form, the arrogant bastard recovered faster than anyone else.

Skylar materialized last among the vanguard, and for once, cool seemed to crack. She removed her headphones with trembling fingers—the first time I’d ever seen those hands shake—and fixed me with a look that could have curdled milk at fifty paces.

"That..." she said, her voice flat but with an edge sharp enough to cut glass, "sucked balls."

I couldn’t argue with that assessment.

I looked around, taking stock of our situation with the cold assessment of a general surveying a battlefield. The chamber branched into two corridors—east and west—separated by a massive wall of what looked like glass but was almost certainly some kind of magical resin.

It was thick, probably several feet, and stretched from floor to ceiling without seam or imperfection. Through it, I could just make out silver shapes moving on the other side, their forms distorted by the barrier but still recognizable.

The Sentinels had arrived in the western corridor.

Their formation was already perfect, of course.

Then he caught my eye through the barrier.

The smile that spread across his face was pure aristocratic malice. He raised one hand with theatrical slowness, then dragged his thumb across his throat in the universal gesture for ’you’re dead.’

Real mature.

I gave him a the middle finger.

"Remember the plan," I said as my team gathered around me in a loose semicircle. The water sloshed and rippled with our movements, sending dark reflections dancing across the walls. "East wing, tight formation. This dungeon’s a descent—the further down we go, the deeper the water gets. By the time we hit the boss room, we’ll be waist-deep in this shit, so conserve your energy for the real fight."

I gestured to our two biggest damage-dealers. "Raphael, Hikari, you’re on point. Anything that comes at us from the front, you turn it into paste. Don’t hold back—these Drowned Retainers are ambush predators. They’ll try to drag us under if we give them the chance."

Raphael cracked his knuckles with the enthusiasm of a kid who’d just been told Christmas came early. "Finally. Been waiting to break something."

Hikari’s smile somehow managed to grow even wider. "Breaking things is my specialty!"

I continued, pointing to the middle guard. "Natalia, Isabelle, with me in the center. Nat, you’re on crowd control and environmental manipulation. If things get hairy, I want you lifting enemies out of the water where they can’t grapple. Isabelle..." I met her wine-colored eyes, and for just a moment, saw the battle-hunger lurking beneath her regal mask.

"Try not to show off too much. We’re saving the fireworks for the Centurions."

She inclined her head slightly. "I shall endeavor to remain... restrained."