My Scumbag System-Chapter 285: Surprise! The Floor Wants to Drown You

"Juan, Emi, rear guard." I turned to the laziest genius I’d ever met and the human ray of sunshine who somehow tolerated me. "Emi, keep your healing aura tight and focused. Don’t waste energy on scratches—save it for the real injuries. Juan..." I paused, searching for the right way to phrase this. "Just... do whatever you do. But maybe do it with slightly more enthusiasm than usual?"

"Enthusiasm is exhausting," Juan muttered, but his green eyes were already scanning the corridor ahead with the calculating attention of a chess master evaluating the board. "But fine. I’ll try to care a little bit. For the sake of the team."

"Skylar, wherever you’re most lethal." I didn’t need to elaborate. The goth princess operated best as a free agent, and trying to pin her down to a specific position would just waste both our time.

She gave me a lazy salute with two fingers. "Aye aye, captain."

Finally, I turned to Soomin. She was still hugging herself, her pink hair plastered to her face with nervous sweat. Her eyes kept darting to the water with an expression of deep-seated dread.

"Soomin, keep those senses sharp. The second you smell anything funky—"

"Funky?" Skylar cut in, her nose wrinkling in theatrical disgust. "Have you smelled this place? I’ve been in Tokyo fish markets that were more fragrant than this bog."

"Funkier," I amended with a smirk that I didn’t entirely feel.

A few nervous laughs rippled through the group, breaking some of the tension. Good. Tension was useful, but too much of it made people brittle, and brittle people shattered when the pressure hit.

"I don’t like this," Soomin whispered, her voice barely audible above the ambient dripping and distant groaning of ancient stone. Her arms tightened around herself, and I noticed her nails had extended slightly. "The water... something’s in it. Many somethings. Waiting."

Great. Just what I wanted to hear while standing ankle-deep in mystery fluid that could be harboring an army of undead ambush predators.

"Then let’s not keep them waiting," I said, projecting more confidence than I felt. "Move out."

We moved toward the eastern corridor, a vaulted passageway that sloped gently downward into darkness. The architecture shifted as we advanced—the stone growing older, rougher, carved with patterns that might have been decorative or might have been warnings in a language no living person could read. Gargoyles leered from alcoves in the walls, their features eroded by time and water damage until they looked less like guardians and more like victims frozen in eternal screams.

The water level rose almost immediately, climbing from ankle-deep to mid-calf within the first fifty meters. It was colder down here, if that was possible. The chill seeped through my boots and into my flesh, numbing my toes and sending aching pulses up through my legs. Every step became a struggle against the drag of the water, every movement requiring twice the effort it should have.

The environmental mechanics from the briefing echoed in my memory. Stagnant Rot—any open wound submerged for more than five minutes receives the Infected debuff. Slick Stone—Dexterity checks required for sudden direction changes. Acoustic Echo—sound carries between wings near the dividing wall.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

"Everybody stay sharp," I said, keeping my voice low. Sound carried in places like this, bouncing off stone and water in ways that could give away our position to anything with ears. Or whatever passed for ears in undead aquatic ghouls. "The Sentinels may be taking the other path, but this isn’t a race—"

"It’s literally a race," Juan interrupted, looking more exhausted than usual despite having done exactly nothing so far. "We’re racing them to the boss. That’s the entire point of this exercise. It says so right in the quest description."

"Okay, yes, it’s a race," I admitted, resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of my nose. "But not the kind where we sprint blindly into an ambush and get our faces eaten off by water zombies. So keep your eyes—"

A splash echoed down the corridor.

The sound was wrong. Too deliberate. Too rhythmic.

Then another. And another. And another after that.

Splash. Splash. Splash.

The tempo was increasing.

Raphael raised a fist, his body dropping into a fighting stance with the fluid instinct of a born brawler. Kinetic energy began to gather around his hands, visible as a faint shimmer in the dim light. "Something’s coming," he growled, and for once, there was no arrogance in his voice. Just the cold recognition of a predator acknowledging other predators.

Hikari’s permanent smile widened to disturbing proportions, stretching across her face like a wound opening up.

She gripped the haft of her massive flail with both hands, the weapon’s head already beginning to glow with the accumulated ’virtual mass’ of her Aspect.

The light cast wild, dancing shadows on the walls, making the gargoyles seem to writhe and twist. "Finally! I was getting bored! Let’s play!"

"Formation," I said quietly, drawing my bat. The metal felt cold and reassuring against my palms, a familiar weight that had served me well in the past. Around me, I felt the team shifting, clicking into their designated positions like pieces on a chessboard.

Natalia’s hands began to glow faintly with telekinetic energy. Isabelle’s spear materialized in her grip, green wind already beginning to coil around its length like eager serpents.

Juan sighed the sigh of a man being asked to do chores but pulled a card from his deck anyway, holding it loosely between two fingers.

Emi’s healing aura flickered to life around her, a soft green glow that stood in stark contrast to the dungeon’s sickly bioluminescence.

The splashes grew closer. More numerous. The water around us began to ripple with movement that wasn’t ours—dark shapes passing just beneath the surface, circling us like sharks scenting blood in the water.

Then... silence. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

The splashing stopped. The ripples stilled. Even the distant dripping seemed to pause, as if the dungeon itself was holding its breath.

"Did they—" Emi began, her voice small and hopeful.

The water exploded.