My Scumbag System-Chapter 290: This Dungeon’s Lure is Not VHC-Approved

Celeste Vance moved in formation because that was what she was trained to do.

Left foot. Right foot. Shield wall ahead. Ranged support behind. Command element in the rear. The phalanx advanced through the west wing of the Sunken Necropolis with all the grace of a well-oiled machine and all the soul of a tax document.

Aaron Sanders held the front line, his massive frame anchoring their formation like a concrete pillar. His graviton Aspect made him nearly immovable, a human barricade that absorbed impacts that would shatter lesser men. Behind him, Cassandra Lion and Daniel Lovestone flanked with medium-range support. Celeste occupied the center with Monica, their ranged attacks covering whatever gaps appeared in their defensive wall.

And Julian Valerius commanded from the rear, barking orders like a general who’d learned warfare from textbooks instead of trenches.

"Target at eleven o’clock. Eliminate."

The words came out flat. Mechanical. Aaron pivoted, his bulk creating an opening. Celeste raised her hand and felt the familiar pull of her Aspect, ice crystallizing from the moisture in the air. The Drowned Retainer lunging toward their formation met a spike of frozen water through its chest. It collapsed, dissolved, became nothing.

"Two targets, three o’clock. Monica, bind. Cassandra, finish."

Monica’s Photosynthetic Sovereign ability sent vines snaking through the ankle-deep water. The ghouls found themselves wrapped in thorny green tendrils before Cassandra’s spear punched through their skulls.

Clean. Orderly. Systematic.

Boring.

Celeste hated herself for thinking it, but the word wouldn’t leave her mind. They were winning. They were following protocol. They were doing everything exactly as Professor Petrova had drilled into them during countless hours of formation practice.

And she felt nothing.

No rush of adrenaline. No thrill of combat. Just the same empty performance she’d been giving her entire life. Follow the script. Hit your marks. Smile for the cameras that weren’t even here.

Through the translucent resin wall that separated the two wings, Celeste caught glimpses of the other team.

The Onyx Hounds looked like a hurricane given human form.

A girl with pink and indigo hair danced through a cloud of smoke, her knives flashing. A massive blonde man sent shockwaves through the water that turned ghouls into paste.

And at their center, Satori Nakano moved like he owned the entire dungeon.

"Celeste. Focus."

Julian’s voice cut through her distraction. She turned to find him watching her with those cold sapphire eyes, his golden hair somehow still perfect despite the humidity that had turned everyone else’s into a stringy mess.

"I am focused."

"Then stop staring at the mutts and do your damn job."

The dismissal stung more than it should have. Celeste bit back her response and returned to the formation, launching another ice spike at a ghoul that had crawled too close to their perimeter.

Monica sidled up beside her, vines retracting into her sleeves. Her honey-blonde hair was damp with sweat and dungeon moisture, and her amber eyes held concern that she tried to hide behind her usual cheerful mask.

"Are you okay? You seem... distant."

"I’m fine."

"You’re not fine. You’ve been not-fine since we entered this place."

Celeste almost smiled. Monica had always been able to read her, even when Celeste wore her best porcelain-doll expression. It was simultaneously comforting and terrifying.

"I’m questioning my life choices. It’s nothing new."

"In the middle of a dungeon run?"

"Is there a better time?"

Monica’s lips twitched. "Fair point. But maybe save the existential crisis for after we’re not surrounded by things that want to eat our faces?"

"Noted."

They pushed forward. More ghouls. More ice. More vines. The water rose from ankle-deep to mid-calf, and the cold seeped through Celeste’s combat suit despite its thermal lining. Her breath misted in the air, which she initially attributed to her own Aspect before realizing the temperature had dropped naturally.

Something was wrong.

Kenjiro Kobayashi noticed it first. The quiet prodigy had been drifting at the edge of their formation, his hand resting on the hilt of his katana with a casual ease that belied his readiness. His turquoise eyes scanned the corridor ahead, and his brow furrowed.

"The wind is gone."

Julian didn’t even look at him. "What?"

"The air. It isn’t moving. There’s no circulation."

"This is a dungeon, not a weather station. Stay in formation."

Kenjiro’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. Celeste recognized that expression. It was the same one she wore when Julian dismissed her suggestions. The polite mask of someone who knew they were right and was being ignored anyway.

But Kenjiro was right. Now that he’d pointed it out, Celeste could feel it too. The air had gone still.

The corridor opened into a massive chamber. Cathedral ceilings vaulted overhead, supported by pillars carved with ancient script that glowed faintly with dying magic. The water here wasn’t just deep.

It was black.

"Hold," Julian commanded, though his voice had lost some of its certainty. "Defensive perimeter. Shields up."

Aaron stepped forward, his graviton Aspect activating with a faint shimmer around his frame. Daniel and Cassandra flanked him.

Everyone felt it. The wrongness. The absence.

"Where are the mobs?" Monica whispered. "We haven’t seen a single Retainer since we entered this room."

She was right. The cathedral chamber was empty. Every other room had been crawling with ghouls, skeletal constructs, parasitic leeches. This place held nothing.

Nothing except the black water and the terrible silence.

Kenjiro’s hand tightened on his katana. "Something’s here. I can feel it."

"You can feel a lot of things," Julian said dismissively. "Doesn’t mean they’re real."

Celeste watched the black water. Her Aspect prickled at the edges of her consciousness, ice trying to form without her command. That had never happened before. Her power was responding to something, reacting to a threat she couldn’t see.

The bioluminescent moss on the walls began to die. Not slowly, not gradually. It crumbled. Turned gray and fell from the stone like dead skin, leaving them in growing darkness.

"Julian," Celeste said, her voice tight. "We need to leave."

"We’re not abandoning our objective because of some atmospheric effects."

"This isn’t normal. Something is—"

The water boiled.

Bubbles the size of skulls erupted from the black surface, releasing gas that smelled of rotting fish and ancient corruption. The liquid didn’t spray outward. It rose. Lifted. Displaced by something massive breaking free from beneath.

Celeste’s ice formed a shield in front of her without conscious thought. Her body knew what her mind was still processing.

Run. Run. RUN.

But she couldn’t do anything except watch as the thing emerged.

It wasn’t a Hydra-Lich. Celeste had studied the mission briefing. She knew what they were supposed to face. This wasn’t it.

Fifteen feet tall. Maybe more. Its body was darkness given form, shadow wrapped around bone, sinew made of nightmare and deep-sea horror. Massive clawed hands. A hunched spine bristling with spikes that looked like ship masts snapped in half.

And its face.

Gods, its face.

Where eyes should have been, there were only empty sockets that leaked black ichor. Its jaw hung open, rows of teeth arranged in concentric circles leading down into an endless throat. And dangling from its forehead, like the world’s most obscene fishing lure, hung a bioluminescent growth.

The growth was shaped like a child.

A crying child.

"Help me," the lure whimpered in a voice that was almost human.

"Please, it hurts, please help me."