My Scumbag System-Chapter 307: Sanctions Division? I Thought You Said Sanctions & Divisions
"Satori."
I met his gaze.
"Man to man." His voice was rough. "Is this real? Or are you just—"
He couldn’t finish the sentence. Using her. Playing with her. Running some kind of con on my daughter.
I thought about lying. Spinning some story about being overwhelmed by emotions and circumstances. Letting him believe this was just teenage hormones gone wild.
But Luka deserved better than that. The man had welcomed me into his home, called me son, stood up for me when the world saw nothing but a worthless Zero.
"It’s real, Luka. I love her."
I was playing a game. The System’s game. The entertainment of gods who watched our suffering like a soap opera. But within that game, within those twisted rules, what I felt for Natalia was absolutely real.
Complicated. Possessive. Probably unhealthy by any normal standard.
But real.
Luka stared at me for a long moment. Searching for something in my eyes.
Finally, he exhaled. Long and slow.
"We’re going to talk about this," he said. "Later. When you’re healed. When I’ve had time to process—" He gestured vaguely at everything. "All of this."
"That’s fair."
"And there will be rules."
"Also fair."
"And if you hurt her—"
"You’ll kill me. I know." I attempted a weak grin. "Get in line. I think Skylar already has dibs."
Natalia’s hand found mine again. Squeezed.
The tension in the room eased slightly. Not gone, but manageable. The kind of awkward family drama that could be dealt with over time instead of exploding into immediate violence.
I was just starting to think we might actually survive this when three sharp knocks rattled the door.
Not a nurse’s knock. Not a doctor’s knock.
These were authority knocks. The kind that said I don’t actually need your permission to enter.
The door swung open before anyone could respond.
Three figures stepped inside.
Two men and a woman. Charcoal suits that cost more than my medical bills. Earpieces with barely visible wires. Small pins on their lapels, silver and blue.
VHC pins.
The lead agent was a man in his forties with salt-and-pepper hair cropped military-short. His eyes were pale gray, the color of winter ice, and they scanned the room with the flat assessment of someone cataloging threats.
When those eyes landed on me, they didn’t see a patient. They saw a target.
The romantic tension evaporated instantly. The coffee puddle, the awkward confession, Natalia’s dramatic declaration—all of it became utterly irrelevant as my blood turned to ice in my veins. Those pins weren’t just any VHC insignia. They were the distinctive silver-and-blue of the Sanctions Division, the shadow hunters, the bogeymen that even other Hunters whispered about with dread.
These weren’t bureaucrats coming to file paperwork. The Sanctions Division was the VHC’s ruthless scalpel—President Vance’s personal cleanup crew who made problems disappear without trials or public records. They handled the threats deemed "too sensitive for public response," the dark secrets that needed to remain buried, the aberrations that threatened the carefully cultivated garden of Valorian supremacy.
And now they were looking at me like I was a particularly troublesome weed.
Well, shit.
Natalia was already moving. She slid off the chair and positioned herself between me and the agents, her body angled like a human shield. Her hands weren’t glowing yet, but I could feel her telekinesis gathering, coiling like a spring ready to snap.
The lead agent ignored her completely. His attention remained fixed on me.
"Mr. Nakano." His voice was pleasant in a way that felt manufactured. "We understand you’re recovering. Our apologies for the interruption." He didn’t sound sorry at all. "But we have some questions regarding the irregularities inside the Sunken Necropolis."
Luka stepped forward.
All the confusion and hurt from the last few minutes transformed into something far more dangerous. His shoulders squared. His chin lifted. The B-Rank Hunter, the protector, the man who had faced monsters for twenty years, emerged from the shell of the bewildered father.
He put his massive bulk between the agents and his children. Both of us. Me included.
"He’s a minor." Luka’s voice dropped into the register he used on Gate runs. The one that made lesser men flinch. "And he’s injured. Get out."
The agent’s smile didn’t waver. If anything, it grew thinner.
"This isn’t a request, Mr. Kuzmina. It’s a debriefing." He produced a badge from his jacket. "National security. Authorization code Alpha-Seven."
I didn’t know what Alpha-Seven meant, but from the way Luka’s jaw tightened, it wasn’t good.
"We need to know exactly how a C-Rank student killed an A-Rank Anomaly." The agent’s pale eyes found mine again. Held them. "Especially one that shouldn’t have been in that Gate in the first place."
The implication hung in the air. Someone put it there. Someone knew. And we think you might know too.
I leaned back against my pillows, letting the movement mask the pain in my ribs.
The domestic crisis was postponed. The talk with Luka, the consequences of Natalia’s confession, the inevitable awkward family dinners, all of it could wait.
Because now I had bigger problems.
I smiled at the agent. It probably looked slightly unhinged with my bruised face and bloodshot eyes, but I’d worked with worse.
"An A-Rank Anomaly, huh?" I tilted my head. "Funny. Nobody mentioned that in the briefing. We were told it was a standard C-Rank dungeon clear. Simple training exercise."
The agent’s expression didn’t change.
"So if something went wrong," I continued, "if something that wasn’t supposed to be there showed up and killed two Sentinels, I’d say that’s a question for whoever cleared the Gate for student use. Not for the student who survived cleaning up someone else’s mess."
Silence.
Natalia’s hand found my shoulder. A warning. Don’t push too hard.
But I’d been playing political games since before I could walk in my old life. This was just another battlefield. Another predator to outmaneuver.
The agent studied me for a long moment. Then, impossibly, his smile widened.
"You’re going to be fun, Mr. Nakano." He pulled a chair from the corner of the room and sat down without invitation. "Let’s start from the beginning, shall we? Tell me everything that happened from the moment you entered that Gate."
