My Scumbag System-Chapter 295: About That Post-Credits Scene...

The monster was blinded. Pinned. Kneeling.

Now.

"Isabelle!" I raised my voice above the chaos. "Bring the rain! Everyone else, maximal output! NOW!"

Isabelle launched herself into the air. Her wine-red hair streamed behind her like a battle flag, and her spear blazed with green wind energy so intense it created a miniature hurricane around her body. She began to spin.

Faster.

Faster.

She became a drill. A living weapon aimed directly at the Angler’s skull.

"Zephyrfall!"

Raphael and Hikari hit the chest simultaneously. Kinetic force and virtual mass combined in an explosion of pure violence that caved in the creature’s ribcage. I raised my hand and let the heat build until the air itself distorted.

[Thermal Incision] lanced toward the monster’s neck. A beam of concentrated heat that burned through shadow and bone and whatever else made up this nightmare’s anatomy. The smell was indescribable. Rotting meat and burning hair and something else, something wrong.

Isabelle drove her spear into the skull.

BOOOOOOOOOM!

The impact sent a shockwave across the entire chamber. Water exploded upward in a column twenty feet high. Steam filled the air so thick I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.

The monster collapsed.

Its massive body hit the water with a tremendous splash that soaked everything in a fifty-foot radius. The child-lure finally stopped crying. The psychic pressure that had been pressing against my skull eased.

Silence.

"Too easy!" Raphael pumped his fist, kinetic energy still crackling around his knuckles. "That’s how Onyx does it! Take notes, Silver Spoons!"

Skylar dropped from the monster’s corpse, landing in the water with a disgusted expression. She was covered head to toe in black ichor. "I need seventeen showers. Possibly eighteen."

"I’ll scrub your back," I offered.

"Touch me and die."

Hikari bounced over, her flail dragging behind her through the water. "That was so fun! Can we do it again? I want to fight another one!"

"Please no," Juan groaned from somewhere in the steam. "My everything hurts."

I didn’t join the celebration.

Something was wrong.

I checked my System interface. Scrolled through the notifications. Looked for the popup that should have appeared when a Boss-class monster died.

Nothing.

No experience gained. No loot dropped. No quest progress updated.

Where’s my reward?

"Wait," I said.

The laughter died.

"What is it?" Natalia appeared at my side, her purple eyes sharp with concern. "Satori?"

I stared at the corpse. The massive body lay half-submerged in the black water, smoke rising from the wounds we’d inflicted. It wasn’t moving. Wasn’t breathing.

But it wasn’t fading either.

Boss monsters dissolved when killed. Their bodies broke down into mana particles that returned to the Gate. It was how Cores were retrieved. How Hunters confirmed their kills.

This body was still solid.

Still warm.

Still—

A cracking sound echoed through the chamber.

KRR-KRR-KRRRRR...

"Oh, that’s not good," Juan said, his voice suddenly devoid of its usual laziness.

SPLORCH.

The Angler’s body split open.

Not like a wound. Like a cocoon.

The massive form, all that shadow-wrapped bone and ancient nightmare flesh, tore itself apart from the inside. Something else was inside. Something that had been wearing the physical form like a costume. Like a shell.

Like armor.

It rose.

The true monster.

My brain struggled to process what I was seeing. It was made of bioluminescent jelly and concentrated darkness, a floating mass of horror that defied biological classification. It looked like someone had ripped out a giant’s nervous system and brought it to life. Glowing tendrils that might have been neurons. Pulsing veins of pure black light. A heart of absolute darkness that beat with a rhythm that felt wrong against my own pulse.

And the child-lure. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

It wasn’t attached to the creature anymore.

It WAS the creature.

The crying child-shape floated at the center of the jellyfish horror, its face still twisted in that pitiful weeping expression. But its eyes were open now.

They were empty.

Hungry.

Ancient.

"The Angler was just a puppet," Isabelle breathed. "This... this is the true Boss."

The entity pulsed.

VWUUUUUUUUUB...

The sound hit me like a physical blow. A bass drop that resonated in my bones and turned my thoughts to static. The water in the room didn’t just ripple. It changed. Turned pitch black in an instant, as if someone had poured ink into every drop.

Then gravity doubled.

I slammed to my knees. My bat drove into the water, the only thing keeping me from face-planting into the darkness. Around me, my teammates collapsed. Raphael roared in fury as his legs gave out. Hikari’s smile finally faltered. Even Isabelle, the unshakeable queen, dropped to one knee.

The pressure was immense. It felt like the entire dungeon was sitting on my shoulders.

The entity screamed.

Not with sound. With something else. A psychic shriek that bypassed my ears entirely and stabbed directly into my brain. I felt blood run from my nose. Hot and copper-tasting. My vision blurred. My thoughts scattered like startled birds.

Monster. Real monster. Not C-Rank. Not C-Rank at all. A-Rank minimum. Maybe higher. We’re going to die here. We’re going to—

I forced the fear down.

Grabbed it by the throat.

Strangled it until it stopped moving.

No.

I was Satori Nakano. I was the Scumbag King. I had faced a World-Ranked Hunter and walked away. I had stolen from gods and seduced monsters and manipulated my way through every obstacle the universe had thrown at me.

I was not going to die to an oversized jellyfish with a sad kid attached.

I pushed against my bat. My arms screamed. My knees ground against the stone beneath the water. Blood dripped from my nose and hit the black surface with soft plops.

Slowly, agonizingly, I stood.

The entity’s empty eyes fixed on me. The child-face tilted, curious.

"Why do you fight?" it asked. The voice was in my head. A thousand children crying at once. "Why do you struggle? Everyone dies. Everyone falls. Why not rest?"

"Because," I said, wiping blood from my upper lip with the back of my hand, "I’ve got dinner reservations next week."

I grinned.

It probably looked insane. Bloody teeth and wild eyes and a baseball bat in a dungeon full of dead Sentinels and cosmic horror.

"Okay." I rolled my shoulders against the oppressive gravity. "Now it’s a boss fight."