My Scumbag System-Chapter 434: Five Crowns, One King

I couldn’t breathe.

My lungs burned like I’d just run a marathon through hellfire. Every inhale was a battle against ribs that had already been through too much today, yesterday, and probably the entire goddamn week.

The air tasted like sex, sweat, and something else. Something divine that was probably going to kill me before the tournament ever got a chance.

Hah... hah... fuck...

My chest was covered in god knows what. Streaks of saliva from five different women. The faint shimmer of Nectar still drying on my skin like war paint.

Somewhere in the chaos of the last four hours, someone had gotten enthusiastic with their nails, leaving red lines across my torso that stung when I moved.

I reached blindly for the water bottle I’d stashed on the nightstand three lifetimes ago. The plastic crinkled in my grip as I chugged the entire thing in three desperate gulps.

Room temperature and tasting faintly like Bartholomew’s terrarium water. Didn’t matter. My body was a desert and this was the only oasis.

The room looked like a battlefield.

And I’d gone undefeated.

Five versus one.

My eyes adjusted to the dim light filtering through the curtains, taking inventory of the carnage I’d created. They were all here. All five of them. Scattered across my bed like fallen soldiers after the war ended.

Akari lay on her stomach near the edge of the mattress, her tan skin practically glowing in the moonlight. Her emerald eyes were shut, long lashes resting against her cheeks, and her black hair fanned out like spilled ink across white sheets. Her mouth was slightly open, a line of drool connecting her lips to the pillow.

One leg was hooked over Skylar’s hip in a way that suggested they’d collapsed together and just... stayed that way. Between her thighs, visible evidence of what we’d done leaked slowly onto the sheets.

Round three had been when she’d grabbed my face, her voice breaking as she begged me to fill her up, told me she loved me, told me she wanted to carry my kid like it was some kind of trophy she needed to win.

The memory alone made my spent cock twitch.

Emi was curled into a ball on my left, her blue hair a complete disaster of tangles and sweat-plastered strands.

Those little antenna pieces had given up hours ago, hanging limply against her forehead.

She’d tucked herself against my side even in sleep, one arm thrown across my stomach like she was afraid I’d disappear. Her white tank top was gone.

Actually, most of everyone’s clothes were gone. Scattered like confetti across the floor. Between Emi’s soft thighs, more evidence.

She’d been the second one to crack during round three, sobbing into my shoulder that she loved me, that she wanted me to put a baby in her, that she wanted to be mine forever in every way that mattered.

I was going straight to hell.

No stops. Express service.

Celeste had claimed the spot on my right, one arm draped across my chest, her silver-white hair a river of moonlight against my skin. She looked younger in sleep.

Less like Seraphina’s sister, less like a political weapon, more like the girl who’d punched me in a cave for being reckless.

Her nightdress had survived somehow, though it was rucked up around her waist in a way that would mortify her when she woke up.

Between her legs, the same story. She hadn’t said the words during round three. Hadn’t declared love or begged for babies.

But she’d looked at me with those periwinkle eyes and whispered my real name like a prayer while I came inside her, and somehow that felt heavier than any declaration.

Natalia was sprawled across everyone’s legs near the foot of the bed, her purple hair with its white streaks creating abstract art against tan skin and pale skin and everything in between.

The Cryo-Lich Ring on her finger had finally stopped glowing. She’d used the last of her energy creating an ice wall at some point, probably when Braxton’s footsteps passed by in the hallway and we’d all frozen like criminals mid-heist.

Her silk shorts were somewhere in the corner—one of them had ended up draped over the headboard like a surrendered flag, which told its own story. Her camisole had apparently achieved genuine interdimensional travel, because I’d stopped trying to locate it around the second hour. Between her thighs, the unmistakable evidence of her own insistence—she’d been very specific about what she wanted, had actually grabbed my jaw and made me repeat it back to her, which had been one of the more unhinged moments of an evening absolutely stacked with unhinged moments.

Skylar had wedged herself into the narrow gap between Akari and the wall. The oversized black shirt—technically mine, a fact she’d never acknowledge—had ridden up to her ribcage at some indeterminate point, exposing the pale curve of her hip. Her indigo-and-pink hair was an absolute catastrophe, an entire music festival compressed into a single braid-gone-wrong. One violet eye cracked open a sliver, found me watching her with what was probably an unforgivably smug expression, and snapped shut again.

"Stop staring, pervert." The grumble was barely audible. Half asleep and still fully antagonistic. Genuinely impressive.

I grinned despite myself.

The arithmetic was absurd.

Five women.

Four hours.

Worth it.

Every last second.

My stomach chose that exact moment to voice its grievances at a volume that could have classified as a seismic event.

A long, deep, resonant growl that rippled through the pre-dawn silence of the room and disturbed absolutely no one, because every single woman in my bed was somewhere in the profound depths of post-exertion unconsciousness—the specific, boneless kind that only arrives at the intersection of alcohol, exhaustion, and endorphins flooding the brain in quantities that would concern a pharmacologist.

I needed a sports drink.

Probably ten sports drinks consumed in rapid succession.

Possibly intravenously. And a medic. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

And a long, serious conversation with whoever designed the human body about its catastrophic lack of stamina reserves.