The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 334

Chapter 334: 334 | Methodology Matters More

I stared at the notification for a solid three seconds while Hiro waited for me to respond to whatever he thought my silence meant.

Rivalry Gauge. The System wanted me to unlock a Rivalry Gauge with the pretty boy whose entire personality was built on the conviction that heroism should look good while being good.

The irony was thick enough to choke on. Here was a guy who’d just accused me of treating people as tactical resources, and the interface in my head had immediately responded by categorizing him as an obstacle to heroine progression and assigning me a quest to establish dominance.

The System had no shame. Zero. Negative shame. The System operated in a deficit of shame that should have violated fundamental laws of the universe.

But the thing was, the quest wasn’t wrong.

Not about Hiro being a threat to my operational flexibility. The Pure Hero Philosophy that Hiro preached, where every action carried weight and every decision reflected on the sacred calling of the profession, that philosophy created exactly the kind of social pressure that made my job harder. Every time Hiro opened his mouth about dignity and public trust, he was establishing behavioral standards I couldn’t meet without blowing my cover or tanking my Temptation progression.

And the failure penalty. Fifteen percent decrease to image-conscious heroines if I let Hiro establish narrative control.

That meant Petra. That meant Camille, probably. That meant anyone in the cohort who cared about how things looked as much as how things worked.

Hiro Sato was a genuine problem I’d been ignoring because his primary mode of engagement was complaining about costume aesthetics during lunch conversations.

But standing here in the golden hour light with his Corona glowing and his jaw set and his eyes full of sincere conviction about my moral failings, I could see the shape of what he could become if I let him.

A competitor. Not for rankings or case resolution rates or tactical brilliance. A competitor for the story.

Heroes were brands. Crane had taught that in the first hour of her class. The public didn’t remember what you did. They remembered what you meant. Radiant wasn’t number one because his Aspect output exceeded everyone else’s. He was number one because he’d figured out how to be a symbol before anyone else understood that symbols were what mattered.

Hiro understood symbols. Hiro was building himself into a symbol right now, every day, with every perfectly styled hair and every dramatically positioned arm and every golden beam that looked incredible on camera.

If I let him establish the narrative that I was the guy who kissed people for tactical advantage and treated colleagues as resources, then every success I achieved would be filtered through that frame. Every win would come with an asterisk. Every climb up the rankings would be accompanied by whispers about whether I deserved it.

I needed Hiro Sato to hate me.

Not because I wanted him to suffer. The guy was annoying and self-righteous and desperately in need of someone explaining that not everything required background music, but he wasn’t evil. He was just inconvenient.

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