The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 435

Chapter 435: 435 | Informationally Valuable

I stared at that entry longer than any other.

Usurper. Legendary. Conditional Active.

Permanently absorb a portion of an opponent’s primary Aspect after decisive victory in single combat. The opponent must reach complete physical or psychological subjugation. The absorbed Aspect becomes a weakened but permanent secondary ability at approximately forty percent of its original potency. The original owner retains their power at permanently reduced strength. Maximum capacity: three absorbed Aspects simultaneously. The opponent must be conscious and aware. The victory must be absolute.

I hadn’t used it. Three weeks at Halloran surrounded by students whose Aspects ranged from Rare to Legendary. Three weeks of powers I wanted and abilities that would transform my ceiling from "terrifying" to "international incident." I hadn’t activated Usurper once.

Not restraint. Not morality.

Cold recognition that stealing a piece of someone’s Aspect in a supervised institutional setting where every training session was recorded by multiple cameras and reviewed by faculty who had already noticed my file didn’t match my performance would be the fastest route to IHL investigators asking questions I couldn’t answer without revealing a parasitic gacha system embedded in my consciousness by an entity that communicated through bracket notation and found my distress informationally valuable.

Usurper waited. Usurper was patient.

Somewhere in the future I couldn’t see clearly, Usurper would be the difference between survival and a footnote in someone else’s case file.

I scrolled to the passive traits.

False Data kept me invisible to machines. Every scanner. Every diagnostic tool. Every analysis-type Aspect that tried to read my registration saw exactly what the fiction described: Phantom Touch, Rare tier, Channeler classification, Force Manipulation variant. The trait operated at a level so fundamental that even Dravid’s Suppress—a Legendary ability designed to shut down any Aspect in line of sight—had failed to touch my constructs. They didn’t originate from an Aspect Core. They didn’t register on any classification the IHL recognized.

False Data was the reason I could walk through biometric checkpoints and sit through faculty assessments and demonstrate my abilities in front of thirty-eight students without anyone’s equipment flagging the obvious truth that everything about my registration was fiction.

Musk operated beneath conscious perception. A pheromonal signature that made women lean closer and men feel comfortable. It scaled with proximity. With exposure duration. With the Temptation Gauge levels of anyone the System had flagged.

At Sloane’s one hundred percent, the effect functioned as genuine biochemical addiction.

I couldn’t think about that sentence for longer than four seconds without wanting to throw my phone at the wall.

At Petra’s thirty-four percent the effect manifested as heightened curiosity and reduced social inhibition. It explained exactly nothing about the French and everything about why she had kissed me first when I’d been fully prepared to let the conversation end professionally.

Ecchi Logic was the trait I hated and the trait I couldn’t turn off.

Devotion’s Echo connected me to Sloane like an emotional fiber optic cable. Her strong feelings transmitted to me within fifty meters. Mine to her. Neither of us could suppress the connection or pretend it didn’t exist. I felt her satisfaction radiating across campus, steady and warm, the kind that came from delivering punishment she considered thoroughly deserved.

Sadism made hurting things feel good in ways I was still learning to live with.

Clean strikes generated stamina recovery. Pain inflicted on opponents created feedback loops that reinforced continued aggression. The trait’s optimization extended beyond combat into intimate contexts with established consent, amplifying sensation for everyone involved in ways I hadn’t requested and couldn’t disable. The System’s approach to improving my bedroom performance through a mechanism that rewarded cruelty in one register and pleasure in another.

Sloane had noticed the difference without understanding the cause. She’d commented on it once, obliquely, after a session that left her breathing harder than usual. Diane had noticed the difference and incorporated it into her data collection with the same characteristic efficiency she applied to tracking every other metric I’d accidentally given her access to. Felicity had noticed the difference in the theater and made a sound that would have required significantly more explanation than "cinematography discussion" if the campus employee’s flashlight had arrived thirty seconds earlier.

Demigod sat at the bottom of the list like an anchor dropped through the floor of human limitation and into something the IHL didn’t have classification structures adequate to contain.

Twenty-five percent multiplicative bonus to every physical attribute. Not additive. Multiplicative. Which meant every point I gained was worth one-point-two-five points in practical application. Three hundred percent recovery rate that made sleep feel optional and injuries heal faster than most people’s bruises faded. Five hundred year lifespan stretched out in front of me like a highway with no visible end. Aging slowed to a crawl measured in decades rather than years. Disease immunity absolute enough that Dr. Voss’s diagnostic equipment couldn’t find anything to flag even when she was actively looking for problems. Poison resistance sufficient to shrug off Maribelle’s Apathy Toxin like mild allergy medication taken with breakfast instead of the neurotoxin it actually was.

Continuous passive physical optimization that made my body develop toward its theoretical maximum regardless of training consistency or nutritional intake or any of the other variables that normal human development depended on.

My shoulders had broadened. My jaw had sharpened. My overall appearance had been improving overnight in increments that Felicity noticed and Camille tracked and Petra catalogued with the same precision she applied to everything else in her professional life.