Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System!-Chapter 387: Scar of the Past: Sins and Karma

Robert Blackwood knelt like a man praying to a god he no longer believed would listen.

His hands were flat against the marble, fingers twitching slightly, head bowed so low it looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him. Not with reverence. Not with honor. With desperation. The kind that made your spine ache and your breath lock shallow in your throat. The kind that crawled from the soul when you knew—you fucked up something eternal.

Parker studied him in silence.

He didn't move.

Didn't blink.

Didn't breathe.

He simply sat on the obsidian throne carved for a prince… like he wasn't the prince, but something worse. Something the title was too small for. One leg crossed, fingers draped lazily along the carved blackwood armrest, chin slightly tilted. But his eyes—his eyes were fucking still. Like ice holding back fire.

He looked at Robert.

Really looked at him.

And he couldn't help but wonder.

To his understanding, the Origin Families—at least the ruling heads—had always known who he was. Not just a child. Not just an orphan. Not just another pawn on the board. But him. The one who gave them their bloodlines. The one who gave them their very Origin Familiy names.

And Robert… Robert Blackwood had known.

He'd known since the beginning. Since Parker was first dropped at the Blackwoods' estate like a burden wrapped in bloodlines. He knew who he was raising. Who he was feeding. Who he was training—or more accurately, who he was letting rot.

All this time.

He knew.

And still—he let Julian do what he did.

Still, he let Annabelle mock him. Maybe it was "just words." But they weren't just words when you were seven, and all you had left of your worth was how you held your silence when someone laughed in your face and said you'll never be anything.

Parker could still hear her voice sometimes—not because he believed her, but because it hurt anyway. The words Annabelle used, the ones she probably forgot as soon as she said them, had stayed with him longer than most memories should. Not because they were clever.

Just because they were constant.

Julian? No. He wasn't worth the breath. Parker didn't have the time—or the fucking patience—to start unpacking the mountain of shit that boy shoved into him year after year. Not tonight.

What he had now was simpler. Something burning behind his ribs, humming under his skin like a blade still wet from a kill.

And so—he asked.

"Why?"

It wasn't a whisper. It wasn't a roar. It didn't need to be either. It was a sound carved out of power and dropped into the grand hall like judgment made flesh. It reverberated through marble, through ribs, through veins, through teeth. It struck the kneeling three first—Julian flinched, Annabelle froze, and Robert looked like he might melt into the floor.

But the real damage was done in the rows behind them.

Scarlett. The twins. The others.

They shivered—because the word didn't just hit their ears. It dug into their souls. And their souls remembered something their minds tried to forget: who he was. Who they had betrayed. What they once bruised, mocked, neglected… was no longer asking as a victim.

He was asking as their creator.

The one with every right to unmake them.

And the worst part?

They couldn't answer him. There was no reason good enough. And even if there was, their souls wouldn't let them speak it.

Some sins can't be explained.

Only punished.

Maya and Evelyn stood in silence, their gazes cast downward—not out of guilt, but memory. Heavy, old, uncomfortable memory. The kind that creeps in through the back of your ribs and settles behind your heart like a ghost with unfinished business.

Evelyn, always the softer one, found herself drifting back to when Parker was just a kid—small, silent, strange. An outcast even before the word had any real weight to it. He didn't cry. Didn't beg to play. He just existed near them like a shadow that wasn't invited but never left. The other kids laughed and ran; Parker sat alone, arms crossed, eyes distant. Watching. Waiting. Like he already knew life wasn't going to hand him shit.

She remembered the time he beat her.

It wasn't rage. It wasn't malice. It was Parker—cold and detached, hitting back like it was instinct, like kindness wasn't part of the system code he'd downloaded into his bones. She chuckled at the thought, not because it was funny—but because, weirdly, that was the day his father named him.

Black.

After Parker cracked the man's pride and maybe his balls, right in the middle of it all. No drama. No screaming. Just a perfect strike and the beginning of a legend nobody realized was being born.

Maya smiled too, slower, sadder. She'd been there. She'd seen it all. The beatings, the mockery, the way Julian and the other little wolves circled him like hyenas around a cub they hadn't figured out was a lion. Even before fully remembering her past lives, she'd stepped in once, told them not to overdo it—not because she pitied him, but because something about Parker always felt… off. Loaded. Like kicking him too hard would wake up something they'd regret.

They didn't listen. Of course they didn't.

Well—Evelyn did. That was a given. The girl was practically angel-coded from birth. Forgiving, soft-spoken, allergic to cruelty. The kind of person who got beat up by a kid and still asked if he was okay after she cried. She never joined in the bullying, not even once. Not like the others.

Annabelle did, though.

She was different.

Annabelle laughed the loudest. The mockery was always sugarcoated, sharp as glass under a silk glove. She didn't raise fists—she raised daggers with her words. And Parker remembered. He always remembered.

The Origin Families remembered too—even if they pretended not to. Everyone here had some blood on their hands. Some had buckets.

Only the Zhangs and the Shadowmires walked into this room clean. The rest? Filthy.

From Helena all the way to the so-called noble fathers and smiling matriarchs… every name stitched into the Origin tapestry had a thread dipped in the damage they did to Parker.

Even Bella. Evelyn's big sister. Saintly in public, complicit behind closed doors.

But the crown for cruelty? That belonged to the Blackwoods. Hands down. They were the architects. The ones who didn't just watch it happen—they scheduled it, sanctioned it, institutionalized it. Raised Parker like a cursed artifact they didn't know how to destroy, so they just kept it locked away and beat the rage out of it every time it breathed.

Tessa sighed.

She remembered the version of Parker she found—half-feral, all instincts. A walking husk of trauma stitched together with hatred and obsession. No dreams. No softness. Just one program looping through his head like a corrupted algorithm:

Grow stronger. Get rich. Make them pay.

He wasn't built for healing. He was built for vengeance.

When he first got the system, that was all he asked for. Two weeks. That's what he said.

Two weeks to start breaking the chains. Two weeks to show the world what they'd created.

What he hadn't expected—what none of them expected—was the twist. The divine joke. The cosmic "oops" that turned him from a broken boy into a prince of everything-wrapped-in-boy's-skin.

Because now?

Parker Black they knew wasn't just their reckoning.

He was their creator.

Every soul in this hall, every ancient bloodline with their pretty legacies and unspoken sins—they didn't just owe him respect.

They owed him existence.

But Parker never forgot a debt.