Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

After a quick glance over your post, I have some thoughts;

Free: ProtonVPN

ProtonVPN is good for torrenting on the paid plan, not the free plan. Proton doesn't allow torrenting on their free plan. They will block your connection if they detect that you are torrenting, or they will disconnect you from their VPN tunnel - exposing your real IP on the torrent.

Paid: Mullvad

Mullvad is a decent choice, though they no longer support port forwarding. ~~You are still able to download, though you won't be able to seed iirc~~

VirusTotal

The problem with a virustotal scan is that pirated software is often false flagged for malware. It's difficult to tell what is safe from what you've downloaded. It's best to download from a trusted uploader, though that doesn't always guarantee safety as they can always go rogue (As an example, FTUApps were seen as safe until one of their uploads to 1337x contained malware).

Older uploads tend to have less false positives in my experience, though it can be very easy to become complacent.

edit; score out comment about mullvad seeding, others have pointed out that it still works fine! oops