The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 477

Chapter 477: 477 | A Squad of Near-Strangers [CASTLE BONUS]

Eight-thirty in the morning, and I was standing in a parking lot in a charcoal and amber costume that a dead hero’s insurance money paid to design, watching two instructors argue about something they clearly didn’t want us to hear.

Cole Dravid stood with his cane planted and his blue-black hair gathered at the nape of his neck, saying something low and clipped to Imara Steele, whose gold athletic jacket had been swapped for something that read faculty-formal. Her pink eyes kept flicking toward the road that led down from Creston Hills toward the city. Whatever they were discussing, it involved someone who was supposed to be here and wasn’t.

I couldn’t read the words at this distance even with a hundred Intelligence. The debuff had shaved eight percent off my cognitive processing, and connections that should have snapped into place were arriving with a lag that made me feel like I was reading a subtitle track running half a second behind the audio.

Dash Reyes bounced on the balls of his feet beside me, his white and blue bodysuit somehow already looking like he’d worn it through a rainstorm. "Man, this is gonna be sick. You think there’s real fire? Like actual fire, not the fake stuff?"

"Trauma sensors," I said. "So probably real enough to hurt."

"Sick." He grinned wide, warm brown eyes crinkling. Dash Reyes was the kind of guy who heard the words active disaster simulation and got excited the way normal people got excited about brunch.

To my left, Elara Camo stood with the stillness that made her the second most dangerous student in either cohort behind Cain. Her ice-white hair caught the morning light, and her expression sat pleasant and closed, the face of someone who was doing considerably more thinking than she let show. She’d swapped into a fitted suit in silver and pale blue, the kind that would let her Glacial Aspect read her velocity and build ice off her momentum. Standing still, she generated nothing. I made a note not to let her start moving if we ended up on opposite sides of anything.

And Zara Whitfield rounded out my group of four, arms crossed, lime-green tips of her blonde hair pulled back, her whole posture communicating that she’d been ready since seven and everyone else was wasting her time.

None of my people. Not Felicity, not Percy, not Sloane. The weighted randomization had done exactly what it was supposed to do and dropped me into a squad with three near-strangers, which was either good pedagogy or the universe having a laugh at my expense. Probably both. Usually both.

"Belmont." Zara’s accent came through when she said my name, that faint Eastern-European musicality her father left in her mouth. "You look like garbage."

"Thank you. I moisturize."

"No." She studied me with the same flat threat-assessment she probably ran on training dummies. "You are slow today. I watched you at conditioning. Your feet land behind where you look. Are you injured or stupid."

Twelve percent off my physical stats, eighteen percent tacked onto my reaction time, a System debuff burning through my nervous system because I’d told a mandatory quest to go fuck itself in front of four women I actually cared about. Not a great answer for a Wednesday.

"Bad night’s sleep," I said.

Elara’s pale eyes moved to me. She didn’t say anything. She just filed it, the way she filed everything, and went back to watching the instructors.

Over by the 1-A bus, Sloane’s cohort was loading up, and I caught a flash of pink hair for half a second before the doors swallowed it. The Devotion’s Echo pulsed warm and steady against my chest, her frequency all sharp anticipation and competitive fire, a girl about to walk into the biggest evaluation of the semester and absolutely thrilled about it. I let it settle in my ribs for a second longer than I should have.

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