The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 475

Chapter 475: 475 | Heroism Waits For No Schedule

"Radiant does not get tired!" He spread his arms wide in a gesture that encompassed the entire intersection and the city beyond it. "Radiant gets energized by the opportunity to serve! Every rescue is a reminder of why we do this work!"

"Right." Apex didn’t look convinced. "Hey, aren’t you supposed to be at Halloran this morning?"

The timer pulsed in his awareness. Three hours and forty-three minutes.

"I am indeed scheduled to chaperone the Crucible exercise! My students are counting on me to provide guidance and wisdom and the occasional demonstration of proper heroic form!" He was already turning toward the eastern sky, where Halloran Academy sat in the Creston Hills like a beacon of everything the hero system aspired to be. "Those young heroes represent the future of our profession, and I refuse to let them down!"

"Then maybe stop responding to every single call between here and there?"

"Every call is someone in need! Every need is an opportunity to help!" Radiant launched himself into the air with a burst of golden light that left afterimages burned into the retinas of everyone watching. "Heroism waits for no schedule!"

He rocketed eastward, the wind of his passage whipping his cape behind him in a stream of white and gold. The city spread below him in geometric patterns of streets and buildings, morning traffic crawling through arteries that fed into the commercial heart of downtown. From up here, Verano looked peaceful. Manageable. A city that could be protected by a single person if that person tried hard enough.

The blood was dripping again.

He wiped his nose without slowing down and the red smeared across his glove and he pretended he didn’t see it.

Two minutes of flight. Halloran was visible now, the white architecture of the campus catching the morning sun on the hillside. He could see the Crucible’s exterior structure, the massive simulation complex that would host forty first-year students in approximately seventy minutes. He could see the parking lot filling with faculty vehicles. He could see, if he focused, the tiny figures of students making their way across campus toward the muster point.

He was going to make it.

"HELP! SOMEONE HELP US!"

The voice came from below and to his left, somewhere in the residential district between downtown and the hills. A woman’s voice. Desperate. Raw in the way that only genuine terror could produce.

Radiant stopped.

He hung in the air above the city with the Crucible visible in the distance and the timer counting down in his peripheral vision and the blood still wet on his glove, and he turned toward the sound.

Smoke. A column of black smoke rising from a four-story apartment building three blocks south. Orange light flickered in the windows of the top floor. People were gathering on the street below, pointing upward, their voices carrying on the morning air in the universal frequency of civilians who needed someone to do something.

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