The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 226

Chapter 226: 226 | Sustenance as a Status Symbol

I locked my door and headed downstairs, taking the stairs two at a time because the elevator in this building moved like it was powered by apology letters. Percy looked up from his notebook as I passed through the common room, his pen frozen mid-stroke.

"You changed."

"Felicity happened."

"The shirt suits your coloring better than the hoodies. The blue picks up the amber in your eyes and creates a complementary contrast that most people would require professional consultation to achieve."

"Thanks, Percy."

"That was not a compliment. That was an observation. Compliments require intent." He paused. "But you’re welcome."

I crossed the quad in the golden hour light, the campus quieting down as students filtered toward the main cafeteria building on the south side of the Academic Spine.

Halloran’s cafeteria occupied the entire ground floor of the Athena Wing, a glass and white concrete structure that connected to the science labs on one side and the Hero Law lecture halls on the other.

I’d seen the building during orientation tours but hadn’t actually eaten there yet, surviving on protein bars, Percy’s emergency granola stash, and whatever Caden’s gravity-assisted cooking produced in the common room.

The double doors opened onto a space that made me stop walking.

The Halloran Academy cafeteria was not a cafeteria. Calling it a cafeteria was like calling the ocean a puddle.

The room stretched the entire width of the Athena Wing, probably two hundred feet across, with thirty-foot ceilings supported by exposed steel beams painted white. Floor-to-ceiling windows ran along the south wall, flooding the space with the last of the afternoon sun and offering a panoramic view of the lower campus grounds where training fields spread out toward the treeline.

The floor was polished concrete, the kind that looked industrial but cost more per square foot than marble because some designer had convinced the administration that heroes eat better on modernist surfaces.

But the food.

The food was the thing.

A central island ran down the middle of the room for at least sixty feet, split into stations that each could have operated as an independent restaurant. The first station featured a sushi bar with a glass display case full of rolls and nigiri arranged on ice like edible jewelry.

A chef in a white coat stood behind the counter with a knife that caught the light every time he moved. Next to that, a ramen station with three different broth bases simmering in enormous vats, the steam curling up toward the ceiling and carrying a pork bone richness that made my stomach clench.

Then a Mediterranean spread with lamb rotating on a vertical spit, hummus in four different colors, and a flatbread station where someone was pulling fresh naan from a tandoor oven built directly into the counter.

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