I drove away from the fire, leaving the cops and the fire crew behind, though I made sure to drive under the speed limit until I was far enough to avoid their attention. Then, I pressed the gas, speeding up, cutting through the occasional puddle, not caring the mud and dirt it created, ruining the looks of my new, borrowed car.

Without my guide looking from my shoulder, forcing me to stay, I had no reason to stick around. Yet, before I could even arrive at the limits of the city, I pulled to the side.

My hands were trembling.

"Fuck," I murmured as the realization of what happened, and more importantly, what might have happened hit me with the full force of a wayward truck. The presence of my guide worked well enough to suppress the weight of the moment, and even after her disappearance, the argument with the sexy policewoman with anger management problems gave me an excuse to focus on the moment.

But now, the pressure was gone, leaving me with the realization of just how close I had been to a disaster. If I hadn't driven through the city to delay us, we would have arrived at the facility before the fire.

Meaning I would have faced whatever was responsible for creating that fire.

"Fuck," I murmured as the shivers hit me even stronger. I tried taking a deep breath to suppress it, but it turned out to be useless against the enormity of the moment. This so-called Darkness was supposed to be something that had been lost in the annals of history, completely irrelevant, not something that I could stumble around the god-forsaken City of Brightwood.

Even worse, my guide's attempt to extinguish that fire showed me that I would have been completely helpless against whatever that was. If the residual of its power was enough to send my guide into some kind of hibernation mode, it was rather obvious that she would have no chance against them in a more direct encounter.

Not that I could trust her to defend me in the first place with her spotty memory even if she had the necessary raw power.

Luckily, not all was bad. I had been active for several days, and yet, whatever responsible for directly destroying the Ceremony didn't come down — or up — to deal with me.

Combined with my guide failing to notice anything extraordinary about the others until the Ceremony actually started, it wasn't hard to guess the Ceremony essentially worked like the magical equivalent of a lighthouse, easily detected, while the Heroic Traits was something subtler.

I closed my eyes, trying to reach that mental place that allowed me to access the System and my guide. My guide was still in her hibernating state, weakly glowing, and the System was still the same, cold and mechanical. Interestingly, however, I managed to notice something different as I focused. A thin line of energy, floating in my mental space before being devoured by my guide.

"It must be the Intent," I murmured, though I was only able to notice because my guide was absorbing it rather aggressively, making it more noticeable in the process. She was probably using it to refill her magic after her exertion.

However, that realization prompted me to turn the car on once more and started driving, hoping to distract myself with some adrenaline before I made a decision. It wouldn't have worked as well as drinking a couple of bottles of cheap vodka, of course, but wasting several hours was not something I could afford.

I needed to calm down before that decision.

One of the options was to fade into the background. Quit the football team, maybe even the chess team, doing my best to stop collecting people's attention, therefore their Intent. It looked like a safe decision. It was a decision I hadn't considered before because of the constant presence of my guide, constantly prompting me to act, with the implied threat of forcing me if I rejected.

And her ability to extinguish a cursed fire suggested that it wasn't just an idle threat in the most visceral manner possible.

Yet, from what I had seen, she needed the Intent to recover. Intent she would have been starved for if I pulled back and started living like some kind of hermit in the middle of nowhere, keeping me away from all the nonsense.

Unfortunately, no matter how tempting was the idea, I couldn't feel myself taking that path. It was against my whole personality.

Someone more altruistic than me might have said that they didn't want to leave humanity helpless against some kind of mysterious threat, especially since that threat was somehow linked to the biggest collapse of history, requiring more than a thousand years for the civilizations to recover from its effects.

That wasn't me. Especially since I neither asked for it, nor I was the only one that was chosen, as evidenced by the Ceremony that had been happening just several miles away.

My mentality was simpler. If there was an upcoming disaster, I wouldn't trust others to defend me against it.

If there was one thing my less-than-stellar childhood taught me, it was that trusting others was a fool's errand.

"Damn it," I murmured as I pressed the gas harder, enjoying the empty highway, not happy with the realization that I had already made a decision. After all, just because I had made a decision didn't mean I had to be happy about it.

Especially if that decision positioned me against some kind of mysterious Darkness.

I was not a fucking hero.

Of course, just because I had made the decision to take an active role didn't mean I had a strategy in place. I still had no idea what kind of danger I was facing, the depths of my abilities, or whether I had any allies — ones that were more reliable than an amnesiac angel — and what was the limits of Heroic Traits.

It was hard to put together a reliable strategy with that little information.

Still, some aspects were clear. For example, taking the football team more seriously. My joining had been a momentary fancy, something between fulfilling a childhood dream and a tool to distract a hyperactive angel. However, it was hard to deny that it was still my best bet to generate some kind of fame and renown.

Chess was another aspect that could give me some benefit, though not as directly. The benefits I gained from nearly winning a tournament showed that the direct benefits were not something worthwhile.

But the indirect benefits were another matter. I hadn't missed the fact that a decent amount of gossip about my mini-scandal with Megan had been about my identity as a chess player. People clearly enjoyed the juxtaposition of two social roles, and it wouldn't be hard to imagine it helping even further if I could actually play in Football games.

There were many decisions to be taken, but rather than returning back to my dorm, I continued traveling down the highway, hoping that the ride would distract me.

Unfortunately, I admitted after twenty minutes, it was not to be the case. The driving simply wasn't as calming as it used to. It took a while for me to realize the reason, but soon, I noticed it. The ride was simply too smooth.

Who would have guessed I would miss that bucket of rust?

Yet, without its constant clanking and rustling, the drive was simply too effortless, making it a boring affair unless I had driven the car to the limit — which would inevitably earn the attention of the police. And I neither had the money to pay the fines, nor had I any desire to have a repeat encounter with the police so soon after the previous one.

Or ever.

With a sigh, I took the nearest turn, and changed my direction back to college. If the ride was not relaxing, maybe I could go back and do some research and put together a more reasonable plan. Though, since I didn't enter the city to deliberately got stuck in the traffic, the journey took much less even with the extended detour.

With the college gates in front of me, I slowed down, giving myself some more time to think, though, as I drove, I felt rather empty. It was hard to admit, but that bucket of rust wasn't the only thing I found myself missing. Without my guide on the backseat, watching her surroundings absentmindedly and occasionally making an inaccurate yet optimistic comment, the drive felt different.

It was interesting just how quickly I started taking an odd sort of comfort from her presence.

And it would be a lie to say her looks were hurting.

"Pity," I murmured as I pulled in front of my dorm, abandoning that track of thought.

There was a lot of research to be done.