Prerequisites for greatness (RWBY fanfic)
- Thread starter bor902
- Start date
chapter 22
bor902
professional illiterate
- Location
- wherever i am at the moment
Jaune slowly rode closer to Brorusalem's gates, the setting sun behind him. It seemed he had arrived just in time to find a place to sleep for the night. He swept back his cloak as he dismounted, preferring to approach the guards at a more eye-to-eye level.
He looked at the peaks of the tallest buildings reaching above the great walls protecting the city. With how he had experienced the political struggle, almost dying in the middle of a contrived conspiracy, he expected the city to be more, burned to the ground.
But everything seemed normal. The only visible change were the amount of guards at the gate… They had lessened. They were looking at him oddly though. Well, their gazes were directed slightly behind him. Towards the shirtless faunus mage with extremely windswept hair and a crazy look in his eyes. The shirt had been seemingly cut up to create a loincloth.
Having gotten used to being the centre of attention in the garrison, Jaune strode up to the gates and walked past the guards. He expected to be forced to stop for some sort of dialogue, but that didn't seem to be the case.
Some of the guards whispered 'young master' as Jaune passed them and entered the city. Sun stumbled in behind him, frowning.
"They thought I was your servant and that I had been unruly on the way here, so you bound me to the horse and dragged me through the sands," Sun explained after Jaune looked at him questioningly.
"Having hearing that good, I'm jealous," Jaune muttered in response, making Sun shrug.
"Being a faunus has its advantages." Sun looked around. The streets were mostly empty, but that was because it would soon be night.
"We left Zedong and May behind, so just go home. You should probably go and look for them tomorrow though. The horse you left behind still has your stuff."
Sun nodded and jumped off to places unknown, slightly less energetic than usual.
Jaune himself hesitated for a few moments wondering where he should go. Technically he could just enter the Zedong residence and crash there, but it felt rude. And if it felt rude, then it probably was rude.
He hadn't been to an inn for quite a while now, actually. He didn't have a preference, only requiring an unsoiled bed and something that resembled food.
Might as well go to the one where Emanon was, or maybe wasn't anymore. A few months had passed since they'd last seen each other. He could extract some information about how the city had felt like during his absence. The adventurers' inn would be cheaper and better, but he had no one to look forward to seeing there.
After bringing the horse he'd borrowed from Targson to the army's stables, he made his way towards the Blossoms Inn, or whatever it was called. The name had faded from memory, but the location hadn't.
-/-
The innkeeper informed him that Emanon was indeed still living there, showing off a star-shaped tattoo on his shoulder that supposedly raised his coolness factor. She had gifted it to the man for free use of a room for half a year.
Nodding at shoulder-obsessed man, Jaune walked up the stairs while kicking up dust and knocked on Emanon's room. It creaked open slowly, and Emanon stared at him blearily in all her half-naked glory.
"Oh, it's you," she said flatly. As she stepped aside to let him in, she peered out into the dusty corridor to see if anyone else was there. As if she was waiting for someone.
Jaune glanced at her underwear-clad behind for a moment. It was different seeing it compared to feeling it with dimensional comprehension.
"Do you usually open the door dressed like that?" he asked her as he leaned back against the wall and let himself slide down to the floor.
"Do you usually knock on the doors of young women when it's night?" she countered.
"The knocking thing bothers me as well. Don't worry, soon enough I'll just be able to teleport in."
He received a glare. She seemed more standoffish now than she had been back when he had escorted her.
"What do you want," she flatly demanded.
Jaune hadn't expected to receive a cold welcome but he was fairly sure Emanon would warm up again shortly. She was probably mad he only bothered seeking her out after half a year and her own inability to find him. It was the only explanation, though their relationship had never exceeded friendly employer. She probably still saw him as a part of her social net. No matter how far on the outside he was.
People hated losing control.
"I just came back from a quest." She rolled her eyes as if saying 'yes flaunt your exciting life more.' "And you're the only person I really know who was here for the time I was gone."
She sat down on her bed, making his eyebrow twitch. Going for the bed instead of the chair when there was a man present... such promiscuity.
"So what, I'm your informant for what's happening in the city?"
"I guess you could say it like that, though due to our positive past interactions I would of course be more interested in how the events have formed your own experience." At her annoyed look he added. "What emotional and possibly physical impact they had on you."
She snorted. "Fine." She turned to stare at the ceiling, hands behind her head. "I assume you're asking about the political shitshow. It started with posturing, then contradictory messages by criers. One would advise all citizens to stack up on food supplies while the other would talk about great harvests in the region which would lead to cheaper and more importantly voluminous amounts of food. There was one incident where it came to blows."
"One?" Jaune queried, causing Emanon's eyes to grow even more distant.
A split second activation of dimensional comprehension showed a hooded man talking to the inkeep.
"Yes, one. I was present at the time. The market, was buying some needles, some noble and a wealthy merchant started arguing, it escalated until they both sent their respective armed forces against each other, at first for intimidation, then for violence."
Another flash. The hooded man, equipped like a rogue, was walking up the stairs.
"And then they burned to ashes in an instant."
What.
"What."
Jaune was focusing on the man who was now passing their room, the man who halted for a second. Maybe he had misheard.
"Apparently the reputation of our court magician is deserved."
The rogue continued onwards after his pause, opening the door next to Emanon's.
"He appeared a second later. One moment he wasn't there, the other he simply was. A small pop, like the death of a soap bubble accompanied him."
The rogue had entered the room and started unpacking.
"His voice boomed out, 'Not in the open,' and then he was gone again."
The unpacking finished, the rogue slowly walked to the wall his room shared with theirs.
"Sirius Black. What a terrifying man."
The rogue knelt down and pressed his ear to the wall.
"Everything went back to normal afterwards."
Shit.
Emanon suddenly gripped her head, the movement startling Jaune further. "It fucking hurts!" she hissed out.
Jaune didn't know why the rogue was spying on them. The most likely reason was the fact that someone had discovered he was a dimensional mage.
"Do you need anything?" he asked as his mind raced. There was also the possibility of someone being pissed on him for halting their plans. The garrison came to mind. Or it could have something to do with Emanon.
"No… Wait, some water wouldn't hurt," she corrected herself.
The question was, were they here to spy on them, or was their purpose more sinister? Could the rogue only listen or did he have other skills available? His position implied he was listening more than anything else.
Jaune would continue with the assumption that he wasn't being watched, only being listened to. He quickly shushed Emanon with a finger in front of his mouth.
She shut up, thankfully.
His thought process accelerated as he thought of what to do. He mindlessly pulled a waterskin out of his inventory, walked over to a very still Emanon, and handed it to her. She ogled slightly at the use of magic. Jaune had been careless with the usage of inventory.
"Here, some water," he enunciated clearly as he pulled out a sheet of paper and scribbled on it. This was not the time for saving space so he made the words large and legible.
He handed the paper to Emanon ,who was gulping down the water. Some droplets ran down her chin and into her cleavage. She glanced at the paper when finished and after a second of incomprehension stared at him wide-eyed.
'Someone is listening in from the room next to us, bad intentions, after me.'
She mouthed 'really?' to which Jaune nodded.
"How about I take you up on your offer to get a tattoo," Jaune suddenly said nonchalantly. "Do you have any new additions to your sketchbook?" He held up the piece of paper, the words 'Yes. At the table' underlined.
He needed to get out of here. If this was an attempted kidnapping there was probably someone watching the inn's exits.
He helped Emanon stand up as she played her role. "I do actually have a few new ones you might be interested in." She sat down at the table and made a show of pulling the chair across the ground so it made a decent amount of noise. She pulled out her sketchbook and let it fall on the table with a bang.
The rogue listening in flinched but quickly regained his composure.
"This design I made recently, it's inspired by the cactus that is abundant to the north of Brorusalem," she said, writing down a 'what do we do' on the blank open page of her sketchbook.
Jaune put away his quill and took a hold of one her charcoal pens.
'they're here for me, unless you did something?'
They continued a sparse verbal conversation that must have come off as a bit stilted to the spy, while their true exchange continued on paper.
'I did nothing.'
It had been unlikely that the rogue was here for her, and now the chance was even lower. Now, how could he get out of this situation? He felt out and found that all exits were being watched by at least one person. They weren't even trying to be inconspicuous.
Even the window was being watched. Fuck. The one in their room was the only one though. The windows of the other occupants had nobody assigned to them. Jumping out of one on their side of the inn would be inadvisable, as it meant jumping down on the cobbled main street that had sentries.
The rooms adjacent to theirs on the corridor though, those were unguarded and so was the back alley. One of the suspiciously dressed men was sitting at the bar downstairs, which let him see everyone entering or exiting the kitchen, which had the only door leading to the back alley.
Which was why the back alley had nobody. Ok.
"You have quite the variety, but they're all drawings. Why don't you… show me your tattoos, so I can see how they look on skin," Jaune suggested saucily.
'Go with it, make sex noises on bed, I'll run away, eat the page we're writing this on later.' Emanon glanced at him, with slight trepidation.
'what about me?'
'they're not after you, not much I can do, seven of them.'
She seemed unconvinced but stood up from the chair, once again making sure it scraped. She clutched her head, mouthing 'headache' at him. A bit of blood dribbled from her nose, down her delicate chin, and onto her white linen tank top.
"Why don't we move to the bed then? Then you'll... be able to see them better." She threw herself onto the bed, and despite her apparent pain managed to sound fairly sultry.
Jaune pressed a healing potion into her hand, his other hand making the gesture for her to continue.
"Well, we didn't say anything about touching, but I'm not entirely against the idea." Emanon basically purred out the sentence.
"Yeah, you like that, don't you," Jaune said, trying his very best not to sound like the awkward teenager that he was while he stood up, went to the door and put his hand on the knob.
Jaune wasn't able to sense facial features very well, but as the 'sexual act' progressed, the rogue seemed to grow more and more annoyed. Eventually the man just gave up, stood up, and threw himself on the bed while muttering something.
Jaune could have laughed, but it was likely that the man had a skill that enhanced his senses if he was assigned the role of spying on them instead of just being another sentry.
Emanon at this point was jumping on the bed with a deadpan look on her face while moaning and giving the occasional shriek. She mouthed the words 'if you're lying' at him, followed by running her thumb across her throat.
Jaune shut the door as stealthily as he could and made his way to the room on the opposite side of the corridor. He knocked on it gently. The man inside muttered something, then stood up from a sitting position to get the door. People sure talked a lot when they were alone.
The thin man opened the door expectantly, looking forward at his own eye-level. This prevented him from really seeing Jaune and made it easier for the mage to drive a fist into the man's solar plexus.
'Bartholomew' folded in two, wheezing and allowing himself to be pushed back into the room. Jaune let him fall onto the ground as he closed the door behind him. He stepped over the now-vomiting man and opened the window. Jaune had one leg on the window still when he suddenly thought of something. He turned around and threw a few coins at the green-haired guy's head.
"Don't tell anyone about this," he commented lightly, as if the situation that had just occurred was something differently entirely. He promptly jumped out of the window, only to land on the roof of the kitchen, four feet below the window he'd exited from.
He steadied himself with the help of the smoke-spewing chimney and continued onwards to the edge of the roof, where he moved down hand-by-hand until his foot found purchase on a barrel that stank of fish.
Someone in his situation would be running, but oddly enough the green-hair hadn't screamed or done anything to indicate to the kidnappers that something had occurred.
"A few Lien sure go a long way," Jaune muttered to himself as he started walking away from the inn and towards, towards… He didn't know, but he needed to put some distance between himself and the inn. He concentrated while walking, slowly making the name and class above his head fade out.
An improper emotional reaction enveloped his thoughts. Numbness, if that was even an emotion. Getting angry, desperate, afraid, those would have been counterproductive actions. What he needed now was the calmness to assess the situation and a plan on what to do. He had thought about the possibility of being chased by someone with nefarious purposes before. A lot, actually.
Had Jaune been too liberal with his use of inventory, or had it been noted that his sensing skill was a bit out of the ordinary? Probably inventory, many had seen him use it and someone must have not come to the conclusion of him having an enhanced item, but the truth instead.
That didn't matter as much as some other things, but Jaune still wanted to know. He decided to think of it later, and develop some rules on operational security when he was at it. What needed to be done now was the procurement of transport.
A donkey would be more inconspicuous than a horse He also needed supplies, as he had little to no food or water with him, and lastly a destination.
For all this he had from one hour to the next morning until the people watching over the inn noticed that Jaune wasn't coming out of his room. When they did, they would most likely search Brorusalem for him, and after not finding him the most likely place they would look for him afterwards was a harbour town. This was discounting all the possibilities of skills being used to determine his location.
Jaune added one more location he needed to visit on his list: the library. He wouldn't have much time, but if he could 'borrow' some books on anti-scrying and mental defences he would at least have something productive to do while on the run.
-/-
Jaune banged on the door of a general store he'd found, and kept hitting it until he felt the owner stand up from where he had been reading some ledgers and make his way downstairs.
The man seemed fairly relaxed for the fact that he had been pulled from his leisure time by someone assaulting his door. An older, chubby merchant opened the door and greeted him with a smile. "Hello sir, business must be urgent for you to be visiting me this late at night." The man's smile grew wider as Jaune pressed some Lien into his hand. The doorway was unbarred and Jaune entered into the store.
"Yes, surprise mission, need to be gone by morning to exterminate a pack of Nevermore that's harassing the nearest harbour town. They need ranged support." Jaune pointed at his now-revealed class. It didn't matter if the merchant knew, and he would be more likely to help someone who wasn't hiding his identity. And if the rogues investigated, well, they would be making their way towards the nearest dock.
The man nodded respectfully and started pulling out nonperishable foods and the other goods that Jaune had requested. Some crude maps depicting trade routes found themselves on top of the pile of food and utility supplies before the man hesitated.
"What is it," Jaune stated more than asked, wanting to get on with it.
"Well, I recently got a hold of a skillbook, only to find out that it's basically w-worthless," he stuttered to a stop while scratching the back of his balding head. Jaune was forced to wave the words out of him. "Well I was thinking that even if the skill isn't that great, a mage could still study the workings of the process."
That was interesting, though Jaune wondered what kind of skill it was that the book was considered useless. Usually skillbooks went for ridiculous prices.
"It would be a flight of fancy that I would only follow up on if the book was cheap. Skillbooks are, after all, well documented," a lie, "There's no need to repeat the experiments done on them unless one is bored."
A grimace, a reluctant nod. They settled on 100 Lien for the book, some more for the rest of the stuff.
Jaune suspected that the merchant had been scammed to buy the book and now couldn't make back the money, and so was therefore holding on to it. It must have drawn some gazes from others, as a general store didn't generally supply items of such luxury, and the man had probably realized that he had overstepped his mercantile boundaries.
The book was brought to light, and the merchant blushed as Jaune got the chance to read the title. Jaune could see why and tried to hold in his chuckle, but didn't quite manage. He shrugged. "We all stumble on a bit of bad luck occasionally," the mage reassured the man, which seemed to brighten him up a bit.
"It's not entirely your fault either. Most books of the skill teaching variant are valuable." Jaune shook his head. "Many, me included, probably didn't even think it was possible for a skillbook regarding pest control to exist."
And so it was that Jaune acquired the second skillbook of his very short career. This meant that he was ahead in acquisition of resources to all but the richest, but the quality was questionable. Maybe he would sense something interesting once he learned the skill, and honestly, if he would then be able to magically kill bothersome insects, the price would be more than worth it.
In ten years or so it may even start paying off; bugs and mice destroyed more provisions than people usually took into account when thinking of the creatures. He would also save on not having to buy several remedies for infestations, like mouse traps, onions for the flies, and herb tassels for the mosquitoes.
Maybe the purchase had immediately paid off with the simple fact that now that the merchant wasn't in possession of the book anymore, he wouldn't be mugged for it by someone unwilling to believe that the book was useless.
Jaune blurred out his name again. It was time to go to the library. He halted. The rogues might know he had a connection to Sun, and Sun lived in the library custodian quarters.
He continued walking. He would have to bank on the fact that they still assumed him to be in the inn. Without the books on anonymous travel, well, his attempts at fleeing would most likely prove to be fruitless.
Jaune passed into the big building effortlessly, despite having no name. He had pulled his hood down though and put his hair back into a ponytail. A hairstyle he had never worn before, so it would hopefully make it harder to recognize him.
The library was, as expected, almost completely empty except for the few custodians running around and sorting books back into their shelves. It felt holy somehow, and the effect was compounded by the fact he hadn't been here in a while. Jaune gave himself a moment to take it all in, before getting to work.
Time was short, after all.
He started grabbing what books spoke to him, only reading the titles. He only managed to shove a few into his inventory while nobody was looking before it became full. Catch Me If You Can by Semmelson; Blow Your Load and Hit the Road by opipkcalb; Definitely Not Who You Are Looking for by Dindu Nuffin; Magical Rituals for Anonymity by The Beast; and Running From Responsibilities by Totally an Adult.
Jaune didn't think he'd ever visited any place that had books, regardless of the amount, for such a short period of time. Ten minutes.
He left, shaking his head. What those bastards had made him do was unforgivable. Jaune wasn't particularly practised at holding a grudge. But he could damn well try.
Now he only needed a donkey, which was more inconspicuous than a horse. Who'd ever heard of a fourteen-year-old being able to afford a horse? Not that he was fourteen yet, but closer to it than thirteen.
The entrance age of Beacon was approaching, so he should probably start making his way to back to Vale. Jaune made sure that his senses were completely extended as he passed the inn Emanon was at, brushing it in his periphery. The rogues were still there, good. He had to make sure there was no one waiting for him at the guild stalls.
Jaune really wondered why there was no one stationed there or at the library. The library not so much, but the guild was a place someone in his situation might go to. Was the organization behind this not as powerful as he had initially suspected? It was possible that a small criminal gang or a coven would go after him as well. It wasn't only powerful institutions that possessed knowledge. Sure, they probably had more of it, but definitely no monopoly.
Jaune entered the stables, looked around for a suitable donkey, took it, and rode out. Technically speaking it wasn't theft. The animals were there for the use of adventurers. It had probably just never been assumed that there was an adventurer brazen enough that it would have been necessary to clarify that distinction, yes. The guild would rather that you had a quest to get to and informed someone of the requisition, instead of simply walking up and taking a mount.
On his way to the gates, he suddenly sensed movement, making him tense up. Several cloaked figures were approaching, running outwards in a spiral pattern. Like a disturbed hive of ants they scurried over rooftops and on the streets. Jaune was sure that if he followed the ever growing spiral back to its source, he would find it to be the inn he had left behind several hours ago.
Jaune slapped the donkey's ass lightly to accelerate. So it was him that they were searching for. If it had been Emanon they were after there would be no reason to leave the inn.
Jaune made sure his name was showing again as he came into sight of the guards at the gate. The gate never closed, expect for sieges, but they were probably more suspicious of people who travelled during the night.
He nodded at the men on duty, one who was apparently napping, and rode past with no issues. A murder of crows rose up from a nearby building as he exited the city. They were almost out of his range, but he still heard their caws before they flew inward, out of his range.
The gate he'd exited from was the one that was connected to the road leading to the seaside. The harbours and dock towns.
After a few minutes riding in that direction, he changed course. Towards the border between Vacuo and Vale.
Yes that was Oobleck and no, he wasn't not shouting because he was bribed, he was not shouting because he's a NPC and Jaune didn't control his strength properly. He's probably still puking his guts out to this point.
TIME SKIP APPROACHING
He looked at the peaks of the tallest buildings reaching above the great walls protecting the city. With how he had experienced the political struggle, almost dying in the middle of a contrived conspiracy, he expected the city to be more, burned to the ground.
But everything seemed normal. The only visible change were the amount of guards at the gate… They had lessened. They were looking at him oddly though. Well, their gazes were directed slightly behind him. Towards the shirtless faunus mage with extremely windswept hair and a crazy look in his eyes. The shirt had been seemingly cut up to create a loincloth.
Having gotten used to being the centre of attention in the garrison, Jaune strode up to the gates and walked past the guards. He expected to be forced to stop for some sort of dialogue, but that didn't seem to be the case.
Some of the guards whispered 'young master' as Jaune passed them and entered the city. Sun stumbled in behind him, frowning.
"They thought I was your servant and that I had been unruly on the way here, so you bound me to the horse and dragged me through the sands," Sun explained after Jaune looked at him questioningly.
"Having hearing that good, I'm jealous," Jaune muttered in response, making Sun shrug.
"Being a faunus has its advantages." Sun looked around. The streets were mostly empty, but that was because it would soon be night.
"We left Zedong and May behind, so just go home. You should probably go and look for them tomorrow though. The horse you left behind still has your stuff."
Sun nodded and jumped off to places unknown, slightly less energetic than usual.
Jaune himself hesitated for a few moments wondering where he should go. Technically he could just enter the Zedong residence and crash there, but it felt rude. And if it felt rude, then it probably was rude.
He hadn't been to an inn for quite a while now, actually. He didn't have a preference, only requiring an unsoiled bed and something that resembled food.
Might as well go to the one where Emanon was, or maybe wasn't anymore. A few months had passed since they'd last seen each other. He could extract some information about how the city had felt like during his absence. The adventurers' inn would be cheaper and better, but he had no one to look forward to seeing there.
After bringing the horse he'd borrowed from Targson to the army's stables, he made his way towards the Blossoms Inn, or whatever it was called. The name had faded from memory, but the location hadn't.
-/-
The innkeeper informed him that Emanon was indeed still living there, showing off a star-shaped tattoo on his shoulder that supposedly raised his coolness factor. She had gifted it to the man for free use of a room for half a year.
Nodding at shoulder-obsessed man, Jaune walked up the stairs while kicking up dust and knocked on Emanon's room. It creaked open slowly, and Emanon stared at him blearily in all her half-naked glory.
"Oh, it's you," she said flatly. As she stepped aside to let him in, she peered out into the dusty corridor to see if anyone else was there. As if she was waiting for someone.
Jaune glanced at her underwear-clad behind for a moment. It was different seeing it compared to feeling it with dimensional comprehension.
"Do you usually open the door dressed like that?" he asked her as he leaned back against the wall and let himself slide down to the floor.
"Do you usually knock on the doors of young women when it's night?" she countered.
"The knocking thing bothers me as well. Don't worry, soon enough I'll just be able to teleport in."
He received a glare. She seemed more standoffish now than she had been back when he had escorted her.
"What do you want," she flatly demanded.
Jaune hadn't expected to receive a cold welcome but he was fairly sure Emanon would warm up again shortly. She was probably mad he only bothered seeking her out after half a year and her own inability to find him. It was the only explanation, though their relationship had never exceeded friendly employer. She probably still saw him as a part of her social net. No matter how far on the outside he was.
People hated losing control.
"I just came back from a quest." She rolled her eyes as if saying 'yes flaunt your exciting life more.' "And you're the only person I really know who was here for the time I was gone."
She sat down on her bed, making his eyebrow twitch. Going for the bed instead of the chair when there was a man present... such promiscuity.
"So what, I'm your informant for what's happening in the city?"
"I guess you could say it like that, though due to our positive past interactions I would of course be more interested in how the events have formed your own experience." At her annoyed look he added. "What emotional and possibly physical impact they had on you."
She snorted. "Fine." She turned to stare at the ceiling, hands behind her head. "I assume you're asking about the political shitshow. It started with posturing, then contradictory messages by criers. One would advise all citizens to stack up on food supplies while the other would talk about great harvests in the region which would lead to cheaper and more importantly voluminous amounts of food. There was one incident where it came to blows."
"One?" Jaune queried, causing Emanon's eyes to grow even more distant.
A split second activation of dimensional comprehension showed a hooded man talking to the inkeep.
"Yes, one. I was present at the time. The market, was buying some needles, some noble and a wealthy merchant started arguing, it escalated until they both sent their respective armed forces against each other, at first for intimidation, then for violence."
Another flash. The hooded man, equipped like a rogue, was walking up the stairs.
"And then they burned to ashes in an instant."
What.
"What."
Jaune was focusing on the man who was now passing their room, the man who halted for a second. Maybe he had misheard.
"Apparently the reputation of our court magician is deserved."
The rogue continued onwards after his pause, opening the door next to Emanon's.
"He appeared a second later. One moment he wasn't there, the other he simply was. A small pop, like the death of a soap bubble accompanied him."
The rogue had entered the room and started unpacking.
"His voice boomed out, 'Not in the open,' and then he was gone again."
The unpacking finished, the rogue slowly walked to the wall his room shared with theirs.
"Sirius Black. What a terrifying man."
The rogue knelt down and pressed his ear to the wall.
"Everything went back to normal afterwards."
Shit.
Emanon suddenly gripped her head, the movement startling Jaune further. "It fucking hurts!" she hissed out.
Jaune didn't know why the rogue was spying on them. The most likely reason was the fact that someone had discovered he was a dimensional mage.
"Do you need anything?" he asked as his mind raced. There was also the possibility of someone being pissed on him for halting their plans. The garrison came to mind. Or it could have something to do with Emanon.
"No… Wait, some water wouldn't hurt," she corrected herself.
The question was, were they here to spy on them, or was their purpose more sinister? Could the rogue only listen or did he have other skills available? His position implied he was listening more than anything else.
Jaune would continue with the assumption that he wasn't being watched, only being listened to. He quickly shushed Emanon with a finger in front of his mouth.
She shut up, thankfully.
His thought process accelerated as he thought of what to do. He mindlessly pulled a waterskin out of his inventory, walked over to a very still Emanon, and handed it to her. She ogled slightly at the use of magic. Jaune had been careless with the usage of inventory.
"Here, some water," he enunciated clearly as he pulled out a sheet of paper and scribbled on it. This was not the time for saving space so he made the words large and legible.
He handed the paper to Emanon ,who was gulping down the water. Some droplets ran down her chin and into her cleavage. She glanced at the paper when finished and after a second of incomprehension stared at him wide-eyed.
'Someone is listening in from the room next to us, bad intentions, after me.'
She mouthed 'really?' to which Jaune nodded.
"How about I take you up on your offer to get a tattoo," Jaune suddenly said nonchalantly. "Do you have any new additions to your sketchbook?" He held up the piece of paper, the words 'Yes. At the table' underlined.
He needed to get out of here. If this was an attempted kidnapping there was probably someone watching the inn's exits.
He helped Emanon stand up as she played her role. "I do actually have a few new ones you might be interested in." She sat down at the table and made a show of pulling the chair across the ground so it made a decent amount of noise. She pulled out her sketchbook and let it fall on the table with a bang.
The rogue listening in flinched but quickly regained his composure.
"This design I made recently, it's inspired by the cactus that is abundant to the north of Brorusalem," she said, writing down a 'what do we do' on the blank open page of her sketchbook.
Jaune put away his quill and took a hold of one her charcoal pens.
'they're here for me, unless you did something?'
They continued a sparse verbal conversation that must have come off as a bit stilted to the spy, while their true exchange continued on paper.
'I did nothing.'
It had been unlikely that the rogue was here for her, and now the chance was even lower. Now, how could he get out of this situation? He felt out and found that all exits were being watched by at least one person. They weren't even trying to be inconspicuous.
Even the window was being watched. Fuck. The one in their room was the only one though. The windows of the other occupants had nobody assigned to them. Jumping out of one on their side of the inn would be inadvisable, as it meant jumping down on the cobbled main street that had sentries.
The rooms adjacent to theirs on the corridor though, those were unguarded and so was the back alley. One of the suspiciously dressed men was sitting at the bar downstairs, which let him see everyone entering or exiting the kitchen, which had the only door leading to the back alley.
Which was why the back alley had nobody. Ok.
"You have quite the variety, but they're all drawings. Why don't you… show me your tattoos, so I can see how they look on skin," Jaune suggested saucily.
'Go with it, make sex noises on bed, I'll run away, eat the page we're writing this on later.' Emanon glanced at him, with slight trepidation.
'what about me?'
'they're not after you, not much I can do, seven of them.'
She seemed unconvinced but stood up from the chair, once again making sure it scraped. She clutched her head, mouthing 'headache' at him. A bit of blood dribbled from her nose, down her delicate chin, and onto her white linen tank top.
"Why don't we move to the bed then? Then you'll... be able to see them better." She threw herself onto the bed, and despite her apparent pain managed to sound fairly sultry.
Jaune pressed a healing potion into her hand, his other hand making the gesture for her to continue.
"Well, we didn't say anything about touching, but I'm not entirely against the idea." Emanon basically purred out the sentence.
"Yeah, you like that, don't you," Jaune said, trying his very best not to sound like the awkward teenager that he was while he stood up, went to the door and put his hand on the knob.
Jaune wasn't able to sense facial features very well, but as the 'sexual act' progressed, the rogue seemed to grow more and more annoyed. Eventually the man just gave up, stood up, and threw himself on the bed while muttering something.
Jaune could have laughed, but it was likely that the man had a skill that enhanced his senses if he was assigned the role of spying on them instead of just being another sentry.
Emanon at this point was jumping on the bed with a deadpan look on her face while moaning and giving the occasional shriek. She mouthed the words 'if you're lying' at him, followed by running her thumb across her throat.
Jaune shut the door as stealthily as he could and made his way to the room on the opposite side of the corridor. He knocked on it gently. The man inside muttered something, then stood up from a sitting position to get the door. People sure talked a lot when they were alone.
The thin man opened the door expectantly, looking forward at his own eye-level. This prevented him from really seeing Jaune and made it easier for the mage to drive a fist into the man's solar plexus.
'Bartholomew' folded in two, wheezing and allowing himself to be pushed back into the room. Jaune let him fall onto the ground as he closed the door behind him. He stepped over the now-vomiting man and opened the window. Jaune had one leg on the window still when he suddenly thought of something. He turned around and threw a few coins at the green-haired guy's head.
"Don't tell anyone about this," he commented lightly, as if the situation that had just occurred was something differently entirely. He promptly jumped out of the window, only to land on the roof of the kitchen, four feet below the window he'd exited from.
He steadied himself with the help of the smoke-spewing chimney and continued onwards to the edge of the roof, where he moved down hand-by-hand until his foot found purchase on a barrel that stank of fish.
Someone in his situation would be running, but oddly enough the green-hair hadn't screamed or done anything to indicate to the kidnappers that something had occurred.
"A few Lien sure go a long way," Jaune muttered to himself as he started walking away from the inn and towards, towards… He didn't know, but he needed to put some distance between himself and the inn. He concentrated while walking, slowly making the name and class above his head fade out.
An improper emotional reaction enveloped his thoughts. Numbness, if that was even an emotion. Getting angry, desperate, afraid, those would have been counterproductive actions. What he needed now was the calmness to assess the situation and a plan on what to do. He had thought about the possibility of being chased by someone with nefarious purposes before. A lot, actually.
Had Jaune been too liberal with his use of inventory, or had it been noted that his sensing skill was a bit out of the ordinary? Probably inventory, many had seen him use it and someone must have not come to the conclusion of him having an enhanced item, but the truth instead.
That didn't matter as much as some other things, but Jaune still wanted to know. He decided to think of it later, and develop some rules on operational security when he was at it. What needed to be done now was the procurement of transport.
A donkey would be more inconspicuous than a horse He also needed supplies, as he had little to no food or water with him, and lastly a destination.
For all this he had from one hour to the next morning until the people watching over the inn noticed that Jaune wasn't coming out of his room. When they did, they would most likely search Brorusalem for him, and after not finding him the most likely place they would look for him afterwards was a harbour town. This was discounting all the possibilities of skills being used to determine his location.
Jaune added one more location he needed to visit on his list: the library. He wouldn't have much time, but if he could 'borrow' some books on anti-scrying and mental defences he would at least have something productive to do while on the run.
-/-
Jaune banged on the door of a general store he'd found, and kept hitting it until he felt the owner stand up from where he had been reading some ledgers and make his way downstairs.
The man seemed fairly relaxed for the fact that he had been pulled from his leisure time by someone assaulting his door. An older, chubby merchant opened the door and greeted him with a smile. "Hello sir, business must be urgent for you to be visiting me this late at night." The man's smile grew wider as Jaune pressed some Lien into his hand. The doorway was unbarred and Jaune entered into the store.
"Yes, surprise mission, need to be gone by morning to exterminate a pack of Nevermore that's harassing the nearest harbour town. They need ranged support." Jaune pointed at his now-revealed class. It didn't matter if the merchant knew, and he would be more likely to help someone who wasn't hiding his identity. And if the rogues investigated, well, they would be making their way towards the nearest dock.
The man nodded respectfully and started pulling out nonperishable foods and the other goods that Jaune had requested. Some crude maps depicting trade routes found themselves on top of the pile of food and utility supplies before the man hesitated.
"What is it," Jaune stated more than asked, wanting to get on with it.
"Well, I recently got a hold of a skillbook, only to find out that it's basically w-worthless," he stuttered to a stop while scratching the back of his balding head. Jaune was forced to wave the words out of him. "Well I was thinking that even if the skill isn't that great, a mage could still study the workings of the process."
That was interesting, though Jaune wondered what kind of skill it was that the book was considered useless. Usually skillbooks went for ridiculous prices.
"It would be a flight of fancy that I would only follow up on if the book was cheap. Skillbooks are, after all, well documented," a lie, "There's no need to repeat the experiments done on them unless one is bored."
A grimace, a reluctant nod. They settled on 100 Lien for the book, some more for the rest of the stuff.
Jaune suspected that the merchant had been scammed to buy the book and now couldn't make back the money, and so was therefore holding on to it. It must have drawn some gazes from others, as a general store didn't generally supply items of such luxury, and the man had probably realized that he had overstepped his mercantile boundaries.
The book was brought to light, and the merchant blushed as Jaune got the chance to read the title. Jaune could see why and tried to hold in his chuckle, but didn't quite manage. He shrugged. "We all stumble on a bit of bad luck occasionally," the mage reassured the man, which seemed to brighten him up a bit.
"It's not entirely your fault either. Most books of the skill teaching variant are valuable." Jaune shook his head. "Many, me included, probably didn't even think it was possible for a skillbook regarding pest control to exist."
And so it was that Jaune acquired the second skillbook of his very short career. This meant that he was ahead in acquisition of resources to all but the richest, but the quality was questionable. Maybe he would sense something interesting once he learned the skill, and honestly, if he would then be able to magically kill bothersome insects, the price would be more than worth it.
In ten years or so it may even start paying off; bugs and mice destroyed more provisions than people usually took into account when thinking of the creatures. He would also save on not having to buy several remedies for infestations, like mouse traps, onions for the flies, and herb tassels for the mosquitoes.
Maybe the purchase had immediately paid off with the simple fact that now that the merchant wasn't in possession of the book anymore, he wouldn't be mugged for it by someone unwilling to believe that the book was useless.
Jaune blurred out his name again. It was time to go to the library. He halted. The rogues might know he had a connection to Sun, and Sun lived in the library custodian quarters.
He continued walking. He would have to bank on the fact that they still assumed him to be in the inn. Without the books on anonymous travel, well, his attempts at fleeing would most likely prove to be fruitless.
Jaune passed into the big building effortlessly, despite having no name. He had pulled his hood down though and put his hair back into a ponytail. A hairstyle he had never worn before, so it would hopefully make it harder to recognize him.
The library was, as expected, almost completely empty except for the few custodians running around and sorting books back into their shelves. It felt holy somehow, and the effect was compounded by the fact he hadn't been here in a while. Jaune gave himself a moment to take it all in, before getting to work.
Time was short, after all.
He started grabbing what books spoke to him, only reading the titles. He only managed to shove a few into his inventory while nobody was looking before it became full. Catch Me If You Can by Semmelson; Blow Your Load and Hit the Road by opipkcalb; Definitely Not Who You Are Looking for by Dindu Nuffin; Magical Rituals for Anonymity by The Beast; and Running From Responsibilities by Totally an Adult.
Jaune didn't think he'd ever visited any place that had books, regardless of the amount, for such a short period of time. Ten minutes.
He left, shaking his head. What those bastards had made him do was unforgivable. Jaune wasn't particularly practised at holding a grudge. But he could damn well try.
Now he only needed a donkey, which was more inconspicuous than a horse. Who'd ever heard of a fourteen-year-old being able to afford a horse? Not that he was fourteen yet, but closer to it than thirteen.
The entrance age of Beacon was approaching, so he should probably start making his way to back to Vale. Jaune made sure that his senses were completely extended as he passed the inn Emanon was at, brushing it in his periphery. The rogues were still there, good. He had to make sure there was no one waiting for him at the guild stalls.
Jaune really wondered why there was no one stationed there or at the library. The library not so much, but the guild was a place someone in his situation might go to. Was the organization behind this not as powerful as he had initially suspected? It was possible that a small criminal gang or a coven would go after him as well. It wasn't only powerful institutions that possessed knowledge. Sure, they probably had more of it, but definitely no monopoly.
Jaune entered the stables, looked around for a suitable donkey, took it, and rode out. Technically speaking it wasn't theft. The animals were there for the use of adventurers. It had probably just never been assumed that there was an adventurer brazen enough that it would have been necessary to clarify that distinction, yes. The guild would rather that you had a quest to get to and informed someone of the requisition, instead of simply walking up and taking a mount.
On his way to the gates, he suddenly sensed movement, making him tense up. Several cloaked figures were approaching, running outwards in a spiral pattern. Like a disturbed hive of ants they scurried over rooftops and on the streets. Jaune was sure that if he followed the ever growing spiral back to its source, he would find it to be the inn he had left behind several hours ago.
Jaune slapped the donkey's ass lightly to accelerate. So it was him that they were searching for. If it had been Emanon they were after there would be no reason to leave the inn.
Jaune made sure his name was showing again as he came into sight of the guards at the gate. The gate never closed, expect for sieges, but they were probably more suspicious of people who travelled during the night.
He nodded at the men on duty, one who was apparently napping, and rode past with no issues. A murder of crows rose up from a nearby building as he exited the city. They were almost out of his range, but he still heard their caws before they flew inward, out of his range.
The gate he'd exited from was the one that was connected to the road leading to the seaside. The harbours and dock towns.
After a few minutes riding in that direction, he changed course. Towards the border between Vacuo and Vale.
Yes that was Oobleck and no, he wasn't not shouting because he was bribed, he was not shouting because he's a NPC and Jaune didn't control his strength properly. He's probably still puking his guts out to this point.
TIME SKIP APPROACHING
chapter 23
bor902
professional illiterate
- Location
- wherever i am at the moment
Chapter 23
edited by 5th dimension
This is a semi-omake so don't take it too seriously. You don't even have to read it to understand what is happening in later chapters.
The oven emitted black smoke as the dough within writhed and twisted itself. Occasionally skulls and demonic faces were discernible as it bubbled. Pantheon sighed.
"Another failure then," he muttered, threw some water over the fire to quench it, and coughed from the smoke. Usually one would only close the oven door to starve the fire of oxygen. But the baker was not in the correct era to know about that method or to even understand what oxygen was.
He put on his oven mitts and pulled out the failed baguette. The form was good; it looked like a proper phallic object, ready for consumption. One end of it was slightly softer than the other. He could actually shove a spoon into that part, unlike the rest, where upon touch the spoon curled up, emitted some smoke, and disintegrated.
It reminded him of how Grimm died, dissipating in a similar manner. Pantheon pulled his white chef hat over his eyes and tried to prevent himself from crying.
Why was being a baker so damn hard?
The oven mitts that were holding the baguette were starting to dissipate. He quickly threw them off and rushed to a bucket of water to wash his hands, and upon drying them on his apron he saw that the baguette was starting to dissolve a hole in his floor. He frantically looked around for something with which he could hold the damn thing without being destroyed, and his eyes fell on the Broom.
Yes. Capitalized, a magical artefact of his grandfather that was spelled to be indestructible. Why the enchantment had been used on a broom he didn't know, but thankfully it had been. He removed the bristle head and aligned the shaft with the softer end of the baguette. The wood penetrated it slightly and he was able to shove the thing towards one of the walls, where he was able to firmly lodge the wood inside the bread(?).
Slightly shaking, Pantheon opened the door to the backyard and looked into the dead forest that started right at the end of his overgrown lawn. The forest hadn't always been dead… It had only been that way since he'd started throwing his failed products into it.
"And away you go you bloody monstrosity!" Pantheon shouted as he swung the shaft towards the forest, the baguette dislodging with a wet 'schlop' A caw resounded as a Nevermore the size of a big dog flew out from the trees, probably taking offence at the description of bloody monstrosity.
Pantheon was just about to apologize, before running back into the safety of his house, when the baguette, sailing through the air, didn't smack the Nevermore down as much as it destroyed half of its body on contact.
Ping.
Pantheon stood there, frozen. He'd known that his creations were sometimes not of the best quality. But to have a Grimm die upon touching it? That was just insulting.
At least he'd gained a level.
-/-
Pantheon was facing a conundrum. He was a baker, but he'd killed a Grimm quite easily. Level five was what he had been before the kill.
At twenty-three years of age that was considered to be quite bad for a NPC like him. There wasn't much he could do about it, though. He just wasn't talented at baking, and that was just the thing that gave him, a baker, exp.
The bitterness of being born an NPC had never really been something he'd gone through like others did. He hadn't been born with a privileged class, so what? Nine in ten people hadn't been born with a privileged class. While being the protagonist of some legendary quest was out of question, he was still perfectly capable of being the main character of his own life.
A new path had opened up though. Not one he'd ever wanted, or considered, but one that was still quite enchanting in its mysteriousness and possible prestige. Gaining that level had felt good. Feeling his status shift and his body change once he put that one point into strength, had been almost orgasmic.
"I'll try to replicate the failure," he muttered as he laid on his cot in his beaten down room in his drafty house. It had never bothered him, but with killing Grimm came lien.
So many possibilities. Maybe there were some other interesting failures he could invoke with his dough. A shield and some armour would probably be a good idea.
-/-
The village Pantheon lived in was small and cut off. While almost directly on the border between Vacuo and Vale it was still on the Vacuoan side of things when you considered taxes and protection.
Emboldened by his successes with his special type of failure, he created bread so hard that it was seemingly unbreakable and harmful to anything it hit, as long as he, the creator, wanted it to be. Thus Pantheon went out with his newly made spear. The shaft was the same Broom he'd used a few weeks ago to dispose of the baguette.
And now, there was another baguette stuck to the top of the shaft.
Maltet he'd named the spear. He'd gotten it from a story his pops had told him as a kid. Something about knights, he couldn't remember.
After trekking through the surrounding forests for a bit (it was harder to find Grimm than expected), he finally found a Beowulf.
"Aha, foul fiend, it's time for your slaying." The creature, which reached up to his chest, turned, lowered its body and started growling. Pantheon was admittedly slightly intimidated, but there wasn't really anything that could happen to him with his spear with him.
He took a pose with his weapon. It almost seemed like he was forgetting something.
"Prepare to be vanquished creature of darkness."
The beowulf lunged at him. Ah, right.
Pantheon had forgotten that he didn't know how to wield a spear.
Thankfully the beowulf was just as inexperienced as him, biting onto the tip of the spear and dragging the whole thing down like he was trying to chew it to death.
Did... the monster think the spear was part of his body?
The action Pantheon had to take was simple. He shoved the spear further down its gullet until it could go no longer. The beowulf started choking and thrashing, the weapon probably being somewhere in its stomach by now. He had shoved it far enough in that the front claws of the beast were able to reach Pantheon.
On the first swing at him he jumped back, circled around until he was behind the beast, and kicked it in it's rear while dodging the slow attacks it managed with its hind legs, all while screaming. The cacophony of sounds, the screams of a grown man, and the whimpering of a beowulf interspersed with the occasional thud of flesh hitting flesh resounded through the forest.
Eventually the Grimm gave up its struggles, and frothing at the mouth, it sank to the ground where it was then kicked to death.
Due to Pantheon's low strength this took approximately one hour.
Once finished, despite his stamina being replenished by the level up, Pantheon couldn't help but sink exhausted to the ground.
He saw something out of the periphery of his vision and looked up to find himself staring at a young mage, who stared back at him with a dead look in his eyes.
The blonde teen was dressed in a manner that screamed adventurer or hero. Steel greaves, mostly leather clothing that looked quite sturdy, with a sheen of what must have been chainmail peeking out of the vest and a sword at his belt.
They stared at each other for a while, Pantheon slightly scared and embarrassed, the mage still with that neutral expression and dead eyes.
"How long were you watching?" Pantheon asked, only to get stared at.
Just as he was about to ask again the teen answered, "The entire time."
"Ah."
The mage pointed a finger at him. "Your next words are going to be, 'I was only pretending to be retarded.'"
Before Pantheon could answer anything the mage had closed the distance between them and gripped his shoulders. His still-trembling shoulders.
"You could have died." The words were whispered while the mage locked eyes with him.
"I- Yes." Pantheon looked down, unable to hold the weighty gaze.
His head was spinning. He could have died. You could die walking down some stairs, but what he'd done was quite a bit more risky. The only reason he hadn't fallen to the ground yet was because of the arms holding him up.
"But I didn't." Pantheon hadn't died, though he would make sure he was better prepared next time. Armour, some daggers, a shield, and a helmet would be necessary.
"You want to do it again?" The mage asked, incredulous.
Pantheon looked at where the Grimm had dissipated, lien lying on the ground. About half as much as he'd make in a day of work. The experience was surging inside of him. He was close to level seven.
"Better prepared, yes." The sudden gain of experience had been a rush. Probably wasn't affecting him overly much though. This was what he wanted.
The mage let him go and sighed, flipping his almost-white blonde hair out of his eyes. "How will you prepare yourself exactly? You don't have any resources here in this village and you will need several years to move somewhere else and purchase them." It didn't sound dismissive, just a statement of facts.
The words hurt though. How was he going to prepare? He didn't know how to make armour, and there wasn't anyone here who could teach him how to wear it. The few soldiers they would probably require payment for teaching him how to fight, as they should.
Pantheon was in the vicinity of a hero though, a mage, all the more knowledgeable for that. Probably. He looked up with star-filled eyes. "Master!"
The mage laughed and asked, "What do you have to offer?"
That was the question Pantheon had been asking himself since he'd realized that to prepare, he needed someone with experience. And he had an answer. Dropping to all fours, still exhausted, he executed a mad scramble towards the lien on the ground and the spear that was lying next to it.
The baguette was fully intact, and so was the shaft. He thrust it at his (hopefully) teacher.
"I was hoping that I sensed wrong. So it's actually bread on a stick that you used." A shake of the head. The spear was taken from his hands, and Pantheon watched as some purple fog began to rise up from the shaft, then the spearhead.
"Durable against magic, how about that." The mage twirled the spear, not expertly from what Pantheon could discern, but still capably.
"Hyaahh!" Faster than his eye could follow the spear hit a tree, denting the wood. Pantheon's eyes widened. If a younger mage, a class that didn't usually employ close quarters combat was this strong, what was the gap between him and an actual warrior?
Depressed, he watched as the mage stared at the spear in wonder.
"That is some impressive..." Hesitation. "...bread."
Pantheon brightened up a bit at that. Nobody had complimented his creations before.
"What else can you make?" The mage asked while handing back the spear, "Tell me on the way back to your place."
Pantheon nodded and started walking. It appeared that he had secured someone to teach him. For how long, he didn't know, but better than nothing.
"So it's failed bread? There must be different ways that you can fail at making bread. Can you make bread pointy and sharp? I would like a sword; chainmail would be nice too. How long does this stuff last? Does it ever dissolve? What are your plans for equipment, farming grounds and fighting style?"
Better than nothing, Pantheon reassured himself.
-/-
Sweaty brown hair rubbed against his face as he lay on the ground, heaving. Master Jaune certainly knew a lot about tempering the body. Though Jaune was most likely not his real name, it was the one he'd introduced himself with, but there was no name above his head, only a the class.
Everything hurt, but Pantheon was glad that he'd been so vehement about seeking out guidance the day prior. The mage knew a lot about training the body, which wasn't even his master's speciality when considering the class he possessed.
The previous two hours or so had been spent working all of his muscles in a rotating cycle. By the time he'd arrived where he'd started, Pantheon's body had been able to handle half of what it had previously. The only reason Pantheon hadn't given up once he'd started feeling the excruciating burn running through his body was the fact that master was doing the exact same exercises on the other side of the clearing they'd found, while occasionally glancing over and correcting his form or providing incentive if he thought his student was slacking off.
One particular painful instance had occurred at the beginning when Pantheon had been doing laborious crunches while hanging from a tree by his legs. Master had come over and punched him in the stomach, causing him to fall down when he thought Pantheon was slacking.
The plan had been explained very thoroughly to him. He remembered the words as if they had been spoken yesterday (they were spoken two and half hours ago). Master didn't have much time, so he would train him for a week. Seven days straight Pantheon would wake up earlier than the already early time bakers usually woke up and work on his physique. After that he would receive tutoring in subjects thought important for adventurers.
After that came spear fighting until exhaustion reared its head again, going over designs for armour and weapons that could be made out of a baker's lifework, and then to finish the day off, a series of light spars.
As he approached his master for the assigned two hours of adventurer knowledge class he hoped that with light spars he meant light spars. The hell he had just gone through had been described as a light workout after all.
Master's eyes glowed slightly as Pantheon sat down before him, and the mage twitched and started speaking without any prompt. "The most important thing about being an adventurer is being able to travel without anyone to rely on. For that you need to know about how to create a nutritious travelling pack, how to navigate, take care of your equipment, set up camp, take care of animals, talk to locals, haggle, scout, and some other stuff I can't remember right now."
That sounded like a lot, Pantheon raised his hand.
"Yes?"
"You don't seem to be carrying much yourself, master." Master nodded at this and hopped down from his position on the rock.
"A very good observation. Another important thing that people who want to take up the most dangerous profession in the world must have is the ability to think." At Pantheon's doubtful glance he continued. "No, not everyone is capable of such a feat. Now, why do I not carry any visible supplies?"
Pantheon rubbed the stubble on his chin. His master's gaze sharpened at the act and he scratched at his own, stubble-less chin. Why did master not need supplies? There was only one thing that separated master from other humans, at least to his knowledge. His class.
"Because you are a mage," Pantheon stated firmly, receiving a clap.
"Yes, another possibility would have been that I possessed a space ring or something equally ludicrous, but the most feasible and the correct answer is the fact that I," he said, pointing at himself and puffing his chest out, "Jaune, adventurer extraordinaire, finder of the sword god's pyramid, peerless swordsman, student of Jain, saver of villages, and vanquisher of evil, am indeed, a mage." Master looked at him, as if waiting for another observation.
"Won't creating supplies the entire time tire you out before you even get to a fight, or will you be able to create supplies after a fight?" Another clap, and master pointed at him.
"Yes, use that brain." Master sat down again. He seemed to be slightly vibrating in place. He probably had to slow down his workout for Pantheon, did master now had too much energy? "Same question right back at you." Master calmed himself noticeably. "Your stamina is also a resource, how can you justify carrying anything at all if it will encumber you in a fight?"
Pantheon was about to sink back into thought before his master interrupted. "Don't think about it too much. To make decisions and reliably use your capacity to think, there must be some information that you can use to base your actions around. The knowledge you possess is directly proportional to the breadth of actions you can perform in any given situation. You seem to have a good head on your shoulders; only seen you do one remarkably stupid thing in the day I've known you. Now I'm going to attempt to stuff that head full of knawledgeee."
And stuffed full of knowledge he got. It was hard. Jaune simply started speaking about a certain subject and didn't stop.
Pantheon had told him that he would forget half of what he would be taught at the beginning. He had since then changed his mind from half to maybe an eighth. Master had said he didn't have much time, so he was thankful for any help at all, but still, wouldn't it just be better to train stuff that he was unable to forget? You didn't lose muscles and muscle memory after gaining it after all. He posed the idea to master, only to be shot down. Metaphorically, thankfully.
"You may forget it now, but you will remember it when you need to."
So Pantheon listened, so Pantheon sat and so Pantheon occasionally fell asleep only to be awakened immediately with a splash of water in the face.
-/-
"The first argument about how one normally uses a spear is overarm or underarm." Master demonstrated the overarm, thrusting at a tree with the spear held almost at his neck, and then the underarm, the thrust coming more from the torso. "Underarm is the preferred method of people who use only a spear. Overarm is used by people who also use a shield." Master brought a shield theatrically out of his pocket and snared it to his left arm, while his right held the spear.
He bashed a non-existent opponent away and stabbed the down foe with a hefty downward swing, then retreated to a crouching position, the buckler hiding half of his body from sight. "The strength of the overarm method is of course the downward stab. You use a shield to bring yourself into a position where you can use it. For beginners it's the simple methodology of block and attack."
Master seemed to contemplate him for a few moments, glancing at Pantheon occasionally and seemingly sizing him up. "I don't think we'll bother with underarm quite yet. It's something for more experienced people or amateurs who don't plan to use a shield."
Pantheon gained a contemplative look at those words. Was there a reason why he had to use a shield? There wasn't really one form the way he saw it, so it would definitely be better to decide now so he could focus on only one form. The week of tutoring he had was even more importanter since what he would learn this week would become the foundation for what he would practice once master left.
He started raising his hand to bring up the point.
"Don't even think about it."
Overhand and a shield it was then.
"Are you right-handed or left-handed?" The question was unexpected but Pantheon could understand why it was important. He raised his right hand in answer.
"Well, sucks to be you, you're going to be learning the spear left-handed." Master seemed to take sadistic glee in those words.
"Uhh, ok." Pantheon didn't have any illusions about his competency in the field of deciding how he should train. He went over to his side of the clearing, looked at master, who was doing something with his sword, received an encouraging nod and started thrusting.
Well, he started up one thrust. He'd never used a shield before and when he'd repelled the imaginary enemy he lost his balance. The thrust, led with his non-dominant hand, made him stumble and fall to the ground.
That wouldn't have happened if he'd been thrusting with his right, he was sure. He tried several more times, failing to make any progress except for not falling down anymore.
This was dumb, he was losing motivation. Maybe he would get some if he knew the reasoning behind the order.
"Why am I using my left hand?" Pantheon asked.
"To learn how to train through adversity."
That made sense. No wait, it didn't. He only had one week with master. Adversity was something he'd face when he was gone. "Can I just use my right arm instead?"
Master shrugged and performed some sword moves which were too fast for Pantheon to see. His body blurred too much for him to perceive what master was thinking.
"Go for it, but remember to do one-fourth of the exercises with your left, underhanded, so you won't be completely stumped when your right arm is damaged."
Pantheon expressed his thanks and went back to his training that was much easier now. Master sure was an agreeable person, if a little on the twitchy side.
Or was it paranoid?
Pantheon was not a man of words. He remembered there being a specific word for that kind of man, but he didn't know it.
...Where was he?
Right.
Master. Paranoid.
Every time a sound resounded through the clearing, master's eyes squinted just the tiniest bit. His expression hinted at the fact he was doing something, but Pantheon wasn't able to discern what.
It was probably some sort of skill, Pantheon thought to himself as he defeated another imaginary dragon-like Grimm. He knew that he himself always pulled a grimace when he used his. Even if it was usually a grimace of distaste as another try at actually baking failed miserably.
But what could the skill be that master was using? Something that Pantheon couldn't see or sense in any way.
An invisible shield, so that in case the sound was an attack master would be protected? A skill that let him sense everything in a certain radius? Maybe he was just gathering mana for an attack if something came.
"How many heroes and soldiers does the village have?" Master asked abruptly, as if he'd just thought of something.
It was a question Pantheon had to think about. They had three soldiers, one of whom was a bit old, and two hero classes, a warrior and his daughter, who was a ranger. The warrior was nearing fifty, and his daughter Gwen was sixteen years old. The father was the one in charge of clearing out Grimm.
Pantheon didn't remember anyone else. The village was small enough that he would know if there were any, but big enough he didn't know everyone personally. "Three soldiers, a fifty-year-old warrior, and his ranger daughter." Master seemed to mule it over before nodding and continuing to swing his sword.
Pantheon waited for him to say something, but master just told him to go back to training. He did, but asked a question too. "May I ask why you wanted to know?"
"There is someone sneaking around our training area, a girl." That was... concerning... but it was probably Gwen. Master's senses must have been top-notch to notice something like that. A skill was probably the reason. Pantheon couldn't think of another way a mage could spot a ranger in the forest of all places.
He was curious about what the skill was, but it was considered very rude to ask, and master seemed fairly secretive and paranoid. A bad mixture when asked to reveal potentially life-saving skills.
A crow suddenly landed on a nearby tree, easily noticed because it gave a loud screech as it entered the scene.
It was promptly shot down by some purplish missile. Patheon traced it back to master's position.
Two crows landed nearby, screeching just as loudly, seemingly unperturbed by the sudden death of one of their brethren. An unholy cacophony of sounds descended upon them from above, a veritable swarm of birds landing on the foliage surrounding them.
"Master?" Pantheon asked hesitantly, looking over when he received no answer.
The mage was standing there sneering at the birds. "One last lesson I guess," he muttered, loud enough for Pantheon to hear, "There is no foreshadowing in real life, clues that hint at something bad happening soon. You're just sitting there, enjoying your life, when a literal storm of shit descends on you for seemingly no reason at all."
"Master is very wise," Pantheon said as an answer, not knowing what else to say.
His words received a chuckle. "Go. Run off, this doesn't concern you, nor will you be able to do anything if you stay." The words were casually said, but there was truth there.
Pantheon didn't know what was happening, but whatever it was, he fearfully glanced at the crows surrounding them, it was beyond him. Like most things. This was his first day of training after all.
So he ran, almost hyperventilating, thinking of all the possibilities of what was happening now in that clearing.
Despite his burning legs, he didn't stop at his house and barricade himself inside like a coward. Pantheon ran until he reached Ulbing's house, banged on the door, and didn't stop until the door was opened.
"The baker?" The aged warrior managed to mutter before being interrupted by Pantheon's wheezing gasps.
"Fight between... heroes... a mage against someone. I couldn't see. Crows!" he managed to rasp out before falling to the ground coughing, having accidentally swallowed an insect at some point.
He wildly gesticulated in the direction he came from and was about to say where exactly master was fighting when he was interrupted by a flash of purple light exploding forth from the training clearing.
He heard a curse from Ulbing, Pantheon's arm was grasped and he was pulled into the house, and the door was shut behind him.
An earth-shattering crack reverberated through the air. Pantheon could see the houses' walls vibrating from what must have been a tremendous shock wave. He glanced at Ulbing, who was already halfway through attaching his armour. Pantheon opened the door so the warrior wouldn't have to when running out. That half-second the warrior would gain from not having to open it might be the half-second that mattered.
He clung to that hope. The bearded warrior righted himself after attaching his footwear, a gigantic halberd clutched in his hands.
At some point, Gwen had come over and was arguing with her father. Pantheon couldn't understand what they were saying. Their lips were moving, the occasional spittle flying. Pantheon couldn't hear anything, now that he thought about it. The scene of the daughter, who had by her gestures wanted to join her father in fighting, was put aside as Pantheon raised his hands to his ears and felt a wet warmth trickling down the sides of his head.
He glanced stupidly at his now bloody hands for a few moment, not comprehending, as Ulbing ran out. Then Pantheon clasped his hands together in prayer, eyes closed.
He didn't know master, but someone who genuinely helped a foolish baker on his path to becoming a hero couldn't be on the wrong side of a conflict. Master was surely strong, but Pantheon was weak and therefore all he could offer was a prayer or a momentary distraction by jumping in front of a blade meant for someone else.
Gwen, the normally haughty girl who didn't look at non-combat classes, hauled him down from his kneeling position and through his feeble resistance laid him on the floor, his head on her lap.
Too weak to resist, Pantheon continued praying, even if the position wasn't right. His eyes unfocused sometimes and he glimpsed Gwen's black ringlets of hair, her face a blotchy piece of white enclosed within them.
Warmth enveloped his ears, sound returning to him. The warmth travelled to the rest of his body and after finding nothing, retreated. His head was then unceremoniously removed from her lap, landing on a pillow not a moment too soon.
Sound had returned to him, but everything was muted, as if he was hearing things from underwater. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gwen racing out the door, having managed to equip herself in the few moments since she'd let his head drop on a pillow. He hadn't even managed to raise his hand properly to stop her before she was already out of sight.
Pantheon let his head fall back on the pillow, hands on the ground. He had been naïve. About the world in general and his position in it.
The despair he was feeling right now, unable to do anything but lay on the floor, taken out of action by being a mile or something away from the actual fight...
"This is what weakness feels like."
Heavy footsteps entered the house, and Pantheon looked up to see Ulbing enter, not a scratch on him. He locked eyes with the man, pleadingly.
Only to receive a morose shake of the head.
Yes. This was weakness. One good point about being so pathetic, though, was that the only way forward was up.
Pantheon had heard of people who had had what could be best described as religious experiences. A moment of clarity, followed by a life-changing decision. A goal that either would be met, or the person would die.
The stories understated the event.
Pantheon could hear his heartbeat, the blood rushing through his head, every single part of his body and mind receiving an edict straight from the heavens.
"I will become a hero."
-/-
Jaune raised a blonde eyebrow, trying not to show how afraid he actually was. The thing before him grinned. A red eyebrow raised to mirror his own expression.
A bad mirror. The demon might have taken the form of a human head but it didn't look anything like Jaune. A squarer face structure and the red hair colour extinguished any possibility of resembling him.
"One life." The demon almost seemed disappointed. "You only want me to take one. Are you sure?" A grin. "How about a city? Spread your name, make people tremble in fear. A good reputation is dead useful in our world."
Jaune managed to jerkily shake his head, the demon's sheer presence pressing him down without its owner having to lift even a nonexistent finger. "O-one life and h-ho-however long it takes you to end it."
The disembodied head smiled from ear-to-ear, showing off its triangular teeth. "What you ask for is what you get. The price shall be paid." Jaune held eye contact with the demon as its pupils, made of geometrical shapes, started spinning, creating a mesmerizing effect that heralded the end of his consciousness.
edited by 5th dimension
This is a semi-omake so don't take it too seriously. You don't even have to read it to understand what is happening in later chapters.
The oven emitted black smoke as the dough within writhed and twisted itself. Occasionally skulls and demonic faces were discernible as it bubbled. Pantheon sighed.
"Another failure then," he muttered, threw some water over the fire to quench it, and coughed from the smoke. Usually one would only close the oven door to starve the fire of oxygen. But the baker was not in the correct era to know about that method or to even understand what oxygen was.
He put on his oven mitts and pulled out the failed baguette. The form was good; it looked like a proper phallic object, ready for consumption. One end of it was slightly softer than the other. He could actually shove a spoon into that part, unlike the rest, where upon touch the spoon curled up, emitted some smoke, and disintegrated.
It reminded him of how Grimm died, dissipating in a similar manner. Pantheon pulled his white chef hat over his eyes and tried to prevent himself from crying.
Why was being a baker so damn hard?
The oven mitts that were holding the baguette were starting to dissipate. He quickly threw them off and rushed to a bucket of water to wash his hands, and upon drying them on his apron he saw that the baguette was starting to dissolve a hole in his floor. He frantically looked around for something with which he could hold the damn thing without being destroyed, and his eyes fell on the Broom.
Yes. Capitalized, a magical artefact of his grandfather that was spelled to be indestructible. Why the enchantment had been used on a broom he didn't know, but thankfully it had been. He removed the bristle head and aligned the shaft with the softer end of the baguette. The wood penetrated it slightly and he was able to shove the thing towards one of the walls, where he was able to firmly lodge the wood inside the bread(?).
Slightly shaking, Pantheon opened the door to the backyard and looked into the dead forest that started right at the end of his overgrown lawn. The forest hadn't always been dead… It had only been that way since he'd started throwing his failed products into it.
"And away you go you bloody monstrosity!" Pantheon shouted as he swung the shaft towards the forest, the baguette dislodging with a wet 'schlop' A caw resounded as a Nevermore the size of a big dog flew out from the trees, probably taking offence at the description of bloody monstrosity.
Pantheon was just about to apologize, before running back into the safety of his house, when the baguette, sailing through the air, didn't smack the Nevermore down as much as it destroyed half of its body on contact.
Ping.
Pantheon stood there, frozen. He'd known that his creations were sometimes not of the best quality. But to have a Grimm die upon touching it? That was just insulting.
At least he'd gained a level.
-/-
Pantheon was facing a conundrum. He was a baker, but he'd killed a Grimm quite easily. Level five was what he had been before the kill.
At twenty-three years of age that was considered to be quite bad for a NPC like him. There wasn't much he could do about it, though. He just wasn't talented at baking, and that was just the thing that gave him, a baker, exp.
The bitterness of being born an NPC had never really been something he'd gone through like others did. He hadn't been born with a privileged class, so what? Nine in ten people hadn't been born with a privileged class. While being the protagonist of some legendary quest was out of question, he was still perfectly capable of being the main character of his own life.
A new path had opened up though. Not one he'd ever wanted, or considered, but one that was still quite enchanting in its mysteriousness and possible prestige. Gaining that level had felt good. Feeling his status shift and his body change once he put that one point into strength, had been almost orgasmic.
"I'll try to replicate the failure," he muttered as he laid on his cot in his beaten down room in his drafty house. It had never bothered him, but with killing Grimm came lien.
So many possibilities. Maybe there were some other interesting failures he could invoke with his dough. A shield and some armour would probably be a good idea.
-/-
The village Pantheon lived in was small and cut off. While almost directly on the border between Vacuo and Vale it was still on the Vacuoan side of things when you considered taxes and protection.
Emboldened by his successes with his special type of failure, he created bread so hard that it was seemingly unbreakable and harmful to anything it hit, as long as he, the creator, wanted it to be. Thus Pantheon went out with his newly made spear. The shaft was the same Broom he'd used a few weeks ago to dispose of the baguette.
And now, there was another baguette stuck to the top of the shaft.
Maltet he'd named the spear. He'd gotten it from a story his pops had told him as a kid. Something about knights, he couldn't remember.
After trekking through the surrounding forests for a bit (it was harder to find Grimm than expected), he finally found a Beowulf.
"Aha, foul fiend, it's time for your slaying." The creature, which reached up to his chest, turned, lowered its body and started growling. Pantheon was admittedly slightly intimidated, but there wasn't really anything that could happen to him with his spear with him.
He took a pose with his weapon. It almost seemed like he was forgetting something.
"Prepare to be vanquished creature of darkness."
The beowulf lunged at him. Ah, right.
Pantheon had forgotten that he didn't know how to wield a spear.
Thankfully the beowulf was just as inexperienced as him, biting onto the tip of the spear and dragging the whole thing down like he was trying to chew it to death.
Did... the monster think the spear was part of his body?
The action Pantheon had to take was simple. He shoved the spear further down its gullet until it could go no longer. The beowulf started choking and thrashing, the weapon probably being somewhere in its stomach by now. He had shoved it far enough in that the front claws of the beast were able to reach Pantheon.
On the first swing at him he jumped back, circled around until he was behind the beast, and kicked it in it's rear while dodging the slow attacks it managed with its hind legs, all while screaming. The cacophony of sounds, the screams of a grown man, and the whimpering of a beowulf interspersed with the occasional thud of flesh hitting flesh resounded through the forest.
Eventually the Grimm gave up its struggles, and frothing at the mouth, it sank to the ground where it was then kicked to death.
Due to Pantheon's low strength this took approximately one hour.
Once finished, despite his stamina being replenished by the level up, Pantheon couldn't help but sink exhausted to the ground.
He saw something out of the periphery of his vision and looked up to find himself staring at a young mage, who stared back at him with a dead look in his eyes.
The blonde teen was dressed in a manner that screamed adventurer or hero. Steel greaves, mostly leather clothing that looked quite sturdy, with a sheen of what must have been chainmail peeking out of the vest and a sword at his belt.
They stared at each other for a while, Pantheon slightly scared and embarrassed, the mage still with that neutral expression and dead eyes.
"How long were you watching?" Pantheon asked, only to get stared at.
Just as he was about to ask again the teen answered, "The entire time."
"Ah."
The mage pointed a finger at him. "Your next words are going to be, 'I was only pretending to be retarded.'"
Before Pantheon could answer anything the mage had closed the distance between them and gripped his shoulders. His still-trembling shoulders.
"You could have died." The words were whispered while the mage locked eyes with him.
"I- Yes." Pantheon looked down, unable to hold the weighty gaze.
His head was spinning. He could have died. You could die walking down some stairs, but what he'd done was quite a bit more risky. The only reason he hadn't fallen to the ground yet was because of the arms holding him up.
"But I didn't." Pantheon hadn't died, though he would make sure he was better prepared next time. Armour, some daggers, a shield, and a helmet would be necessary.
"You want to do it again?" The mage asked, incredulous.
Pantheon looked at where the Grimm had dissipated, lien lying on the ground. About half as much as he'd make in a day of work. The experience was surging inside of him. He was close to level seven.
"Better prepared, yes." The sudden gain of experience had been a rush. Probably wasn't affecting him overly much though. This was what he wanted.
The mage let him go and sighed, flipping his almost-white blonde hair out of his eyes. "How will you prepare yourself exactly? You don't have any resources here in this village and you will need several years to move somewhere else and purchase them." It didn't sound dismissive, just a statement of facts.
The words hurt though. How was he going to prepare? He didn't know how to make armour, and there wasn't anyone here who could teach him how to wear it. The few soldiers they would probably require payment for teaching him how to fight, as they should.
Pantheon was in the vicinity of a hero though, a mage, all the more knowledgeable for that. Probably. He looked up with star-filled eyes. "Master!"
The mage laughed and asked, "What do you have to offer?"
That was the question Pantheon had been asking himself since he'd realized that to prepare, he needed someone with experience. And he had an answer. Dropping to all fours, still exhausted, he executed a mad scramble towards the lien on the ground and the spear that was lying next to it.
The baguette was fully intact, and so was the shaft. He thrust it at his (hopefully) teacher.
"I was hoping that I sensed wrong. So it's actually bread on a stick that you used." A shake of the head. The spear was taken from his hands, and Pantheon watched as some purple fog began to rise up from the shaft, then the spearhead.
"Durable against magic, how about that." The mage twirled the spear, not expertly from what Pantheon could discern, but still capably.
"Hyaahh!" Faster than his eye could follow the spear hit a tree, denting the wood. Pantheon's eyes widened. If a younger mage, a class that didn't usually employ close quarters combat was this strong, what was the gap between him and an actual warrior?
Depressed, he watched as the mage stared at the spear in wonder.
"That is some impressive..." Hesitation. "...bread."
Pantheon brightened up a bit at that. Nobody had complimented his creations before.
"What else can you make?" The mage asked while handing back the spear, "Tell me on the way back to your place."
Pantheon nodded and started walking. It appeared that he had secured someone to teach him. For how long, he didn't know, but better than nothing.
"So it's failed bread? There must be different ways that you can fail at making bread. Can you make bread pointy and sharp? I would like a sword; chainmail would be nice too. How long does this stuff last? Does it ever dissolve? What are your plans for equipment, farming grounds and fighting style?"
Better than nothing, Pantheon reassured himself.
-/-
Sweaty brown hair rubbed against his face as he lay on the ground, heaving. Master Jaune certainly knew a lot about tempering the body. Though Jaune was most likely not his real name, it was the one he'd introduced himself with, but there was no name above his head, only a the class.
Everything hurt, but Pantheon was glad that he'd been so vehement about seeking out guidance the day prior. The mage knew a lot about training the body, which wasn't even his master's speciality when considering the class he possessed.
The previous two hours or so had been spent working all of his muscles in a rotating cycle. By the time he'd arrived where he'd started, Pantheon's body had been able to handle half of what it had previously. The only reason Pantheon hadn't given up once he'd started feeling the excruciating burn running through his body was the fact that master was doing the exact same exercises on the other side of the clearing they'd found, while occasionally glancing over and correcting his form or providing incentive if he thought his student was slacking off.
One particular painful instance had occurred at the beginning when Pantheon had been doing laborious crunches while hanging from a tree by his legs. Master had come over and punched him in the stomach, causing him to fall down when he thought Pantheon was slacking.
The plan had been explained very thoroughly to him. He remembered the words as if they had been spoken yesterday (they were spoken two and half hours ago). Master didn't have much time, so he would train him for a week. Seven days straight Pantheon would wake up earlier than the already early time bakers usually woke up and work on his physique. After that he would receive tutoring in subjects thought important for adventurers.
After that came spear fighting until exhaustion reared its head again, going over designs for armour and weapons that could be made out of a baker's lifework, and then to finish the day off, a series of light spars.
As he approached his master for the assigned two hours of adventurer knowledge class he hoped that with light spars he meant light spars. The hell he had just gone through had been described as a light workout after all.
Master's eyes glowed slightly as Pantheon sat down before him, and the mage twitched and started speaking without any prompt. "The most important thing about being an adventurer is being able to travel without anyone to rely on. For that you need to know about how to create a nutritious travelling pack, how to navigate, take care of your equipment, set up camp, take care of animals, talk to locals, haggle, scout, and some other stuff I can't remember right now."
That sounded like a lot, Pantheon raised his hand.
"Yes?"
"You don't seem to be carrying much yourself, master." Master nodded at this and hopped down from his position on the rock.
"A very good observation. Another important thing that people who want to take up the most dangerous profession in the world must have is the ability to think." At Pantheon's doubtful glance he continued. "No, not everyone is capable of such a feat. Now, why do I not carry any visible supplies?"
Pantheon rubbed the stubble on his chin. His master's gaze sharpened at the act and he scratched at his own, stubble-less chin. Why did master not need supplies? There was only one thing that separated master from other humans, at least to his knowledge. His class.
"Because you are a mage," Pantheon stated firmly, receiving a clap.
"Yes, another possibility would have been that I possessed a space ring or something equally ludicrous, but the most feasible and the correct answer is the fact that I," he said, pointing at himself and puffing his chest out, "Jaune, adventurer extraordinaire, finder of the sword god's pyramid, peerless swordsman, student of Jain, saver of villages, and vanquisher of evil, am indeed, a mage." Master looked at him, as if waiting for another observation.
"Won't creating supplies the entire time tire you out before you even get to a fight, or will you be able to create supplies after a fight?" Another clap, and master pointed at him.
"Yes, use that brain." Master sat down again. He seemed to be slightly vibrating in place. He probably had to slow down his workout for Pantheon, did master now had too much energy? "Same question right back at you." Master calmed himself noticeably. "Your stamina is also a resource, how can you justify carrying anything at all if it will encumber you in a fight?"
Pantheon was about to sink back into thought before his master interrupted. "Don't think about it too much. To make decisions and reliably use your capacity to think, there must be some information that you can use to base your actions around. The knowledge you possess is directly proportional to the breadth of actions you can perform in any given situation. You seem to have a good head on your shoulders; only seen you do one remarkably stupid thing in the day I've known you. Now I'm going to attempt to stuff that head full of knawledgeee."
And stuffed full of knowledge he got. It was hard. Jaune simply started speaking about a certain subject and didn't stop.
Pantheon had told him that he would forget half of what he would be taught at the beginning. He had since then changed his mind from half to maybe an eighth. Master had said he didn't have much time, so he was thankful for any help at all, but still, wouldn't it just be better to train stuff that he was unable to forget? You didn't lose muscles and muscle memory after gaining it after all. He posed the idea to master, only to be shot down. Metaphorically, thankfully.
"You may forget it now, but you will remember it when you need to."
So Pantheon listened, so Pantheon sat and so Pantheon occasionally fell asleep only to be awakened immediately with a splash of water in the face.
-/-
"The first argument about how one normally uses a spear is overarm or underarm." Master demonstrated the overarm, thrusting at a tree with the spear held almost at his neck, and then the underarm, the thrust coming more from the torso. "Underarm is the preferred method of people who use only a spear. Overarm is used by people who also use a shield." Master brought a shield theatrically out of his pocket and snared it to his left arm, while his right held the spear.
He bashed a non-existent opponent away and stabbed the down foe with a hefty downward swing, then retreated to a crouching position, the buckler hiding half of his body from sight. "The strength of the overarm method is of course the downward stab. You use a shield to bring yourself into a position where you can use it. For beginners it's the simple methodology of block and attack."
Master seemed to contemplate him for a few moments, glancing at Pantheon occasionally and seemingly sizing him up. "I don't think we'll bother with underarm quite yet. It's something for more experienced people or amateurs who don't plan to use a shield."
Pantheon gained a contemplative look at those words. Was there a reason why he had to use a shield? There wasn't really one form the way he saw it, so it would definitely be better to decide now so he could focus on only one form. The week of tutoring he had was even more importanter since what he would learn this week would become the foundation for what he would practice once master left.
He started raising his hand to bring up the point.
"Don't even think about it."
Overhand and a shield it was then.
"Are you right-handed or left-handed?" The question was unexpected but Pantheon could understand why it was important. He raised his right hand in answer.
"Well, sucks to be you, you're going to be learning the spear left-handed." Master seemed to take sadistic glee in those words.
"Uhh, ok." Pantheon didn't have any illusions about his competency in the field of deciding how he should train. He went over to his side of the clearing, looked at master, who was doing something with his sword, received an encouraging nod and started thrusting.
Well, he started up one thrust. He'd never used a shield before and when he'd repelled the imaginary enemy he lost his balance. The thrust, led with his non-dominant hand, made him stumble and fall to the ground.
That wouldn't have happened if he'd been thrusting with his right, he was sure. He tried several more times, failing to make any progress except for not falling down anymore.
This was dumb, he was losing motivation. Maybe he would get some if he knew the reasoning behind the order.
"Why am I using my left hand?" Pantheon asked.
"To learn how to train through adversity."
That made sense. No wait, it didn't. He only had one week with master. Adversity was something he'd face when he was gone. "Can I just use my right arm instead?"
Master shrugged and performed some sword moves which were too fast for Pantheon to see. His body blurred too much for him to perceive what master was thinking.
"Go for it, but remember to do one-fourth of the exercises with your left, underhanded, so you won't be completely stumped when your right arm is damaged."
Pantheon expressed his thanks and went back to his training that was much easier now. Master sure was an agreeable person, if a little on the twitchy side.
Or was it paranoid?
Pantheon was not a man of words. He remembered there being a specific word for that kind of man, but he didn't know it.
...Where was he?
Right.
Master. Paranoid.
Every time a sound resounded through the clearing, master's eyes squinted just the tiniest bit. His expression hinted at the fact he was doing something, but Pantheon wasn't able to discern what.
It was probably some sort of skill, Pantheon thought to himself as he defeated another imaginary dragon-like Grimm. He knew that he himself always pulled a grimace when he used his. Even if it was usually a grimace of distaste as another try at actually baking failed miserably.
But what could the skill be that master was using? Something that Pantheon couldn't see or sense in any way.
An invisible shield, so that in case the sound was an attack master would be protected? A skill that let him sense everything in a certain radius? Maybe he was just gathering mana for an attack if something came.
"How many heroes and soldiers does the village have?" Master asked abruptly, as if he'd just thought of something.
It was a question Pantheon had to think about. They had three soldiers, one of whom was a bit old, and two hero classes, a warrior and his daughter, who was a ranger. The warrior was nearing fifty, and his daughter Gwen was sixteen years old. The father was the one in charge of clearing out Grimm.
Pantheon didn't remember anyone else. The village was small enough that he would know if there were any, but big enough he didn't know everyone personally. "Three soldiers, a fifty-year-old warrior, and his ranger daughter." Master seemed to mule it over before nodding and continuing to swing his sword.
Pantheon waited for him to say something, but master just told him to go back to training. He did, but asked a question too. "May I ask why you wanted to know?"
"There is someone sneaking around our training area, a girl." That was... concerning... but it was probably Gwen. Master's senses must have been top-notch to notice something like that. A skill was probably the reason. Pantheon couldn't think of another way a mage could spot a ranger in the forest of all places.
He was curious about what the skill was, but it was considered very rude to ask, and master seemed fairly secretive and paranoid. A bad mixture when asked to reveal potentially life-saving skills.
A crow suddenly landed on a nearby tree, easily noticed because it gave a loud screech as it entered the scene.
It was promptly shot down by some purplish missile. Patheon traced it back to master's position.
Two crows landed nearby, screeching just as loudly, seemingly unperturbed by the sudden death of one of their brethren. An unholy cacophony of sounds descended upon them from above, a veritable swarm of birds landing on the foliage surrounding them.
"Master?" Pantheon asked hesitantly, looking over when he received no answer.
The mage was standing there sneering at the birds. "One last lesson I guess," he muttered, loud enough for Pantheon to hear, "There is no foreshadowing in real life, clues that hint at something bad happening soon. You're just sitting there, enjoying your life, when a literal storm of shit descends on you for seemingly no reason at all."
"Master is very wise," Pantheon said as an answer, not knowing what else to say.
His words received a chuckle. "Go. Run off, this doesn't concern you, nor will you be able to do anything if you stay." The words were casually said, but there was truth there.
Pantheon didn't know what was happening, but whatever it was, he fearfully glanced at the crows surrounding them, it was beyond him. Like most things. This was his first day of training after all.
So he ran, almost hyperventilating, thinking of all the possibilities of what was happening now in that clearing.
Despite his burning legs, he didn't stop at his house and barricade himself inside like a coward. Pantheon ran until he reached Ulbing's house, banged on the door, and didn't stop until the door was opened.
"The baker?" The aged warrior managed to mutter before being interrupted by Pantheon's wheezing gasps.
"Fight between... heroes... a mage against someone. I couldn't see. Crows!" he managed to rasp out before falling to the ground coughing, having accidentally swallowed an insect at some point.
He wildly gesticulated in the direction he came from and was about to say where exactly master was fighting when he was interrupted by a flash of purple light exploding forth from the training clearing.
He heard a curse from Ulbing, Pantheon's arm was grasped and he was pulled into the house, and the door was shut behind him.
An earth-shattering crack reverberated through the air. Pantheon could see the houses' walls vibrating from what must have been a tremendous shock wave. He glanced at Ulbing, who was already halfway through attaching his armour. Pantheon opened the door so the warrior wouldn't have to when running out. That half-second the warrior would gain from not having to open it might be the half-second that mattered.
He clung to that hope. The bearded warrior righted himself after attaching his footwear, a gigantic halberd clutched in his hands.
At some point, Gwen had come over and was arguing with her father. Pantheon couldn't understand what they were saying. Their lips were moving, the occasional spittle flying. Pantheon couldn't hear anything, now that he thought about it. The scene of the daughter, who had by her gestures wanted to join her father in fighting, was put aside as Pantheon raised his hands to his ears and felt a wet warmth trickling down the sides of his head.
He glanced stupidly at his now bloody hands for a few moment, not comprehending, as Ulbing ran out. Then Pantheon clasped his hands together in prayer, eyes closed.
He didn't know master, but someone who genuinely helped a foolish baker on his path to becoming a hero couldn't be on the wrong side of a conflict. Master was surely strong, but Pantheon was weak and therefore all he could offer was a prayer or a momentary distraction by jumping in front of a blade meant for someone else.
Gwen, the normally haughty girl who didn't look at non-combat classes, hauled him down from his kneeling position and through his feeble resistance laid him on the floor, his head on her lap.
Too weak to resist, Pantheon continued praying, even if the position wasn't right. His eyes unfocused sometimes and he glimpsed Gwen's black ringlets of hair, her face a blotchy piece of white enclosed within them.
Warmth enveloped his ears, sound returning to him. The warmth travelled to the rest of his body and after finding nothing, retreated. His head was then unceremoniously removed from her lap, landing on a pillow not a moment too soon.
Sound had returned to him, but everything was muted, as if he was hearing things from underwater. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gwen racing out the door, having managed to equip herself in the few moments since she'd let his head drop on a pillow. He hadn't even managed to raise his hand properly to stop her before she was already out of sight.
Pantheon let his head fall back on the pillow, hands on the ground. He had been naïve. About the world in general and his position in it.
The despair he was feeling right now, unable to do anything but lay on the floor, taken out of action by being a mile or something away from the actual fight...
"This is what weakness feels like."
Heavy footsteps entered the house, and Pantheon looked up to see Ulbing enter, not a scratch on him. He locked eyes with the man, pleadingly.
Only to receive a morose shake of the head.
Yes. This was weakness. One good point about being so pathetic, though, was that the only way forward was up.
Pantheon had heard of people who had had what could be best described as religious experiences. A moment of clarity, followed by a life-changing decision. A goal that either would be met, or the person would die.
The stories understated the event.
Pantheon could hear his heartbeat, the blood rushing through his head, every single part of his body and mind receiving an edict straight from the heavens.
"I will become a hero."
-/-
Jaune raised a blonde eyebrow, trying not to show how afraid he actually was. The thing before him grinned. A red eyebrow raised to mirror his own expression.
A bad mirror. The demon might have taken the form of a human head but it didn't look anything like Jaune. A squarer face structure and the red hair colour extinguished any possibility of resembling him.
"One life." The demon almost seemed disappointed. "You only want me to take one. Are you sure?" A grin. "How about a city? Spread your name, make people tremble in fear. A good reputation is dead useful in our world."
Jaune managed to jerkily shake his head, the demon's sheer presence pressing him down without its owner having to lift even a nonexistent finger. "O-one life and h-ho-however long it takes you to end it."
The disembodied head smiled from ear-to-ear, showing off its triangular teeth. "What you ask for is what you get. The price shall be paid." Jaune held eye contact with the demon as its pupils, made of geometrical shapes, started spinning, creating a mesmerizing effect that heralded the end of his consciousness.
chapter 24
bor902
professional illiterate
- Location
- wherever i am at the moment
Chapter 24
Edited by 5th dimension
Jaune threw an arcane bolt at the wall adjacent to his prison cot. It was absorbed before impact by some sort of murky gray shield that appeared every time something magical approached the walls, which were also gray. The bars on the small window and door were gray too. The wood of the door looked kinda gray as well, as did the chains holding up the plank of wood that he had affectionately come to refer to as a cot.
Almost two years of hiding, travelling by donkey, wiping away all traces of his passing and not interacting with people much. All of that, just to be captured anyway. On the border at that! Jaune had even cut off all his hair so that nobody could forge a sympathetic link with it to find him. It had grown back fairly quickly. The regeneration stat was useful and at two right now, but still, he had been running around the desert bald for a week.
Back then he'd had the choice between suffering in a hood or having a scalp hotter than most cooked meals!
Steps echoed down the corridor where his cell was and he tensed, preparing an attack but staying seated to give the illusion of peace. The steps passed by his cell, just like the last four times. Jaune slammed his fist into the wall behind him in anger. He'd been rotting in this cell for several hours now. Kidnapping him and then not even bothering to clarify the situation... He truly had been found by some horrible people.
Jaune laid back down and wondered where he was. The cell didn't have a window so he couldn't tell. It couldn't be far from the village where he had been captured. He didn't feel like he had been unconscious for a long time.
He grimaced at the thought of his capture. The crows had converged on him, forcing him to blow them away by causing a huge explosion with some alchemically created dust. After that, someone had closed in on him so fast he almost couldn't sense it and knocked him out.
Being underlevelled sucked. What was he supposed to do against someone with several times his agility? There was no time to react due to him being unused to such high speed combat, and even if he had a clue to what was happening, he wasn't strong enough to do anything about it.
Someone walked by his door again. Jaune didn't bother preparing for a fight. Maybe they didn't know he was awake? They might not know he had points in constitution and therefore thought he would be out for longer.
Jaune stood up and walked the two feet he needed to walk to get to the door. He clutched the iron bars and pulled himself up to attempt a glance into the corridor… only to flinch back as something crawled onto his right arm. He fell back down and managed to dislodge the ugly millipede from his hand in the process. The bug smacked into the door and Jaune killed it off with pest control before it could regain its bearing.
"Motherfucker," he muttered, clutching his arm that had come down painfully while falling. Steps suddenly echoed through the corridor outside, more urgently this time.
Jaune stared at the dead millipede that dissolved into ashes. That wasn't supposed to happen. The millipede had not shown up in his senses. Sure, the skill dimensional comprehension was being limited at the moment, probably by the same magic that saved his surroundings from being blown up, but he was still able to feel a foot or so outside the door.
Theoretically, the thing should have shown on his radar, but it hadn't. That and the fact that he hadn't actually made that much noise, but someone was still coming right after he'd killed the thing, pointed to it being a magical construct of sorts.
It would have been arrogant to assume that dimensional comprehension had no weaknesses, that no one could cloak themselves against it. It was still disconcerting to be faced with an example, though.
"You awake in there." A voice resounded from outside his cell. It was a young, also female voice.
Jaune considered not answering, but since he had wanted to get his captor's attention anyway, he shouted back a "Yeah."
"Alright."
So being awake was alright, was it? That didn't really tell him much, and neither did the analysis of his probably-jailer's voice help him in any discernible way. Half the world's population was female, and a third of those were in the young range.
The girl outside his cell left, still in a hurry apparently. Jaune wondered why, if he was so important, they hadn't stationed anyone by his door to inform them when he awoke. Maybe the girl in question was just hyper. Those people existed. Sun came to mind; he could still remember the boy's hyperactivity despite not seeing him for two years.
He went through some strategies to disable anyone who opened his door for what must have been the hundredth time, but ultimately discarded the line of thought. The simple truth of the matter was that Jaune was outmatched in every single way here: numbers, skill, levels, and some other things he couldn't think of off the top of his head. Negotiation was his only real possibility. A bad one, but probably the only one he had. Being in an overwhelming position of weakness was never a good way to start a discussion.
The worst outcome would be enslavement under threat of death, but even if that came to be, he only needed to gain seven levels to gain access to teleport or another movement skill.
"Only seven levels."
Damn.
It wasn't like they would let him fight if he was, as he assumed, a dungeon radar. Too valuable to lose. He would have to try and level up by mental effort spent on intellectual thoughts and pray to god he would gain some experience for his role in killing the monsters, even if it was circumstantial in the highest sense.
Finding the dungeon which allowed it to be raided, and the monsters dying in the raid. Those were at least two levels of separation from the actual act of killing anything. Any exp gained that way would be minimal, if not nonexistent.
The door to his cell opened rather abruptly, making him flinch at the suddenness and the light. A rogue stood at the door, the same one who had eavesdropped on him and Emanon at the inn two years ago. It was easy to remember a man who had several burn scars on his back, even if he seemed to have more of those now. A flaming whip perhaps? As a punishment for any kind of failure, or self-flagellation?
"Up, I'm bringing you somewhere." The man's voice was neutral, the unveiled upper half of his face not revealing anything.
"No restraints?" Jaune had to ask. Even if he was weak in comparison there was a still a small chance he could harm someone if he tried to escape.
"None are needed. Even if you somehow were to incapacitate me you would never be able to escape. We trust your intellect. You were able to avoid us for quite some time after all." The man's eyes crinkled as he smiled underneath his mask.
"Thanks." It was a slightly backhanded compliment, with him being a prisoner now. But still, nice to hear some people thought highly of his ability. Jaune stood up and walked up to the door.
The man nodded and started walking, slowly. Jaune appreciated it. He could take in his surroundings easier that way. Gray walls and drab was what came to mind. Which was understandable; he was in the prison wing of whatever structure this was. He looked out of a portcullis and froze. The rogue noticed and turned around to look at him questioningly. Jaune was transfixed by the city outside. How couldn't he be?
He was looking down on Brorusalem, a place that he had left several miles behind.
"How long was I out?" Jaune managed to push out.
"A day or so."
Impossible. In most cases. Now he was really curious about the identity of his captors. He took one last glance outside, to make sure he wasn't hallucinating.
Following the man, Jaune quickly did some mental gymnastics, trigonometry. He knew Brorusalem to a certain point and he had been able to identify some landmarks: the statue of the Sun Emperor, adventurer's guild, and inn. From this viewpoint, the highest building in the city was the residence of the court wizard, a tower that stretched into the sky like a demented hand trying to strike the heavens.
Well, at least it wasn't some incompetent that managed to capture him.
He managed to dredge out some of the things he knew about the man as he was led through twisting turns and down many stairs. Not a great reputation, something with human experiments, feared enough that it didn't matter how others saw him. Capable of teleportation, fire magic, duplication; ruthless, decisive, and possibly cruel. Not the best combination of traits and capabilities for someone who held Jaune's life in their hand.
Eventually the rogue stopped in a rustic dining room, motioning for Jaune to sit down. The man then walked backwards to the door they'd just entered from and started standing guard.
The room might not have been opulent, but that didn't mean it wasn't big, some dozen feet in each direction with some floating blue flames providing light. The centrepiece was taken by the big round table Jaune was now sitting at.
There wasn't any food present yet, but the cutlery and some jugs of liquid were. He only now noticed how thirsty he actually was and poured himself some. He discovered it was water and gulped down two glasses before being satisfied.
He didn't have to wait for long, as five minutes later the court wizard himself entered and sat down opposite of Jaune. Court wizard was a title Jaune associated with age. Sirius Black looked younger that he had expected. Instead of nearing a hundred the man seemed to be barely sixty years old.
Clear gray eyes, uninhibited in sight, clean-shaven, no wizard beard, and with a head of shoulder-length black-and-gray hair.
"You must be hungry." The man clapped his hands and there was food. Simple dishes appeared on the table, followed by more complicated foodstuffs. Roast pheasant, potatoes, soup, and much more.
Jaune shook his head. "Hungry for answers, maybe."
The wizard looked like he wanted to laugh, but was able to restrain himself. Still, the man's facial features turned less intimidating. "Well, let's get to the reason why I had you delivered here, out of your way." The man didn't seem to have a problem with eating as he spoke. "I know about your class."
Jaune nodded hesitantly. "So what, I'm going to be your dungeon searcher?" Jaune asked.
A shake of the head, another bite of food disappearing. "No, I need a portal to another world," he said lightly, as if speaking about the weather. His eyes burned into Jaune, though.
Jaune sputtered. "I didn't even think something like that was possible," he admitted, gaining a shrug.
"It isn't, for most people."
Jaune put some food on a plate and started eating. "When exactly would I be capable of something like this?" Several decades most likely. He shouldn't have eaten. He felt like puking now.
"I am capable of some magic in that direction, but I need help, someone who is more suited. At level 100 you can design your own skill. If all else fails, I help you get there, you create that skill according to my design." The words got more heated the more the man spoke. He was obviously invested in this topic.
The only problem in Black's plan was that Jaune did not want to give away years of his life for something someone else wanted. One could argue that getting boosted to a level one would otherwise never reach would be worth it, but it wasn't, not really.
Jaune had been largely independent for several years now, liked it, and did not wish to lose the ability to do what he wanted, when he wanted. And what he wanted most right now was to go to Beacon Academy for heroes. Jaune didn't necessarily want to be a hero, but having spent two years trying to get there had solidified that goal in his mind.
There was also something about it that drew him, like a beacon. As if that was the place his destiny awaited. He couldn't quite describe the feeling.
Black, however, was not a person that drew him in any particular way. Repelled maybe, now that he focused on it. There was something deeply wrong with the man. As if he didn't belong here, and never would.
The man was also the bastard that forced his capture, and was also a politician, if he understood the title court wizard correctly.
But Jaune was weak. A compromise would have to be made. "Is it possible for me to attend Beacon while serving?" Jaune asked, causing an odd look to pass across the wizard's face.
"School, huh? I can understand why you would want to attend. Those are often times the best times of our life." He sounded almost melancholy and wistful, but then shook his head and regained a colder bearing. "No, that won't be possible, not really. Maybe a metaphor would help." Black pointed at his plate of food. "You see this?"
Jaune didn't see anything but some eggs and pork roast but nodded anyway.
"The chicken, it gave its eggs for this meal. One could say it made a contribution." He suddenly gripped the knife in his right hand tightly and slammed it down onto the pork, stabbing through it, the plate and the table beneath it. "The pig however, made a commitment."
Jaune had still not recovered from the act of sudden violence as Black affixed his eyes to his. The man seemed a bit... feverish.
"I don't think I have to tell you what I want from you. A contribution ain't gonna cut it."
That was... shit, Jaune wasn't going to act tough here. He knew there must be some way to barter for better working conditions, so to say, but he sure as hell wasn't able to think of any right now.
He'd never quite been held at knifepoint quite like this. There had been beasts and people set on his death before. But never any that were stronger than him, proven by the fact he was still alive and they weren't. He managed to open his mouth despite the slight jitters still running through his body. "Can I have, s-some time to think about it?" Black glanced at him, as if sizing up a cow for the chopping block.
Jaune's first mistake was that he had asked, instead of stated. The second had been the stutter. The third in retrospect was that he directly deflected the small mental probe that had tried to sneak its way into his head through his eyes.
"I don't think of myself as a bad man, nor as an evil one," Black said. Jaune had differing opinions to that statement, but the wizard continued. "There are just some things in life that I would sacrifice quite a lot for." The man mulled it over. His face was quite easy to read now that Jaune thought about it.
"You have until tomorrow to think."
That was the sentence. One day.
Jaune made to stand up, not wanting to be here anymore, but Black waved him down. "You should eat something. There is no room service here. It would also give you some time to watch a demonstration of mine."
Jaune reluctantly started eating again. Black was right, he needed food to think. Now that he concentrated fully on his plate, he noticed that the fare was quite good. Which made sense, nothing but the best for people of high political office.
He was startled once again as an oink resounded through the room. He glanced up and saw that a servant had brought a pig into the dining room.
Jaune stared at it.
"Oink."
He had not forgotten the contribution and commitment metaphor.
Black started speaking again, though Jaune only heard it vaguely through a haze, already suspecting what was about to happen. "This is just a showing, that a commitment, must not necessarily be voluntary."
The wizard pulled out his wand from his sleeve and pointed it at the pig.
"Imperio."
There was no light, no sound of a spell going off. Jaune couldn't see anything change about the animal either, at least until he looked into its eyes. They were glassy, as if the thing was high, drunk, or unconscious.
"Run head-first into the wall behind you, until you die."
Thus spoke the wizard, and thus a pig died.
A limp body. Cranial seepage and blood running along the lines in the floor.
-/-
Jaune didn't allow himself to scream in rage... or desperation? He didn't quite know until he was alone in his cell again.
So that was it, the choice of either becoming a willing slave, or becoming an unwilling slave.
Maybe Black had simply used the spell as an intimidation tactic. Controlling a pig was very different than controlling a human being, especially a mage who had some rudimentary mental defences. But Black knew from his mental probe that he had those defences. A human could be broken down to be nothing more than an animal, with time.
"There comes a time when you have to choose between two bad choices." Great. The passage hadn't spoken of how to decide though.
Choosing the lesser evil, willing servitude was probably better. There wasn't anything he could do to get himself out of this situation. Black seemed dead set on his path and unwilling to compromise.
Jaune created several arcane bolts and hurled them at the walls, where they dissipated. Well, the walls were magically immune. He however, wasn't. He formed another salvo and gulped, heart beating out of his chest.
The arcane bolts dissipated as the thought passed through his head. So even his magic didn't want him to contemplate suicide, huh?
The only real choices left were willing servitude and trying to find his fortune in that place then. He hadn't entered shared dreamspace for a while now, for good reason. But it seemed like it was time to take a gamble.
Would servitude be that bad though? Levels, knowledge, and a chance to work closely together with an experienced magic caster. Jaune would outlive Black by about forty years anyway. That meant all in all, that he would at least have a few decades of freedom, maybe even more if Black found what he wanted earlier.
There was something drawing him to Beacon academy, and his very being inwardly recoiled at being beholden to anybody. It was just wrong on a level that he was not even capable of comprehending. Visceral somehow.
There was only one possibility left then. A chance of one in a million that he would encounter an entity willing and able to help him in the shared dreamscape.
He hadn't forgotten about the skill despite not having used in two years. Overuse led to long term consequences, this he had determined. But taking a chance with that and being enslaved were two very different things. Why should he trust Black to treat him as a slightly-more-bound-than-usual servant? The man seemed too taken with the idea of travelling to another world not to try and lay unbreakable chains upon him.
Shared dreamscape seemed to be the only option he had left. Jaune lay down on his cot and stared at the ceiling for a bit. It was weird returning to a place he hadn't been to in a while. It was nostalgic with a hint of danger.
Jaune dropped down into a vibrant forest. It seemed to be nearing autumn, the various trees around him changing their foliage from green to yellow and brown. It was beautiful, in some ways more real than reality itself.
He spent much thought and experimentation on his skills. But everything he had on shared dreamscape was mere conjecture; he hadn't allowed himself to use it after all. One thing that stuck out to him was the fact that he had only ever met one being using it. The wind that had answered his call for help back in the fishman dungeon.
Other than that one time, he had never encountered anyone or anything. He had seen things, but never met them. Because at the time, he hadn't wanted to. His thoughts affected this place, somehow. So to meet creatures willing to help him, he had to imprint his will onto this world.
"I need help" became almost a mantra as he traversed the forest, repeating it endlessly as he walked on. The soil beneath his feel changed to rock and the trees grew smaller, and sparser. The scenery changed into a desert, the sun bearing down onto him.
Jaune wondered if it was a coincidence that the first environment he dropped into was a forest, and the second a desert. A different facet of reality indeed. Following that logic, the next thing to come was a mix of both, or a city.
The sun bore down on him, making him sweat until he willed himself to stop. The sand under his feet crackled, drew together to slowly form into cobblestone, shanty buildings springing up around him to create a street. Its streetness was dubious at best, though. Jaune had never seen one without people.
The city scenery was short, followed by a longer stretch of desert and then an oasis.
It was eerie, retracing all of his steps in so short a time, but at least he was prepared for the sudden teleportation that occurred. It took him from a clearing that resembled the one he'd trained Pantheon in to the gray cell that he had intimately acquainted himself with the day before.
Only he wasn't alone.
A human head with red hair floated in the room. Its pupils seemed to be made out geometrical shapes.
Jaune opened his mouth to commence dialogue, but the creature interrupted him. "We already had this conversation," it said, revealing pointed teeth that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle to create a truly terrifying smile.
Now that he thought about it, he had already had this conversation. The thing would take over his body to kill Black and then relinquish it back to him. He couldn't for the life of him remember what he was paying with for this service, though.
"You're paying me through symbolism. Using a symbol of my design, you will gain fame or infamy." The head seemed to mull something over. "I recommend a guild made out of elite members." Jaune felt himself get analysed. "You don't seem to be capable enough to bring forth the effect I want in any meaningful way... alone, at least."
The demon rolled his eyes. "Enough time wasted. Let's get on with it."
Jaune had just the time to feel indignant before losing consciousness.
Edited by 5th dimension
Jaune threw an arcane bolt at the wall adjacent to his prison cot. It was absorbed before impact by some sort of murky gray shield that appeared every time something magical approached the walls, which were also gray. The bars on the small window and door were gray too. The wood of the door looked kinda gray as well, as did the chains holding up the plank of wood that he had affectionately come to refer to as a cot.
Almost two years of hiding, travelling by donkey, wiping away all traces of his passing and not interacting with people much. All of that, just to be captured anyway. On the border at that! Jaune had even cut off all his hair so that nobody could forge a sympathetic link with it to find him. It had grown back fairly quickly. The regeneration stat was useful and at two right now, but still, he had been running around the desert bald for a week.
Back then he'd had the choice between suffering in a hood or having a scalp hotter than most cooked meals!
Steps echoed down the corridor where his cell was and he tensed, preparing an attack but staying seated to give the illusion of peace. The steps passed by his cell, just like the last four times. Jaune slammed his fist into the wall behind him in anger. He'd been rotting in this cell for several hours now. Kidnapping him and then not even bothering to clarify the situation... He truly had been found by some horrible people.
Jaune laid back down and wondered where he was. The cell didn't have a window so he couldn't tell. It couldn't be far from the village where he had been captured. He didn't feel like he had been unconscious for a long time.
He grimaced at the thought of his capture. The crows had converged on him, forcing him to blow them away by causing a huge explosion with some alchemically created dust. After that, someone had closed in on him so fast he almost couldn't sense it and knocked him out.
Being underlevelled sucked. What was he supposed to do against someone with several times his agility? There was no time to react due to him being unused to such high speed combat, and even if he had a clue to what was happening, he wasn't strong enough to do anything about it.
Someone walked by his door again. Jaune didn't bother preparing for a fight. Maybe they didn't know he was awake? They might not know he had points in constitution and therefore thought he would be out for longer.
Jaune stood up and walked the two feet he needed to walk to get to the door. He clutched the iron bars and pulled himself up to attempt a glance into the corridor… only to flinch back as something crawled onto his right arm. He fell back down and managed to dislodge the ugly millipede from his hand in the process. The bug smacked into the door and Jaune killed it off with pest control before it could regain its bearing.
"Motherfucker," he muttered, clutching his arm that had come down painfully while falling. Steps suddenly echoed through the corridor outside, more urgently this time.
Jaune stared at the dead millipede that dissolved into ashes. That wasn't supposed to happen. The millipede had not shown up in his senses. Sure, the skill dimensional comprehension was being limited at the moment, probably by the same magic that saved his surroundings from being blown up, but he was still able to feel a foot or so outside the door.
Theoretically, the thing should have shown on his radar, but it hadn't. That and the fact that he hadn't actually made that much noise, but someone was still coming right after he'd killed the thing, pointed to it being a magical construct of sorts.
It would have been arrogant to assume that dimensional comprehension had no weaknesses, that no one could cloak themselves against it. It was still disconcerting to be faced with an example, though.
"You awake in there." A voice resounded from outside his cell. It was a young, also female voice.
Jaune considered not answering, but since he had wanted to get his captor's attention anyway, he shouted back a "Yeah."
"Alright."
So being awake was alright, was it? That didn't really tell him much, and neither did the analysis of his probably-jailer's voice help him in any discernible way. Half the world's population was female, and a third of those were in the young range.
The girl outside his cell left, still in a hurry apparently. Jaune wondered why, if he was so important, they hadn't stationed anyone by his door to inform them when he awoke. Maybe the girl in question was just hyper. Those people existed. Sun came to mind; he could still remember the boy's hyperactivity despite not seeing him for two years.
He went through some strategies to disable anyone who opened his door for what must have been the hundredth time, but ultimately discarded the line of thought. The simple truth of the matter was that Jaune was outmatched in every single way here: numbers, skill, levels, and some other things he couldn't think of off the top of his head. Negotiation was his only real possibility. A bad one, but probably the only one he had. Being in an overwhelming position of weakness was never a good way to start a discussion.
The worst outcome would be enslavement under threat of death, but even if that came to be, he only needed to gain seven levels to gain access to teleport or another movement skill.
"Only seven levels."
Damn.
It wasn't like they would let him fight if he was, as he assumed, a dungeon radar. Too valuable to lose. He would have to try and level up by mental effort spent on intellectual thoughts and pray to god he would gain some experience for his role in killing the monsters, even if it was circumstantial in the highest sense.
Finding the dungeon which allowed it to be raided, and the monsters dying in the raid. Those were at least two levels of separation from the actual act of killing anything. Any exp gained that way would be minimal, if not nonexistent.
The door to his cell opened rather abruptly, making him flinch at the suddenness and the light. A rogue stood at the door, the same one who had eavesdropped on him and Emanon at the inn two years ago. It was easy to remember a man who had several burn scars on his back, even if he seemed to have more of those now. A flaming whip perhaps? As a punishment for any kind of failure, or self-flagellation?
"Up, I'm bringing you somewhere." The man's voice was neutral, the unveiled upper half of his face not revealing anything.
"No restraints?" Jaune had to ask. Even if he was weak in comparison there was a still a small chance he could harm someone if he tried to escape.
"None are needed. Even if you somehow were to incapacitate me you would never be able to escape. We trust your intellect. You were able to avoid us for quite some time after all." The man's eyes crinkled as he smiled underneath his mask.
"Thanks." It was a slightly backhanded compliment, with him being a prisoner now. But still, nice to hear some people thought highly of his ability. Jaune stood up and walked up to the door.
The man nodded and started walking, slowly. Jaune appreciated it. He could take in his surroundings easier that way. Gray walls and drab was what came to mind. Which was understandable; he was in the prison wing of whatever structure this was. He looked out of a portcullis and froze. The rogue noticed and turned around to look at him questioningly. Jaune was transfixed by the city outside. How couldn't he be?
He was looking down on Brorusalem, a place that he had left several miles behind.
"How long was I out?" Jaune managed to push out.
"A day or so."
Impossible. In most cases. Now he was really curious about the identity of his captors. He took one last glance outside, to make sure he wasn't hallucinating.
Following the man, Jaune quickly did some mental gymnastics, trigonometry. He knew Brorusalem to a certain point and he had been able to identify some landmarks: the statue of the Sun Emperor, adventurer's guild, and inn. From this viewpoint, the highest building in the city was the residence of the court wizard, a tower that stretched into the sky like a demented hand trying to strike the heavens.
Well, at least it wasn't some incompetent that managed to capture him.
He managed to dredge out some of the things he knew about the man as he was led through twisting turns and down many stairs. Not a great reputation, something with human experiments, feared enough that it didn't matter how others saw him. Capable of teleportation, fire magic, duplication; ruthless, decisive, and possibly cruel. Not the best combination of traits and capabilities for someone who held Jaune's life in their hand.
Eventually the rogue stopped in a rustic dining room, motioning for Jaune to sit down. The man then walked backwards to the door they'd just entered from and started standing guard.
The room might not have been opulent, but that didn't mean it wasn't big, some dozen feet in each direction with some floating blue flames providing light. The centrepiece was taken by the big round table Jaune was now sitting at.
There wasn't any food present yet, but the cutlery and some jugs of liquid were. He only now noticed how thirsty he actually was and poured himself some. He discovered it was water and gulped down two glasses before being satisfied.
He didn't have to wait for long, as five minutes later the court wizard himself entered and sat down opposite of Jaune. Court wizard was a title Jaune associated with age. Sirius Black looked younger that he had expected. Instead of nearing a hundred the man seemed to be barely sixty years old.
Clear gray eyes, uninhibited in sight, clean-shaven, no wizard beard, and with a head of shoulder-length black-and-gray hair.
"You must be hungry." The man clapped his hands and there was food. Simple dishes appeared on the table, followed by more complicated foodstuffs. Roast pheasant, potatoes, soup, and much more.
Jaune shook his head. "Hungry for answers, maybe."
The wizard looked like he wanted to laugh, but was able to restrain himself. Still, the man's facial features turned less intimidating. "Well, let's get to the reason why I had you delivered here, out of your way." The man didn't seem to have a problem with eating as he spoke. "I know about your class."
Jaune nodded hesitantly. "So what, I'm going to be your dungeon searcher?" Jaune asked.
A shake of the head, another bite of food disappearing. "No, I need a portal to another world," he said lightly, as if speaking about the weather. His eyes burned into Jaune, though.
Jaune sputtered. "I didn't even think something like that was possible," he admitted, gaining a shrug.
"It isn't, for most people."
Jaune put some food on a plate and started eating. "When exactly would I be capable of something like this?" Several decades most likely. He shouldn't have eaten. He felt like puking now.
"I am capable of some magic in that direction, but I need help, someone who is more suited. At level 100 you can design your own skill. If all else fails, I help you get there, you create that skill according to my design." The words got more heated the more the man spoke. He was obviously invested in this topic.
The only problem in Black's plan was that Jaune did not want to give away years of his life for something someone else wanted. One could argue that getting boosted to a level one would otherwise never reach would be worth it, but it wasn't, not really.
Jaune had been largely independent for several years now, liked it, and did not wish to lose the ability to do what he wanted, when he wanted. And what he wanted most right now was to go to Beacon Academy for heroes. Jaune didn't necessarily want to be a hero, but having spent two years trying to get there had solidified that goal in his mind.
There was also something about it that drew him, like a beacon. As if that was the place his destiny awaited. He couldn't quite describe the feeling.
Black, however, was not a person that drew him in any particular way. Repelled maybe, now that he focused on it. There was something deeply wrong with the man. As if he didn't belong here, and never would.
The man was also the bastard that forced his capture, and was also a politician, if he understood the title court wizard correctly.
But Jaune was weak. A compromise would have to be made. "Is it possible for me to attend Beacon while serving?" Jaune asked, causing an odd look to pass across the wizard's face.
"School, huh? I can understand why you would want to attend. Those are often times the best times of our life." He sounded almost melancholy and wistful, but then shook his head and regained a colder bearing. "No, that won't be possible, not really. Maybe a metaphor would help." Black pointed at his plate of food. "You see this?"
Jaune didn't see anything but some eggs and pork roast but nodded anyway.
"The chicken, it gave its eggs for this meal. One could say it made a contribution." He suddenly gripped the knife in his right hand tightly and slammed it down onto the pork, stabbing through it, the plate and the table beneath it. "The pig however, made a commitment."
Jaune had still not recovered from the act of sudden violence as Black affixed his eyes to his. The man seemed a bit... feverish.
"I don't think I have to tell you what I want from you. A contribution ain't gonna cut it."
That was... shit, Jaune wasn't going to act tough here. He knew there must be some way to barter for better working conditions, so to say, but he sure as hell wasn't able to think of any right now.
He'd never quite been held at knifepoint quite like this. There had been beasts and people set on his death before. But never any that were stronger than him, proven by the fact he was still alive and they weren't. He managed to open his mouth despite the slight jitters still running through his body. "Can I have, s-some time to think about it?" Black glanced at him, as if sizing up a cow for the chopping block.
Jaune's first mistake was that he had asked, instead of stated. The second had been the stutter. The third in retrospect was that he directly deflected the small mental probe that had tried to sneak its way into his head through his eyes.
"I don't think of myself as a bad man, nor as an evil one," Black said. Jaune had differing opinions to that statement, but the wizard continued. "There are just some things in life that I would sacrifice quite a lot for." The man mulled it over. His face was quite easy to read now that Jaune thought about it.
"You have until tomorrow to think."
That was the sentence. One day.
Jaune made to stand up, not wanting to be here anymore, but Black waved him down. "You should eat something. There is no room service here. It would also give you some time to watch a demonstration of mine."
Jaune reluctantly started eating again. Black was right, he needed food to think. Now that he concentrated fully on his plate, he noticed that the fare was quite good. Which made sense, nothing but the best for people of high political office.
He was startled once again as an oink resounded through the room. He glanced up and saw that a servant had brought a pig into the dining room.
Jaune stared at it.
"Oink."
He had not forgotten the contribution and commitment metaphor.
Black started speaking again, though Jaune only heard it vaguely through a haze, already suspecting what was about to happen. "This is just a showing, that a commitment, must not necessarily be voluntary."
The wizard pulled out his wand from his sleeve and pointed it at the pig.
"Imperio."
There was no light, no sound of a spell going off. Jaune couldn't see anything change about the animal either, at least until he looked into its eyes. They were glassy, as if the thing was high, drunk, or unconscious.
"Run head-first into the wall behind you, until you die."
Thus spoke the wizard, and thus a pig died.
A limp body. Cranial seepage and blood running along the lines in the floor.
-/-
Jaune didn't allow himself to scream in rage... or desperation? He didn't quite know until he was alone in his cell again.
So that was it, the choice of either becoming a willing slave, or becoming an unwilling slave.
Maybe Black had simply used the spell as an intimidation tactic. Controlling a pig was very different than controlling a human being, especially a mage who had some rudimentary mental defences. But Black knew from his mental probe that he had those defences. A human could be broken down to be nothing more than an animal, with time.
"There comes a time when you have to choose between two bad choices." Great. The passage hadn't spoken of how to decide though.
Choosing the lesser evil, willing servitude was probably better. There wasn't anything he could do to get himself out of this situation. Black seemed dead set on his path and unwilling to compromise.
Jaune created several arcane bolts and hurled them at the walls, where they dissipated. Well, the walls were magically immune. He however, wasn't. He formed another salvo and gulped, heart beating out of his chest.
The arcane bolts dissipated as the thought passed through his head. So even his magic didn't want him to contemplate suicide, huh?
The only real choices left were willing servitude and trying to find his fortune in that place then. He hadn't entered shared dreamspace for a while now, for good reason. But it seemed like it was time to take a gamble.
Would servitude be that bad though? Levels, knowledge, and a chance to work closely together with an experienced magic caster. Jaune would outlive Black by about forty years anyway. That meant all in all, that he would at least have a few decades of freedom, maybe even more if Black found what he wanted earlier.
There was something drawing him to Beacon academy, and his very being inwardly recoiled at being beholden to anybody. It was just wrong on a level that he was not even capable of comprehending. Visceral somehow.
There was only one possibility left then. A chance of one in a million that he would encounter an entity willing and able to help him in the shared dreamscape.
He hadn't forgotten about the skill despite not having used in two years. Overuse led to long term consequences, this he had determined. But taking a chance with that and being enslaved were two very different things. Why should he trust Black to treat him as a slightly-more-bound-than-usual servant? The man seemed too taken with the idea of travelling to another world not to try and lay unbreakable chains upon him.
Shared dreamscape seemed to be the only option he had left. Jaune lay down on his cot and stared at the ceiling for a bit. It was weird returning to a place he hadn't been to in a while. It was nostalgic with a hint of danger.
Jaune dropped down into a vibrant forest. It seemed to be nearing autumn, the various trees around him changing their foliage from green to yellow and brown. It was beautiful, in some ways more real than reality itself.
He spent much thought and experimentation on his skills. But everything he had on shared dreamscape was mere conjecture; he hadn't allowed himself to use it after all. One thing that stuck out to him was the fact that he had only ever met one being using it. The wind that had answered his call for help back in the fishman dungeon.
Other than that one time, he had never encountered anyone or anything. He had seen things, but never met them. Because at the time, he hadn't wanted to. His thoughts affected this place, somehow. So to meet creatures willing to help him, he had to imprint his will onto this world.
"I need help" became almost a mantra as he traversed the forest, repeating it endlessly as he walked on. The soil beneath his feel changed to rock and the trees grew smaller, and sparser. The scenery changed into a desert, the sun bearing down onto him.
Jaune wondered if it was a coincidence that the first environment he dropped into was a forest, and the second a desert. A different facet of reality indeed. Following that logic, the next thing to come was a mix of both, or a city.
The sun bore down on him, making him sweat until he willed himself to stop. The sand under his feet crackled, drew together to slowly form into cobblestone, shanty buildings springing up around him to create a street. Its streetness was dubious at best, though. Jaune had never seen one without people.
The city scenery was short, followed by a longer stretch of desert and then an oasis.
It was eerie, retracing all of his steps in so short a time, but at least he was prepared for the sudden teleportation that occurred. It took him from a clearing that resembled the one he'd trained Pantheon in to the gray cell that he had intimately acquainted himself with the day before.
Only he wasn't alone.
A human head with red hair floated in the room. Its pupils seemed to be made out geometrical shapes.
Jaune opened his mouth to commence dialogue, but the creature interrupted him. "We already had this conversation," it said, revealing pointed teeth that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle to create a truly terrifying smile.
Now that he thought about it, he had already had this conversation. The thing would take over his body to kill Black and then relinquish it back to him. He couldn't for the life of him remember what he was paying with for this service, though.
"You're paying me through symbolism. Using a symbol of my design, you will gain fame or infamy." The head seemed to mull something over. "I recommend a guild made out of elite members." Jaune felt himself get analysed. "You don't seem to be capable enough to bring forth the effect I want in any meaningful way... alone, at least."
The demon rolled his eyes. "Enough time wasted. Let's get on with it."
Jaune had just the time to feel indignant before losing consciousness.
chapter 25
bor902
professional illiterate
- Location
- wherever i am at the moment
Chapter 25
Edited by: 5thdimension
It was odd looking at himself from a third person perspective, Jaune concluded after floating around his body for several minutes. He had never really acknowledged how handsome he was. Mirrors weren't something he spent a particularly long time around.
The sculpted face, strong jaw, windswept hair the colour of hay, and placid blue eyes. The posture, the poise, simply sitting there his body emitted an aura of nobility. Back straight, the heel of his right leg resting on his left knee, muscular arms set in the thinker's pose.
The tanned skin on the back of his neck held an immaterial chain, its links made of a bright light, a chain that led directly to Jaune's consciousnesses. Which was good. It signified that even if he was not currently inhabiting his body, he was still linked to it. The link was just weaker, signified by the fact that the only skill he retained in this form was dimensional comprehension, and a weaker version at that.
Referring to his body as his body was weird. Better to refer by its inhabitant. "What's your name?" Jaune asked.
His body glanced at him lazily. "It must be annoying referring to me as your body. I have many names, you can call me Morilec, last name Smrti."
Jaune nodded. Weird name, but he'd heard weirder… A certain "Newb Stomper" came to mind. Well, shared dreamspace was a place inhabited by beings from others worlds, universes, or timelines. The only thing connecting these inherently different people was their ability or potential with dimensional magic, or spacetime magic as a certain book called it.
Morilec had come to him in the form of a disembodied head. Like a dullahan, but without a body. Wait, that sounded dumb. A dullahan without a body was literally just a floating head. That was what he'd just described.
Well, what Jaune had been trying to get at was the fact that Morilec, who was someone who didn't normally possess a body, seemed perfectly fine in Jaune's body. One would think there would be more flailing around and all. Asking would be unwise though. Morilec seemed fine with having a body, and so the posture and facial expression of 'don't talk to me' was most likely intentional.
Jaune could understand. Someone who could travel worlds and efficiently take over a body must have been very old and powerful. Pestering him now would be the equivalent of a five-year-old doing the same to him.
Wait, were the skills he had tied to his body, his mind, or both? Two of those options would mean that he would perhaps see someone more experienced fight with his own personal skillset.
Jaune suddenly gained a more-than-visceral interest in how the fight would proceed. Before this it had just been something that would determine if he would live the rest of his life in slavery or not. Now he was able to think about it with a sort of academic interest from the perspective of someone who fought for a living.
The boredom became even worse with his strengthened anticipation, though. He wanted to see them face off. Black was powerful, there was no doubt about that. But if Black was powerful, then the feeling that Jaune had gotten from glimpsing Morilec's strength could only be described as a crushing cosmos pressing down on the soul of the observer.
He didn't have to wait for long. Steps resounded through the corridor, but Morilec did not act. Probably guessing his confusion, the demon whispered, "Not him."
Jaune nodded and watched as the same rogue from yesterday opened the cell and bid his body to follow him. He had somehow expected Black to come by personally, but the man probably didn't want to bother, which also didn't make much sense since from what he had heard the wizard could teleport.
The path they were taking, well the path the rogue and Morilec were taking while Jaune was dragged along, lead upwards. Which made sense. Black had tried to get a feel of him and eating was just useful for that. The consequent enslavement of Jaune did not necessarily have to take place in a dining room.
After some time going upwards, Jaune realized they were going onto the roof of the tower. He wondered why, but Morilec didn't seem to be concerned, though the placid expression might have been caused by the fact that for him, nothing was really at stake.
Giving over control of his body had been the best possibility to avoid enslavement. But being the best possibility in a sea of literal shit wasn't really all that great. There was a great chance that Morilec was tricking him somehow and had a way to possess him indefinitely. But even if he were to die as a result of his decisions, at least he would get to witness a battle between two powerful beings. Going out with a bang as they said, even if it wasn't one produced by him.
These thoughts flitted through his head as they finally ascended the tower completely. The rogue behind them did not come with.
The roof was vast, bigger than logic would normally allow when considering the fact that the tower beneath the roof was smaller. The usually blue and clear sky was for once covered by clouds. Not of the fluffy variety, but that of heavy gray rain. And there stood Black, hair whipping slightly in the breeze, wand held out. He was on the opposite side of the roof.
Jaune wondered about the theatricality. Black shouldn't have a way of knowing that he would be facing anything but a teenager today. Yet the circumstances hinted at something else. Had Black somehow found out about the fact that Jaune was not the one inhabiting his body right now?
And even if that were the case, why bother with the dramatic scene of two enemies standing on top of a tower as the sky grew slowly covered by rain-clouds?
Jaune looked around again, inhaling the atmosphere. Ok, he could see why. This was the kind of event and setting that could be painted and inserted into the biography of a legendary figure. So Black was dramatic? The actions of the day before leaned that direction as well.
"So you have come," Black said with a loud voice, observing the fact that he had indeed come, an event which Black himself had ordered. The man raised a hand towards him, resembling a gesture of invitation to friendship. "You don't look ready to join me though."
The wizard lifted the wand in his right hand to the sky, summoning a thick purple barrier that encompassed the top of the tower in a hexagonal ball-like structure. "I will show you the depths of despair then." The man, after saying this, giggled and smirked in a way that was not at all threatening.
Suffice to say, Jaune ascertained that Black was indeed a dramatic individual.
Morilec however, certainly wasn't. He might have appeared so in the deal they'd made, but apparently his attitude shifted once he was... on the job, so to say. An arcane bolt was sent hurtling at Black as if to interrupt any further dialogue. It broke apart into a flurry of vivid sparks on a blue shield surrounding the wizard.
By the time the sparkles dissipated, Morilec had already formed two more bolts, one for each hand. Black waved his wand and sent a hail of red bolts at Morilec, who simply jumped upwards to dodge.
...And simply stayed there as with another wave of the wand, the ground beneath Morilec's feet turned into ice. He was using arcane bolts as a propellant to float in the air.
A small pause descended on the battlefield. Black was the one to break it, bending down and touching his wand to the floor, working the first incantation Jaune had heard him mutter this fight. Morilec didn't wait to see what he was doing, showing off supreme control of flight by ascending even further while spinning. At some point during the spin he accessed his inventory and hurled several swords at lightning fast speed.
The swords stumbled on the same blue spherical shield as the bolt before, but they visibly dented it, creating cracks. Black had finished whatever he was doing and several man-sized gargoyles formed from the stone and flew towards Morilec, who spun and prepared another salvo.
Not to be deterred by the newly created pursuers, he hurled the swords, causing Black to shield himself rather than add another type of offence to the gargoyles. Despite their frightening demeanour, the gargoyles didn't seem to be very effective. Morilec easily fended them off with only his arcane-coated fists.
But he now had no way to actually attack Black, who now walked away from the small mountain of swords that had been thrown. He hurled red bolts that seemed to home in on Morilec, whose movements had become slightly frantic meanwhile.
Suddenly, though, Jaune's possessed body tightly gripped one of the gargoyle's heads, infusing arcane bolts directly into it, destabilizing the whole thing until it exploded into a great shower of stone.
"BANG!" Morilec flew out of the dust cloud, thrown by the explosion. Black was ready for him, sending a gigantic fireball to greet him. Morilec tilted his palms upwards and shot out several bolts into the sky in quick succession, slamming himself harshly into the ground to avoid getting burnt to a crisp. The thud he made as he landed was not reassuring.
But the smirk and the extended hand thrown Black's way certainly was. Rolling to the side to avoid a red bolt, he somehow managed to cast sword return on all of the swords lying just behind Black at once. Swords flew towards Black's back at frightening speed hilt first, smashing into him and sending the wizard sprawling towards Morilec. In a reverse of the previous situation, he was readily waiting for Black with another sword pointed at his quickly approaching body.
Black disappeared with a very loud crack to completely skip past Morilec, and appeared dozens of feet behind him. His momentum had not dissipated even with the teleportation, however, and Black had to manually stop himself with some acceleration-slowing spell. Arresto something.
Before the wizard could gain any sort of reprieve, several arcane bolts struck his position, completely obliterating the blue shield and forcing Black to erect another one.
A pause ensued in which Jaune wondered why Black had been hit by the swords in the first place. He should have at least one sensing skill, right? He sensed around the battlefield frantically with the minor access to dimensional comprehension he still had.
"Well, you certainly don't fight like a sixteen-year-old." Black commented, breathing rather harshly.
Jaune meanwhile found the anomaly. The swords that had struck Black were slowly transforming behind Morilec.
"You, certainly d-" Morilec started a retort before being interrupted.
"Behind you!" Jaune shouted at his body as the swords finished their transformation into several large black dogs and pounced onto his body.
Morilec wasn't able to turn around in time and was suddenly held in place by dogs biting down on every one of his limbs. The sound of flesh tearing and growls resounded as Black smirked. "Too naïve."
The man needed Jaune alive, but seemed to be forgetting that as he charged what looked like a localized tornado of wind above his head. With a flick of his wand, the rampaging air was sent towards Morilec, who despite the situation and Jaune's screaming in his ear like a little girl, smirked once again.
The dogs biting down on him suddenly started distorting, seemingly liquefying and being absorbed into the skin of their prisoner. The process was fast, allowing Morilec to clap his hands together with a resounding "Ha!" before the wind was able to reach him.
A small black ball the size of a fingernail appeared in front of Morilec's joined hands. Jaune felt woozy from the roller-coaster of emotions he was being subjected to, but was still able to feel the tyrannical hunger from the small ball as it floated there.
Was that inventory?
With a great roar, the tornado with a diameter of a dozen feet noisily crashed into the space in front of the pitch-black ball, before compressing to the same size, if not smaller than the ball and being completely absorbed by it in less than a second.
Black stared at Morilec, horrified. Morilec grinned back, a small amount of blood leaking out of his mouth, running down his chin and falling to the floor. The splash the droplet made as it impacted was not as much heard, as it was felt.
"Thanks for that. I don't have anything in my arsenal that's big enough to decisively beat you." The grin extended further. "It was pretty dumb of you to raise a barrier that hinders any spatial travel outside of it," Morilec added, eyeballing the hexagonal barrier that surrounded the rooftop.
Black started waving his wand rapidly, muttering to himself. Morilec simply unleashed the storm back from the small black ball, along with several gallons of blood and all the sharp objects in Jaune's inventory. Ah, so that's where the dogs had disappeared to.
The tornado had in its five seconds of absence turned into a hurricane, with Morilec at the eye of the storm.
Jaune wasn't able to see through the arcane-enforced wind to see what was happening to Black and his slippery grasp of dimensional comprehension eluded him due to the sheer amount of feelings running through him. He simply floated beside Morilec as the storm raged around them, swords and purple arcane magic encompassing their position completely.
The blood that was in the hurricane shed droplets onto his body, turning his clothing and face red. Jaune idly wondered if it the blood belonged to the dogs or Black.
His body didn't have the mana reserves to feed the storm with arcane magic for any long period of time, even if with superior magic control Morilec had wrung out three times the spells Jaune was able to. Morilec had to sluggishly dodge a few flying swords as the hurricane destabilized and finally settled. Jaune felt elated as he found Black's corpse lying against the battlement, several swords sticking out of it.
"Serves the fucker right," he muttered, to which Morilec chuckled. The demon dragged himself to the broken corpse that slightly resembled a hedgehog and started looting it, getting even more blood on Jaune's hands.
He retrieved a ring from one of Black's remaining fingers and an amulet with the shape of a sun from his neck. "The barrier is dissipating, guards will be here soon," Morilec commented, causing Jaune to panic slightly and look around the scene of the murder.
Blood literally everywhere, weapons stuck in the destroyed floor, an almost unrecognisable corpse that looked like it had been thrown around in a magical hurricane and filled with swords. Which to be fair, it had been.
"Well my part of the deal is finished," Morilec said faintly, causing Jaune's heart to stutter before he found something to retort with.
"Not going to be able to uphold my part of the deal dead, and they will execute me for this. How about you get me somewhere safe first?" he suggested.
It was quite amazing that he had been able to come up with an argument at all considering the fight was still flashing through his head repeatedly. Morilec had only used Jaune's skills and while Black had been much weaker than expected, it was still quite a feat to beat the man who in hindsight probably focused more on non-combat areas of magic.
On the other hand, Morilec hadn't won because of Jaune's skills, despite his ridiculous grasp on them. He had won because, from the start of the fight to the end, he had dictated every single action taken by both sides. From the first arcane bolt to the provocation to use a large scale spell that ended the fight.
This sort of battle experience was not something that Jaune could replicate. It seemed that he had made a deal with a supremely intelligent being/demon/god/whatever Morilec was.
"Ok, I'll get you out of here," Morilec said.
"Thank yo-" Jaune started speaking, but his words got stuck in his throat as he focused again on his body. His body which, after gulping down a healing potion, had climbed onto the smooth battlements and jumped off the tower.
Jaune barely had the time to scream before he was dragged along by the chain connecting them. If he was still in possession of his body he was sure that he would have vomited blood.
You say you'll get me out of here, but you just jump off the building. Bro you're too shameless. Jaune was relieved of his need to pray for an easy passage into the afterlife by Morilec, who laughed and pulled out a broom from somewhere. He straddled it and started flying on the shabby looking thing.
Jaune wished he could lose consciousness again like the last two times he'd dealt with Morilec. Then he wouldn't have to deal with this crap.
Someone else doing the stuff Morilec did would be enlightening in many ways, especially battle tactics. In some ways it'd even be amusing. But the problem Jaune had with the demon's actions was the fact that he was completing those actions while possessing his! body.
He chose to, for now, ignore that a broom, especially such an ugly one, was capable of fligh. Jaune just sullenly floated behind Morilec as he flew above the clouds in the direction of a harbour.
"What is the symbol you want me to use? You've never actually told or shown me." Jaune sighed. Despite all things, he was still grateful for Morilec, who was acting in a way that indicated he would hold his part of the deal.
"I'll get you on a boat and engrave it onto your clothes," was the answer, "but basically it's just a triangle with a circle inside of it bisected by a line."
That was good. It wasn't anything that would come over as rude or indicative of a criminal to others. Symbols were, after all, mostly used by immoral organizations like gangs, nobles, and kingdoms. Though some of those preferred the term 'heraldry.'
If Morilec's symbol had turned out to be any variation of a mandala, the representation of the now-defunct assassin supremacy terrorist organization, Jaune would have had some problems.
"Now that you mention it, your pupils in the shared dreamscape world were also shaped like some geometrical shapes," Jaune remembered. How far did someone want to go to change his own eyes? Or was he born that way? Well, maybe not born. Summoned from the darkest pits of hell that way?
They flew for a bit more before Morilec landed a few miles outside of the actual harbour town. He pulled clothes out of Jaune's inventory and Black's ring. Huh, so the man had been in possession of a spatial ring. Expensive and something useful to study. Who knew, maybe he could replicate such a feat in the future.
As Morilec started his engraving, Jaune was transfixed by the sea. It was his first time seeing it. It was quite beautiful; he only wished he could smell it.
"Done."
Jaune turned around to see Morilec don Jaune's usual style of greaves, leather pants, chainmail and vest. He didn't see the symbol.
Morilec threw on a purple robe that covered him down to his feet and pulled up the hood that hid his eyes. The bisected triangle with a circle inside of it was on the back of the robe, and on the hood above Jaune's forehead, the symbol being placed directly at the inner eye. It also had the function of casting the upper part of his face impenetrable shadows.
"It's not really a big town. You sure they will have a ship that goes towards Vale?" Jaune asked.
He received a shrug as Morilec lifted off his feet with arcane bolts. "We'll just have to go and see now, won't we."
-/-
There was actually a ship headed for Vale, with a stop in Menagerie, and Morilec had gotten Jaune on it before relinquishing control of his body back to him.
Jaune was thankful, but still pretty happy that he finally got himself rid of the probably-devil. He had never found out what exactly Morilec had been, but a semi-friendly devil was the likeliest possibility.
As a last gift, so to say, Morilec had used his flight to get onto the ship, getting awestruck expressions from the sailors. Jaune pissed off to his cabin before he ruined the first impression.
Morilec had reminded him of their deal, not that Jaune had forgotten. Bring renown to the symbol, recommended path to take, guild. This didn't mean he shouldn't try to gain renown on a personal level. Doing that would actually make creating a guild easier.
The best way to do so was, well, to act seriously and worthy of respect. The symbol was basically covering his whole body, so renown for him would lead to renown for it. Most heroes created symbols to be identified with, this would simply be his. He summoned an arcane bolt and tried to form it into the symbol. It failed, but he had enough time. The journey would take a few months.
He noticed a slight increase of his control regardless. Jaune was completely focused on examining the spell for the next few minutes. Mana cost had lessened, more maneuverable, easier to shape, and the explosion he shot out of the small window seemed more impressive than usual.
There really was one reason why something like this could have occurred. Morilec using his body and skills had somehow increased his own grasp of these.
Dimensional comprehension had improved as well, range and quality. Pest control, rend, stealth, and shared dreamscape received no improvements, which made sense as Morilec had not used them in the fight. Inventory though, brought with itself the largest surprise. The skill had been used in a frankly ridiculous way, shedding its boundary of only being accessible from Jaune's hands, to being pushed out as an actual entity, and absorbing not objects, but wind.
And then, as a cherry on top, he had gained two levels.
Rightfully speaking Black should have been worth more than just two, especially with Jaune's low level. But the simple fact of the matter was that it wasn't Jaune who had killed the man. It had been Morilec. He'd just used Jaune's body as a conduit for the act.
The fact that he may gain experience fighting Black had honestly completely slipped his mind. He had been more excited to see how someone else used his skills. He did think that overall the improvement of his skills was worth more than the levels themselves.
Level 24. One more and he would finally get to the meat of dimensionalism, intangibility, teleportation, and so much more. Level 25 was, after all, one-fourth of the journey to level 100, and that had meaning.
He wondered what skill Morilec would have chosen to supplement either his utility or fighting strength. Jaune sighed and wondered if he would ever be able to fight like that. It was possible with training, and he would gain an even larger repertoire of spells in the near future. Hell, he already had something that Morilec didn't. He may still be a gnat in the overall comparison, but Morilec didn't seem to know how to wield a sword.
The fact that the swords had only been thrown and the rend skill not used at all had not gone unnoticed by him.
"I bet I could beat him if I got him into close range." It was unlikely, but his ego needed the boost. Even if it came from a lie and he also needed to stop thinking about the demon. Their interaction was over now. He had other things that needed his attention. Like the fact that he was getting seasick.
A bit queasy, and he was on a ship, so it probably was seasickness, something he had forgotten to take into account. The feeling was novel but not entirely unenjoyable. He wondered how bad it would feel if he didn't have so many points in vitality and that brought him to the question of where to put the two points that he had from the level up.
Well that and searching Black's inventory could be done later. The fact that it was still light out was calling him to enjoy the scenery of the sea while he was still able to see it.
I had so much fun writing that fight, I hope you guys can experience even a half of the joy that I had creating this for yourself.
Edited by: 5thdimension
It was odd looking at himself from a third person perspective, Jaune concluded after floating around his body for several minutes. He had never really acknowledged how handsome he was. Mirrors weren't something he spent a particularly long time around.
The sculpted face, strong jaw, windswept hair the colour of hay, and placid blue eyes. The posture, the poise, simply sitting there his body emitted an aura of nobility. Back straight, the heel of his right leg resting on his left knee, muscular arms set in the thinker's pose.
The tanned skin on the back of his neck held an immaterial chain, its links made of a bright light, a chain that led directly to Jaune's consciousnesses. Which was good. It signified that even if he was not currently inhabiting his body, he was still linked to it. The link was just weaker, signified by the fact that the only skill he retained in this form was dimensional comprehension, and a weaker version at that.
Referring to his body as his body was weird. Better to refer by its inhabitant. "What's your name?" Jaune asked.
His body glanced at him lazily. "It must be annoying referring to me as your body. I have many names, you can call me Morilec, last name Smrti."
Jaune nodded. Weird name, but he'd heard weirder… A certain "Newb Stomper" came to mind. Well, shared dreamspace was a place inhabited by beings from others worlds, universes, or timelines. The only thing connecting these inherently different people was their ability or potential with dimensional magic, or spacetime magic as a certain book called it.
Morilec had come to him in the form of a disembodied head. Like a dullahan, but without a body. Wait, that sounded dumb. A dullahan without a body was literally just a floating head. That was what he'd just described.
Well, what Jaune had been trying to get at was the fact that Morilec, who was someone who didn't normally possess a body, seemed perfectly fine in Jaune's body. One would think there would be more flailing around and all. Asking would be unwise though. Morilec seemed fine with having a body, and so the posture and facial expression of 'don't talk to me' was most likely intentional.
Jaune could understand. Someone who could travel worlds and efficiently take over a body must have been very old and powerful. Pestering him now would be the equivalent of a five-year-old doing the same to him.
Wait, were the skills he had tied to his body, his mind, or both? Two of those options would mean that he would perhaps see someone more experienced fight with his own personal skillset.
Jaune suddenly gained a more-than-visceral interest in how the fight would proceed. Before this it had just been something that would determine if he would live the rest of his life in slavery or not. Now he was able to think about it with a sort of academic interest from the perspective of someone who fought for a living.
The boredom became even worse with his strengthened anticipation, though. He wanted to see them face off. Black was powerful, there was no doubt about that. But if Black was powerful, then the feeling that Jaune had gotten from glimpsing Morilec's strength could only be described as a crushing cosmos pressing down on the soul of the observer.
He didn't have to wait for long. Steps resounded through the corridor, but Morilec did not act. Probably guessing his confusion, the demon whispered, "Not him."
Jaune nodded and watched as the same rogue from yesterday opened the cell and bid his body to follow him. He had somehow expected Black to come by personally, but the man probably didn't want to bother, which also didn't make much sense since from what he had heard the wizard could teleport.
The path they were taking, well the path the rogue and Morilec were taking while Jaune was dragged along, lead upwards. Which made sense. Black had tried to get a feel of him and eating was just useful for that. The consequent enslavement of Jaune did not necessarily have to take place in a dining room.
After some time going upwards, Jaune realized they were going onto the roof of the tower. He wondered why, but Morilec didn't seem to be concerned, though the placid expression might have been caused by the fact that for him, nothing was really at stake.
Giving over control of his body had been the best possibility to avoid enslavement. But being the best possibility in a sea of literal shit wasn't really all that great. There was a great chance that Morilec was tricking him somehow and had a way to possess him indefinitely. But even if he were to die as a result of his decisions, at least he would get to witness a battle between two powerful beings. Going out with a bang as they said, even if it wasn't one produced by him.
These thoughts flitted through his head as they finally ascended the tower completely. The rogue behind them did not come with.
The roof was vast, bigger than logic would normally allow when considering the fact that the tower beneath the roof was smaller. The usually blue and clear sky was for once covered by clouds. Not of the fluffy variety, but that of heavy gray rain. And there stood Black, hair whipping slightly in the breeze, wand held out. He was on the opposite side of the roof.
Jaune wondered about the theatricality. Black shouldn't have a way of knowing that he would be facing anything but a teenager today. Yet the circumstances hinted at something else. Had Black somehow found out about the fact that Jaune was not the one inhabiting his body right now?
And even if that were the case, why bother with the dramatic scene of two enemies standing on top of a tower as the sky grew slowly covered by rain-clouds?
Jaune looked around again, inhaling the atmosphere. Ok, he could see why. This was the kind of event and setting that could be painted and inserted into the biography of a legendary figure. So Black was dramatic? The actions of the day before leaned that direction as well.
"So you have come," Black said with a loud voice, observing the fact that he had indeed come, an event which Black himself had ordered. The man raised a hand towards him, resembling a gesture of invitation to friendship. "You don't look ready to join me though."
The wizard lifted the wand in his right hand to the sky, summoning a thick purple barrier that encompassed the top of the tower in a hexagonal ball-like structure. "I will show you the depths of despair then." The man, after saying this, giggled and smirked in a way that was not at all threatening.
Suffice to say, Jaune ascertained that Black was indeed a dramatic individual.
Morilec however, certainly wasn't. He might have appeared so in the deal they'd made, but apparently his attitude shifted once he was... on the job, so to say. An arcane bolt was sent hurtling at Black as if to interrupt any further dialogue. It broke apart into a flurry of vivid sparks on a blue shield surrounding the wizard.
By the time the sparkles dissipated, Morilec had already formed two more bolts, one for each hand. Black waved his wand and sent a hail of red bolts at Morilec, who simply jumped upwards to dodge.
...And simply stayed there as with another wave of the wand, the ground beneath Morilec's feet turned into ice. He was using arcane bolts as a propellant to float in the air.
A small pause descended on the battlefield. Black was the one to break it, bending down and touching his wand to the floor, working the first incantation Jaune had heard him mutter this fight. Morilec didn't wait to see what he was doing, showing off supreme control of flight by ascending even further while spinning. At some point during the spin he accessed his inventory and hurled several swords at lightning fast speed.
The swords stumbled on the same blue spherical shield as the bolt before, but they visibly dented it, creating cracks. Black had finished whatever he was doing and several man-sized gargoyles formed from the stone and flew towards Morilec, who spun and prepared another salvo.
Not to be deterred by the newly created pursuers, he hurled the swords, causing Black to shield himself rather than add another type of offence to the gargoyles. Despite their frightening demeanour, the gargoyles didn't seem to be very effective. Morilec easily fended them off with only his arcane-coated fists.
But he now had no way to actually attack Black, who now walked away from the small mountain of swords that had been thrown. He hurled red bolts that seemed to home in on Morilec, whose movements had become slightly frantic meanwhile.
Suddenly, though, Jaune's possessed body tightly gripped one of the gargoyle's heads, infusing arcane bolts directly into it, destabilizing the whole thing until it exploded into a great shower of stone.
"BANG!" Morilec flew out of the dust cloud, thrown by the explosion. Black was ready for him, sending a gigantic fireball to greet him. Morilec tilted his palms upwards and shot out several bolts into the sky in quick succession, slamming himself harshly into the ground to avoid getting burnt to a crisp. The thud he made as he landed was not reassuring.
But the smirk and the extended hand thrown Black's way certainly was. Rolling to the side to avoid a red bolt, he somehow managed to cast sword return on all of the swords lying just behind Black at once. Swords flew towards Black's back at frightening speed hilt first, smashing into him and sending the wizard sprawling towards Morilec. In a reverse of the previous situation, he was readily waiting for Black with another sword pointed at his quickly approaching body.
Black disappeared with a very loud crack to completely skip past Morilec, and appeared dozens of feet behind him. His momentum had not dissipated even with the teleportation, however, and Black had to manually stop himself with some acceleration-slowing spell. Arresto something.
Before the wizard could gain any sort of reprieve, several arcane bolts struck his position, completely obliterating the blue shield and forcing Black to erect another one.
A pause ensued in which Jaune wondered why Black had been hit by the swords in the first place. He should have at least one sensing skill, right? He sensed around the battlefield frantically with the minor access to dimensional comprehension he still had.
"Well, you certainly don't fight like a sixteen-year-old." Black commented, breathing rather harshly.
Jaune meanwhile found the anomaly. The swords that had struck Black were slowly transforming behind Morilec.
"You, certainly d-" Morilec started a retort before being interrupted.
"Behind you!" Jaune shouted at his body as the swords finished their transformation into several large black dogs and pounced onto his body.
Morilec wasn't able to turn around in time and was suddenly held in place by dogs biting down on every one of his limbs. The sound of flesh tearing and growls resounded as Black smirked. "Too naïve."
The man needed Jaune alive, but seemed to be forgetting that as he charged what looked like a localized tornado of wind above his head. With a flick of his wand, the rampaging air was sent towards Morilec, who despite the situation and Jaune's screaming in his ear like a little girl, smirked once again.
The dogs biting down on him suddenly started distorting, seemingly liquefying and being absorbed into the skin of their prisoner. The process was fast, allowing Morilec to clap his hands together with a resounding "Ha!" before the wind was able to reach him.
A small black ball the size of a fingernail appeared in front of Morilec's joined hands. Jaune felt woozy from the roller-coaster of emotions he was being subjected to, but was still able to feel the tyrannical hunger from the small ball as it floated there.
Was that inventory?
With a great roar, the tornado with a diameter of a dozen feet noisily crashed into the space in front of the pitch-black ball, before compressing to the same size, if not smaller than the ball and being completely absorbed by it in less than a second.
Black stared at Morilec, horrified. Morilec grinned back, a small amount of blood leaking out of his mouth, running down his chin and falling to the floor. The splash the droplet made as it impacted was not as much heard, as it was felt.
"Thanks for that. I don't have anything in my arsenal that's big enough to decisively beat you." The grin extended further. "It was pretty dumb of you to raise a barrier that hinders any spatial travel outside of it," Morilec added, eyeballing the hexagonal barrier that surrounded the rooftop.
Black started waving his wand rapidly, muttering to himself. Morilec simply unleashed the storm back from the small black ball, along with several gallons of blood and all the sharp objects in Jaune's inventory. Ah, so that's where the dogs had disappeared to.
The tornado had in its five seconds of absence turned into a hurricane, with Morilec at the eye of the storm.
Jaune wasn't able to see through the arcane-enforced wind to see what was happening to Black and his slippery grasp of dimensional comprehension eluded him due to the sheer amount of feelings running through him. He simply floated beside Morilec as the storm raged around them, swords and purple arcane magic encompassing their position completely.
The blood that was in the hurricane shed droplets onto his body, turning his clothing and face red. Jaune idly wondered if it the blood belonged to the dogs or Black.
His body didn't have the mana reserves to feed the storm with arcane magic for any long period of time, even if with superior magic control Morilec had wrung out three times the spells Jaune was able to. Morilec had to sluggishly dodge a few flying swords as the hurricane destabilized and finally settled. Jaune felt elated as he found Black's corpse lying against the battlement, several swords sticking out of it.
"Serves the fucker right," he muttered, to which Morilec chuckled. The demon dragged himself to the broken corpse that slightly resembled a hedgehog and started looting it, getting even more blood on Jaune's hands.
He retrieved a ring from one of Black's remaining fingers and an amulet with the shape of a sun from his neck. "The barrier is dissipating, guards will be here soon," Morilec commented, causing Jaune to panic slightly and look around the scene of the murder.
Blood literally everywhere, weapons stuck in the destroyed floor, an almost unrecognisable corpse that looked like it had been thrown around in a magical hurricane and filled with swords. Which to be fair, it had been.
"Well my part of the deal is finished," Morilec said faintly, causing Jaune's heart to stutter before he found something to retort with.
"Not going to be able to uphold my part of the deal dead, and they will execute me for this. How about you get me somewhere safe first?" he suggested.
It was quite amazing that he had been able to come up with an argument at all considering the fight was still flashing through his head repeatedly. Morilec had only used Jaune's skills and while Black had been much weaker than expected, it was still quite a feat to beat the man who in hindsight probably focused more on non-combat areas of magic.
On the other hand, Morilec hadn't won because of Jaune's skills, despite his ridiculous grasp on them. He had won because, from the start of the fight to the end, he had dictated every single action taken by both sides. From the first arcane bolt to the provocation to use a large scale spell that ended the fight.
This sort of battle experience was not something that Jaune could replicate. It seemed that he had made a deal with a supremely intelligent being/demon/god/whatever Morilec was.
"Ok, I'll get you out of here," Morilec said.
"Thank yo-" Jaune started speaking, but his words got stuck in his throat as he focused again on his body. His body which, after gulping down a healing potion, had climbed onto the smooth battlements and jumped off the tower.
Jaune barely had the time to scream before he was dragged along by the chain connecting them. If he was still in possession of his body he was sure that he would have vomited blood.
You say you'll get me out of here, but you just jump off the building. Bro you're too shameless. Jaune was relieved of his need to pray for an easy passage into the afterlife by Morilec, who laughed and pulled out a broom from somewhere. He straddled it and started flying on the shabby looking thing.
Jaune wished he could lose consciousness again like the last two times he'd dealt with Morilec. Then he wouldn't have to deal with this crap.
Someone else doing the stuff Morilec did would be enlightening in many ways, especially battle tactics. In some ways it'd even be amusing. But the problem Jaune had with the demon's actions was the fact that he was completing those actions while possessing his! body.
He chose to, for now, ignore that a broom, especially such an ugly one, was capable of fligh. Jaune just sullenly floated behind Morilec as he flew above the clouds in the direction of a harbour.
"What is the symbol you want me to use? You've never actually told or shown me." Jaune sighed. Despite all things, he was still grateful for Morilec, who was acting in a way that indicated he would hold his part of the deal.
"I'll get you on a boat and engrave it onto your clothes," was the answer, "but basically it's just a triangle with a circle inside of it bisected by a line."
That was good. It wasn't anything that would come over as rude or indicative of a criminal to others. Symbols were, after all, mostly used by immoral organizations like gangs, nobles, and kingdoms. Though some of those preferred the term 'heraldry.'
If Morilec's symbol had turned out to be any variation of a mandala, the representation of the now-defunct assassin supremacy terrorist organization, Jaune would have had some problems.
"Now that you mention it, your pupils in the shared dreamscape world were also shaped like some geometrical shapes," Jaune remembered. How far did someone want to go to change his own eyes? Or was he born that way? Well, maybe not born. Summoned from the darkest pits of hell that way?
They flew for a bit more before Morilec landed a few miles outside of the actual harbour town. He pulled clothes out of Jaune's inventory and Black's ring. Huh, so the man had been in possession of a spatial ring. Expensive and something useful to study. Who knew, maybe he could replicate such a feat in the future.
As Morilec started his engraving, Jaune was transfixed by the sea. It was his first time seeing it. It was quite beautiful; he only wished he could smell it.
"Done."
Jaune turned around to see Morilec don Jaune's usual style of greaves, leather pants, chainmail and vest. He didn't see the symbol.
Morilec threw on a purple robe that covered him down to his feet and pulled up the hood that hid his eyes. The bisected triangle with a circle inside of it was on the back of the robe, and on the hood above Jaune's forehead, the symbol being placed directly at the inner eye. It also had the function of casting the upper part of his face impenetrable shadows.
"It's not really a big town. You sure they will have a ship that goes towards Vale?" Jaune asked.
He received a shrug as Morilec lifted off his feet with arcane bolts. "We'll just have to go and see now, won't we."
-/-
There was actually a ship headed for Vale, with a stop in Menagerie, and Morilec had gotten Jaune on it before relinquishing control of his body back to him.
Jaune was thankful, but still pretty happy that he finally got himself rid of the probably-devil. He had never found out what exactly Morilec had been, but a semi-friendly devil was the likeliest possibility.
As a last gift, so to say, Morilec had used his flight to get onto the ship, getting awestruck expressions from the sailors. Jaune pissed off to his cabin before he ruined the first impression.
Morilec had reminded him of their deal, not that Jaune had forgotten. Bring renown to the symbol, recommended path to take, guild. This didn't mean he shouldn't try to gain renown on a personal level. Doing that would actually make creating a guild easier.
The best way to do so was, well, to act seriously and worthy of respect. The symbol was basically covering his whole body, so renown for him would lead to renown for it. Most heroes created symbols to be identified with, this would simply be his. He summoned an arcane bolt and tried to form it into the symbol. It failed, but he had enough time. The journey would take a few months.
He noticed a slight increase of his control regardless. Jaune was completely focused on examining the spell for the next few minutes. Mana cost had lessened, more maneuverable, easier to shape, and the explosion he shot out of the small window seemed more impressive than usual.
There really was one reason why something like this could have occurred. Morilec using his body and skills had somehow increased his own grasp of these.
Dimensional comprehension had improved as well, range and quality. Pest control, rend, stealth, and shared dreamscape received no improvements, which made sense as Morilec had not used them in the fight. Inventory though, brought with itself the largest surprise. The skill had been used in a frankly ridiculous way, shedding its boundary of only being accessible from Jaune's hands, to being pushed out as an actual entity, and absorbing not objects, but wind.
And then, as a cherry on top, he had gained two levels.
Rightfully speaking Black should have been worth more than just two, especially with Jaune's low level. But the simple fact of the matter was that it wasn't Jaune who had killed the man. It had been Morilec. He'd just used Jaune's body as a conduit for the act.
The fact that he may gain experience fighting Black had honestly completely slipped his mind. He had been more excited to see how someone else used his skills. He did think that overall the improvement of his skills was worth more than the levels themselves.
Level 24. One more and he would finally get to the meat of dimensionalism, intangibility, teleportation, and so much more. Level 25 was, after all, one-fourth of the journey to level 100, and that had meaning.
He wondered what skill Morilec would have chosen to supplement either his utility or fighting strength. Jaune sighed and wondered if he would ever be able to fight like that. It was possible with training, and he would gain an even larger repertoire of spells in the near future. Hell, he already had something that Morilec didn't. He may still be a gnat in the overall comparison, but Morilec didn't seem to know how to wield a sword.
The fact that the swords had only been thrown and the rend skill not used at all had not gone unnoticed by him.
"I bet I could beat him if I got him into close range." It was unlikely, but his ego needed the boost. Even if it came from a lie and he also needed to stop thinking about the demon. Their interaction was over now. He had other things that needed his attention. Like the fact that he was getting seasick.
A bit queasy, and he was on a ship, so it probably was seasickness, something he had forgotten to take into account. The feeling was novel but not entirely unenjoyable. He wondered how bad it would feel if he didn't have so many points in vitality and that brought him to the question of where to put the two points that he had from the level up.
Well that and searching Black's inventory could be done later. The fact that it was still light out was calling him to enjoy the scenery of the sea while he was still able to see it.
I had so much fun writing that fight, I hope you guys can experience even a half of the joy that I had creating this for yourself.
chapter 26
bor902
professional illiterate
- Location
- wherever i am at the moment
Check out my new story, a Harry Potter time travel fanfic featuring our favourite adventurer/teacher/author.
Chapter 26
editor: 5th dimension
Jaune wondered how much worse his seasickness would be if he didn't have such a high vitality score. He made his way to the deck, where he watched the sailors go about their business shouting nonsensical nautical terms at each other, like "Fore," "Gaff," and "Arc of Visibility." Hey, that was his name!
He held in a small giggle and went over to the steering wheel where the captain, a rather young man by the name of Ercanbald, was shouting commands.
The ship hadn't looked overly big in the harbour, but now that he was actually on it he could admit that he was somewhat impressed by the size of the brigantine. He loitered around, not disturbing anyone and looking around the deck until the captain turned to him. "Is there anything I can do for you sir..." The twenty-something man hesitated. "Light Bringer."
Jaune looked at him blankly. Why are you talking to me man? I'm just loitering around. He had concealed his name, only letting his title be shown, which added to his momentary confusion.
Think of something smart to say Jaune. "I'm just looking around, but while I'm here I might as well inform you that I will occasionally be sending out magical attacks into the water to kill Grimm." Jaune thought for a second before adding another bit. "Maybe fish a bit. I heard sharks taste very good."
Ercanbald gave him a weird glance while scratching his sad excuse for a beard. "I didn't know that there were Grimm in these waters, at least not so close to the shore, sir."
Jaune blinked. Well that was weird, he was sensing thirteen right now, tentacle creatures that seemed to be made up of small Taiji with a skull mask covering the bundle of knots holding them together. "I sense several," he blithely commented.
The captain sank a bit further into confusion. NPCs usually didn't understand Grimm behaviour, after all. So Jaune decided to explain further. "They aren't attacking, mostly because there is not much negative emotion to latch onto this ship, and because they simply are not aware that ships are inhabited by humans." He pointed down. "From down there they only see wood. They probably think we are a washed-up log."
The captain seemed skeptical. Well that was bad; Jaune had just decided not an hour ago that he would be gathering renown, and the captain was probably starting to think he was a bit of an idiot. Words in the end didn't convince that many people. Actions though...
Jaune waved at the man to follow him, making his way to one of the guard rails. "Just because there are no dangers perceived by us, does not mean that none are present. We must stay vigilant, in mind and body, if we are to thrive." Jaune sent out an arcane bolt as he said those sophomoric words.
The bolt travelled into the sea, changed direction so it was going up again, and hooked itself into the mask of a tentacle Grimm. He pulled it upwards, creating an arc that ended on Jaune's upheld fist. He splattered his surroundings with the remains of the corpse before the entire thing dissipated.
A mask and some Lien clattered to the ground. One of the younger sailors nearby picked up the items and handed them over to Jaune before he himself had the chance to pick them up. "Here."
"Thanks." Jaune wondered if he should pursue the fact that the man had slipped one of the dropped coins into his own pocket. It would only be problematic if others had seen it as well. If he did not pursue the matter then, he would lose the respect of the other sailors and the captain.
The atmosphere filled with tension as Jaune continued to stare at the man who he'd just thanked. The facial recognition of dimensional comprehension had gone up a level, so he was able to watch the faces of some surrounding sailors morph from glee into slight apprehension. Glee that one of their own had one-upped a hero, probably. The captain was not gleeful, however. He was sweating and his heart was beating quite fast.
Jaune sighed. Seemingly everyone had noticed the thief pocket the coin. Jaune would usually not care. It was one Lien. It was literally not worth his time to pursue the matter. But people had noticed the incident. What was he supposed to do?
As they continued to stand there, the apprehension slowly turned into fear. The thief especially was unable to look away from Jaune and was starting to sweat as well. Honestly. If you weren't good at sleight of hand, why try to steal from a hero? Especially one who had just gained a new commandment to live by.
"Respect is everything," Jaune said lightly, locking eyes with the thief who now started shaking even more. "It is the basis of a society, something that we all participate in." He let his eyes glide down to the pocket containing the coin. "Is this respectful?"
The thief, appeared to be fairly young, with a very patchy moustache. He looked down, hiding his face, and didn't reply. What the hell? Just because you didn't look at a problem didn't mean it would disappear. How old was this guy?
The captain, now that he noticed conflict was unavoidable, finally stepped in. "He asked you a question!" He barked at the thief… Prometheus. Jaune had wasted enough time on the man to start referring to him by name.
"No." A pause. "Sir," Prometheus whispered, still shaking. But no matter how the man tried to conceal it, he could not hide from Jaune. Prometheus face was a rictus of hatred, he wasn't shaking with fear. He was shaking with anger, and the words were meant as an insult.
"The youth of today," Jaune commented and shook his head. He gave out an aura of unbothered authority and power on the outside, but Jaune's inner self was at the stage of biting his nails down to the root.
The youth of today? Are you fucking kidding me, that's what you came up with? Just verbally admonishing someone but leaving them unharmed and with the money they stole from you reeked of cowardliness.
Arrrghhh. Something more, something more, what could he do!
"Lien is a very special concept," Jaune started lecturing to the still-bowing Prometheus. "You gain it by investing your time into something. It is a physical representation of time and effort." He looked around, pupils glowing an electric purple. "I think everyone here agrees that life itself is time and effort. A life is simply the time you spend doing things. So Lien, in fact can be considered to be life itself, a part of your existence."
Jaune raised his hands into the air, as if revealing a divine truth. "Therefore theft can't really be considered a petty crime. The logical conclusion is that theft is attempted murder of a small part of someone's existence." The lower part of his face that was visible to others contorted itself into a grin. The upper, non-visible part was sweating.
"And the attempted murder of a hero is followed by an immediate execution of the perpetrator!" Jaune shouted out, wheezing out a laugh to appear more menacing. Fame and infamy, two sides of the same coin. Both were good.
All hatred had fled Prometheus' features. He had collapsed to his knees, trembling with a pale face. He didn't try to run; there was nowhere to run too. They were out on the sea.
Everyone was quiet, except for the soft sobbing of the would-be thief. Maybe Jaune had gone too far. He didn't want to kill anyone. A way out should be offered. The captain was the first to come to himself. Well, he was probably the captain for a reason, even if he left Jaune personally underwhelmed.
It was his fault for not stepping up that Jaune had to think fast and conclude the situation in a satisfactory manner. Something he was struggling with, but not something he could stop now that he'd started.
Jaune raised his hand, shutting him up before he started. "I'm not a cruel man." Everyone present was a bit too terrified to give him weird looks, although some of the older sailors cast doubtful glances at Prometheus' still-crying form. "I have a possibility of redemption for you, young man. While I don't like apologies, accepting labour for the coin you stole is completely acceptable." Jaune stepped forward and laid a hand on the thief's shaking shoulder. "Is that fine with you?" he asked gently.
Prometheus broke down crying. "Anyth-ing, I'll do anything." Jaune stepped back to avoid getting his robes cried on and smiled. Even if Prometheus wasn't looking up to see it. Jaune had harboured the fear that the sailors would simply gank him. He was the outsider, after all. But looking around and seeing the faces surrounding him, he realized that that would never happen. They looked scared shitless.
"Now we should probably determine exactly how much time you owe me," Jaune continued as Prometheus' sobbing stopped completely. "The problem you are faced with young man, is that you don't only have to pay back the one coin you stole, but also the time I wasted resolving this situation." He thumped his chest. "Now as you have noticed, I am of the hero caste. I am also good at what I do."
Another shark-like smile. It didn't feel quite right, so Jaune decided to practice it in the mirror later. "Extermination. In the ten minutes I spent resolving this issue, I could have killed approximately two hundred and thirty Grimm, each valued at maybe five or so Lien." And there it was. The hope vanished from the thief's eyes, replaced with incredulity and then despair in quick succession.
Sailors around him gasped as they plodded through mental hundred and thirty times five equalled about twelve hundred Lien. That was more money than most of them made in a month.
This was kind of fun, now that he'd managed to stumble into controlling the situation. "Now again, I'm not a cruel man," Jaune said before anyone could call him out on his bullshit. "Instead of calculating the potential maximum of what I could have earned in those ten minutes, I'll instead give you an estimate on how much I could have actually earned considering my location." He stomped on the ground. "As you know, we are on a ship. There aren't two hundred and thirty Grimm in the vicinity of course, but there still are some." Jaune pretended to get a bit miffed. "Some that I missed. We sailed past them due to the fact that I was dealing with you."
"You said thirteen," the captain whispered from behind his right shoulder.
"Yes. One of them I killed, creating this little issue. Twelve left. Three of whom are still in range so they can't be counted against you. That means I could have killed nine of them, which amounts to forty-five Lien." Some of the sailors goggled at him as he calculated at what to them seemed a fast pace. "Captain, how much does our murderer here earn in an hour, an estimate please?"
Ercanbald crossed his eyes, steam rising from his ears. Sailors weren't paid per hour, they were paid before going on land, a percentage of what the ship in total earned. But Aschirngthvarbuddhstak was understandably unwilling to argue that fact with Jaune and was thus calculating it in his head.
"I would say... five per hour sir."
Jaune clapped his hands and glanced at the relieved thief. "See, it's that simple. You'll just pay me off by working eight hours. Now, is there anything you're particularly good at?" Jaune asked, having no idea what the hell the man could actually do that would help him.
Prometheus licked his lips and stammered, "W-Woodworking, uh, ropemaking..." The man scratched his head trying to come up with something more.
Jaune interrupted his thought process. "Say no more, woodworking it is." He pulled out several pieces of wood from his inventory, but flourished his newly acquired spacial storage ring so as to make it seem like it came out of there instead. "You will work eight hours carving out this symbol." He pointed to the symbol drawn on his hood. "The size should be appropriate for necklaces or bracelets. Maybe one big one as a room decoration."
A nod.
Jaune had spent enough time on this, so with those last instructions he departed amidst wide-eyed gazes of what must have been awe at his eloquence and graciousness. It felt good to be respected.
-/-
Back in his cabin Jaune threw himself onto the berth. "Why is this bed so hard," he muttered while marvelling at his quick-thinking ability to get out of crap like that.
It had been harder to think up ways to steer the situation than it should have been. Normally he would have just ignored it, uncaring about the fact that the NPCs might lose respect for him. But the appearance he had to cultivate now was a different animal entirely. Respect, fame, infamy. Behaviour and reactions to things around him would have to be changed to fit the mould of someone trying to gain all these things.
Jaune had considered the deal he made with Morilec quite one-sided towards Jaune. He gained his life, basically, and Morilec received another person spreading the renown of his symbol. One amongst many, most likely.
But the way he had just forced himself to act made him reconsider that belief of unfairness towards the demon. He would have to change how he reacted to things and what he valued. Wasn't that basically changing who he was?
Morilec had simply invested one day of his life. Jaune would have to change his entirely and invest the rest of his.
A deal's a deal. It was time to construct a persona.
-/-
The premise for his future behaviour, Jaune decided, would have to be an act of mysterious ambiguity. He wasn't powerful, therefore even going all out, he wouldn't be able to impress anyone. But if he acted ambiguously, keeping his thoughts and capabilities hidden to a small extent, people would most likely overestimate what he was actually keeping from them. It was common sense. Better to overestimate someone than to do the opposite.
The rest of his actions would have to be situational, fitted to every person and group he interacted with individually. Kindness in front of some. Cruelty in front of others. Even so, he wasn't a cruel person and would try to avoid it if he could.
Now that he had a very vague idea of how he was going to try to act in future situations, Jaune constructed and ran himself through several internal scenarios, imaginary scenes where he interacted with others in all manner of situations, all aimed at gaining the greatest amount of renown possible of course.
The memory of how he'd thought to himself that he should practice his threatening smile in a mirror came to him and thus Jaune pulled out the aforementioned object.
Then he went through more mental simulations, all the while pulling the appropriate faces. His facial muscles were underdeveloped in comparison to the rest of his body. Which was only natural, so he got sore quickly.
He was not willing to give up after only a few hours, so Jaune pulled out one of his many empty journals and titled a section of it Linguistics. Being able to articulate properly was helpful in the pursuit of renown.
Jaune wondered why he was so motivated to chase down the goal of someone else. While he was thankful to Morilec, he rightfully shouldn't be this eager to work on his promise.
Then he remembered that every human wanted respect from others. It made life easier, more enjoyable, and the body released some internal composite that was supposed to make you feel good.
Now Jaune wasn't sure what the basis of that was, but the researcher who had written that book had been highly acclaimed. Hadn't his name been Jain? Strange coincidence.
Back on topic, by fulfilling his obligation of getting renown Jaune was helping himself as well.
Jaune would say that making that deal had actually been good for him. Otherwise he probably wouldn't have come to the realization that he wanted to be respected for some time. Wonderings of what intangible things he actually wanted and how to achieve those things didn't really come up often in his inner monologues.
Enough of that. No matter how enthused he was thinking up ways to gain renown, he still got sick of it after a while.
It was night out and the ship was quiet. The only sound Jaune heard were the waves crashing against the hull. He would normally be asleep by now, but he had a few more things to do first.
Like checking out his new space ring and what was inside it. Jaune pulled the thing out of a pocket and prodded at it, magically and with a finger. He had been leery of putting what was basically an inventory into his inventory; it sounded like a potentially bad idea. The implosion-of-reality-around-him kind of bad.
Examining the ring physically revealed nothing. Dimensional comprehension however had quite a few bits of interesting information to deliver. The ring itself wasn't magical in the strictest term. It was simply a physical object that was used to anchor the dimension of the ring's inventory to the world. The dimensional space was a balloon that would fly away if it wasn't bound by rope to the ground that was the ring. Or rather, more like a balloon that would dissolve.
Jaune patted himself on the back for the great metaphor.
Since it was ring Jaune assumed that he would have to wear it to gain access to the thing. Which he only did because Morilec had used it in the past, proving that it was harmless. And even if it hadn't been, it probably was now after passing through the demon's hands. Jaune would need to be alive to conclude his side of the bargain, and giving him something deadly was not conducive to that. Not many people respect corpses, even less the symbol on a corpse.
Jaune put on the ring and marvelled as the seemingly magicless thing fitted itself exactly to the proportions of his right ring finger.
No magic to be felt, just like he hadn't been able to feel the insect crawling on the door of his cell. Both of those phenomena were tied directly to the now-deceased Black, which lessened his worry. Dimensional comprehension had weaknesses, but the man who had made him aware of these was now dead.
Accessing the dimensional space took some time, but was eventually solved by simply shoving mana in the form of a key at the link between ring and space. A slight mental prod assailed him from the direction of the ring and he lowered his meagre mental defences to let his mind be filled by...
An entire library, one that was at least a fourth as big as Brorusalem's. Thousands of books.
Holy shit. Jaune's mind flew over the titles of the books. A few written in languages he didn't know, others had nonsensical titles that he couldn't make heads or tails of. But most of them, most of them were books about magic. And at least a tenth of all of those books on magic detailed his branch of it. Dimensionalism and its offshoots.
"There must be at least a hundred of them," Jaune gasped to himself. It made sense. Black had been feverishly interested in a portal to another world, and something like that was best achieved by dimensional magic.
Jaune lightly slapped himself to awaken from his stupor. Just because the books were there didn't mean they were worth the paper they were written on. Though it did beg the question of why Black would fill up space with useless things. Regardless, the space ring had much more than just books. Brooms, magical ones, flying ones, like the one Morilec had flown. Wands, what must have been hundreds of them. Just as shabbily made as the brooms, but still evoking the feeling of a deep magic having been ground into its wood.
Jaune salivated when he came to the small pile of artefacts. And they were artefacts, clearly. No normal items could be so exquisite and enchanting to look at. It would make sense for Black to have a few of those. The man had clearly been making his own in the form of flying brooms and wands. He had definitely studied artefacts to help him with understanding how they worked and how to create them.
What really caught his eye, however was the Helmet. Capitalization intended. A closed burgonet helmet. A simple design, the only thing distinguishing it from others was the serrated teeth etched onto its mouth piece and its colour pallet.
It was beautiful because of its simplicity, not despite it. It was a flat gray, except for the serrated teeth, which were a glowing neon green.
Jaune chuckled and then grew melancholy. With this and the vambraces he'd spotted somewhere else in the pile, he could become a knight. Well, look like one at least. Not a full-plated one of course, but the style of a knight was often distinguished by the fact that they wore a helmet, usually a closed one.
Wasn't that something he'd wished for in his youth? To become a knight, or at least gather enough equipment to act like one? Jaune retrieved the beautiful helmet and the scaled steel vambraces.
He started putting on and taking off the newly acquired artefacts to determine what effect they had. The helmet had a glow-in-the-dark effect stemming from its toothy design. It also regulated the temperature within itself to fit the wearer's desires. Hilariously non-combat oriented, but useful in other ways. Ironic that he would find something to help him with the sweltering heat of Vacuo just as he was departing from it.
The vambraces held a more combat-ready effect. It slowly shaved away at the durability of weapons that struck them. Fitting, given the scale design. Not really something that synergized well with his fighting style, since Jaune seldom blocked or parried attacks, but it was a superior quality set made of metal that he could wear.
No more leather, just good reliable steel, even if it was heavier. The positives greatly outweighed the fact that he would be losing some of his speed. Jaune aligned the armour parts on his bed in order that one would wear them and started putting them on.
Greaves, chainmail, vambraces, and helmet. The only thing really missing were some shoulder pads and something to guard the thighs.
He pulled out a mirror from the space ring. Jaune set the thing down and looked at himself, quickly discovering Morilec's mark on every singe scale of the vambraces and on the temples of the helmet. Weird, how come he hadn't noticed before?
Most likely a spell that engraved the mark on everything once it was taken out of the space ring. Unimportant. Jaune looked at himself.
He looked like a knight.
Didn't he need a guise for Beacon that would make people suspect there was greater strength hiding beneath the surface? A knight he would be then, one who tried to hide the fact he was actually a mage, but was bad at doing so. A shabby knight, Jaune corrected himself.
"You carry yourself well, but clothes make the man and yours sure do suck. Maybe try to wear something that actually fits together next time, hmmm?"
The mirror apparently agreed.
The first half, scene with Prometheus the thief feels a bit clunky, maybe it's due to the fact that at the moment of writing this I've read and edited it over five times. I feel like it isn't bad that it feels clunky though. It matches well with Jaune's inexperience in such situations, he has been travelling mostly alone after all. His social skills are not top notch, and this is the first time he's had to seek a direct confrontation with the goal of garnering respect.
I had fun writing that scene, did the 1800 words in two days.
Chapter 26
editor: 5th dimension
Jaune wondered how much worse his seasickness would be if he didn't have such a high vitality score. He made his way to the deck, where he watched the sailors go about their business shouting nonsensical nautical terms at each other, like "Fore," "Gaff," and "Arc of Visibility." Hey, that was his name!
He held in a small giggle and went over to the steering wheel where the captain, a rather young man by the name of Ercanbald, was shouting commands.
The ship hadn't looked overly big in the harbour, but now that he was actually on it he could admit that he was somewhat impressed by the size of the brigantine. He loitered around, not disturbing anyone and looking around the deck until the captain turned to him. "Is there anything I can do for you sir..." The twenty-something man hesitated. "Light Bringer."
Jaune looked at him blankly. Why are you talking to me man? I'm just loitering around. He had concealed his name, only letting his title be shown, which added to his momentary confusion.
Think of something smart to say Jaune. "I'm just looking around, but while I'm here I might as well inform you that I will occasionally be sending out magical attacks into the water to kill Grimm." Jaune thought for a second before adding another bit. "Maybe fish a bit. I heard sharks taste very good."
Ercanbald gave him a weird glance while scratching his sad excuse for a beard. "I didn't know that there were Grimm in these waters, at least not so close to the shore, sir."
Jaune blinked. Well that was weird, he was sensing thirteen right now, tentacle creatures that seemed to be made up of small Taiji with a skull mask covering the bundle of knots holding them together. "I sense several," he blithely commented.
The captain sank a bit further into confusion. NPCs usually didn't understand Grimm behaviour, after all. So Jaune decided to explain further. "They aren't attacking, mostly because there is not much negative emotion to latch onto this ship, and because they simply are not aware that ships are inhabited by humans." He pointed down. "From down there they only see wood. They probably think we are a washed-up log."
The captain seemed skeptical. Well that was bad; Jaune had just decided not an hour ago that he would be gathering renown, and the captain was probably starting to think he was a bit of an idiot. Words in the end didn't convince that many people. Actions though...
Jaune waved at the man to follow him, making his way to one of the guard rails. "Just because there are no dangers perceived by us, does not mean that none are present. We must stay vigilant, in mind and body, if we are to thrive." Jaune sent out an arcane bolt as he said those sophomoric words.
The bolt travelled into the sea, changed direction so it was going up again, and hooked itself into the mask of a tentacle Grimm. He pulled it upwards, creating an arc that ended on Jaune's upheld fist. He splattered his surroundings with the remains of the corpse before the entire thing dissipated.
A mask and some Lien clattered to the ground. One of the younger sailors nearby picked up the items and handed them over to Jaune before he himself had the chance to pick them up. "Here."
"Thanks." Jaune wondered if he should pursue the fact that the man had slipped one of the dropped coins into his own pocket. It would only be problematic if others had seen it as well. If he did not pursue the matter then, he would lose the respect of the other sailors and the captain.
The atmosphere filled with tension as Jaune continued to stare at the man who he'd just thanked. The facial recognition of dimensional comprehension had gone up a level, so he was able to watch the faces of some surrounding sailors morph from glee into slight apprehension. Glee that one of their own had one-upped a hero, probably. The captain was not gleeful, however. He was sweating and his heart was beating quite fast.
Jaune sighed. Seemingly everyone had noticed the thief pocket the coin. Jaune would usually not care. It was one Lien. It was literally not worth his time to pursue the matter. But people had noticed the incident. What was he supposed to do?
As they continued to stand there, the apprehension slowly turned into fear. The thief especially was unable to look away from Jaune and was starting to sweat as well. Honestly. If you weren't good at sleight of hand, why try to steal from a hero? Especially one who had just gained a new commandment to live by.
"Respect is everything," Jaune said lightly, locking eyes with the thief who now started shaking even more. "It is the basis of a society, something that we all participate in." He let his eyes glide down to the pocket containing the coin. "Is this respectful?"
The thief, appeared to be fairly young, with a very patchy moustache. He looked down, hiding his face, and didn't reply. What the hell? Just because you didn't look at a problem didn't mean it would disappear. How old was this guy?
The captain, now that he noticed conflict was unavoidable, finally stepped in. "He asked you a question!" He barked at the thief… Prometheus. Jaune had wasted enough time on the man to start referring to him by name.
"No." A pause. "Sir," Prometheus whispered, still shaking. But no matter how the man tried to conceal it, he could not hide from Jaune. Prometheus face was a rictus of hatred, he wasn't shaking with fear. He was shaking with anger, and the words were meant as an insult.
"The youth of today," Jaune commented and shook his head. He gave out an aura of unbothered authority and power on the outside, but Jaune's inner self was at the stage of biting his nails down to the root.
The youth of today? Are you fucking kidding me, that's what you came up with? Just verbally admonishing someone but leaving them unharmed and with the money they stole from you reeked of cowardliness.
Arrrghhh. Something more, something more, what could he do!
"Lien is a very special concept," Jaune started lecturing to the still-bowing Prometheus. "You gain it by investing your time into something. It is a physical representation of time and effort." He looked around, pupils glowing an electric purple. "I think everyone here agrees that life itself is time and effort. A life is simply the time you spend doing things. So Lien, in fact can be considered to be life itself, a part of your existence."
Jaune raised his hands into the air, as if revealing a divine truth. "Therefore theft can't really be considered a petty crime. The logical conclusion is that theft is attempted murder of a small part of someone's existence." The lower part of his face that was visible to others contorted itself into a grin. The upper, non-visible part was sweating.
"And the attempted murder of a hero is followed by an immediate execution of the perpetrator!" Jaune shouted out, wheezing out a laugh to appear more menacing. Fame and infamy, two sides of the same coin. Both were good.
All hatred had fled Prometheus' features. He had collapsed to his knees, trembling with a pale face. He didn't try to run; there was nowhere to run too. They were out on the sea.
Everyone was quiet, except for the soft sobbing of the would-be thief. Maybe Jaune had gone too far. He didn't want to kill anyone. A way out should be offered. The captain was the first to come to himself. Well, he was probably the captain for a reason, even if he left Jaune personally underwhelmed.
It was his fault for not stepping up that Jaune had to think fast and conclude the situation in a satisfactory manner. Something he was struggling with, but not something he could stop now that he'd started.
Jaune raised his hand, shutting him up before he started. "I'm not a cruel man." Everyone present was a bit too terrified to give him weird looks, although some of the older sailors cast doubtful glances at Prometheus' still-crying form. "I have a possibility of redemption for you, young man. While I don't like apologies, accepting labour for the coin you stole is completely acceptable." Jaune stepped forward and laid a hand on the thief's shaking shoulder. "Is that fine with you?" he asked gently.
Prometheus broke down crying. "Anyth-ing, I'll do anything." Jaune stepped back to avoid getting his robes cried on and smiled. Even if Prometheus wasn't looking up to see it. Jaune had harboured the fear that the sailors would simply gank him. He was the outsider, after all. But looking around and seeing the faces surrounding him, he realized that that would never happen. They looked scared shitless.
"Now we should probably determine exactly how much time you owe me," Jaune continued as Prometheus' sobbing stopped completely. "The problem you are faced with young man, is that you don't only have to pay back the one coin you stole, but also the time I wasted resolving this situation." He thumped his chest. "Now as you have noticed, I am of the hero caste. I am also good at what I do."
Another shark-like smile. It didn't feel quite right, so Jaune decided to practice it in the mirror later. "Extermination. In the ten minutes I spent resolving this issue, I could have killed approximately two hundred and thirty Grimm, each valued at maybe five or so Lien." And there it was. The hope vanished from the thief's eyes, replaced with incredulity and then despair in quick succession.
Sailors around him gasped as they plodded through mental hundred and thirty times five equalled about twelve hundred Lien. That was more money than most of them made in a month.
This was kind of fun, now that he'd managed to stumble into controlling the situation. "Now again, I'm not a cruel man," Jaune said before anyone could call him out on his bullshit. "Instead of calculating the potential maximum of what I could have earned in those ten minutes, I'll instead give you an estimate on how much I could have actually earned considering my location." He stomped on the ground. "As you know, we are on a ship. There aren't two hundred and thirty Grimm in the vicinity of course, but there still are some." Jaune pretended to get a bit miffed. "Some that I missed. We sailed past them due to the fact that I was dealing with you."
"You said thirteen," the captain whispered from behind his right shoulder.
"Yes. One of them I killed, creating this little issue. Twelve left. Three of whom are still in range so they can't be counted against you. That means I could have killed nine of them, which amounts to forty-five Lien." Some of the sailors goggled at him as he calculated at what to them seemed a fast pace. "Captain, how much does our murderer here earn in an hour, an estimate please?"
Ercanbald crossed his eyes, steam rising from his ears. Sailors weren't paid per hour, they were paid before going on land, a percentage of what the ship in total earned. But Aschirngthvarbuddhstak was understandably unwilling to argue that fact with Jaune and was thus calculating it in his head.
"I would say... five per hour sir."
Jaune clapped his hands and glanced at the relieved thief. "See, it's that simple. You'll just pay me off by working eight hours. Now, is there anything you're particularly good at?" Jaune asked, having no idea what the hell the man could actually do that would help him.
Prometheus licked his lips and stammered, "W-Woodworking, uh, ropemaking..." The man scratched his head trying to come up with something more.
Jaune interrupted his thought process. "Say no more, woodworking it is." He pulled out several pieces of wood from his inventory, but flourished his newly acquired spacial storage ring so as to make it seem like it came out of there instead. "You will work eight hours carving out this symbol." He pointed to the symbol drawn on his hood. "The size should be appropriate for necklaces or bracelets. Maybe one big one as a room decoration."
A nod.
Jaune had spent enough time on this, so with those last instructions he departed amidst wide-eyed gazes of what must have been awe at his eloquence and graciousness. It felt good to be respected.
-/-
Back in his cabin Jaune threw himself onto the berth. "Why is this bed so hard," he muttered while marvelling at his quick-thinking ability to get out of crap like that.
It had been harder to think up ways to steer the situation than it should have been. Normally he would have just ignored it, uncaring about the fact that the NPCs might lose respect for him. But the appearance he had to cultivate now was a different animal entirely. Respect, fame, infamy. Behaviour and reactions to things around him would have to be changed to fit the mould of someone trying to gain all these things.
Jaune had considered the deal he made with Morilec quite one-sided towards Jaune. He gained his life, basically, and Morilec received another person spreading the renown of his symbol. One amongst many, most likely.
But the way he had just forced himself to act made him reconsider that belief of unfairness towards the demon. He would have to change how he reacted to things and what he valued. Wasn't that basically changing who he was?
Morilec had simply invested one day of his life. Jaune would have to change his entirely and invest the rest of his.
A deal's a deal. It was time to construct a persona.
-/-
The premise for his future behaviour, Jaune decided, would have to be an act of mysterious ambiguity. He wasn't powerful, therefore even going all out, he wouldn't be able to impress anyone. But if he acted ambiguously, keeping his thoughts and capabilities hidden to a small extent, people would most likely overestimate what he was actually keeping from them. It was common sense. Better to overestimate someone than to do the opposite.
The rest of his actions would have to be situational, fitted to every person and group he interacted with individually. Kindness in front of some. Cruelty in front of others. Even so, he wasn't a cruel person and would try to avoid it if he could.
Now that he had a very vague idea of how he was going to try to act in future situations, Jaune constructed and ran himself through several internal scenarios, imaginary scenes where he interacted with others in all manner of situations, all aimed at gaining the greatest amount of renown possible of course.
The memory of how he'd thought to himself that he should practice his threatening smile in a mirror came to him and thus Jaune pulled out the aforementioned object.
Then he went through more mental simulations, all the while pulling the appropriate faces. His facial muscles were underdeveloped in comparison to the rest of his body. Which was only natural, so he got sore quickly.
He was not willing to give up after only a few hours, so Jaune pulled out one of his many empty journals and titled a section of it Linguistics. Being able to articulate properly was helpful in the pursuit of renown.
Jaune wondered why he was so motivated to chase down the goal of someone else. While he was thankful to Morilec, he rightfully shouldn't be this eager to work on his promise.
Then he remembered that every human wanted respect from others. It made life easier, more enjoyable, and the body released some internal composite that was supposed to make you feel good.
Now Jaune wasn't sure what the basis of that was, but the researcher who had written that book had been highly acclaimed. Hadn't his name been Jain? Strange coincidence.
Back on topic, by fulfilling his obligation of getting renown Jaune was helping himself as well.
Jaune would say that making that deal had actually been good for him. Otherwise he probably wouldn't have come to the realization that he wanted to be respected for some time. Wonderings of what intangible things he actually wanted and how to achieve those things didn't really come up often in his inner monologues.
Enough of that. No matter how enthused he was thinking up ways to gain renown, he still got sick of it after a while.
It was night out and the ship was quiet. The only sound Jaune heard were the waves crashing against the hull. He would normally be asleep by now, but he had a few more things to do first.
Like checking out his new space ring and what was inside it. Jaune pulled the thing out of a pocket and prodded at it, magically and with a finger. He had been leery of putting what was basically an inventory into his inventory; it sounded like a potentially bad idea. The implosion-of-reality-around-him kind of bad.
Examining the ring physically revealed nothing. Dimensional comprehension however had quite a few bits of interesting information to deliver. The ring itself wasn't magical in the strictest term. It was simply a physical object that was used to anchor the dimension of the ring's inventory to the world. The dimensional space was a balloon that would fly away if it wasn't bound by rope to the ground that was the ring. Or rather, more like a balloon that would dissolve.
Jaune patted himself on the back for the great metaphor.
Since it was ring Jaune assumed that he would have to wear it to gain access to the thing. Which he only did because Morilec had used it in the past, proving that it was harmless. And even if it hadn't been, it probably was now after passing through the demon's hands. Jaune would need to be alive to conclude his side of the bargain, and giving him something deadly was not conducive to that. Not many people respect corpses, even less the symbol on a corpse.
Jaune put on the ring and marvelled as the seemingly magicless thing fitted itself exactly to the proportions of his right ring finger.
No magic to be felt, just like he hadn't been able to feel the insect crawling on the door of his cell. Both of those phenomena were tied directly to the now-deceased Black, which lessened his worry. Dimensional comprehension had weaknesses, but the man who had made him aware of these was now dead.
Accessing the dimensional space took some time, but was eventually solved by simply shoving mana in the form of a key at the link between ring and space. A slight mental prod assailed him from the direction of the ring and he lowered his meagre mental defences to let his mind be filled by...
An entire library, one that was at least a fourth as big as Brorusalem's. Thousands of books.
Holy shit. Jaune's mind flew over the titles of the books. A few written in languages he didn't know, others had nonsensical titles that he couldn't make heads or tails of. But most of them, most of them were books about magic. And at least a tenth of all of those books on magic detailed his branch of it. Dimensionalism and its offshoots.
"There must be at least a hundred of them," Jaune gasped to himself. It made sense. Black had been feverishly interested in a portal to another world, and something like that was best achieved by dimensional magic.
Jaune lightly slapped himself to awaken from his stupor. Just because the books were there didn't mean they were worth the paper they were written on. Though it did beg the question of why Black would fill up space with useless things. Regardless, the space ring had much more than just books. Brooms, magical ones, flying ones, like the one Morilec had flown. Wands, what must have been hundreds of them. Just as shabbily made as the brooms, but still evoking the feeling of a deep magic having been ground into its wood.
Jaune salivated when he came to the small pile of artefacts. And they were artefacts, clearly. No normal items could be so exquisite and enchanting to look at. It would make sense for Black to have a few of those. The man had clearly been making his own in the form of flying brooms and wands. He had definitely studied artefacts to help him with understanding how they worked and how to create them.
What really caught his eye, however was the Helmet. Capitalization intended. A closed burgonet helmet. A simple design, the only thing distinguishing it from others was the serrated teeth etched onto its mouth piece and its colour pallet.
It was beautiful because of its simplicity, not despite it. It was a flat gray, except for the serrated teeth, which were a glowing neon green.
Jaune chuckled and then grew melancholy. With this and the vambraces he'd spotted somewhere else in the pile, he could become a knight. Well, look like one at least. Not a full-plated one of course, but the style of a knight was often distinguished by the fact that they wore a helmet, usually a closed one.
Wasn't that something he'd wished for in his youth? To become a knight, or at least gather enough equipment to act like one? Jaune retrieved the beautiful helmet and the scaled steel vambraces.
He started putting on and taking off the newly acquired artefacts to determine what effect they had. The helmet had a glow-in-the-dark effect stemming from its toothy design. It also regulated the temperature within itself to fit the wearer's desires. Hilariously non-combat oriented, but useful in other ways. Ironic that he would find something to help him with the sweltering heat of Vacuo just as he was departing from it.
The vambraces held a more combat-ready effect. It slowly shaved away at the durability of weapons that struck them. Fitting, given the scale design. Not really something that synergized well with his fighting style, since Jaune seldom blocked or parried attacks, but it was a superior quality set made of metal that he could wear.
No more leather, just good reliable steel, even if it was heavier. The positives greatly outweighed the fact that he would be losing some of his speed. Jaune aligned the armour parts on his bed in order that one would wear them and started putting them on.
Greaves, chainmail, vambraces, and helmet. The only thing really missing were some shoulder pads and something to guard the thighs.
He pulled out a mirror from the space ring. Jaune set the thing down and looked at himself, quickly discovering Morilec's mark on every singe scale of the vambraces and on the temples of the helmet. Weird, how come he hadn't noticed before?
Most likely a spell that engraved the mark on everything once it was taken out of the space ring. Unimportant. Jaune looked at himself.
He looked like a knight.
Didn't he need a guise for Beacon that would make people suspect there was greater strength hiding beneath the surface? A knight he would be then, one who tried to hide the fact he was actually a mage, but was bad at doing so. A shabby knight, Jaune corrected himself.
"You carry yourself well, but clothes make the man and yours sure do suck. Maybe try to wear something that actually fits together next time, hmmm?"
The mirror apparently agreed.
The first half, scene with Prometheus the thief feels a bit clunky, maybe it's due to the fact that at the moment of writing this I've read and edited it over five times. I feel like it isn't bad that it feels clunky though. It matches well with Jaune's inexperience in such situations, he has been travelling mostly alone after all. His social skills are not top notch, and this is the first time he's had to seek a direct confrontation with the goal of garnering respect.
I had fun writing that scene, did the 1800 words in two days.
chapter 27
bor902
professional illiterate
- Location
- wherever i am at the moment
Chapter 27
Edited by: 5th dimension
Warning; This will get bloody
Apart from the eventful first day on the ship, Jaune concluded that sea travel was in truth quite boring. He only stepped out occasionally, to kill all the Grimm in vicinity. The sea had long lost its lustre. In the end, it truly was simply an unfamiliar, endless expanse of blue, its saltiness sometimes blown harshly into his face by a passing gale.
So he was understandably quite glad when the land of Menagerie came into sight. They'd stopped in several docks along the coast of Vacuo and southern Vale, but those had been brief respites.
Their docking in Kuo Kuana would be for much longer, picking up more trading goods and maybe a passenger or two before heading to Vale. It would be a reprieve from his discussions about navigation with the captain and the seemingly endless amount of time he spent in his room, either reading or doing callisthenics.
His happiness at walking on actual earth for the first time in weeks almost made him forget what Menagerie was. Almost.
Stealth classes were, after all, the bane of all mages. And Menagerie was nothing but filled with them. Half the people he walked by on the shabbily-cobbled street weren't even civilians, but dark figures with their hoods drawn up, so as to hide their classes.
Did it really matter if your class was hidden if the mere fact you were hiding revealed what it was?
Jaune paused, considering his own hidden class. Someone ran into him from behind, the grubby thug opening his yap to say something but quailing away and moving on at Jaune's violet-green burning eyes.
Neat trick, that.
Well, probably everyone hid their class here. But there was still a definite overrepresentation of stealth classes in the heroes present. You could tell by their equipment. Not many warriors bothered dressing in leather armour and carrying knives.
Jaune moved on. The peddlers on Main Street didn't really interest him; they were mostly selling food. It was the most important resource after water, but it wasn't the type of food Jaune was interested in. Dried up turnips (the purple variant) and some sickly potatoes…
Jaune preferred more high-quality food, so when he spotted the first off-branching alley that appeared to cater to more well-off customers, he ducked in to explore a bit.
He did not fail to notice the three shadows that followed him from Main Street, that were now inconspicuously browsing wares that they probably couldn't even afford to look at.
Dimensional comprehension let him see into every shop, making sure it was not an ambush point, and being aware of their presence meant he could simply go back into Main Street and avoid any alleyways on his way back to the ship.
He kept perusing wares, buying some delicacies and picking up empty journals. Summarizing the important parts of Black's books had demolished his supply.
Jaune wasn't in any danger, but that didn't mean others knew that. A girl approached him as he was contemplating if he should buy caviar at a fish store. (The owner was a mage, so all the fish were sprawled out on blankets of ice. Genius idea.) She wore the usual getup of an assassin's: leather, cloak, and daggers. Her hood concealed her descriptors, but could not do the same for her faunus heritage.
"You're being followed," she whispered to him, standing next to him and gazing longingly at a tuna fish.
"I know right? They're not very good it," was Jaune's reply. The girl didn't have enough Lien in her pouch for any of the stuff in this district, so what she was doing here?
Jaune purchased the tuna she had been gazing at, received it packed in some nice brown paper, and unceremoniously handed it to his would-be rescuer. Who received it stiffly, almost flinching away at the unexpected gesture.
She really took her faunus heritage too seriously. Just because you had cat ears didn't mean you should attempt to emulate the animal's behaviour.
"Thanks for caring, I-" can take care of it, was what he was about to say, but he stopped mid-sentence when he noticed someone he knew, talking with his would-be followers.
Prometheus had done good work on the carvings. Jaune was now a proud owner of four pendants bearing the mark of death. Death was what he'd been told the symbol should be referred to as. An innocuous little piece of paper that had been stuck in one of his journals had informed him of this.
He also has one fairly big, but crude carving of the thing. What he was trying to say was that he'd forgiven the thief, but apparently the thief had not forgiven him.
After some more words, Prometheus and what was probably his followers' leader parted ways. The most likely possibility was that Prometheus was a little snitch who informed this band of miscreants on high value targets that travelled to Kuo Kuana, and then worked together with them to lure them into places where they were then robbed. It was not certain, but it would be fairly easy to prove his hypothesis.
Someone lightly shook his shoulder, the girl. "Are you alright?" she asked gently.
The three followers were all young, and most likely city-dwellers. Which meant weak, but having backup would be nice...
Jaune waved her off. "Just observing my would-be followers. I've decided to spring their trap." She frowned. "How much Lien to acquire your backup in case something goes wrong?"
Her friendly demeanour disappeared at the insinuation that she was purchasable. Bad phrasing on his part. "I'm not for sale. I did my part in warning you and do not feel obligated to help when you decide to leap into trouble on your accord."
Jaune's second mistake was probably pulling out a filled moneybag and shaking it in front of her face, making the coins jingle their own little tune. "Thousand Lien with your name on it."
She left after that. Taking the tuna he'd bought as thanks with her. Smart one, she didn't just dump the gift because she now disliked him. Jaune could admire the practicality over emotion in that simple gesture. Though she could have earned another thousand by not being offended. But there were lines people did not want to cross. He respected that.
He didn't need her though. He was enough for three scamps with underdeveloped muscles and low-quality gear. Dimensional comprehension was very useful in scouting out the strength of an enemy before engagement. He had really underestimated its ability to let him pick his fights.
Jaune made his way back on the Main Street and ambled towards where Prometheus was. Two alleys away from the docks, namely, along with another little rogue. That would make four. Five if the sailor also participated in the fight.
After a bit more walking and halting to look at merchandise (he had to make it look natural after all, or they might call the operation off), he reached the point where he could see Prometheus as he stood, very unconvincingly at the entrance to their chosen alley. The sailor waved at him, also seeing him, and was dragged back into the darkness of the side street by an arm around his neck the second after that.
Nobody around Main Street seemed to care enough to even gasp at the occasion, probably used to it. The three followers were still there, closer now, he'd also gained one following observer on the rooftops. Jaune ran into the side street, faster than anybody had expected a mage to run apparently, since his followers paused in surprise before frantically running after him.
The bait was quick. They'd managed to take one turn before he caught up to them, taking their fight out of sight of Main Street.
The highly stereotypical thug held a dagger to Prometheus' throat while using him as a shield. "Stop or your friend gets it." He looked wary. Good.
Jaune didn't stop, shooting a few bursts of arcana behind him to accelerate even further, and while the two were in the process of stumbling back, he gathered a rend around both his arms.
Just before he would have collided with them, Jaune grinded to a halt by pushing his greaves into the stones under his feet, transferring all his momentum through his body in a whip-like motion to his hands, which snaked forward through Prometheus's hastily erected guard.
The dimensional cutting spell was best used in tandem with a sharp weapon. Here, it wasn't necessary. One of Jaune's hands sheared through the sailor's solar plexus, the other through his stomach. Both of them continued onwards into the thug behind, assisted by arcane bolts firing out of Jaune's elbows. But his arms weren't long enough to stab the thug all the way through.
Arcane bolt.
Twin explosions caused the already dirty wall behind the thug to be marred even further, this time splattered in much more visceral liquids than just vomit.
Ping. A notification cheerfully informed Jaune that he had risen to level twenty-five.
The two corpses on his arms were too heavy. Prometheus coughed a glob of blood into Jaune's hood as a last unconscious act of spite, before he, along with the thug, were dislodged with a sickening 'schlop.' Like the sound of a vacuum suddenly being filled. But... fleshier.
Jaune turned around to the three followers that had now caught up to him. By the looks on their faces they were wishing they hadn't.
No words spoken, they, as a unit, turned around and started running.
No screams.
No hesitation.
No chance.
Jaune teleported himself amidst the three of them in a crack of displaced air and promptly stumbled. He grabbed out instinctively and managed to grasp the head of the only one of them who was using a skill, some sort of shadow engulfing his legs letting him run faster.
The wide blue eyes stared at him in fright from between his fingers before he slammed the head along with the body into the cobbled ground. There, that helped steady his footing. The arcane bolt he released as the head made impact sealed the deal. The street was given another paint job, not that the artist was there to see it.
He could feel the remaining two thieves through dimensional comprehension. The skill provided a better map of the surroundings he was teleporting himself into than his sight. Which was probably the point, Jaune thought as he appeared before the two survivors. Skills of a class were supposed to synergize. A kick to the chest of the thinner thief probably broke some bones, judging by the sound.
A sweep of his hand towards the neck of the burlier thief had no chance to actually reach its target from the beginning until a sword blinked into existence, neatly decapitating the thief who ran into the edge at full speed. The head fell to the ground and started rolling along, passing the bend that would have brought the fleeing robber-wannabes into sight of the Main Street. Their salvation? Doubtful.
Nobody heard the thump as the head rolled to a stop on the wall. It would have been very dramatic if it had stopped in a position where the eyes were gazing accusingly at their killer. Alas, it was not to be, the head ended up face down.
The fight hadn't even lasted half a minute. Well. Fight was a bit of a misnomer. More like a slau-.
A wet rasp brought Jaune's attention back to the matter at hand, namely the last living member of the little robber band. The hood had fallen from the man's face after he'd been knocked down. His name was Bob.
Bob looked at him dejectedly, not looking all too well. Which was understandable. He did have a broken sternum. Before he could start begging for mercy, Jaune silenced him with a finger to his lips. "Shush you, I'm thinking."
With a gulp, Bob nodded and stilled on the ground, choosing to not look at his probably future murderer and looking upwards. Jaune couldn't fault him. Gazing at lazily passing clouds, drifting along in a bright summer day was probably easier than looking at what the poor thief must've thought was some sort of monster.
Now, the question Jaune had to ask himself was, what could he gain from this situation? There weren't many ways he can spin this. The men were dead, one injured. He would loot them of course. The two remaining questions were if he should let Bob live, and how he should display the corpses.
The object of his third question had run away in the meantime. The girl who had warned him of his followers had followed him on the rooftops, hand fiddling with a dagger, considering if the arrogant mage should be saved.
She had left with a hand held before her mouth, so her vomit would make no sound as it violently rose from her stomach and trickled down her neck.
-/-
Jaune pulled on the corpse that he had impaled into the wall with the daggers he'd taken off his would-be robbers, making sure that it was well and truly stuck there now. Nodding to himself, he dipped his crusty fingers into the clean cut on the neck and drew the symbol of death. Triangle, circle, line, where the head of the dead man would have been. He stepped back not to admire his work, but to see if there was anything more to be done.
The arms were spread out, impaled hands holding them up. The feet had been stuck together with a short sword through the gaps of flesh between the metatarsal bones. When taking the symbol replacing the head into consideration, the entire spectacle took the shape of a cross.
Jaune glanced at the corpse that had the contents of its skull decorating the street, another symbol of death drawn in the gray matter splattered on the ground.
He walked further on, startling Bob, who had just about finished drawing the symbol, but bigger, on the wall that had suffered from his first two kills.
"You'll live." Jaune said, to the visible relief of Bob.
"Death comes to all, but you can escape its grasp for a bit more." Jaune fumbled around his inventory before pulling out one of the wooden pendants the now deceased Prometheus had created for him. He'd threaded cord through them, so he probably should just start referring to the things as symbol necklaces.
He threw it at Bob, who caught it while wheezing, one hand clutching his chest. "Here."
Bob stayed standing, clutching the necklace in his right hand.
"Well, wear it. That's the whole point of the thing," Jaune had to say to make the thief put it on. Without saying a word.
Well, Jaune had told him to be quiet.
"You can leave now." He waved him off, walked past the hobbling man to the graffitied walls. "Oh, and if you ever take it off? I'll kill you," Jaune added as he dipped his fingers in blood for what was hopefully the last time in a while.
The sound of footsteps quickened.
A symbol was a symbol. But having a bit more to accompany it would raise its memetic value. Jaune had been thinking of a phrase to write down as he decorated the alley.
And he'd found it.
He charged some mana into his finger and started writing. The mana was necessary because blood dried into a murkish red-brown, which was not so easy to make out against the murkish-gray of the walls behind it. Mana made the blood a bit more... vibrant.
Jaune had never thought that learning about what was basically magical painting would ever help him in any capacity. But here he was. He dotted the i's and stood back to admire the ominous-looking words, with an even more ominous symbol above them.
Very deep. Very nonsensical, but Jaune considered it a sentence that would stick with people.
The Goal of All Life is Death.
-/-
Jaune noticed that he had a slight problem as he walked back to the docks. The fact that he had decorated an alley in the blood of his enemies was good and all, but the highly distinctive symbol he'd used was present all over his clothes. All of his clothes.
He smacked a palm into his face, before removing it in disgust.
He had just left the market area.
Jaune turned around and hurried off towards the nearest shop selling clothes. He bought an unmarked cloak and used it to replace his stylish purple one. A downgrade was fine as long as it ensured some safety.
People would inevitably remember the fact that someone bearing the symbol had left The Lad (the name of his ship). The attire was made to be distinctive, after all. But for all that it mattered, that mysterious figure had disembarked in this town and was not coming back, having reached its destination.
Jaune Arc, young mage, however, would board the ship, free of any suspicions, to attend Beacon Academy in Vale and then promptly switch back into his symbolised clothes. News of the small slaughter would never make it to Vale due to it not being very important, and the sailors wouldn't care. Couldn't afford to care due to their weakness. Generally nobody would care about the death of some scum, but the presentation thereof may have raised some eyebrows and concerns.
The captain had apparently come back before even Jaune, which was odd, since the man should have many more things to settle in Kuo Kuana than Jaune did. Dock permit, trading goods acquisition, and whoring. All of those activities would probably take longer than Jaune's short stroll through the market.
Jaune approached the neutral-faced captain and asked, "What ails you Ercanbald?" The facade of the man broke a little at the question and he grunted and sighed.
"I'll be blunt. A Merchant Prince is trying to monopolize the trading market of Kuo Kuana and has hired assassins to "inform" anyone who tries to purchase anything." Ercanbald said with a gruff voice.
Jaune blinked. That came out of nowhere. "I was just at the market. The atmosphere seemed fairly normal, if a bit stifling, which is expected of such a place." Maybe the thugs had also had a secondary mission in accosting him. If so, he'd definitely stepped on some toes. "I imagine the jumped-up merchant prince will be dealt with soon enough. One particularly high-level assassin is bound to lose someone important to him if the planned takeover you described is truly a city-wide occurrence. But just because it will be dealt with does not mean that we should stay here in the meanwhile. I imagine we're waiting for the crew to come back before we set sail?"
The captain grunted in agreement. He seemed very standoffish. Understandable. If his words were true, he was losing his men to assassins at the very moment and would also run a deficit on this particular venture.
Jaune looked around the docks. They were mostly empty, and now he knew why. Had the other captains slash merchants known of this happening beforehand? Or had they also lost men, money, and then cut their losses?
The captain visibly tensed next to him. Jaune turned his head to where the man was looking.
There was a commotion at the gangplank. One of the tougher-looking sailors was arguing with a girl. It seemed she wanted to book passage to Vale, but Guts, the sailor, was obviously unwilling to let an obvious assassin on board.
It was the girl that had tried to warn him of the ambush and then followed him, presumably to save his dumbass when he got stuck in over his head. No saving had been required, and he'd most likely traumatised her. She also didn't seem like the type of person that would let herself be bought to kill innocents. She'd balked at being bought to kill robbers.
Attempting a good deed though, should be rewarded, even if the deed itself was unnecessary. "I vouch for that girl," Jaune said, loudly enough for the captain, Guts, and the girl to hear him.
The captain gripped the railing and Guts stilled, backing off from the situation that was beyond his pay-grade. The girl flinched and looked ready to bolt when she caught sight of him. Had she recognised the visible bottom portion of his face, or his voice?
The captain respected him. Jaune was banking on that. The man would at least consider it.
The girl was hesitating, glancing at the rest of the docked ships. A few fishing boats that would get her nowhere, two galleons, and one other brigantine. All smaller than theirs and probably not even heading to Vale.
"The other ship that could take you to Vale isn't heading there. They're going to Mistral," Ercanbald informed the girl. "Get on and we will discuss it."
The girl acquiesced. Jaune wondered where'd she'd left the fish.
-/-
There had been a few concessions to be made for Blake's passage. Blake was the assassin girl's name, as the first concession had been for her to reveal her name. Which she had done, somehow managing to make her descriptors only give her first name and class. The second was that she would keep to her cabin at day and only come out at night for the month required to reach Vale. Unless of course she wanted to dress like a civilian.
Which she vehemently refused. Jaune could respect her being proud of her own class, and wanting to display that, but inconveniencing yourself to do so was going a bit far.
The third concession was the one that had Blake almost jumping off the ship. She was to be watched over by the only person on board who could reliably keep track of her and stop her if she, as the captain feared, attempted to kill everyone and take over the vessel.
Jaune requested no monetary compensation for the service or the fact he would be sharing his room with an assassin. It had been his idea to let her on board after all. And he wasn't afraid of her either. Dimensional comprehension woke him up if anything that it recognized as a danger to him tried to get too close to him or took any threatening actions.
It was odd that the skill wasn't capable of ranking up. It was clearly improving, range, detail, and now Jaune had (with some questionable self-hypnosis and mental triggers attached to the skill) made it capable of being semi-active in his sleep and waking him up by putting pressure on the part of the brain it affected. The downside was that he now required an hour more of sleep on average.
Blake turned to him when they were alone in hi- their cabin. "Why did you help me?" she asked, sounding quite angry for someone asking that question. Was it anger at him in particular for helping her, anger at herself for needing help, or anger at the fact that she thought she was undeserving of help?
Jaune got the feeling that it might have been a mix of all three. Maybe she was suspecting ulterior motives? Which to be fair, he did have. In the heat of battle he had revealed his teleport skill to her and the robber that had survived.
But while Bob knew, it was highly unlikely that he would leave Kuo Kuana, go to Vale, and mention how he had tried to rob this one guy and gotten his sternum kicked in. Blake however, was travelling, was going to Vale. And from her apparent age, her destination was the same as his.
Her travelling with him meant that he could get to know her. Was she someone who revealed the skills of others, something which was considered incredibly rude and oftentimes malicious against your fellow man? Well, if she was such a person, she would not be able to get away from him on a ship. Jaune doubted Ercanbald and Guts would care if she were to quietly disappear one night to go frolic with the fishes.
Normally it wouldn't even matter that she had seen him teleport. He had his name hidden along with his face. But being the only person running around wearing the symbol of death kind of made it obvious who the dimensional mage was. Nobody was going to buy the fact that he was already level fifty, where some other fringe mage classes unlocked the teleport skill, or that he was simply that fast.
He would have to remember to keep his more questionable activities better hidden, changing his clothes when he was finished, for example. It wasn't like it would be hard, with his access to not one, but two inventories.
"Are you ignoring me?" she bristled.
Jaune shook his head. "No, I was simply thinking of an answer to your question. I imagine saying that it was simply the right thing to do would be unsatisfying."
"Why was it the right thing to do?" she asked, making sure that he knew that the answer indeed needed further clarification.
Jaune needed something to stall with while he came up with an answer, so he pulled down his hood, releasing his hair and revealing the upper part of his face. "Having an extended conversation with someone, while having our faces hidden is uncomfortable. Also, why don't we sit down?" Jaune asked and then promptly plopped himself down on his bed.
His words startled Blake out of her frozen state.
She was probably taken aback by how handsome he was.
While desecrating the dead may seem like a dishonorable tactic, Jaune is stuck in his mindset of everything for fame at the moment, and rationalizes it with the fact that corpses can't have their feelings hurt.
Edited by: 5th dimension
Warning; This will get bloody
Apart from the eventful first day on the ship, Jaune concluded that sea travel was in truth quite boring. He only stepped out occasionally, to kill all the Grimm in vicinity. The sea had long lost its lustre. In the end, it truly was simply an unfamiliar, endless expanse of blue, its saltiness sometimes blown harshly into his face by a passing gale.
So he was understandably quite glad when the land of Menagerie came into sight. They'd stopped in several docks along the coast of Vacuo and southern Vale, but those had been brief respites.
Their docking in Kuo Kuana would be for much longer, picking up more trading goods and maybe a passenger or two before heading to Vale. It would be a reprieve from his discussions about navigation with the captain and the seemingly endless amount of time he spent in his room, either reading or doing callisthenics.
His happiness at walking on actual earth for the first time in weeks almost made him forget what Menagerie was. Almost.
Stealth classes were, after all, the bane of all mages. And Menagerie was nothing but filled with them. Half the people he walked by on the shabbily-cobbled street weren't even civilians, but dark figures with their hoods drawn up, so as to hide their classes.
Did it really matter if your class was hidden if the mere fact you were hiding revealed what it was?
Jaune paused, considering his own hidden class. Someone ran into him from behind, the grubby thug opening his yap to say something but quailing away and moving on at Jaune's violet-green burning eyes.
Neat trick, that.
Well, probably everyone hid their class here. But there was still a definite overrepresentation of stealth classes in the heroes present. You could tell by their equipment. Not many warriors bothered dressing in leather armour and carrying knives.
Jaune moved on. The peddlers on Main Street didn't really interest him; they were mostly selling food. It was the most important resource after water, but it wasn't the type of food Jaune was interested in. Dried up turnips (the purple variant) and some sickly potatoes…
Jaune preferred more high-quality food, so when he spotted the first off-branching alley that appeared to cater to more well-off customers, he ducked in to explore a bit.
He did not fail to notice the three shadows that followed him from Main Street, that were now inconspicuously browsing wares that they probably couldn't even afford to look at.
Dimensional comprehension let him see into every shop, making sure it was not an ambush point, and being aware of their presence meant he could simply go back into Main Street and avoid any alleyways on his way back to the ship.
He kept perusing wares, buying some delicacies and picking up empty journals. Summarizing the important parts of Black's books had demolished his supply.
Jaune wasn't in any danger, but that didn't mean others knew that. A girl approached him as he was contemplating if he should buy caviar at a fish store. (The owner was a mage, so all the fish were sprawled out on blankets of ice. Genius idea.) She wore the usual getup of an assassin's: leather, cloak, and daggers. Her hood concealed her descriptors, but could not do the same for her faunus heritage.
"You're being followed," she whispered to him, standing next to him and gazing longingly at a tuna fish.
"I know right? They're not very good it," was Jaune's reply. The girl didn't have enough Lien in her pouch for any of the stuff in this district, so what she was doing here?
Jaune purchased the tuna she had been gazing at, received it packed in some nice brown paper, and unceremoniously handed it to his would-be rescuer. Who received it stiffly, almost flinching away at the unexpected gesture.
She really took her faunus heritage too seriously. Just because you had cat ears didn't mean you should attempt to emulate the animal's behaviour.
"Thanks for caring, I-" can take care of it, was what he was about to say, but he stopped mid-sentence when he noticed someone he knew, talking with his would-be followers.
Prometheus had done good work on the carvings. Jaune was now a proud owner of four pendants bearing the mark of death. Death was what he'd been told the symbol should be referred to as. An innocuous little piece of paper that had been stuck in one of his journals had informed him of this.
He also has one fairly big, but crude carving of the thing. What he was trying to say was that he'd forgiven the thief, but apparently the thief had not forgiven him.
After some more words, Prometheus and what was probably his followers' leader parted ways. The most likely possibility was that Prometheus was a little snitch who informed this band of miscreants on high value targets that travelled to Kuo Kuana, and then worked together with them to lure them into places where they were then robbed. It was not certain, but it would be fairly easy to prove his hypothesis.
Someone lightly shook his shoulder, the girl. "Are you alright?" she asked gently.
The three followers were all young, and most likely city-dwellers. Which meant weak, but having backup would be nice...
Jaune waved her off. "Just observing my would-be followers. I've decided to spring their trap." She frowned. "How much Lien to acquire your backup in case something goes wrong?"
Her friendly demeanour disappeared at the insinuation that she was purchasable. Bad phrasing on his part. "I'm not for sale. I did my part in warning you and do not feel obligated to help when you decide to leap into trouble on your accord."
Jaune's second mistake was probably pulling out a filled moneybag and shaking it in front of her face, making the coins jingle their own little tune. "Thousand Lien with your name on it."
She left after that. Taking the tuna he'd bought as thanks with her. Smart one, she didn't just dump the gift because she now disliked him. Jaune could admire the practicality over emotion in that simple gesture. Though she could have earned another thousand by not being offended. But there were lines people did not want to cross. He respected that.
He didn't need her though. He was enough for three scamps with underdeveloped muscles and low-quality gear. Dimensional comprehension was very useful in scouting out the strength of an enemy before engagement. He had really underestimated its ability to let him pick his fights.
Jaune made his way back on the Main Street and ambled towards where Prometheus was. Two alleys away from the docks, namely, along with another little rogue. That would make four. Five if the sailor also participated in the fight.
After a bit more walking and halting to look at merchandise (he had to make it look natural after all, or they might call the operation off), he reached the point where he could see Prometheus as he stood, very unconvincingly at the entrance to their chosen alley. The sailor waved at him, also seeing him, and was dragged back into the darkness of the side street by an arm around his neck the second after that.
Nobody around Main Street seemed to care enough to even gasp at the occasion, probably used to it. The three followers were still there, closer now, he'd also gained one following observer on the rooftops. Jaune ran into the side street, faster than anybody had expected a mage to run apparently, since his followers paused in surprise before frantically running after him.
The bait was quick. They'd managed to take one turn before he caught up to them, taking their fight out of sight of Main Street.
The highly stereotypical thug held a dagger to Prometheus' throat while using him as a shield. "Stop or your friend gets it." He looked wary. Good.
Jaune didn't stop, shooting a few bursts of arcana behind him to accelerate even further, and while the two were in the process of stumbling back, he gathered a rend around both his arms.
Just before he would have collided with them, Jaune grinded to a halt by pushing his greaves into the stones under his feet, transferring all his momentum through his body in a whip-like motion to his hands, which snaked forward through Prometheus's hastily erected guard.
The dimensional cutting spell was best used in tandem with a sharp weapon. Here, it wasn't necessary. One of Jaune's hands sheared through the sailor's solar plexus, the other through his stomach. Both of them continued onwards into the thug behind, assisted by arcane bolts firing out of Jaune's elbows. But his arms weren't long enough to stab the thug all the way through.
Arcane bolt.
Twin explosions caused the already dirty wall behind the thug to be marred even further, this time splattered in much more visceral liquids than just vomit.
Ping. A notification cheerfully informed Jaune that he had risen to level twenty-five.
The two corpses on his arms were too heavy. Prometheus coughed a glob of blood into Jaune's hood as a last unconscious act of spite, before he, along with the thug, were dislodged with a sickening 'schlop.' Like the sound of a vacuum suddenly being filled. But... fleshier.
Jaune turned around to the three followers that had now caught up to him. By the looks on their faces they were wishing they hadn't.
No words spoken, they, as a unit, turned around and started running.
No screams.
No hesitation.
No chance.
Jaune teleported himself amidst the three of them in a crack of displaced air and promptly stumbled. He grabbed out instinctively and managed to grasp the head of the only one of them who was using a skill, some sort of shadow engulfing his legs letting him run faster.
The wide blue eyes stared at him in fright from between his fingers before he slammed the head along with the body into the cobbled ground. There, that helped steady his footing. The arcane bolt he released as the head made impact sealed the deal. The street was given another paint job, not that the artist was there to see it.
He could feel the remaining two thieves through dimensional comprehension. The skill provided a better map of the surroundings he was teleporting himself into than his sight. Which was probably the point, Jaune thought as he appeared before the two survivors. Skills of a class were supposed to synergize. A kick to the chest of the thinner thief probably broke some bones, judging by the sound.
A sweep of his hand towards the neck of the burlier thief had no chance to actually reach its target from the beginning until a sword blinked into existence, neatly decapitating the thief who ran into the edge at full speed. The head fell to the ground and started rolling along, passing the bend that would have brought the fleeing robber-wannabes into sight of the Main Street. Their salvation? Doubtful.
Nobody heard the thump as the head rolled to a stop on the wall. It would have been very dramatic if it had stopped in a position where the eyes were gazing accusingly at their killer. Alas, it was not to be, the head ended up face down.
The fight hadn't even lasted half a minute. Well. Fight was a bit of a misnomer. More like a slau-.
A wet rasp brought Jaune's attention back to the matter at hand, namely the last living member of the little robber band. The hood had fallen from the man's face after he'd been knocked down. His name was Bob.
Bob looked at him dejectedly, not looking all too well. Which was understandable. He did have a broken sternum. Before he could start begging for mercy, Jaune silenced him with a finger to his lips. "Shush you, I'm thinking."
With a gulp, Bob nodded and stilled on the ground, choosing to not look at his probably future murderer and looking upwards. Jaune couldn't fault him. Gazing at lazily passing clouds, drifting along in a bright summer day was probably easier than looking at what the poor thief must've thought was some sort of monster.
Now, the question Jaune had to ask himself was, what could he gain from this situation? There weren't many ways he can spin this. The men were dead, one injured. He would loot them of course. The two remaining questions were if he should let Bob live, and how he should display the corpses.
The object of his third question had run away in the meantime. The girl who had warned him of his followers had followed him on the rooftops, hand fiddling with a dagger, considering if the arrogant mage should be saved.
She had left with a hand held before her mouth, so her vomit would make no sound as it violently rose from her stomach and trickled down her neck.
-/-
Jaune pulled on the corpse that he had impaled into the wall with the daggers he'd taken off his would-be robbers, making sure that it was well and truly stuck there now. Nodding to himself, he dipped his crusty fingers into the clean cut on the neck and drew the symbol of death. Triangle, circle, line, where the head of the dead man would have been. He stepped back not to admire his work, but to see if there was anything more to be done.
The arms were spread out, impaled hands holding them up. The feet had been stuck together with a short sword through the gaps of flesh between the metatarsal bones. When taking the symbol replacing the head into consideration, the entire spectacle took the shape of a cross.
Jaune glanced at the corpse that had the contents of its skull decorating the street, another symbol of death drawn in the gray matter splattered on the ground.
He walked further on, startling Bob, who had just about finished drawing the symbol, but bigger, on the wall that had suffered from his first two kills.
"You'll live." Jaune said, to the visible relief of Bob.
"Death comes to all, but you can escape its grasp for a bit more." Jaune fumbled around his inventory before pulling out one of the wooden pendants the now deceased Prometheus had created for him. He'd threaded cord through them, so he probably should just start referring to the things as symbol necklaces.
He threw it at Bob, who caught it while wheezing, one hand clutching his chest. "Here."
Bob stayed standing, clutching the necklace in his right hand.
"Well, wear it. That's the whole point of the thing," Jaune had to say to make the thief put it on. Without saying a word.
Well, Jaune had told him to be quiet.
"You can leave now." He waved him off, walked past the hobbling man to the graffitied walls. "Oh, and if you ever take it off? I'll kill you," Jaune added as he dipped his fingers in blood for what was hopefully the last time in a while.
The sound of footsteps quickened.
A symbol was a symbol. But having a bit more to accompany it would raise its memetic value. Jaune had been thinking of a phrase to write down as he decorated the alley.
And he'd found it.
He charged some mana into his finger and started writing. The mana was necessary because blood dried into a murkish red-brown, which was not so easy to make out against the murkish-gray of the walls behind it. Mana made the blood a bit more... vibrant.
Jaune had never thought that learning about what was basically magical painting would ever help him in any capacity. But here he was. He dotted the i's and stood back to admire the ominous-looking words, with an even more ominous symbol above them.
Very deep. Very nonsensical, but Jaune considered it a sentence that would stick with people.
The Goal of All Life is Death.
-/-
Jaune noticed that he had a slight problem as he walked back to the docks. The fact that he had decorated an alley in the blood of his enemies was good and all, but the highly distinctive symbol he'd used was present all over his clothes. All of his clothes.
He smacked a palm into his face, before removing it in disgust.
He had just left the market area.
Jaune turned around and hurried off towards the nearest shop selling clothes. He bought an unmarked cloak and used it to replace his stylish purple one. A downgrade was fine as long as it ensured some safety.
People would inevitably remember the fact that someone bearing the symbol had left The Lad (the name of his ship). The attire was made to be distinctive, after all. But for all that it mattered, that mysterious figure had disembarked in this town and was not coming back, having reached its destination.
Jaune Arc, young mage, however, would board the ship, free of any suspicions, to attend Beacon Academy in Vale and then promptly switch back into his symbolised clothes. News of the small slaughter would never make it to Vale due to it not being very important, and the sailors wouldn't care. Couldn't afford to care due to their weakness. Generally nobody would care about the death of some scum, but the presentation thereof may have raised some eyebrows and concerns.
The captain had apparently come back before even Jaune, which was odd, since the man should have many more things to settle in Kuo Kuana than Jaune did. Dock permit, trading goods acquisition, and whoring. All of those activities would probably take longer than Jaune's short stroll through the market.
Jaune approached the neutral-faced captain and asked, "What ails you Ercanbald?" The facade of the man broke a little at the question and he grunted and sighed.
"I'll be blunt. A Merchant Prince is trying to monopolize the trading market of Kuo Kuana and has hired assassins to "inform" anyone who tries to purchase anything." Ercanbald said with a gruff voice.
Jaune blinked. That came out of nowhere. "I was just at the market. The atmosphere seemed fairly normal, if a bit stifling, which is expected of such a place." Maybe the thugs had also had a secondary mission in accosting him. If so, he'd definitely stepped on some toes. "I imagine the jumped-up merchant prince will be dealt with soon enough. One particularly high-level assassin is bound to lose someone important to him if the planned takeover you described is truly a city-wide occurrence. But just because it will be dealt with does not mean that we should stay here in the meanwhile. I imagine we're waiting for the crew to come back before we set sail?"
The captain grunted in agreement. He seemed very standoffish. Understandable. If his words were true, he was losing his men to assassins at the very moment and would also run a deficit on this particular venture.
Jaune looked around the docks. They were mostly empty, and now he knew why. Had the other captains slash merchants known of this happening beforehand? Or had they also lost men, money, and then cut their losses?
The captain visibly tensed next to him. Jaune turned his head to where the man was looking.
There was a commotion at the gangplank. One of the tougher-looking sailors was arguing with a girl. It seemed she wanted to book passage to Vale, but Guts, the sailor, was obviously unwilling to let an obvious assassin on board.
It was the girl that had tried to warn him of the ambush and then followed him, presumably to save his dumbass when he got stuck in over his head. No saving had been required, and he'd most likely traumatised her. She also didn't seem like the type of person that would let herself be bought to kill innocents. She'd balked at being bought to kill robbers.
Attempting a good deed though, should be rewarded, even if the deed itself was unnecessary. "I vouch for that girl," Jaune said, loudly enough for the captain, Guts, and the girl to hear him.
The captain gripped the railing and Guts stilled, backing off from the situation that was beyond his pay-grade. The girl flinched and looked ready to bolt when she caught sight of him. Had she recognised the visible bottom portion of his face, or his voice?
The captain respected him. Jaune was banking on that. The man would at least consider it.
The girl was hesitating, glancing at the rest of the docked ships. A few fishing boats that would get her nowhere, two galleons, and one other brigantine. All smaller than theirs and probably not even heading to Vale.
"The other ship that could take you to Vale isn't heading there. They're going to Mistral," Ercanbald informed the girl. "Get on and we will discuss it."
The girl acquiesced. Jaune wondered where'd she'd left the fish.
-/-
There had been a few concessions to be made for Blake's passage. Blake was the assassin girl's name, as the first concession had been for her to reveal her name. Which she had done, somehow managing to make her descriptors only give her first name and class. The second was that she would keep to her cabin at day and only come out at night for the month required to reach Vale. Unless of course she wanted to dress like a civilian.
Which she vehemently refused. Jaune could respect her being proud of her own class, and wanting to display that, but inconveniencing yourself to do so was going a bit far.
The third concession was the one that had Blake almost jumping off the ship. She was to be watched over by the only person on board who could reliably keep track of her and stop her if she, as the captain feared, attempted to kill everyone and take over the vessel.
Jaune requested no monetary compensation for the service or the fact he would be sharing his room with an assassin. It had been his idea to let her on board after all. And he wasn't afraid of her either. Dimensional comprehension woke him up if anything that it recognized as a danger to him tried to get too close to him or took any threatening actions.
It was odd that the skill wasn't capable of ranking up. It was clearly improving, range, detail, and now Jaune had (with some questionable self-hypnosis and mental triggers attached to the skill) made it capable of being semi-active in his sleep and waking him up by putting pressure on the part of the brain it affected. The downside was that he now required an hour more of sleep on average.
Blake turned to him when they were alone in hi- their cabin. "Why did you help me?" she asked, sounding quite angry for someone asking that question. Was it anger at him in particular for helping her, anger at herself for needing help, or anger at the fact that she thought she was undeserving of help?
Jaune got the feeling that it might have been a mix of all three. Maybe she was suspecting ulterior motives? Which to be fair, he did have. In the heat of battle he had revealed his teleport skill to her and the robber that had survived.
But while Bob knew, it was highly unlikely that he would leave Kuo Kuana, go to Vale, and mention how he had tried to rob this one guy and gotten his sternum kicked in. Blake however, was travelling, was going to Vale. And from her apparent age, her destination was the same as his.
Her travelling with him meant that he could get to know her. Was she someone who revealed the skills of others, something which was considered incredibly rude and oftentimes malicious against your fellow man? Well, if she was such a person, she would not be able to get away from him on a ship. Jaune doubted Ercanbald and Guts would care if she were to quietly disappear one night to go frolic with the fishes.
Normally it wouldn't even matter that she had seen him teleport. He had his name hidden along with his face. But being the only person running around wearing the symbol of death kind of made it obvious who the dimensional mage was. Nobody was going to buy the fact that he was already level fifty, where some other fringe mage classes unlocked the teleport skill, or that he was simply that fast.
He would have to remember to keep his more questionable activities better hidden, changing his clothes when he was finished, for example. It wasn't like it would be hard, with his access to not one, but two inventories.
"Are you ignoring me?" she bristled.
Jaune shook his head. "No, I was simply thinking of an answer to your question. I imagine saying that it was simply the right thing to do would be unsatisfying."
"Why was it the right thing to do?" she asked, making sure that he knew that the answer indeed needed further clarification.
Jaune needed something to stall with while he came up with an answer, so he pulled down his hood, releasing his hair and revealing the upper part of his face. "Having an extended conversation with someone, while having our faces hidden is uncomfortable. Also, why don't we sit down?" Jaune asked and then promptly plopped himself down on his bed.
His words startled Blake out of her frozen state.
She was probably taken aback by how handsome he was.
While desecrating the dead may seem like a dishonorable tactic, Jaune is stuck in his mindset of everything for fame at the moment, and rationalizes it with the fact that corpses can't have their feelings hurt.
chapter 28
bor902
professional illiterate
- Location
- wherever i am at the moment
Chapter 28
Editor: 5th dimension
Jaune watched, sat on his cot as Blake made herself comfortable on the floor, leaning on the wall opposite of him. Him being elevated and her being on the floor was what he had been banking on when he'd sat on the cot.
He had left space open for her, but sitting in a bed with a stranger was beyond what most people would be willing to do. They would willingly sit themselves on the floor to avoid it. Willingly put themselves in a position of someone lesser... The effect would of course be stronger if Blake didn't know what he was doing and how he was doing it.
Jaune doubted she suspected anything. She seemed more street-smart than anything else. The type of manipulation he'd just put into action was on a slightly more refined level than what she was probably used to.
"The reason why I helped you is… I'm bound to my own view of the world, I guess," Jaune started. "I could say that I helped you because you attempted to help me, when you seemingly had no reason too."
She made to speak but he raised a hand to halt her.
"You might say that anyone would have done what you did, warning a stranger of a potential ambush where he might lose more than just his material goods. But..." He locked eyes with her yellow ones, sparking a small amount of arcane in his. "Look inside your heart, no matter how cliché it sounds. Do you really believe many others would have done the same as you?"
Stopping someone as they were about to speak, and forcing them to say something else than what they originally wanted...
Blake broke eye-contact. Looked down. "No, not many," She admitted.
"Could you please raise your head?" Jaune asked. "You have done nothing to warrant shame, and should not act in any way that suggests it." He chuckled. "Unless you think having a subconscious belief in the good of humanity is something to be ashamed of."
Blake raised her head and he was able to lock eyes with her again. They were quite pretty, now that they had lost their hostility.
Suggest something that the target was going to do anyway, make it seem like it was your idea, and therewith implying that they were foolish enough to need your guidance in something as simple as that. Dependence.
Then, ask for a favour that the target would have no reason of refusing. People don't do favours for anybody, therefore if they did one for you, you must be their friend. Why would they go out of their way otherwise? The construction of a positive bond.
The simple act of a compliment, paired with the commandment, thou shalt not feel ashamed. I am your absolver, your judge, your executioner.
"It's not something to be ashamed of, but it is quite naïve, I admit. It does lead well into my reasoning behind helping you." Jaune continued waffling as Blake listened.
Belittlement, you are something lesser than me. Immediately followed by something else to grasp their attention. Making the act of putting them below you seep into their psyche without any chance to analyse the words actively.
"I do not believe in the inherent good of humanity, quite the opposite really, I believe in its limitless malice." He raised a hand to interrupt her again. "That does not mean that I want it to be that way. I rather like the idea of inherent goodness actually. That means for me, rewarding such acts when I can. After all, if you experience positive consequences from your acts of good you are more likely to continue committing them aren't you?"
Always ask questions, rhetorical ones if you can. If they are busy answering questions they can't actively steer the conversation and rhetorical questions leave very little open in the way of variation.
Blake snorted. And the anger returned to her, the colour changed alongside her emotions, interesting. They were more amber than yellow now. "And how does you wanting to do good compute with how you killed those men? With how strong you are you could have simply incapacitated them."
It won't always work of course, that's why you should phrase your words in such a way that when your target breaks away from your script, they are more likely to do so in a very specific way. A specific way that you have already planned for.
"It works quite well, really." Jaune raised his hands and lowered them in a calming gesture as Blake bristled. "Just as acts of good are to be rewarded to incentivise them, acts of evil must be punished with a brutal severity to deter others from walking down that path."
The words must have pushed a very deep-seated button in the girl, as she slammed a fist onto the floor and shouted at him. "You can't just divide the world into good and evil!" She continued, suddenly more quietly. "They could have been redeemed."
Interesting. Her stance implied that she herself was someone who did not want to be judged in black and white, which of course implied that if she were to be judged she would be painted black. Also someone who had likely been redeemed, or was in the process of doing so.
She could also be a moralist.
Jaune seemingly ignored her. "Of course if nobody is there to spread the word of how the act of evil was punished, it won't deter a great many people. Therefore I let one live. Thankfully I am strong enough to choose which, and I chose the one who seemed the most at odds with what they were doing."
The anger receded from Blake's eyes and she slumped into herself. Seemingly exhausted.
If someone is foolish enough, to bare to a stranger one of their core beliefs, of how they view the world, then they are truly an idiot, for they have just handed you the key to their heart. Now, you simply have to turn it and open the door.
Jaune of course had not chosen to spare Bob because of any supposed chance at redemption, Bob had simply been the only one to survive his initial attack and it was preferable for someone to survive and spread the word, so to say.
He stood up. "Now if you'll excuse me, the ship is about to depart. I must speak with the captain. You can use the time to think on how to continue the conversation if you wish to do so." And he promptly left.
Suggest people what to do with their time. Once you have a grip on that, you own them. They are more likely to do what has been suggested, even if they don't realize it. And less likely to do the opposite. Jaune had said 'how to continue the conversation,' which made it less likely for her to dwell on how the conversation had gone up to that point.
Do not contemplate the past, always look towards the future. Do not doubt, do not falter, do not question. A slave mentality.
Conversation was just as much of a battle as everything else in life. It was just that most people didn't even know they were fighting in the first place.
Jaune pulled his hood back up as he exited the cabin. No need to show the sailors how young he really was. They thought he was in his twenties, if a bit short, and that was perfectly fine. His presence seemed to reassure the men greatly as he walked through them, arriving by the captain's side.
"We lost five." Ercanbald told him before he could ask. Jaune clasped the man's shoulder and squeezed reassuringly. "My first mate amongst them."
"A good man deeply regrets his failures, a great man, turns them into lessons." Was all Jaune could offer to that. He wasn't particularly attached to any of the sailors, but he could feel how affected the captain was by their deaths. The man's eyes were tearing up.
It was all quite sudden, Jaune thought to himself. Not even knowing that something was happening and then dying due to the power-hungry machinations of another.
"Thanks," the captain choked out. This was quickly approaching territory that Jaune wanted nothing to do with.
So he changed the topic. "Is the ship sailable with the men we have now?"
He received a nod. "Yes, but barely."
Jaune grimaced. That was something that he had rather been hoping to avoid. "I can offer the simple assistance of two hands on board if it becomes necessary." He wanted off the sea as soon as possible. If he had to help the crew a bit for them to not be slowed down, then so be it.
It would of course be quite drab if he was called when not truly needed… Jaune departed towards the port side with some last words. "Do not attempt to misuse the privilege."
Maybe the captain had picked up on his ability to sense things out of sight, because he nodded, despite there being no chance at Jaune seeing it.
-/-
Jaune smiled at his handheld mirror. Had it really been this easy the entire time? The skill of turning the descriptors above his head on and off was something he'd mastered a year ago, but he'd never wondered if there was anything more to it.
Until Blake had come along, somehow not showing her last name.
The knowledge that the descriptors were, to a point... malleable, had shattered his understanding of the entire bloody thing. Maybe it was an assassin skill! Moving onto a target with the name Mary Jane revealed, garnering no suspicion because the most famous assassin in town was called Jane Mary.
But no...
He had simply needed to think it and the Arc had disappeared from Jaune Arc. Was it really that simple? Nobody had bothered trying, therefore nobody knew it was possible? Jaune could see why this information had never been written down. It was only useful as long as others didn't know about it.
Blake showing only her first name would make people assume she was some kind of orphan, or from a family that refused to use their last name to ever refer to their daughter. The orphan and no-last-name ideas had only come to him after he'd already made up his mind about the descriptors being malleable.
It was obviously a well kept secret if even the Arc family, which had many encounters with assassins, didn't know about it. It better remain a secret.
After all, this was potentially his salvation. His freedom.
Jaune looked into the mirror and grinned. If you could leave out your last name, wouldn't it make sense that you could leave out your class as well?
Jaune Arc
Lightbreaker
Classes and titles didn't have anything that could help discern between the two of them. And being ogled for a rare class (first of its kind actually!) was much better than being hunted for being a dimensional mage.
Teleport was simply his passive, the class "Lightbreaker" seemed to be a mix of offensive magic like arcane bolt/rend, and skills capable of looking through illusions, like dimensional comprehension.
Though he would never reveal its true name. "Gaze of the Beholder" seemed quite catchy for something that could simply glance through illusions.
Jaune was ashamed of his rare, but rather useless class, and therefore hid it. The entire thing centred around being a counter to illusionists, which wasn't overly useful, since illusionists were a rare class as well. The reason why his skills were so unfitting for an illusion breaker was the fact that he'd taken the divergent skills offered every time.
After all, shatter illusion was only good against a certain group of people. Arcane bolt, however, did damage to everything, with a small chance of disrupting light-based illusions.
Jaune deliberately stopped thinking about how he could display Lightbreaker as a class. He was getting ahead of himself. While happy he had chanced upon something so utterly versatile, especially for someone in his position, he shouldn't rush in creating the story of how his supposed class worked. Hell, he could maybe gain another title and use that.
Warrior of the Seas sounded like something you could get if you fought enough naval battles… It was better to start his planning when he had come down from his happiness high. So that's what he did.
Stopped thinking about it. Helped the sailors. Starting the ship up always took more effort than keeping it sailing, and with his amateurish help they had probably set off five minutes earlier.
Jaune stretched out his senses to their maximum, expecting an ambush or something as they sailed out of Kuo Kuana's dock. The town hadn't really made a good impression on him so he was a bit more paranoid than usual. He relaxed when they sailed out of sight of it, and walked back towards his cabin, intentionally scuffing his feet against the wood beneath him and walking heavily so as to not startle the assassin in his room.
It was his room; he refused to knock. If she wasn't listening intently enough and he came upon her in an embarrassing situation then it was her own fault.
He found her sleeping, in the same position he'd left her. Back to the wall, knees drawn to the body with the head resting on them, hands resting on her daggers. Well, she was pretending to sleep, anyways. Probably just didn't feel like interacting with him.
Now that Jaune looked at her, face clear of all the negative emotions marring it before, he noted she was quite the beauty. The probable baggage kind of ruined any attraction he might have felt though. From his interactions with her, he was able to discern that she had been redeemed, or was seeking redemption. Redeemed for what he did not know, but she was too much of an assassin to have been raised as anything but. ...And maybe, being a mage, his prejudices against the class were showing.
But if even an assassin felt that a crime needed redeeming, then it must have been a hefty one indeed. Was that why she'd warned him about his would be robbers? An attempt at doing good to mask the evil of her past. She has most likely turned over a new leaf only recently. She was too emotional about the subject for it to be an old wound. In general, too emotional for an assassin. Whatever had made her attempt a change must have happened recently.
And the outfall was big enough that she was fleeing to another continent, to attend a hero school of all things. After all, what other destination would a sixteen, seventeen-year-old assassin seeking redemption going to the city of Vale have? Missions you could receive from Beacon were all centred around helping or saving people, after all.
Redemption, absolution. It was a pursuit of freedom. Freedom from one's own conscience.
Jaune tilted his head as he observed her still form.
What have you done, Blake?
Editor: 5th dimension
Jaune watched, sat on his cot as Blake made herself comfortable on the floor, leaning on the wall opposite of him. Him being elevated and her being on the floor was what he had been banking on when he'd sat on the cot.
He had left space open for her, but sitting in a bed with a stranger was beyond what most people would be willing to do. They would willingly sit themselves on the floor to avoid it. Willingly put themselves in a position of someone lesser... The effect would of course be stronger if Blake didn't know what he was doing and how he was doing it.
Jaune doubted she suspected anything. She seemed more street-smart than anything else. The type of manipulation he'd just put into action was on a slightly more refined level than what she was probably used to.
"The reason why I helped you is… I'm bound to my own view of the world, I guess," Jaune started. "I could say that I helped you because you attempted to help me, when you seemingly had no reason too."
She made to speak but he raised a hand to halt her.
"You might say that anyone would have done what you did, warning a stranger of a potential ambush where he might lose more than just his material goods. But..." He locked eyes with her yellow ones, sparking a small amount of arcane in his. "Look inside your heart, no matter how cliché it sounds. Do you really believe many others would have done the same as you?"
Stopping someone as they were about to speak, and forcing them to say something else than what they originally wanted...
Blake broke eye-contact. Looked down. "No, not many," She admitted.
"Could you please raise your head?" Jaune asked. "You have done nothing to warrant shame, and should not act in any way that suggests it." He chuckled. "Unless you think having a subconscious belief in the good of humanity is something to be ashamed of."
Blake raised her head and he was able to lock eyes with her again. They were quite pretty, now that they had lost their hostility.
Suggest something that the target was going to do anyway, make it seem like it was your idea, and therewith implying that they were foolish enough to need your guidance in something as simple as that. Dependence.
Then, ask for a favour that the target would have no reason of refusing. People don't do favours for anybody, therefore if they did one for you, you must be their friend. Why would they go out of their way otherwise? The construction of a positive bond.
The simple act of a compliment, paired with the commandment, thou shalt not feel ashamed. I am your absolver, your judge, your executioner.
"It's not something to be ashamed of, but it is quite naïve, I admit. It does lead well into my reasoning behind helping you." Jaune continued waffling as Blake listened.
Belittlement, you are something lesser than me. Immediately followed by something else to grasp their attention. Making the act of putting them below you seep into their psyche without any chance to analyse the words actively.
"I do not believe in the inherent good of humanity, quite the opposite really, I believe in its limitless malice." He raised a hand to interrupt her again. "That does not mean that I want it to be that way. I rather like the idea of inherent goodness actually. That means for me, rewarding such acts when I can. After all, if you experience positive consequences from your acts of good you are more likely to continue committing them aren't you?"
Always ask questions, rhetorical ones if you can. If they are busy answering questions they can't actively steer the conversation and rhetorical questions leave very little open in the way of variation.
Blake snorted. And the anger returned to her, the colour changed alongside her emotions, interesting. They were more amber than yellow now. "And how does you wanting to do good compute with how you killed those men? With how strong you are you could have simply incapacitated them."
It won't always work of course, that's why you should phrase your words in such a way that when your target breaks away from your script, they are more likely to do so in a very specific way. A specific way that you have already planned for.
"It works quite well, really." Jaune raised his hands and lowered them in a calming gesture as Blake bristled. "Just as acts of good are to be rewarded to incentivise them, acts of evil must be punished with a brutal severity to deter others from walking down that path."
The words must have pushed a very deep-seated button in the girl, as she slammed a fist onto the floor and shouted at him. "You can't just divide the world into good and evil!" She continued, suddenly more quietly. "They could have been redeemed."
Interesting. Her stance implied that she herself was someone who did not want to be judged in black and white, which of course implied that if she were to be judged she would be painted black. Also someone who had likely been redeemed, or was in the process of doing so.
She could also be a moralist.
Jaune seemingly ignored her. "Of course if nobody is there to spread the word of how the act of evil was punished, it won't deter a great many people. Therefore I let one live. Thankfully I am strong enough to choose which, and I chose the one who seemed the most at odds with what they were doing."
The anger receded from Blake's eyes and she slumped into herself. Seemingly exhausted.
If someone is foolish enough, to bare to a stranger one of their core beliefs, of how they view the world, then they are truly an idiot, for they have just handed you the key to their heart. Now, you simply have to turn it and open the door.
Jaune of course had not chosen to spare Bob because of any supposed chance at redemption, Bob had simply been the only one to survive his initial attack and it was preferable for someone to survive and spread the word, so to say.
He stood up. "Now if you'll excuse me, the ship is about to depart. I must speak with the captain. You can use the time to think on how to continue the conversation if you wish to do so." And he promptly left.
Suggest people what to do with their time. Once you have a grip on that, you own them. They are more likely to do what has been suggested, even if they don't realize it. And less likely to do the opposite. Jaune had said 'how to continue the conversation,' which made it less likely for her to dwell on how the conversation had gone up to that point.
Do not contemplate the past, always look towards the future. Do not doubt, do not falter, do not question. A slave mentality.
Conversation was just as much of a battle as everything else in life. It was just that most people didn't even know they were fighting in the first place.
Jaune pulled his hood back up as he exited the cabin. No need to show the sailors how young he really was. They thought he was in his twenties, if a bit short, and that was perfectly fine. His presence seemed to reassure the men greatly as he walked through them, arriving by the captain's side.
"We lost five." Ercanbald told him before he could ask. Jaune clasped the man's shoulder and squeezed reassuringly. "My first mate amongst them."
"A good man deeply regrets his failures, a great man, turns them into lessons." Was all Jaune could offer to that. He wasn't particularly attached to any of the sailors, but he could feel how affected the captain was by their deaths. The man's eyes were tearing up.
It was all quite sudden, Jaune thought to himself. Not even knowing that something was happening and then dying due to the power-hungry machinations of another.
"Thanks," the captain choked out. This was quickly approaching territory that Jaune wanted nothing to do with.
So he changed the topic. "Is the ship sailable with the men we have now?"
He received a nod. "Yes, but barely."
Jaune grimaced. That was something that he had rather been hoping to avoid. "I can offer the simple assistance of two hands on board if it becomes necessary." He wanted off the sea as soon as possible. If he had to help the crew a bit for them to not be slowed down, then so be it.
It would of course be quite drab if he was called when not truly needed… Jaune departed towards the port side with some last words. "Do not attempt to misuse the privilege."
Maybe the captain had picked up on his ability to sense things out of sight, because he nodded, despite there being no chance at Jaune seeing it.
-/-
Jaune smiled at his handheld mirror. Had it really been this easy the entire time? The skill of turning the descriptors above his head on and off was something he'd mastered a year ago, but he'd never wondered if there was anything more to it.
Until Blake had come along, somehow not showing her last name.
The knowledge that the descriptors were, to a point... malleable, had shattered his understanding of the entire bloody thing. Maybe it was an assassin skill! Moving onto a target with the name Mary Jane revealed, garnering no suspicion because the most famous assassin in town was called Jane Mary.
But no...
He had simply needed to think it and the Arc had disappeared from Jaune Arc. Was it really that simple? Nobody had bothered trying, therefore nobody knew it was possible? Jaune could see why this information had never been written down. It was only useful as long as others didn't know about it.
Blake showing only her first name would make people assume she was some kind of orphan, or from a family that refused to use their last name to ever refer to their daughter. The orphan and no-last-name ideas had only come to him after he'd already made up his mind about the descriptors being malleable.
It was obviously a well kept secret if even the Arc family, which had many encounters with assassins, didn't know about it. It better remain a secret.
After all, this was potentially his salvation. His freedom.
Jaune looked into the mirror and grinned. If you could leave out your last name, wouldn't it make sense that you could leave out your class as well?
Jaune Arc
Lightbreaker
Classes and titles didn't have anything that could help discern between the two of them. And being ogled for a rare class (first of its kind actually!) was much better than being hunted for being a dimensional mage.
Teleport was simply his passive, the class "Lightbreaker" seemed to be a mix of offensive magic like arcane bolt/rend, and skills capable of looking through illusions, like dimensional comprehension.
Though he would never reveal its true name. "Gaze of the Beholder" seemed quite catchy for something that could simply glance through illusions.
Jaune was ashamed of his rare, but rather useless class, and therefore hid it. The entire thing centred around being a counter to illusionists, which wasn't overly useful, since illusionists were a rare class as well. The reason why his skills were so unfitting for an illusion breaker was the fact that he'd taken the divergent skills offered every time.
After all, shatter illusion was only good against a certain group of people. Arcane bolt, however, did damage to everything, with a small chance of disrupting light-based illusions.
Jaune deliberately stopped thinking about how he could display Lightbreaker as a class. He was getting ahead of himself. While happy he had chanced upon something so utterly versatile, especially for someone in his position, he shouldn't rush in creating the story of how his supposed class worked. Hell, he could maybe gain another title and use that.
Warrior of the Seas sounded like something you could get if you fought enough naval battles… It was better to start his planning when he had come down from his happiness high. So that's what he did.
Stopped thinking about it. Helped the sailors. Starting the ship up always took more effort than keeping it sailing, and with his amateurish help they had probably set off five minutes earlier.
Jaune stretched out his senses to their maximum, expecting an ambush or something as they sailed out of Kuo Kuana's dock. The town hadn't really made a good impression on him so he was a bit more paranoid than usual. He relaxed when they sailed out of sight of it, and walked back towards his cabin, intentionally scuffing his feet against the wood beneath him and walking heavily so as to not startle the assassin in his room.
It was his room; he refused to knock. If she wasn't listening intently enough and he came upon her in an embarrassing situation then it was her own fault.
He found her sleeping, in the same position he'd left her. Back to the wall, knees drawn to the body with the head resting on them, hands resting on her daggers. Well, she was pretending to sleep, anyways. Probably just didn't feel like interacting with him.
Now that Jaune looked at her, face clear of all the negative emotions marring it before, he noted she was quite the beauty. The probable baggage kind of ruined any attraction he might have felt though. From his interactions with her, he was able to discern that she had been redeemed, or was seeking redemption. Redeemed for what he did not know, but she was too much of an assassin to have been raised as anything but. ...And maybe, being a mage, his prejudices against the class were showing.
But if even an assassin felt that a crime needed redeeming, then it must have been a hefty one indeed. Was that why she'd warned him about his would be robbers? An attempt at doing good to mask the evil of her past. She has most likely turned over a new leaf only recently. She was too emotional about the subject for it to be an old wound. In general, too emotional for an assassin. Whatever had made her attempt a change must have happened recently.
And the outfall was big enough that she was fleeing to another continent, to attend a hero school of all things. After all, what other destination would a sixteen, seventeen-year-old assassin seeking redemption going to the city of Vale have? Missions you could receive from Beacon were all centred around helping or saving people, after all.
Redemption, absolution. It was a pursuit of freedom. Freedom from one's own conscience.
Jaune tilted his head as he observed her still form.
What have you done, Blake?
-/-
The anguish of the fallen absolves our eyes
'Til beauty shines in all that we can see.
Murder is our scourge; yet it has made us wise,
And fighting for our freedom, we are free.
The Poem was not created by me. It is a slightly altered and shorter version of "Absolution" by Siegfried Sassoon.
I released this chapter today since it got edited a few hours ago, and I didn't want to wait until next week to update the story.
Warning though, I haven't even started on the next chapter yet. It might take a while for me to write it, officialy declaring this story on hiatus again. If anyone still remembers, the story also went on hiatus for two months approx. six months ago.
Been writing more original fiction than fanfiction these days, (Find my original fiction on RoyalRoad; same username.) And the fanfiction I've been writing hasn't been of the RWBY variety. I wrote two chapters of "Living with Loops", a Gilderoy Lockhart time-loop story. And I've recently started writing another gaymer Self-insert in the Harry Potter fandom.
bor902
professional illiterate
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I'm going to be taking this down and rewriting it into a original story. I made it so AU that I only need to change the names of the characters and the Grimm anyway. Maybe it will get as popular as 'fifty shades of grey' afterwards lol, that was recycled twilight fanfiction. (Going to rewrite more than just the names of the characters and the monsters of course, I now have two more years of writing experience under my belt so I'm sure I can make it way better.)
Doing this mostly because its almost an original anyway, and I lost the motivation to write this thing since I felt very constrained by the few RWBY concepts I actually kept.
Doing this mostly because its almost an original anyway, and I lost the motivation to write this thing since I felt very constrained by the few RWBY concepts I actually kept.
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Going to put it on Royalroad? I'm assuming, then after getting a following built up, rewrite parts of it again after getting more experience and edit/correct/improve/add content for an amazon release?
bor902
professional illiterate
- Location
- wherever i am at the moment
RoyalRoad, I already have some originals there by the way, if you wanna check em out. My newest and the one I actually plan to continue is "Living a Long Life as a Legend".
I don't know what I'll do if my originals ever get a big following, I'll decide when it comes to that.
By the way, now is the time to tell me in which ways my story sucks (and what's good, so I keep it), since I'll be rewriting it.
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Will do tomorrow when I have the time to read through the full story.
bor902
professional illiterate
- Location
- wherever i am at the moment
I've gotten a lot of feedback that the story loses some quality after Jaune arrives at Brorusalem, especially the Black arc.