I am crossposting this story from other sites, but I suggest hopping on Questionable Questing if you would like to see some character portraits. Or join me on Discord, server code is vN7sTYhEp6
I will be posting four chapters daily on this site until it catches up with other sites.
The adventurer trio ran along the gorge towards the awaiting Grimm. The narrow pass had potholes from the bombardment by the troops, and the st of the white phosphorous was sputtering out as they ran past it. The smell of burned chemicals and dead Grimm had Fie wrinkle her nose, but she forged on.
In the distance, Jaune could see the massive and armored forms of a dozen Ursa Major, a score of Alpha Beowulfs, a handful of Deathstalkers, more Alpha Creeps, and other lesser Grimm that were held back by their older kin. Any one of those Grimm could be a catastrophe in the making, capable of fttening out an entire vilge by their lonesome. Jaune wasn’t worried, though; while his Aura at a little over 20%, he had faith in his abilities and, more importantly, Fie and Sara. His concern, however, lies in the most dangerous of the Grimm in the very back.
A trio of Goliaths, a couple of Beringels, and a lone Centinel. He scowled; this was the second time he had encountered a Grimm native to Solitas here in Sanus. That Centinel needs to be their highest priority, or else they risk it evolving into a Cenitaur. None of the Goliaths were over a hundred years old; the damn creatures were simply born that dangerous. He hit the jackpot with the rest of the Grimm, however, as most of them were easily over a hundred. He hoped the Creator would still be generous if they fell to Sara or Fie instead of him.
Speaking of… Jaune attached a line of Aura to his companions to keep an eye on them during the coming fight with Search. The aspiring huntsman noticed that the adventurer duo were not going as fast as they should have, and he huffed at how they were slowing down for his sake. Running in a straight line relied more on his STR rather than his AGL, so he sped up to be on Sara’s right while Fie was on her left.
“What’s the pn, Sara?”
“Hit them hard with enough firepower to warrant a war crime hearing.” He snorted but then coughed from the bad chemical smell, reminding him that white phosphorus was illegal in many pces, “The terrain should work to our advantage, but we’ve never fought together before. Both of us can take care of ourselves, so don’t worry trying to match up or down to us. I’ll take point, Fie will do her own thing. You just take potshots with your gun, but if you see an opportunity, go for it.”
Fie piped up, “If you can aggro that Centinel so we can finish it quickly, that would be nice. Fighting a Cenitaur is… not fun.”
“Heh, will do, Kitty. Let’s go!”
‘Time to go Overdrive! I think a 50% boost in AGL should be more than enough to handle this. Maybe another 27% in PER, just in case? Hmm, why not go for another 23% in STR and round it all up to 100%? I got the Aura to spare.’
Stats:
Aura Points: 1900/10,000 (200/hr) (DEBUFF to 100/hr, 10:52 hours remaining)
Strength (STR): 100/81
Vitality (VIT): 98/98
Dexterity (DEX): 85/85
Agility (AGL): 93/62
Perception (PER): 70/55
Intelligence (INT): 93/93
Temporary Perk gained!
Juggernaut: Unlocked at 100 STR. Whether you bowl over weaklings or throw them like rag dolls, your strength shall prevail over all. Muscle Power!!
Jaune could feel his Aura infusing with his joints and tendons, his nerves were giddy, and all of his movements simply seemed smoother. His muscles bulged, not to the point where he himself got bulky, but their very nature hardened. His vision sharpened, his hearing intensified, and so did his sense of smell…which made the stench of chemicals almost overwhelming. He idly wondered how Fie could handle everyday life with her insane PER. There were a dozen other senses that were also improved, such as his bance, but the sheer crity of everything…It made it so tempting to keep his PER permanently boosted.
Boosting his stats to the safe limit didn’t have any adverse effects, and it felt completely natural compared to when he was in the cave. Most importantly, he could still enhance his abilities and power with Aura in addition to his Sembnce boost.
Challenges issued!
Sy a Goliath with style
Reward: One magic point.
Sy the hidden leader of the Grimm
Reward: One magic point
Bonus Challenge!
Sy the Centinel before it evolves
Reward: One magic point
“Jump!”
The warning barely came from Fie before all three of them instantly jumped up high, avoiding a mole-like-Grimm emerging from the ground. Jaune bnched as he had never seen one of those before. They could only see its head, and It was the size of a truck, making him think that it must be the size of the Drake he killed! It looked like a giant mole rat with huge burrowing cws trying to free itself from the rocky ground.
It screamed in frustration at the loss of its prey, but for some reason, it was unable to move. Jaune found out why as he saw a brown sludge-like Glyph holding it in pce. All of this happened in the span of a single second, his enhanced stats allowing him to swiftly notice his surroundings and process what happened. Even then, what happened next still took him by surprise.
Sara aimed her gun, Joker, at the Mole Grimm and used her Lightning Dust to unch something metal at it. The gun barely made a fizzling sound, and whatever was shot nailed the Grimm in its pte-covered head. It was a six-inch steel spike. The Grimm barely felt the ordinance hitting it, as its armor was too thick to be penetrated so easily. Jaune didn’t have time to comment before the woman next to him burst out into purple lightning, yellow lines of LD coursing through her coat and dress. She aimed her electrifying sword downwards, and gave him a cheeky grin before disappearing from his sight with a fsh and loud thundercp.
Jaune nded and turned to the crashing sound from where the Mole Grimm was. At first, he thought Sara would use her gun as an overpowered railgun with the help of Dust, but she certainly beat his expectations. The A-Rank Adventurer had somehow used her Sembnce to turn herself into lightning, and using the steel rod she unched as a lightning rod, became a Thunderbolt that bsted the Grimm to smithereens. The thing didn’t even know it was dead, as Jaune could see its head was completely gone and what remained of its body twitching before disintegrating. All the while, Sara looked unscathed from the insane attack. Heck, her Aura barely dropped by less than a hundred.
He was willing to bet that her Dust reserves would be another story.
Jaune stared bewilderedly at the older woman as she aimed her gun at him. Small glyphs formed near the tip before shooting a veritable red ser storm that split like a spider web when it approached him and struck a trio of Beowulfs that attempted to sneak on him, shredding them to burned pieces.
“Get your head back in the game, Blondie. That was just the overture.”
The Mole’s death seemed to be the signal that the Grimm were waiting for as they all charged. Jaune instantly drew his gun and fired at the nearest Grimm, an Ursa Major, trying to hide the embarrassment of losing track of the fight. The bear Grimm was a tough one, over a hundred years old, and the regur metal round barely made a crack in its skull. It tried to swipe at him, but Jaune dodged its telegraphed attacks easily before unloading his entire cylinder in the same spot as it finally succumbed to the st bullet and had its nonexistent brains blown up.
‘This is taking too long.’
The blonde adventurer emptied his gun, storing the spent cases, and, using a trick he practiced on the road, reloaded it through his storage. This time, it was all FDRs.
Something pinged his senses as it approached him, but he knew who it was. Fie nded on his right shoulder; he noticed that she had her goggles on and barely felt her weight, then she jumped back into the sky. She maneuvered herself in midair by firing short bursts of wind from her guns and then regur rounds at the various Grimm nearby, dragging their attention towards her and practically forming a train of them as they chased her. She would barely nd for a split second before she would be back in the air again.
One of the Grimm, another Ursa Major, ignored Fie in favor of striking at the one that killed its kin. Jaune aimed his gun to meet it, only for the slightest tremor behind him to have him dodge sideways. A Death Stalker tried to stab him in the back, but he was having none of that. Suffice it to say, Jaune had grown a great distaste for the scorpion Grimm. He didn’t even bother using his weapons, depositing his gun in Storage, before he grabbed the offending tail and used his prodigious strength to break off its stinger that was stuck in the ground.
The Death Stalker hissed in pain but didn’t get a chance to recover before Jaune lifted the Grimm from the ground and smashed it at the charging Ursa, fttening it. Tail still in hand, Jaune again lifted the Death Stalker and smashed it on the ground before lifting it once more and smashing it one final time at the recovering Ursa, finally killing them both.
A roar of thunder followed by a searing cold grabbed his attention as he saw Sara had frozen the train of Grimm following Fie before bsting them with Lightning. The younger girl threw a grenade at the surviving Grimm to finish them off. Jaune focused back on his fight as a loud trumpeting sound erupted. The Goliaths had started their charge, and one of them was heading right for him.
The massive beast was…well, massive! It was easily the biggest Grimm he had ever seen, twice the size of the Drake. It was sluggish in its movements, but its rge form allowed it to cover the distance toward him swiftly enough.
Jaune aimed his gun at the beast and unleashed a hail of fire at its chest. His small stature, in comparison to the beast, allowed him a perfect angle to shoot under its trunk and tusks. The FDRs caused devastating damage, melting through the armor pting of the Grimm, but the sheer size of the Goliath made it endure them well enough as it approached. Eventually, Jaune ran out and had to reload, but he noticed a noticeable gap in its armor. A gnce at his foot found that the Death Stalker’s stinger was still there and shining gold from venom. A wicked idea formed in his mind.
The Goliath was barely a few seconds away from trampling him before Jaune stored his gun, grabbed the stinger, and charged at it. He deftly dodged a swing from its trunk and jumped to the gap he made before stabbing the beast with the venomous stinger.
Honestly, Jaune wasn’t even sure if Grimm venom would work on other Grimm, but considering that he was the recipient of this particur type of venom, he had high hopes that it would work. Regardless, he watched with satisfaction as the stinger injected its venom and disintegrated in his hands. As close as he was to the beast’s metaphorical heart, as he honestly had no idea how Grimm anatomy worked, it was only a matter of time before the beast would colpse.
The Goliath bsted a pained trumpet from the stab and tried to wack him away. With no stinger to hold onto, Jaune agilely scaled its cracked armor while avoiding its trunk. The elephant-like- Grimm’s movements were already slowing, and its pained trumpets were getting weaker, clearly, the venom was doing its job. It was still dangerous, however, and with it unable to see its prey, it switched targets to the nearby Sara, who was fighting her own Goliath. Jaune had managed to climb to the beast’s back, and he could feel through the link he established with Sara that she saw the other Goliath coming but was hesitant to shoot it with him on its back.
Not wasting any time, Jaune moved quickly to its head, pulled out his gun, this time loaded with regur rounds to not get burned by his own FDRs, and fired at the weakest part of the skull he could find until its armor broke. The beast was getting even slower, and he could almost imagine it moaning pitifully from pain, but its inherent nature to abhor humans kept it going. Jaune had no pity for it, however; he stored his gun and drew his sword for the first time that day. Without hesitation, he stabbed the Goliath in its exposed neck.
No matter how sharp or tough Crocea Mors was, however, it was too small to do any significant damage to a beast of that size. Jaune could channel Aura into the bde and easily kill the Goliath the same way he killed the Drake, but he had a better idea to conserve his Aura as he felt Sara was about to finish her own opponent. A quick gnce showed that her Goliath was utterly wrecked from the prodigious use of Dust it suffered, with nearly its entire half facing him burned out and missing most of its armor. He looked at Sara, and somehow through the Aura link they had, she understood his intentions and ran towards him, thus luring her own Goliath after her, which ran with a noticeable limp.
Jaune waited for the st possible moment when both beasts were close enough and twisted the bde in the Goliath’s spine, forcing it to turn at the st second towards its kin. Sara easily jumped away as both beasts collided with each other, and out of pure luck, Jaune’s unwilling steed impaled its kin with one of its tusks through its unprotected flesh. He withdrew his sword and jumped away just as they both colpsed to their deaths.
Landing next to Sara, he warily looked around for any more attackers, noticing that the Beringels were smashing the ground like angry monkeys. Jaune stared at them, confused, before ignoring them in favor of searching for the Centinel. The area they were fighting in was right where the gorge spilled into a rge courtyard, and several paths could be seen in the distance that led to the different quadrants of the quarry. Right in the center of the courtyard was the huge excavator they saw from the entrance.
Jaune clicked his tongue in annoyance as he couldn’t find the Centinel, and there were more of the lesser Grimm heading their way. He gnced at Sara, who using this lull in the fighting to top off the Dust vials on her gun.
“So… You’re pretty good using Glyphs.”
Sara hummed as she finished reloading her gun, magazine in the hilt holding regur ammo and the strange compartment under the barrel that held the metal spikes. Instead of relying on Dust Rounds, she was clearly talented enough in Dust Casting to coat the regur rounds with elemental Dust.
She took off her coat and a vial of ground Lightning Dust and another of Earth Dust, then sat on the ground. Jaune stared at her in disbelief as the woman had the audacity to weave Dust into her coat right in the middle of a warzone. “I’ll have you know I was top of my css back in Ats. I may never be on the level of a Schnee, with their natural affinity towards Glyphs, but I am pretty confident in my Dust Casting. You’re doing quite well, too. Quite the strong young man, aren’t you?”
Jaune smiled wryly as the older adventurer coated her hand in Aura and levitated the Dust from the vials and into her coat. She had stopped flirting with him since st night, probably still embarrassed about how he literally saw right through her thoughts.
He took aim at an advancing Creep and zily blew its head off, “Perks of having an enhancement Sembnce. Aside from increasing my physical abilities, I can still enhance myself with Aura like normal. I just wish I had more time to recover my Aura, I could have cleaned up this entire canyon with one good swing of my sword.”
Sara finally finished her weaving and stood back up, putting on her coat and drawing her weapons. “That’s a bold cim. Any eye on that Centinel yet?”
The blonde man shook his head in annoyance, “Nope. Do you think we should help Fie?” He pointed to where Fie was running circles around the st Goliath. Somehow, she had her scarf stretching around and through the Grimm’s hind and front legs in a zigzag pattern. How the scarf could stretch so much, he attributed to Dust Weaving bullshittery.
“Nah, she got it handled. Oh look, it's almost gonna trip.”
Sure enough, the Goliath, after turning around itself for so long, finally appeared to have dazed itself and was gradually losing bance with its feet entangled. Fie, who had been taking potshots at it with her Chasers but to little effect, suddenly stopped as the Grimm trumpeted in anger and tried to charge her… only to face fault stupidly. The cat-faunus rummaged in one of her pockets and produced some sort of package that Jaune couldn’t recognize. Then, she bounded off towards the massive head of the Grimm, dodging its filing trunk, pnted the package right between its eyes, fiddled with some kind of device in her hands, then jumped back on the ground.
She grabbed her scarf, and this time Jaune could see her channeling Aura for a technique that caused the whole thing to rapidly shrink to its normal size and wore it around her neck like normal. Fie looked over to them and seemingly teleported by how quickly she moved to their side, her face as impassive as normal with nary a sweat as she returned her goggles over her hair.
“Sup.”
Jaune chuckled at her as he shot another lesser Grimm dead, “You looked like you were having fun.”
Fie nodded her head rapidly with a small smile on her face while Sara sighed exaggeratedly. “Fie, aren’t you forgetting something?”
The young girl tilted her head cutely, yet Jaune could feel amusement emanating from her.
“Ah yes,” She turned to the now recovered Goliath and aimed the device in her hand at its head before pressing a comically rge red button.
“Boom.”
And Boom indeed, as the Goliath’s head was blown to smithereens. It must have been two hundred feet away from them, yet Jaune could feel the heat and wind of the explosive the girl pnted.
‘Portable high-powered explosives…Every gal has some for emergencies’
“Every gal, right Fie?” He looked at the girl as she pocketed her detonator and gave him a peace sign. He noticed that despite her bravado, her Aura was over a third gone. He filed away the contrast between both adventurers; one of them seemed to consume Dust a lot while the other relied heavily on Aura. He patted the girl on the head for a job well done.
“Need a break?”
The younger girl shook her head before stilling as she looked around the field. She turned this way and that as if looking for something before frowning as she noticed something. Sara, trusting her apprentice’s senses, looked warily as well.
“What is it, sweetie?”
“Centinel is underground. It's very sneaky, probably because it knows It's alone here, and they usually hunt in swarms.” Fie turned to Sara, “We have a bigger problem, though. I think the soldiers are under attack. I heard an explosion then screams.”
Both Sara and Jaune stilled. To be fair, they had been hearing gunfire for a while as the acoustics of the quarry allowed loud sounds like guns to travel for miles. They were too absorbed in their fights, however, and simply assumed the guards could handle whatever was thrown at them. They turned back to where they came from, but the entrance was too far away to be seen as they had rounded a bend. They were nearly two miles in from the entrance, and men screaming would not be heard at this distance; however, if Jaune strained his senses, he could almost hear something, though it could simply be his imagination.
“Are you certain, Kitty?” Jaune looked warily at the two Beringels that finally stopped making a racket smashing the ground, and seemed to be collecting the destroyed rocks. He had a bad feeling about them.
Fie nodded and looked to Sara for guidance. Sara bit her bottom lip as she thought before sighing, “We don’t have a choice. Fie, you are the fastest one of us. Return to the guards and provide aid. We'll finish here quickly and back you up.”
Fie nodded, “Take care,” and she was gone like the wind the way they came from. With his increased PER, Jaune could see that the girl was incredibly fast when running in straight lines but needed to stop to turn. Within a few seconds, she was beyond the bend.
Sara gnced at the setting sun and clicked her tongue, “Well then, Jaune, we really are burning daylight here. Let’s clean this pce up, or else we’ll miss dinner. Eyes on the ground, the Centinel could come out any–”
A slight tremor was all the warning he got before Jaune grabbed Sara and jumped as far as he could. The Centinel tore out of the ground, biting at thin air. It hissed angrily at missing them, but Sara was already firing Joker at it, sticking another steel spike into its carapace. It dug deeply, but the Grimm frantically dove down into the ground. Clearly, it had seen what had happened to the Mole Grimm earlier.
Jaune and Sara did not have the luxury to even nd as one of the Beringels threw a massive boulder at their airborne figures. Jaune had a split second to watch the boulder rapidly approach them and he didn’t even have time to acknowledge that there was nothing he could do to block it. Sara didn’t agree. Without hesitation, the experienced adventurer kicked the young man out of the boulder’s path before channeling Aura through Ace, and a rge Hard-Light shield formed in front of her.
All of this happened in a heartbeat, with barely any time for either of them to shout a warning or do anything else against the surprisingly coordinated attack of the Grimm. Jaune could only watch in horror as the boulder crashed into the shield Sara created, sending her tumbling dozens of feet away and only stopping when she crashed into the canyon wall with the boulder burying her under rubble.
“SARA!”
He barely got up before another tremor in the ground had him jumping backward just as the Centinel emerged. This time, Jaune was ready and emptied all ten rounds of his revolver at it in the span of two seconds, Aura-coating the gun to stabilize it as its double-action nature came into full effect. Sadly, he was using the standard .500 FMJ, which, although penetrated deeply into the Grimm, did not damage it as much as he hoped due to its rger-than-normal size.
The Centinel hissed in pain before it dove underground again. Jaune quickly turned to Sara but could not see her under the boulder. He hesitated, wanting to dig her out, and was about to check on her through their link but was distracted by the sound of tumbling boulders. He risked a gnce towards the Beringels in case they were flinging more shit at him and nearly dropped his gun in shock at what he saw.
The boulders and rocks the two Grimm have been collecting were floating in the air. It was almost as if he was watching an enormous robot made of stone mechashifting from a pile of rubble into a massive humanoid. It was easily thirty feet tall but extremely fat and bulky, yet cking a head. For just a second, he could see the face of what he now recognized as a Geist Grimm, leering at him from its massive torso before it retreated inwards, and only its mask was shown with a single red eye.
“Observe,” came his instinctual command.
Klu’Nci, Geist Grimm (Rock Golem Form)
Age: 513 years old
Description: The secret leader of this Grimm Horde, a Geist, is an ancient Grimm full of cunning and spite. It hides, biding its time as it commanded its minions to attack the humans who dare trespass on its ir.
Strengths: Practically invincible, can regenerate any limbs with surrounding debris
Weaknesses: Heavy body and ck of joins make it less agile
The aspiring huntsman gulped nervously, especially as he noticed the two Beringels on each side of the golem as if they were bodyguards to their king. With a calm that he did not honestly feel, Jaune reloaded his revolver with FDRs though he highly doubted it would be very effective against the Geist.
‘At least I will get five magic points if I kill the thing’
Just as he was about to make a pn of attack, the ground rumbled again. Jaune prepared for the Centinel to emerge, but this time it wasn’t being stealthy as it erupted near the Golem, and its shape was entirely different. Gone was the centipede look of the Grimm, and instead was a massive creature that looked like it had eaten a huge batch of rotten food with its bloated green belly. Jaune could still see the spike that Sara shot sticking out of its head.
“Of-fucking-course. Why not? Anyone else wants to join this party?”
Bonus Challenge Failed.
Secret Challenge Issued!
Sy the Cenitaur
Reward: One magic point.
“…and things were going so damn well too. You better be alive, Sara, or else I’m fucked.”
Some may ask why I had Sara be capable of using glyphs despite not being a Schnee. My answer to that is that it's never explicitly shown in the show that glyphs are unique to the Schnees, at least to my interpretation, although the wiki states otherwise. In the very first episode of the show, we see Glynda use glyphs against Roman and his Bullhead. Now this could simply be an aftereffect of her sembnce or the writers still undecided on where to take the story, but I decided that’s too limiting.
Instead, Glyphs can be learned by anyone who is willing to put the effort into it, for they are simple to learn but extremely difficult to master. HOWEVER, just as the Arcs have hereditary massive Aura reserves, the Schnees have a hereditary affinity to Glyphs, making them natural Dust Casters as Glyphs complement Dust Casting. Don’t worry, though; our favorite Snow Angel and her family still have their hereditary sembnce, which I will expand upon in ter chapters.
Suffice it to say, Weiss is one of my favorite characters in the show and shall feature heavily ter on. In fact, I’ve already left some serious hints in previous chapters on how Jaune has a connection with the Schnees, and no, it's not that joke about him seducing Winter.
