RWBY Re: Jaune Arc - Chapter 39

“Where’s the rest of your team?” Jaune asked.

Sun scratched his head before saying, “Well, they’re going to meet us at Argus, we have the Winter Harvest and the Vytal Festivals coming up, it was the only thing they could find on such short notice since all the transportation sources for the next few weeks are completely booked. Why do you think I stowed away on the ship, you know my school paid for our ticket right?”

“You wanted to explore,” Jaune stated.

Sun nodded his head, “That’s right! An adventurous guy like me had to come early, otherwise, I would have to spend winter break stuck in Haven, we get snowed in a lot down there.”

Having settled things with Sun, Jaune then told them that they would be spending a few hours on the aircraft and they would be getting off at a certain place.

After boarding the ship, everyone sat apart from each other, and Ruby sat between Jaune and Yang, along the way, Jaune heard a very interesting conversation that almost made his eyes pop out of his head.

“You know, this last week or so, I’ve been having strange dreams about Jaune.” Ruby whispered to Yang.

Yang grinned and teased, “Oohh! What kind of dreams, kinky dreams?”

Jaune coughed and made the two jump, Ruby quickly moved Yang farther away from Jaune and said, “No, it’s weird, it was like I was reliving the first semester of Beacon, only things were, different.”

Yang lifted a brow, “How so?”

“Well, for one, Jaune was a total goof, not that he isn’t still a total goof, but this version was way more…how do I say it…less skilled.”

“Well, things played out similar, it’s just…Jaune had a crush on Weiss, and I’m pretty sure, I wasn’t attracted to Jaune in that way, at least not a first.”

Yang tilted her head and gulped as Ruby continued to explain what happened in her dream, “During the moments I’ve been dreaming, they are all a connected continuing series of events, like a movie or something, and I’m always viewing it as if it were a 3rd person point of view.”

Yang turned to Jaune and felt a little off, “Could Ruby have come back as well, I have to talk to Jaune about this.” She then turned to Ruby and said, “Well, I don’t know what to make of that, other than you really have the hots for a guy if you even fell for his dorkier version.”

Ruby growled, “Yang, I being…”

“Were here!” The pilot’s voice came over the intercom, Jaune smiled and stood up and said, “Well guys, time to jump.” as he walked over to the hatch and opened it up.

They were hovering about 15 feet over a vast green plain of grass, for hunters, a fall of this distance was nothing, quickly leaping off the ground, Jaune waited for the rest to follow before saying, “Welcome to the Plains Lutetia, the final battleground of the 100 year wars, also known as the Great War.”

Nora raised her hand, “Yes, Nora?” Jaune pointed her out.

“Why are we here, is this where your family lives?” Nora asked innocently.

Jaune shook his head, “No, Nora, this is not where my family is, everyone, use your perception skill.”

“As you can see, this place even after eighty years since the war’s end, this bloodstained land still has a great deal of negativity attached to it. This is what we would call a low-grade spawning ground for them. Drawn to and born by darkness, Grimm will populate places like this all over the world. I brought us here to gain experience, and collect broken weapons,” Jaune explained.

“Broken weapons?” This time Ruby called out.

Jaune smiled, of course Ruby would be pulled in by this, “Yep, normal people don’t really dare to come here, and hiring hunters to risk their lives excavating the land for artifacts, wouldn’t exactly net you any gain, so for eighty years, a treasure trove of Diamondnite has just been sitting here, I need a good supply of Diamondnite to reforge your weapons.”

“That’s can’t be the reason such a useful metal has gone unnoticed for so long,” Weiss shook her head.

“Would you start digging up land while you’re surrounded by deadly Grimm?” Jaune questioned.

It never occurred to Weiss what one would have to do during an archaeological dig, “There are bodies buried under layers in mass graves, shallow ones that are just a few feet in the ground because of some explosion in battle, the ones on the surface would be surrounded by Grimm, even then we would still have to search in waist-high grass. Can you manage all this without risking your life?”

Weiss ġrȯȧnėd before saying, “Then how do you propose we harvest the materials!?”

“We have a Pyrrha,” Jaune said holding his hands out to Pyrrha as if he were presenting her.

“Ah!” Pyrrha suddenly figured out what Jaune was after. “I can sense the metals nearby so we can just pull them out of the ground with my Semblance.”

“Smart Arc.” Yang nodded her head.

“So, we fight, Pyrrha collects, then we move?” Ren questioned.

Jaune nodded his head, “That’s the plan, Doremy is about 60 miles off in that direction, we’ll move towards that large bȧrėn hilltop before sundown and camp out for the night, if we wake up early, we can reach Doremy by tomorrow, before noon.”

“We’re camping out?” Weiss looked frustrated as she shouted.

“Relax, I made sure to pack plenty of supplies, cooked a few weeks worth of food, and I even bought a few luxury tents.” Jaune held up his thumb.

“I’m…well I am concerned about our living condition, what made me agitated was the fact you think we could sleep when we’re surrounded by Grimm,” Weiss shot back.

“Once again, relax, there’s some kind of something on that hill that keeps Grimm from approaching, as long as we get there, we’ll sleep soundly,” Jaune said as he turned around.

“Wait, how do you know all this?” Weiss shouted.

“Because my ancestor fought here and was praised as a hero, remember?” Jaune said shaking his head and equipped his training armor.

“Yep, I’m training to prepare for wearing full plate, because of my Aura levels, I can handle this easily, the real question is can you keep up?”

Nora grinned and pointed Magnhild towards the plains, “You heard our fearless leader, he’s got this, now let’s kill some Grimm!”

Ruby grinned and walked up next to Jaune’s side, “Okay everybody, let’s do this!”

Jaune grinned as he said, “Pyrrha, you take the front, guide us to the metals and we’ll cover you while you store them in your inventory, Sun you’re on protection duty, keep any and all Grimm away from Pyrrha so she can focus on collecting the materials.”

Motivated by the dėsɨrė of better weapons, the large team of Huntsmen charged into action, using Pyrrha as a metal detector, it only took them half an hour to find their first pile of remains.

Jaune grinned as he sensed a group of Antlion-Grimm called Sinkers, they were charging up from beneath the earth while a group of Beowolves was circling them from a distance of 20 feet.

Jaune pulled out his Black Egeal and shot at the ground below him, the rounds were made up of Augmented Earth Dust, so the moment the bullets buried themselves into the earth, a loud cracking noise was heard and the ground above them formed fissures on the surface, the empty space made by the Antlion’s presence was quickly filled up and was crushed to death by the small earthquake caused by Jaune.

“Take down the Beowolves while Pyrrha stores everything, then move to the next location,” Jaune shouted they blasted off towards their targets, with Ruby’s speed, she managed to cut down 4 Beowolves in a few seconds, Yang blast holes in the Beowolves with a few powerful punches, Nora lobbed grenades loaded with ice dust, which Weiss used her glyphs on to empower them even more.

Ren shot off dozens of rounds with blake, each hitting their targets with deadly accuracy, Pyrrha raised her arm pulling up dozens of broken armors, shields, and weapons with her semblance, once she pulled them close enough to see, she sent them into her inventory and moved to the front of the group, leading them to the next location.

As they moved to a large open area, they stopped again and took a defensive position around Pyrrha, once more, they were attacked by another group of Grimm, this time, they were large spider type Grimm called Crawlers, they were around half the size of the Deathstalker that they fought during initiation.

Jaune didn’t hold back as he raised his sword and surrounded it with Aura, now that his base Aura had grown, he could only use around 3% of his total Aura to encase Crocea Mors.

Without a second to spare, Jaune cleaved the Crawler down the middle and bisected the creature before moving on to the next one, Ruby and Yang teamed up by sling shooting Ruby into the nearest Crawler.

She blasted over and placed her Scythe blade into the top of the creatures head and ran down its body, a puff of Grimm ash shot out from behind Ruby as she kept her momentum while she lept to the next target.

Jaune and Ruby fought next to each other turning everything they touched with their blades into chunks of broken Grimm parts.

“Wow, look at them go!” Yang thought as she jumped up and punched one of the Spider Grimm directly on its back, creating a crater in the process.

Nora was having the time of her life as she smashed through countless spiders, “And, Smack, and, Smack! Die you eight-legged monstrosities!”

Sun’s real body acted as bait, he continued to smash away with his shot-gun 3-part staff, making a spectacle so that Ren and Blake, could continue to silently take out their targets, by combining their Semblances they could literally ȧssassinate them from the shadows. Ren’s kept them from being felt, and Blake’s semblance kept them from being seen.

There was only the sound of grass shifting before the two ȧssassin types sent up a pile of Grimm ash in every direction.

Weiss stabbed her rapier in the ground and pulled the trigger causing the new Antlion Grimm that was approaching to be buried by the ground shifting, and crushed by the pressure alone.

Weiss had to hand it to Jaune, this really was the right way to kill large underground types like the Antlions, as Weiss pondered how Jaune came up with the idea, Pyrrha pulled out a new pile of great war relics, along with some skeletons that were buried with their gear.

Pyrrha felt a little bad about doing this, it felt like she was grave robbing, however, she couldn’t deny that it would be better for the materials to aid humanity rather than just rot here.

After sending all the material to her inventory, she placed the body’s back in the ground and moved to the front of the group.

Once again they charged towards the large hill in the distance, it looked like it was made of pure stone with only a few patches of green here and there, the size of the hill was approximately 64 feet in height, and a little less than a mile in diameter across.

They continued to fight for almost several straight, only stopping to get healed by Jaune or having their Aura’s boosted so they could fight even quicker, by the time they reached the hillside, they had leveled up 6 times, all of them reaching level 10 in the process.

Jaune’s new stats were…

Name: Jaune Arc

Age: 17

Title: Reicarnated Hero: +25% to Aura Growth.

Class: Hunter Knight In Training – Level:10

Overall Level: 010

Experience: 91,430

Experience needed until the next level: 135,000

Condition: 50%

Constitution: 57 (+21 from Lv Up)

Defense: 65 (+25 Armor Bonus) (+24 from Lv Up)

Intelligence: 26(+12 from Lv Up)

Focus: 27(+13 from Lv Up)

Mana: 0

Battle Power: 223(+98 from Lv Up; +10 from increased Constitution.)

Aura: 4,612(+324 from Lv Up; x2 bonus acquired from Moondust Pendant)