Jaune was panicking, that was an understandable reaction in his mind, as he looked up at the massive claw that was being dragged back through the damaged movement and tight confines meant the spear head was being driven further into the Grimm's body, but all that seemed to be doing was pissing the thing off further.

"Jaune, we need weapons!" Mr Vautz grabbing his shoulder broke him out of his panic, and Jaune realised he was shaking slightly as his body screamed for him to run.

But running wouldn't do him much good here, and their best chance was if they could hold the gate, so Jaune steeled his nerves and turned away from the gate as it shook under the impact of the Grimm once more. In addition to his cart, Mr Vautz seemed to have gotten the word about Jaune's presence out to the other villagers as well, Stoke the Forge meaning that even as Jaune was assessing what was in the hand cart he was working to mold the nearest villagers rake into a spear.

He had always thought that his first abilities were a bit… pointless, if he was entirely honest, as all they did were things that a good Blacksmith could do with a forge and basic tools.

"There." Handing the finished 'weapon' to the Baker who he had grabbed it from, Jaune pointed to two of the most recent arrivals, a Carpenter and his Gatherer daughter.

"We need barricades, the gate isn't going to hold!" Ansel had a Wood Pile near the gate, off to one side, so the two could get to work immediately, though how much they would be able to do without tools was questionable.

As the Carpenter said something to his daughter, Jaune was assessing what other metal he had available.

The remaining pieces in his hand cart were mostly small traps such as bear traps and capture cages, for the Hunters and Gatherers, nothing particularly useful against Grimm, as well various crafting and hand tools. There was also 16 horseshoes, a large cauldron full of cutlery that the villagers had obviously grabbed from the nearest houses, and a dozen steel 'stones' that Anders had commissioned for his daughters sling, not exactly much in the way of accessible weapons.

If he had another half an hour, he could melt all the metal in the cauldron and use that to craft some actual swords, but in the time he had now he would only be able to… Suddenly Jaune had an idea, though it was very much an 'all or nothing' type of idea.

"Get the cauldron upstairs with the sling shot!" It was slightly unnerving to Jaune that he was the one giving the orders, as he was the youngest of the small group by at least 5 years.

"O-Of Course Jaune." But as Mr Vautz and one of the other villagers jumped to the task he had given them with barely a pause, he realised that most of them were too panicked to think about tactics or strategy right now.

*CRACK*

The gate heaved once more under the attacks of Grimm, and there were now several points that were showing signs of severe damage. Whilst several people moved away, Jaune assumed to help the carpenters with the wood pile, those with weapons were doing their best to form into a defensive line.

"Move it people!" The weathered shout from behind the swiftly forming line helped relieve some of the tension that had been building in Jaune's stomach, the villagers parting to allow four members of Ansel's Soldier Caste through, lead by the elder Anders.

Two of them, both simple Fighter Classes dressed in chainmail armour and armed with spears, stormed past Jaune and the other villagers as Anders stomped up to him.

"You got a plan son? If not, I will take it from here." It was a moment that not even a month ago Jaune would have jumped on, his heart feeling like it would burst out of his chest.

"I was going to melt all of the metal in the cauldron and drop it on them." It wasn't exactly the most detailed plan, but it was the best he could come up with in the circumstances.

"Good, you do that lad, I will manage down here." With the burden of command removed from his shoulders, Jaune only just resisted physically breathing a sigh of relief, instead pulling his best attempt at a salute and turning away.

Even as he reached the stairs up to the wall, Jaune felt the entire structure shudder once more, the sound of wood splintering and cracking an ominous sign to say the least. He took the stairs two at a time, reaching the parapet just in time to see Fiona unleash another stone, the first of his metal 'bullets' zinging off into the distance with remarkable accuracy.

Mr Vautz was struggling with the cauldron by himself now, the other villager who had come with him nowhere in sight, so Jaune moved over and grabbed the cauldron from the older man.

"Go find more arrows and stones!" Mr Vautz seemed grateful for the chance to get off the wall, and as Jaune watched Fahren rear back as a Geckan reared it's head over the wall he could see why.

Fahren managed to recover remarkably well though, arrow drawn, notched and released in the time if took for Jaune to start heating the metal in the cauldron to make a weapon. The Geckan's head was literally pinned to the top of the battlements as the Hunter swiftly resumed the grim task of trying to kill the Grimm still approaching the wall.

That left Jaune with a cauldron full of slightly melted metal of various types. It was heavy enough that he would struggle to move it too far by himself, but there were only seven or eight steps to the hatch in the middle of the gatehouse, so despite his screaming muscles Jaune covered the distance and dropped it next to the hatch with a grunt. Sticking one hand into the Cauldron, and activating Stoke the Forge once more, Jaune focussed mainly on the two thick bolts that fixed the hatch in place.

Each was almost a foot long and an inch thick, put in place by his father almost twenty years before after a Scavenger had used it repeatedly to enter the village without being noticed and stole quite a few of the village's valuables. Time and the seasons had not been kind to the condition of the bolts and the fixing points keeping them in place, something Jaune confirmed when he hooked a foot to the nearest of the two bolts and tried to yank it open.

The bolt didn't even budge, the thick coating of rust and other gunk meaning that it would be impossible for a normal person to open. Looking into the Cauldron, and satisfied with the slowly growing amount of molten metal he could see there, Jaune raised his hand and flicked the molten metal still stuck to his hand off before reaching down with both hands and grasping the bolts, Stoke the Forge remaining active the entire time.

It took barely a second to 'burn' off the rust attached to bolts, another to melt through both the bolts and the latches keeping the hatch in place, Jaune joining the blobs of molten metal now almost dripping from his hands together so that he could free a hand grab the metal ring hoop and open the hatch.

The entire gatehouse shook once more, and the almost deafening wrenching sound made it clear that he was out of time. So Jaune's free hand changed direction mid-reach, running his fingers across the hinges of the hatch as his other hand formed a long pole, his burning touch weakening the hinges enough for them to give way and the hatch to fall through into the mass of Grimm below.

Whilst he had originally wanted to slowly tip the contents of the cauldron down the hatch, to ensure that he didn't accidentally set fire to the gatehouse, all Jaune could do now was yank the cauldron across so that it was over the hatch and stab his hand into and through the metal. It hurt somewhat to punch through the base of the cauldron, despite the increased flexibility the metal offered when heated, and Jaune winced as his sleeve smouldered and burnt away on contact.

"WARE BELOW!" The call didn't come from Jaune, Fahren obviously had been paying enough peripheral attention to let out the warning as somewhere in the region of 50-80 kilograms of molten metal started to stream out of the newly created outlet and onto the Grimm below.

The effect was instantaneous, the roaring and howling that had been filling the air shifting almost immediately in pitch and meaning. From a young age, Jaune had been taught that most basic Grimm didn't act in ways that could be attributed to human or even basic animal behaviour, in the sense that they didn't react to pain in what would be considered an intelligent manner. Rather than try to avoid it or shy away, the Grimm would try and attack whatever was attacking them, in this case the stream of metal.

Judging by the experience he could literally feel flowing into him as the roaring continued, the heady feeling of gaining another level making him feel more than a little light headed, the Grimm weren't backing away from the threat.

*CRUNCH*

"It's through the gates!" As the Cauldron finished emptying, Jaune moved it to the side hurriedly, giving him a picture of the scene below.

The metal had killed at least a dozen of the attacking Grimm, creating a pile of cooling metal and Grimm corpses directly underneath the hatch almost twice his size, creating a barrier that was preventing the majority of the remaining Grimm from getting through. The large bear like Grimm that had breached the gate however, which Jaune vaguely remembered being called Ursa Minor, seemed to have gotten away with only a few burn marks, that he glimpsed as it forced its way through the splintering remnants of the left hand gate.

"Shit…" His mother would have his ear for cursing later, but Jaune felt it was a suitable reaction. Even as he stood and hurried over to the inner edge of the gatehouse, the remnants of the cauldron and the long pole in his hand more afterthoughts than anything else.

The Ursa had reared up after it passed through the gate, it's monstrous mask and black furred back only a couple of metres below Jaune's feet, the remaining Grimm pouring through around it.

"Loose!" The villagers had been busy under Anders direction however, the minute or so since Jaune had left them allowing them to construct some rudimentary barricades in the direct path of the Grimm if they intended to progress further into the village.

It seemed the rest of the villages small allotment of Soldiers had arrived as well, two Bowmen and a Crossbowmen leading the volley of projectiles that were fired or flung at the invading Grimm.

Most of them were aimed at the smaller Grimm, succeeding in downing two or three of them before the mixture of Geckans, Gaunts and Boarba's were at the barricades, though several of them were caught in the various traps that had obviously been set in a hurry as well. Anders was already at work hacking at the ones closest to the middle of the barricade, the other Soldiers standing at the ends of the barricade to catch those that got around it. Jaune winced as he saw Mr Vautz fall back with a pained cry, the Gaunt that had clawed him in the face whilst leaping over the barricade burying its teeth into the neck of another villager before it was stabbed by three other villagers.

It looked like the barricade would hold against the smaller Grimm for now, even if the odd one got over it, but that was only until the Ursa decided to attack. And given Jaune's difficulty with killing the Gaunt even with his high Strength, the other villagers and even the Soldier class would no doubt struggle to even pierce the Ursa's skin. And all it would take was the Ursa to kill a few more people and the negativity would summon more Grimm.

"Jaune, I think that's the last of… What are you doing?!" What Jaune was doing, to evoke such a response from Fiona as she obviously finished either the last of the Grimm or her metal 'bullets', involved jumping up to stand on the top of the inner parapet.

The long pole, which he had originally planned on using to keep the metal he had poured into the gatehouse hot enough to act as a barrier to any further Grimm, was already morphed into long gauntlets that would be the closest he would get to armour. Even as they cooled through his use of Quench, the newest skill in his itinerary that he had gained barely two weeks ago, Jaune was already morphing the remnants of the cauldron. It was only an iron cauldron, nothing special, but as his hands moved over the surface Jaune smiled at the shape that was formed almost from muscle memory rather than active thought.

Crocea Mors, or at least a copy of the blade he had secretly stashed in his room, felt comfortable in his hands despite the lack of a proper grip or even a crossguard. But as the Ursa dropped down with an ear ringing roar, Jaune knew he didn't have any time to make it look pretty. Sharpening the blade as best he could, by Quenching the end of the blade before he finished forming it and snapping pieces off, Jaune leapt forwards.

It was a stupid idea, that was what went through his mind as he fell towards the black mass infront of him, but there wasn't exactly any way to stop himself at this point. Crocea Mors slammed into the Ursa's back a moment before the rest of Jaune did, and for a moment Jaune was terrified the sword would snap. The sword actually bent slightly, but then pierced through the skin of the Ursa with Jaune's full weight behind it.

*ROAR*

The pained cry of the massive Grimm, along with the sudden bucking maneuver it immediately began to perform, nearly threw Jaune completely off his unintended perch on the thing's back. Thankfully his grip on Crocea Mors held, much to the complaints of his unprotected fingers as the rough iron handle cut into them, the half buried blade sinking deeper into black fur and flesh as Jaune jerked back and forth, the white bone plates that intermittently dotted up from the thing's back cutting through his clothes and into flesh.

As the Ursa started lumbering forwards though, one of its paws smashing through the nearest of the erected barricades, Jaune realised his 'heroic' leap hadn't been quite as decisive as he had thought it would be. Whilst he had clearly wounded the Ursa, the black oil like liquid oozing over his body making that clear along with the roaring and bucking, it wasn't dead or dying anytime soon.

And if he pulled his 'sword' out to try and stab it again, chances were he was going to be bucked off. So, with no other ideas jumping out at him, Jaune activated Stoke the Forge. He wasn't sure how his skill would act as he poured heat from his hand down into Crocea Mors, doing his best to envision the heat transfering down the blade and into the Ursa.

*ROAR*

"Whatever you're doing lad, keep it up!" Anders and the others seemed to have finished the other Grimm, judging by what little Jaune could catch as the world around him blurred, the Ursa bucking almost frantically for several seconds before suddenly collapsing forwards and bursting into ash and dust.

Though even as Jaune crashed to the floor, the feeling of something in his leg giving way under the unexpected impact, his focus was on the lump of blackened metal and what looked like brown and green crystals that had appeared at the end of his Crocea Mors. His energy fading along with his consciousness, Jaune barely had time to note the new knowledge in his head, the skill he had felt himself gain when he gained the level at the gate finally becoming clear in his mind…

Passive Skill: Purge the Impure

A/N: First off, apologies to everyone, I've had this chapter pretty much finished for a couple of weeks, but as I hadn't decided which path I really wanted to take this story I didn't want to head down the 'wrong' track without meaning to. I had ideas ranging from 'one off insta-forge' skill with an insane cool down that he used to effectively turn all that metal in the cauldron into a spiked iron barricade, to this one.

So, if you can't tell, Jaune's skills and focus will be more than a little different than they are in Coeur's fic. I won't explain in complete detail, but think of it as battlefield forging… Of a sorts. Something that Jaune's Stoke the Forge makes him almost uniquely useful for.

Still not decided what to do with magic users fully yet, though I do want to avoid the 'mages are OP' thing most gamer fics tend to go for. Any suggestions on the above points are always welcome.

Leave a review, let me know what you want to see more of etc. Next chapter will be a time skip, as we start to introduce characters and deal with the fallout of this particular event.

Thanks to all my supporters for their continued support. Lost the car recently so the contributions made are helping me cope with all the additional expenses that come with not being able to get myself places easily, while still having a little time for writing.

Defias Out!