Hey again! Another indeterminate amount of time, another chapter! Funny how that works, huh?
Thanks to Robert Waldron, Fridrod, LOLZMAN, Dakota, Ragy and Hydrolic for supporting me on Pa Treon! Truly, you guys are the best!
Repairing a Bullhead was a far easier venture when it was a part of the System. Jaune would have feared for the sanity of aeronautical engineers and the safety of his own life if he'd shown up and asked the airdock workers to repair what was essentially a mangled hunk of scrap and shrapnel.
As it was, Jaune made the wreckage appear on one of the landing pads, confusing the nearby workers beyond anything they'd ever witnessed before, clicked a button on a terminal that only he could see, and watched as the scrap metal floated in the air, bending and warping as it restored itself into the former vehicle it had once been.
[Achievement Complete!]
[Back From The Brink: Repair 10,000 vehicle HP in a single repair. Reward: 2 Superdense Steel Plates]
Vehicle achievements giving vehicle upgrades, that was appreciated. The onlookers who hadn't given up trying to understand promptly did so as he pressed thin air yet again, and the reassembled Bullhead became denser, armor plating increasing in protectiveness as it wrapped around the aircraft.
Further public amazement would continue as Jaune eyed the mounting brackets on the Bullhead's main door-frames, before eyeing his armaments menu.
It was a remarkably simple option to easily relocate the two AH-M72 miniguns from the Hellion to the Bullhead, almost criminally so. The weapons seemed to simply appear in place, as if they'd been there since the beginning, mounts attached and ready to be swung out and used at a moment's notice.
Not that he had any ammunition for them, though. That would have to go into the pre-flight preparation list. He stepped over to the weapons and quickly checked the stamped-metal label that was essentially hammered into the side of the minigun's main chassis, checking the caliber of round they took. It listed them as 7.62x51mm, a larger round than Sandstorm's 7.62x39mm, at least lengthwise. Then again, even if it was chambered in 9x19mm, a few thousand rounds per minute of anything was going to be lethal to most Grimm.
Of course, it wasn't chambered in 9x19mm, which meant that it would be a hefty expenditure to keep stocked, if he let Weiss use it again. Granted, she'd had good reason to open fire with it before, but considering the price of the high-caliber rounds, he might as well have loaded the thing with Lien with how much he'd hemorrhage.
He had money, but he didn't have money, if that distinction was even legible. Either way, having their main mode of transport armed would help to avoid issues like the gigantic Lancer that had nearly killed them all only a few days ago from happening again, which was always a plus.
Anybody still witnessing the strange visual spectacle got a chance to view the end of the impromptu, unintentional magic trick as Jaune made the aircraft disappear with a simple thought, making half his audience believe it was some strange semblance thing (which was, technically, correct), and the other half schedule appointments with their therapists, just to make sure what they'd just seen wasn't some kind of bizarre fever dream.
The instigator of said fever dream in question was already moving on with his day, either uncaring or unaware of the impact he'd just had, already on his way to his next destination, yet another supply surplus store, easily found with easier entry, and soon he was browsing aisles of various products from hiking boots to high-caliber ammunition, and most likely anything in between.
Partially, he was here for the latter, but there were a number of items that caught his attention regardless of his previous commiserations about his lack of spendable wealth. It also made him almost depressingly nostalgic, but that was a sensation that would have to be shelved for now, to be dealt with at a later time, if ever.
For now, he would settle with stocking up on items they'd most likely end up needing over however long their trip to Mistral would be, from premade meals in the form of ration packs to the occasional bits and pieces of raw materials he couldn't easily get with Gathering, and the aforementioned ammunition he was in need of to stock not only his vehicle of choice, but also himself and his accompanying teammates and assorted allies.
Or, rather, just himself and Blake, now that he thought about it. Pyrrha did use a firearm, of course, chambered in 5.56x45mm, but she lived and trained here in Argus until she travelled to Vale to attend Beacon, so her own training room at her mother's house was more than well-stocked, courtesy of many sponsorships over the years.
The man working the register (nearly as young as him but clearly eyeing him with a mix of admiration and jealousy) scanned his rather significant amount of items without so much as a blink at the amount of ammo, dumping it all into an eco-friendly cardboard box and then waiting for Jaune to pay.
He did so, quickly heaving up the box and unceremoniously dropping its contents into his inventory the moment he was outside the store, quickly compacting the cardboard and popping it back into the stack that was still waiting to be hauled back inside, no one the wiser.
Not that anyone would really care. He'd already done far more fantastical things today, a storage semblance was nothing in comparison. Actually, a storage semblance would more than likely explain all the things he'd done so far today, aside from how he'd spent his earlier morning, visiting family.
He'd been overdue a visit, Saphron aside, though when he told them he was only passing through, he'd been understood. Granted, they were disappointed, and had made that rather clear, but they knew that he had places he had to be, things he had to do. His father had known before Jaune had even said it, helping to temper the rest of his family's expectations.
He had to do this, it wasn't just a matter of want. He owed it to so many people to try and stop Cinder, to try and stop Salem and everybody else that worked for her. He'd always said he wanted to be a hero, and now here he was, knee-deep in all the muck that came with that job, with nothing to do but wade deeper, further, until he was submerged. Either he'd surface on the other side body and mind intact, or he'd flounder and get carried away. He had no way to know for sure except to keep going.
He'd be damned if he was going to sit this fight out. Somewhere out there was RRYN, somewhere out there was his enemy, and somewhere out there was his future, his destiny, his fate.
Jaune was no longer a passive participant in his own life, he was slowly starting to realize. His actions were his own, but more than that they also informed the actions of others. He was a leader, in more than just the Beacon-typical way. He didn't just lead a team of three other Hunters, in-training or not, but a group of like-minded souls with an objective.
They looked to him for orders, not just in combat, but in their path forward, and it was a responsibility he'd taken to with his usual lackadaisical attitude, putting in enough effort to pass like he was still in school.
This was not school, as had been made clear to him repeatedly over the past year. This was life or death, sometimes it was even life and death, specific circumstances notwithstanding. Minimum effort wouldn't cut it. Passivity wouldn't cut it.
Of all the wake-up calls it had taken to knock sense into his head, it was the Oathbreakers and the knowledge of Salem that had really kicked him into gear. One single Oathbreaker had nearly killed all of them, a man who seemed more monster than human, and he was their weakest member.
Khayin and Vox scared Jaune, he'd readily admit that, but it was Talon that terrified him the most. A mask as vicious and imposing as his own, but without the moral beliefs that Jaune held behind it, less a mask and more akin to a window into the man's very soul.
Adrenaline had been running rampant, but even now Jaune could close his eyes and see the glow-eyed skull staring back at him unflinchingly. The clear choice for a human skull, an option Jaune's own Abominae Mask did not have, was clear-cut imagery if Jaune had ever seen it.
The Oathbreakers were not Hunters, but they were Hunters, and he was their prey. Him specifically, in fact, but Jaune was not foolish enough to think that separating himself from his friends would spare them any pain. More than likely they'd just follow him anyway, and prevent him from actually being able to keep a watchful eye on them as they did him.
All of that didn't even take into consideration their fourth member, or Salem, or any of her lieutenants. This was a shadow war, and he'd essentially pulled himself right into the middle of it.
Gods, he hadn't even pulled himself in. Instead, something else had pulled him in, something far older than anything he could comprehend. 'The Power of the Gods', or so he'd been told. What was the System, really? Why hadn't these questions ever really come up before?
He knew the answer to that. Passivity, a gratitude to simply having any kind of power, and the power-tripping that came with suddenly discovering all sorts of new things like regeneration and magic.
The knowledge there was an older wielder out there, alive, but turned to the side of evil… it was like a mirror. He knew what Corruption really was, now, of that he had no doubt, and what Alsius Schnee's warning had meant. The man had once fallen to the side of evil much like this other wielder, and Jaune's own ancestor had fought him back, beaten him.
He didn't know if Calidus Arc had wielded the System, either. If he had, it meant that Corruption could be beaten, but it also meant that in order to stand on equal footing with a wielder, you had to be a wielder. Elsewise, if he hadn't possessed the System, Calidus had proven that strength and power didn't have to come as a gift, but could be earned. It also proved that Corruption was an inevitability, or at least impossible to remove, and that Jaune himself was as weak to it as anyone else. If Alsius Schnee, the legendary hero and second Defender of Mantle had fallen victim to it, Jaune was no more immune to it than the mystery wielder was.
There were more questions to be asked, and even more in need of answers, but as he was, right now, there was no way to tell. He needed additional information, more evidence. Even his hypotheses were barely formed as it was. There was no point in making claims now when he couldn't prove anything.
He needed Cinder. If he could make the sociopathic murderer talk, that would be a start. She'd have the answers he needed on Salem, and from there he could work it out. Of course, that meant he had to capture the woman who'd stolen the Fall Maiden powers, whom he'd last seen at level… what had it been, just over a hundred?
That was a far cry from his mere seventy-nine, and even then that wasn't taking into account the potential growth the psycho had undergone since he'd last seen her. She could be one-twenty or even one-thirty by now, he had no way to know.
Of course, Jaune was never one to play fair. Cinder might be a Maiden, but Jaune was a Wielder. He wasn't going to back down from that fight. He was going to prepare.
Cinder used fire. A lot of fire. In fact, he was pretty sure it was all Cinder knew how to use. It gave him an unspoken advantage. If he could make himself resistant to fire much like he was to the cold, Cinder would be all the less effective against him.
Jaune was going to need a lot of Dust. It was a shame Weiss hadn't inherited the SDC yet, it would make his plan a lot easier, not to mention cheaper. As it was, he had a few bits and pieces of Dust lying around.
More importantly to his Dust gathering were his Elementals. It was a lucky decision that he'd chosen to evolve Ignatius from Shard to Gem, because he knew that the Fire Elemental could grow Fire Dust from its crystalline body without issue. Granted, it was incredibly slow, and he might benefit in the short-term from evolving it from Gem to Divinity, to gain the plus two to his Fire Affinity, but that would then prevent it from growing the Dust he needed.
As it was, the Elemental had two Grade II crystals growing from its back, and Jaune was careful in the removal of them. Not that he needed to put in much effort, as they flaked off at the slightest Mana-infused touch.
Only a few strange looks were sent his way this time, though that was in part to the fact that he wasn't anywhere busy. One lone Atlesian soldier looked as if he wanted to take Jaune aside and question him, but one look at the teen was enough to dissuade anyone. Jaune was more heavily armed than most Atlesian Paladins.
The soldier wouldn't have been able to stop Jaune regardless, as he brought out a Hearthstone and promptly vanished within the portal it conjured, warping him to the safety of his Rest Area for the first time that day.
It was empty, as expected, everyone else was getting themselves ready for travel, part of which included Pyrrha convincing her mother that she was more than fine, and ready to go travelling.
Thetis Nikos was most likely not going to be happy about that.
It was necessary, though, Jaune knew. Pyrrha was his teammate, his partner. She'd been sitting out for too long, especially considering what had been done to her. To have to sit out the fight against the woman who'd put her on the sidelines would be more insulting than anything else Jaune could think of. He just hoped Thetis would understand. Jaune's own mother certainly did. It had come as a bit of a surprise to find out that Juniper Arc knew Thetis Nikos, but then again, why did that come as a surprise? He knew his mother had an active social life, and it made sense that she would gravitate towards those who had a lot in common.
Granted, Pyrrha was an only child and Jaune was very much not, but those were extraneous details. If anything, at least the two mothers could commiserate on their kids fighting a war together.
His thoughts notwithstanding, Jaune considered his surroundings, noting all the popups that floated above the objects within the cave, looking for one in particular. It was one he'd all but skipped in his previous explorations and investigations into the Rest Area, always with more pressing interests steering his gaze.
This time, it wasn't just mild interest directing his attention, but a real necessity. If he was going to be messing around with fire, doing it around a lot of flammable furniture inside a cave with no real openings wasn't just a bad idea, it was several bad ideas stacked on top of each other in a trenchcoat.
He found the popup he was looking for in mere moments, stepping close to it. Less a 'upgrade' button and more a list of options, he scrolled through what wasn't greyed out, taking each into consideration.
The Rest Area had a decent selection of cosmetic upgrades, listed in order of level requirement, if not material cost. "Cabin in the Woods, Rainswept, Fort Stone…"
The list went on for a few more entries, eleven in total, even if one was the cavern he was already in and five were locked behind level requirements.
He was short on materials for a few of the available options as well. "Tropicana and Deserted are off the table I guess."
In the end, he settled for 'Cabin in the Woods', described by the System as 'A small wooden cabin interior, Valean in style, opening out into a sunny forest'. As to what that actually entailed, there was really only one way to find out.
It was a cheap cost, only twenty-five Pine Planks, which did require Jaune to take a quick jaunt over to his workshop to quickly trim and shape some logs down, but the added XP was only a benefit, and it took next to no time before he had purchased the cosmetic upgrade.
It was a strange sensation, to be standing in a cave one moment, and to be standing on the porch of a cabin the next. It was almost the opposite of teleportation, too, instead of him moving, the world around him had.
Granted, the world around him was incredibly small, being essentially a portable pocket dimension of his own creation, in a sense, but that didn't make it any less jarring.
He'd be lying if he said it wasn't a stunning little vista, though. The cabin was wood, a mix of oaks, from what he could tell, so clearly the cost was more symbolic than necessary, with small windows and a solid door, from which a small pebbled path led to the firepit he'd constructed already. Further along, amidst the trees, were his farm plots, bushy herbs fully grown in their soil.
He turned back to the cabin, opening the door.
It was large on the inside, deceptively so, and immediately inside was the main living area, with an attached kitchen. A hallway led off from the opposite side, lined with doors to small bedrooms, and a staircase at the end that went both up and down.
From the ground floor he could look up and see the end of those same stairs, the attic rooms less segmented and more akin to additional space than anything else, whereas the stairs that led down took him to the cellar, where his workshop lay, with plenty of additional space around.
Without a doubt it was much better than a cave. It was the kind of house Jaune wanted to own in reality, somewhere nice in Vale. In that respect, it reminded him of Ruby and Yang's own home in Patch. It reminded him of that in more than one way, in fact.
He stepped back outside, stretching. He had a lot to do today, before they departed tonight. He'd better get started.
Jaune had never seen himself as a farmer, so it was a strange feeling to be actually good at it, even if the vast majority of the complicated stuff behind botany was handled by the System. His plants had grown large and healthy, much faster than typical plants ever could, and his harvest had been bountiful.
Almost incredibly so, in fact. He had such a swath of herbs to be used as ingredients in stat potions that he wasn't sure he had the time to process them all. He'd give it a shot, of course, there was no point in not having any bonus potions, but it was clear that time was becoming his most precious resource. There wasn't much else he couldn't farm, gather or grind for.
The things he had to wait for were a little more limiting, like Dust, but there were always other options for acquisition. There might still be a global Dust shortage due to Atlas trade embargoes and the pre-fall criminal activities of Roman Torchwick, though the former was significantly more relevant than the latter, but Dust was still necessary. It sold at higher prices, sure, but if anything that just made its availability more likely. He was one of the few singular buyers that could afford the near thousand-percent price hike of the recent year.
Not that he thought that was necessarily a good thing. Weiss had drilled enough basic economics into his head during their time at Beacon to know that the economy was going to crumble under its own weight soon enough, and Jaune was more than aware of the effects the embargo was having on global poverty, but that wasn't something he could spare the time to worry about. He had a literal war to fight before he could ever dedicate his time to more humanitarian endeavours.
He sighed, pausing his work at his workbench. Even without Cinder, without Salem, the world wasn't in a good place. As much as Jaune respected the man, General Ironwood's response to the Fall of Beacon was a little… much. He'd have to try and talk some sense into the man if he ever found himself back in Atlas.
Mistral was a whole other bucket of fish, or however that saying went. At least in Atlas and Vale he'd had some sense of how the councils operated, considering his connections with those in power. Granted, his connections had really only been the headmasters of the academies, but considering how much weight they pulled politically, that wasn't anything to scoff at.
With Mistral, Jaune didn't have a single connection outside of Pyrrha, and Pyrrha had essentially abandoned Haven for Beacon, though she'd never put it like that. He didn't quite know what to expect from the Haven Headmaster, in fact, he didn't even know who they were.
Qrow was important to the mission, he supposed. Without the aging alcoholic, they were going to be hard-pressed to get anywhere. There was a near one-hundred percent guarantee that Raven Branwen was simply going to either ignore or try to kill them if they tried to talk to her without Qrow, plus the man definitely knew the headmaster of Haven.
Qrow was, last Jaune knew, with RRYN as they traveled here, but they'd not made it yet. Either that was because it was a longer walk than he'd initially guessed, or because they'd gotten delayed somewhere along the way.
In the end, it was a question of how to find RRYN. Or, at least, find Ruby, Nora and Ren. Jaune wasn't sure what Yang was up to. The last time he'd seen her had been in Patch, and she hadn't seemed quite like herself. He knew why that was, too, he could hardly blame her. If he hadn't been able to heal the way he could, he'd definitely be dead multiple times over, so for Yang to have gone through what she'd gone through and come out standing was impressive enough.
Jaune wasn't sure his Tracking skill was going to be enough to locate four or five people across an entire continent. He was good, but he wasn't that good.
He did have another idea, though. It was a stretch, as all his ideas tended to be, but it was the kind of stretch that didn't have any negative consequences if it failed. Not quite a win-win, but not quite a standard win-lose scenario either.
It was a ritual he'd not performed before, gifted to him by his connection with Palantir. Jaune had heard of scrying before, though, a cult classic in its own right from all sorts of fantasy media. To do it in reality was a little strange, but no stranger than anything else he'd managed to pull off in the past.
He finished his prep work, taking the stairs out of the cellar two at a time and stepping out the front door into what he knew was simulated sunlight, no matter how real it felt. There was plenty of clear space nearby the firepit, and Jaune closed the distance to it, one hand brushing against the dirt to shape it into the patterns he knew he needed for the ritual, Terrakinesis forcing the earth to respond to his orders.
The big problem with this idea was that Scrying required something that had a connection to the target being scryed on. There was only one thing Jaune had in his inventory, and it was a stretch.
Tranquility wasn't the first thing that came to mind when he thought of Ruby, but it was the only item he had that had any kind of connection to her, even as tangential as the connection was. She'd taught him how to put it together, though, and helped him through the process of assembly. That had to count for something, right?
He placed it in the center of the ritual circle, barrel pointed away from him, unloaded and unchambered, for safety's sake, and added to it the rest of the ritual components, delicately balanced so as not to roll away, in the case of the Soul Orb.
The ritual began not a moment later, the leylines he'd carved lighting up with an entrancing magical glow that spread like liquid amethyst, congealing in the center as it wrapped around the components and the shotgun, encasing them in a crystalline orb that expanded steadily until it enclosed not only the items, but the ritual circle and himself.
On it were projected images, flickers of motion indicating they were not pictures but instead active, as if he were sitting inside some kind of strange cinema, attempting to watch the world's highest-concept movie ever filmed.
Silently, he watched. A minute later, he was no longer watching, but running.
He broke free of the portal to his Rest Area in a single stride, speed intensifying as he manipulated his scroll in his hand. He wasn't giving much warning, but he had no other option.
He reached the landing pads not much longer, not even waiting for permission from any of the surprised soldiers as he simply leapt off the nearest pad and into the air, his Bullhead forming around him, engines roaring as the strained to pull out of the sudden dive it found itself in, Jaune pulling back hard on the controls, teeth grit.
It was another minute before he was near the outskirts of Argus, rapidly bringing the Bullhead down towards the land, bay doors opening from the flick of a switch.
Pyrrha, Weiss, Blake, Ilia and Oscar piled in as fast as they could, and Jaune barely even had to stop before he was full-throttle again, pushing the Bullhead hard once more as they flew southwards.
He knew where he was going. He just hoped he wouldn't get there too late.
What will happen? Is it spooky? Is this my only reference to Halloween for this year? Who knows?! Me, I know. Happy Halloween?
I really do choose the weirdest times to update, sometimes. Oh well, review response time!
Argus456: Weiss would definitely be recognized were it not for her disguise, but I'd always assumed that Yang didn't really get recognized due to the broadcast signal from Amity not really making out that far into the wilds of Mistral. Vytal always struck me as a city-dweller kinda thing. Most people living in the outskirts in small settlements don't usually have the time to spare to watch entertainment, at least, not on Remnant. Too many Grimm.
Omniocular: Hey, thanks for the kind words of encouragement, I really appreciate them! It's less 'issues' quote-unquote and more just a lack of free time, but all the same your words do ring true.
adamantra03: Theoretically speaking, yes, he could clone his friends and implant their soul into the body a la Penny. However, it's not quite so simple as ctrl + x ctrl + v, there are limitations. As to what those limitations are, I'll leave them up for speculation right now.
IHateGenericCereal: Off the top of my head Saplings are minimum level 20 Farming, so not too far off, all things considered. I still need to balance them, though, currently it's more effective to go chop a few than it is to farm them, even if you do get a massive amount more XP from trees than any other crop at their level.
Epicweaver: I agree with you in that the Dungeon and Loot stuff is a bit much, it can be a little difficult to balance that sort of gameplay aspect with the storytelling aspect without it seeming too fetch-quest-y. I'm going to be pushing a little harder to get proper story beats now, with a little less focus on floor-by-floor dungeon crawling, when it appears again. We've reached a point in Systema where the actual individual aspects of what's happening are less interesting to read than the overall concept, so I want to work with that idea.
Fanfiction0000: NGL I had written that as a thing for a little bit before I removed it due to game-breaking bugs (I'm serious, it quite literally could end the world. Jaune could, feasibly, drain the ocean. An infinite inventory is dangerous.)
kenodoxia: You seem to be laboring under the impression that this is a 'GAMER' system that I have pulled from a pre-existing medium, and is not something I have spent many, many hours creating and testing myself. This is a completely original system, and with that comes content that needs to be changed or cut. Not cutting something that needs to be cut is far worse than simply cutting it, much the same as removing infected flesh from a wound.
handwran: I do much the same thing, waiting for chapters to release so I don't have to wait week to week (or in this case week to whenever I finish the next chapter), so I understand completely. Glad you're enjoying, and I'm more than happy to explain things!
Alright, that'll have to do for review responses for this chapter. Quickly, though, before I go, I need to ask y'all a question that's been on my mind for a few chapters now.
Should I cut the vast majority of the Mana Projectile skills (eg Mana Bolt, Mana Arrow, Spinning Mana Arrow) and rework them into a few different Mana Projectile skills? I normally would just make a change like this without consulting, but this is a significant change that would essentially retcon a large amount of the early chapters of Systema, even if it would make keeping track of combat skills a lot easier. Lemme know what you think!
I have a Pa Treon, if you ever feel like supporting my writing, you get access to all the behind-the-scenes stuff I have for Systema and my other projects, too. It's not a requirement, of course, but I'd definitely appreciate it!
And, as always, see you next chapter!
~AFatFlyingWhale