Here it is!
My writing schedule works! (as long as my uni doesn't change the timetable again)
Reviews:
Guest - Who's to say that Cinder wasn't the one responsible?
Guest.2 - Glad to know that somebody liked it!
X3runner - If I really wanted to have the Matamune like charter I would probably just use Matamune. Also Nora for the win!
Kolomte'49 - Yeah, I see what you mean by that. I kinda jumbled all of team RWBY into one in that moment so Blake didn't really feel Blakey. My bad.
shaolin story - Thanks! And I will just say that the brother gods are different from Kami spirits (Though I hope I would be able to answer what they are precisely in the story itself) so they would still be visible by normal people.
Midnight49 - Don't worry Pyrrha's okay. She wasn't actually at Beacon in this story. [If you don't know what I'm referring to, check back to the beginning of the second chapter. Specifically Nora's first words in this fic. ;)]
Gamelover41592 - Thanks! Like always!
The only word Jaune could use to describe him and his friends after the incident that the media quite quickly had named the fall of Beacon was 'tense'.
It was almost a week since their meeting with Hao and them learning about what happened at Vale but the impact that moment had on them could still be felt in their interactions.
Ren and Nora were reacting the most drastically out of all of them with Nora being way more reclusive than anyone who knew the orange haired huntress would though possible of her and Ren constantly using his Semblance to subconsciously dampen all of his emotions.
He really was concerned for them but despite being affected the most, they weren't the only ones in a clearly worse state than before.
Almost the exact moment they had left the village where all of that happened, Whitley had begun training like crazy. There hadn't been a single night since that day during which the young Schnee wouldn't waste in its entirety on practicing.
Seeing the power of the strongest shaman in the tournament must have made the younger shaman realize how insignificant they truly were compared to the competition.
It reminded Jaune of how he had acted after seeing Iron Maiden Jeanne fight for the first time.
"I see a village in the distance." Jaune said with a small sigh.
At first he had been trying to take his friends' minds away from all the gloom and depression, maybe cheer them up a little or make them think about something else, but after a few days of fruitless attempts at helping he had given up on that.
For the last few days the only real conversations they had were all only the ones necessary for them to travel as nobody was in the mood for anything else.
"Let's go spend a night there before returning to traveling." Whitley said shortly. "We shouldn't be too far from Argus so we don't have to hurry."
"Hmm." Jaune nodded absentmindedly.
They've been traveling north for a couple of weeks by now and while they didn't know how far exactly the village of Kousa was from Argus they did remember Maria telling them that it should be about three weeks of travel meaning that they were closer to Argus than further.
With their mind slightly renewed at the prospect of a rest for the day they slowly made their way towards the village.
It didn't take them long to reach the small village, as the area around it was rather flat and easy to traverse, but the moment they arrived close enough to see what was happening in the village in more detail, almost everyone suddenly stopped.
"Brunswick Farms..." Nora read out loud from one of the signs at the entrance gate of the village before stopping in place and turning around after realizing that she left her friends behind.
"Did something happen?" The red haired huntress asked with a slow tilt of her head.
None of the shamans and the spirits of the group responded to her question however as all of them were too captivated by the most bizarre sight they had seen in a while.
Even Ren, whose emotions were being dampened by his Semblance, couldn't help but gawk at what they were seeing.
"I-It's a ghost town." The wind shaman said with his eyes slightly widened.
"A ghost town?" Nora questioned before looking at the village more carefully to see what her childhood friend was talking about. "Now that you mentioned it, the village is strangely quiet and we have yet to see anybody."
"He meant it literally." Whitley remarked, his eyes still glued to the sight of this village.
"What?" Nora asked with confusion in her voice.
"This place is full of activity, people are moving around, chatting and playing, acting as if everything was absolutely normal." Jaune explained while glancing from side to side. "It's just that everyone here is a ghost."
The state of the village was exactly how he described it to Nora. Ignoring the fact that every person inside was a ghost it wouldn't be a stretch to call this place a perfectly normal village and it was slightly scaring him.
Scenes like these certainly weren't normal let alone common or ordinary.
Throughout the years Jaune had seen and visited dozens villages destroyed by grimm, he even helped a couple of ghosts from such villages pass into the afterlife, but no matter how recent the destruction of the village had been there were never so many ghosts staying on Remnant after the death of everyone from the village.
Situations like these simply didn't happen. There would always be at least a few people who lived their lives to their fullest and didn't have any reason to stay on Remnant, especially if their family died with them.
Brunswick Farms on the other hand looked as if nobody wanted to die early yet one day everybody decided to end their lives just for the sake of it and then continue their life in the village after like nothing had happened.
"So, are we entering then?" Nora asked with uncertainty.
The moment she said that all the eyes moved to Jaune. They might not have been a team officially but they still agreed to treat the blond shaman as their leader.
"Yeah." Jaune sighed. "Let's go in."
...
A few minutes later...
...
After entering the village and interacting with a couple of the local spirits, all of them realized that this place was even more bizarre than it looked from afar.
First of all, no matter who or how they asked, no one would tell them what was the cause behind the deaths of everybody. None of these ghosts would even acknowledge the fact that they had died!
Everyone assumed that they were still alive and that their health simply greatly improved. And when they asked if something weird had happened before the villagers 'magical improvement of health', all they would get was people telling them that most of them just felt a little bit more tired than usual.
It was incredibly eerie.
"You guys keep acting strange." Nora remarked as they passed by a spirit of a farmer who was talking to his neighbors.
"This place is strange." Whitley said with a scoff. "Let's just find some abandoned house to spend the night in and move out the next morning. It's not like we have to stay here for long and we still need to get to Argus."
"I agree." Ren nodded. "This place is of no importance to us anyway. We shouldn't waste too much time here."
A frown appeared on Jaune's face when he heard that.
Their duty as shamans should be to help those lost spirits in the village or at the very least learn why they didn't want to move on. He knew that the Shaman King tournament was important and that what happened at Beacon was tragic but that didn't mean they should ignore the spirits they found along the way that very clearly needed their help.
"I think we should help these spirits, guys." He said before immediately wincing when Ren and Whitley snapped their heads towards him in a confused anger.
A scoff and a questioning gaze hollow of any emotion were on their faces as they looked at him. Seeing his friends look at him with such looks on their faces hurt more than any shaman fight they had to go through since the beginning of the tournament.
"Are you joking right now?!" Whitley asked with an offended tone.
Ren didn't say anything but Jaune could clearly see that despite his dampening of emotions he agreed with the younger shaman.
Only Nora didn't appear to be angry at him for suggesting that. Instead, she was looking at both Ren and Whitley with a clear concern in her eyes. She really cared for their friends despite not knowing one of them for that long.
"Whitley..." Jaune started only to stop when the said steel shaman cut him off by stomping up to him.
"We are so weak and insignificant that we could disappear in the middle of a shaman fight against some of the opponents and nobody would realize! It's bad enough you guys aren't doing anything to get any better but now you are also suggesting that we should waste time here instead of going forward in the tournament?!"
With each word said by the younger shaman Jaune could feel himself cower a little.
"Guys, please don't fight." Nora's pleas to calm down could just as well have been barely audible whispers with how ineffective they were.
"I-I..." Jaune started but he couldn't find the right words to calm the young Schnee down.
"You know what? Fine! Let's do it your way!" Whitley scoffed before storming off to the other side of the village. "Let's just waste our time here playing with those weird ghosts when there's a person capable of turning us all to ashes in seconds running around and possibly interested in us! Who knows we might even get something from this?!"
They still could hear the younger shaman's voice after he walked to the other side of the village but by that point it became an incomprehensible noise of discontent for them.
Jaune winced slightly before turning to his other friend and asking. "Ren?"
"I will go look for anything in the other direction." The wind shaman frowned at him before turning around and starting to walk in the opposite direction to Whitley. Nora followed after him soon after with a concerned expression on her face.
"Guys..." Jaune whispered while looking at his friends disappearing in the small crowds of spirits.
"Give them time, Jaune." Summer said right next to him. "It's something they have to try to overcome on their own before we can help them and the most we can do at the moment is to give them some time to be alone. I guess it's actually quite lucky that you decided to investigate this place, at least now they won't be forced to unnecessarily focus on traveling together."
Despite Summer saying that, he still couldn't help but feel terrible after all of his friends left to investigate the village. It just didn't feel like he made the right decision to stay here with how they were at the moment.
Summer sighed as she watched a frown form on her shaman partner's face.
"No more of that brooding now." She said and if she still was alive then she would have lightly smacked the back of the young blond's head. "We still have a village to investigate and to be honest I'm also quite curious what's happening here as well."
...
The other side of the village...
...
Nicholas Schnee wasn't the best parent figure.
He neglected his own daughter for not being able to continue his legacy and the negative effects of him teaching his grandson the very same legacy could still be felt by the poor Whitley until this day.
That was all without mentioning how the rest of the family only knew him as a hard working businessman who died decades ago.
There truly were a lot of terrible things that could be said about his parenting skills but despite all of that for the last couple of months he had been trying to be better and the moment he realized that he would have a chance to help his grandson in this bizarre ghost village he made sure to take it.
"I think we should help these spirits, guys." Whitley quoted his blond friend's words angrily and kicked the ground to vent a little. "Can you imagine he said that, grandfather? It's like he didn't see a shaman turning the guardian spirit of his opponent into ashes! Does he not realize how doomed we are?!"
Of course nobody said that helping his stubborn little grandson was going to be easy.
Where did that kid get all of that spite from?
It couldn't be from his side of the family, both he and Willow were so calm and reasonable people. That Jacques guy must have been the reason, he knew he shouldn't have blessed him with the hand of his daughter, now that brat ruined his family.
"The young Arc does have a point though, Whitley." He said calmly. Creating a rift between his grandson and the first human friend the boy made wouldn't benefit anyone, especially with how everyone was so high strung lately. "It is the duty of all shamans to take care of any unusual occurrences like this one."
"If that's the duty of every shaman then what about the tournament?! If we keep taking it as lightly as we do now then by the time we reach the next round we will be nothing more than cannon fodder for our opponents!" His grandson asked loudly with his fist tightened.
Of course his grandson's never ending obsession with the Shaman King Tournament was the main reason behind the raging emotions that were tearing the young boy apart.
A sigh escaped the dead patriarch of the Schnee family. Sometimes he really was jealous of his fellow spirits in their team, at least they didn't screw up the mental health of their shamans before the tournament had even started.
"What about it?" He asked, to his grandson's shock and surprise.
"W-What?" Whitley couldn't stop himself from asking as he took a step back from the shock that went through his body.
"What about the tournament, Whitley?" Nicholas answered sternly. "If you truly believe that you and your friends will be killed the moment you fight against more powerful enemies then simply give up. You're putting too much weight on this competition. Your life is way more important."
Shock that was present on Whitley's face earlier quickly turned into anger as the young Schnee gritted his teeth forcefully in confusion at his grandfather's words.
"How am I putting too much weight on it?!" Whitley shouted. "The last tournament supposedly happened five centuries ago and if everything happens as it should then the next one will be after another five! With the price of becoming god it literally is a chance of several lifetimes to even participate in it!"
A short moment of silence happened when Nicholas couldn't find the right words to rebuke his grandson's misplacement of importance after noticing a couple of tears forming in the young shaman's eyes.
"Besides, if we win then it will be proof that my life wasn't wasted on following your path and that it was a correct choice for you to put your hopes on me." Whitley whispered to himself quietly as a few tears from his eyes hit the ground.
"I-I'm sorry." Nicholas said while avoiding his grandson's eyes with a fake cough. "I didn't know what that tournament meant for you."
He really was an idiot.
Did he really think that after putting all of his expectations on a poor Whitley throughout the boy's entire childhood, the young shaman would desire anything else but to prove himself to him?
The Schnee patriarch groaned in resentment for his previous actions. Maybe if he hadn't been so focused on his legacy in the past then Whitley would have a chance at a relatively normal life by now.
Who knows, maybe Whitley wouldn't have entered the tournament if that had happened?
"It's alright." Whitley said dejectedly with a loud sigh before slowly starting to move to explore the village further. "Let's at least look for the cause of this bizarre village. Spirits know it would be awkward if we didn't find anything."
Whitley's eyes were hollow of any positive emotions as the boy moved in between the spirits walking around.
Seeing his grandson acting like that made Nicholas frown. Even though such a reaction was rather natural considering the situation and conversation they had, something about Whitley was off.
Whitley, despite him claiming to be weak for the last couple of days, was in fact a strong boy and he would never become depressed so quickly in an argument. Especially in an argument with him of all people.
Something was definitely wrong and he wasn't sure what it was.
Maybe it really was a touchy subject for his poor grandson?
...
Somewhere else in the village...
...
Li Ren had made plenty of mistakes during his life and death.
It wasn't anything strange or unusual, people greater than him had made mistakes as well, some even lost more than he ever had because of them yet they still lived their lives with barely any regrets.
Most of them however didn't keep making the same mistake for almost a decade without stopping.
While it wasn't exactly easy for the Arc boy and his guardian spirit to convince him to stop blocking his son off from any spiritual related matters, doing it despite all the difficulties was certainly a decision he was infinitely thankful for the young blond to have taken.
Being able to effortlessly interact with his only son was enough for him to not regret going against his dumb decision of preventing his son from ever becoming a shaman on its own.
There was another, way more important, reason why he was glad for stopping hiding away from his son however.
It was the ability to help Lie Ren go through the hard times of life.
He had been doing this before of course, some gentler spiritual wind here or imaginary hug there, but he always had to be subtle about it so as to not reveal himself. He couldn't count the times he wanted to help his son with an emotional issue so badly that he was barely able to stop himself but decided against it because of some stupid decision made right after dying.
The feeling of helplessness he felt every time he watched his son crying through the spiritual wind surrounding him wasn't a feeling he wanted to ever feel again.
That was why the moment he saw his son suffering once again he immediately moved to help him. Sadly, this time it wasn't him who put up the barrier separating them but Lie Ren did it instead.
"I haven't found anything suspicious yet." Ren said hollowly, his emotions dampened by his Semblance to the point that neither of his companions could detect any of them. "How about you, father? Did you find anything?"
"Ren..." Nora said with clear concern in her voice.
At least he wasn't the only person trying to help his son. The orange haired girl that had been with them since the destruction of their home village wanted to help as well and with her experience at talking to Lie she might even have a better chance at it than him.
"I didn't find anything, either." He sighed, knowing that their words wouldn't have any effect on his son who's masking all of his emotions. "I don't think that walking around without any goal in mind will help us find anything about this village, son."
"Good point." Ren said calmly.
"There's no reason for us to actually look for anything here." He said with a serene smile. "I believe that the only reason the Arc boy asked us to find out what's wrong with this village was to give us some time alone to sort out our issues."
At least that was how it looked like for him, solving issues of the spirits might have been the duty of shamans but everyone of them knew that there were more important problems to solve at that moment.
"It doesn't change the fact that we should still do it, though." Ren said with an emotionless tone before lightly shrugging. "It's not like we are in a hurry to do anything else."
Out of everything that was hurting him during their conversation that emotionless tone of his son was probably the worst. While it's true that Lie's Semblance had the ability to dampen and mask emotions, everybody here knew that it affected the negative ones the most.
If there weren't any emotions that could be found on Ren despite him only blocking the negative ones then didn't that mean that there were hardly any positive ones?
"Please stop doing that, Ren." Nora said quietly, no doubt knowing just as much if not more about his son's Semblance than he did.
The girl probably knew precisely what was wrong with her partner before he noticed that his son was really hurting at all. Unlike him who hid from his son for the last couple of years, the orange haired huntress in training always made sure to keep Lie company.
Maybe he should leave helping his son go through these hard times to her.
"Calm down, Nora." Lie said with a fake smile. "We've been through way worse thing than a school blowing up. The most important thing is that all of us here are safe and that no deaths of any of our friends at Beacon were reported yet."
That was true, everybody knew it's true, yet none of them felt truly calm right now.
"Everything is fin-" A loud slap resounded through the village, cutting off what Ren wanted to say.
A deathly silence followed immediately after the slap as the father and son duo's minds tried to process what exactly happened.
"W-What?" He couldn't help but ask while seeing his son starting to show emotions after being slapped by the person who could be considered to be the closest to him. It looked like Nora did know how to break that barrier that his son had put up.
"N-Nora..." Ren asked, holding his cheek.
"Don't you dare finish that sentence!" Nora screamed. "Everything is not fine! Do you think I don't know what you are going through?! I'm going through the same! And unlike you I don't have the spirits of my late loved ones to help me go through it!"
"Yet despite that, you purposefully stop me and everyone else from helping you." She added quietly.
"I-I-" Ren stuttered, not knowing what to say. Emotions flooded his face, most of them were negative ones like fear or anger but it still was a good sign, and his body was shaking as he reached out his hand forward.
"I'm sorry." The wind shaman said honestly while grabbing his closest friend into a hug.
They had hugged for a long couple of seconds and if anyone were to listen more closely they might have been able to hear some sniffling as the orange haired girl let out some tears after finally seeing the person she loved starting to act normal.
Their little fight gathered the attention of every spirit around them, making them the center of attention as dozens of people looked at them with curiosity and pity from every direction.
Li scoffed it was the last thing they needed in the situation they were in.
"I think we should move somewhere else." He suggested while subtly pointing at the people around them with his head. "Despite how it may look like we aren't here to be their entertainment."
"Y-Yeah, that sounds like a good idea." Ren said after glancing to the sides.
"What?" Nora asked in confusion, her eyes still with some tears in them from the fight.
"Dad said that we should move because every spirit is watching us." The long haired boy answered with a small smile. While this one wasn't as big as the previous one it certainly wasn't as fake either.
"I really need to find a way to unlock my hidden shaman potential." Nora said, trying to lighten the mood. "I will be the Shaman Queen one day. You will see."
...
A few minutes later...
...
Despite the village being filled with many different spirits of people it was weirdly quiet. It wasn't the silence like one would find in the forests or empty fields since it was still quite loud with all the spirits moving around.
No, it wasn't the loudness that was the issue but the atmosphere. Even if everybody was moving around and talking, the noise made from that seemed oddly muffled as if his mind didn't consider it important.
It made Jaune really unnerved when he was slowly exploring the small ghost town.
"Why is nobody willing to acknowledge that they have died!?" Summer shouted in annoyance while raising her arms because of her irritation. "I died as well and you don't see me trying to convince other dead people that we are alive!"
Or it would have made him really unnerved if Summer wasn't destroying whatever effect the village had on him by complaining and pointing out the absurdity of their situation.
He could always trust his guardian spirit to take the tension away from the most dire situations.
"It's not always easy to accept your death, Summer." He said absentmindedly while slowly looking from side to side in hopes of finding some clue as to what had happened in this village. "Especially if everyone you know is a ghost as well."
"Yeah, yeah." Summer rolled her eyes. "There has to be a reason for that though. It had to be some weird cause of death as I sincerely doubt that anyone would insist on being alive after being eaten alive by the grimm or blown to pieces in a Dust explosion."
That crossed out a couple of his theories. He half expected for the population of the village to have been killed by a very particular Dust explosion that happened in the middle of the night but with the professional huntress denying that idea it probably wasn't the case.
There weren't many other ideas he had however. For spirits to act like they did right now they had to be either controlled by some malicious shaman or their deaths were so calm they didn't know they had died.
The possibility of them dying just a few seconds ago and not realizing that they didn't have a body anymore wasn't even an option since everybody here acted way too casually for that.
"Maybe it was some painless poison that killed everyone in their sleep?" He suggested.
"Then wouldn't they realize they had died by the time they saw their dead bodies?" Summer rebuked his suggestion with a question on her own before adding with a frown. "Speaking of which. Where are the bodies of everyone from the village? I can't imagine them being buried properly without anyone noticing they are dead and I didn't see them anywhere."
That was actually a good question. No matter how they died, there should be at the very least remnants of their bodies somewhere. Most people didn't just vanish after dying, let alone an entire village.
"I have no idea." Jaune admitted.
He might have more experience in dealing with wayward spirits from his journey through Vale when he was younger but situations like this were still outside of his expertise.
"There are things you don't know about shaman related things?" Summer faked her shock with a loud gasp and an exaggerated expression as she said that.
If it wasn't clear to him that Summer was trying to lighten the mood with the way she acted, Jaune might have been really offended at how genuinely surprised his guardian spirit sounded.
Although for some reason he didn't really have it in him to be truly annoyed at anything.
"What's that supposed to mean?!" He decided to play along and pretend to be offended by what his guardian spirit said.
Summer giggled slightly at his reaction but she didn't get another one as he quickly gave up on pretending to be angry and returned to how he usually was. There would be teasing in this village no longer.
"Nothing." Summer said in between her giggles. "It's just that you usually are so interested in anything related to spirits and the shamanic ways that It's weird to see you at loss when dealing with them. It actually kinda reminds me how Ruby was always so interested in different weapons and huntsmen culture."
The moment he heard those last words, Jaune immediately stopped his step. With all the stuff he had on his mind lately he almost forgot that Summer's daughters were students at Beacon.
If the news about the fall of Beacon impacted his friends so much despite only two of them attending that school then he dreaded to imagine how hard dealing with that event was for team RWBY.
"A-Are you alright, Summer?" He asked his guardian spirit awkwardly.
Of course Summer wasn't alright, the school she had attended when still learning how to be a huntress and both of her daughters were attending at the moment had been destroyed and nobody really knew how it had happened.
Who would be alright after that?
"Am I alright?" Summer asked back in confusion while pointing at herself. "Of course I'm alright nothing has happened to me recently. Where did that question even come from?"
Okay, now he was just confused. He knew Summer was a very compassionate person who would feel sympathy for every student harmed in the attack and mourn the death of her ex-headmaster.
Not to mention that her daughters were a part of Beacon as well.
"I'm talking about Beacon." He clarified. It's possible that Summer simply didn't get his question correctly. "Your daughters attend there and Ozpin's death was already confirmed. You worked for that man when you were alive, right?"
"Ahh..." Summer drawled in realization before shaking her head lightly and happily explaining. "Don't worry about that. I already know that my daughters are safe thanks to Nora revealing that they followed after us. As for Ozpin, let's just say that merely killing him is not enough for that man to die."
"That puts things into perspective." He said, a little bit confounded from the answer.
"It does, doesn't it?" Summer said with a small grin and here he thought that there wouldn't be anymore teasing in this village. "Let's just focus on finding out what's wrong with this village instead! I swear this place is giving me the creeps."
With the newfound determination to find out what's happening Jaune vigorously nodded at his guardian spirit's suggestion.
"It is a peculiar village, isn't it?" An unknown woman's voice said from behind, making them jump a little in surprise.
Both of them screamed in surprise and quickly turned around to face whoever sneaked up on them. They didn't think that some other people besides them were visiting this village as well.
"I'm sorry." The unfamiliar woman giggled lightly. "Did I scare you two?"
"A little bit." Jaune said. "Please don't sneak up on us like that ever again."
The strange woman chuckled once again as she saw Summer frantically nodding to what he said to express her agreement in the most clear way possible. They were lucky that the woman who sneaked up on them didn't appear to be hostile, if that person was an enemy then they could have lost the Shaman Fight right there.
"Then I will make sure to announce my presence early every time we meet from now on." The woman said before extending one of her hands in a greeting. "My name is Sati Saigan and I'm pleased to make your acquaintance."
When Jaune grabbed Sati's hand in greeting he finally had the time to take a closer look at the woman who sneaked up on him.
Sati was a beautiful woman whose image exuded calmness and elegance. Her hair and eyes were brown and she wore a long orange dress that reminded him of a monk's robe. There was no doubt in his head that she was a powerful shaman.
"It's nice to meet you." He said a bit stiffly. His experiences with extremely powerful shamans had made him quite wary of people who were way stronger than him. "I'm Jaune Arc and that is my guardian spirit Summer."
"You don't have to be so on edge around me." Sati said with a light laugh. "If I wanted to fight then I wouldn't waste time on introducing myself, would I?"
Normally he would have agreed with that statement on the spot but considering that there were people like Hao who could casually talk with you for a good few minutes before revealing his true intentions he wasn't so sure of that anymore.
For some reason though, unlike Hao who appeared unassuming when he had first met him but turned out to be a monster or Iron Maiden Jeanne who was both kind and terrifying at the same time, Sati seemed to be just friendly.
As if there was something about her that just made him want to trust her.
Maybe she simply wasn't as powerful as the strongest competitors of the tournament and was just quite a bit stronger than him. What was the chance that they would stumble upon another one of the favorites to win the Shaman Fight before the third round even began?
"Yeah, I guess you're right." He said, still on guard although a bit inclined to believe the brown haired woman.
In the worst case scenario his friends were still in the village so he could run away and find them to try fighting three on one. After the Hao incident he doubted that any of them would complain about fighting with an unfair advantage.
That was of course only if Sati didn't have any of her companions in the Brunswick Farm too.
"I'm glad for that." Sati said with a wry smile, clearly knowing that he was still wary of her. "Nowadays it's hard to find a stranger shaman, who would be willing to hold a conversation with me. They are always either too wary of me to talk or my followers."
"Your followers?" Summer asked curiously.
They had met many different shaman groups until now and some of them did work more like an organization than a group of friends but they had never heard someone calling their companions their followers.
Even in teams like X-Laws that was made mostly out of the followers of Iron Maiden Jeanne it was always the followers who called themselves that and not the leader.
The fact that she had referred to her companions as 'followers' was made more unusual because the moment Sati heard Summer's question she appeared to be surprised that they didn't know what she was talking about.
"Right, It is possible that you might not know that." Sati said to herself before explaining what she meant to Summer. "I'm sort of an influential figure in the shaman world. I may not be as well known as Hao is but there still is a quite big movement behind me."
Apparently the chance to stumble upon one of the favorites to win the Shaman Fight before the start of the third round was quite high indeed considering what was happening.
The only thing they needed to do now was to somehow meet with the X-Laws again and they would have met every favorite to win in the second round of the tournament alone.
That was, if there were only three of such monstrous people in this tournament but considering how they just happen to meet these types of people every other week nowadays he wouldn't be too surprised if everyone but them was such a monster capable of winning the tournament on their own.
"Let me guess, every one of your followers is also incredibly powerful and could defeat most of ordinary shamans on their own?" Jaune asked dejectedly with a sigh.
"I wouldn't call all of us that strong." Sati said calmly. "I'm pretty sure that you and your team would be able to defeat a few of my followers."
"That doesn't really sound like a compliment, you know?" Jaune raised his eyebrow in mild annoyance.
For some reason he felt as if his emotions were slowly becoming more distant. He didn't know why it was happening or if there was a cause for it but he certainly was able to feel the difference. It was as if the ability to feel stronger emotions was fleeing from him.
"I'm just telling you the truth." Sati's voice and small chuckle brought him out of his thoughts. "Also, if I were you I wouldn't be so negative in this village. It could be more dangerous for you right now than fighting against any of the shamans from the tournament."
"Why would that be so?" He asked.
"A rare and dangerous breed of certain not quite alive black colored beasts made this village their resting nest." Sati explained before turning around towards the exit of the village and slowly walking away.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Jaune asked with genuine confusion in his voice while watching the brown haired woman leave the town.
His attempts at trying to understand what Sati was talking about made him miss how Summer's eyes suddenly widened in realization right after they heard Sati's explanation of what was wrong with this village.
"Apathy..." His guardian spirit muttered to herself.
"What?" He asked with one of his eyebrows raised.
The moment he said that, Summer immediately flew right up to his face with a lot of worry and anxiety present on her. It was like she was shot from a bow the moment she realized what was happening.
"Jaune, quick! We have to gather all of us and leave this village as soon as possible, it's infested with the Apathy!" Summer shouted at him in an anxious tone. If she hadn't been a ghost he could imagine that she would have been shaking his entire body while saying that.
"What's this Apathy?" He asked with a wave of his hand to push Summer away from his face.
"It's a dangerous grimm!" Summer quickly shouted, acting as if she didn't want to give him a chance to think for a single second. "It has the ability to suck every emotion and motivation from people away to make them apathetic enough to commit suicide!"
"That explains all of the ghosts here then." Jaune said with a grunt. "But why do you want us to immediately leave the village?"
If anything, that's the reason why they should stay here a bit longer to get rid of the Grimm that caused the deaths of all of these villagers. It might not bring them peace as he doubted that the spirits would notice the difference at this point but it should stop the grimm from killing more innocent people.
"Don't you remember how everybody was feeling before entering this village?!" Summer's question made him instantly realize what the problem was.
The grimm in this village made everyone feel more terrible and apathetic while he and his friends were feeling so terrible for the last week that they could barely stick together.
And he basically told them to stay in this village and split up.
What would happen to Ren and Nora who were dealing with the fall of Beacon? Or what about Whitley who was still shaken after witnessing the sheer power and terrifying nature of Hao?
Nothing good would come out of it.
He had screwed up.
With a single move of his hand, Jaune quickly pushed Summer to the side and instantly broke into a run. He didn't know where his friends were at the moment but they should still be somewhere inside the village so if he ran around the edges of it he should be able to find at least one of them.
"Wait for me!" Summer shouted from behind before rushing to catch up to him.
He had to find them before they did something stupid.
And cut!
You know this chapter was something I wanted to write from the very beginning of this fic and now that I'm at it I can't help but feel like my skill at writing is simply not good enough to accurately represent what I imagined back then.
Ohh well, At least I'm slowly getting better.
I think.