Another Friday and another chapter.
I guess it officially makes this day of the week my update day, huh?
Reviews:
Kolomte'49 - I don't think there will be a good place in the story to write a flashback of Willow's life. I might do some sort of recursive fic where I will write all of the little interesting stories that took place in different character's pasts after I finish this story. (Something like Shaman King Zero.)
Dragonslayerajahn - I know that main source behind the Over Souls was shaman's imagination and knowledge but I always assumed that the medium was important as well since there were a couple of examples where it did kinda matter (especially at the beginning of the series), for example the Silva mentioning that it was clever of Yoh to use sword as an medium for an Over Soul with a samurai spirit, the whole double medium Yoh used to form his giant sword Over Soul or how after Lyserg destroyed the original's crew mediums in his introduction they couldn't make the same mediums with different items and had to fix the original ones. Either way thanks for the info and the review. :)
X3runner - Glad to know that you liked the Whitley scenes. As for Jaune and using Summer's silver eyes, well... We'll see about that.
Gamelover41592 (Hey it was the first time I managed write the numbers in your username from just memory.) - Thanks as always! :)
Running off into the Brunswick Farms without any plan or direction wasn't the greatest idea Jaune ever had. Not only did he have next to no idea where his friends might be but if there were any enemies nearby that wanted to attack him he would be giving them a perfect occasion for an attack.
If Summer wasn't as concerned for their friends' safety as he was then she would have for sure scolded him for doing things without thinking.
It was a pity that he wouldn't have cared even if she did that. He was the one whose mistake endangered all of them and he would be the one to make another mistake to fix the previous one.
It was his responsibility and Nora's teasing about him being the team leader had nothing to do with that.
"Whitley!" Jaune shouted loudly while passing by a bunch of unconcerned spirits. "Are you here?!"
He was prioritizing finding Whitley first in his search because while Ren had Nora with him as another living person to keep the wind shaman from falling into more dangerous thoughts, Whitley only had his grandfather to talk to and doubted the old man would understand what was happening.
From the way Summer was acting, Jaune quite quickly noticed that the spirits weren't really affected by the effects of the Apathy grimm. At least the ones who didn't die because of the grimm as the ghosts from the village were still acting weird.
Although it might have something to do with how seamless and gradual their deaths probably were. He likely wouldn't have thought that he had died if he simply went to sleep after feeling under the weather one day and then woke up feeling fine the next one.
No sounds met his shouts and the only attention he had gotten was from a couple of wandering spirits near him who looked at him in a slight confusion.
"Not here either." Jaune clicked his tongue in annoyance.
"Maybe we should split up?" Summer suggested. "We would be able to cover more ground that way."
"No. It's too dangerous." Jaune firmly shook his head. "I'm still being affected by the Apathy grimm and I don't trust myself to not fall into dangerous thoughts without anyone to keep me company."
It would be even more destructive right after learning that his mistake could lead to some serious consequences for his friends. He wouldn't be able to live with that knowledge on his own.
"Y-Yes, You're right." Summer said, noticing his point before suggesting something different. "How about we look for Ren and Nora first? It's clear that we won't find Whitley that easily but with the help from the rest finding the boy should be way easier."
"Do you have any idea where they are?" Jaune asked with one of his eyebrows raised.
Summer's idea only worked under the assumption that they would be able to find the wind shaman and the energetic huntress duo way quicker than find Whitley. Otherwise it would only end up with the person who's under the biggest threat being left without help for way longer.
It could lead to a disaster.
"I don't have a clue." Summer admitted and before Jaune could question what she was thinking, she elaborated. "But I can't imagine finding anything that involves Nora would be difficult at all."
"That's a good point." Jaune nodded. "Let's look for anything out of place that could be Nora's doing. It won't take us too long."
"Hey guys. What do you need us for?" Before they could even start looking for their two friends, a familiar although a bit more dejected than usual voice surprised them from behind.
Thankfully they didn't have to search at all.
A small smile appeared on Jaune's face while Summer grinned wholeheartedly. It was great to hear emotions in that familiar voice, especially since for the last week or so it was almost machine like with its tone.
"How did you find us so quickly?" Summer asked as both of them turned around to face the Beacon affiliated part of their small group. "I thought that we would need to search through at least half of the village to find you three."
"You were running around and loudly calling for Whitley in a hurry." Ren said with a deadpan expression on his face. "After seeing that, it wasn't hard for us to realize that you were looking for us all."
"Yeah, I guess it makes sense." Jaune said with a slightly befuddled expression on his face.
Ren and Nora hearing his shouts in such a small area wasn't strange at all, he was pretty sure that his voice had reached all the ends of the village without any issues.
What was strange however was the fact that Whitley didn't respond at all despite supposedly being in the same village as well.
Was the steel shaman ignoring them? Or maybe the young Schnee was somewhere so desolate in this village that he simply didn't hear his shouts for some reason?
If the second option was indeed the case then it left Jaune in quite a conundrum. As far as he knew the village wasn't big enough for there to be places where his voice wouldn't reach.
"Hey! Are you alright, Jaune?" Nora asked him while slowly waving her hand before his face to get his attention. "You are spacing out."
"Yeah, I'm fine." Jaune said absentmindedly before quickly shaking his head. "Anyway, now that you are here, help me find Whitley as well. We are leaving this village as soon as we can."
A clear shock appeared on Ren's and Nora's expressions when those words reached their ears.
"Why?" Ren asked. "Didn't you say that we should find out what's wrong with this place and help those spirits?"
"We have already found out what's going on here. There's an Apathy grimm somewhere around here that killed off the entire village. We cannot deal with this thing with how everyone's feeling right now. If we really want to help then we can do this later when we feel better." Jaune answered.
"Wait." Ren said with puzzlement on his face. "So all of this bizarre scene was caused by a single grimm?"
"Yes!" Jaune answered briefly. "Now let's quickly find Whitley and get out of here. The less time we are under the grimm's effects the better."
Three sharp nods met his instructions as the part of their group that came from Mistral already began looking around with frowns on their faces in hopes of finding their friend. While Ren and Nora started looking from the ground, Li floated higher to watch the entire village from above.
Knowing that at least two of his friends were already aware of what was going on, Jaune sent a quick nod to Summer before going in the opposite direction from them to look for Whitley.
...
Half an hour later...
...
While half an hour might not have sounded like a lot of time spent on looking for someone, in a place where every second was making everyone feel gradually worse and worse, that half an hour felt like an eternity.
During that short time which felt way longer for them, Jaune and Summer managed to travel through the entire village at least two times over. Yet despite that, there wasn't even a trace of Whitley that they could find.
Ren's and Nora's group didn't have any luck either if their short conversations were to indicate anything.
That state of affairs perplexed Jaune; he didn't believe that Whitley could abandon them and simply leave the village, even if their search made that extremely plausible.
Sure, the younger shaman might have been quite pissed at the time when he asked them to stay and investigate the village but that couldn't be anything more than a simple passing anger at his decision.
At least Jaune hoped it wasn't anything like that.
If Whitley had truly left the village then at some point the steel shaman would have left the effect area of the Apathy grimm as well. Without the influence of the Apathy, Whitley for sure would realize that something wrong was going on in the Brunswick Farms and come and help them.
Jaune just couldn't imagine the younger shaman abandoning them to die.
"Help!" A distant shout brought Jaune out of his worries.
It was the voice of Nicholas Schnee! If his guardian spirit was here then there was no way that Whitley would be somewhere else. A breath of relief escaped Jaune, thankfully it appeared that he worried for nothing.
Only after Jaune calmed down his worries about his friend running away did his mind finally register the contents of Nicholas's shout.
With an abrupt shift of his body, the young Arc immediately shot off in the direction of the voice. He didn't have time to wonder about the bond he had with his friend if that friend was in danger.
It didn't take long for him to reach the dead Schnee patriarch. The village of Brunswick Farms wasn't a huge town and with him knowing precisely in which direction he should go, finding the old Schnee was beyond easy.
Upon arriving at the source of the shout Jaune saw the old Nicholas Schnee worryingly flying around a well while shouting for help whenever he could.
"We're here!" Jaune shortly said as he and Summer arrived by the well before frowning after noticing something.
"Where's Whitley?"
The moment Nicholas heard and saw them the emotions on his face immediately changed. When before there was only worry and fear on his face now it was replaced with relief and anxiousness.
"That's why I screamed for help." The Schnee patriarch said hastily. "He's in the well and since falling in there and meeting that strange grimm creature all of his motivation disappeared completely."
"Why would that idiot fall into a well?" Another familiar voice said from behind as three more people of their small group arrived at the scene.
Jaune took a quick glance at his friends that just arrived. Ren and Nora looked a tad bit more weary than usually. While he expected to see such a look from the wind shaman of their group, he had to say seeing Nora looking like that was uncanny.
"You're here as well!" Nicholas shouted in happiness.
"Of course we are." Ren rolled his eyes. "Do you know how hard it is to not hear someone shouting for help in this small village?"
The small joke made by the wind shaman didn't really make anyone laugh as everyone was either affected by the Apathy or worried for their family but Ren likely didn't want to make anyone laugh anyway.
"O-Of course." Nicholas coughed into his hand embarrassingly before explaining what had happened. "You see, Whitley and I were looking around and asking the residential spirits in hopes of finding out what has happened in this place but after talking to at least dozen of different spirits the only thing we learned was that one day everyone started to feel under the weather after a few of the villagers saw a couple of small grimm enter their main well."
"Knowing that it would probably be our only lead on what happened here for a while, Whitley decided to dive into the said infected well to find if there still was anything related to the deaths of everyone in there. As you can probably imagine, it turned out that there was something in there and Whitley being unprepared for a fight didn't even have a chance to form an Over Soul before becoming an apathetic husk of a person."
Silence and worry met the recounting of the events as everyone was worried for their slightly arrogant friend. Soon after, all of the eyes turned towards Jaune to await his decision on the matter.
It was slowly becoming way too hard for him to deny being the team leader.
"We are going down there to help." Jaune decided with a sigh before raising one of his fingers. "Although, not everyone of us should go there. Nora, you will stay here and wait for us. If we do not come back after an hour or so blow that well to pieces, just make sure to warn us though, alright?"
Sure, that plan might have been considered quite risky, even unnecessary if everything went fine and they didn't need to use it, but with his Over Soul the risks were practically nonexistent. The only thing he would have to watch out for was being to apathetic to form an Over Soul.
That was why this time he would be going into action with his Over Soul already formed.
"Wouldn't it be better for me to go down there and for Renny to stay here?" Nora asked in confusion. "If Renny were to wait outside the well then he could be informed if something dangerous happened by your spirits. There's no option like this for me."
Jaune noticed Ren raising his eyebrow in confusion at that as well. The wind shaman probably didn't expect that he would be diving down that well either.
"It's true and if it was any other grimm we would have done it like you said but since Apathy attacks our emotions it's better for everyone down there to be able to communicate with each other." Jaune answered. "On top of that, Whitley's guardian spirit had already been in that well so he can work as our guide and you wouldn't be able to see him."
His answer cleared some of the confusion but there still was some worry present on his friends' faces. It was possible that the worry they were feeling was simply caused by the Apathy grimm affecting them though.
With their emotions being the target of the attacks nothing was for certain.
"So, how are we going down?" Ren leaned down the well.
"Don't worry about that." Jaune smirked slightly while quickly forming his Over Soul. "I've got an idea."
Rose petals began to slowly rain from the sky making every resident of the village look upwards in awe. Many of the spirits from the Brunswick Farms would later remember that phenomenon as a sign from the blond magician that had visited the village.
...
A couple of minutes later...
...
After staring at the slowly falling petals in an awkward silence for the last couple of moments, Jaune decided that he would need to find a way to make that aspect of his Over Soul faster. For some reason it somehow felt slower in this village than it was usually too.
Now that he thought about it, his Over Soul's main ability was unbelievably inconvenient. Not only did it always take a while for the petals to reach the height at which he wouldn't kill himself from falling but it also couldn't be used in closed spaces.
Why was that even the case?
Over Souls were almost entirely spiritual so theoretically they shouldn't need to interact with the physical world at all. He knew that ordinary people who weren't shamans were incapable of seeing those petals therefore they shouldn't be able to interact with it in any other ways as well.
Was he the one who was doing something wrong?
He didn't have the strength to feel properly angry or curious about it either. The only thing that was getting out of him was a mild annoyance. The Apathy grimm were truly terrifying, or maybe he wouldn't have felt angry about that in the first place because of how insignificant these thoughts were in the grand scheme of things anyway.
Who knows?
Thankfully, the petals at the very least didn't have any issues with falling into the well, saving him from some of the embarrassment the Apathy would have to suck out of him once again.
"That certainly took a while." Ren remarked. "Are you sure it wouldn't have been better if we simply jumped down there earlier?"
Jaune grabbed his head into his hands and groaned loudly. He was pretty sure he heard Nora chuckle a little at him and considering that their emotions were being constantly stolen away, every little bit of happiness was a good thing.
It meant his idea wasn't completely useless.
"Are you going, guys?" Nora asked, holding her smirk from forming on her face.
"Yes, we are." Jaune groaned. "Ren, come closer. I know we never tried using my Over Soul to teleport others with me but it's something I wanted to try for a while yet never had a chance to do so."
"Was the desire to test something really a good enough reason to leave Whitley waiting in a small pit with a dangerous grimm for a good couple of minutes?" Ren asked sternly, showing a rare concern for their other friend.
"It wasn't." Jaune agreed easily. "Safety, however, was. We can't go down there without a quick way to get out because with no motivation to do anything we would never choose to use the tiring exit route."
Ren opened his mouth to argue but after finding no argument against it he closed it and shrugged. "Good point."
Not wanting to waste any more time on unnecessary things, Jaune quickly grabbed one of Ren's arms and pulled the wind shaman closer to him. There was no time to waste on needless chatting.
With a wide movement of his arm the cloak on Jaune's halberd spread out over two of them. Despite knowing that it should technically work, Jaune wasn't sure whether it would be successful or not.
Ignoring the fact that he had never tried it before, there was also the Furyoku cost and his skills as a shaman to consider. It wasn't to say that his shaman skills were bad or inadequate in any way but with no previous experience to base off of it was hard to gauge what he was and wasn't capable of doing.
A single pull on his halberd was enough to cover both of them with the cloak from his Over Soul and upon doing that, the numerous rose petals rapidly gathered around them swallowing both of them whole.
At the same time that they disappeared from one location outside the well at another location deep into the well countless rose petals swirled and gathered around a single one of them creating a small storm of petals from which both of them appeared.
It looked like his test was a success.
"So that's how it feels." Ren said in genuine wonder after touching the ground. "I have to say, I expected it to be a lot worse."
"Do you really think I would bother using an ability like that in the middle of combat if it felt worse than that?" Jaune asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Fair point." Ren said before looking around the water tunnels. "I don't see any grimm in here."
"It's because they are a bit deeper!" A voice of Nicholas said from above.
The spirits of their group hadn't been relocated through Jaune's Over Soul so they had to fly down here on their own. Luckily since they didn't have any physical bodies they didn't have to worry about slowing down their fall and could just rush down as fast as they could.
It made Jaune question what the limits of his Over Soul were however. If he couldn't bring ghosts with him when using his Over Soul then what different limits did his ability have?
"Okay, since we are down here, guide us to Whitley." Jaune said to Nicholas who had just reached them.
"Let's go." The old Schnee nodded before flying in one direction.
Once they left the only lightened spot of ground that was directly under the well, Jaune and Ren finally noticed how dark the water tunnels under the well were. There weren't any torches or light systems installed down there and if it weren't for their scrolls then they likely would have walked blindly.
In hindsight it should have been obvious, no random village was going to light up their water tunnels of all things, but the lack of foreknowledge about the darkness made them quite surprised at that.
The path the dead Schnee patriarch was taking them on was unexpectedly quiet. It wasn't that they expected there to be a lot of noise a good dozen or so meters underground but the idea of a grimm infested place left them with other expectations.
The Apathy grimm had to be there somewhere since their effects were still working so Whitley couldn't have eliminated all of them.
Were the grimm hiding from them?
Was it possible for grimm to hide at all?
He didn't have the huntsman education to know such things and the only person he knew who could have any idea was busy carefully looking around in search of enemies and frowning. Based on his friend's actions it apparently was abnormal for Grimm to not attack them directly after they entered their lair so his confusion was justified.
"We are here." Nicholas whispered sharply before stopping them and pointing forward.
Ahead of them was a rather large cave that was overflowing with small humanoid-like black skeletal creatures. No matter where he would look at all he would see was an amalgamation of countless of these creatures.
It was terrifying how many of these beasts were there.
"Where's Whitley?" Jaune whispered shakily. Despite there being so many of these creatures in the cave, he couldn't see his friend anywhere among them. As long as they found Whitley they could take him and run away without bothering the grimm at all but without knowing where the younger shaman was it would be impossible to do so.
Nicholas responded to his question by merely pointing forward again in silence. Following the path his friend's guardian spirit's finger was making, Jaune saw a bunch of the Apathy grimm swarming to a single place in the cave.
Those things didn't attack nor did they hurry, the only thing they did was slowly walk towards the place Nicholas pointed at and shrieked in a whisper-like tone at it.
"Wait..." Jaune swallowed audibly in a frightening realization. "He's in there?"
"Yes." The old Schnee nodded solemnly. "Whitley and I explored the caves to precisely that point before all of a sudden the grimm we had no idea were in here surrounded us in a matter of seconds. The shrieks staggered Whitley in place and by the point those things came close Whitley lost all of his will power to move. He's been sitting in that place ever since."
A short moment of silence followed the explanation of what happened. They've been so busy the last few days with the things that were more important for them that they completely forgot how scary the Grimm could be.
"How are we doing this?" Ren asked while looking at the group of grimm with a frown on his face.
They couldn't just enter without a plan. While they were strong enough to take care of any ordinary grimm the world could throw at them, things like these were way out of the league of people who didn't have any real experience in fighting them.
If they handled it incorrectly they could end up like Whitley and it wouldn't help anyone.
"We are doing this quickly." Jaune stated. "Over Souls active from the start, I will make our way through the fastest route to Whitley, grab him, and then leave immediately after while you cover me from afar with your bow. We don't have to kill all of them and our safety is the most important."
Three quick nods of agreement met his plan and right after Ren formed his Over Soul they charged at the swarm of grimm.
Loud shrieks and grunts of combat echoed through the tunnels and could be heard outside the well as Jaune cut through the hordes of Apathy creatures blocking his way. The grimm fell to his Silver Arcs remarkably quickly, almost immediately even.
It wasn't to say that his path to Whitley was completely effortless as for every five Apathy that he cut down another ten would appear the very next moment and Ren's arrows could help him only so much when the enemies could block them through their sheer volume.
It was like trying to dig through a mountain.
In the end, after a good minute or two of constant hacking through the grimm, he managed to arrive at the location where all of these Apathy had been swarming at before. He was still surrounded by dozens if not hundreds of grimm so he had to be quick about getting Whitley away.
With a quick straightforward movement he extended his hand to grab what he assumed would be Whitley's arm. His assumption wasn't correct however and because of that he almost fell down after trying to grab something that wasn't there.
Jaune stopped himself from collapsing by stabbing his halberd into the ground with his other hand.
Knowing things weren't exactly going how he had imagined them to go earlier, Jaune took a quick glance at Whitley to see what was wrong. Upon witnessing how his friend was faring, he frowned a little before slumping his shoulders with a loud pitying sigh.
Unlike what he had expected, Whitley wasn't standing and trying to hold his own against the endless horde of grimm coming at him nor was the younger shaman sitting down dejectedly after losing all of his will power to the black beasts.
Whitley was curled up in a ball, his legs bent in an almost protective way that covered all of his torso with his arms lightly wrapped around them as the boy didn't have the strength to waste. It paired up with the head of the steel shaman being tilted slightly down made for a pitiful sight of the usually proud shaman.
Yet that all wasn't the worst part about the state of the young shaman.
That part certainly were his eyes. There was nothing of value to be found in them, no joy, sadness, or any other emotion for that matter. Jaune wasn't sure if the younger shaman truly saw anything in the state he was in or if his mind simply gave up on interpreting the rays of light entering the boy's eyes as anything else than a bunch of meaningless colors.
"Whitley..." Jaune laid his hand on top of his friend's head before kneeling down to get on an equal level as said friend. "I know it's impossibly difficult for you right now but if you stay here it's only going to get worse."
His words didn't seem to reach the younger boy as the only response he had gotten was a bunch of grimm shrieking around them and whistling of wind from Ren's arrows that were currently protecting them.
Whitley was silent.
The shrieks were gradually becoming louder and louder as Ren couldn't kill every grimm on time. Some of the Apathy were surviving the first wind arrows that hit them too, Ren wouldn't be able to keep this up forever.
"Get up." Jaune said a little bit more forcefully through his gritted teeth and shook the young Schnee a little. It felt terrible to hurry a friend in a clear need for help but if he didn't do that then they could become the next ones to need help. "You can mope around after we leave this village but now we have to go."
No response.
There were no answers, no movement to leave, no grunts of discomfort at his shaking, not even any signs of acknowledgement. It was like he was talking to a literal shell of a person, a hollow body with no soul or mind in it.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jaune saw that the grimm were slowly but steadily arriving closer and closer to them. Ren was too busy protecting himself from the never-ending swarm of Apathy to help them as well.
If they didn't leave quickly then all of them would end up dead. Only Nora's bombing of the well would help them in any way and it wouldn't do too much either.
"Jaune, hurry up!" Ren shouted in between shooting his arrows. "I can't go all out if we don't want the cave to collapse on us and without my full strength I cannot protect us indefinitely!"
As if hearing the worry in Ren's voice, all the grimm suddenly become twice as aggressive in their attempts at killing them than they were before.
It was almost incomparable how much worse the situation had become when before they only had to deal with uncountable swarms of relatively weak beasts attacking them at the ground now walls and the ceiling stopped being as safe as they were supposed to be.
Some of the beasts began climbing at the ceiling trying to get them from above. Others tried to get through the small cracks on walls or maybe break the walls from within by overfilling them from inside, it was hard to tell how many of them were doing similar things.
No matter where they would look, an army of pure black would await them.
"Damn it!" Jaune cursed before shaking Whitley with a bit more strength. "We need to leave now! If you won't go on your own then I will drag you out myself!"
Jaune did exactly as he said and after hurriedly grabbing his youngest friend by the shoulder, he began to drag the boy away.
Countless grimm stood in his way and jumped at him from every direction, there were so many of them that he didn't have the space to swing his halberd and had to resort to stabbing whatever happened to be in front of him.
Jaune winced a little as a claw of one of the Apathy cut through the skin on one of his arms. The normally passive in way of fighting grimm were now attacking directly, with how many of them there were here they were dead the moment he stopped moving.
"Jaune! Help!" Ren shouted while being drowned by the grimm.
He wouldn't be able to get there in time to help him while dragging Whitley along. Another curse left Jaune's mouth as he was at a loss on what to do, he couldn't just leave Whitley behind since he was the reason they were here in the first place and leaving Ren without the help was out of the question too.
Knowing that there was no chance for him to get to Ren on time, Jaune stopped in place and tightly gripped his halberd in anger.
If they were outside and he had enough space to widely swing his weapon then there wouldn't be any issue, he would just teleport all of them away with his Over Soul but with that option taken away from him he was left with almost nothing.
There had to be something he could do.
With a near miraculous determination flowing through his eyes, Jaune narrowed his eyes at his halberd. It was his Over Soul that cut through the grimm like they were nothing earlier and it was this Over Soul that was powered by the spirit of the strongest huntress he knew, if there was anything that could be done about this situation then it should be able to do it.
A loud groan echoed through the cave as Jaune pushed a few of the Apathy away from him and forcefully slammed the bottom of his halberd into the ground.
If there was anything that the Shaman Fight taught him so far it was that sometimes everything you needed was just an enormous amount of Furyoku in a single attack. It worked for him when he fought against Whitley, it worked for Ren when they fought against Tyrian and it was going to work right now!
The sensation of channeling his Furyoku to power an attack wasn't foreign to him so when the blade of his spiritual halberd began to glow with a bright silver light and his body started to feel spiritually lighter he only grit his teeth and pushed all of his strength into the weapon.
Soon that small silver light became so bright that it would put many flashlights to shame and the grimm that were the closest to him began to steadily disintegrating one by one.
The wind didn't move nor there was any sound, the only thing that was happening was a light constantly getting brighter and the grimm disappearing in a matter of seconds upon touching that light.
"Silver Glow!" Jaune shouted as he slammed the bottom of his halberd into the ground once again and the light from his halberd momentarily shone so brightly that anyone capable of seeing it was blinded by it.
The light lasted less than a single second yet the moment it was gone none of the grimm remained alive.
A low whistling sound of wind passing through the different cracks and caves of the tunnels could be heard as everyone silently stayed in place. The sound continued for a few seconds only to be interrupted by a loud thump sound of a body hitting the floor.
Jaune wasn't sure if it was because of running out of Furyoku or if it was purely from the relief of getting rid of Apathy but the moment he was certain everything was safe he couldn't stop himself from collapsing on the ground.
The ground felt surprisingly cold, annoyingly so.
A sigh left the barely awake Jaune as he laid on the ground, his eyes felt heavy and it was becoming difficult for him to stay awake. They were safe now so if he were to leave the escape from the well to his friends then everything should be fine.
With thoughts like these flowing through his mind the young Arc slowly lost his consciousness.
...
Some time later...
...
Waking up in the middle of an unknown room, Jaune couldn't help but wince as the wounds from the fight in the well painfully reminded him of what had happened. The pain wasn't anything unbearable but it was still annoying.
The place he woke up at wasn't somewhere he had ever been before but from the wooden walls of the house he could say that he was still within the borders of Brunswick Farms.
That, or his friends managed to somehow drag him to another village in the time it took him to regain consciousness.
He wanted to say that it would be impossible but with everything they have seen and done already, he wouldn't put it past Whitley to create an entire train out of his steel to transport him.
Jaune quietly groaned as he pushed the blanket off himself and carefully stood up to not damage anything too hard. He had to find his friends but there was no need to hurry anymore with the grimm taken care of.
He grimaced as he looked over the room he was in and found it completely empty. They could have at least left someone to watch over him and bring him up to speed when he awoke.
After sluggishly making his way to the door, he gently pushed it open to see if his companions weren't waiting for him there.
Upon opening the door a loud noise of a conversation between at least a dozen people hit his ears like a sound attack specifically designed to make him irritated. With a small grimace on his face Jaune looked at the people talking to see a bunch of spirits talking with his friends.
Seeing that there were clear emotions present in that conversation, Jaune could only smile with content. Everything had turned out just fine and he didn't have to worry about the apathy anymore.
"Hey! Look who woke up!" Someone called loudly after taking a note of Jaune bringing the attention of everyone to him and he lightly sighed in response. He wasn't able to find out who was the person that shouted that because the voices were all blending together for him but he had a feeling that it was Summer.
A momentary silence spread among everybody as everyone silently looked at him with either worry, happiness, or relief.
"Jauney! You're up!" A loud energetic voice screamed as a heavy object collided with him at a speed that it shouldn't have.
"Yup, I am. What did I miss?" He said with a wide smile while popping the 'p' sound while ruffling the hair on top of Nora's head. It was great to get the fully energetic red haired huntress in training back.
The silence was instantly replaced with a loud mixture of noises as all of his friends and the spirits around them tried to talk over each other. His friends actually tried to tell him what had happened while he was asleep but the residential spirits appeared to try talking about something else.
"Not that much to be honest." Summer said with a light chuckle after arriving next to him. "Whitley snapped out of the depression after seeing our new Silver Glow and then brought both you and Ren out of the well. Since then we just told the spirits here that we killed a dangerous grimm that was hiding in their village and everything that you see here is just the result of that plus a typical treatment for a huntsman that helped from a village that was saved by them."
"All of the spirits remained in the village, I see?" Jaune said with a raised eyebrow.
Summer nodded with a slight hum in response.
"None of them still consider themselves to be dead. It's true that the apathy was responsible for killing all of them and making them think that they are alive but simply killing the grimm that took their lives isn't going to change their minds."
Jaune hummed, deep in thought. It wasn't like he was expecting that by killing the grimm they would be able to help the spirits pass into the afterlife but if that didn't work then he couldn't think of a single way to help those spirits that would be quick enough not to drop out of the tournament.
It looked like they would have to give up on making those spirits pass into the afterlife for now.
A content smile appeared on Jaune's face as he saw Whitley push Ren slightly to the side in order to get to him faster, starting another one of the regular fights between those two by doing so.
Was it really so bad that they wouldn't be able to do that though?
Chapter's finished.
The day is saved, people aren't depressed anymore and our crew is on their way to Argus.
The next chapter will be the beginning of the Argus arc and I hope it will end up as good as how I'm imagining it to be.
Anyways, See ya later!