Drifting Legacy
Chapter 1: Remnant but shittier.
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[24th September 6016]
My name is Jaune Arc and I am going to be a Hunter.
Well, that's the plan.
At the middle month of Fall, right after harvest season is done, I have made a journey from my hometown, Ansel to Lake Lullaby, home to many of world renowned warriors.
Hunters, a collective term for a class of profession of professional warriors that dedicate themselves to fight magical beasts.
Over 6000 years ago, a comet crash into the moon and shattered a quarter of the celestial body. The dust of the moon and the comet as well as the debris of the collision fall into Remnant, and destroy the old world as we know it. Mythical creatures long thought to be mere stories rise from dust, and tear apart the world. People died from either inhaling Dust, the particles from the comet or got mauled to death by monsters. Billions died in the advent of the Age of Apocalypse.
Six millennia passed, and humanity had be reborn anew. The little amount of human that survived from inhaling the comet dust had developed what we call magic, and began to take back our world, one inch at a time. After 6000 revolution over the sun, humanity has established four major territories.
Vacuo, Mantle, Mistral and Vale. That is the four safe zones that our ancestors had created after six thousand years of hardship. The rest of humanity scattered across the Frontier, harsh lands which we had yet managed to fully tame. We had classify the zones to Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red and Purple according to the rate of Dust pollution in the region as well as the strength of the beasts that lies within. The four major capitals are the region classed as Blue Zones, zones that is truly safe from Dust and the Beasts of Remnant. Most of humanity lives in the Green Zones relatively safe but occasionally was hit by calamities brought by the Beasts.
What is Beasts? The full term was Mythic Beasts, referring to their origin from myth of old. Satyrs, cyclops, goblins, fairies, you name it. Scholars had failed to explain the origin of these beings, other than they began to appear when Dust and the remnants of the comet fell to our world. Most of the old species of animals had all extinct, replaced by mutated variants.
As for Fae? They come with the comet. Dangerous beings we do not understand. Intelligent and sapient, yet inhumane. We were warned to never associate with it.
However, the most dangerous of it all is perhaps the Grimm. Most of the Beasts of Remnant does not bother with humanity much, too far deep in the frontier, away from human settlements. However Grimm is different. Born from the collective negativity of humanity and made corporeal through Dust, the dark demons seeks to destroy mankind.
Anyway, I am a simple boy from a simple village. The Arc family used to be a knightly house, however my great grandfather had pledged his blade on the human side during the Faunus Conquest, and lost his fiefdom in the aftermath of the war. Exiled from his home, he found himself in Ansel, and live on as a blacksmith. I am the fourth generation blacksmith of the Arc Smithy back in Ansel, but I grew tired of forging farming tools every single day, while seethe in envy as I see my father do an occasional commission for the local warriors in our vicinity.
So, after a long week of trying to convince my father, I gained permission to leave my home and travel to Lake Lullaby, the City of Hunters.
"Bweerrghhhhhh"
I vomit out the few remaining portion of lunch in my belly down below, weekly holding myself up by the hand the edge of the deck. Currently, I am on a zeppelin, a poor and slow form of air travel, but beggars can't choose. Still, you'd think this slow floating barrel of an aircraft would be gentle enough to not upset my stomach. My tummy however, disagrees.
"Come on, Jaune… how can you be an awesome Hunter if you can't even handle a zeppelin?", I try to hype myself up.
While there are several methods of air travel, the most common form of air transportation is through zeppelins. It is a very common type of vehicle that you can find even in the most remote settlements. Traveling through land routes is very dangerous for the most part, so many of us choose to travel through air. And the cheapest type of vehicle you can make to travel through air is zeppelin. Get a boat and a large fan, tie it up to a hot air balloon and booyah! Zeppelin! If you want to be fancy, you can make one with helium.
It's slow but it works.
I had taken myself to ride a large zeppelin that transport regularly to Lake Lullaby. There are many young people like me who wants to try their luck in Lake Lullaby too.
"Okay Jaune, let's check up our equipment again."
I had bought myself an old set of sword and shield with my life savings. Both only have one Skill Slot each, which was not much but it'll do for a start. The two D Rank Skill Gems I bought had nearly put me in the red.
Skill Gems is the product of Remnant's six thousand years of magic research. By carving spells into gemstones, even a teenager like me who has zero idea how to do magic can use one. For my shield, I slotted [Fortify Defense, to raise up my defense obviously. For my sword I slotted [Slash, which pretty much just enhance normal slash with a little bit of magic.
A simple starter set for my quest to become a famed warrior.
Lake Lullaby came into view as the zeppelin pass over a mountain. The lake is more accurate to be called an freshwater ocean instead, as even from up in the sky on this zeppelin, I can't see the opposing banks of the other side of the lake past the horizon. The Lake Lullaby city is a huge city at the southwest edge of the lake.
The City of Hunters is called the unofficial fifth Blue Zone, but actually, the city is located in a Yellow Zone, which bordered with many Red Zones territories. Centuries ago, Hunters had made an outpost by the lake and over time, it grew into this large city.
I feel so excited to begin my adventures that I forgot my nausea. Get ready Lake Lullaby, Jaune Arc is coming!
[24th of June, 6016]
"Sorry, we don't see you as a Beacon's cadet material."
I had made a terrible error of judgement.
What did you mean you need a license to become a Hunter?!!
I had thought that all I need to do is just come to the city and began taking hunting request, but apparently, you need to have a license and certificates to prove that you are actually a competent hunter. I came from the boonies, so I didn't know that I will be halted by bureaucracy!
When I realized my mistake, I try to apply to one of the many Hunter Academy in the city but none of them want to accept me. I have no money to pay for the tuition nor do I have the skills to be qualified for scholarships.
As a month passed, I had run out of money and now had to sleep in the streets, and snow has begin to fall.
I try to make a living by asking to be hired to the local smithy, but none of them wanted some blacksmith in the boonies that had only forged pitchforks and hoes. They won't take me even when I beg to settle with half the pay. Before I knew it, I found myself in Oldtown, an old settlement 5 kilometers south of the city. If I failed to get a job here, I may ended up living in the slums.
Oldtown is a really old town, probably three centuries old. According to the locals, it used to be a thriving town, but as the slums east of the town grew larger and expand nearer Oldtown, many residents had left. It is now mostly a residence for the top crimelords which ruled over the slums.
I shivered in cold. I had sold most of my clothes in order to keep myself afloat, and had sold my only winter coat left for some more money for food. If this fails too, I will have to sell my weapons for a zeppelin ticket and go home.
Please, I don't want my dream to be over! Please, give me some work!
I arrived in town, and the few townsfolk I see outside glance at me suspiciously. Oldtown is a dangerous lawless place, they say. The gangs that littered across the town is one thing, but the worst was the rumored de-facto ruler of Oldtown.
The Murderhobo.
It is said there is a Hunter that live in the Oldtown. He is a bloodthirsty monster who kill 100 bandits a day. He's smell of blood and iron and has sharp teeth like a wolf. On a whim, he once killed 10 Hunters with just a broomstick.
I don't know if I am shivering from the cold or from the dread of encountering the infamous Hunter.
"Uwarrghhhh!!!"
I stumble to the ground as my foot caught unto something. When I glance to my feet, I crawled away in a panic as I see a corpse by my feet!
"urghh. I was sleeping, man."
"Why are you sleeping on the ground?! Its snowing."
"I'm hunting."
What did you mean hunting?! Who hunts by sleeping on ground while snowing.
The dude who looked like to be my age gestured to me to lie beside him.
I don't know what possessed me to comply, but maybe this is somekind of a hunting method. Maybe I can learn something here.
"You're new. Let me guess, you are some dumb hick from the boonies and get rejected because you are unlicensed, right?"
"I didn't know, okay! How am I supposed to know that most Hunters had been trained from childhood?!"
"Sheesh. Must be Green Zone virgin. I bet you never fight a goblin your whole life, aren't you?"
I wish I can retort back, but that's the truth. I had never fight a single monster in my life. Not even a slime.
"From the magnitude of Dust I can feel from you, you must be a Rank 1."
"Rank 1?"
"Yep. There is eight Ranks that refer to the concentration of Dust within your body. It signify how much power you can store in your body at a time and how much the concentration of Dust you can withstand in the environment. For example, I bet you have nausea the moment you got out of your village right?"
Huh? How did you know?
"That's Dust poisoning. You need to be at Rank 2 to live comfortably in Yellow Zones like Lake Lullaby. To enter Red Zones, you need to be at least Rank 4."
"Poisoning?!! Am I dying?!!"
"Nah. Dust distribution is not exact across the zones. The Zones simply refers to a range of concentration. Lake Lullaby is at a low end of Dust concentration. If you go to a more concentrated part in the Yellow Zone, your nausea and headache will get worse as you entering places that is only tolerable by Rank 3s. Here's the guideline. Rank 1 in Green. Rank 2 and 3 in Yellow. Rank 4 and 5 in Red. And 6 to 8 in Purple."
"I wish someone told me this."
"Pfftt. Most people don't want to get of Green buddy. And the Blue? Like hell they get out of that so called paradise of theirs. Like many kids before you, you guys think you can be awesome Hunters when you know nothing about what's its like to leave at the edge of the Frontier."
I bit my tongue to hold back my retort. Yea. It's my mistake to get into Lake Lullaby half-cocked. That's on me.
"Anyway, pretend to sleep. Or better, play dead. It's coming."
I follow along and close my eyes then, I can feel something small crawl onto my chest. I open my eyes, and saw a…. Little cute snowman?
Then, it open its mouth and show rows of razor sharp teeth! How the hell a snowman has teeth?! And meaty tongue?!! This defy biology!!
"Whoops! Got cha!"
The dude beside me with lightning fast move grabbed the small snowman before it can chomp my face off! I get up and back away, looking over the alley to see if there's any other monster snowmen!
"What the hell is that?!!", I demanded answers.
"Oh this? Jackfrost. It's a type of Fae. It appears to prey upon the homeless who fell asleep in the cold outside."
"A Fae?!!"
"Yep.", he casually toy with the murder snowman as he poked it with a dagger. Then, he gutted it right in front of me. On the outside it look and felt just like a snowball, but on the inside, it has the anatomy of a regular animal, if you can call it that. It defy my understanding of biology!
He then took out a heart of ice and the jackfrost dies.
"Heck yea! That's a pretty good heart! Hey, wanna eat it?"
"N-no???"
Who the hell eats Fae?!! And didn't it eat people?!!
"Suit yourself."
He then walk over to a metal barrel at a back alley and light up the pile of woods inside with a fingersnap.
Wow! A Simple Sign! A type of simple magic that is cast by simple hand gestures!
"How did you do that?!"
"Do what?", he began to pull out the organs out of the jackfrost abdomen and separated it in different bowls. He then hold it over the fire, not minding the flame, as it doesn't even seem to burn him at all and collect the melted snow-skin(???) into a cup.
He then take a sip of it.
"Want some?", he hold the cup to me.
"Err… no?"
"I'm not answering anything if you don't take it."
I begrudgingly took the cup. This is a chance to learn something from an actual Hunter, so I'm not letting this chance passed! Hell, maybe I can convince him to follow him to work!
I took a careful sip, expecting a foul taste, but instead what I taste is sweet nectar!
"w-what?!!"
"Nice right. That cup of jackfrost water can fetch you 200 Lien at the local high end restaurants."
"And you make me drink this?!! I can't pay for it!"
"Eh, consider it your share for the hunt."
"Does this mean that you can sell the other parts too?!!"
"Yea, with this size, give or take, its about 1500 Lien, I think? Rank 3 monsters is pretty pricey."
Wow!! What a stroke of luck!! This is my chance to restore some of my funds.
"Let's sell it!"
"whoa whoa whoa, slow down, cowboy. I didn't even invite you for this hunt. Besides, I'm eating it.", he says as he seasoned the carcass of jackfrost with barbecue spices.
"You get a 1500 Lien worth of prey and you want to eat it?!!", I shouted incredulously.
He looked at me like an alien.
"Why else do anyone hunt? To eat good food obviously!"
)))))))
The roasted jackfrost is so good damnit!
I don't know what to feel, satisfied for eating a delicious meal after a month of surviving on stale bread or cry over 1500 Lien being burned becoz some homeless dude decide he just want to eat a snowman.
"How did you not get burned, or feeling cold?", I asked him.
"Oh that? Aura."
"Aura?"
"Man, you're really clueless, aren't you?", he tossed the last bone of the jackfrost we ate into a mortar, and began to grind it to dust with a pestle. "Dust can be harnessed in two ways, Mana and Aura. If you want to be a wizard, you make Mana. If you want to be a melee fighter, you make Aura. If you're really good at it, you can do both."
"Oh.", I nodded. I assume this Aura thing is why he doesn't feel a thing from the elements despite wearing what I can only describe as rags. "By the way, what are you doing?"
"Oh, I'm making a magic weapon."
"Wait what?!!"
Who the hell make a magic weapon in the backalley?!! You don't even have a forge here!
I watched in abject horror as despite my experience in the forge as the son of a blacksmith, I am looking at this guy making a magic weapon through a method I can only describe as a hobocraft project. He put some scrap metal into a stone bowl and shoot a jet of flame from his index finger, all while he hum some musical tunes.
Then, he pour the molten iron into a mold he had lazily carved on the ground. A small knife in shape. When it cool down and solidify, he picked up the red hot metal and dipped it into the plate of jackfrost bonedust. Then, he took the jackfrost heart and embedded it on the knife's flat side.
[Forge]
With a simple command, I see the red hot metal slowly bend into a more refined shape. In just a few minutes, it turn into a beautiful, blueish blade, with the ice heart embedded in the middle.
"Hmm.", he toss the knife several times, and throw it to the brick wall. It pierced through the brick and frost began the crept across the wall until it stops spreading over 1 meter radius from the knife.
"Ah shit, a Rank 1. Eh, you can have it. It probably can last 2 or 3 more throws."
"What the hell?!! This isn't supposed to be how you forge a magic weapon! There's proper steps to make one!", I yelped in protest over the ridiculous stunt I had just seen.
"Well yea, forging with this method only make a weapon that last only a few strikes. I just make weapons out of my meals as a hobby, plus it make a decent side gig to sell consumable weapons. If I want something that really last, I get a proper forge."
Still, it's ridiculous that you make a magic weapon with nothing but a stone bowl and a mold carved on ground just for kicks! Even if it only last a few use, that's a really ridiculous thing to do.
"By the may, my name is Jaune Arc. What's yours?"
"Hmmm, Soren Coldforge."
"I know I don't have any skills or money, but can you teach me how to become a Hunter?", I begged on my knees.
Soren had this annoying smirk on his face. "Why do you want to be a Hunter? Do you know what's the mortality rate of the first 3 years of Hunters? 70%. Hunters keep the population of monsters and Grimm down by culling them forever, so it's been a very old grinding machine. What do you, some hick from boonies can do to survive a deadly world like that?"
To be honest, I'm not sure. I had came here with a shallow dream to be a famous Hunter, not realizing what it means to be one. I want the thrill and excitement of the adventures, but I had no idea what I was walking into.
"yeah right. Tell me, how did your first taste of a hunt feel?"
"Shocking. I pretend to sleep only to see myself to about to be mauled by a little snowman."
"That's just the easy one. Well, easy for me. I'm a Rank 3 and had been doing this gig for awhile. I had joined up some dude going around massacring goblins, tracked and taken down some vampires, join some fisherman fishing up crabs during storms and many more crap like that. Most hunts won't be some simple playing asleep in the snow. That's why the government take tight control over passing up new Hunters. This is not a game, buddy."
Still…
"I want to be a Hunter! My family used to be knights but we're nothing more than commonfolk now! I want to live up to the legacy of the Arc's name! I know I came into this half-cocked with shallow intentions, but still…"
I looked him dead in the eye with determination.
"The jackfrost hunt was unexpected, but thrilling! And I never had tasted a water so good in my life! And the meat was to die for! It was… fun!"
Soren Coldforge raised an eyebrow.
"well okay honestly I was expecting a stupid I wanna be a hero speech. Kids stories stuff."
"I have no idea about dreaming to be a hero. Honestly, I am kinda a shallow person. I want to be famous and adored. Not exactly hero material, I think."
Soren laughed. "Yea, I would have kicked you out of town if you go mr protagonist on me. You see, the world has too many heroes in it. What it really needs, is professionals."
Soren stood up.
"Well, I happen to need someone to help me build a zeppelin. I mean, I can do it myself, but that's kind of annoying. I will be staying here until spring. So, if you managed to train and rise to Rank 2 by the time I'm leaving town, I guess you can come along with me."
"Even without license?", my eyes jolted out.
"Meh, I am a Drifter. A nomadic hunter that's not affiliated to any kingdoms. I roam across Remnant looking of new things to eat, girls to flirt with and monsters to hunt and kill. Fuck Lake Lullaby, Vale, Atlas, Vacuo and Mistral! I refuse to pay taxes! So yeah, with me, you will be an illegal Hunter, but fuck those elitist bastards. Being a Drifter is cooler anyway."
Soren then walk out the backalley and I followed him.
"So how's its going to be? Interested?"
"Yes! I want in!"
"Okay, no take backsies."
As we walk toward the center of the town, I began to notice that the townsfolk runs away at the sight of Soren Coldforge, yelling something on the line of,
"EVERYONE RUNS! THE MURDERHOBO IS BACK!!"
Sky looked back at me with a smug grin.
"Remember, no take backsies."
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Fuck!
[Author's Note]
Alright, that's the debut of Drifting Legacy.
A long time ago, while having a rant tangent over RWBY with my friend, we ended up coming up with this fic idea. Both of us are too lazy to actually write it, but eh, now that I am here, might as well.
If there's any fic I want to make the most, it would be this one.
As usual, I pretty much just go fuck canon and may be pissing off a lot of people over OOC characters. To which, fine I guess. I'm not good at writing "fanfic". Maintaining the personalities and mannerism of canon characters is not my forte, which is why I mostly focus the PoV on the OC MC and get away with nonsense using the crack license. Its also why I go AU as fuck, coz if I'm going to rewrite the same thing and events in canon, that would just be a boring writing process, which makes this whole fanfic side hobby I'm doing for now to be counterproductive.
Anyway, to describe the power level of Rank system, it goes like this.
Rank 1 is peak normal human strength. Which doesn't mean much in this AU because everything on the planet is busted.
Rank 2 is Season 1 and 2 Team RWBY.
Rank 3 is Phyrrha level at the low end to veteran Hunters at the high end
Rank 4 is legendary Hunters like Qrow, Raven and stuff. And yep I am disappointed with Qrow in canon, so I want him to be really peak here.
Rank 5 is Ozpin in his prime.
We wont get into Rank 6 to 8 for awhile but basically that's the realm of demigods and gods.
Is there a Rank 9 and 10? In this fic canon, no one had reached a powerlevel that can be described as Rank 9 and beyond. Rank 8 is already treated as gods in this verse, so Ranks beyond that? Yep I'm not going into that.
About the OC, Soren?
Well, this fic is pretty much using an abandoned OG story I made using the Drifting Legacy idea. I am currently working on my own manga, so when that come out you will see I used most of this fic lore stuff in my own manga. So in a way, you're getting a preview of my own original work. The manga vol 1 I am working on should be finished in a few chapters, which I then will release on my pixiv, I think. I intend to make the 1st vol of my manga to be free.
Soren is loosely taken from the MC of the manga I working on. In the manga, Soren is the MC while Jon (the companion character based on Jaune) is the side-main character. For this fic, it's the reverse. If I write this fic with Soren at its helm, I think this fic is going to go full Makoto Hotaru's nonsense lmao. I want to write this fic a little bit more seriously and not full crack.
K, that's enuff rambling. See y'all later.