Ruby was the first to break from their formation the moment the chaos ahead sharpened into focus. She darted forward in a burst of red. Her form blurred into the melee, cutting down an awakened who had nearly broken through the barricade. Wind pressure followed each swing of her scythe, scattering rubble and keeping the defensive line intact.
Yang followed with her usual disregard for subtlety. She kicked off the ground and detonated a shockwave beneath her feet, launching herself into a golden arc toward a woman with stone-hardened skin. The two collided in a tumble of shattered asphalt and debris, Yang's laughter audible even over the roar of the battlefield.
Jaune entered more cautiously.
His Aura had crept back up to only sixty percent since their earlier clash with the Dragon Gang. And with the fight still raging above, Jaune knew he had to ration every drop.
He'd fought long enough to understand the real danger wasn't running out of Aura. Against grimm, it would have been a different matter but... against awakened who were trained to fight using their runes in many different scenarios... it would be problematic.
A flicker of an idea brushed the edges of his mind, something about precision and efficiency, a way to cut his expenditure further. But he didn't have time to think before a shadow overtook him.
A large awakened barreled toward him—the same brute from earlier, built like a reinforced tank and glowing with the unmistakable pulse of an active body-enhancement rune. His silhouette blocked out the ruined skyline, and his grin stretched wide enough to hurt just looking at it.
"There you are," the man bellowed. "Little meta user, bug!"
He charged, each step cracking concrete. Jaune brought Lux Aeterna up just in time to intercept the first blow. The impact rattled his bones down to the knuckles. He staggered. The follow-up punch came in a blur, and Crocea Mors caught that one, but the shock traveled through his arms, numbing them instantly.
The brute laughed.
It wasn't like Yang's kinetic absorption—that much Jaune could sense clearly. The energy coiling around him seemed to be feeding into his physique directly, making it swell with each passing second. A different kind of body enhancement. A kind that threatened to make the man even more of a monster the longer the fight dragged on.
He lunged again.
Jaune twisted and avoided the full brunt of the blow, though the partial glancing hit still carved fire through his ribs, even with his rune frame in place. He retaliated with a cross-slash—Lux Aeterna first, Crocea Mors second. Together, they barely managed to cut into the brute's skin. Sparks flew.
"Swing harder!" the man taunted.
He threw a hammering downward punch.
Jaune barely got both blades up to block. The weight behind it drove him to one knee, his spine lighting with pain, his arms trembling under the effort. He rolled away before the follow-up stomp smashed into the ground hard enough to crater the pavement.
'I can't take hits like that again.'
His Aura was low enough that he couldn't afford to spray Weakness indiscriminately. He could easily weaken a single enemy, and control how much he wanted to weaken them. From one all the way to twenty percent of their output—but that cost was steep, and the battlefield around him demanded far more than he could give.
He needed to be smarter.
More efficient.
The idea flickered again, a spark at the edge of his consciousness—
—but the brute lunged, fists raised, and Jaune had no time left to ponder.
Instinct took over.
He reached for Weakness and unleashed it—but instead of blanketing the brute entirely, he aimed sharply, precisely, at the man's lower body. His thighs. His hips. The structural core of his stance.
It landed.
The brute's next step faltered. His knees buckled as though the ground had tilted beneath him. His upper body still bulged with monstrous strength, but his foundation collapsed under the mismatch.
"What—?!"
The confusion on the brute's face was as satisfying as the stumble he took trying to regain balance.
More importantly, Jaune felt the cost.
Significantly lower.
Half, maybe even less.
His heart pounded—not from panic now, but exhilaration.
'So Weakness can target more narrowly. Not a whole person—just the part I define. A limb or a joint or even a sense.'
The brute roared and threw a wild punch. Jaune ducked under it and slashed across the weakened knee. Crocea Mors bit deeper this time, enough to make the brute hiss.
It wasn't crippling damage, but it mattered.
The man snarled and swung again. Lux Aeterna caught the blow, the impact still driving Jaune backward through grit and debris. His arms shook from the force, every nerve screaming in protest.
He needed to reposition.
The brute's stomp came down like a falling boulder.
Jaune jumped back—just a meter, just enough to evade.
He steadied himself.
Weakness still clung to the brute's legs, distorting his movements, throwing off his timing. Jaune shifted the Rune again—tightening its focus, sliding the effect down to the right knee alone. Concentrated. Efficient.
The brute tried to step forward.
His leg gave out entirely, dropping him to a half-kneel. He cursed, struggled to rise.
Jaune moved.
He cut across the back of the weakened knee again—Lux Aeterna first, Crocea Mors following. The blades struck true. The brute's leg buckled further, and his entire frame tilted.
"You little—rat!"
He swung wildly downward.
Jaune ducked under the attack and slashed upward into the armpit—a rare unarmored angle—but the man twisted, absorbing the hit with that monstrous durability. The counter-swing came too fast to dodge entirely. Jaune blocked with both blades, teeth clenched as the impact jolted through his arms.
Still, it wasn't a clean hit.
Because the brute's legs kept collapsing beneath him, disrupting every attack.
Jaune felt that spark inside him again, the sense of revelation blooming like a flame catching air.
'If I can weaken a leg, I can weaken a grip. A breathing rhythm. A heartbeat. Anything structural.'
It was terrifying.
And exhilarating.
'Anything structural...'
The brute roared again—a sound mingled with frustration and fury—and charged with uneven steps. Each stride faltered at a different angle, every movement thrown off balance.
Jaune stepped forward but the brute's roar rolled across the battlefield like a physical force.
A violent shimmer rose off his skin as invisible pressure condensed around him, warping the air with heat and distortion. His body swelled grotesquely, muscle piling on muscle, his frame thickening, expanding, growing until he towered over the street like a warped statue brought to life. Three meters at least. Maybe more. His silhouette now blotted out the ruined lights behind him.
Weakness still clung to his legs, but Jaune could feel the strain, as if the Rune itself were being pushed back by the relentless surge of the man's power. The nightmare system could only grant stats upwards to 10, but Jaune was certain that this man's physical quality if quantified the same way, would be equivalent to a theoretical around 13 or 14 in the body stat.
The wounds that Jaune had carved earlier hadn't healed, yet they no longer bled. Instead, the flesh around them had thickened, reinforced until the cuts looked almost decorative—deep grooves sculpted into tougher, denser muscle.
He was turning damage into fuel, and he was getting stronger by the second.
The brute lunged forwards and the street behind him exploded, asphalt shredding apart beneath his leap. His arm, now thicker than a tree trunk, swung forward with enough force to twist the air into a spiraling shockwave.
Jaune dodged only by instinct—dropping into a low slide, heat brushing the top of his head from the near miss. The impact of the punch behind him created a second crater, dust and shattered concrete erupting into a cloud.
He couldn't trade blows with this thing. He couldn't even take a single clean hit. He needed altitude.
Jaune teleported.
A blink and he reappeared above the brute's head. Wind tore past his face, tugging at his hair and coat. The world beneath him slowed, stretched, arranged itself into clarity.
Weakness was still active.
And it didn't have to remain where he had placed it.
Focusing every strand of his Will, Jaune pulled the Rune upward, away from the brute's legs, away from the uneven footing he'd carved into the man—
—and narrowed it down to a point.
A single vertebra, the hinge between skull and spine.
The cervical joint.
Everything clicked into place. A dangerous, fragile node of the human body—no matter how enhanced, no matter how reinforced.
Jaune adjusted his grip on his blades.
Aura Echo.
Raven had taught him the principle once, with Qrow filling in the rest: take your Will, impose it onto reality, and let Aura carve the after of a strike before the strike itself even finishes. This would create a layered hit. A multiplied impact, that could cause a single motion to fold through time and execute in a single instant.
He could manage three layers now. Barely. Enough to make his forearms ache whenever he practiced it.
Both swords flipped in his hands, reversed for blunt impact. He brought the pommels down in a clean arc and drove them into the brute's neck.
One strike—
—and three echoes detonated an instant later.
He followed with the second weapon.
Another strike which unleashed another triple pulse.
Six impacts slammed into the same point in less than the span of a heartbeat, each one amplified by Weakness concentrated into that single fragile spot.
A sharp, sickening crack split the air.
The brute's massive body seized. The towering frame that had seemed unstoppable only moments ago jerked, faltered, and began to tip forward in a slow, heavy collapse. His feet dug trenches into the pavement as his balance failed entirely.
Then he fell.
The impact churned a tremor down the street, rattling windows and sending loose debris sliding across the ground. Dust billowed upward in a choking plume.
Jaune landed on the brute's back, knees bending to absorb the drop. For a breath, everything around him seemed to pause. Even the shouts of fighting nearby dimmed, swallowed by the echo of the giant hitting the earth.
He stepped off him, blades steady at his sides.
Behind him, the brute's limbs twitched weakly, his body struggling to obey muscles that no longer had support from the neck down. The fight was finished. The man's runes raged uselessly, trying to fuel strength into a structure that had already collapsed.
Jaune exhaled once, slow and centered.
He had toppled the giant in one move.
Just like David, Jaune felled Goliath.
Jaune stepped off the fallen brute and let his breath settle. Dust still rolled across the street, cloaking the chaos in a gray haze. The fight hadn't paused just because his had ended. The city block was still alive with violent motion—shouts, bursts of light, the grind of stone as runes smashed bodies into walls. The world snapped back into motion around him.
He swept his gaze across the melee.
Yang was locked in combat with a slim man ricocheting between conjured geometric shields—hard-edged constructs that flashed into existence a split second before each impact. Yang's gauntlets detonated wave after wave of kinetic discharge, but every punch was caught, absorbed, angled away. Another LUCID Awakened fought at her flank, hurling bolts of energy that only added to the kaleidoscope of clashing forces, but the shield-user danced through all of it, a blur of angles and refracted impacts.
Farther down the street, Ruby reappeared in a burst of red acceleration, slashing past the same speed user she'd been dueling earlier. Their movements were nearly invisible—two streaks weaving around debris and combatants, sparks firing whenever they crossed paths. The speedster looked faster now, twitchier, his limbs almost vibrating. Ruby, by contrast, was still sharp, still controlled, though the tension in her shoulders told Jaune she was reaching her limit.
Dozens of other Awakened clashed around them, most of them from LUCID. They were losing ground. The Erosion creeping through their systems made them slower, sloppier and more desperate. Attacks that should have landed missed by inches. Defense patterns broke. Even the stronger ones were fraying at the edges.
Jaune tightened his grip on his blades. He needed to move—needed to help—needed to—
A sound threaded itself through the chaos.
A slow clap.
Deliberate. Crisp. Mocking. Each strike of palm against palm somehow cutting cleanly through the roar of battle, as though the world itself made room for it.
Jaune turned.
Roman Torchwick stood among the rubble as if it were a stage set precisely for him. His white coat fluttered in the shifting winds of battle, and a lazy, satisfied smile curled his lips. He applauded with the amused air of someone watching a circus performer who had exceeded expectations.
His multicolored partner was nowhere in sight.
"Gotta hand it to you, kid!" Roman called out, raising his voice over the screaming and explosions. "That was one hell of a show. Really—truly—impressive."
Jaune raised both blades, leveling his stance automatically. Roman only grinned wider.
The thief lifted his cane—no, not a cane. Up close, Jaune could see the truth of it now: the subtle grooves etched along the shaft, the faint metallic gleam beneath the lacquered exterior, the slight asymmetry at the tip where components fit together too precisely for any mundane accessory. It was a high-tech weapon disguised as a gentleman's prop—sleek, expensive, and dangerous.
Roman angled it toward him like a conductor's baton aimed at the next note of a performance.
"Well then," he said, smile sharp as a razor's edge. "I suppose it's time we had ourselves our own little dance."
Jaune shifted, blades glinting under the fractured light, and prepared for the next threat.
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AN: Advanced chapters are available on patreon