Qrow didn't bother looking toward Raven's fight for any longer.
Whatever she was doing against the Rank 3 Grimm would have to be left to her, because he had a far more immediate problem in front of him.
Becoming a Rank 3 had granted him new capabilities. But simply being capable, didn't mean that he was strong enough to fight on the same battlefield as beings who had spent years mastering their Domains.
If Qrow simply charged into the melee with the physique of a Rank 3 while possessing the combat understanding of a Rank 2, he would accomplish little beyond becoming an unusually large target.
He needed to understand exactly what his Domain was capable of doing, and more importantly, how he could shape it. Fortunately, Raven had unknowingly given him the first piece of that puzzle when she had condensed her Domain into that gigantic sword of Ending and used it to cut through a Rank 3 Grimm's Domain as though the thing were nothing more substantial than wet paper.
Qrow had recognized the phenomenon almost immediately. The sword hadn't simply been some physical manifestation of Raven's rune. It had been her Domain itself being molded into a weapon.
The realization had struck him with almost comical simplicity. Domain Molding. The name practically explained itself. The Will stat had always been an unusual attribute compared to Body and Aura, because while Body governed physical capability and Aura served as the fuel that allowed runes to manifest, Will represented something far more difficult to quantify.
A higher Will did not merely make a person's runic attacks stronger. It allowed the awakened to impose themselves upon reality, to subtly tell the world that certain rules simply did not apply to them.
At Rank 0 the stat wasn't strong enough to impose one's will upon reality. However at Rank 1 was where that started to change. An awakened at Rank 1, when sufficiently trained, could manifest that worldly law breaking capacity through things as seemingly ridiculous as standing upon empty air or producing Aura Echo attacks.
At Rank 2, that principle had become much more pronounced, allowing awakened to instinctively disregard aspects of gravity, friction, air resistance, momentum, velocity, and other mundane limitations.
That was the essence of Rank 2 combat strength.
An awakened wasn't merely stronger than a normal human. Their Will was beginning to overwrite the assumptions reality made about how their body was supposed to behave.
But Domains represented something far greater than that. A Domain was already an externalization of one's power, a territory where the laws of the awakened's runes became authoritative. Yet if a Domain could simply be manifested and left alone, then the Will stat would have lost much of its purpose upon reaching Rank 3. Qrow now understood that wasn't the case. Will was what allowed a Rank 3 to mold their Domain into shapes, weapons, constructs, defensive shells, extensions, and countless other manifestations. The Domain was the material, while Will was the hand that shaped it.
Qrow focused inward, feeling the enormous expanse of his newly born Domain spread around him. He could feel the movements of the titanic Grimm several kilometers away, the pressure generated by the Domains of the other Rank 3s, the ripples of runic energy that accompanied every clash, and even the movements of his own Crows as though each were a finger belonging to a hand far larger than his body.
Qrow had never experienced anything remotely like it.
At Rank 2, his Crow rune had allowed him to create copies of himself, splitting his presence into a Murder of shadowy, feathered bodies that could attack from multiple directions, but there had always been a distinction between himself and those copies.
Even if the clones possessed his mannerisms, his combat instincts, and his appearance, they were still copies.
Qrow could always feel the difference. Now, however with his Master Rune, something else was within possibility.
If his Domain could be molded, perhaps he could distribute portions of it into his Crows. Qrow's attention shifted toward the flock that had already begun gathering around him, their enormous black wings beating through the crimson air.
One by one, he reached toward them with his Will, attempting to push portions of his Domain into their bodies. At first, the process resisted him, almost as though it understood instinctively that separating it would weaken it. Qrow however ignored the feeling and pushed harder, and his Will pressed his Domain, forcing it to obey his intent.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the invisible territory surrounding him began to stretch toward each Crow. Thin strands of runic authority connected his Domain to the monstrous birds, and then those strands thickened, wrapping around their bodies like invisible shells. The result was immediate. Each Crow suddenly gained a faint pressure of its own, a small but unmistakable Domain surrounding its body.
Qrow's eyes widened.
"Well, I'll be damned," he muttered, his voice almost lost beneath the thunderous roar of the battlefield. He had done it. He had successfully molded his Domain into his flock. The process was not without limitations, however. Qrow could feel the conservation of his power almost immediately.
His Domain had a finite size and density, and every fragment he pushed into one of his Crows reduced the amount remaining around his main body. It was like dividing an ocean between a series of enormous reservoirs. There was only so much water to distribute. Still, the result was promising enough that Qrow didn't hesitate.
He sent his now newly empowered Crow toward the battlefield. It descended upon the battlefield where Ozpin was currently locked in combat with the gigantic Dragon Grimm, a creature so enormous that its body resembled a moving mountain range.
The Grimm's Domain had been tearing Qrow's ordinary Crow bodies apart with terrifying ease, manifesting attacks directly inside their bodies and reducing them to shrieking fragments of black flesh. This time, however, things were different. Qrow's Crow plunged directly into Ozpin's Kinetic Energy Domain and collided with the Dragon Grimm at full speed.
The impact was colossal.
The two titanic creatures crashed together with enough force to send a shockwave racing across the battlefield, blasting dust, fragments of crimson earth, and loose weaker ranked Grimm bodies outward in every direction. The Dragon Grimm was knocked sideways, while the Crow was sent tumbling through the air before recovering with a furious flap of its enormous wings.
Both had crashed into the ground almost simultaneously, yet unlike before, Qrow's Crow did not immediately disintegrate beneath the Dragon Grimm's Domain. The small portion of Qrow's Domain attached to it had protected it from the manifested internal attacks, and for the first time since entering the Rank 3 battlefield, Qrow had actually created a meaningful opening for one of the veterans.
Ozpin caught his breath for a moment as he watched the Crow rise again. His eyes narrowed slightly as he studied the strange phenomenon.
He could feel it.
The Crow had a Domain.
A weak one, oddly enough, but a Domain nonetheless. It was attached to the creature like a protective layer, allowing it to resist the Dragon Grimm's attempts to manifest attacks directly inside its body.
Ozpin's gaze briefly shifted toward Qrow's true body in the distance, studying him for several seconds before apparently deciding that whatever the newly ascended Rank 3 was doing, it was intentional.
He didn't question it as there was simply no time.
Ozpin surged forward again, his own Kinetic Energy Domain colliding against the Dragon Grimm's territory as he launched another attack. Qrow watched the interaction carefully. He now understood the basic principle, but he also understood its weakness.
A single Black Calamity Crow could possess an enormous portion of his Domain and become incredibly difficult to destroy, while ten Crows would each possess less defensive and offensive authority.
If Qrow created a hundred, they might become little more than oversized birds with a thin shell of Domain around them, easy prey for a Rank 3 Grimm.
Yet that wasn't necessarily a flaw.
His rune wasn't called Black Calamity because it produced one incredibly powerful Crow. It was a Murder.
A flock.
A storm.
The entire concept of his power was based around overwhelming an enemy with numbers, and now he understood that the true path of his Master Rune lay somewhere between singular power and multiplicity.
Qrow could feel something else as well, something that disturbed him far more than the simple mechanics of Domain Molding. His Crows felt vast different from before. Before becoming a Rank 3, Qrow had always known that his Murder clones were copies.
He could control them almost perfectly, but beneath that control there had always been a subtle distinction.
The real Qrow was here, and the copies were there.
Now that his Domain had been attached to them, that distinction had begun to disappear. His consciousness flowed through each one exactly like they were his own. Their movements felt like his movements in their exactness and even their wings felt like his wings.
Qrow stared at one of the distant Crows and suddenly experienced a profoundly unsettling thought. If his Domain was what defined his existence as a Rank 3, perhaps his physical body was no longer the true core of his being. Perhaps the Domain itself had become the real Qrow, and the bodies merely served as manifestations of it. He didn't yet understand the full implications, but one possibility immediately presented itself.
If one of his Black Calamity Crows survived, and that Crow contained a fragment of his Domain, perhaps the death of his original body wouldn't necessarily mean his death. Perhaps he could be reborn through the flock.
The thought was so absurd that Qrow almost laughed.
"I think..." he murmured, watching his Crow across the battlefield, "so long as one of these things survives, I might not actually die." He wasn't certain if it would be wise to test that theory now, but perhaps since the world was coming to an end anyhow, this might be the best chance that he could do so.
His attention returned to the Dragon Grimm. The enormous creature opened its maw, revealing layers of jagged teeth and a furnace of crimson runic energy building inside its throat. Qrow's Crow lunged toward it, but the Grimm's Domain responded first. A runic attack attempted to manifest directly inside the Crow's body, yet the fragment of Qrow's Domain surrounding it resisted the intrusion.
The attack sputtered and vanished before fully forming.
The Dragon Grimm snarled, apparently recognizing that something had changed, and instead manifested its attack outside the Crow's protective territory. A series of circular beams of dragonfire appeared around Qrow's Crow, rotating through the air before converging on it from multiple directions. The Crow twisted through the first two, its enormous wings scattering crimson fire, but the third beam slammed into its side and sent it tumbling.
Qrow immediately felt the impact through his Domain, but before the Grimm could capitalize, Ozpin's own Domain crashed into the Dragon's.
The Kinetic Energy Empyrean tore through the space between them, disrupting the Grimm's attack and causing several of the beams to collapse into nothing.
Qrow took the opportunity. He created and sent the rest of his other Black Calamity Crows toward the remaining Rank 3 battles, splitting themselves between the other awakened who were struggling against their monstrous opponents.
Qrow deliberately limited himself to ten.
He could create more, but doing so would dilute his Domain too severely, and he suspected that ten represented the best balance between numbers and individual strength.
This wasn't the final form of Black Calamity, he knew that instinctively, but it was enough to begin.
Then Qrow's main body joined the attack. His enormous Crow form descended upon the Dragon Grimm from above and slammed into its side, striking it simultaneously with the Crow already fighting beside Ozpin.
The combined attack caught the Grimm off guard.
Its dragonfire had barely finished rotating around the first Crow when Qrow's main body collided with it from the opposite direction. The beast's head snapped sideways, and the attack it had been preparing exploded directly inside its own mouth. Flames erupted from between its teeth, blasting its jaw apart as the Grimm roared in fury.
Qrow's massive Crow twisted through the air and the Dragon Grimm immediately retaliated. Its neck stretched forward with horrifying speed, its jaws snapping toward Qrow's throat. Qrow instinctively twisted his enormous neck sideways in a strangely avian motion, narrowly avoiding the first bite, but the Grimm adjusted and clamped its burning jaws around Qrow's shoulder. Qrow's eyes flashed while he felt the pressure, but instead of retreating, he snarled and opened his own enormous beak and drove it directly into the Dragon's eye.
'Lets test it.' Qrow thought in his head.
The impact ruptured the eye completely.
Black blood and viscous fluid poured down the Grimm's face as it roared, but the Dragon refused to release him. Runic flames suddenly erupted from its mouth and began pouring into Qrow's body, consuming his feathers and flesh from the inside. Qrow felt his form burning away. Then a titanic spear of condensed kinetic energy crashed into the Dragon Grimm's skull. The weapon pierced halfway through its jaw before stopping, unable to penetrate completely, but Ozpin had never intended for it to.
The spear detonated.
The explosion tore the Dragon's jaw open. A torrent of blood and molten runic flame erupted from its mouth, but the damage had come too late to save Qrow's main body. His enormous Crow form collapsed under the Dragon's grip, its feathers disintegrating into ash as its body was consumed by the Grimm's flames.
"Qrow!" Ozpin shouted, his voice carrying through the battlefield. Yet the remaining Black Calamity Crow clone continued moving. It immediately seized the Dragon Grimm by the neck and attempted to drag the titanic creature downward. The Grimm weighed more than a mountain range, and the Crow struggled to lift it, but through sheer force it managed something resembling an avian suplex, dragging the Grimm's enormous body sideways before slamming it into the ground.
Ozpin stared.
His confusion was immediate and profound. He had been watching carefully. His Domain covered twenty-five kilometers around him, allowing him to perceive the distinction between Qrow's main body and his clones. He had known which of the Crow's was the original and he had even seen the Dragon Grimm destroy it.
Yet the remaining Crow clone close by was not only still alive, but had seemingly become stronger. The Domain surrounding it had increased in density by a small but noticeable amount. Ozpin narrowed his eyes. It was almost as though the Domain that had belonged to the destroyed body had redistributed itself through the surviving flock.
Before Ozpin could fully understand what he was seeing, another smaller Crow emerged from the back of the surviving one. It wasn't simply another clone appearing from nowhere. It was a manifestation of Qrow's Domain, and Ozpin could feel it immediately. The new Crow flew toward him.
Its body rippled, black feathers flowing like liquid shadow, and a human figure emerged from within it. Qrow stood there, completely intact, dusting his coat as though he had merely stepped out of a particularly inconvenient doorway. Ozpin stared at him for several seconds. Qrow looked back with a grin.
"Yo. Oz. Surprised you, didn't I?"
Ozpin raised one eyebrow, though his expression betrayed genuine surprise.
"You certainly did. I wasn't expecting you and Raven to reach my realm so soon. How did you manage it, and with meta runes no less? This effectively places you on par with Velik."
Qrow shrugged, though there was unmistakable pride beneath the gesture.
"Had a little help from Nicholas Arc and Raven."
Ozpin's eyes narrowed thoughtfully before he nodded.
"Truly? Well, I suppose we'll have to make time to discuss that later."
Qrow nodded.
"Yeah, but that's not all. There's a lot of things we have to talk about. I've got a lot of intel that's going to decide the rest of how this entire battlefront is going to go."
Ozpin's expression became serious.
"I see. But first we should probably get to helping the others. Though..."
His eyes flicked toward the Crow that had just been destroyed, then back toward Qrow.
"I must admit, I am curious as to how you're alive when I thought I clearly saw your main body destroyed."
Qrow waved one hand dismissively, as though Ozpin had asked him why he was wearing a particular color.
"Oh yeah, don't worry about that. I'm just immortal now."
Ozpin stared at him.
"...Right."