The Games We Play

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryuugi. This has been pulled from his Spacebattles publishment at threads/rwby-the-gamer-the-games-we-play-disk-five.341621/. Anyway on with the show...err read.

Passage

With our goals decided, we returned to our training with renewed vigor. My family knew the truth about me and knew not to get too alarmed over prolonged disappearances, so I shot them a message and put them out of my mind. After the last day of training, we were more or less ready to dispense with the small fry that ventured close to the Kingdoms borders and start Hunting the real monsters. The lands beyond the Kingdom's walls were held solely by Grimm and ruled by the greatest examples of them. Where before we'd Hunted the Karkinos, now we chased the mighty beasts called Tegmines, their pitch black shells like mighty hills as they dotted the beaches around the Inland Sea. Most of the creatures, sometimes surrounded by what seemed like entire fields of their lesser cousins, lay underwater and we had to compensate, but there are benefits to being the master of so many elements.

They were powerful creatures, with pincers that could scoop up buildings and crush them to powder. More than that, their shells were an order of magnitude more durable than those of the smaller creatures that gathered around or even upon them, enough that it took a focused assault to crack them enough for Adam to get some hits in. The monsters that inhabited the sea were wholly different from those on land, and the shelled beasts called schools of Grimm to their aid. From the shark-like Akheilos to the Skolopendra—a creature that had no direct analogy, but appeared as something of a cross between a millipede and a lobster—the Grimm of the sea attacked, aiding their greater comrades in their battle against us.

But though the Tegmines were as mighty as glaciers, they were about as fast. Adam and I made short work of the small fry, pun intended, and then focused on them. It wasn't the leisurely battle of the night before, but we made do—I buffed Adam as much as I was able, healed freely, and wasn't afraid to step in and erase everything in an area when need be. They had an army, but Xihai turned the seas to our cause and I underwent a Metamorphosis to adapt to aquatic combat. After about half an hour, the three Tegmine we'd found lay scattered like broken mountains, the shattered remains of their shells reaching up towards the sky. On the miniature island created by one of them, I found the prizes for our victory. Besides the usual enormous sum of money that I split between Adam and myself, there were items that I claimed for my own.

You have obtained the item 'Cancer.'

You have obtained the skill book 'Crushing Grip.'

You have obtained the skill book 'Armored Shell.'

When the battle ended and we returned to the surface, I led us to the North-East, where the stony wasteland around Mistral turned abruptly into gentle plains—gentle, that is, if you could somehow ignore the monolithic shapes that wandered it, making the ground shake with their footfalls. Nemeans roamed in the distance, even the smallest of the creatures standing more than half as high as a Goliath and hunting in packs of up to sixty. All the creatures in sight had the slick look of lionesses, their hides layers of white Grimm bone with only occasional patches of dark flesh. Rukhs circled in the sky above, their wingspans casting massive shadows on the ground below as the eagle-like beasts occasionally took flight, large enough to casually grasp a grown elephant in each claw and swallow one whole with a gulp. Calydons led herds of Boarbatusk in wheeling swarms, casting dust clouds high into the sky and in the distance I could see the sky turning red from where the Tyrant Scales were no doubt making themselves comfortable.

There were other creatures, so many others, giants that roamed the plains freely far beyond the reach of man. In places, the grass of the plains rose high above our waists, providing concealment to thousands of natural creatures, but it did absolutely nothing to hide the greater creatures of Grimm and even without my enhanced vision, I'd have been able to see the creatures for miles and miles, the kings of the open plains.

Here, even we moved carefully. If I was alone, I might have taken more chances—the Nemeans were a tempting sight, I had to admit, but they were too powerful and too numerous to risk opposing with Adam present, at least for the time being. We'd venture further into the savannahs later, but today we merely skirted the edges, facing the creatures that ventured too far from their herds or didn't hunt in packs, slaying many of the massive creatures we had before as well as a few new ones. I risked bringing down a Rukh for us to fight, even though I feared the fall would attract attention, and faced several of the Calydons. I'd thought I might see a few Basilisks or even the mighty Meretsegers, but the serpentine creatures were nowhere to be found, for better or worse. Even so, this far from the walls, we were not wanting for prey and though we regularly waited and moved to avoid drawing too much attention at once, we fought long and hard until the sun began to sink over the horizon, slaying monster after monster until we'd both gotten what we wanted.

The Beast

LV70

Adam Taurus

Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one! Your level has increased by one!

You have obtained the item 'Erymanthius.'

You have obtained the skill book 'Stampede.'

You have obtained the skill book 'Spiraling Strike.'

"Adam," I spoke, making sure he was the only one who heard me. We were both crouched low in the tall grass, hiding from sight as the night drew even more creatures to the plains. "Let's take a break."

My friend relaxed a touch beside me, cracking his neck. My regular healings had kept the exhaustion from slowing him down, but constant exertion had left the both of us drenched in sweat and he looked glad for a short rest.

"That about do it, then?" He asked.

"For now," I said, smiling brightly despite the worlds. "Things will move more quickly, now that we're within ten levels of one another."

"Time for you to do all the work, huh?" He snorted. "Can't say I mind. You can think of it as paying me back for all my valuable time."

"You wish," I replied, rolling my eyes. "You're not getting out of this that easy—all this means is that I won't be holding your hand as much and I'll hold back less. We've still got a lot to do over the next few days."

"I take it we're not going home tonight, then?" He asked, lifting a hand to push the grass away from his face as he took a seat.

"Why would we go home when there's still so much fun to be had?" I replied, raising an eyebrow challengingly. "Progress has been a bit slow of late, but I think I can get a few more levels before it's time for Mistral. There's so many types of Grimm here I haven't had a chance to fight yet. We killed a Rukh, but we couldn't find an Aethon, we didn't see any of the snakes, I didn't get to fight any Nemeans."

I shook my head.

"Now that we're done getting you up to snuff, I want to have some fun, Adam," I finished.

"You are such a whiner," Adam snorted. "If you wanted to kill everything we saw, we could have stayed in the sea."

"We could have," I agreed. "If somebody could learn to fucking breathe underwater. I was getting tired of you taking air breaks every few minutes. Can't you breathe on your own time?"

"There's no pleasing you, you realize that?" He asked. "You're just an endless fountain of bitching and moaning."

"And you complain about every little thing," I replied. "Like 'I haven't slept in two days' and 'I can't breathe underwater' and 'I can't fly.' You know who else complains about stuff like that, Adam? Losers."

He gave me the finger, making me smirk.

"So…you want me to spend my points, then?" He asked after a moment of silence, expression turning serious and he stretched carefully, staying in motion. As he did, a muttered word brought up his status screen, displaying his stats. "That's the point of this break, right?"

"It's not just for you, this time," I told him, bringing up my own. "I'm going to invest a little myself, before we go play with the big boys."

"Joy," Adam snorted, pushing the buttons on his screen carefully, raising Dexterity this time. He raised it as high as he had his Strength before it before pausing in thought. "Hey, Jaune, what do you think I should—"

"One sec," I stopped him as I finished raising my Intelligence. "Now, that's odd—no random skills this time?"

By greatly heightening your brain functions, you have learned to draw upon the power of the Psychomachia.

By raising INT above 200, you have gained the passive skill 'Castitas.'

By raising INT above 200, you have gained the passive skill 'Temperantia.'

By raising INT above 200, you have gained the passive skill 'Caritas.'

By raising INT above 200, you have gained the passive skill 'Industria.'

By raising INT above 200, you have gained the passive skill 'Patientia.'

By raising INT above 200, you have gained the passive skill 'Benevolentia.'

By raising INT above 200, you have gained the passive skill 'Humilitas.'

I took a deep, steadying breath as I felt the changes take hold, shutting my eyes for a moment as power coursed through my veins. In many ways, my power was tied to my Intelligence, both in how closely it was related to my MP and due to how many of my skills, both Passive and Active, relied on it. Even as new energy began to well up within me, I felt the skills that had been settled comfortably over my form stretch and grow to accommodate. My unified senses whirled for a moment before consolidating and settling once more, my Aura burst forth even more powerfully than before, my skin thickened and hardened—the sudden increase caused major shifts throughout what felt like my entire being, as if I'd swallowed a storm.

But like a storm, it soon passed, leaving me changed in its wake but still whole. Though energy raced through my body, my power quickly struck a balance with itself and by the time I exhaled I was fine again.

"Jaune?" Adam asked. "You okay?"

"Better than okay," I answered as I opened my eyes. I lifted my hands so I could see the trails of power coursing through my flesh, a network of energy given form and function. "Sorry, it's just always a bit of an odd feeling."

"I know what you mean," He nodded, rolling a shoulder and stretching again. "It does feel kind of weird. Not bad, but… when I train normally, improvements are so gradual that sometimes I won't notice for days or weeks at a time. But when I do this, it's such a sudden and massive increase that I feel…well, I guess you know better than anyone."

"Yeah," I nodded, staring into space. My awareness reached out, getting used to the changes in how I perceived the world. I could see better, of course—view things that were even further away or smaller than I had before, distinguish shades and differences more clearly, and countless other differences, major and minute alike—but the changes to my other senses were by far the greater. I could hear something I could only describe as a song and it took me a moment to trace the sound back to the Aura surrounding Adam. I could feel the sharpness to it, near as I was to him, and smell it, and—

It took me a moment to rein my senses in, until the sound of Adam's soul was a quiet background noise rather than a song that filled my ears. Other sounds, sharply different and not quite as vibrant, reached out to me from the Aura around every living thing nearby, but I screened them out for a moment as well, slowly getting used to the chorus around me. There were other things that called out for my attention, from electromagnetic radiation to the motions within seemingly stationary matter, but I gave my senses a moment to adjust and simply altered my worldview accordingly. I'd had quite a bit of practice with something similar from when my ESP had first expanded my senses, this was just…more. Before, the tastes and sounds were almost meaningless, but now I could gather things from them that I was having trouble placing. It was…

Not what I really needed to worry about right now. I'd get all of that in order in a bit.

"Sorry," I said, shaking myself. "Was looking at something else. You had something you wanted to ask me?"

"Just wanted your take on how I should spend the rest of my points," He asked, gesturing towards the status screen only he and I could see. "I've raised my Strength and Dexterity by the same amount and I still have some points left over; do you think I should use the rest to increase my Wisdom now or keep focusing on my physicals? It must be kind of a pain for you to have to restore my Aura so often, so I was thinking it might be a good time to improve my own recovery rate."

I looked at him and saw the thin veil of red light clinging to his form. Even without taking a look at the HP and MP bars above his head, it was plain to see that he was running low on power from the fighting beforehand. I hadn't used a Dust Crystal to heal him in a bit, but something occurred to me as I looked at him. I reached out with an invisible tendril of my Aura, shaping it in a fashion I'd simultaneously never done before and was certain of down to my bones. The tendril pierced Adam's chest like a spear, burying itself deep into his heart, and then power raced down the line like it was a power cord. I saw Adam jerk in place once, drawing back a step, but it made no difference now. Beneath my sight, I could see his heart glowing like a red star inside his chest and each beat sent a pulse of the same color through veins, illuminating them beneath his skin. His eyes became solid orbs of the color in the world I saw and the song that had faded to the background doubled and redoubled into an echoing symphony.

In moments, his MP bar was full and mine had dropped the difference.

"What the hell!" Adam all but shouted in alarm, raising Wilt and Blush. In the bleak realm of visible light, the effects were more subdued, limited to a glow in his eyes and around his skin, reminiscent of a person who's Aura had been freshly awoken. "Holy shit Jaune, are you the one doing this?"

I nodded slowly, still not completely certain about what I'd done—but now that I'd seen it in action and knew what I was looking for, I could feel it at work, though that merely raised more questions. It shouldn't have been possible to simply give him my Aura but that was what was happening; there was none of the usual resistance because Adam's Aura didn't try to reject my own, even though it should of. I wasn't adjusting my Aura into a more consumable form as I would if I were trying to heal him, either. I just…gave it to him somehow and fortified his strength. I didn't know how.

But I was certain of the cause. Looking through the windows that had popped up, it took me only a moment to find the one I wanted.

Caritas (Passive) LV1 EXP: 0.00%

The generosity and sacrifice that cannot be seized by the hands of Greed. Similar to the process in which a soul infuses all living beings, this skill represents the ability to sacrifice one's own soul to bolster the light of another's—for greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends.

The owner of this skill may sacrifice their own MP to restore the MP of another.

Range: 70 meters.

"Restoring your MP won't be a problem," I said after a moment. "I have enough for the both of us and I can just give you mine, now. Raising Wisdom might still come in handy since I won't always be there—and being wise is pretty useful in and of itself—but you don't need to raise it right now if you have your eye on something else. It's up to you."

"Huh…" Adam murmured, barely seeming to hear me as he looked at his glowing skin. Since his Aura was full and he wasn't doing anything to drain it at the moment, I severed the connection between us and the light slowly faded, drawing back beneath his skin. "That's…something."

"You don't have to spend them all right now if you're not sure what to do," I continued after he was silent for a moment. "But you should be good to go. Ready to get back to work?"

"Yeah, I'm ready," He nodded slowly, lowering his weapons. "What do you have in mind?"

"Same as before, really," I answered even as I brought up the Party Screen and went to options to adjust a few settings. "We should split the experience equally now, so just go wild. I'll keep an eye on things and tell you if anything comes up, but we're in a target rich environment so feel free to go wild."

"That I can do," Adam smirked, taking a slow look around. "Any recommendations on what I should kill first?"

I chuckled and tilted my head.

"What kind of question is that?" I asked him. "Obviously, you should just kill anything that moves."

He gave a smile that showed all his teeth and was gone, dashing away with his newly improved speed. A moment later, I saw him slip right under a Calydon and jump into the air, sword aimed at the giant creature's vulnerable belly. The sheer force of the blow was enough to lift the beast wholly off its feet and cut most of the way through it at the same time, red Aura bright in the growing darkness.

It was interesting to be able to see the improvements from the outside, especially in a relatively controlled setting. I'd always focused on the mental stats, too, so it was nice to see how the physical ones changed as well. Though he'd only improved his Strength and Dexterity by a little more than fifty, raising each by a bit more than half, the resulting effect was significantly greater than that even after taking into account the matter of his Aura. To use a gaming analogy, I suppose his Strength and Dexterity were merely part of larger formulas to determine his damage output and movement speed—and they may have even been a part of the same formulas in places, building off each other like I'd figured they would. If nothing else, his increased Strength went together well with an improved attack speed.

So long as he was cautious and as long as I kept an eye on him, he should be fine even on his own. I'd just need to swing by to restore his Aura periodically and there shouldn't be a problem.

Which left me free to do some Hunting of my own—and I had my fair share of multipliers, too.

My fingers closed around a Magic Missile as if I'd plucked it right out of the air. Taking a step forward, I began to climb the invisible staircase Levant helpfully provided until my healing returned my Metamorphosed form to normal long enough for me to tweak the mutations. Once a new set of wings sprouted from my back, I stepped from the top of the stairs into open air and floated in a gentle circle, counting as I went.

One by one, I marked my targets, picking out every Grimm in a radius several kilometers long. There were tens of thousands of them nearby, monsters of every shape and size, but I paused for a moment to consider them.

The ones at the edge of my little circle of life and death were the most likely to escape if something overt happened.

Best to work from the outside in, then.

Rearing back, I hurled my new and improved Magic Missile across the sky. To the normal eye, it would have vanished into the night, reduced to a spark in the darkness at best, but I tracked its flight all the way to its destination to make sure it hit.

Nearly five kilometers away, a Rukh began to fall from the sky.

By the time it hit the ground, a legion of spears had followed on their predecessors heels, a lethal meteor shower meant for anything unlucky enough to be in my way.