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.

Storage

After I blew its head clean off with a pair of Lux Aeterna that fed off each other until they merged into a single attack, the fight was pretty much over. I say 'pretty much' because even that wasn't enough to kill the damn thing outright—losing its head just made it thrash around and panic for a while—but it did take most of the fight out of the thing; even if it wanted to kill us, its main forms of attack originated from its mouth and I'd well and truly blown that option to hell for it.

From there, it was mostly a matter of making it stick. Even the Leviathan's potent regenerative abilities struggled with regrowing a head and I had no intention of giving it the time it need. Instead, I simply pressed the assault, interfering with any attempts at recovery or escape long enough to make the creature go down. It took a few more Gungnirs, waves of scorching fire, and even another Lux Aeterna, but I'd taken the teeth out of it along with its actual fucking teeth, so it was more of a waiting game then an actual fight.

Still…to require five of my best attacks, a horde of lesser blows, nearly two times my full power, and a death scene long then Azure and Sienna's…I guess the hundreds are a bit different after all, especially the ones that were built for combat. If not for the many cost reductions I had bringing down Lux Aeterna's exorbitant cost, it probably would have been even worse.

But in the end, I'd won and taken my prizes.

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

You have obtained the item 'Cipactli.'

You have obtained the item 'Tannin.'

You have obtained the skill book 'Kanju.'

You have obtained the skill book 'Manju.'

"Well, that was a pain in the ass," Adam stated as I descended, hovering a meter above the water. Though he'd spent the entire fight running atop the water, there wasn't a drop of it on him thanks to Xihai and he came to a halt as I nodded to him, raising a short staircase of hardened water with a thought. "For a minute there, I honestly thought it was going to regrow its damn head."

"Wait until we get to the other side of the sea," I answered with a chuckle. "There are supposed to be Hydras out there. If you want to talk about hard to kill…"

Adam groaned, sounding honestly annoyed. He knew the stories about Hydras as well as anyone. It was the nature of Grimm to grow stronger not only over time—although they did that too, of course—but also through survival. What doesn't kill them tends to make them stronger in a very literal sense as they learn, adapt, and grow to become better killers. The Hydras were perhaps the best example of this, because they combined it with the best regenerative abilities of all the Grimm.

Or, at least, the supposed best. With myths like Ziz now proven to be true, God only knows. There are more than a few legends of creatures that would straight up come back to life if you didn't kill them thoroughly enough and the biology of the Grimm was sadly fucked up enough that I couldn't dismiss the possibility. But the Hydras were the best known example, with multiple records of them growing two new heads in response to decapitation and sprouting armored limbs when weaker ones were cut off. As far as threats went, Hydras were considered some of the biggest ones around and the sighting of any near the Kingdoms was responded to as quickly as possible. After all, if you fuck up killing it the first few times, you might end up dealing with a monster you aren't equipped to handle.

That was what made places far beyond the walls of the Kingdoms so dangerous. They wouldn't be like the areas close by or even like the Sea of Monsters—those places had been culled semiregularly thanks to Hunters, to say nothing of my recent work. The most important part of dealing with the Grimm long term is to make sure there is no long term, or else they'll grow and grow and grow.

But that doesn't apply to places like the other side of the Sea of Monsters—or to the wastes far into Vacuo's deserts or who knows how many other places. The Grimm there hadn't been culled.

They'd done the culling. The monsters out there had won—they'd fought civilizations that vanished thousands of years ago because of them. Some of the creatures out there were old enough and strong enough to have cut down cities like a man would mow grass in the summer. Things like Leviathans were what happened when the same monster encountered ship after ship after ship and was never quite put down; the mistakes that had been made over the history of the Sea of Monsters. Things like Hydras…

Well, a Hydra that managed to survive a year after first contact was generally considered an unmitigated disaster. One that had survived a thousand was a touch more problematic.

The Leviathan gave me a good idea of what to expect out there and the truth was…

"But it'll have to wait," I continued, floating back as I looked into the distance. "We'll head back for today."

"Canceling our fieldtrip?" Adam asked, no doubt able to guess why.

"I know how much you'd hate to miss classes," I said anyway, smirking at his grimace. "We'll spend a bit more time playing around here before we cross. Unless you'd like to go now?"

"Hmph," He scoffed, rolling his eyes. "I guess I wouldn't mind sleeping."

I smiled at him and inclined my head. We both knew it was better to turn back now, for the same reason the Leviathan had hesitated to fight us. It wasn't—or at least, wasn't just—a question of whether we could win or not, but whether or not we could win easily. The point of training was to grow stronger, not to kill yourself trying to. However much my life might sometimes seem like a game, there were no arbitrarily placed walls keeping me from going places…just like there was nothing to keep me from wandering into a place I couldn't hope to survive. Best to err on the side of caution and not drawing the attention of civilization killing abominations.

…Well, I say that, but if it was just me, I probably still might have tried it—or at least get close enough to take a look. But I'd gotten what I wanted and then some so I could afford to be patient.

"What are those?" Adam asked, nodding at the bundle floating beside me.

"New mask," I said, nodding at Cipactli and then showed him Tannin. "A new armor designed for aquatic environments, and a pair of skill books. Which reminds me…"

I promptly devoured the two books, noting with a smile that they were water skills. Not really surprising, but good to have. Perhaps I might be able to use them a bit more easily then my other water skills and train them up.

"More importantly, check out your new level," I continued, stashing the remaining items in my Inventory.

The Beast

LV 88

Adam Taurus

"Nice," Adam replied, drawing up his status screen. "What's yours now?"

"Ninety," I nearly sang. "You know what that means."

Adam quirked an eyebrow, obviously getting it.

"Time to distribute points again, huh," He asked wryly.

"That's right," I answered with a bright grin. "It's skill time!"

With a flourish, I opened my own status screen and happily took my Wisdom straight over two-fifty.

By raising WIS above 250, you have gained the passive skill 'Totality.'

By greatly improving your understanding of the world, you have learned to draw upon the power of the Sephirot, the emanations of the soul.

By raising WIS above 250, you have gained the passive skill 'Chokhmah.'

By raising WIS above 250, you have gained the passive skill 'Binah.'

By raising WIS above 250, you have gained the passive skill 'Chesed.'

By raising WIS above 250, you have gained the passive skill 'Gevurah.'

By raising WIS above 250, you have gained the passive skill 'Tiferet.'

By raising WIS above 250, you have gained the passive skill 'Netzach.'

By raising WIS above 250, you have gained the passive skill 'Hod.'

By raising WIS above 250, you have gained the passive skill 'Yesod.'

I froze at once, smile fading as I read the words that appeared before me. The first one, Totality—a skill I guessed to be the next in the line of elemental skills I'd received from raising Wisdom even before I felt the knowledge flow into me—my eyes glances over with almost absentminded happiness. But the moment I started reading the others, I felt like I'd just been struck by lightning. The words were meaningless to me and yet…

They weren't.

It was bizarre. I had no idea what they meant and yet they meant something to me. I'd have thought it was something I'd forgotten, except I didn't forget much of anything anymore, and I was all but certain I'd never seen the words before in my life. At the same time, however, I knew that something was wrong.

Except I had no idea what. It wasn't the words themselves, of that much I was sure, yet I had no idea what else it could be. It was like I was missing a puzzle piece.

Or maybe two, I thought and had no idea why. Even worse, though there was a certainty to it that surprised me—enough so that if I'd been anyone else, I'd have thought that maybe the thoughts weren't my own—no answers came to me no matter how I looked at the words.

"Jaune," Adam said, sounding worried. "Jaune, what's wrong?"

"What?" I replied, looking up—and realizing with another moment of shock that I hadn't been paying attention, even peripherally. Adam seemed to catch that and the mere idea made him rock back slightly.

"Are you okay?" He asked carefully, tilting his head slightly.

"Yes?" I said, nearly kicking myself when it came out like a question. "Yes. It's just…I thought there was something odd about my new skills for a second there. Sorry."

"What is it?" He wondered.

"I don't know," I replied, glancing back at the words even as I pursed my lips. "I thought I remembered something, but nothing springs to mind. Let's head how, okay? I'll tell you about them when we get back to Mistral. I don't want to get…distracted out here."

"Okay," He answered slowly. "Sure. Let's go."

"This is good enough," I said aloud as we crossed into Mistral proper, slipping past the guards and gates with the help of Naraka. I shattered the barrier when we were safely positioned atop the roof of a skyscraper, far from any prying eyes. It would have been easy enough to go all the way back to Haven, but while I knew the odds of anything happening were miniscule at best, I didn't dare take any chances that close to Cinder. Not after what had just happened.

And what the fuck had just happened?

I had no clue, not even after spending the entire trip home thinking about it. I couldn't have done anything else if I'd tried; I'd long since gotten used to spending my time thinking while my body was busy with dull, repetitive labor and attempting to avoid the thought would have done nothing but bring it to mind even more quickly. Perhaps it was inevitable, given that I valued my Intelligence and Wisdom above all else—not thinking about stuff just wasn't something I was good at.

Hell, I was proud of that fact. I took pride in my ability to think things through, plan ahead, see opportunities, and make connections. With the stakes so high and so much on the line, not thinking was the worst thing I could possible do.

After, of course, freezing up.

Which I just had. In an area full of Grimm. Without even thinking about it, I'd blotted out all else and focused entirely on what was before me, and I had no doubt that if Adam hadn't drawn my attention, I'd have stood there a lot longer than I had. Possibly until something had attacked me.

And I…that just didn't happen to me. Not anymore, at least. And though it had only been for a few seconds in the end, but that didn't change the fact that it had happened—nor did it change the fact that, more worryingly, I didn't know why.

Well, perhaps that wasn't quite true. The most likely explanation was that it had something to do with my past life—that I'd seen something that had wrung a bell and had gotten a flash of insight. Except, if so, it was a pretty uninformative flash; it hadn't told me anything, as far as I could tell, and it had left me dangerously distracted besides. I'd quickly closed all the windows and had avoided bringing any of them up again during the trip home, worried that it might happen again. Until I was somewhere safe, it was the best I could do.

And this was probably the best I was going to get.

"Why are we up here?" Adam asked, the frown he'd worn since we'd started back still firmly on his face.

"I'm…" I paused before admitting the truth. "I'm distracted. Something's wrong and I need to figure out what. Can you cover me for a bit?"

Adam's frown deepened for a moment before he nodded, hand rising to rest on the hilt of his sword as he turned to look at the city lights far below.

"Take your time," He answered, obviously settling in to wait.

I flashed him a grateful nod and then began to pull up screens.

The good news was that I didn't stop paying attention to my surroundings this time. The bad news was that I felt that strange feeling again, that flash of electric sensation that made me certain that this was important—more important than my surroundings or anything else. I had to resist the urge to give it my full attention, not because of any mental compulsion but simply because it mattered that much. It was like I was standing in a room with a bomb that was about to go off; the wallpaper just didn't matter a whole lot in comparison. I kept myself from being pulled in, but I had to think about it for a moment.

I had to get to the bottom of this, fast. Either it wasn't as important as it seemed, in which case something was wrong, or it did deserve that attention and something was really wrong.

First things first, I thought. Best to get this out of the way now.

Totality (Passive) LV1 EXP: 0.00%

An ability given to those who have reached the summit of knowledge and fully grasped the truth, reaching the light from which all things come and return. By bathing in the light without form, the user has reached that which is above the minds ability to comprehend—and through the profound truths which they have learned, the user has grasped that which is hidden.

Allows for the creation of an Elemental of Light through the combination of all lesser Elementals. Light Affinity is equal to the average of all Elemental Affinities.

Double resistance to all Elemental attacks.

50% less MP used for all Elemental abilities.

100% increase to the effectiveness of all Elemental abilities.

Pretty much what I'd expected, given the abilities that had come before it, but I was glad to have it nonetheless. I made a note to create a Light Elemental the first chance I got just to see what happened, but everything else would come in handy too. Double damage, reduced costs—it was good stuff all around. Given the costs of Gungnir, Karna, and especially Lux Aeterna…well, I wasn't going to complain, especially not when it was the one ability that didn't fill me with doubts.

But now, it was time to do what I came here for. I looked over my skills and the pictures that represented each before tapping the last one and bring it up.

Yesod (Passive) LV1 EXP: 0.00%

The Foundation upon which all things are built, wherein the light from the spheres above is given shape in the Kingdom below. In the same way, it is where spiritual thought is first translated into physical action. This ability represents the heightened presence of Yesod within the soul of the user and through its light, gives them excellence in all things.

100% increase to the effectiveness of all skills that passively enhance physical actions.

100% increase to experience gained by all such skills.

I blinked once, surprised despite myself—not just by the effects of the skill, but also by its description. The skill itself was a good one, of course; I'd have to check to be sure of exactly which skills counted, but at the very least it seemed like it would improve things like my Sword Mastery and such. It was hard to be anything but happy about something that made you stronger for no cost, so I was glad to have it. But…

What did it mean by the presence of Yesod in my soul? Not just that, but a heightened presence, which implied there had already been Yesod present—but what was Yesod, then? The Foundation it said, but what did that mean? Again, I felt like I was looking at a puzzle I didn't have all the pieces to.

Pausing for a moment, I looked over the other icons again. Each bore an image of a sphere, with a number of paths branching out from it. Yesod, for instance, had four paths—one up, one down, and one going to each of the upper corners of the picture. Looking over the other spheres and the paths that spread from them, I could see enough similarities in the designs to be pretty sure I was looking at a puzzle. In fact…

With a thought, an illusion appeared before me. Chokmah and Binah were in the uppermost corners, with Chesed and Gevurah beneath them and Netzach and Hod below them. Yesod was at the bottom, connected to Netzach and Hod above and to the sides of it, while Tiferet was in the center and linked to every sphere around it through eight paths.

Except there were only seven spheres in my design. The path that stretched up from Tiferet didn't connect to anything, nor did the paths from Binah and Chokmah that should have led to the same place. There was also a path directly below Yesod that had no sphere at its end.

I was right—I was missing two pieces. And I'd known it even those I was sure I'd never seen this design before in my life. The odds that this was something from my past life went up a notch, but how was I supposed to figure out what when I was missing the key pieces?

By looking at the pieces around it, obviously. Yesod mentioned a 'Kingdom below' and probably wasn't referring to the Kingdoms like Mistral and Vale. Or was it? I'd always wondered why they were called Kingdoms when we hadn't had a King in a long, long time, but…no, for the moment, I'd stick only to what I could be sure of. Yesod was the only piece connecting to this 'Kingdom', but the top most sphere had three paths leading to it. I decided to start in the middle, at the center of the image—Tiferet.

Tiferet (Active & Passive) LV1 EXP: 0.00%

The Adornment—the throne of Glory and the Beauty of that which is to come. The center that balances Judgement and Mercy, Wisdom and Understanding, Victory and Splendor; it inherits the light from above and allows it to be given form in the world below. This ability represents the heightened presence of Tiferet within the soul of the user and through its light gives them the power to shape wonders. Just as Tiferet unifies the emanations of the soul, this ability allows the user to combine skills they possess to create new ones. Though not all skills can be combined with each other, it is possible to draw great power from those that can, if one knows how.

Passively makes the user aware of skills that can be combined with one another.

Minimum Skill Level Required for Sephirotic Synthesis: LV99.

What?

For a moment I didn't understand, but as soon as I paused to consider it, I knew it was the truth. I could feel something—a connection of some kind, between two points in my head. It wasn't an obtrusive sensation, nothing I couldn't ignore if I chose, but as soon as I gave it thought it sprang to the forefront of my mind.

And…well. There was a lot I could put up with for the promise of new skills. All at once, I couldn't help but think the distraction my new skills had caused wasn't that bad, at which point I was already reaching out towards that mental connection, shutting my eyes.

Abruptly, light flashed through my mind, so bright that for a moment I thought that someone had shoved the sun into my head. I thought it was all in my head, but only more a second because I could see it, shining out through my eyelids.

And then I couldn't, because my ESP shut down, followed momentarily by my Clairvoyance. My skin hardened into a cage around me as the Adamant Serpent's Skin deactivated and one by one my other skills flickered and died. My MP plummeted and then emptied entirely, fed to the fire burning inside my mind. I would have stopped if I'd known how, shaken if I were able, but the process refused to stop now that it had begun, and it seemed to drag on and on and on.

In all likelihood, it couldn't have taken more than a minute, but I spent that minute powerless and trapped in my own skin, unable to even speak. Whatever MP I regenerated was devoured by the process occurring within me until it reached completion—and then it was done, halting abruptly.

Even then, I didn't move, trapped within an Adamant cage made of my own skin. I felt my MP begin to return to me, though, and immediately activated all of my senses, scanning furiously for any sign of trouble that could have appeared while I was helpless. My heart was pounding in my ears and only the Gamer's Mind kept me calm.

"Jaune," Adam nearly shouted and he must have been doing it for a while considering he was shaking me. I hadn't noticed and God did I fucking hate that with the burning passion of a million suns.

But beside him, a window had appeared.

Sephirotic Synthesis Complete. The skills 'Magic Missile' and 'Flare' have been combined successfully. The skill 'Agneyastra' has been created.