Chapter 2 - A Timely Encounter

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Jaune jumped back and avoided a strike to his chest, watching as the goblin glared at him, trying to reorient himself—but Jaune didn't let that happen as he swiftly lunged at the goblin and slashed its head off before it could realize what happened.

As the remains of the monster dissipated into a white smoke, he crouched down and grabbed the Mana core that dropped off of it.

[Goblin Mana Core (E-)] obtained

Jaune frowned as he stared at it, feeling a little annoyed as the item he'd been trying to get still hasn't dropped. Had the corpse not just dissipated into smoke and left System-related items, he would have had a higher chance of getting what he needed, but unfortunately that doesn't happen out here in the world of Remnant itself due to some weird fuckery the Gods of this world had made that caused the body of any being not native to this world (which included te Grimm, as those were from the God of Darkness' realm) to dissipate upon death.

Well, at the very least, it still dropped the System-related items for the people of this world to use, but it did pose a problem if one wanted to gain a larger supply of Mana Cores and even Monster goods like for example Goblin Pelt or Arachnid Silk, they'd have to dive deep into the related dungeons where said monsters could spawn in every now and then. If he remembered correctly then at this point in time, there should only be around 23 Known Gates in Remnant, 14 of which are being controlled by a number of different Guilds, 6 being under the direct supervision of the different Hunter Associations from the different Kingdoms, and the last 3 being Public to all licensed Hunters because they're simply too big to be handled by any one Guild or Association… and the fact that they were also one of the most dangerous Gates to exist so far with ranks ranging from A to S+ being the main reason why not even the strongest Guilds of Remnant would dare handle it on their own.

Well, there's that and the fact that those 3 Gates were quite far from most Kingdoms' borders, which meant not only were they teeming with powerful monsters, but large amounts of powerful Grimm roam around the nearby area too, which make them even more dangerous to handle. 

For the time being however, Jaune didn't really have to worry about those three Gates for now, as they were still rather stable and the current Hunters should be able to handle them for now. Besides, even the Grimm and the people under Salem, the so-called Underworld Guilds, were cautious enough to not let those Gates rampage throughout Remnant… at least not right now. The Gate Awakening incident only happened a mere decade ago after all, and not many knew what they were exactly here for.

But not him. He knew exactly what they were here for, and as he looked up at the small rift that crackled with distorted Mana and rippled dangerously in the distance at a forest clearing, he smirked, using his Authority upon the Gate to analyze it. Though, he did see something that made him frown.

Arkvale-Argus Gate

D+ Rank | Small (15000 sq. m) | Slightly Unstable

No Player Limit / No Time Limit

Rewards: [Small Dagger (D-)], [Danger Sense (C)] Skill Orb, 4 Stat Points

Current Players Inside: 1

Jaune narrowed his eyes, there's another person inside the Gate right now? But as far as he remembered nobody should have found out about this Gate's existence until a few months from now when it evolved from a D+ Rank Gate to a C Rank Gate and caused a Monster Outbreak in Argus, in which the Hunters from Argus barely managed to hold back the wave of Monsters and the subsequent wave of Grimm that took advantage of that time to cause havoc in the fortified port city, thankfully Argus Port was able to survive in the end amidst a fair number of casualties thanks to the timely support of the Golden Sword Guild.

Still, who could have possibly stumbled upon this Gate before even all that happened? He thought he knew practically everything in this world currently because he was the author, but it seems that there may be a few slight differences here contrary to what he thought.

Well, he didn't really mind it all that much in the end, he still had his Authorities and his Aura to save him if it were someone dangerous. Unless the opponent he'd face were to be someone equivalent to Ozpin or Salem, he should at least be able to escape. Steeling himself, he reached out his hand and poured Mana into the Gate, feeling a strong pull coming from the rift, and as he allowed himself to be pulled by it, his surroundings shifted, and after a brief moment of darkness, he found himself in a whole different environment.

He was greeted with a dark indigo sky that gave most people a feeling of dread and uneasiness. Above the skies were two celestial bodies, one was a small crescent moon while another a fair bit to the side was some sort of red star much bigger than the moon. The place he'd landed on seemed to be a small forest clearing similar to where he'd just been, but the trees looked slightly different with purple leaves covering it instead of green ones, with a slight fog covering his surroundings, that didn't really limit his vision however, thanks to the training he'd gone through and the few skills he'd gotten from his father and their guild, this much wasn't a problem.

[Clear Vision (C+)] - Improves the user's vision by carefully infusing their eyes with Mana. Aura can also be used in conjunction to increase the sight range by 30%, but it will also increase the Mana cost by a significant amount.

[Clairvoyance (C)] - Allows the user to see through different energy signatures/wavelengths. At the current skill level, the user can see: Aura Signature, Mana Signature, Infrared, Radio

Looking around, he was able to find a bunch of Goblins, Slimes, and Horned Rabbits, there were also a few dark signatures he could detect by manually searching with his Aura, which he could guess were some random Grimm that made their way into the Gate but he didn't really pay attention to them for now. Jumping up a few trees to stand on one of the taller ones, he looked around to find where that other person could be in this Gate, it shouldn't be so hard to see after all since it was a relatively small Gate and at this distance he should be able to see something even without his skills—and just as he thought that, he heard a small explosion at his 4 o-clock, making him turn and seeing a line of smoke coming from that direction. Jaune narrowed his eyes and immediately made his way there, hopping through the trees while cloaking himself through his Authority and subsequently boosting his body and mind in preparation.

[Universal Camouflage (EX)] has been cast.

[Physical Enhancement (EX)] has been cast with 2X Reinforcement!

Physical Rank is now S+!

[Physical Endurance (EX)] has been cast

[Mental Enhancement (EX)] has been cast with 2X reinforcement.

Mental Rank is now SS-!

[Mental Endurance (EX)] has been cast.

[Physical Endurance (EX)] has successfully resisted the penalty!

[Mental Endurance (EX)] has successfully resisted the penalty!

No penalty will be applied.

The world around him blurred, and within a few seconds, he arrived at his destination, and what he saw stunned him to the point that he nearly tripped and fell from the branch he was standing on. Why was she here? She wasn't supposed to become a registered Player until much later… and yet, what he saw in front of his eyes was definitely real. Just in case, he used his Authority to verify what he was seeing right now.

[The Successor's Mark (EX)] peers into the user's soul.

Pyrrha Nikos (Unregistered)

Skills: [Polarization (A)], [Nikos Spearmanship Legacy (A-)], [Aura Strike (B)], [Aura Blast (B)], [Sharpshooter (B-)], [Mana Shield (B-)], [Mana Bullet (C+)], [Creation: Metal (C-)], [Danger Sense (C-)], [Enchantment: Fire (D+)]

Physical: B

Mental: C+

Aura: A-

Mana: C+

That was Pyrrha Nikos, solo hunting a D+ Rank gate all by herself. He wasn't particularly surprised by the fact that she was able to easily handle this Gate all by herself, no, in the first place, she was one of the most overpowered people in this world anyways, even right now as a 15 year old girl she was even more powerful than practically all of her peers—that is, if Jaune didn't include himself—what did surprise him, however, was the fact that she was even here in the first place.

No, wait, observing how she was fighting all the enemies around her with an almost practiced ease, it didn't seem like this would be her first time coming here to train. As Jaune started to think about it, the more it started to really make sense, perhaps this was the world's way of rationalizing/explaining how and why Pyrrha even got so powerful in the first place, and also how this random Gate in the middle of the Argus/Arkenvale border even got so unstable in the first place to cause a Monster Outbreak.

Just in case, Jaune pulled out his Settings Notebook out of his [Pocket Inventory (SSS)] that he managed to make as a skill after using [Spatial Manipulation (EX)] and [Time Manipulation (EX)] at SSS Mental Rank before. Checking through his notes and what he remembered at the time when he wrote about the backstory of Pyrrha and the events that took place in Argus, in addition to what the MC in his story had done to prevent it, he was able to confirm it. Nowhere in those notes did he explicitly say that Pyrrha had been one of the causes of the Gate explosion, only the fact that it was a natural occurrence. 

Now that he thought about it, he did sort of explain somewhere in his writing before that Pyrrha actually was one of the main people who led the defense against the Monster Outbreak that occurred in Argus, he never really thought about it at the time, but it seems like this world had filled in the blanks for him in a lot of places where it needed it.

In some ways, it was good since it meant that he wouldn't have weird situations where one character just suddenly moves around from one place to another for no reason other than "plot", which made things a fair bit easier to manage and monitor otherwise. On the other hand, however, it also meant that there were a number of things which he himself didn't know fully, which would make gaining [Omniscience (EX)] or [Future Sight] all the more difficult, but in the first place, he didn't really want to rely on those things too much since he was planning to change a lot of things in the early stages anyway since he knew far more than Arthur (the MC of his fanfic that returned back in time into Jaune) could ever possibly hope to. Really, his knowledge and Authority itself was a cheat, the fact that he wanted a fair bit more than this couldn't be helped since he didn't want to just stand by and let events he knew he could have prevented pass by him.

Something like that would never sit well with him, rather, it never really did even back then, which was why it was so difficult for him to even publish the fanfic he'd written at the time, no matter how many times he himself would say that he didn't really mind how bad it was and that he'd just push on with it anyways, deep down he knew that wasn't true and so he could never bring himself to really publish it even when it was completed.

In fact, this story was the only one he'd ever really managed to complete, and it was all due to his passion for said worlds, that of Remnant in RWBY and the desolate Earth in I Came Back and Conquered it All. He couldn't help but sigh for a moment before he shook his head, there was no use in dwelling on the past, he was in this situation now as Jaune Arc, one of his favorite characters overall for many reasons… but the main one, really, was the drive that pushed Jaune to never truly give up no matter how high the odds may be stacked against them, no matter how bleak the situation, just like Ruby, he never gave up. And he admired that, truly. So now that he himself was Jaune Arc, with all the memories and feelings of this one to boot, he was able to understand him all the more deeply.

He was going to do his best to protect this planet. Though he in his past life was never really much of a person who believed in heroes, Jaune did. And if it were for Jaune, then he himself would become a hero in his place. It was what he truly wanted after all.

Although, now that he thought about it, talking about himself in this way was weird since he was Jaune Arc now, both in body and soul. After all, this wasn't like how Arthur reincarnated into Jaune's body, which was but a hollow soul… even now, he himself could still feel some of the emotions that Jaune would have felt.

Currently, that included the fact that he wanted to help Pyrrha apparently, but he held himself back from doing that for now, since he had to observe just how she was causing this Gate to become unstable in the first place. Though he did have a suspicion on what she was doing to cause it, he didn't really hope for it to be the case, considering he knew that Pyrrha was not the type of person to deliberately do something like that.

Though if it were really the case… then he really had to get into the bottom of Pyrrha's backstory here, considering he never really thought too deeply about it when he himself had written her. She was an important part of the story, sure, but due to a number of reasons, his MC never really interacted much with her despite the fact that they literally live quite close by, Pyrrha in Argus, and Jaune in Arkenvale, the two of which were literally right next to each other.

He at least knew of what she would be doing later on and what she was originally going to do in the original timeline before Arthur unconsciously used [The Successor's Mark] to go reset Remnant and reincarnate as Jaune Arc, but at this point, he essentially knew nothing about her current plans and such. If one had asked him before this, he would have said that Pyrrha would be in Argus or in Sanctum Hunter Academy, training herself to death or something, but really, that would never have made sense, would it? Considering all the skills and the ridiculous stats he could remember giving Pyrrha in her first appearance in the story, it would only have made sense if she was diving into the gates herself nonstop, as risky as it may have been considering she was literally an unregistered Player and Hunter, that is, someone who hasn't undergone the Player's Trial upon first unlocking their Mana. Considering that, if something were to ever happen to Pyrrha inside one of these Gates, to top it off it was an Unregistered Gate as well, nobody would be able to help her or even know about it. She'd literally just disappear.

Which was exactly why about 8 years ago the original Huntsmen Academies quickly shifted into a Players' Association of sorts, which handled both Huntsmen, and Players alike, of which the line between the two were quickly disappearing as time passes, handling the necessary legal procedures and providing basic protection to most Players. Well, getting into a Guild usually gives you much more benefits compared to just joining the Associations themselves, which have generally given the various Kingdom officials headaches considering it was quickly becoming more and more difficult to control the various Superhumans, which had once just been the Huntsmen who wielded Aura, but now it also included the Players who could wield both Aura and Mana.

Well, all that politics and such aside, he didn't really want to worry about that yet, so he put the Settings Notebook back into his [Pocket Dimension] and observed Pyrrha closely as she cleanly dealt with all the enemies around her. In the first place, worrying about her was pretty pointless, since even her current stats right now would be able to rival many of the powerful talents in the top 10 Guilds. Really, she's pretty ridiculous for being able to do this much alone at her age, but he supposed that was why she had the title of the "Goddess of Victory", or more accurately, the "Champion of Victory" which always felt quite ironic even in the canon show considering who and what her name was based off of.

Pyrrha swung her javelin, Miló, wide and pushed back the group of goblins that tried to encircle her, subsequently, she threw Miló accurately towards the slimes which were trying to catch her off guard, manipulating it with her Semblance, [Polarity], to fly around and pierce straight through their cores, destroying them in an instant. Then she pulled the javelin back towards herself while pulling up Akoúo̱ to block an attack from one of the goblins, using the momentum from it to somersault backwards, catching Miló, holstering it to her back again then landing while kneeling with her fist on the ground, activating [Aura Blast] at the same time, causing an explosion of red Aura starting from her that disintegrated the enemies close to her and pushed back the rest further back with the shockwave from it.

As she looked up, she then threw Akoúo̱ like a chakram, coating it with her Aura using her Semblance and modifying it slightly with [Creation: Metal] and [Enchantment: Fire] making it sharper and hotter with the additional enchantment of fire, making it look like a burning disc. Jaune thought it was quite impressive to see Akoúo̱ handle such high temperatures even at this time, but then again, considering the fact that Pyrrha was one of the main candidates for her family's inheritance, it wouldn't be wrong to think of her as a Young Mistress to her family line, which, similar to the Arc Family, was very much a renowned Warrior-family with rich history dating back to even before the Great War. Which would definitely explain why her weapons, which were made specifically to suit her fighting style, were made of such expensive materials that would make even the current high rankers cry.

[Miló and Akoúo̱ (S)] - A pair of weapons specifically made for Pyrrha Nikos, Miló, a reconfigurable offensive weapon which could turn into a Javelin, a Xiphos, and a Rifle, and Akoúo̱, a shield with cross sections on the side, both are made of a combination of Rubrum Platinum, and Etherion Gold, improving the Aura and Mana circulation within the weapon by a great amount, and provides a high degree of malleability and durability to withstand high temperatures.

Even her armor and clothing were made of equally expensive, if not moreso, materials. In a few ways, it did make him wonder just how the hell the Nikos family are even able to get such insane materials so casually, but then again, with the kinds of connections their current Family Head and Patriarch, Xander Nikos has, and the fact that guy was one of the Top 10 High Rankers currently that's a part of the Haven Association of Players and Huntsmen, it probably wouldn't even be that hard for him to ask a few of his friends there for it, and their wealth is also no joke either, considering what the other Nikos were doing around Remnant… But that's beside the point, since Pyrrha of all people should be particularly low in the line of inheritance of the Nikos family.

Huh, now that he thought about it he really never went into the backstory of how Pyrrha even got her weapon in the first place. Jaune just blinked that thought away as he'll probably find out eventually, but he has to get to the bottom of this situation first.

As Pyrrha disposed of the last of the Goblins around her, she looked around the area one last time before holstering Akoúo̱ and grabbing Miló then transforming it into a rifle with a click. Jaune watched as she looked through the sniper scope, letting out a few [Mana Bullet] rounds through it, causing a bunch of explosions in the distance, making him frown as he narrowed his eyes.

While [Mana Bullet] was certainly powerful, he knew that it normally won't be able to cause an explosion alone, so he observed her again, even closer this time as he used his [Clear Sight] and [Clairvoyance] to look at the inside of the rifle. What he saw made his brows rise up, she was already using that technique? He was pretty sure it would have taken her a much longer time to actually learn and even properly utilize it.

As he looked at the bullet being shot through the rifle, he could see the [Mana Bullet] also being coated with some Aura, and what was even more surprising was that she had some metal balls in the middle core of the bullet. Shrapnel, essentially, which was kind of ridiculous since she'd have to essentially cast three skills all at the same time, which would only really be possible with a high Mental Rank, or having a specific skill [Parallel Processing] to help her out, which she didn't have. While having C+ Mental Rank is pretty high, it normally shouldn't be possible for her to do this kind of triple casting of sorts. Only other thing he could think of is her endlessly training this specific technique before to the point that she's able to do it subconsciously…

She's a monster. Really. Even more so than the one he had written before, which made him worried for the future since he didn't know if the characters he remembered would also be the same or not. At the very least, he knew Ren and Nora are only slightly higher rank than they should be because of his involvement recently, but that shouldn't really be the case for Pyrrha since he hadn't influenced her yet.

Or maybe she'd always been able to use this technique but wasn't able to really do so efficiently until much later on?

Yeah, that's probably the case, which doesn't change the fact that Pyrrha was a monster overall, but then again, she was always kind of meant to be one… Probably why she got killed in Canon huh? Jaune won't let that happen this time though, even if the fate she'd been forced into in his story caused her to inevitably die, he'll make sure that won't happen this time.

And as she cleared out the last of the common Monsters and Grimm, she suddenly pulled out a yellow wing, making Jaune curse as his suspicions were proven true, so he immediately dashed towards Pyrrha and grabbed the cursed item away from her hand, dispelling his stealth skill and appearing right before Pyrrha.

Jaune stared at the item for a moment, the [Emergency Return Wing] a seemingly harmless, if not lifesaving item, but one that had caused many disastrous Gate Explosions and Monster Outbreaks before… and even more so in the future, if those damned Associations couldn't get their shit together to properly regulate these Gates and the Players.

"W-Who are—" before Pyrrha could finish her sentence, Jaune sent her a powerful glare.

"Pyrrha Nikos, 15 years old, student of Sanctum Academy… and an Unregistered Player. Tell me, why are you in this Unregistered Gate, alone, and also using a known restricted item so casually?" Jaune said, narrowing his eyes at her.

He didn't want to believe it, but it really seemed like it was the case… Pyrrha was the cause of the Argus Monster Outbreak Incident. A seemingly insignificant incident in the grand scheme of things, but one which led to the eventual downfall of not only Mistral, but also Atlas.

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