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Breathe Chapter 2: Black Rock
🕑 Added 2024-04-01 05:22:49 +0000 UTCA day had quickly come and gone since I’d woken up and true to her word, Maria was now escorting me to Black Rock, a small town on the edge of an enclosed ocean that was a few miles from her home.
The trip, while only a few miles, was extremely hazardous. We’d come across a few grim, which Maria easily dispatched with her walking stick that actually turned out to be a scythe, but the Grimm wasn’t the only danger.
The entire forest was covered in snow, so much so that it was difficult to tell where to step and what could be lurking underneath, not to mention how cold it was. Maria’s old cloak was one of the few things I had on me to keep me warm.
There was, however an upside to all of this.
Maria had taught me how to use my Aura.
…
Aura (Active) Lvl 1
The power of the soul. Using this creates a field around your body, protecting you from all harm. STR DEX and CON are increased by 5%. Consumes 25 AP per minute and additional AP depending on exertion and injury.
…
It was at a really low level, but just the feeling of invincibility that I gained when I used it was enough for me. It made the actual, physical hike through the woods easier. My body didn’t feel cold when I had it active. I didn’t tire and my muscles never ached or burned.
The only down side to it was that I couldn’t use it all of the time, only in brief bursts. Maria didn’t want me tiring myself out and being unable to shield myself from Grimm. It made the moments I was exposed to the cold temperatures that much more Jarring.
“Not much further now,” Maria said as we reached the peak of a hill. “From this point onward, it’s all downhill.”
“Thank goodness,” I said, rubbing my hands together.
“You can go ahead and activate your Aura again.”
Nodding, I let out a relieved sigh as I felt my body begin to warm up again. “That’s better.”
“Aura is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it’ll grow and the longer you’ll be able to use it,” Maria began. “Right now, you’re probably only capable of using Aura for 20 minutes, but if you train it, you would end up being able to keep it active for hours on end.”
“So I just need to use it more?”
“Yep… if you want your Aura to grow stronger, that is. There is a downside though. The stronger your Aura becomes, the more Grimm that it’ll attract,” Maria explained. “Right now, you’re like a tiny flame in the dark, but with time and training, it’ll appear like a bonfire to the Grimm.”
“Oh,” I hummed. “So that means if I train my Aura, I’m going to have to fight off Grimm?!” I’m not sure if that’s a good trade off… then again, I was almost killed by Grimm even when I didn’t have Aura.
“Eh, you get used to it.”
We finally finished the walk down the hill and exited the tree line. Looking ahead, I could make out what appeared to be a large wooden wall. However, the closer we got, the easier it was to see that something terrible had happened here.
“Damn,” Maria cursed as we came to a stop.
A huge section of the wooden wall seemed to have been burned down and the gates to the town had been left open.
“Stay close,” Maria said. “I can’t exactly leave you here while I investigate what happened, so we’re going to briefly enter the town.”
“Okay,” I nodded.
We cautiously entered the town and were immediately met with destruction. Buildings that had once stood tall now laid in rubble and ash. Looking closer, I could make out a burnt hand sticking out of one of the numerous piles.
We continued onward, towards the town center and slowly, the burnt and destroyed buildings were replaced with mostly untouched buildings that had been hastily abandoned, doors still left open as the residents had hastily left.
“What happened here?”
“That’s what I’m hoping to find out,” Maria replied. “I need to know if this was the work of a Grimm or if it was an accident.”
We finally made it to the town center and I found myself staring at a four story high tower that seemed to be constructed out of stone and reinforced with metal.
“This is Black Rocks CCT hub, it allowed the people that lived her to communicate with the rest of Remnant,” Maria explained. “Every village that pops up is not only given one of these towers for free, but paid to keep it. The main reason being that it helps strengthen the CCT grid, but there is a lesser known reason for the Kingdoms to fund the towers.”
I suddenly felt a sinking feeling in my stomach as I stared at the heavily fortified building. “What’s the second reason?”
“The tower acts as a black box. There are cameras connected to the tower that records everything that happens. If a town is lost, like now, the tower will record what has happened and send the video back to the main CCT tower in the kingdoms capital to be analyzed,” Maria sighed and moved closer to the tower. “Sometimes they find a new species of Grimm, other times they see that a natural disaster occurred and then there are the times when a bandit tribe raids the town.”
“Can’t they send help then?” I asked. “If they see there’s a problem, couldn’t they help prevent it or protect the people living there?”
“An alert is issued to all the huntsmen in the vicinity, but sometimes it’s a lost cause and help arrives too late to change anything,” Maria said. Walking up to a hatch, she twisted it open and gestured for me to follow her
The room inside the tower proved to be incredibly cramped as the walls were much thicker and layered. The only thing being inside was what appeared to be a computer screen that was blinking.
Grabbing a cable from the side, Maria plugged it into her goggles and stood silently for several moments before letting out a long sigh.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Maria replied. “There’s a few more places that I want to see before we get going!”
“But what did you see?”
Maria grimaced. “The buildings were bombed by bandits, that caused a fire. They used the panicking villagers to attract Grimm, so they didn’t have to do any of the dirty work. After everything was done, they returned and looted the buildings”
I honestly didn’t know what to feel about that other than disgust. A group of people… bandits doomed an entire town and let monsters raid it so they could come back later and have their pick of loot.
Maria placed her hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go see the Bullhead bay.”
The Bullhead bay really wasn’t much of a bay at all. It was more of a fenced off landing pad than anything else… only, it was completely empty.
Walking through the gate, I froze when I heard a low growl come from a pile of snow in front of us.
There was a sudden burst of air. One moment Maria was standing beside me and the next she was in front of me, her scythe blade fully extended and the body of what looked like a pitch black werewolf with bone armor lying on the ground, its head still falling to the floor.
There was another pile of snow that shifted further up and Maria disappeared in a blur of speed, only to reappear in front of the pile, cutting through it and the Grimm that hid inside, before disappearing again. She systematically cut into the different piles of snow, occasionally hitting one and in less than a minute, the entire area had been emptied of Grimm.
“Hah,” Maria grunted as she stretched, her back releasing several clicking sounds. “It’s been a while since I’ve had to move so fast. Let’s go, it seems that at least some of the towns people were able to use the Bullheads to evacuate.”
“Okay,” I nodded, still a little dumbfounded at the speed Maria moved at. I’d never seen anyone fight like that before. A thought suddenly occurred to me. “Couldn’t the bandits have taken the Bullheads for themselves?”
“There’s a tracking beacon that’s wired into each ship,” Maria explained. “It would take quite a bit of time to remove them and not only was there a blizzard recently, there were also Grimm in the area. It’s the same reason why the CCT hub is undisturbed. They’re more trouble than they’re worth! Now come, we should check in the market area if there’s any food we can take with us.”
The market area, luckily didn’t seem to have any Grimm lingering around it. However, by the mess of products that had been scattered around, it seemed that the bandits that ruined this town had come through here and taken everything they could carry, while leaving a huge mess.
That didn’t mean that everything was ruined. There were still plenty of salvageable food products and the cold weather helped preserve the things that needed to be refrigerated. The only issue now was how to transport them back to Maria’s cabin. We could both only carry so many bags after all.
Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something, a shadow moving and my head snapped up.
There was a click as Maria’s scythe extended as she moved to stand at my side. “What did you see?”
“Something moving over there,” I replied, pointing towards the area I saw the shadow.
Maria cautiously walked outside, ready for an attack, but it never came. “There’s nothing out here.”
“But I saw,” I began, walking outside, before spotting a shadow move down an alley. “Over there!” I pointed.
I rushed down the alley with Maria and when we reached another street, the shadow moved again. It was always just out of sight and Maria never saw it move, but followed after it with me, until we finally reached a house with a broken door.
Walking up the steps, I froze as an uneasy and at the same time, familiar feeling made itself known to me. Looking down at my hands, I noticed they were shaking and it wasn’t caused by the cold weather.
“I’ll go in first and let you know if there’s anything dangerous in there,” Maria said, almost sensing my discomfort.
“No,” I shook my head. “I’ll go first… it should be alright, I’ve got Aura after all.”
“If you’re sure,” Maria nodded.
Entering the building, I immediately noticed that it was kind of plain. There weren’t many decorations, just basic curtains and shelves were stripped clean of anything valuable. There was a crunch as I stepped on something and looked down to find several framed pictures, with one underneath my tattered shoe.
Picking it up, I found myself staring at a picture of a small child that seemed really happy as he sat on his father’s shoulders. Looking through the rest, I found several more pictures of the child’s life and began to feel a sinking feeling as I began to recognize the child.
Relatively pale skin from living in an area that’s perpetually cloudy, burgundy hair and red eyes.
These pictures were of me.
The shadow appeared in the corner of my eye again and I turned to look at it. It didn’t disappear this time, instead it slowly walked into another room. Placing the pictures on a shelf, I followed it and found that the shadow had disappeared and I was standing alone in the room… except I wasn’t completely alone.
Lying on the floor was the body of a man, the same one from the pictures. A pool of frozen blood surrounded him, having leaked out from the numerous stab wounds that littered his torso. He hadn’t been killed by a Grimm or frozen by the cold weather. He had been killed by another person. A bandit.
I blankly stared down at the man. There was no escaping it, this man… all the photos… We were close, but at the same time, I couldn’t remember it. I was missing something that was fundamentally important.
My mind kicked into overdrive as it attempted to remember this man that had raised me. I could hear that Maria was saying something, but I couldn’t make out what. Blood began to drip from my nose and then suddenly, things began to snap into place.
Memories flooded my head, just not the ones I was expecting. Instead of remembering being raised by the man in front of me, I remembered a different life in a place completely different to this. Then there were things that sounded so familiar. Grimm, Remnant, Maria, RWBY.
That’s right. I’d seen some of this before.
Salem, the relics, the maidens… this world was heading towards an apocalypse. The headmaster of Haven was weakening Mistral by sending his Huntsmen out on seemingly normal missions that ended with them dead at the hands of Tyrian and Hazel.
Beacon was going to fall and Grimm were going to invade Vale… Salem was going to invade Atlas herself and it was going to fall, taking out Mantle with it while the people who lived there were going to be evacuated into one of the harshest environments on Remnant.
I was breathing heavily now. The memories were too much and they came too fast. My legs felt weak and I barely noticed when Maria grabbed me and dragged me out of the room, depositing me in the hallway, the dead body just out of my view.
“…cus, Focus,” Maria said, standing in front of me. “Coal, you need to focus on my voice right now.”
“I… Yes,” I nodded, bringing my hand up, I wiped the blood from my face.
“Good. Now slow your breathing and think about something else… Something calming. There is a time and a place for you to feel what you’re feeling and this isn’t it. There are still Grimm out there and we’ve still got to hike back to my Cabin.”
Slowly I was able to get myself under control and calm down. Things were bad and there was nothing I could currently do about it. Instead of panicking over what I can’t do, I instead focused on what I could do right now.
Ping!
Through mental stress and forced clarity, the Gamers mind is now only 50% fragmented.
Ping!
Aura is dangerously low.
AP: 15/500
That wasn’t good. We still needed to get back to Maria’s cabin and I doubt I’d be able to make the journey while carrying things without Aura helping me. Luckily it was still fairly early, so we could probably wait for my Aura to recover before we leave.
“You doing alright there, lad?”
“Yeah,” I said as I slowly pushed myself to my feet and wiped the blood from my nose.
“Good. We can talk about this later, but for now, follow me. We still need to collect some food and a few supplies,” Maria replied, before pausing. “And we should probably get you some more clothes… We can start here, but this time, I’ll enter the rooms first and let you know if it’s safe to enter.”
“Okay.”
I followed Maria through the house and we soon found what was assumed to be my old room. Clothes were thrown all over the place, but it didn’t look like anything had been taken. The bandits didn’t have enough time to fully loot the town, so they just stole anything that seemed valuable or useful and there really wasn’t much of either in this room.
We found an old backpack and filled it with the clothes that looked to be in better condition and I swapped out my torn up shoes for the pair of snow boots that I found under the bed.
Once we were done, we left the house behind us and silently headed back to the market place to continue collecting food for Maria’s cabin. Not saying anything on what had transpired there.
“That should just about do it,” Maria said as she finished loading the last of the canned food into a sack. “This should be able to last us about 2 months, give or take a week or two.”
“What’ll happen after the food runs out?”
“By that point, this town should be mostly rebuilt and we’ll be able to buy food.”
“Wait, people would come back here after what happened?” I asked.
“Well, despite how bad it looks, there’s still quite a lot of buildings that are still standing,” Maria hummed. “And there’ll be more Huntsmen around next time and bandits like an easy target, so they won’t attack again.”
“But what about all the people that died here?”
Maria grimaced slightly. “Despite how bad it looks, there doesn’t appear to be that many that died here. All the Bullheads have left and there are few visible bodies. Trust me, there would be a lot more gore if the Grimm killed more people. It seems that those that died here were either caught in the explosion or by a bandit.”
That led to a disturbing thought. The man who was with me in the pictures, the one I assumed to be my father. He’d been stabbed to death. He wasn’t killed off in the explosion or the Grimm. He probably had enough time to evacuate, but decided to stay behind instead… in order to wait for me.
Noticing my silence, Maria handed me a sack. “Come help me carry some of these sacks. I can’t manage them all on my own.”
Staring at the sack for a moment, I took my backpack off and tied several sacks to it, before putting it back on. It increased the weight by a good amount, but at least I wouldn’t have to carry the sacks with my hands.
However, when it came down to it, I was only carrying a measly third of all the sacks. Maria was still much stronger than me and was able to keep her Aura up for extended periods of time.
“You ready to head back?”
I took a quick glance at my Aura level.
AP: 335/500
“Yeah, I think I am,” I replied.
…Breathe…
I’d made the trip back to Maria’s cabin in a daze. Not really focusing on anything other than the hard climb up the hills, avoiding the drops that had been covered by snow and doing my best not to fall over. I’d still been in a lull after we packed everything away and sat in front of a newly lit fire.
“You want to talk about it?”
I jolted lightly. “I… think I’m good.” Yeah, I didn’t know how to start a conversation about how I knew the world was coming to an end because I’d seen it all in a animated series.
“Coal,” Maria sighed heavily. “What you saw back there, in that house… I told you to not think about it because it was dangerous there… it wasn’t the right time, but we’re here in my cabin and it’s safe here. Now’s the right time for you to process what happened in your old house!”
What happened in my old house? To Maria it must have looked like I was on the verge of an emotional breakdown because I’d just found my dad’s dead body, but the truth was much stranger.
“I… Just don’t know what I’m supposed to do now,” I said honestly. “There’re still massive chunks missing from my memory… It’s like I’m trapped in this strange, scary world and I can see that things are only going to get worse.”
“Then you can stay here until you’ve figured out what you’re supposed to do.”
My head snapped up and I stared at Maria for several moments. I’d be safe here… at least until she decides to get involved with team RWBY, then…
A memory flashed through my head of Maria and Pietro on the Amity Colosseum which was falling back to Remnant.
…Then she would likely die from the fall.
I took a deep breath and calmed myself. I needed to focus on what I could do right now, not what’s potentially coming.
I could always warn Ozpin about Cinder’s plan and all of Salem’s minions, but that would draw a ton of attention to me and if Salem learned of my existence, things could get bad. No, I needed to grow stronger first, strong enough that I would be able to fight off Salem’s minions… Assuming that I still had some time before everything went to hell.
My semblance, the nerfed Gamer system would help me measure how strong I’d become… but that could all only take me so far. If I wanted to become strong enough that I would be able to protect myself from Salem’s minions, I would need someone to instruct me. Someone like Maria, the Grimm reaper herself.
“Could…” I began. “Could you teach me how to fight?” I could learn how to use a weapon later. My semblance could probably help me learn how to use my Aura properly, but fighting skill... That was something I was going to need a teacher for.
Maria regarded me seriously. “And why do you want to learn that?”
“… To get stronger?!” I said, unsure.
“So you can hunt down the bandits that killed your father?” Maria pressed.
“What? No!” It might be horrible to admit, but what happened to Black Rock was literally the last thing on my mind. I had other things to worry about.
“Then why do you want to be stronger?” Maria asked. “People who want power want it for a reason. What’s your reason?”
“I want to be able to protect myself,” I said honestly. “And with time, maybe I could protect others too…”
I know how this must look to Maria. Some kid that’s lost his father to a bandit now wants to be trained in how to fight. It looked like the beginning of a revenge plot, but that was far from the truth. I’d already died before. The message about me transmigrating pretty much confirmed that.
I hadn’t died as some old man in a bed surrounded by all his loved ones while he recounted on a life well lived. No, I died young and I’d been given a second chance. I was going to fight tooth and nail to ensure that I didn’t need a third chance.
“You want to become a Huntsman,” Maria hummed and rubbed her chin. “How long can you keep your Aura active?”
I quickly brought up the Aura screen.
…
Aura (Active) Lvl 1
The power of the soul. Using this creates a field around your body, protecting you from all harm. STR DEX and CON are increased by 5%. Consumes 25 AP per minute and additional AP depending on exertion and injury.
…
My Aura regenerates at 5 AP per minute, so that meant I was still losing 20 AP every minute and I had 500 total points, meaning…
“25 Minutes,” I replied.
“I’ll tell you what,” Maria began. “I’ll give you two months. If you’re able to keep your Aura up for two hours, I’ll train you, but if you can’t then you’ll have to give up on your goal of becoming a Huntsman.”
“Am I going to be working on it by myself?”
“I’ll give you some instructions,” Maria replied. “You’ll have all the tools you need to strengthen your Aura. Success or failure will be entirely up to you.”
Doing some quick estimates in my head, I figured that I would need roughly 1500 AP in order to be able to keep my Aura active for two hours. I needed to get my AUR to 30. I don’t know how long it takes to grow my Aura capacity, so I can’t tell if two months will be enough.
“You’ll help me learn how to use it properly and give me a chance, right? This isn’t just some sort of impossible task that you’ve given me?”
“I’ll give you the same instructions I got as a child… It’s not impossible,” Maria replied. “But it will be difficult and luck does play a part in this. Your Aura might not grow as fast as others.”
I sighed and steeled myself. “You’ve got a deal. In two months time, I’ll be able to keep my Aura active for a full two hours.”
“Or give up on being a Huntsman.”
Well that was a risk I was going to have to take.
