บท 29: Chapter 29: Just Another Manic Monday

When Glynda's Ki Signature appeared in my sensing range, I grabbed the bundled up members of Team CEM, flew out of my apartment and into the airship she was piloting once she opened the side door.

"Good… Night? Hello, I guess, is better," I said as I dropped the unconscious bodies farther into the airship where they weren't at risk of slipping out.

"Hello yourself," Glynda grumbled. "I had already fallen asleep when Ozpin called for me to pick these… people up."

"Do you want a Stamina Potion? I've got a couple dozen in surplus," I said. Surplus meaning, over the 99 Limit I kept ready to take out of an Inventory Slot at a moment's notice.

"Depending on how it works, I suppose I might take one with me and ingest it after whatever short rest I may get once this situation is over and done with." Word about my Potions through Amber or Qrow must have reached her otherwise, she'd probably not be so flippant about taking them.

I materialized a green Stamina Potion and offered it to her, "Drink the liquid and 10% of your physical exhaustion is removed from your body. That's soreness, stress, as well as the condition of your muscles and organs. That's 10% restored of your peak physical state."

"I'll consider it," she took the potion and stored it in one of the pockets of her nightgown. "Now, I suppose you have some questions you might want answered."

"Oh, you're just going to answer them for me? Cool," I said. I ignored her cold impatient look and asked, "Well, I guess the first thing I should ask is how many other ways of getting rid of Salem have you guys tried besides conventional murder."

"What?"

Glynda looked genuinely confused, so I elaborated, "Like, sure I get that you can't stab her or shoot her to death. She'll just regenerate. But have you tried sealing her underground or sending her off to the void of space?"

"N-no," She stuttered as the mere notion of suggesting such a thing was laughable to consider, "Salem hasn't given any of her enemies the chance to attempt those methods. She's powerful in her own right. Besides being able to command lesser Grimm, she has her own Dark Magic powers and thousands of years of experience to perfect her martial mastery of fighting with both."

"So… If I were to manage to seal her under a couple thousand tons of earth or send her to space, would that get rid of her for good? Or does her Magic have some way around that."

"I'm not sure, but… Her power is effectively unlimited as she can regenerate it as well as her physical state. If you sealed her underground, she'd eventually break her way out to the surface. I assume it would be the same if you somehow managed to send her into outer space."

Welp, there goes that, I guess. I moved on to another question.

"What can you tell me about Ozpin and Salem's origin?"

"Ozpin and Salem are both from the first generation of Humanity, before the Gods abandoned Remnant. They are the only ones that remained, having been cursed by the Gods. Salem was cursed by the God of Darkness and was corrupted at some point by a Grimm Pool, while Ozpin was cursed by the God of Light. For as long as they've been alive, Salem has been trying to get the Relics to end the world and Ozpin has been around to stop her and prevent the end of the world."

"Can't she just end the world with her army of Grimm?"

"Not in the way she wants. The four Relics together can bring about the end of everything, including herself which is what she actually wants."

Ah yes, the "immortality is a literal curse, I actually just want to die" trope. What else should I have expected?

"Well then, I guess that about wraps up everything I wanted to know that I could think of. Here," I gave her a bulky storage drive with all the information I downloaded from Salem's hidden cloud server, "You can let Ozpin know I don't need the data profiles for Salem's people anymore. I already have everything I need to know. In here is everything I could pull from one of her networks. Have fun picking out whatever you can from it," I said before jumping off the airship.

I waited for the airship to start moving away from my apartment before I went to bed and fell into my Inner World.

"Still worried?" Katayoki asked as he idly tossed and caught his knife.

"Yeah, but I guess I might be overreacting. I thought about what you said and have to admit, you're probably right. Even if Salem found out about me the moment I captured Cinder, if she's the mastermind she's been made out to be, she won't just launch an assault on me. It'll take a while before she does her research, plans and schemes up a way to either test me, recruit me or attack. It's just… Kind of weird not being able to solve all my problems by being borderline invincible."

"I get it," Katayoki said, sounding remarkably relatable as he said, "You feel as though you need to find a way to deal with her permanently, or else she might just take the direct approach and make it her life mission to target the people around you. If that happens, either you make it your life mission to defend everything and everyone around you from her, or you give up and have to live with the consequences in a world you know for a fact is real. It's irrational, but people can't help but fear the worst-case scenario."

"Ugh, I hate this psychoanalyzing bullshit," I groaned as I assumed my Vasto Lorde Form. "Let's just fight. I'm getting pretty close to being an equal match for you skill-wise." I materialized a copy of his knife and held it with a throwing grip.

"I'm well aware of how close you are to getting your clearly expressed revenge. Unfortunately for you," he grinned, "you'll probably be left disappointed by the fact that I'm looking forward to it as much as you are. The day you manage to overcome me, I won't feel any pain or despair. Instead, I'll finally be complete."

"Forget what I said about psychoanalyzing, I hate you when you're trying to be cryptically vague way more," I said before throwing my knife and starting the most catastrophic fight I'd ever waged in my Inner World.

This time, I could feel my Soul actually sustaining quantifiable amounts of damage with every full-power attack. It wasn't much every time I missed an attack and carved a small hole in my Soul, but that added up quickly when Katayoki and I exchanged thousands of attacks a minute. By the time I was due to wake up, I only lost twice for every time I managed to hit him.

I left my Inner World and completed my usual morning routine before going on to do my morning workout. With my recent advancements in Spiritual Power and all the Cyberware augmentations taking effect from within my Equipment Slots, I was still able to run to Beacon while cutting through any Grimm I saw, while suppressed by the eyepatch, in about twenty minutes. This was without using any techniques like Sonido or the Afterimage Technique. In other words, it was no longer a challenge.

It was a cooking day rather than a training day, but I resolved to start coming to Beacon every day regardless during my morning workout, to add a certain safety measure that would hopefully tie me over until I managed to get a power to permanently end Salem. Back when I tied Yatsuhashi while being suppressed, part of my rolls for the Meta Gacha Coin I got included 422 Summons.

Every day for the foreseeable future, I would use one of those Summons and set them to defend Beacon since that's where most of the people I knew resided. Everyone else I dealt with, I could defend myself while staying in Vale.

I accepted the summon for "Ragdoll" and a woman with emerald-green hair and a strange set of accessories appeared right in front of me.

"Hey, uh, do you know where you are or how this works?" I asked.

"Yes?" She looked as confused as I sounded, "You want me to keep an eye out for those villains, right? Don't worry, my Quirk, Search, allows me to keep track of one hundred people at once and works in a ten-mile radius. I already know what Salem and her people look like from the documents you pulled from her network, so I'll just stay where you need me, inside Beacon, and let you know if any of them appear."

Good to know that these Summons didn't need to be directly told everything and more or less came with an understanding of what I wanted them to do. I thanked her for her help before leaving for Vale.

On my way back, my Scroll began ringing. An unknown caller was trying to get in contact.

"If that's Salem or one of her minions, I would like to apologize for how badly I underestimated her in advance," Katayoki quietly said through our connection. Her competence could not be questioned if she were this diligent and resourceful to track down my personal number this quickly.

I picked up the call, "Hello?"

"Hey, um… It's the guy from the club last night. You said to call you when I was ready to explain why I wanted to get into Beacon or you'd tell my dad. I, uh… Damn, I hope I'm not bothering you by calling you this early," the caller said and I recognized them as Jaune Arc. He must have taken my cautious tone for annoyance at being called so early in the morning.

Right… The boy whose future I changed resulted in my first Legendary Gacha. I should probably do something to rectify that and hopefully prevent some cataclysmic event from happening just in case Destiny or Fate had rebound mechanics in this world. It wouldn't surprise me in the least at this point.

"Good morning, Jaune. You ready to explain why I shouldn't ship you off to the nearest psychiatric ward for suicidal tendencies? Trying to fake your way into a Huntsman Academy is a surefire way to get killed, you know."

"It is?" He sounded confused, "I thought they were supposed to teach you how to fight Grimm there. Isn't the whole point of going to the academy to learn how to survive and fight back?"

"Yes, but usually the people who go to a Huntsman Academy do so after spending years training either at a preparatory school or under a direct mentorship with an already established Huntsman. Those kinds of people have Aura and don't need to forge transcripts to bypass all the barriers to entry that would prevent a regular civilian like yourself from going through their initiation and dying from a dozen different miserable deaths," I knew all this from talking to Velvet and her team.

"So if I go, you're sure I'll die?" He asked, the hope draining from his tone, "Is there really no way for me to make it as a Huntsman like my dad and grandfather?"

"There might be a way," I slowly said while trying to piece together how I wanted to approach this. To almost anyone else I'd probably tell them to catch up to everyone else, get Aura and meet the legitimate requirements to become a Huntsman before applying to Beacon. But this was a guy whose missing presence at Beacon was worth a Legendary Gacha reward.

If I looked at the Rarity of Gacha by the measure of the effort involved Uncommons would come from unusual, but still relatively normal achievements. Rare would come from impressive achievements accomplished by normal people. Unique would come from astounding achievements, enough effort to probably elevate a large community below the level of one of the Great Kingdoms. Epic and above would probably only be quantifiable by destructive capabilities; Epic being city level and Legendary being country or continental level.

I could be wrong, but I had the faint impression that I was more accurate with my assessment than not. So, Jaune's role in Beacon could, in the absolute worst-case scenario, cause a continental amount of destruction if I handled it wrong. For all I knew he might have been fated to be this world's hero and kill all the Titans as well as Salem.

"I'm guessing you planned on forging transcripts to enter as a freshman next year, right?" I asked. When he admitted as much, I said, "Then perhaps, maybe we can work something out. You'll only have a few months to catch up with the rest of your would-be peers, but if agree to subject yourself to my borderline torturous training, I can probably bring you up to snuff."

"You're offering to train me to become a Huntsman?!" He must not have heard the "borderline torturous" part of my offer with how excited his voice was coming through.

"Sure. I'll even unlock your Aura if you manage to stick with the program for a month. If you can make it that far, you'll probably be good enough to survive the initiation this coming November."

"But— But… I'm leaving Vale soon. I'm only here for a family vacation and that's due to end this Thursday," his excitement turned into soul-crushing depression.

"Don't worry about it, I can handle your training wherever you need to go," I could do that and it wouldn't even cost me anything as I planned on straining my use of Shadow Clones to make myself as weak as possible and earn as many high Rarity Gachas as I could. One of the tens or hundreds of Shadow Clones I could probably sustain with my elevated Spiritual Power can go babysit his training arc— montage. Training montage…

"Really?! Thank you so much for this, I swear you won't regret it!" Jaune said. Unfortunately, I wasn't sure the sentiment would go both ways as we hashed out the details of our arrangement before ending the call.

I took a deep breath and formed fifty Shadow Clones. I put on my power suppression eyepatch and continued to have a relatively easy time running back to Vale. With Beacon reinforced by my summon and more than one of my Shadow Clones, I felt at ease enough to continue going about my normal routine.

I finished my morning routine and went to relax my nerves by spending the next ten hours cooking at my job. It was a pleasant time, seeing Velvet and being able to zone out in the kitchen come the evening dinner rush. Having to explain why I was wearing an eyepatch to more than one member of the staff got annoying after a while, but it was an entertaining challenge coming up with increasingly insane reasons as to why I had it.

"Laser eye surgery gone wrong: I need to keep it covered so that it can recover for the next few months."

"Training mishap: My biological eye can destroyed while fighting against a Grimm, so now I'm going pirate mode."

"Got cursed: Turns out that wearing the eyepatch for long enough makes it impossible to take off, so now I'm stuck like this forever."

At some point, the kitchen staff got that memo and stopped asking about it. Meanwhile, the Shadow Clones I made that chose to go fight Grimm for the day were raking in thousands of Unique Gachas every hour. Occasionally, I would get a prompt for an Epic Gacha Coin for killing off an Ancient Grimm while debuffed to hell and back.

"Do you want to go out to eat?" Velvet asked me when the time to clock out came. "I haven't eaten dinner yet and I'd like to pay you back for last Friday. I'll be my treat," she offered.

"I mean, if you're offering, I certainly won't turn you down. Just don't be surprised when I do the same on Thursday," I was trying my best to fight the urge to offer to pay for this dinner date and every other thing going forward.

I knew she was strapped for cash and I was disgustingly rich, but drawing attention to that fact would probably not end well. Better to just set up the next date — where I would, no doubt, take her out to the fanciest place I could get away with — up in advance and treat her with dignity than to assume she'd fawn over me just because I could solve all her money problems.

She smiled and led the way to one of the restaurants a short walk from where we worked. I didn't take that as a sign that she didn't like the food at Bistro Cafe, but rather that she'd decided the limited late-night menu was not something she was interested in at the moment.

We entered a mom-and-pop restaurant that was a part of a strip mall instead of being a standalone establishment. It sold a mix of what I could only describe as "Mexican-Asian fusion" and had a decent number of customers for a restaurant their size on a Monday night. I probably would have liked it if not for the fact there couldn't be any more signs that screamed I wasn't welcome.

The first sign of trouble was the fact that once one person saw me, they were quick to glare at me and in the process of doing that the other people in the restaurant followed their line of sight and joined in. The more people who took note, the faster the process of everyone in the restaurant taking notice of me.

This strange behavior became much less confusing once I realized that everyone in the restaurant was Faunus; so, probably just anti-humanists or whatever the right term was. With my enhanced senses, I could hear their muttered curses and hateful comments. It was annoying, but only because it upset Velvet and put her on the spot. Personally, I couldn't care less what some random strangers I'd never interacted with thought of me. They were free to judge me however they wanted so long as they didn't start anything physically.

"So, what do you recommend?" I asked Velvet, trying to distract her from all the attention she had unintentionally drawn to herself. I doubt she would have brought me here if she knew it would draw out this kind of reaction.

"Oh, um… I usually just get a sushi roll or two," she said.

"Mhmm," I hummed before settling into a darker and darker mood once it became obvious that the staff at the restaurant were purposefully ignoring us. In any other situation, I would just leave and blacklist the restaurant as one I'd never support in the future. Unfortunately, I couldn't do whatever I wanted as it was Velvet who brought me over here in the first place.

Before I could make a scene, a waitress decided to approach us. Her expression was more frightened and alarmed than suspicious or hateful, but I was too annoyed to really pay it any mind. Velvet and I followed her to an open table before we took our seats. We made a bit of small talk, mostly just talking about what we would order before I put my menu down and frowned.

It'd been minutes and they hadn't even brought us any water, asked us if we wanted drinks or appetizers. I swear… If these motherfuckers were purposefully going to draw this out to inconvenience us as much as possible…

The waitress returned, trembling and with her makeup running down her face.

"Are you ok?" My annoyance was replaced with confusion and worry. As much as I didn't like her for being a part of this decidedly incompetent or purposefully unprofessional staff, I didn't want to see them hurt or traumatized; either one of those seemed an apt description of what I was looking at.

"I— I don't know," she said, refusing to look me in the eye. "C-can I t-take your orders?"

I took a glance at Velvet and she looked just as confused as me. We gave the waitress our orders and she quickly scurried away as soon as she confirmed that we were done. A couple minutes later, the waitress returned looking a lot less fidgety with our food.

Now, because I didn't want to bankrupt Velvet needlessly, I only ordered one sushi roll and no drink, appetizer, or dessert. The roll I ate was great, not amazing, but definitely worth returning for if it didn't come with the treatment I'd been subjected to. I kept my mouth shut and waited for Velvet to finish her food before she asked for the bill to pay for our food and leave.

Alas, before that could happen the personification of my bad luck manifested itself and walked into the restaurant. Of all the possible times for me to see Adam, god-damn, Taurus, why did it have to be now, while I was on a date? I knew all about this deranged psychopath due to all the information on Cinder's notes and Salem's network. A few of my Shadow Clones had been going through all that stuff and what they discovered about the leader of Vale's Branch of the White Fang left little to the imagination with regards to how much he hated Humans.

So, when the red-haired bull-horned Grimm-masked man with a posse of over a dozen Faunus entered the restaurant, I knew for certain this idiot would start something with me, the moment he saw I was the only Human around.

"Velvet," I called out to my date. When she looked up at me while continuing to sip her soda through a straw, I added, "I'm probably going to have to defend myself in—"

"What the fuck are you doing here, Human?" Right on cue, the man cut me off. I was hoping it'd take him a little longer to notice, but seeing as Velvet had her guard up, I would take that as a win.

"You blind behind that mask? I'm waiting for my date to finish eating," I said, not really bothering to show him any amount of respect. He didn't deserve it with how much needless death he caused.

"James?" Adam angrily turned to a member of the administrative staff. "You're letting Humans eat here now?"

"A regular brought him in," the man began to sweat at a noticeable rate as he struggled to come up with an excuse, "I—I thought it'd be fine and he hasn't said or done anything until you showed up."

"Really, now? Well, I guess it's good to know where you stand with our cause," Adam threateningly said.

"What are you getting mad at him for?" I couldn't help myself, "Or would you rather miss out on our money if you banned all Humans from coming here? I thought your cause wanted equal rights."

"Keep your unwanted opinions to yourself, trash!" He spat, "You can take your equal rights and shove them! If it were up to me, all you miserable Humans would be dead or put where you belong."

"Tell me how you really feel," I rolled my eyes at him.

"You…" He started walking his way over to me menacingly and all I could do was laugh.

"Really? You're going to start a fight over words?" I asked. Velvet started to stand, but I grabbed her shoulder and gave it a reaffirming pat.

"I'm going to execute you for your impudence," he said.

"I'm warning you. You still have time to back off with only your ego checked. If that fucking sword comes out, both you and it are going to leave here broken."

"Die," I actually can't believe he said that.

His sword came out faster than any bullet I'd encountered. If his sword sheath was a gun its muzzle velocity would be in the tens of thousands of feet per second. Unfortunately for him, I could react fast enough to see it coming. I activated my Sandevistan just to trivialize my move to block him and caught his blade after it had reached the apex of its swing with my index finger and thumb covered in Hierro.

When I dropped the Sandevistan's bullet time effect a resounding clang of metal clashing against metal echoed in the restaurant. A moment afterwards I added a bit of distending force to the blade in between fingers and it snapped like brittle candy.

"You had your chance," I said and while he stood in horrified disbelief, I flicked a finger at his chest and broke through his Aura.

[Congratulations! For defeating Adam Taurus, you have earned a Unique Mission Gacha Coin!]

As the man collapsed like a puppet with cut strings, everyone in the restaurant tensed at the same time. The White Fang posse that had entered with Adam looked like they were struggling to decide whether to fight back or stand down. One woman hesitantly began to raise her gun at me until I spoke.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you. The first time, I can excuse you guys for not knowing how outclassed you are. But, if you seriously try to start up a firefight in the middle of this civilian restaurant, I'm not going to hold back as much. Just take your idiotic leader and reflect on what you've seen today."

They were lucky I was out on a date with Velvet. Otherwise, I wouldn't be this forgiving and have already sent them all packing to jail or an early grave depending on how serious they were about retaliating. It was a humbling moment when I think about Salem and how trying it is for me that I can't just treat her like all these people. It'd be so much easier to go through life if I could just use overwhelming power to get rid of everything in my way.

"Don't worry, you totally don't sound like every narcissistic megalomaniacal dictator. You could give even the worst of them a run for their money with these psychotic thoughts, though," Katayoki commented.

I leaned back in my chair and ignored him in favor of focusing on the people around me. The situation was still as tense as it could be, but when it became obvious that I wasn't going to do anything else, the members of the White Fang did as I said and picked Adam up before retreating out of the restaurant.

Everyone else that was not Velvet remained staring. The customers were probably petrified as they wondered if I would do anything to them for their passive aggressiveness. The restaurant staff was caught between going back to work as if nothing happened or whether they should quit while they were ahead and just close the restaurant entirely.

Mercifully, because Velvet had asked for the bill before the incident had gone down, it had already been printed and ready for our waitress to rush it over to our table. Velvet paid the bill with a 10,000 card and dragged me out of the restaurant without waiting to get any change.

"Sorry about that," I said, feeling a bit remorseful about how much stress and attention I'd brought her by proxy of being my date.

"I should be the one apologizing," she frowned and looked at the ground. "I should have paid more attention and realized there was an anti-Human culture there before taking you out to eat there. Now you have to worry about retaliation from the White Fang…"

I snickered at the irony. When the sound drew Velvet's eyes back to me, I said, "You're worried about me? Even after I cowed their group by effortlessly taking down their big shot? That guy was the leader of Vale's Branch of the White Fang, you know. He's held up as one of the contenders for strongest fighters in the entire organization."

"They're going to want revenge," Velvet looked concerned.

"I already gave them a warning," I shook my head. "I showed them the difference in power between us. Their only options now are to try to catch me when I'm off guard," I held up a finger, "go after the people around me," I held another finger and looked at her intently, "or realize how bad either of those two options would end for them and leave me alone. I give second chances, but never a third."

"You'd kill them?" She took a hesitant step away from me and to be honest, it stung worse than tanking that nuke back in Night City.

"Maybe," I shrugged. "I'm not going to lie to you, if someone is too dangerous to be left alive I will find a way to permanently end whatever threat they pose to me or the people around me. For the overwhelming majority of people, the ones who can't hurt me even if they tried, I probably won't have to resort to personally killing them, but I won't hesitate to break most of the bones in their bodies before carting them off to jail."

"That's wrong… but fair," she said before coming around and leaning into me for a hug. "I wish it didn't have to be that way, but I know that's not how real life works."

I hugged her back until she was ready to let go. She then gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, apologized again for the bad date, and left to go back to Beacon before she missed the last airship.

I had a Shadow Clone make sure she got to the shuttles safely and headed back to my apartment to end my day. I was in the middle of my shower when the Shadow Clone dispelled to let me know that Velvet's ride had taken off without any mishaps.

After my shower, I cashed in all my Gacha Coins before going to bed.

[Results: Rarity — Uncommon/Rare 31 - 866 | Transformation Technique x10, Earth Release: Earth-Style Wall x10, Volcanic Explosion x10, Swordsmanship x10, Axe Throwing x8, Piano x7, Bass x5 (Skill)]

[Results: Rarity — Unique 2,470 | Shout: Spring (Ability)]

[Results: Rarity — Unique 3,666 | Trick Vanish (Item)]

[Results: Rarity — Unique 4,611 | Battle of Beacon (Mission)]

[Results: Rarity — Unique 7,591 | 72 Hours 2, The Final Release (Scenario)]

[Results: Rarity — Unique 9,804 | Labyrinth Crystalarium (Scenario)]

[Results: Rarity — Epic -91,503 | Ryomen Sukuna's Fingers (Item)]

[Results: Rarity — Epic -99,998 | Brockton Bay: May 15th, 2011 (Scenario)]