章節 22: Chapter 22 - Expanding horizons
[Land of Darkness]
"It seems that Cinder encountered some problems."
"Contact the Crown. They want the old kingdom and they will get one if they cooperate."
"I understand."
...
[Vale]
With Cinder's two failed plans, her mood was at an all-time low. Nonetheless, she couldn't afford to stop and trudged on.
The only good thing was her identity that was still unknown, at least that is what she thought.
Nephrite himself had almost entered Ozpin's outer circle, and the inner circle members were considering him as a potential member for now. His prowess at the beginning wasn't the most grand, but as the months passed, his speed of growth was at another level.
Most students concentrated their training time on a single skill, but he had trained almost everything and now excelled at them.
His speed of growth wasn't the most deciding factor, though, it was his knowledge of events that had happened this year and his breakthrough invention.
Glynda had speculated that he was a spy from the enemy, but that was proven wrong when he revealed the true identity of Cinder and everything that had happened.
"Could he be the disciple of that man?"
"Impossible. He never had one for hundreds of years." Ozpin shook his head, even for him that man was an enigma and the only person in existence that Salem could not conquer.
"What is the current situation of other academies?" Ozpin asked, and Glynda handed him a report.
"Everything seems to be going well so far, but our informants in Mistral had encountered her pawns, and even that faunus appeared. The concerning part is his new robotic arm, it seems that James might have moles in his ranks..."
Ozpin sat in silence for a while.
"Investigate our student, and if he has a clean background, we can introduce him to the inner circle after he graduates."
Glynda sighed, but didn't object in the end and just walked away.
After she left, a hologram of Ironwood appeared...
...
*cling *clang
*Wooosh *Booom
Nephrite narrowly avoided an enormous green sword, it's sheer weight and power behind it had generated an explosion that almost sent him flying away.
In the distance, Pyrrha was barely holding her own against Fox. He bombarded her with slashes and punches. For a minute, it was a stalemate until he put more power behind his punch and it forced Pyrrha to block with her shield.
Fox's punch changed into a palm and it gently landed on her shield, before it blasted her away, ending their fight. He didn't relax, and a moment later he dodged a pink grenade.
Nora and Ren were facing off Velvet and Coco.
Ren confronted Velvet, and they were locked in a close combat, both trying to find the other's weakness, but if one looked a bit closer they would be able to see that their movements were perfectly on the same level.
Nora dodged Coco's barrage of bullets and responded with a grenade of her own. It exploded mid-air as the bullets had hit it.
She used it as a cover and got close to Coco.
Her hammer was met with her suitcase. She alternated between light strikes and heavy strikes. Coco dodged most of the light strikes and matched the heavy strikes with her own.
Soon the battle ended with the team CFVY as victors, but they didn't win easily. Velvet's and Yatsuhashi's auras were well into the yellow and bordered the red territory by the end.
First to fall was Nora when Coco supercharged her briefcase and amplified her power to an extreme degree. If Nephrite had to guess, even Yatsuhashi would have to take a few steps back.
After Coco had won, she targeted Pyrrha. He didn't know if they used teamwork or just used a telepathic link. The bullets hit Pyrrha with ease without impacting Fox even once.
With Pyrrha's fall, Ren and Nephrite followed soon after. A solid result when you realize that team CFVY stands at the absolute peak of second-year students.
The three first year teams often sparred against team CFVY, and although they have never won, both sides gained a lot.
Team CFVY faced 9 different combat styles that keep improving, forcing them to improve as well lest they lose to their juniors.
Team RWBY, BRON and NNPR were far ahead of their current year, and were already considered the aces of their year.
With this in mind and the fact that Nephrite was one of them, more difficult missions were presented to the teams.
Every second year, equivalent missions had to have at least 2 teams of the three in order to ensure their safety. It would be foolish to endanger the students too much for no particular reason other than experience.
Apollo was a professor that accompanied them most of the times, but when he was busy with 'girlfriend', though no one had ever seen her. He just shivered whenever he remembered he forgot something when it came to her.
Today, team NNPR would see the frontlines for the first time with team CFVY, professor Apollo and a few other huntsmen. When the experienced huntsmen had been informed that a bunch of first and second-year students would accompany them, they weren't happy at all.
They sighed in relief when they heard it wouldn't be anyone rich trying to show off their prestige by using their barely grown up kid to 'shine' on the frontlines.
Although Nikos was found amongst the surnames, it wasn't anything ground-breaking. They were famous for doing things like these, after all.
"These are the kids, this is team NNPR, and this is team CFVY." Apollo said and introduced them to the huntsmen and a huntress.
"Red, I am a ranger."
"Blue, I am a tank."
"My name's Carmine. Nice to meet you!"
The two huntsmen had a rather brief introduction, and only the huntress introduced herself properly. Nephrite felt that something was wrong, but she had not appeared in the canon series, so an absolute caution was not necessary.
But he did use his sixth sense to observe her from time to time when they were travelling to the frontlines, and after a few days his caution almost disappeared when she was just a more approachable huntress.
On their journey, they didn't waste much time and often just blitzed through any Grimm. Their target was a few hundred kilometres away from Mt. Glenn. It was a settlement that bordered the official border between Vale and Vacuo.
The settlement was pretty large and could be considered a town by many. The only problem was the unending Grimm tides that befell this town. No one knew why, but it was an important trade route for the two kingdoms.
This was the sole reason as to why this settlement was even standing after many Grimm tides. And after a decade of its existence, no normal civilian could be found. Everyone there could fight, had an aura unlocked and even the weakest could fight a beowolf or two.
Though the Grimm weren't the sole reason for the name Frontlines. Animals that unlocked their Aura and even the rarest of the rarest, the ones that unlocked their Semblance, were fearsome.
Even the normal animals around the frontlines could sometimes reach the size of a car without any problems. Vacuo was plagued by these kinds of animals, so their students were quite used to this kind of thing.
Beacon students were different, though, thanks to a constant human involvement. Vale and its large surrounding area was cleared and only the weakest species weren't driven to basically extinction.
Atlas didn't have this problem either thanks to the harsh weather and, except a few rare animals, there were only Grimm.
Mistral faced a similar situation in the east desert and south, but that wasn't much of a concern when the settlements were up north and centre in Anima.
Vacuo was the only place that directly faced such a threat, adding one more trouble. Although Nephrite had heard about these huge animals, yet he had never seen them in person and it was quite incredible and terrifying.
It wasn't every day that you could see a 2 meter tall wolf staring at you as you pass near it's territory. Once, Apollo even almost panicked and forced everyone to lie down in silence.
Soon after an enormous shadow passed by and when Nephrite looked up out of curiosity he swore that thing had a wingspan of 100 meters, maybe even more.
If Nevermores were edible, they would be just snacks for that monstrosity.
"Well kids, this is why these are called the frontlines... This thing is what we call a king. And there are very few of these across all the Remnant. No one knows how, but every of these 'kings' can live long like the Ancient Grimm. The theory that Grimm doesn't want to exterminate animals is a lie proposed by some ignorant Atlas scientists that barely knew about the real world." Apollo said as he got up.
"No need to fear though, we humans and faunus have some great huntsmen and huntresses. You will learn more about them when you are in your fourth year. It was quite incredible to see what aura can do at its peak. Some of them can even hunt these so called 'kings'."
"Can these things be really hunted?" Coco asked. She didn't believe that something like that can be taken down with only one person.
"Have you kids read 'Book of Legendary Huntsmen Vol.1', 'Book of Grimm Vol.1' and 'Book of weapons'? If you did then you should ask Oobleck for Vol.2 and only then you will realise what humans and faunus are capable of. Just tell him that I approved of the access." Apollo nonchalantly commented, and they resumed their journey.
'I'll definitely need to check out the truth about these. I wonder what constitutes as a 'legendary' weapon though...' Nephrite noted the information down in his head and continued on with everyone.
[Name: Nephrite Antaeus]
[Current Job: 🌟 Huntsman Student LVL: 20/50]
[EXP: 12/18206]
[Body: Healthy]
[Physique: 45]
[Vitality: 23.6]
[Aura Strength: 25]
[Aura Pool: 45]
[Status Points left: 0]
[Skill Points left: 18]
[Aura Manipulation LVL: 42/43]
[EXP: 169845/176400]
[Vulcan's Pillar Mastery LVL: 21/100]
[EXP: 10/1102500]
創作者的想法 
Xouldrion
Xouldrion Bonus chapter tmrw =w=
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