RWBY (Roosterteeth) and The Gamer (Sung San-Young).

I am neither of the two groups.

I thus do not own either RWBY or The Gamer

I do not own Diablo II, Blizzard Entertainment does.

I do not own Business Strategy Game, McGraw-Hill Irwin does.

I do not own Rome Total War, The Creative Assembly does

I do not own Fate/Stay Night, Type-Moon does.

I do not own Street Fighter, Capcom does.

I do not own Guilty Gear either Arc System Works does

I do not own Star Wars, 20th Century Fox and Lucasfilm does.

I do not own World of Warcraft, Blizzard does.

I do not own Monster Girl Quest, Torotoro Resistance does.

Version 1: Cooking first. No Grimm felt too similar to the last chapter, like a part 2 rather than a separate chapter.

Version 2: Was too inwardly focused. Didnʻt feel any changes happening to the world.

Version 3: Somehow spent an entire chapter with Jaune fighting Lily then thinking about how he got to the fight; getting me nowhere.

Version 4: Got stuck in why being in a business should really suck.

Remember that Lien is like Yen rather than $ or Euro.

Calendar is based on 2005 (since RWBY canon starts in 2013)

The Games We Play Notes:

12/13/14 While they seem more biological, it does appear that Ryuugi introduced Human *****

At least I don't think he'll include Soul healing, exorcism, and Magic Cookies. Hints of a weakening seal, but speaking works differently at least.

12/16/15: A bit different, I go the Emptiness becomes so great it goes full circle pov. It's how the Four Symbols gave birth to the Faunus, and the Arc Styles quest for Aether works.

12/18/14 NOTE TGWP: Glad to see Grimm Slayer being used, otherwise pretty expected.

The Gamer: We got WIS! Too bad it took so long for Jee-Han to be able to click on a stat to see what it does. So once more I'm going with 'something is interfering with that function', like the tutorial and gaining levels.

12/19/14 NOTE: A style descended from someone who later became a god huh? The Arc styles coming from Heracles is already stated in Jaunes 'maybe this, maybe that' way at least.

12/25/14 The Gamer: So something similar to A**a may exist in that world too huh? Still, if I keep looking at other stuff, I won't actually finish before Christmas is over.

Jaune Arc: The Accidental Hero

Chapter 5

The Hero Pushes Buttons!

My brother is a genius.

In the blinding white light of a hospital room, I first saw him.

A small little thing, expected of being born half a month early.

I didn't want a little brother; my three little sisters were already enough, as Sieglinde Arc, the oldest child of the Arc family, I had to be responsible; and that was hard. I couldn't play and that was sad. Most of all… what little time our parents could spend with us would get smaller once more. So it was like a little monster, who took away time; time that I would never get back.

Still I was the oldest, so I had to be there.

So while my sisters sulked I went to the hospital room expecting nothing.

But then I saw him.

And he saw me.

His eyes, for the briefest of moments… were white.

But, I dismissed it as a trick of the light, as he never showed any other sign of having Aura.

My brother is a genius.

Always a bit too old.

A bit too responsible.

A bit too smart.

Even a bit too friendly.

But he never seemed to have any type of Aura based power.

So my worries flipped from him becoming a heartbreaker,

to worrying that his heart would be broken.

But whenever his unintentional-after long study I'm reasonably certain about that-flirting would reach the point that I felt an intervention was necessary, he would... break up an argument by saying something random, and I would see why I left more and more situations in his hands.

I never had a problem with thinking,

but always had a problem with expressing.

Jaune never had a problem with either of them.

But he assumes things.

He wants to be a Hero, and he kept listening to stories, studying more and more as time goes on.

He learned the basics of cooking to make healthy food for us all, trying to be the 'man of the house' because that is what father, his personal hero, told him he was.

He comforted all of us, even if he couldn't tell exactly what was wrong, but never thought of himself. Life to him was simple.

He would become a Hero.

And so would we.

And that was all.

Despite having natural physical talent, he never asked to be trained, not like the twins who came up-shy for once-for my help, nor did he go off to train like Scarlet and Nero, or even study combat magic like Charlotte did, despite being the smartest among us. So I was uncertain that he could become a Hero.

He started following grandfather around as well, becoming smarter to the ways of the world, but he did so by copying another person. Traces of father and traces of grandfather, I worried that he would lose sight of himself with all these imitations.

Life was not simple. While I didn't mind becoming a Heroine, or even a sidekick, Rowan went along with it because she loved him more than any actual desire, Scarlet worries about the past; wondering if she even has the right to become a Heroine, and Charlotte is very nervous about such a scary concept. So most of us would probably never be Heroes in the way that he dreamed.

So I was worried that someday, the day after his dreams were shattered, I would try to be there for him, and he would push me away.

I attended Signal to set a good example for my siblings; most of the extended family considers themselves too good to learn from a government subsidized school, even before taking into account the divide between traditionalists and modernists.

But I had a feeling… a hunch if you will.

That alone of my siblings, Jaune would never Awaken his Aura on his own, that the distance from hiding to hide our Aura from him; combined with how his other older sisters, except for me, kept playing with him to make up for the times that they were training their Aura, were unconsciously starting to baby him, would make him start to hate being babied.

That Jaune would spiral through failure after failure; trying his best to be strong, but getting weaker as sibling after sibling passed a Hunter Equivalency Exam (HEE), while Jaune failed to enter Signal trying to set a good example for his younger sisters to follow.

That my little brother would fail, crash, and burn; with nothing that we could do to stop him.

And so I killed Grimm.

The Grimm fed on negative emotions, some people think they also make them stronger; it would be nice if I could say that I killed them because of that.

But that was not the case.

I just killed them because… I didn't know what else to do.

So I killed Grimm.

Killed Grimm.

And killed more Grimm.

Staining my hands with blood so many times that I decided to name my gauntlets Fafnir, after the bloodstained dragon my namesake once killed.

That knowing look on Jaunes face…

I felt guilty.

Like he was judging me.

But then he smiled like normal again.

I wanted to help him.

But I couldn't change how I acted around him now.

Or else he would suspect me.

Refuse me.

And go away even sooner.

I didn't know what to do.

So I killed more Grimm.

But now I have to reconsider my assumptions.

Because Jaune is a genius.

One day, (I found out later that the day before he had awakened his Semblance), he just came up to all of us, and hugged us, hugged us while looking sad.

Outside of Scarlet whose connection to Aura is… frightening, only I noticed the faint hint of Aura around him.

I had been maintaining my weapon, as well as studying Earth, of the Classical Elements, in order to develop a better affinity with my weapon, and I sensed something similar to that around him.

A feeling like he was reaching into the World.

And unlike I who could receive no real response, for him, the World reached back.

Then the next day he was gone.

Gone training with Nero; Nero the strongest of his younger sisters, Nero whose Semblance was enough that I once recently had kept watch while she killed an Ursa Major; an impressive feat for a 7 year old, regardless of her fainting afterwards, and then, I wondered how much he knew.

He came back looking different. Taller. Grimer. And the power following him...was below only Scarlets out of nowhere. He felt… almost like father somehow.

And then I noticed his eyes.

They were white.

Just like that day.

And suddenly I worried about what had happened.

I was even more shocked hearing his story.

His story after he had Nero sent to the hospital, after he had gathered us all together, was that he had failed.

While he used bigger words; another bad habit of his to tend to do, Hunters generally lack the luxury of monologuing, he basically said this:

"Killing Beowolves wasn't too hard, Ursa Minor a bit of effort, but an Ursa Major pushed him completely. Nero was already tired from the hundreds of Grimm they had already fought, most of them killed by Nero, but he could only protect her from the Ursae, and fainted himself. Nero Discovered her Semblance, and fully copied a portion of his power. Then she almost died because using the skill depleted too much Soul. Because she couldn't handle the strain. But not to worry.

Because he already used the skill several times on her, so she wouldn't die."

Just how massive his Soul was…

Even the Twins thought that Nero would surpass them one day.

Yet… he said it so casually.

My Soul is far stronger than hers, so I should have prevented it.

I talked to father, who came home specially having heard Nero was hurt so badly and received another shock.

In the years that I saw nothing...

Jaune had been practicing.

Jaune had been learning the basics of The Shield, and other arts.

Jaune had been learning about the Elements.

Jaune had been learning about the previous Heroes.

He just did it when we weren't around, finishing all his homework for the month in the first few days, excusing himself with how Hunter families can request to do homework ahead of time in case of volatility; leveraging that most of those trusted to teach at the elementary level were old enough to know the legends behind father and grandfather; really making him a genius intellectually as well.

Did I ever know him?

Did he ever need me?

Are we already too far to ever stay together?

I went to him to try to vocalise this.

And saw him creating new ways of healing, with nearly as much control as Scarlet, a genius in Aura manipulation.

So I left.

And when I saw him again, he was baking cakes.

And baking cakes.

And baking cakes.

It felt like looking into a mirror, and so I fled.

Then one day he created cookies.

The power inside them… was amazing.

While he had saved the best for Nero, he did give each of us a cookie.

It felt like being healed… except greater somehow.

Then I realised it.

It was the World.

He had placed a bit of the World.. the highest level of enchantment, into a cookie.

So I rushed to see him, the genius in enchanting.

And found him with Nero, saying something that astounded me again.

These are failures, but, they should make you feel a little better.

I found out later that he had been trying to create Soul restoring cookies, so that life restoring cookies, cookies that restored based on the Worlds concept of health, truly was a failure to him.

But at that time, I just stood around, completely shocked.

Then ran.

After nearly a week of baking cakes, he went to visit someone, and brought back… a girl.

She was a few years older than me, and despite being baby faced was stunningly beautiful, was obviously less than mentally mature; almost seeming to fall into the stereotype of a dumb blonde, and was desperate to stay at our house with Jaune.

I was worried that she had Jaune hooked around her fingers, or more likely with how glamorous her proportions were, other… parts of her body.

But I was assuming things again.

Jaune had made her cry.

So he was taking responsibility.

Part of why he had gotten so strong,

was because of her.

We were all stunned by what sounded like a love confession,

but now I don't believe that Jaune realise what his words sounded like,

Still.. from the look on that girls face, that didn't matter.

My baby brother would become a 'genius' heartbreaker, so I stepped aside.

And let my sisters plan what they would.

Abandoning Jaune to their tender mercies.

I knew he was baking.

But I avoided him completely.

And so the first time I realised it, along with Rowan it seems, was at the party.

The cookies Jaune created… were amazing.

The work of a master chef.

And that made me feel even worse.

Even people with top-class learning Semblances, generally lack… something.

A power that is good at acquisition of new abilities, the ability of a early-bloomer, generally lacks in progression of those abilities; like how Nero can copy and learn most abilities, yet retains almost nothing to build off of later.

It was how Julius Caesar failed.

He fought Behemoth, Unconquered Monster of The Land to a draw with his army at full strength, with both sides letting the other go, seeing a reason to fight again later. Julius was certain than in a millennium his descendents would be even stronger. So no mutual death was necessary. Behemoth was certain that the descendants of Julius would fail to live up to his name, but felt intrigued at the possibility, while having nothing to lose by waiting. Roland ended up fighting impressing Behemoth with his personal strength, yet still losing in the end. That the greatest Paladin was spared, is something that I as eldest am probably the only Arc sibling who knows about it-or perhaps thats just my assumptions again-still becoming a Hero is not what he thinks, no fairy tale end awaits him, but I love him too much to break his dreams myself. Julius was unable to enough abilities of beyond the highest levels, instead gaining many abilities that were near Legendary, but only barely so. Roland had Legendary ability, but without a growth Semblance he was unable to fight in enough fields to match something like Behemoth.

A power that is good at speeding up growth, the ability of a strong-bloomer, generally lacks either in acquisition, or in mastery. Our ancestor through Mordred's half of the family, Morgan Le Fay, is an example of that.

She could acquire any magic skill with only modest effort.

She could learn the basics to expert level on any magic skill with ease.

But then… her learning ability rapidly slowed down.

So she made a contract with The Lady of The Lake; who turned out to be Leviathan, Mother of All Sea Grimm in 'Human' form.

To acquire a connection to Water so strong that she was able to super-charge her Semblance through fluidity; similar to how Heracles used Earth to add the weight of a mountain to each of his punches, without actually having to carry a mountain on his fists through extreme application of a connection to Earth obtained from his Goddess nursemaid. It just built on his supremacy as Son of The Heavens to add in Earth; something that in older sets of belief… older powers that Heracles actually tapped into, would create the entire World, to further enhance his Legendary strength.

A power that is good at taking expert class skills to true mastery, the ability of a late-bloomer, generally lacked in other places. The power of Siegfried that I inherit, started at almost nothing. I was just slightly more durable than other people. Healed slightly faster than the average person. But training intensely with Aura, intensely enough that I physically injured myself… if other people could do 1000 work before breaking, while i could do 1010, with them resting for 100, while I only needed 99; the difference does not seem much. But people get stronger. And I was able to work hard to get stronger… just a little faster. I could do 1100 work while others could only do 1050 work, had improved my recovery time to 95, while others only improved to 99… and it just kept moving from there.

Eventually, I was alone.

Rowan had tried to compete with me, but the nature of her powers were in acquiring every skill quickly, with only a small degree of learning afterwards, leaving her behind me by the time I was ten.

The Twins hold have more specialized powers, but despite having had Aura since they were born; the speed of their growth is only now starting to accelerate; they inherited the strong mastering learning abilities of Artus it appears.

They will surpass me.

But that doesn't change that I am alone nowand for at least a few years in the future; Artus took up the throne at the age of 15 because he was waiting for his true growth to start showing, they are the same.

Or at least that is what I assumed.

He was taller.

And when he was dressed in girls clothing, he was more girlish.

In front of my eyes I saw it, a learning genius in illusion at work.

And I felt even worse, that I had let him down.

Then his eyes looked solely at Rowan...

While they were furious, they also somehow felt like The Puppy Dog Technique, Ultimate Secret Skill of Girls.

And I somehow felt slightly better.

Then I was worried about all the promises he was making.

Reduced prices on products.

Promised orders.

Bulk buying of organic goods.

Donations to charity.

None of it sounded very good for him at all.

After we returned from Ladies Night, he went to his room alone, somehow giving off the feeling of a cold and wet dog. He hid it well before Scarlet, naughty girl breaking her curfew, came to hear about the night, and he managed to; without actually lying, make the night sound like it was fun for him.

I decided to give him twenty minutes to cool-off.

And went with to his room with some of the fresh waffles, that he so loved.

We originally ate very healthy, Falafel having all the protein necessary to start the day, yet not having the same degree of fat and cholesterol. Then we switched to eating Sugar Beignets, first replacing sugar with fruit, then with increasing amounts of sugar. So waffles were what Jaune once called, "The S.S. Waffle is our last bastion of sanity, against the evils of the Cookie Faction; we can still warn The Three Cookie Monsters that it's too messy, have them use less syrup by talking about how they're overflowing the squares, and it's easy to divide to prevent fights over equality unlike Pancakes. We will fight for Breakfast, opposing their Evil Will to replace All Breakfast with Cookies.", he can be such a dork.

Still, as all 4 of us have a Physical Semblance, with all that it implies, all of his older sisters found it both fun to go along with him, and beneficial to help keep our bodies in peak condition; or rather, all of us never learned to cook, so his basic skill in cooking was a suitable alternative when our mother was busy with other matters.

And she was often busy; organizing Ladies Night was hard work. And it was fine… now. But when we were younger… only Jaune never seemed to feel the effect of even our more involved parent often being busy. So I can see why even the twins at times act as if he's the older one, and why our younger sisters all idolize him.

His strength was always around for them, even if Jaune himself didn't know what to do.

So I wanted to be there for him when he himself was so down.

Not just for me, but for all of us.

But as I started hesitantly opening the door, I felt it.

The strength of his Aura… it had increased by over five times! I felt him move and instinctively, I moved out of the way. He didn't even notice me before going downstairs to start to cook.

So I ate the syrup-filling-only-the-holes waffles alone.

I found out later that Jaune had somehow signed contracts with all those people who he promised, without anyone remembering exactly when they received his mail.

But I knew.

Jaune must have sent it that moment with his power, after becoming resolved to do it. The desire to keep his promises; especially when he considers himself the man of the household, is huge. But even that would not be enough for him to have had that look on his face, so do what he did afterwards.

For the past two weeks, the sheer amount of Aura Jaune has been outputting, became similar to my classmates. My Signal classmates. He improved his meditation to the point that only I and Rowan could truly be said to be beyond it. His cooking, both in taste and the artistics of his finished product, showed me my mistake in assuming him a master before. And he got taller visibly, surpassing the twins in terms of size.

He fulfilled all those unreasonable orders by manning multiple ovens.

He had gained years worth of ability in using Aura, in less than a month.

So he truly is a genius.

Still, the scene in front of me is… different.

In the just opened room of pure white. Shining even brighter with the ample white light. A yellow and blue figure dances excitingly.

That was the normal part.

"WOOHOO! I got forecasting! Forecasting! Forecasting!" Shouts the figure in unrestrained glee.

"In your face World! In your FACE!" Shouts the figure, suddenly starting to roll on the ground.

"Last month's prices, product quality, overall presentation; I can see it all!" Shouts the figure while shooting out dozens of tiny bolts of Aura from his fingertips.

"I can do it! I can expand! I can take on other businesses!" Shouts the figure while… using Aura Burst! The twins self-created technique!

"But first I need to figure out birthday gifts." Says the figure, suddenly completely calm, in a voice similar to a professor, while radiating Signal class Aura.

"Sieglinde was born in Spring, while being conceived in Summers passion. So the late pregnancy was in Winters chill… I can probably wait and see what she wants till after Lover's Day in February to find appropriate gifts that signify new beginnings. Rowan was born a bit later in Spring, conceived in late Summer, and so felt the warmth of Springs first light. So I should find a growth orientated gift for her.. maybe I can craft something that is traditionally for fun during the Summer? She did seem stressed recently, probably because the twins are almost as strong as her if she went full out. The twins should have been born at the start of Summer, but were both late and waited till the absolute middle of Summer to be born. They were conceived in the gathering of Falls energy, meant to be born in Summers early bloom. But it ended up working out, as twins they both covered Summer. They're starting to get into their true growth, from descent from both Artus and The Little Lady. So I should get them a symbol that they're growing, but need to store energy properly to continue to do so. So I'll get them some slightly too large underwear, good things I memorized the measurements of all my female relatives; wouldn't want to send the wrong single on something like chest size. I was meant to be born in early Fall, but I was instead born on the day after Summers death, September 1st, which isn't even officially acknowledged as part of Fall scientifically. Scarlet was born in late Fall, where energy fully matures, and so was conceived in Spring, and saw the entire life cycle while in the womb. So theory books on magic, since October just ended. Witchcraft and strawberry cake. If I organize the other decorations right, it should look like purity, modesty, goodness, love, eternity, and childhood from the many meanings of strawberry. She needs to know that I'll acknowledge her, regardless of what happens, not to fear the past, and that i'll always be there to help her; I won't be caught with my pants down like Merlin, I'll surpass him completely. Following the set of perfect 8, Nero was supposed to be an early Winter child. But instead she was conceived in early Winter, and was born early at the middle of summer like the Twins. The characteristics of that change coming from communications with the World; in accordance to the Classical Elements, combined with Vacuo We Xing, the Four Symbols making the next child a true Fire child who would best be born in that time. So I need to counter that force with a gift of Winter, during Winter, for her to remember her origins, as well as another small; albeit slightly larger gift, on her actual birthday. While Charlotte was born at the peak of Winter, rather than the end, leaving some room by traditional measures for more children, but mother cut the cord, leaving room for one of us to create new life prematurely without disruption in the family unit. Necromancy would have some effect, but Golem Creation is probably better. But for now I should choose to study Elementals; creating something new is harder than making use of something that already exists after all. I've already developed an affinity for Fire with all the cooking… In order to expand, I should gain another affinity. Or perhaps expand in Fire. But then-"

Hearing him continue rambling in the tone of a teacher, really got me.

He obviously understood the Classical Elements of Ancient Hellas, the Wu Xing of Ancient Zhongguo, with both a top-class Learning Semblance, where he also can choose what to learn, and from his lack of doubt in developing affinities/finding techniques, something else definite at the same time.

He also has a top-class Knowledge Semblance as well.

In order to have that…. if he continues to learn at his accelerated pace to the peak of mastery…

He may possess the greatest Semblance in the history of the Arc line.

But... looking at the person in front of me, who went back to practicing a mix of martial arts and magic,

I could only think..

Who wears a Onesie to practice fighting.

Yeah...

I guess I'll leave the genius alone for a bit longer...

XXX

After more screaming in the white room, this time in joy, I think back to the screen that I can practically still see.

No wait. I have backlogs; so I can see it again.

Ha ha ha!

Congratulations!

For surviving your first month in 'Tycoon Mode' you have unlocked the following functions!

Gaining levels in Tycoon Mode have been unlocked!

Experience has been retrospectively added!

Business Inventory has been unlocked!

Tycoon Mode Forecasting has been unlocked!

You have gained a level in Tycoon Mode!

You have gained a level in Tycoon Mode!

You have gained a level in Tycoon Mode!

You have gained a level in Tycoon Mode!

Nine years ago, September 1st, I was born.

Born the day that Autumn starts, the day scientists place as still being within Summer. Something I felt suited me completely. My four older sisters were already great; Sieglinde like the spring, bursting out from the winter, Rowan whose great but awkward potential was like spring in full bloom, Lily and Arthuria twins born with the rare condition of being close enough in self at birth to Awaken each other's Aura for protection; even if I knew nothing about Aura until grandpa revealed it to me, I still understood that the two of them were the strongest. Thus I had no trouble believing that I was born after the best.

The world felt at it's peak, The War had ended, and Remnant was in an era of unprecedented peace. More and more Hunters were being trained by the day, and the connections between the Four Kingdoms were being strengthened as technology constantly improved. Naturally, things would start going bad. The house of the Kingdoms would show cracks, the paint would discolor, and weeds would start to creep up from the surrounding lands. But it would be a time of change. A time when new Heroes must rise up. And I would be one of them.

Lacking expectation of the world continuing to get better if you 'just gave it some time', I would be able to act to preserve this beautiful world. And so I was waiting, watching, and eagerly reading stories to properly learn from the past, for when my day finally came to help save the world.

Now I believe differently.

I was born the day after Summers demise, to see the world rotting away. Without the bias of the past, I could tell that how the previous generation was hiding away the dismal state of the world, sending away the next generation to die in droves, to preserve, not their safety, but their comfortalone, was wrong.

And that said circumstance didn't matter.

I just needed to know that the world current course would lead to oblivion, understand that I must be smarter than the previous generation, and take advantage of every blind spot to stay ahead.

Without decisive action, even my newfound powers, even while standing watch over my overpowered family, I would only be able to watch the world burn.

And work with it.

The book that placed me on this path..I wonder if it's still where I hid it? Vales main public library is one of the five largest libraries on the planet, open 24 hours a day, and difficult to clean; the number of cobwebs when I played hide and seek with Sieglinde, Rowan, and Arthuria in the past were….

Anyway, regardless of what happened to that book, itʻs fine.

As now, my priorities are in order.

Gain a strong enough position to keep my family safe first.

Then worry about other people.

I Discovered my Semblance on September 30th, the last Friday of the month while in the Vale Public Library. Saw my title and lv 2, immediately after seeing that uncensored history book, and was dazed.

Explaining myself didn't work, since I didn't really have anything that I could explain; so I was kicked out of the library for the next 6 months. So I explained that I had something to think about and wanted to be left alone for a while to my mother, going to sleep early so that I could think more clearly on the matter. But couldn't stay asleep, and so stared at nothing for a while instead.

I started thinking again the next morning, enough (depending on their differing morning schedules) to hug and kiss all my sisters, cook breakfast, lunch, and reflect. Then after thinking about it, I decided to go to the tutorial after eating a light dinner. I gained 2 levels and a WIS from that, making me level 4. When I came back, I went to get a snack, then I gained 3 more levels from a quest turn in, and choked on an apple; good times.

I became a badass level 7, the same level as Middle School Hunter-kids in a bit more than a day.

My reaction to that (after my fruit induced nap): Cry about fighting someone who would be 15 levels higher than me no matter what. "Wah, she'll always be stronger than me. Wah!"

On Sunday morning, I decided to train, train till it was time for my Saturday Night duel. My father changed my motivation from winning the duel, to winning something more though. I gained skills, and was ready to fight, recruiting my little sister to help.

She was beyond me, someone I now know was the strongest of my younger siblings; fighting with her, I felt afraid.

Yet the more I fought… the less truly afraid I became.

And when I fought that Ursa… I was completely and utterly focused, in a way that made me understand, albeit briefly, just how my sisters got so strong. If what they always felt was even half of what I just did… that alone would be enough to change the world.

I saw the true danger of my power that day, the sheer strength necessary to bring even someone like Nero crashing down from the sky.

Because of that I realised that I needed to apologize, not in the type of grand gestures that I tended to favor from being the mediator of a large family, but in doing something simple and humble; just like how I act with my family in other times. So I trained the rest of the week in cake baking, simple cake baking, no schemes, no grand gestures, just a simple apology.

I was able to safely finish the tutorial, and soon after got access to modes.

I studied them (Sunday, October 9th), and was asked to bake cookies for Ladies Night (Monday, October 10th). I then continued to study modes even as I baked for Ladies Night. By late night on Saturday, October 15th, I had 4444 cookies for the night; could have had more than 5000 had I not been experimenting with various proof of concepts at the time. My other cookies, including Neros Basic Magic Cookie were lost to the hordes though. I gained stats during that time as well.

Then I was level 14, a match for a lower class Primary Hunter Training Institution (PHTI) or 'Hunter High School' graduate, as the formal name and most used nickname for the first half of the Hunter Academy system was often called. So I was strong enough to take on those a decade older than me.

What did I do? I felt weak because I knew I was only around the level of a first year Signal student.

At level 14 I already was a match for one of the lower class Primary Hunter Training Institutions (PHTI) or 'Hunter High Schools' graduates, in addition for matching a first year Signal student. "Wah! I'm only as strong as an elite student 5 years older than me! Boo hoo, I only just (probably judging by their current mid-20's levels) surpassed my logically, realistically, amazing twin sisters; who had been born using Aura, when they were my age."

Of course, my level 16 Basic Aura Skill was still within a normal PHTI school level, so I had somereason to feel that I was weak. But it was still complaining; since this time I wasn't in danger of dying against someone 15 levels higher than me.

My overall strength, (at the ripe age of 9 and 2 months), was already at the level of your average 15 year old Hunter Trainee. I got it by bullying a weapon-girl, killing wolves and bears for a day, and baking desserts for nearly two weeks; not exactly your normal training procedures.

Then I spent the last two weeks cooking some more. Objectively passing an ordinary expert in cooking, into master class, while running around like a cooking hamster.

Because of that, I can see the innermost depths of my multi-part Semblance.

I Learn things almost instantly, the sign of a high-class Learning-acquisition Semblance, taking it to very high-class the moment it affected everything, rather than just a single field.

I Learn concepts that I learned the basics of extremely quickly, the sign of Learning-accumulation Semblance, taking it to very high-class the moment it affected everything, rather than just a single field.

Those two pillars combined are enough to have a top-class Learning Semblance.

But I just add more concepts.

I continue Learning concepts from expert, into the realm of a lesser master with great ease. Even most top-class Learning Semblances lack depth to have width, or have depth without width. It is why I was so amazed by my sisters potential.

Scarlet, Mistress of All Magic.

Nero, Emperor Who Copies Anything.

Charlotte, She Who Can Learn Anything.

I immediately saw parallels to Legendary figures.

Morgan Le Fay/Julia d'Arc.

Julius Arc.

Charlemagne.

And fanboyed accordingly.

But, on reflection, I have nothing to worry about.

Scarlet surpasses me in depth of magic, but it still takes her effort to acquire magic the basics of a spell in the first place. So I win in the first part, she wins in the second part; plenty of time for me to train her. I won't end up Merlin to Nimue; because even if she surpasses me in magic… so what. Even if someone is controlling her, I'll still be able to take risks, risks someone with magic alone would be unable to take, to save her where even that Archmagus and Grand Druid failed. The Lady of the Lake may have a fragment of Leviathan, Mother Who Rules The Sea of Chaos, but even she could not use her full power as a Human Grimm. King Arthur, with his rule over the weather, eventually surpassed his patron, and Merlin in many ways was beyond her from the start. That her fullest form was worthy of being called a Goddess did not matter, she still was forced into taking that form, losing much power that could be considered 'Elemental' or 'Spirit', to wholly become Grimm once more.

Nimue trapped Merlin when his pants, (quite literally), were down. And I don't need to worry about that with A Gamer's Mind.

Morgan Le Fey was eventually eaten by her contract with the beast, because she pursued speed in acquisition that she didn't have, something that will not be the end to Scarlet; I'll teach her enough magic that she'll be happy with herself, and her strength.

The Little Lady of The Lake, child of Artus and The Lady… was more complex. Since The Lady, was nearly an Elemental/Spirit/Lesser Goddess in that form, and the blood of Albion descended from one of the Twin-Dragons, direct children to Ziz; counterpart to Leviathan, whom through magic Artus inherited some of the power of…

The Little Lady was very special. Someone who could potentially surpass her mother, becoming the new apex-predator of Remnants oceans. Ordinary snakes can store sperm for up to 5 years, that what could be called the Queen of All Dragons decided to have The Little Lady sooner, before her death to Artus, (something that would have killed the sperm even if she later resurrected through some means that we lack knowledge on), meant that she did not want to risk her. Mordred and Gawain both saw to it that their half of the remaining Arc's had a child with her, recognizing her as something beyond a Demi-god, yet a step below a true God, and we've carried her since; neither of the twins fully manifest the power of Artus, but manifest both Artus and The Lady's powers.

And the same was true for the other descendents of the Little Lady, when the Little Lady decided to lay with the new rulers of Albion centuries after the death of Artus, making the Branwen, the final names of the last members of that royal family, extremely distant relatives-though seeing as how we ended up ruling France, with Charlemagne, a distant relationship would have existed either way.

And ironically, the Rose family who ruled the island (that had previously been attached to Mantle with ice) that become part of Iberia also were related to us, since we had married into the original inhabitants of Albion, which had included that group as well despite their independence. Even though Charlemagne put effort into arranged marriages when he reformed Albion, after Charlemagne we still kept contact with the french, and eventually moved back to france to get away from the corruption that took place in Vale, so the relationship is even more multi-century dead; we probably have more relation to a descendant of a french peasant than we do to the Rose family; a pity that the last scion of that family died, but the Grimm weremore powerful after the island and a continent crashed into each other; a matter of the elementals dying off even further, shattering their already frail protection, and making the area become a true winter without summer, (an anti-continent class beam of light isn't a toy after all, regardless of the surprisingly little effect the crash had (probably some sort of sacrifice also took place)), hence the cute name the last scion of that family had.

Summer Rose; Winters Hope.

She was named from a land that not only no longer had a real Summer, but also a land that was slowly being eaten away by the Grimm. During The ReconquistaTaiyang may have helped reclaim such a large portion of the continent to force the war back to two large fronts rather than one front that was withering, and another that was pretty much dead. So her name was ironic. She fought against the Grimm from a young age and had only entered Beacon, (a year early like Taiyang, also with no previous schooling), to find allies. Her potence in Wind was near-legendary, despite being mostly limited in width, to having the speed of the wind, a weight that almost allowed her to teleport (at very high costs) once she was at her strongest. A pity she died so young; had she lived to 40, the rough prime for an Aura wielder… she may well have become Legendary as well. Raven who wielded Water & Avalon (Space) to create portals may have been better at long distance, but she was less of an army killer and more of an assassin to anti-battalion class fighter.

Qrow wielded Lightning and Avalon (Time) to use 'Haste' and 'Slow'.

Sound wimpy?

Sure those powers are common as dirt. But, as 'mere children', he the weakest of the four, was the only one able to land a hit, (however weak), on grandpa. Aura is generally a fight of power versus power, so even an AAA ranked Hunter (level 70-75 estimate by later events) would find it almost impossible to hurt an unofficial 'S+' rank Hunter (level 100 estimate). But the concept of Avalon, surpassed it with Authority. The Gods held the power to ignore natural and supernatural rules, simply because they had the Right to do so. It's like how video games give you unblockable combos, and perfect defenses; Authority could do things that make no sense, and Qrow inherited a bit of that nature. Being able to affect a lv 100, probably at only lv 60.

Grandpa was most impressed with Taiyang though. Calling him 'the same breed despite being a brat'. Which is why we ended up using the last treasure of great-great grandpa. The power of turning imagination into a limited form of reality was huge, and limited by creatively alone.

So my namesake created a lantern. One which held his power, ready to act in a predetermined way once. He was nearly in a coma for months making it, but it was powerful enough to create a small Kingdom, including experimental modern (for the time) infrastructure. Since he made it shortly before the tensions that eventually started the Faunus Rights Revolution, it was nearly half a century old by today's experimental modern standards; meaning it only a decade or so old by actual infrastructure used today, or actually slightly newer than what most of the rest of the Kingdom's had when it was used during Mountain Glenn and other such 'expansions' had nothing on what my namesake created. Which is why Castile still exists, even if far weaker, while M.G., the greatest of the expansions; the only one large enough that the council couldn't fully erase, dead within a few years of it's birth.

Grandpa knew the odds, understood the ramifications in a way that the young hunters did not, yet he still listened to Taiyang. His passion, his dreams… they were what made Team TRQS the strongest of their half-generation, same as father was the strongest of his half-generation. A team, rather than an individual. Of course, father grew into his prime after the Faunus Rights Revolution, so TRQS would also have gained their full might had they survived a few decades beyond their first war. Still with only two of them alive, they too will probably fail.

So watching out for Scarlet, or rather watching out for all my sisters is the same as watching out for Team TRQS.

Because Julius Arc copied countless skills, and learned a bit of each skill he copied. He made up for lack of depth; the imperfection of his copied skill, with the extremely high numbers of skills he copied. Nero is different. Perfect copying skills (depth), but limited in how many copies she can make (width).

She may never go beyond one. While her ability to learn is quite strong to have gotten to where she is now, in light of what I know of her actual battle experience, she can only match me when she has something to copy, within limits. Complex techniques that rely on multiple skills are a field that she will never match me. Julius fought Behemoth to a draw without sacrificing nine-tenths of a centuries old collection of magical items to shove a continent destroying beam at that member of The Children, but even if her talent is beyond Julius, she would still be beneath me in terms of potential.

Charlemagne could learn anything, and eventually ruled half of the world by Law, but his mastery learning was slow. Charlotte seems to be slower on acquisition by comparison, and she would have physical and mental limits that; utilizing with A Gamer's Body and A Gamer's Mind, I simply don't have.

So my potential is beyond any of my sisters, with my Learning abilities and two Gamer skills along.

My limited Knowledge Semblance on top of that has great width, but weak has great depth but has range limitations. That much gave me a very-high class Knowledge Semblance by the end of it, making my potential surpass my sisters completely.

But this new power, surpasses anything else my Semblance has.

Product: Basic Cookies (Basic Cookies)

Type: Individual Sale (Individual Sale)

Organic: Yes (A Few)

Region: Vale (City)

Wholesale Price: 250 Lien (161 Lien)

Quality: 74/100 (44/100)

Varieties Available: 13 (10.2)

Advertising Budget: 125,217 Lien (145,361)

Rebate Offer: 125 Lien (45 Lien)

Retailer Outlets: 4 (16.3)

Retailer Support Per Outlet: 25,000 Lien (34,721)

Delivery Time: 1 hour (4.7 hours)

Celebrity Appeal: 3 (6.3)

Number of Local Competitors: 223

Number of Foreign Competitors: 5

*() are Current Industry Estimates

Deadly and dangerous. Simple but deceptive.

The estimates are created from a snapshot of the previous month; being accessible from the moment I received the mode. So I spent half a month running like a hamster in a wheel, with no real idea how much more I would reallyneed to produce, no way to acquire information on that matter, and not even knowing enough to properly know my own costs, under high stress for two weeks, then suddenly I had enough information to make my previous struggle look hilarious in hindsight.

Unlike Ladies Night, the mid-monthly event that needed to take place in the middle of the month, for the organizers to gather vital information to discuss the previous month, I immediately had data sufficient to decide the moment a new month began.

Even super high-tech Schnee, pioneer of daily monitoring, still had to process that data; and half of their entire empire is based on low (financial) cost strip mining, making most data gathering go far slower.

With this alone my Business situation is not hopeless, when combined with my my Knowledge abilities and current skills; is already enough for me to be mid-class

Because of what it means to start a business in Remnant.

In Remnant, the main problem is the Grimm. That applies to the markets as well, most of the markets are isolated; very few can afford to keep regular connections with the rest of the world. It's why Atlas (though the money was actually a donation from Kalte Schnee) received much praise for their grand 'gift' of bringing the world the Cross Continental bringing the world closer together was huge. Even with Kaltes accompanying international trade system, only major hubs were connected together, and sporadically at best. While the world is vast, The Grimm naturally makes expansion… less than feasible. Those inherent limits drive up land prices and it's derivatives; including rent. The extreme capital costs of starting a business in the middle of nowhere makes pioneering outside of the reach of all but the most wealthy. And that is the only free market that you'll ever find. Tariffs, import/export fees, even bribes all have to be taken into account. Escaping your local market requires that in addition to making your way through hordes of soulless monsters, a damper on early investment that makes the average entrepreneur start in their early 30's, after having mastered a field and gathered tens of millions of Lien's in savings.

The main exception to that age rule is generally Semblance users, but even there risks are abound. As the other party knows that you need to sell your cargo, wholesalers can generally drive prices down; even if it's strongest at the greatest of them; the SDC under Eis being the strongest in every field, and natural leader of forced discounting.

And often times, one of the oliogopths are the only ones buying; their control over politics and the underworld is quite strong, their strongest secondary business. The SDC has been slowly devesting it's criminal connections from the time of Kalte, but they're doing it slowly to milk the cash cow; the land necessary to feed one of those things is great even in Vale… well Yoo-hoo and Udder Satisfaction together control half of the market for a reason. The market just can't handle more competitors with it's current usable land; well that's not exactly right, as it's more a matter of type of land available is wrong. The Grimm don't need to eat. Humanity does, and it causes them great despair if you destroy their food. So growing food on the outskirts of your land basically lets Grimm come by to wreck it; so natural limits exist based on what humanity can squirrel away inside of protection, rather than lacking land. Even someplace like Beacon is not completely disconnected to Vale, it's just that it's outside of Vales walls. So nothing is stopping the space from being conquered; the Grimm in the area are weak enough to allow it. But after you conquer it… you have to hold it. And the area has almost no defensive value. So just like Mountain Glenn, it too will fall.

If you're too successful, the Oliogopths are more than happy to crush or buy you out. As you would expect, very few serial entrepreneurs exist, and of the few that do in fact spawn multiple businesses, most suffer an 'accident' or 'disappear'.

And due to the previously mentioned political power, the council tends to take the side of the Oliogopths as well.

So starting a business isn't rare, but starting a successful business is rare. It's not strange for even a 'large' scale organization; something that by the strange definitions of my power probably means: nearly an Oliogopth to want my help. Of course that is just a guess. The size of my organization is too low, and my level in Tycoon mode is too small to make up for organization size. Meaning, I can't actually see the name of the largest organization that I gained reputation with from Ladies Night is, something that would give me a hint. Even the details on the mid-scale organizations is fuzzy, the small-scale groups at least give me an Observe style summary.

Being Huntresses, spouses of Hunters, and so forth, those women knew power when they saw it. My mother probably bragged about how smart I was for years, making me a viable candidate to run a business someday even if I ended up with a shitty Semblance. That my Aura, from the moment it was Awakened, was at the level of a middle schooler preparing to enter a Hunter Academy was already boast worthy. And by Ladies Night, my gained levels and investment in INT enhanced my Aura to the league of a Lower-class PHTI student.

They approached me in order to test out what I would be like in a few years, I see that now.

When they discovered that my learning ability was huge and multi-dimensional, they swarmed me, keeping me off balance to better test out my limits. Then Rowan's friends revealed that I was a true creator; someone able to use Aura to create artifacts of power-and I was good enough to do it with cookies; a temporary and transient existence… Well if I was Sieglinde's age, I would probably already be engaged, possibly to multiple women with how the old families are. Though that may be giving my father too little credit, he and grandpa fought during the Faunus Wars for a reason; mother probably helped with make Ladies Night such a large affair precisely because many of the older families would no longer interact with fathe; rebelling against a family is a big deal in a world where half of all Secondary Hunter Training Institution (SHTI) students, full graduates of 'Hunter Colleges', are dead after their first year of combat. Or rather, as the families were from before The Warand so came from a time where most started fighting in middle school (the point where Semblances and Aura generally… well the reason Puberty Superpower exists is because of the timing of our actual powers), or in the case of actual scions of the families, sometime in late elementary school.

The old method of combat training is still used by some of the old families. Sparring and fighting to gain all your strength is… well even with the skill of the best, Aura, and healers only a third of all people trained in that method survived. Still, the results are obvious. Despite being in High School, a great deal of Signal girls were at the gathering. Graduates around the same level as Lily/Arthuria/Rowan-mid-twenties all of them scattered like flowers. While age is difficult to tell with Aura wielders, especially powerful ones, I have Observe. Women in their mid-twenties, I saw more than a few above level 40, and that doesn't take into outliers; people who were among the best of their class, and continued to be the best after graduation. At level 7 I could only see up to level 57, but I recognized the way some of those women interacted; though to be fair I only did it afterthe rush to create cookies ended. Still I believe putting the best and brightest among the rising stars in their mid-twenties at level 60 would be accurate.

So on my (new) estimated scale I was nothing.

On the HEE ranking I was something, but the lower portion of the scale was useless.

C Rank (Automatically obtained by a PHTI graduate)-many prospective students for an Elite PHTI get this rank before they enter a PHTI, and it's still a normal method to acquire this before graduation for above average students. Jobs like Sheriff actually require this qualification, as taking a HEE is not only a competency exam, but also gets you registered with the council as well; with all that implies. Sieglinde was 11.5, Rowan 12, and Lily and Arthuria were both 11 when they gained this qualification. Only the Twins had Discovered their Semblance at the point that they took the exam. I estimate some level 5 with Aura, or level 10 without Aura would be able to accomplish this; meaning an average fully grown adult still in the physical prime of their early 30's should be able to do this.

CC Rank (Automatically obtained by a SHTI graduate)-A greater challenge, allows one to be a 'real' (by council definitions) Hunter, but still laughably obtainable. Top ranks in most security based businesses require this. Maybe level 15 with a high Basic Aura Skill/low Intermediate Aura Skill. Without Aura you would need to be closer to level 25; simply because the nature of someone to have gained that many levels would have to delve towards combat (unless I'm mistaken in my assumption that 'extra' stats comes from practice even in 'normal' people, while 'levels' come from battle).

Many outside of the Kingdom eventually gain the ability to pass this test. A graduate of a normal PHTI is around the right level to pass this with Aura, and most of the low level Hunter's in their late teens, who carried themselves differently than those who went on to a SHTI like Beacon, were just in their 20's as well; around the same place as those people that had helpful positions as a 1st year Beacon Student. But the reason to go to someplace like Beacon (according to my father) is mostly the connections. Unlike 'Hunter High School' where all forms of inter gender relations are strictly monitored, in 'Hunter Colleges' said relations are allowed.

This is due to the difference in audience being served by the two institutions. The Warshattered every nation on Remnant, while also causing Australis to nearly become a lost continent like Iberia had during The Napoleonic Wars. So the newly formed councils had to reassure the people fast; otherwise the negatively would eventually draw enough Grimm to annihilate Humanity in it's entirety. So they for a time spent half of their collective budgets on education. Over 3,000 temporary Hunter Academies were created. Two-thirds at the Primary level, the rest at the Secondary level; the council was certain that they would quickly have, then surpass the number of Hunters from before The War. Which realistically is probably why they shafted the veterans of the The Warso badly. But with my power, I can literally see why it ended up failing.

Basic Aura Skill, gained 1% per level for me, after starting at 5%. It continued doing so till level 25. At level 26, I received nothing. It wasn't until level 30 that I had acquired another 1%. Because of that, the problem was obvious.

While I can choose when I upgrade my Basic Aura Skill to Intermediate, anywhere from level 50 to level 100, other people cannot. So some upgrade near 50. Others 60. Others 70. This continues all the way up to 100. As my upgrading potential probably has something to do with the Learning and Knowledge nature of my Soul, most people probably need a higher level like 70-80 to change tiers. And as even people who are born with advanced abilities to use Aura appear to end up in the same place at the end, it is likely that some people Awaken to an Intermediate Aura Skill instead.

The reason I think this is simple, Aura users nowaday are weaker. Watch any good Vacuo Wuxia movie and you'll see. In the old days, when people actually meditated to find their inner self, went to numerous harsh trials, and all that other good stuff… the sheer amount of Aura from the start of a disciples Aura training was nearly low class modern day Hunter class. Or.. if I backtrack from "Level 20-30 with no Aura suddenly gaining Aura" to "Level 20's gaining Intermediate Aura Skill" I see a remarkably similar level of Aura. The only reason the current technique to Awaken Aura is so well used… is because it's simple. Takes a large chunk of your average Hunters reserve, and if I'm as correct as I believe I am, doesn't give you a very noticeable result. It also explains why the old families still try to have their children self-Awaken their own Aura.

These large differences in end goal is then further compounded by difference in starting position.

Let's say someone without an Aura managed to get into a low class PHTI without much standards to Awaken their Aura. Let's say their strongest classmate is level 10 in Basic Aura Skill. The difference between 5% and 14% is huge. But the difference in stats between someone with 10, turning to 10.5 and 10 turning to 11.4 isn't anywhere near as huge. And since people gain stats from Aura at different rates and proportions… some gain a great deal more to physical stats, others to mental stats, and others are balanced like I am. So other than thinking that "People are different, small differences are to be expected," you really can't determine anything at the start of a PHTI. And by graduation, let's say that the average student like level 20. The best student may only have level 25-in other words have gained the equivalent of one more percent.

A higher class PHTI has larger differences. But even the difference between someone graduating with level 30 and someone graduating with level 50, is just 4%. And the rare person who upgraded to Intermediate could be said as being "unusually talented", and calling it a day.

Elite PHTI get more people with Intermediate, but lets say the average graduate has level 50, and higher graduates has level 60-only a 2% difference exists. More intermediates change the scene, but it's known that you'll hit a wall at some point, and after overcoming a wall, grow rapidly again for a while.

But then you have people from an old Hunter family, who start a PHTI at level 20, with advanced training at home acquires intermediate, and levels up to level 15-20 in intermediate, with real monsters existing who are level 30+ (which since it's in a higher tier, most likely gains extra stat points for more levels). They demoralize everything that moves. Luckily, after veterans of The War were shafted, very few old Hunter families let their children into PHTI, making them an outlier.

But… is that really good luck or not? Since people from all 3 types of PHTI then met each other in a SHTI, and found out how far behind/ahead they were. With most people of those early classes not graduating. So the council decided to let in anyone at any age; so long as they passed a proper entrance exam; one that was moderately harder than the current average student at the PHTI. At which point… Seeing the opportunity, the old families mass sent their children (of roughly correct age to be more insulting), to the 'colleges' and completely and utterly crushed the current crop of council trained students. And since subsidies were so high, they were doing it cheaply, when many Hunters that survived The Warhad been powerful enough to become middle class-lower upper class even without much in veteran benefits. So they managed to stay in the schools, even as enrollment sharply decreased. Then around 15 years after The War, when enrollment in SHTI level programs of non-hunter kids reached an almost critically low point, the hunter-kids retreated enmass; causing the near total failure of the system. It was covered up by the over all economic depression soon after, but it still was a really dick move, though it may have accidentally allowed the Faunus War to go against the council. Or at least I think it was an accident, but you can never tell. Still, the council had to crack down, making a big deal on other rebuilding efforts, and focused on quality of life, rather than being safe and defended. That sort of extreme spending of money, combined with other 'free-lunch' policies, ended with The Great the greatest of the SHTI were able to survive, many of them were sold by the governments to pay it's debts. So while over 1,500 PHTI exist; regardless of many people a Single-Room School, less than 150 SHTI exist, of which only 12 count as full sized academies. Beacon (Vale), Haven (Mistral), Codex (Atlas), and Ren (Vacuo); count as over half of the population of those 12.

Of the roughly 2 million high school graduates worldwide, roughly 100,000 are from PHTI; most of them ~level 15. But, only around 10,000-15,000 apply to a SHTI, because most students just wanted to Awaken their Aura, and gain basic combat training. And only around 5,000-7,000 are accepted each year. 10,000 take the CC rank HEE, of which only around 3,000 do it become Hunters; the rest just use it to further boost their resumes. Only 30% of SHTI graduate, meaning less than 2,000 graduate a year, with only 30% of those; having seen some of the dangers involved, actually become Hunters.

Those figures are deceptive. Elite PHTI like Signal have a far higher acceptance rate into SHTI, and near 100% pass rate of the CC Exam (should they actually take it). The 4 Elite SHTI also have a high rate of becoming Hunters; it's the rest of the system that creates those depressing numbers.

The same happens down the line. More than half of all SHTI level graduates who become Hunters die in their first year, with half of the remaining deciding to change careers; reducing the number of added SHTI level Hunters to less than a fourth. But of those ~2,000, most of them come from the poorly funded over 130 small sized SHTI, and most of the deaths come from their as well. Which makes sense, since I would place the graduate of a small sized SHTI as being similar to a Signal Graduate; just around their mid-20's in terms of level on average. So it's natural that they have a high death rate; even graduates of Signal who become Hunters have a pretty high death rate. The same illusive figures say that 70% of PHTI graduates who became Hunters by taking and passing a CC within a year of graduation dies; is even more obscuring as the number of quality PHTI is even lower.

While many of the survivors of 'First Year Syndrome' as the term goes in Hunter Circles leaves the field, as a 'positive point' many of them did so due to permanent injury taking on a Grimm too far beyond them, meaning that if medicine were better… well it's one of the more selfish reasons I have for experimenting with medicinal cookies is that I have a captive audience who would pay for it. Kalte was too busy building giant robots, making Dust extraction more efficient, improving communications, transport, and seeing to it that large amounts of basic infrastructure was built.

Still in the end the point of all this is simple.

Real Hunters: B rank or higher; someone who is 'only' (at estimated) level 40-45 number around 10,000 in the entire planet, with more than half being of the old generation, the shafted survivors of The War,and who are just sitting around angrily. The distance between each rank gets smaller and smaller, and the greatest, AAA ranks (based off of the strongest pet Hunters that the combined council could scrounge up a few dozen of to show off) are probably just 'level 75'.

This I got from my father and grandfather after the Faunus War. Neither had taken the HEE before. Grandpa was once known as The World's Strongest Man, contrasting his best friend Kalte Schnee, The Tyrant of Commerce as two legendary figures. And the council attempted to bury both of them. And while father had fought grandpa during the war, he did so because he agreed with Kalte; that politically weakening the movement to force migrate Faunus to Australis, which had been renamed Menagerie in honor of the 're-settlers', was preferable to outright war. The split in the Arc family… 70% of what had been the strongest family on Remnant died, destroying mountains, vanishing lakes, creating valleys… changing the face of Remnant itself. And all of it had been covered up by the council, whose control of the media allowed them to showcase their council approved Heroes, and ignore anyone that didn't listen to them.

So Arthur Arc was no friend of the council, and they treated him accordingly. Despite all their differences, father and son really were alike. They independently decided to take the exams, challenge the four AAA rank examiners of the AAA rank exam, as the tests were 'too easy', and then proceeded to grind their opponents into the dirt.

The message was clear, one that allowed the Arc family to continue naming children after ancestors, rather than be pushed into color names.

"Huh, was that all?" indeed.

So the matriarchs of Ladies Night, being around level 70-80 should be right; naturally I'm expecting at least one to be level 90. So I decided to treat the Ladies Night affiliations as being similar to the Roman Senate in that Total War game; listen to them now, but be ready to crush them later.

Now I see the advantages of the old system. Kingdoms were pretty big on responsibility. The Ruler did big things, including keeping the nobility together. The nobles generally held their own estates and armies, being responsible for keeping the Grimm out of a specified area. The border nobles had less duties and tributes to pay, because they were actually fighting the Grimm. Most of the inner nobles became bastions of learning, knowledge, magic, and obviously food.

Grimm don't need food. Crushing food causes negative emotions in Humanity. Do the math.

Ancient Greece, or Hellas as is the native name, with numerous city-states too small to fully support themselves, needed trade to survive. The Earth itself was nearly exhausted after Heracles; Son of Heaven and Earth, fought The First, so the famine that followed was natural.

But they still could have worked together, traded enough goods to other people in the region, and have avoided The Ten Year War. The conflict that; despite Greece having 100,000 demigods; which was the honorary name of their Hunters, regardless of having/not having Divine descent, or in other words, having an army roughly equivalent to the current world's entire Hunter population. Which then cheerfully ended with 80% of all demigods dead, and the Grimm almost exterminating the Greeks. The remnants had to flee to a neighbor, and many of the refugees were eaten before they reached safety. So the claim of Julius couldn't be reliably questioned; the man had power, Heracles had lots of children, Hercules, was the most famous of them, and really could have been an ancestor to a whole lot of people. Julius even re-conquered the entirely of Greek land, gave them back to the Greeks, and since he himself was 'obviously Greek', secured a great deal of estates for the Arc family; enough to make fleeing after the death of Julius have enough valuables to bribe a few poor royal courts that existed in conquered Mantle at the time.

The Kingdom system worked because everyone had a clear idea of what had to be done to keep the ship running. The Republic failed because none of the smaller parts really worked together. Of course, every single civilization, except for the inhabitants of Vacuo, were nearly wiped out by the Grimm at some point. The Wu Xing (Four Symbols) had held such great status in the martial arts world due to this. The respect for the style was so great, that even the fact that the original four masters of the style were also the first four Faunus, was ignored completely.

Heracles based his style off of Divine Combat, battle between the Deities who were nearly his brethren. Followers of Heracles like the Arc family, followed the Classical Elements. Or rather, we ignored Earth (Spring), Fire (Summer), Air (Autumn), and Water (Winter); only focusing on the unifying Heavenly Element of Aether. On perfection in everything, on using what works, and discarding what doesn't. Leading to the Arcs gaining immense powers for short periods, yet losing most of it in the long term; yet never wavering from the path.

The Armor is a single persons passive close ranged defense.

The Shield is a single persons active close ranged defense.

The Gauntlet is a single persons passive close ranged defense.

The Sword is a single persons active close ranged attack.

The Rock is a single persons passive far ranged attack.

The Bow is a single persons active far ranged attack.

The Breath is a single persons passive far ranged defense.

The Barrier is a single persons active far ranged defense.

And styles exist for mid-ranged (like The Spear for attack), magic (such as The Staff), and avoidance (The Sandel). So it is actually pretty normal to know something of multiple styles in the family-all in route to become Aether and a miniature world themselves. The most similar concept came from that game that Lily and Arthuria were playing-Fate/Stay… something-though they seemed really embarrassed when I caught them about a year ago-

...

..

.

I thought the room smelled odd! I thought they Lily was being less touchy and feely than normal! I thought Arthuria looked somewhat goofy rather than her normal serious self! But I didn't see it.

What was I a moron?!

..

.

*sign*

Thinking about this doesn't do anything, just put them in my notes under 'Possible Lesbian Route' instead of Rowan, and make certain to research the protagonist to file under 'Guy-types I need to watch out for'; sleeper agents and all that.

Anyway, the natives of the eastern half of Vale believed in a vast number of smaller spirits with specific rituals for each, held a great deal of ancestor worship, and so generally just rolled with the Roman beliefs, adopting some of the most powerful Elementals that Julius and his (unintentional successors) wanted them to worship, which ironically allowed them to keep more of their beliefs than anywhere else; one of the reasons why the Eastern half of Vale is, as a whole, the most nature filled and pristine of the Four Kingdoms. Naturally other systems exist(ed), such as one that just separated the world into Light and Not-Light.

So the world is a pretty varied place, with all the systems being worth following. But… for the most part, the systems end up at the same place in terms of power. Thus the best system for me is the Classical Elemental system. Because of how secretive my family is, I could just say I learned it from the Arc family secrets. While if I used the Modern Elemental system based off of the four basic types of Dust (Fire, Ice, Lightning, Wind), then it would be easy to tell where that I couldn't have learned it from my family; so I'll just pretend the others don't exist.

Even better, my Semblance, given infinite time, could probably tap into Aether. The more probable: I'll magically get a skill out of nowhere like some late game super move. Other systems (unless I'm missing something) lack that potential without ancient lost rituals, sacrifices, and other rare/esoteric requirements.

The Wu Xing had a similar extreme power but… they pretty much ignored Earth, their almost mythical Element, and focused on four directional Elements instead. The first Faunus came about when powerful masters of both Aura and martial arts meditated not just on the world, but specifically in Grimm infested lands. The 'animal traits' (false seeing as things with non-mammal traits exist; just in lesser number) of the first Faunus was actually due to the type of martial arts that the Wu Xing (Four Symbols) were. Styles that take in everything of the world around them. The western half of Vytal has every type of environment on the planet; so it makes sense for that type of enlightenment system to have started in the area.

Their external enlightenment, directly opposed the Arc focus on full manifestation of their internal world. As two of the oldest supernatural martial arts styles the two groups had significant (read: babies) contact with each other. But it was usually only worth it in the case of a weak member of one going with a strong member of the other; otherwise their flows canceled each other out or resulted in a powerful but short lived super Hunter.

All four styles are heavily based on Aura; meaning they primarily use INT and WIS to work properly.

East: Azure Dragon: Wood, Spring, and Growth. A large scale puppet master style with plants being the minions. Focused on group combat, buffs, and rejuvenation. Could not be used without expending a massive amount of Aura to start the process with 'Genesis of the Deep Forest' to create special trees that were neutral to fire.-very flashy despite using buffs. Also provides strong defense.

South: Vermilion Bird: Fire, Summer, and Swelling. Artillery Mage type master using a larger and larger avatar of flame, used extreme amounts of Aura to maintain, but used even more controlling the unstable energies. Very few passives, but absurd actives-extremely flashy. Moderate defensive potential.

West: White Tiger: Metal, Fall, and Harvesting. Physical type, almost all passives, but extremely costly passives that keep costing more and more as you get stronger. Not flashy but extremely powerful in a short fight. Extreme offense pretty much killed it's defensive potential though.

North: Black Turtle: Water, Winter, and Stillness. Physical type, almost all passives, passives cost less and less as mastery increases, but the few actives cost exponentially more and more. The strongest single attack comes from this style-as a type of counter that uses Water to absorb the entirety of the opponent's force and use it against them. Tai Chi, Vacuos most popular martial art was created by an adept who lacked the Aura needed to fully master the extreme accumulation needed to become a true Black Turtle, yet who was fully dedicated to the path.

But research on Center: Yellow Dragon: Earth, Long Summer, and Fruition, was almost nonexistent. Rather than doubting it's existence like some members of the Classical Elements, it was understood that the possibility that something so small as a single mortal could ever become everything, was nonexistent. Which makes sense as their entire style helped them see how massive the world around them was. While the Arc style had the person focus inwardly to create and manifest their own internal world, with the point of view that a perfect persons world would be great enough to save the external world. Prejudice was formed in part because the first functionally different Faunus were created by absorbing strength from the 'World of Grimm', and the greatest of the Grimm have a 'human' form, one that is always slightly off, generally towards being toobeautiful, too ugly, or having extratraits; but that was an excuse for the real problem.

Mutations from survivors of accidents with more primordial Grimm had led to the birth of individual Faunus in the past, said Grimm just were rare, and rarer as time moved on-the Arc family thinks one of The Children purposely unleashed a great deal of them to enhance the population of Faunus, then let out less in order to create suspicion on the Faunus; plenty of negative emotions to feast on that way-but few had extra abilitiesto go along with it.

The original Four Symbols changed that.

They also had lots of babies, thousands each, rivaling Heracles-one of the crack theories following the Four was that they were horny men who couldn't get laid and so trained really hard to get Faunus traits in order to screw lots of women, with all the unconscious bias behind that statement; it's not like most Faunus have full blown mating seasons or anything-and the Faunus became a true race because of that. The famous Faunus Night Vision is inheritance through martial arts, in the same way that no member of the Arc family has ever truly neededglasses; even great-great grandpa who was over 130 years old when The War started, and who died when over 160, had no need for glasses. Faunus probably do have slightly higher lifespans, though less so than a more insular bunch like the Arc family; until recent times, we generally only married the powerful, beautiful, and rich; that we fled The Empire after the failure of Julius, yet still only condescended to marry into a local branch of Royalty in Albion should tell you everything you need to know.

The funny part about the original dislike of Faunus as 'half-grimm', is that many of the most powerful Hunters descended from Faunus; the extra abilities were huge enough that strong and Heroic Class Hunters have popped out lots of babies throughout all time; and nearly as many Heroic Class Hunters came from the Faunus as from 'Humans', despite the Faunus originally having been… well the difference was enough that you could compare the two populations as 'a bathtub full of water' and 'an ocean full of water'. But as proof of their fertility, today, after only thousands of years, a third of Humanity are Faunus; and pure science will say that the timeframe was low enough that little genetic difference exists between the two groups.

Of course, the Grimms ability to cause changes were blamed for making them different faster, combined with some Faunus Supremacists-but none of that was the real problem.

No the real problem was jobs; or rather the economy as a whole.

Around 200 years ago Napoleon did his thing.

Conquered pretty much everyone outside of Australis and Vacuo. Had some trouble with Iberia; since they were on another continent, to the point that he ended up weakening the flagship Kingdom of the continent till the point that they fell to the Grimm with the natural effects on the rest of the population, but the Kingdoms on Eastern Vytal were easier since they tended to be on the smaller side after Jeanne d'Arc failed at completely unifying them and Mantle.

So most people really lacked the resources to start an Industrial Revolution.

And Vacuo mostly used the peace and quiet from it's neighbors to solidify its control of their protectorates. And with the Grimm attacking based on the persistent negatively after such a huge world war… it wasn't until a bit over a hundred years ago that it became possible for an Industrial Revolution to happen. But in that era where Humanity as a whole felt like it was treading water, alternate solutions came into play; creating the backdrop of another world war, one which ended just 72 years ago; causing the fall of Australis before it's end.

Two of the greatest Heroes of The War were Juane Arc, The World's Strongest Man, and Kalte Schnee, The Tyrant of Commerce. Kalte had turned the old system, one that had decentralized mining to be in the hands of the people; in order to prevent someone like the Napoleon, Emperor of Artillery from being born again, back into a larger scale affair. While he used government contracts as the base, during The War, he continued buying up massive numbers of troubled mines, driving down their costs, making them profitable, and then expanding some more. He gave away 80% of his mines to the Kingdoms, a calculated political move, one that gave the newly formed Council's a great deal of capital to work with. They put some into rebuilding, but far more into education and training; their subsidies for the Hunter Academy system. So Kalte picked up the slack. He built all the absurd infrastructure that he did because the council wouldn't 'waste' the money to do so. But that gave him an advantage once more. Allowing him to compete his way into success. But he didn't over compete, and so had plenty of reserve capital when the Council's free-lunch policies inevitably ran out of money to fund them. At which point he, the man whose first business experience had been expansion during The War, was the only one equipped to continue expanding (despite the industry as a whole contracting) once more buying out troubled competitors for cheap.

None of this sounds like a problem to you?

Kalte cut costs. Utility bills were the largest secondary cost to running a mine. Kalte hired workers who could cut him costs. Thus Kalte instituted a eye test, so only people who could work for prolonged periods of times in weak light could work for him. Most of the people who ended up working for him, were Faunus who had night vision. And energy occupied a central position in the technological revolution, making the sector huge compared to all other industries. Kalte was pretty much the only person hiring. Everyone else had an unemployment rate that at it's worse reached 30% during The Great Depression.

No one but Faunus were getting jobs.

That extreme tension eventually led to violence; the Faunus Rights Revolution's, Faunus War.

Plans to move a third of the world population to 'resettle' Australis, which Kalte had started reopening portions of as a pioneer, were big. But they required transport, security, and Dust. All three fields that Kalte was the greatest in. He had invented the field of combat robotics afterall, created/re-created trade routes, and was the indisputable king of Dust. So Kalte would have gotten larger, noticeably larger, during that conflict as well. But his fallout with grandpa Juane was (among the older generation of Hunters) Legendary. Despite just being 1 man, Juane was able to singlehandedly fight Kalte, up until the war in the second half of the Faunus Rights Revolution derailed him. But Kalte was in no condition to expand, because of his health. One of the reasons Kalte had been driven into using his genius in the way that he had, was because his family had a history of being physically frail. Kalte had thus reached a level just below the highest class, while having started as a frail child like scarlet. So his health took a turn for the worse, and while he continued officially running the family until 30 years ago, unofficially, he turned over increasing power to his son starting from 40 years ago. So I think I can understand, just a bit… how Eis became the way that he is.

"Heroes do not exist. The world is not fair, just do the best for your family."I intone what is likely both of our mutual thoughts on the matter.

…

..

.

Still, what does all this talk about styles of government, education, motivations, and Elements have to do with business forecasting? Everything.

Despite the world being caught between endless conflict. Conflict beyond that of Faunus vs Human, Human vs Human, even Modernists and Traditionalists fighting each other. Strife greater than a dozen Elemental systems. And war beyond the billions of Grimm.

My ability predicts the average result of everything outside of the largest players.

Now normally, with the sheer market share the Oligopolies have, this would be bad.

But, one key factor of the modern system is its reliance on assembly lines.

A modern industrial bakery uses many parts.

Blenders tend the… well flour blending machines.

Broth Mixers, control flour sifters, mix out solutions for fermenting, oxidizing,and shortening.

Batter Mixers, tend the… machines that mix ingredients for cake/other batter.

Sweet-goods-machine operators, roll and cut sweet dough that makes rolls and other sweet products.

Cracker-and cookie machine operators roll dough into sheets to form crackers/cookies before baking, and remove badly formed parts before baking.

Bakery helpersdo all the general duties, including greasing pans, moving supplies, and cleaning equipment.

Bakery Checkers prorate and distribute baked goods to route-sales drivers.

Bakery-maintenance engineers keep all the machines in good working order.

And Bakery Supervisors oversee production.

I've already established how people learn at different rates, from different starting positions, under different backgrounds, and for different motivations.

Meaning, in the short to mid-term, it's almost impossible for an industrial bakery to make significant upward changes in quality; unless they were already running at a cost inefficient level already-in which case they are probably not threats anyway.

If the coordination does not kill them, the switch to extremely high quality cookies, low overhead due to Semblance, strong storage abilities without using preservatives; or at least I'm assuming they keep reasonably well-I have a inventory clearance button, implies cookies in Business Inventory still spoils-change to individual sale, moving to an even more niche market; all while actually being able to see the actual effects my changes will make.

A 10 Lien rebate doesn't even have a 10% chance of being used. Even a 100 Lien mail in rebate only has a 66.2% chance of being used; making my actual cost at 66.2 Lien per cookie in that case.

With a mostly accurate idea of how much things cost, and a basic understanding of the limitations of industrial bakeries, I'm already taking on the biggest players in the market. And if they counter by creating world wide sales of organic cookies, in just 1 factory, they still have to ship them in a way that the quality of the cookie is consistent; meaning that it'll be consistently somewhat lower than the best of what they can produce.

Of course, very large businesses have the power to fund something like a small time baker, hiring multiple masters to create, but that requires my entering a scale large enough to threaten them, meaning that I'll probably need to sell at least a few billion Lien worth of cookies; otherwise I'm just not worth taking on directly. After I surpass… maybe the 500 million mark, I'll attract attention from a subsidy, but with the discounts I'm offering, I still have a long ways to go.

The small time bakers are the same as me. A all-around baker, someone who develops recipes, mix, shape, bake, and finish the baked goods. Or a pastry chef, someone who is also doing more of their work by hand, with high independence and creatively allowed.

They also generally spent a decade in the cooking business. Had millions of Liens in savings before opening their business. And had some degree of business skills.

But it doesn't matter.

After passing level 50, (when combined with my bonuses to making desserts, and making cookies in particular), I'm a master cookie chef. After the month of training my cooking skill, from Now's cakes to the end of the orders from Ladies Nights, I won't lose to most of them.

The equation turns against them.

They need to be a Master Chef + A businessman.

I just need to be a Master Chef + Push Buttons.

And since my "Push Buttons" is backed up by a Knowledge Semblance beyond any all but a few Legends; I would actually be surprised if a you could count on your fingers the number of people that could beat my button pushing. In addition, they have far more costs than I do; their Semblance doesn't take care of concerns with 0 corruption, and do many jobs with 0 cost. I also can get loans from my Semblance; and judging from what I know, the quests will just tell me to expand harder.

So only mid or large sized businesses are a true threat to me.

And thatis precisely what Ladies Night was formed to help members against.

I have 'Faction Quests', that they would appreciate that I do, with rewards.

I get faction discounts, meaning I can actually make the ingredients and equipment cheaper; without getting any bad will. The reward is mostly in 'Mode Experience', which makes my current mode level up, though it has a tiny degree of ordinary experience; beyond getting experience just doing things in general does for me that is.

When I saw that I naturally switched to research mode before turning in a quest; and gave my Semblance a budget to start researching the creation of a Basic Magic Cookingset of equipment.

It'll be done by the end of this month. I even got a title for it!

How did I afford this? I took out a Services: Economic: Beginner Quest Loan. Despite my Semblance deciding to troll me, saying it would give me a month before I had to start repaying the loan, it didn't really matter, since a year to repay a loan would be more than possible with these advantages; and I had no other offers in Economic Quest.

Which matters because:

Gaining levels in Tycoon Mode is huge. Increasing my levels gave me free reputation with those who ate my cookies, and free products.

In other words, people who hated my cookies turned to greatly disliking them, those who greatly disliked them turned to disliking them, and so forth. Despite being subtle and relatively weak, this margin of safety; on top of my other advantages gives me the confidence that I can really handle my competition. It takes care of the primary problem of demand neatly as well; people who liked my cookies are somewhat more likely to buy from me than they would have otherwise. It has both a active which added reputation with the level, and a passive which adds a tiny bit of extra reputation gained (without adding more to potential losses) to everyone that was neutral or above, which enhances my informal advertising, something which will allow me to advertise less than my competition and still retain sales in the future, just as things become tough.

Free product on the other hand… well, put free 'Basic Organic Cookies' in my business inventory. So those four levels I gained? Thousands of free cookies.

So I decided to take advantage of it; by wearing even more weight as I cook.

I estimate in a few months my physical stats will catch up to my mental stats, and I'll be able to see if over 50 bonuses exist for all stats without having to go out and spend points. If they don't, then INT is my best bet; I can't have minions until I have enough MP to Awaken someone's Aura and still fight at a high level afterwards. Also, I'll need the physical stats to cook for Professor Taiyang. With how my mother was an apprentice to my father, she wasn't much older than Team TRQS, so she did manage to get him to stay away from me. But I saw possibilities here. I gained a Fire Affinity (1) after getting cooking beyond level 50. Taiyang Xiao Long is the worlds greatest Fire wielder. So if I can impress him enough I may eventually be able to train under him. So I agreed to show him how I make my Basic Magic Cookies, next month December 3rd, the first Saturday of the month; also giving me a chance to look over Signal to see if I need any modification to my level theories.

Business Inventory is similarly great. As a massive storage for goods it differs from inventory; I can put anything in my 24 (4X6) squares inventory, but it has to be things I can life one-handed for one square, for two-handed for two squares. That meant it would stop getting stronger quickly as my STR stopped improving. My new inventory could store millions of cookies with a hassle instead.

So it's time to push some buttons.

Product: Basic Cookies (Basic Cookies)

Type: Individual Sale (Individual Sale)

Organic: Yes (A Few)

Region: Vale (City)

Wholesale Price: 250 Lien (151 Lien)

Quality: 81/100 (49/100)

Varieties Available: 17 (10.7)

Advertising Budget: 179,217 Lien (155,361)

Rebate Offer: 125 Lien (55 Lien)

Retailer Outlets: 11 (17.3)

Retailer Support Per Outlet: 30,000 Lien (38,721)

Delivery Time: 1 hour (3.7 hours)

Celebrity Appeal: 3 (7.3)

Number of Local Competitors: 223

Number of Foreign Competitors: 5

*() are Current Industry Estimates

That should do just fine. My estimated cookie sales are at my targeted 60,000 despite changing the estimates to make my competition lower their prices, increase their quality, advertise more, give higher rebates, pick up more vendors, support retailers more, delivery faster, and hire more celebrities. As my advertising comes in the form of committing to making 1000 New Product cookies for Ladies Night (Intermediate Organic Cookies) long before I actually release the product into the market, as well as preparing cookies for the orphans on Napoleon Dayon the 20th; the celebration of the final fall of the last (near) world conqueror, I know what my costs look like pretty well.

..

.

Clicking the button used up some of my newly acquired loans, but it's not a problem.

The market for organics was weak to the past.

The War made reconstruction necessary. Education and training were pushed; everything else outside of basic investments were left on the wayside.

The Great Depression killed everyone except Kalte, who had no interest in organics.

The Faunus Rights Revolution, and the Faunus War that dominated the later half of the conflict, another horrible time for organic cookies.

The Reconquista, yet another plan to reclaim a continent, tried to retake Iberia, with TRQS being the councils new Heroes. They were completely different from the forgettable 'Heroes' the council sponsored during the Faunus War, and The War. But resources were necessary to take on the defenses of a continent… so people pinched their Lien, going without.

Seeing as how Raven Branwen 'died' (assassination guessed my grandfather), then a few years later Summer Rose was sent to reinforce the area (as the only one fast enough to make it in time) and was torn into thousands of pieces for her trouble, Qrow was closer to an assassin than a army-killer, and Taiyang ended up heartbroken, that 'reclamation' never officially hasn't ended, yet never really went anywhere; making it once again really hard to push organic cookies.

Mountain Glenn and several smaller expansions (that were glossed over after MG failed) were created after the (temporary) reconquest of what was once the Kingdom of Castile, which honestly was stupid enough that the Kingdom's would have been bankrupt without Kalte giving one last gift, (which since he turned over control of the company to Eis 30 years ago), directly from what was left of his own personal fortune. Yet the council's still waste the money, being loath to give up their expansions, their Hunter Academy system, or their Hunter Equivalency Exam-the three largest costs of the united councils.

So even the council lacks… 'disposable income' to make new investments.

It's the perfect setup for a business game.

So naturally it'll become more complex than that.

Well more complex than the fact that the death of The War generation, has left money in the hands of children whose greatest conflicts were done under the eyes of the council. Not a War that lost a continent due to everyone dying, but a war that failed to truly re-settle a continent due to stinginess, and another war that left Humankind in a place nearly as bad as the immediate aftermath of The War; without any actual rewards to be seen.

Children who inherited money, feel free to blame all their problems on others, and have lost more fortunes than any other generation in recorded history; something astounding considering how much weaker and fewer economic depressions, and recessions we've been having since The War. The one positive point of the council being how slow it is to change; meaning unlike the old Kingdoms, few sudden disastrous decisions that screw over a Kingdom are made.

Instead…

The world slowly dies, while the current generation is convinced the world is becoming better.

Still moral issues of supplying a generation that created enough persistent misery to increase Grimm attacks on all the Kingdoms, causing packs of Goliaths; traditional scouts for The Greater Grimm, to wait around for their chance.

When things collapse enough, millions of Grimm gather under the command of one or more of the Greater Grimm. Only someone whose power scales like Julius, or someone stupidly impossible like Artus can actually handle one of those. Grimm get larger and more spiky as they age. But eventually… their size becomes too much to hunt effectively. So they start shrinking, losing many of their old spikes and other growths, becoming closer to their original chaotic state; blood and… other parts of the First Grimm. It's why Grimm starting on the path to power start taking shapes with no counterpart on the planet; they're imitating their amazing seniors. And since the further away from the Kingdoms you get, the generally stronger the Grimm become… any reclamation plan needs to be able to deal with that; something that screwed over all of the councils expansions. They ignored the old families, because the information of millennium of fighting the Grimm, wasn't 'scientifically proven'.

Yet it's not all their fault.

The old families tend to laugh at almost any technological advances, preferring the old techniques such as Direct Dust Use, and Dust Weaving, despite it being far safer to use a weapon. They ignore the positive changes of the future to the same extent the councils tend towards ignoring the wisdom of the past.

Still, I'm getting off topic once more.

I needed to increase sales now because of timing.

As November is Military Month, where you eat for those who died, showing the fallen that the world they fought for is doing well, with a feast on Napoleon Day on the 20th, a celebration on the defeat of the last (near) world conqueror. And reputation is based on volume, this is one of the best months to sell high volume.

December is a weird month, but one that has the largest cookie sales due to some forgotten religious holidays. Whatever the original significance of throwing black rocks at the Grimm while shouting 'be good next year', or lighting a candle for 8 days, having multiple feast days during the last month where food, 'still had grown recently', was pretty big; though what and when people feast on, differs depending on region. Also has two different gift giving days, most people only celebrate one of them, with the Arc family celebrating on the 26th due to the failure of Jeanne in the name of the unknown Savior being one of our most recent failures.

In addition, as my full years sales would still be pathetic, and holiday seasons are a time where fad companies do well, overshoot and die-providing me with a much appreciated veil that would exist in no other time of the year, combined with how my power actually has Jaune Arc (Owner) and Jeanne Jeanne (Mascot) as two separate entities with their own stats; making the name officially look like a combination of someone in the Arc family (unknown who) plus what ever Jeanne Jeannes real name is…

Well most of my extended family could be pinned for this; due to some more bullshit that only affects Hunters. Since most of the Oligopolies were originally formed during The War, many of them had at least some experience as Hunters, so it's like the law that allows Hunters (regardless of age or previous record) to run for political office; Hunters can hide their participation in a company so long as they are approved of by some organization. It's an advantage that I can use now, regardless of how it'll turn against me in the future if left alone.

But for the expansion to work, I need to greatly enhance my cooking. I've used up most mundane-or at least as mundane as someone using their own Soul for power can be-means already, I need something special.

I need to use my hint section to take a quest in exchange for finding a particular skill.

Now Golems are ideal for battle. Obedient, loyal, and capable of resisting great punishment. But they would take substantial time to bring up to speed; even worse than hiring people would.

Necromancy involves letting the dead touch your food; so it's fine for something like weapon creation, but for cooking they're a really bad idea.

So the only type of 'minion' I would be able to get (that isn't a familiar that may surpass and try to eat me, or a robot that tries to annihilate mankind), is obviously an Elemental. Supernatural laws for Classical Elements should allow me to use Water and Earth as metaphysical weight, and so not have to actually lug around those substances, but the spell that I saw to Summon Elementals… I actually am not sure WHICH Elemental system it uses. A more naturalistic system, actually would force me to lug around the full weight of the Elements in question so thinking on it more, Wind or Fire are my only choices. Still, even if it falls on a different path, I should be handle it; as it'll be fact that I'm stronger with an Elemental than without.

I could follow this path until someone wants to acquire me; it would be more than enough to fund a full party, or even moderately fund a raid. But the scale of my power is such that I need to arm at least an entire army.

I have delegation abilities. While various functions of the mode is still locked, I do have some control over delivery time, as I can click the button next to each category and change the number. And was told that "Lowering delivery time was locked for Small Businesses", meaning that while it would cost me money, in the future I would be able to manage even those details that my Semblance was currently taking care of. The balance sheet screen said that it currently cost me 0 Lien (0.00%) for the Automated Accounting System with 0 corruption, while implying that in the future I would be able to retain the system at increasing cost depending on size. So I really can continue to compete against even the largest companies, given enough time.

By cheating as a Gamer, the entire basis behind my strength.

While knowledge and experience differs, skill I can obtain in weeks what would take years for anyone else. That is the timeframe most professional gamers work in. Gaining control to micromanage everything in their simplified version of the world… so the only real threat (outside of large and obvious ones) would be a true gaming champion having a power similar to my own.

But… if I don't take the chance now, I won't be able to until Lovers Day (Heart Shaped Cookies) in February, then Green Day (Green Cookies) in April, then Fireworks Day in July (throwing fireworks at the Grimm on the 4th, while feasting is hilarious for Hunters), while October would have been Dark Chocolate and wearing masks.

And my largest foe will become manageable in the future.

Eis Schnee is just pure efficiency.

He had no friends, nor any real allies; he destroyed everything Kalte cultivated, ended most of the non-moneymaking projects as 'secondary', and steeply cut costs from when he started as a manager in his early teens almost 40 years ago, as a peer to my father. When he took over the company 30 years ago, to let his elderly father (5 years older than grandpa Juane) retire, he implemented his way on the entire company. He lowered the price of Dust over a ten year period; making most of the savings start from year 2 or 3; in order to bank several years worth of profits-before taking any hit to his bottom line. He expanded from being 18% of the Dust Market, worth 19.4% of the world's (formal) economy, to being over 30% of the Dust Market at around 25% of the world's (formal) economy, all while expanding as a Merchandiser, Servicer, and Manufacturer; becoming the largest in all 3 categories.

Rather than 4.5% of the formal economy as was his fathers day, he is closer to 13% now.

Company script used in the SDC mining towns don't count as money, saving him massive amounts on taxes, and while the SDC is cleaning up all of their illegal operations, they're doing it slowly; milking the cash cow while it's still available.

They are one of the largest pioneer companies; companies who send expeditions out to gather resources at their own cost, braving the Grim without any support, but in exchange aren't taxed on the resources they bring back; the assumption being, the Grimm already 'taxed' them enough.

And the company with the largest R&D budget, spending massive amounts on (tax credited) military-grade robots, as well as hiding funds in top secret military operations to avoid taxes; so the SDC may well own a tenth of the entire world.

Kalte had used company script to fight the artificial inflation created by power hungry bureaucrats. Replaced huge military build-up (the then accepted way of clearing an area of Grimm) with Elite Hunters supported by pioneering the first battle robots.

Was good enough to realise my grandfathers true strength before anyone else. He even was originally stronger than my grandfather, to the point that grandfather later admitted (to me) that he had been hesitant to become stronger than his best friend; that it took said friend noticing that he was holding back for him to truly surpass his limits.

Well the situation was a lot more complex than that-it involved the creation of the Schnee's second greatest quarry, one of the Greater Grimm, and acting that my grandfather said pissed him off-but in the end it was the words his friends used, and the respect that he had by not trying to demand anything of his friend, despite by the end of The Warwhen the quarry was built; Kalte was the world's richest man, and became it once again after giving up most of his mines to the Kingdoms. Of course, he also owned much illegal assets, which make the situation more complex, but it's pretty obvious which of two Schnee's are evil to everyone.

And I can use that. As long as it's bad for Eis, many people would try it. So in the future...

I will win.

XXX

To continue my thought from another perspective, even without Elements I'm pretty strong.

Energy Bullet, the 5 fingertip bolts of Aura technique that I wanted is strong enough to kill a low class Beowolf with each, and with my current INT, I have some homing capabilities.

Energy Bolt is cheap, literally down to 1 MP each.

Spinning Energy Bolt, a slightly slower bolt should be enough to kill a low class Ursa Minor.

Javelin, a compressed… javelin of energy that I hope to eventually make similar to a Lightsaber combined with a bomb should be able to kill an Ursa Major.

I've been able to use Rip while cooking; the skill I thought was useless because it didn't kill the Ursa Major, is really good for high speed cooking. Since the sudden force can combine with the enhanced DEX to continue to prepare, cook, and clean properly. It also has disarmament purposes on Human foes.

My meditation not only got stronger when I changed the energy to a neutral flow, but it's been getting stronger from my extensive use of Aura while cooking; due to need to use my breathing technique to recover MP afterwards.

And as my most used enhancement techniques, my Basic Aura Skill and Energy Storm just continue to rise.

So the optimum path for me to oppose the Grimm is both clear, unambiguous, and powerful.

But, for other people it works differently.

An ability to negate Aura means almost nothing against the Grimm; only Human Grimm like The Lady of the Lake have ability with Aura, and for the power of the being involved, it is very weak. Artus surpassed Water Elemental masquerading patron; forcing her to return to her original form of Leviathan, who crushed him, and forced Artus into a running retreat, eventually forcing him to sacrifice of most of the Arc family treasure heirlooms to manage a ʻdrawʻ-read:Artus died soon after, Leviathan took centuries to reform from a vast number of lesser Grimm; the Leviathan species took a large increase in size with so many powerful Grimm popping up from the ʻdeathʻ of such a powerful being-which honestly was the best you could except as a single person fighting, what, regardless of their origins, was pretty much a god.

But that same ability used as a policeman would be invaluable.

But the person in question may have had no desire to become a policeman and so quit with their Semblance being the final blow. That ignores the fact that you could do more to help against the Grimm by reducing Human to Human problems than you could as a Hunter.

The ability to see Aura combined with large Aura reserves could be motivation for someone who has no other ability to become a Hunter, or perhaps they quit and become a private eye.

The ability to breath fire sounds great, but if it stopped scaling up shortly after you got it; well Dust can pretty much replace your ability.

Someone else with the ability to create small fireballs, may find that enhancing their control allows them to become an artillery type Hunter, combining Dust with their Semblance to acquire absurd ranges from which to bombard Grimm with. But until you reach beyond a certain point, itʻs just a wimpy ability.

So taking College level classes is highly demotivating; since most people canʻt see and prepare for the characteristics of their abilities, itʻs like having an invisible skill tree in video games, you screw up and suddenly your character canʻt do anything right, all while having it shoved into your face that large amounts of other people are doing just amazing.

So the Councilʻs adapted. Entry tests got harder, number of places in each SHTI got smaller, and subsidies for the ʻbestʻ PHTI got ever higher. Signal became the greatest PHTI in Vale because itʻs course on weapon creation was popular. That gave them more resources, which allowed them to give an incentive to students; come here and get a free Hunter weapon, another source of envy for many people. Those who graduate from lesser PHTI tended to just use standardized Hunter Weapons, and only make a true Hunter Weapon in a SHTI.

The orphanages I'm partially funding; probably at least partially goes towards helping aspiring pre-PHTI students group practice with low-quality weapons, helping PHTI students have low-quality standardized Hunter Weapons, and helping SHTI students slowly and carefully create a Hunter Weapon.

Rich people can just outright buy the best equipment. Or afford to create equipment until they get something good. And that doesnʻt take into account how much higher the fees of a SHTI is after subsidies than a PHTI was. Since the schools are competing with normal Colleges, they now price closer to normal colleges.

Hunters make a lot of money, enough that a successful Hunter is middle-class. So a great deal of people probably wanted to become a Hunter for purely economic reasons. But the council took advantage of that with the Hunter ranking system.

The system ranks a Hunter between C to AAA rank by passing a multi-part test. But most of the points comes from direct combat. So it was a pretty transparent attempt to find out the strength and exploitable weaknesses of possible Hunters, and the council can control the Kingdoms.

I understand how having more Hunters would make people feel better, but they also had the negative effect of killing off the mystique about being a Hunter; something that shafted pretty much every single war veteran alive indirectly-on top of being directly since they chopped veteran benefits to pay for increasing the subsidies further when they 'had more demand than they expected'; something grandpa called bullshit on-and they even made the next level of Hunter advancement barely any better. Many towns outside of the epicenter of a Kingdom requires a C rank HEE to become sheriff. Towns that truly border the Grimm, far outside of the bastions of humanity, require CC ranks just as casually.

Many Hunter Trainees pass a CC while in a SHTI. Beacons entry test is actually modeled after the CC level HEE. So many motivated 14-16 year olds take and pass the CC exam, and that's ignoring the old families who can do it even sooner.

I could have passed the C rank exam after Ladies Night.

And, Iʻll most likely pass 50 before this full month is over so I could probably pass the CC exam before I turn 10 if I train correctly.

In industry, Hunters generally only consider CCC or B rank Hunters as ʻrealʻ Hunters. But the propaganda has helped morale deeply. Still, it means that Sieglinde would attract a great deal of attention if she takes the B rank test before sheʻs even old enough to enter Beacon. Which probably isnʻt the best idea… yet as the other responsible member of the family, I can't fault her for it either.

Still regardless of my continued bafflement on most things in life,

Since I know how many cookies I can make, and how many I need to make… all I need to do is push buttons!

November: Observation Journal

Day 1: Got heavier weights with loan money. Look stupid but going to become OP from cookie weight baking. Going to increase Intermediate Soul Demise to level 10 in case Nero recovers early and wants to go hunting again.

Day 3: Sales count and money collection has updated daily twice, maybe I can make daily predictions eventually?

Day 5: Started to train Basic Grant Magic, for the demonstration.

Day 8: Cookie Quality went down on midnight, so Business Inventory is weaker than anti-spoilage on normal Inventory. May hint at eventually gaining the ability to make weekly forecasts instead of monthly forecasts. Grew up again, actually had an accompanying growth spurt starting soon after this time.

Day 13: Dish Washing is OP. After level 51, it no longer needed soap if you have trace amounts of Aura spilling out from another source (i.e. Basic Aura Skill or Energy Storm).

Day 15: Reached 34,000 cookies in sales; prediction may have been overly pessimistic. Baked less extra cookies, so lost less quality overall.

Day 19: Finished Quest to send cookies to orphanages for the 20th, lots of reputation gain. Date of Ladies Night for November, very successful.

Day 20: Sales shot up, somehow Nero recovered after eating 101 cookies for good luck (seriously what happened!?); also gaining a level to 6. And yes, she did Awaken her Aura completely.

Day 22: Sales over 50 thousand.

Day 23: Rip reached level 51-it levels up extremely quickly but stopped giving noticeably stronger effects around level 10; may confirm pet theory that cruder skills = stop growing sooner.

Day 30: Sold 62,159 Cookies total. Level 67 Basic Aura Skill, Level 57 Cooking, Level 72 Rip, Level 25 Energy Storm, Level 63 Craft, Level 33Basic Grant Magic, Level 69 Dish Washing, Level 25 Basic Ki Breathing-now with the right flow has what I assume is base 20 MP/Min, (since it changed from 10 base + 9 for gaining 9 levels, to 38 MP/minute which is basically double)-giving me 44 MP/Min extra when I meditate.

Cooking slowed growth massively, so Craft surpassed it but both are slowing in growth speed, probably using too low level items to cheese my way to gain skill experience.

Stat growth:

STR: +8

DEX: +8

VIT: +10

INT: +1 (from growing up)

WIS: +1 (from growing up)

LUK: N/A

So I can keep selling cookies even when it surpasses my expectations rather than getting a stockout message, which is a real positive, regardless of the low profit margin on these cookies. I should be able to try for 100,000 during December.

I can even donate dark chocolate cookies, combined with sugar cookies for my orphans, since it's impossible to be truly good in Remnant.

It's almost midnight.

5

4

3

2

1

Quest Alert

Tycoon Mode: Spread Your Name! (1)

Jeanne Arc Industries is currently only known locally. Use the power of your mascot, paired together with the Internet to defend Remnant from the Grimm and sell more cookies!

[ ] Put on the uniform of 'Jeanne Jeanne' the companies mascot.

[ ] Go to training area.

[ ] Turn on recording equipment.

[ ] Slay 10,000 Beowolves with recording equipment on.

[ ] Upload video to the Internet.

[ ] Sell more than 120,000 cookies in a month after you unload your video.

Time Limit: 3 months.

Completion Award: Repayment of Loan, Special Female Mascot Underwear, Reputation Gain with all relevant factions.

Completion Failure: Bankruptcy, Temporary Freeze on using Tycoon Mode, Reputation Loss with all relevant factions.

Love you to Semblance.

Just because last months forecast was 60,000; you want me to double it in three months.

December: is the best month for sales, but I would have to slay 10,000 Beowolves this month, something that may be possible alone, but not if I have to bake that many cookies at the same time.

January: Has no real chance of selling that many.

February: Has a chance, lovers seem to like smaller cookies; so maybe if I make heart shaped mini-cookies, and further erase my profit margin to spread the love-

NOPE

Semblance you will not get me into more random Harem antics.

NOPE you hear!

Hmm… wait…

It's like my Ladies Night quest, which made my month into (by the end of the same month), rather than giving me a full month. Here it means I could release the video in February, after already having sold most of the cookies, then reach over 120,000 later. So I could prepare for 2.5 months, kill the Beowolves for the video really fast, then finish selling cookies.

So I just need to create high enough quality cookies that even with the decrease in quality they'll still sell. So if I adjust my production to create even higher grade cookies than I say I'm selling, I should be able to manage it. I can also use my inventory storage of Basic Magic Cookiesto restore HP/Stamina/a tiny bit of Soul to work even harder if I run low on time.

Of course, this'll get me more known than before, and I'll need to increase the amount of free cookies that I bake for Ladies Night and the orphans. If I sell the cookies for the same price, but to raise money for the orphans increase the amount of money going to feed the orphans then that should also double as advertising right?

Buy one, and I donate 10 Lien to feed starving children.

Still I'll probably need to sharpen my Fangs more quickly. This type of attack will attract enough opponents that I may well be swallowed by the wolfs hiding among the sheep. Due to the education system, I would be willing to bet that many veterans have Intermediate Aura Skill; and the forecasting screen is just like knowing "The Gamer helps with all abilities", too dangerous to share with other people without setting something big into play; so without some excuse I'll have to limit my usage of it.

I would need multiple other sources of information, so that no one really knows where I'm getting the information from. I would need-

To use Criminal Mode wouldn't I.

…

..

.

Becoming a Villain during the most festive month of the year…

No I'm better off making lesser use of this information.

But then I can't sell enough cookies...

I need a distraction. Something else to sell the cookies.

…

..

.

*SMACK*

"Duh. I just need to make Jeanne Jeanne more visible." The answer is so obvious that I unconsciously say it outloud.

"Hmm? Who is Jeanne Jeanne; Jaune?" a melodic voice that brings to mind a clear stream asks.

(The Storm of Flowers)

Lv 24 Lily Arc

"Ah it's nothing special Lily." I say to the (two minutes) younger, of my four year older twin sisters. "I just was thinking about my cookie business again."

"Hmm." Lily quietly ponders before lighting up with a gentle smile like that of a blooming flower, "Jeanne Jeanne is your mascot then?" Then she placed a hand on her cheek while her eyes cloud over, "I knew you loved when I dressed you up! Let me help you out!" And she starts advancing on me.

Oh sheep!

"Don't swear Jaune." Lily stops while looking at me in pointed disapproval.

"I said sheep!" I say as I step back.

"But you were thinking someone else weren't you?" Lily gently admonishes me while looking sad, "Where did I go wrong with raising you." As her eyes turn mournful and the atmosphere starts feeling like a dull rainy day.

"I'll go with you! Just don't be sa-" I start out with.

"Alright then, escort me?" Lily goes back to her normal gentle smile while holding out her arm.

…

..

.

"You really take advantage of how similar you are to mom whenever you can don't you?" I say as I take her arm,

Why doesn't a Gamer's Mind work here? Is it because I like spending time with her or something? Well I suppose it's fine.

Hmm… but that gives me an idea for the video...

XXX

Two days later at Signal a beautiful young blonde-haired blue-eyed girl(?) who looks around 13 or so walks around with a slight smile on her(?) face.

While it is a Saturday, numerous students still live at the dorm. With that being the case, more than a few friendly students stop by to ask if the young girl is lost, only to receive a single response.

"I am not lost at the current time, but thank you for your concern." with a curtsey and a smile. Giving off a refreshing feeling of innocence.

Internally on the other hand,

You need to get over level 51 in Crossdressing Jaune. You can do this. Keep your eye on the prize and take another step. Even after being in here for two days, I still don't get how girls walk in such small shoes. And even though this isn't a shirt, it's still feels so drafty. And-just stay calm Jaune. You can do this. Keep your eye on the prize and-

Soon the disguised boy makes his way to his destination and knocks on the door and waits.

"Come in." a voice says from inside.

Looking at the man in front of me makes me smile a bit wider.

(The Unconquered Sun)

Lv ? Taiyang Xiao Long

The strongest Hunter of a team of four of the greatest of their generation.

Team TRQS.

Taiyang Xiao Long, Summer Never Dies

Raven Branwen, Spring Will Never Come

Qrow Branwen, Autumn Leaves Flowing

Summer Rose, Winters Hope

Taiyang Xiao Long, originally an illiterate nomad, of the numerous tiny bands that come and go, regularly disappearing one day to never return. But he managed to save his band by Discovering his Semblance and Awakening his Aura simultaneously, and to burn through the attacking group of Grimm in a few moments, immediately allowed into Beacon a year early, without training on personal recommendation by Ozpin, made team leader, and while still a Beacon student managed to take down a Goliath; something beyond many Hunters in their entire lifetime, he did as a teenager. A man who mastered the most uncontrollable of elements, to the point that he could fully adjust the strength of his Semblance; something rare for an element of such volatility as Fire, whose wielders predominantly active their abilities with their feelings, than through control. The greatest Hero of The Reconquista, who with his team managed to create a distraction great enough to give time for Castile to be reconstructed using the last treasure of my namesake.

More importantly, he managed to convince grandpa to allow his grandpa's last treasure to be used. A Hero bright enough that he even managed to make someone as bitter as my grandfather 'give it another try'. Of course, part of why I'm no longer trying to become a Hero is because what happened after The Reconquista, but none of that is his fault.

"...Do I know you?" Professor Taiyang plays awkwardly fiddles with his short and scruffy blonde hair.

"We had a meeting soon. To make cookies?" I tilt my head at him.

"OH! I wasn't aware that-I mean of course the company name is...umm I like your dress?" A surprisingly familiar response comes out of the flustered blonde-haired mans mouth.

"Thank you." I say while channeling Lily, even wearing (don't think about it!) pure white panties.

Gah! "If you were busy I can wait for you?"

"No no.. It's perfectly fine." Taiyang says while shaking his head several times, "I was just surprised that the creator of those cookies was such a lovely young lady. I have two daughters myself you know, so imagining them being able to cook like that in just a few more years-well it's beyond me." Says the now recovered man with a casual shrug.

Huh.. this really IS similar isn't it?

"People, especially children grow far faster than you realise." I say feeling a bit strange, "As long as you offer your support, they'll become far more than you'd ever imagine."

"Yes, yes I know." Taiyang says with a genuine smile as his eyes light up, "It's why I became a teacher in the first place."

And then we continue smiling at each other like morons for about 5 minutes, I even have the thought log saying [Congratulations! You think of nothing like a moron for 4 minutes and 52 seconds], damned increase in sarcasm.

*cough*

*cough*

As we cough in unison while looking slightly embarrassed, I wonder if this was a good idea after all.

…

..

.

Immense amounts of Aura is gathered, empowering over a dozen items with as many weaving flows. Parts are stirred with a squish. A fire burns brightly, while something is being ripped apart to fast for the eyes to see. Change. A neverending cycle; a dangerous juggling act. Growth. A sudden stirring evening out all the parts. Completion. A pan comes out with a small pan of circular pieces of baked flesh; the smell causing an immediate reaction, as the watcher helplessly covers his nose to endure the potent scent.

"And that is how I make magic cookies." I explain to Professor Tiayang, handing him over some Basic Magic Cookies.

"Most impressive. I did not doubt that it would be "dangerous, difficult, and not yet perfected," as you implied, but…" manages the Professor before losing to the smell and starting to eat the cookies.

..

.

"...This is amazing. For such a young child; no a most skillful young lady," corrects the slightly awed professor while frowning slightly, "I did not expect you to be a master chef." he continues with a shake of his head.

"I still have a long way to go." I speak demurely, my cooking barely moved on to level 58 after all.

"I can make these cookies if I put in all my effort," I tell him seriously and mostly honestly, "But the way I see the world through my Semblance is a bit… different."

"I can tell how much Aura most beings within a certain strength difference have. An average fully growth adult has around 400 'pieces' of Aura that they could Awaken. This technique originally used 40 pieces. I needed to reuse this skill multiple times, perhaps 30 times while cooking. That meant using 1200 Aura pieces; an amount rare outside of mage-type Semblances; even in lower class Hunters." I give the background stats for a level 10 adult with 10 INT as well as make my skill sound scientific. "I've gotten better." I allow, "I can use the skill at far lower cost, though I feelthat I can't get it below it's current 5, and I only need use the skill around 13 times now. So I can regularly create a small batch, yet a problem remains… I can't recover swiftly enough."

"I can recover around 40 pieces of Aura in a minute while meditating." I start with,

"So you need to meditate for half an hour." Professor Xiao Long interjects nodding his head thoughtfully,, "That combined with the actual cooking and cleaning time… it probably wouldn't be wrong to say that it takes you an hour? Since you said you slow cook these to create a single small batch of 12 cookies. In the same time… you could probably create…" the professor trails off not willing to guess on something so far outside of his expertise.

"360 of them. While my ovens are larger, so are my cookies. So I still use 12 on each sheet, I just can properly see to it that 10 sheets are cooking at once. With cleaning it takes roughly 20 minutes for each batch, so I have confidence in making 360 cookies in the same time."

Then getting into slightly dangerous territory, "I also am starting to expand into Fire, a subject Sir Xiao Long is most familiar in," I give a solemn nod to his status as the worlds greatest Fire wielder, giving weight to my single point in Elemental Affinity: Fire, from Cooking; probably as a combination with how I was using Grant Magicprimarily to cook (leveling it to level 33, gaining half a second and losing 2 MP each level until I hit 5 used per cast); and possibly including my efforts specifically to treat Nero who has a Fire based title, as a possible future contract with a Fire Elemental.

"I see…" Taiyang says as he stares at me intently, "You do give off the feeling slightly. As a teacher I would be glad to help teach you if you ever need the help." he finishes seriously.

He really does sound the same, except he's probably not bullshitting half the time like I do.

"For now, I feel… that I should do this alone" I start with, "But… I really am happy to accept your feelings." I say just as seriously as he did.

…

..

.

"Anyway...if each cookie is worth 30 cookies then…?" Taiyang prompts me after another odd silence.

"To make it easy, let's say I can make 50 Lien profit on each cookie, or 18,000 Lien an hour." I start off with what I normally create, "Then let's say I need 19,000 Lien to make the same amount on Magic Cookies. That means 1584 Lien a cookie. Even if people could afford that…" I trail off meaningfully.

"It sends the wrong message," the professor starts off by saying, "You truly are HIS grandchild aren't you." The change in Taiyang Xiao Long's tone reminds me why he he earned the title of the Sun. Yet not a single change in the air. Not even a little bit of heat. And that is what truly makes me acknowledge that he is similar to my father as well.

Taiyang is the man who took The Rebuilders power,the last second defensive measure if something like the Napoleonic Wars of happened again, would allow the creation of a city sized fortress; to set up a new Kingdom should several fall like they did in that conflict.

The Grimm feed on negative emotion. The most negative feeling of Humanity gathers when their safe havens are torn down, leaving them in the darkness. So the greatest armies of Grimm have historically allowed Kingdoms to flourish for a time, bothered only by near mindless and mostly unspiked younger Grimm, while situating some of their greatest in the sidelines observing the exact defenses of an area. Then in a one fell unrelenting tide, millions of Grimm descend in an unstoppable wave, changing the shape of the landscape entirely.

Only someone like Julius; whose ability to partially copy skills was able to scale up to the point where he once managed to draw against Behemoth, one of the three greatest of The Children, would be able to take on such a Kingdom ending attack; or rather it's how he conquered the world despite killing off 3 million, and enslaving another 12 million; or nearly a fourth of the entire world population at the time. He took on over a dozen such attacks, including ones led by members of The Greater Grimm. Still despite the Arc family tendency to glorify it's greatest warriors, our family had a great number of builders and rebuilders as well. My namesake was one of the rare few who was one of the greatest in both fields. Building up (together with natural fortifications) a small Kingdom (including basic infrastructure) in one go was not beyond him. Putting it into an item though… left him in a coma for months, but he felt it worth it.

Only someone as passionate and idealistic as Taiyang Xiao Long would have been able to convince someone as cynical as my grandfather that their 'mad scheme' was worth using the last piece of Soul that his beloved grandfather left behind; and that is even before you take into account how the council had (according to grandpa) assassinated his grandfather, with Ozpin and his protege being considered solidly on the side of the council.

And I felt something of that force right now.

After a long pause I answer sounding calm and confident. "Yes I am."

"I'm glad to see that the next generation is doing so well." Taiyang manages to say, against my expectations completely. "You look surprised, I've always respected your grandfather, so it shouldn't be much of a stretch." Taiyang says with an easy grin.

"...I see…" I acknowledge despite feeling confused, "You are a bit different than I'd expect from his stories."

"I've been called an idiot many times in the past, so don't worry about it." He waves off my confusion with a laugh.

"Anyway, you are right about my resembling my grandfather. I took this path because it was the route most likely to save people, just like my grandfather would." I say nodding my head slightly, "Still, I should probably be going now, it was a pleasure to meet you Sir Xiao Long." as I curtsy and smile at him once more.

..

.

"Yang and Ruby." the professor suddenly says as I am about to leave, "My daughters names are Yang and Ruby. Here, have a picture of them." he says floating over a single photo on warm air.

"I'll look out for them." I promise having fulfilled a pick-up quest that appeared after I had already finished the requirements once again.

…

..

.

Now that I have to become a battle and cooking mascot, controlling the Wind is absolutely my best bet. Even if it wasn't the fastest and most expansive of elements; something perfect for a mage with a lot of power, it's near invisibility was huge.

I was currently limited to killing 10 Beowolves at once, a strength insufficient to be a B Rank Mage.

So my plan is simple: Regardless of system mage Elementals will be strong, and Artillery has good synergy. With a storm added in, Jeanne Jeanne will shoot dozens of bullets at once. They'll all be fast enough to outpace most Hunter Rounds. Beowolves will die. The End.

To regen MP, I combined the principles behind Basic Group Ki Breathing,which was created by taking in Nero's flow. Nero's extremely active yet still Yin (female) flow, with Crossdressing, and my other disguise effect skills like Stealth.

I attempted to use my ordinary Basic Ki Breathing, while in full female gear; including panties. Started shifting a bit, while continuing to meditate. Then started to move slightly. Using the power of being 'more and more like a girl' as my crossdressing was gaining experience, to gain Yin, which is more pronounced in girls. Or basically, successful magical thinking; combining Arc (mostly Yang based styles), altered to use Neutral energy (a completely different system), with more bullshit; I named it Battle Meditation (B.M.) It's another skill with no levels, but it says it'll have 10% of the effect of it's connected Ki Breathing technique; which goes up to 25% when I'm using crossdressing. Still 24/7 meditation (though it'll stop functioning if I need to go all out) is huge.

Basic Ki Breathing also stopped growing quickly, but at level 30 this time, with the same weird 'gain every 5 levels rule imposed after that'. While I'd wanted to create a skill once I mastered the technique, I really need to get the Intermediate version of this skill if I want to have the MP regen necessary to pull this off.

So having crossdressing up 24/7, combined with using Basic Ki Breathing while moving as much as possible, was enough that I was able to reach that goal and some change before the end of December; happy Boxing Day to myself, from me.

The updated skill is...interesting.

Intermediate Ki Breathing Lv 3: 2.63

Through skillful regulation of Ki, the ability to recover Ki is enhanced.

Large External Shocks will break Ki Breathing and cause you to fall into a state of Ki confusion.

Gains Special Effects at higher levels.

Gain additional 30 MP/Min.

Special Effects:

Gain 50% of 86 MP/Min. (43 MP/Min)

Half the benefits of the old skill, and a gain of 2.5 MP/min rather than 2 MP/min like before. So by level 9 I'll surpass my old skill. Perhaps the bonus would have been higher had I taken a completionist attitude, but level 9 should be nothing. Even more interesting here is the fact that Soul Demise did not have inheritance; taking away most of my crackpot theory that I'm in a New Game Plus.

B.M. already gains 25% of 73 MP/Min or an extra 18.25 MP/Min.

As each 100 MP seems to add 1 MP/Min to my regen rate, even taking Mana Affinity into account, I don't even have 18.25 MP/Min, so the skill more than doubles my regen rate. But Mana Affinity helps out B.M. by 30%; giving me a true bonus of 32.5% of 73 MP/Min, or 23.725 extra MP/Min regen-nearly putting my (below very high) intensity MP/regen at over 35.

Energy Boltis too powerful to use against a normal Beowolf now; it could possibly kill an Ursa Minor.

Spinning Energy Boltis definitely enough to kill an Ursa Minor.

Energy Bullet originally costed 20 MP, but it now costs 5 MP and stopped; so as another simple technique it also stopped growing quickly. Each finger bullet started at 10% at first, now it's up to 19.5%, having gained .5% each level to it's current level 20, but it's now almost too powerful for normal Beowolves, so I'll see if I can use Wind control to further split the bullets.

Focused Energy Bolt-A Ursa Major definitely would die now.

Javelin-very fast (for a finisher), but equally expensive. The whole Lightsaber thing, combined with how I can keep it from detonating for a short, (and increasingly getting longer), while, makes it hold great potential; just not for Beowolf slaughter.

I even was able to sell 100,000 cookies this month; in addition to sending more to Ladies Night and the orphans. Now, my weapon-girl appears pretty happy, and I'm actually starting to get used to barely making money, I didn't even cry when a pop-up asked if I wanted to renew my support for… pretty much everything from Ladies Night; if I switch things up now I'll definitely not be able to sell enough cookies so yeah, more 25% post expense donations to orphans, for a full year this time. The positive thing though; that decision pushed me to Friendly to Neutral, a big deal for a large organization, and I may soon rank up again for some of the smaller groups that I'm directly buying products from; so the discounts are growing, and all without me having to negotiate a deal either.

Still, it's time to go Elemental Hunting; not that I expect it to be hard-how many sources of ancient information sufficient to learn an extremely powerful art of controlling the wrath of nature could there be-but if I don't start it now at the absolute end of December, or early in January, I won't be able to train the skill sufficiently if a hint literally means 'do a 10 part quest to acquire this skill'.

…

..

.

Now, my estimated consistent growth rate… even if I lowball it at 20x, I'll soon (relatively speaking) be able to see my Legendary predecessors level and stats. Because of how experience seems to work.

In most non-super grinding games, the difference between 60 and 100 is maybe 5-10x experience. A veteran that reached their prime has maybe 30 years of experience using Aura.

If I gain 20 EXP *(.20 time) * .1 = .4x experience to get to 100, so somewhere in level 50's at the lowest.

While 20 E * (.25 T) * .2 = Enough to get to level 100 exactly.

So even without truly living and breathing battles, I can probably get a nice 75, with far more extra stats than any natural 75 has; being at a level where only Legendary and Near-Legendary Hunters, Potent Greater Grimm, and The Children are beyond me.

Which should work fine. Dish Washing is OP, it can be used defensively in attack deflection, redirection, and weapon disarmament;though the last would probably only be useful against human foes, though I still have limits. I also started buying rat poison, I got a title and a new skill from drinking it. If I get enough resistance, I can add poison to my style later; further expanding what I can actually kill, and for now, it acts as insurance against poisonous Grimm, and even more ominous corporate assassins that may soon be after me. Creating poison with a combination of Craft and Cooking should also be possible too.

…

..

.

And depending on the Grimm, that may only work on humans too; still useful enough to do partially (resistance ahoy!) though.

…

..

.

Still, I need to expand in less directions in Tycoon Mode.

Or else I'll end up creating even more attention.

As clothing and Shoes are probably the weakest link, I won't set up anything to do with them.

"For the Panties!" I cheer, "*smack* yeah this is pretty stupid." I say facepalming.

Still I needed that special underwear-It almost definitely boosts my ability to advertise an a mascot!- My competition will focus on it being a lucky break of finding a good mascot, rather than 'the owner can cook nearly 23 hours a day now, with inhuman speed, master class skill, and bending reality to have things cook faster than is realistically possible. All combined with the invisible perfectly efficient accountant/managers/delivery/other in a giant stew of random'-meaning as the owner I'll be free of suspicion as being special in anyway shape or form.

Similarly, as reputation gain was not stated, I can probably jack it up if the video is good enough. I can erase any bad publicity-including in enemy company taste testers-I may even end up counter spying instead.

Free estimated growth rates, geographic information, and so forth, is OP.

Rebates force the customer to think of your product again, and so push further sales; making offering a high rebate with a higher base price a legitimate market strategy if you can calculate your costs correctly. So I keeping that high is good, as long as you understand the cost of that strategy; something the vast majority of people don't.

And since both advertising and celebrity appeal are based on relevance rather than absolutes, even the Schnee Dust Company's (Food and Beverage Division) under Ol' King Cold is losing to me-I'm completely crushing my opponents in the organic field. My forecast is only including regular members of the market though, but in a large city like Vale the commercial market still comprises 81.3% of the entire cookie buying industry.

Those Huntresses put so much pressure on me to force me into making Organic Cookies; probably because most of the businesses I'm now affiliated with were created by retired/semi-retired Hunter or Huntress; they made lots of money Hunting Grimm, and decide to invest when they got old, figuring the skills that let them survive into old age would give them the skill necessary to survive the business world then getting steamrolled. Yes no place existed to cheap and good quality cookies; nor did any of the conglomerates enter the highest grade of cookies in force-the two major markets that Hunters tap into-but that doesn't mean that they could do it. Even those with an Information/Knowledge Semblance could only last so long, as producing more varieties of cookies increases the difficulty exponentially due to type of training. The best Hunters trained their short-term senses to the maximum to survive life and death battle. While they also had to be able to withstand a many day long siege, no Hunter-ignoring someone insane like my father-had the ability to keep fighting much longer than a week. Business Aura Masters tended towards the opposite specialty. Long to Super-Long Term Aura usage at very low to low intensities.

But that didn't apply to me. My Semblance took care of all the details, and I had business storage for cookies that did not sell-meaning I could produce and have in storage a large variety of cookies that stayed reasonably fresh due to my power, I had almost no delivery time a, Ladies Night made Jeanne Jeanne a minor star as a mascot, and Vale has no clear market leader unlike the other 3 Kingdoms which are each home to a an HQ of a powerful cookie selling company.

Ol' King Cold, while being more focused on beverages, is to the North in Mantle-subordinate to the rest of the Schnee Dust Company-Pumpkin Pete to the East in Mistral; though they primarily sell their flagship cereal, While Dr. Piper is predominantly is a soft drink company, their Yoh-hoo Chocolate Milk goes well with the more plain varieties of cookies. They are worth several hundred billion Lien in assets, and make roughly a tenth that in revenue each year-and are actually the largest threat; good moo juice + 'not as bad for your health cookies' + low-mid quality ingredients in the cookies = easy to sell, cheap to make, and popular cookies-have their HQ in Vacuo. They got powerful by the focus after The War on health. "Tai Chi for health; Milk for energy." "Coffee is a drug; drink Milk instead." "Lose weight drinking (insert Milk product) as meal replacement!" "Beer started The War; drink Milk for peace!" And other more interesting sound bites.

Despite having superior capital and total sales, the Schnee are almost net-negative in the cookie business, so if I'm lucky I may not even have to take them on until I expand into Dust mining to fund my empire. And their ability is after all the bribes taking place behind the scenes that are doing away with the high tariffs foreign companies have to pay, and self-shipping to be cheaper; so once I get some of those advantages into play, I can really see myself challenging them someday.

Which is the problem.

In every field I can see myself challenging the status quo. But what is the best path? Father wants me to find my own path. But I know (or at least know far more than even most lower leveled Hunters) how bad off the world is, and I have what to takes to do something about it.

Grandpa was born in the buildup before The War and so can see (to a certain extent as he was young at the time) just how many things have changed since the past. And so he can attribute everything to the councils, who changed the Kingdom system.

Father was born in the buildup before the Faunus Rights Revolution, which grandpa doesn't even consider a notable enough conflict to call a war. Father thus saw wars as a fight for positive change, that ended in failure because of inability to work together, unlike grandpa who saw wars as forcing negative changes onto the world as a result of a few wicked being working together.

So their views differ greatly.

"They probably were just drunk when they started building it the moment the final battle was won, so by the point the hangovers were taken care of a few weeks later, the statue was already far too complete to change. They most likely felt that the two people looked similar enough in their youth that they could get away with saying it was Jaune as a young man rather than Juane; the council isn't very big on manning up to mistakes." Father always has a boring mistake theory filled with drunk people, while grandpa has an interesting conspiracy theory with everyone playing on a big chessboard.

But regardless of viewpoint, the Faunus War was a success for the council; it made the Faunus feel slightly better about their crappy jobs, so it made them continue working in pathetic conditions without complaint for another decade at least. And even in the current day, the overall feeling of dissatisfaction isn't yet great enough for Faunus to have created even a single radical terrorist group; so things went back to being good for the council; they could just sweep their problems under a rug again.

So in my own view, I need more power, yet need to keep from being too noticed. But learning to control the Wind shouldn't contradict that view.

And while the power of Elementals will be great no matter what system it works under, I'm especially hoping for a certain famous case; the case of Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards.

Of course, I see problems with that as well.

In a videogame, you, the wizard can react at the same speed as the thief whose reaction speed SHOULD far surpass yours.

But in the real world, if the thief has (100 DEX) compared to your (20 DEX), you won't even be able to see him move.

So maybe my abilities say 'per minute' or some other unit of time.

Maybe I even operate in ticks within that time.

But speed is still OP. The damage of Rip is weak; or rather it seems like it's meant to fight things without Aura, or things with light armor. DEX does not just control speed either, but precision as well. Which makes another difference in stats that I did not see immediately. Both a surgeon and a speedy Hunter would have high DEX.

STR seems to take into account both average, and maximum strength, as well as my inventory space.

The slim and pretty cousin of Taiyang was only about ~155 cm, yet had around the same enhanced by passive Aura STR as another ~170 cm weightlifter like lady. I'm pretty sure that the second lady is stronger, as I can see that her base STR is greater; so it's only the difference in Aura that makes a difference. And with the weight lifters mix of looks, as well as her fine control over the way she walks, I could tell that she was heavy as well; so it's not just looking like she has muscle, but really having a great deal of muscle as well. So in a passive boost from Aura only situation, I'd put my money on the weight lifter. Of course, skill makes a big difference as well, and it's not like people are fully wearing what their skills are either.

Now I did gain an 'Attributes' tab with Observe. It says things like (Martial Arts, Fire) for the cousin. But… Martial Arts is a really big field. She could be a master of Tai Chi and so not need that much strength, being a complete monster in close range combat despite her apparent STR, or only use the martial arts in self-defense when she can't just bombard them. The same follows other Attributes as well. And since it doesn't take active empowerment and abilities into account, someone could just have insane abilities-like 'Death Curse', that wouldn't show up on stats. I can Observe most items to get some idea of what they do, but how someone would use the item is something I have no idea about.

All the stats are that confusing:

STR could be used to carry large numbers of short fused bombs, which I use STR to throw far, and DEX to throw accurately to create someone with excellent ranged firepower. And since I appear to lose stamina based on weight relative to my maximum… if I get the two stats up high enough I could effectively fight at a low intensity forever.

VIT covers more than just endurance. HP allows me to laugh at most hits. Since only powerful single blows affect me (giving me a status debuff), I have no problem as long as my defense/HP is high relative to the blow. So the synergy of STR and VIT would be enough to farm weak Grimm forever, taking HP damage without wounds instead. Going heavily into VIT would let me LOL NOPE! most Grimm, as a eternal tank.

INT-MP and MP regen. But also thinking speed-meaning that I'm actually thinking more in the same time period; but it probably also involves DEX and my speed and reflex increase as well too. Seeing options (Knowledge) for long-term strategies are involved here. Changing society as a whole. More MP helps with resisting Aura as well; Aura defense gets stronger.

WIS-MP regen (maybe), Aura defense (maybe). Short-term tactics fall under this stat. But putting together information should also fall under here as well. Hard to tell based on how little I gained in this field.

LUK-Who knows what falls under this skill. Drop chance? Rare mobs? Actual games of chance? Crit rate? But I already have it really high, and I know that I that I was lucky taking on that Ursa, so this may be worthwhile in the future.

If he is as similar to me as I felt, I could probably look to Taiyang for tips. But yeah...

It's not like I'll meet a Royal Ice Queen wielding Water, Royal Silent Assassin wielding Lightning, Royal Battle Maniac wiedling Wind, or a Blonde-haired Prodigy of Fire easily.

And they still failed. So I have to actually do better than them or any other generation if I wanted to protect the entire world; which is why thinking about it here is something I should stop doing.

"But I have a weapon they didn't have!" I shout to myself in triumpth.

Basic Magic Cookie

A cookie forged through a mix of Soul Magic and notable skill at Cooking. Amazing cookie created by a chef putting their Heart and Soul into cooking in order to surpass their limits.

Stats limitation by lack of of 'Magic Cooking' sub-skill, weakness of 'Magic Cooking' sub-skill, and weakness of 'Cooking' skill have been partially overridden.

Restore 100 HP.

Restore 100 Stamina.

Increase HP regen by 1/minute for 15 minutes.

Increase Stamina regen by 1/minute for 15 minutes.

Slightly restore a damaged Soul.

Ordinary store bought bread restores 5 HP a slice, 10 for a tasty mid-quality roll, and 15 HP for a full baguette. So 100 HP is great. Roll (10) + Milk (10) creates a combo of a (50), but I think I can safely say it's easier for most people to eat a single cookie rather than drink two quarts of milk and two meal sized rolls.

HP gains quickly with each level. 25 at the lower ones, and 50 later. So you would think Hunters would find it useless. But that would be wrong. Most of an ordinary (non-tank Semblance) Hunters defenses come from their Aura. When active, Aura automatically acts like a MP shield; you take a hit and a chunk of the damage goes to your MP rather than your HP; just like mana shield in Diablo. So the actual damage they take is… ping damage. For me a normal weak stab to one of my lungs is still HP damage to me. After verifying that, I also noted that stabbing my heart is no different. So my Gamer's Body literally only breaks in the case of single extremely powerful hits, and even then only in status effects; but for 'normal' Hunters, even if they have a lot of HP, they still have vital points.

And with a larger sample size, I now see that a great deal of Hunters have lower physical stats, and higher INT than you'd expect from how they act. Of course I also noticed that most lower leveled and ranked Hunters also tend towards less than 10 WIS (which I assume is average), while most high level and high rank Hunters (or at least the ones that I could see at level 7 during the first Ladies Night, and the level 14 that I still was the next month delivering cookies for another Ladies Night) have at least 25 WIS. So I'm actually willing to be that the weakest of the matriarchs, would probably have at least 50 WIS. Mage-types tend towards affecting larger portions of the world and so I would actually be worried if they didn't have more WIS on average than their more physically based associates.

Still this means one thing; VIT is lower, sometimes far lower, than you would expect.

That makes the stamina bonus useful, even to Hunters. Since a lot of what Hunters do is based on efficiency, while this 100 stamina is based on total effect. It won't be very useful for me if I stack VIT, since my invisible stamina bar will go to outright impossible levels if given the time. I can say with confidence that my stamina will surpass most Hunters regardless of what choice I make; Grimm punish long battles by sending in reserves, so no Hunter survives to be a veteran without being a Aura 'runner' or 'sprinter' in terms of consumption speed.

Humanity fights best in battles lasting hours.

Any Grimm beyond the weakest mooks can fight with no visible reduction in their fighting ability for at least a few days. It probably has something to do with how Grimm evolve. They most likely store energy to accomplish this feat; meaning that they can tap into it for a boost, or at least that's the theory grandpa advocates.

Grandpa may be grumpy but he's probably the smartest member of the family; hence why I'm not going to go see him until I'm at least level 51; to get his stats without him noticing something is wrong when we see each other.

Also, children have reduced stats; including HP. Even Nero had a reduced HP bar. And since the majority of elementary school children are level 1, with even a decent number of non-hunting training middle school students have below 100 HP; the cookie can cure anything but death for the average person. Also, should I further increase my skill to the point where I can unlock/discover Magic Cooking, I may be able to heal someone important, gaining me a large amount of resources in one go. Even if that's not the case, since it helps restore Soul, it suddenly frees me to useSoul Demise extensively. Of course the skill is dangerous; but if you take no risks during the safer portion of a game you'll end up regretting it in the most difficult parts of a game. And I can already see two paths opening up because of this.

Jeanne Jeanne is a magical girl. I can raise INT/WIS a great deal, while (as a cookie mascot) eating lots of cookies. Even if I get hit, as long as it doesn't exceed a certain level (which is getting more and more as I get stronger) I take no visible damage (though my clothing does lose some durability, it also appears to lose less the stronger I become as well; so my body appears to protect my clothing somehow too). So I can focus everything on artillery level mage attacks; making Jeanne Jeanne look far far stronger than she actually is.

Jaune Arc is a swordsman. By actually using Aura Skill, Aura Burst, and Aura Storm I have enough movement ability and physical stats to crush most Grimm. Rip (which I could actually use with high speed cooking) adds a more primal physical element that further distinguishes Jaune from Jeanne. My Soul adds HP based on both MP and VIT; meaning my increased INT indirectly adds to my HP; and with my using less MP intensive skills with Aura buffs I can actually take extreme amounts of damage since my MP wouldn't be used otherwise.

The second path is based not on Mage/Tank but on Summoner/Enchanter.

Jeanne Jeanne can use magic, but her main thing is drawing on nature's wrath. Elementals, created golems, necromancy; all of them have a place. Though the last one will probably have to be the most discreet, having minions is pretty much the safest course against most Grimm.

Jaune using the same INT with Grant Magic would allow immense amounts of damage to fight like an elementally based thief. If worse comes to worse, I can always summon and run away. I would need more DEX in this path to make use of the short time that items stay enchanted, but that is honestly no problem.

Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but I can think of them later. I'm now almost 150 cm, so I can pat Lily on the head now, something that she both seems to like and dislike in equal measure, so the video will have even more effect; since I look even more the part of Alice, who tended to use illusions in her younger form (7-10), and who tended towards artillery with a (12-13) year old form. Her strongest mode looked about (15-16), but she rarely used it; hence why she's thought of as a loli more than anything else.

So all I have to do now is practice a bit before I go out to get my Elemental.

XXX

Not the same.

As I fought my sister in the Arc families training room, pushing my new abilities to their limits before

embarking on a new quest, I felt it distinctly.

I'm still thinking too much.

"Energy Bullet" my command sending five white marble sized bullets shooting from my out stretched hand.

A white blur; my sister, dodges all of the bullets with ease, moving to the side in a single side step before blasting forward in an explosion of gold.

With quick thoughts of Energy Storm, Aura Burst I attempt to roll out of the way of the Aura clad blur.

The white blur clips me, as I quickly reactivate both Energy Storm and Aura Burst in a slightly unstable explosion of white Aura, simultaneously preparing a third skill with my sword.

With Power Strikein my mind, I rotate my body to push all my momentum into my strike at empty air-

*BAM*as I hit the nearly invisible ball of compressed air I think,

Nailed it, next is….-and start to use my momentum from deflecting the attack to gain distance.

Energy Bullet, Energy Bolt, Spinning Energy Bolt-as the five marble shaped bullets, one palm sized orb, and one spinning melon sized sphere all fly towards… empty a-?!

Shi-!I start to think as I attempt to force my attacks to move another 90 degrees, while changing my sheath into a shield while think-activating The Shield and Energy Storm, with an additional usage of Aura Burstto deflec-

*SMASH*as the white blur hit me, I think,

Failed, next is! I rapidly calculate while being sent soaring, re-upping Energy Storm on instinct, while manually grasping hold of the ground with an Aura Burst, and then activating Energy Storm as I dig my hand into the pure white floor with a silent thought of Rip. As a living lawnmower I imbue my shield that came out of nowhere with Aura using a silent Grant Magic to quickly toss it towards my latest estimate of where my sister would be. As I continued skidding, I then sent forth a full speed barrage of Aura Bullets from both my hands like fireworks before it happens again.

Maybe I could develop my usage of Aura Burst to the point where I can fly completely? It already is like a jetpack so- thinking too much!

Sixty bullets, each strong enough to create a hole in a Beowolf are sent flying; I speed up my movements to make up for the slowdown in firing speed from overthinking, almost painfully aware of how much MP I'm wasting to force my bullets out faster, before spreading my arms apart in a throwing position; starting to create release Aura so condensed that it shines like a miniature sun; a wrecking ball forged in the shape of a throwing Javelin. Over a hundred MP focused in a few seconds; enough power to kill an Ursa Major; all given form and solidified with a soft whisper of "Javelin", as the Aura surrounding my body erupts like a white geyser of power.

Is it enough? I mean she has that power!

Is it-shut up brain!

Already facing firepower sufficient to stop the charge of a sleuth of Ursae, the white blur should lose to with the new expression of Aura capable of ending the Major leading such a group of Soulless bears in a single blow.

But…

"It's useless." coldly says my opponent.

Then in a single instant, my entire arsenal is swept away like trash before a storm, as an immense gale of condensed super high pressure air; destructive enough to obliterate the Ursa Minors and crush their leader simultaneously, is thrown in response.

And as I once more prepare all of my defenses, all of my evasive maneuvers, fully utilizing every one of my almost cheat level abilities, I think:

Oh come on...

*CRASH* a unintentional "Keh" is forced out as my lungs can't handle the sudden strain despite my Aura covering me.

I continue thinking

*CRACK* even as I feel one of my bones, it may even be my funny bone!,being cracked despite my continued use of Aura,

I continue thinking

*CRUNCH* and even as I am embedded into the wall feeling several more bones crack even with my last moment Aura Burst to lesson the crash,

I continue thinking

The sad final *thump* as I hit the ground leaving me momentarily vulnerable... is still not enough to stop my thinking, nor do I stop thinking as a golden sword is pointed at my neck.

With strong winds surrounding us, with only her being untouched by the winds as if blessed,

"Do you yield" asks a cold yet melodious voice, staring at me with emotionless eyes, as I stare momentarily entranced by her beauty.

"Will you yield or not?" asks the blooming flower of battle in front of me.

"...Ah.. Yes I yield." I say snapping out of my trance, without even a twitch.

Why does THAT briefly stop my thinking, yet I can't stop thinking to use my skills naturally like against that stupid bear!?

The wind dies down, leaving the room an empty whiteness once more, and the girl smiles brightly at me while extending out a hand,

"Here let me help you up, Jaune" smiles my sister Lily at me, as I soundlessly cast Soul Demise over the parts of my body that broke; though as I lost around two-thirds of my life, I only look better afterwards, as I take her hand with a answering "thanks" and smile.

..

.

"So how do you think I did?" I seriously ask as we continue to hold hands.

..

.

"Lily?" I tilt my head at her in question.

Before I'm suddenly pulled downward into her budding breasts.

Huh?! This again?

"Um… do you want a hug back?" I ask her moving my head to look her in the eyes.

"...Haa…. you really don't get flustered as easily now don't you Jaune?" asks the suddenly disappointed young woman, frowning in slight disapproval.

"Hmm..? But you do this all-" I start to reason with, having managed to keep a my face straight despite my feelings.
"Because you used to react." Lily interjects before I can finish my excuse,
"I did-" I attempt to refute,
"You did." She says clearly while smashing my face deeper into her chest
"..."She has a point… But I can't just give it to her.

"Well?" She questions while continuing to hold me tightly.

"..."Good thing I lose HP instead of-!

"Jaune!" She demands squeezing hard enough that I feel my HP going down.

I then poke her in the side.My Semblance is so broken.

"Epp!" She quickly jumps back after releasing her death grip on my head, a blur of white once more, before fiercely pointing with one of her fingers, "Why did you do that you villain!"accusing me with the valiant tone of someone facing pure evil.

"I couldn't breath." I respond simply, looking slightly amused, while inwardly thinking as she freezes; probably from her feelings as a knight giving her a sudden surge of professional shame and embarrassment,

Losing HP instead of air when unable to breathe, (so she can't force me to react by making me feel as if I'm running out of time anymore, while 'accidentally' interpreting my attempts to breathe air as doing something perverted any longer,) is also OP.

"Ah.." says Lily suddenly looking embarrassed, "Sorry about that…" responding politely yet sheepishly , despite appearing to think about something.

While I can see emotions and other such things with my Observe, even that skill can't read minds. Then again, it could just take multiple levels of upgrades to work… well I can gain those levels naturally… they really are dangerous

"Eh!? Are you mad?" Lily asks me looking startled.

Huh? No I'm not mad… Wait… my expression showed again!?

It may really be that A Gamer's Mind is sentient enough to only help me during situations I feel are battles; the most powerful Semblances are almost alive so… maybe thats the case here? Still, she DOES look worried, and since we're about the same size...

"It's fine," I smile at her, "I just was thinking more on what I need to do to grow," I continue on as I start patting her on the head, "As the only man among of the Arc family, I need to get stronger to protect all of you." I finish feeling properly brotherly, which was really hard to do so when four of my sisters were larger, older, and stronger than me.

..Only three… well two since Lily and Arthuria are twins, to go. Just like dad implied; even if you're not going to be a Hero, you can still do Heroic things.

..

.Is that a blush?

"Hmm…" she purposely says out loud to my suspicion, "How about we play 'doctor' before I give you your evaluation" Lily tries to tease me again, succeeding in making my face flush momentarily before A Gamer's Mind dispels it.

Broken I think as the perfect way to stop her comes to mind.

"Up top or down below first?" I ask to all appearances just as bored as before.

"What?" As I see my sister looks completely gobsmacked for the first time, I do a silent victory dance despite outwardly looking calm and neutral.

"Well apparently I did badly enough that you need to be put into a better mood before we begin." I carelessly explain with a shrug, "So do you want me to massage from top to bottom, or bottom to top first?" I requery her with a calm smile.

..Maybe I should pat her head again?

.No… Not sure why, but that'll probably annoy her.

"You really are a playboy" I see in subtitles from her muttering under her breath after a long pause.

Nope; I have no margin on those cookies so I'm not rich. I am being responsible. And I haven't gone through puberty yet, so no problems on that end either. I need to do this quest if I want the resources to become a playboy… Don't think noting that will help her out any though...

"Hmm… if you are experiencing that much stress, I can help you by… concentrating where it aches?" I continue seriously as if what I'm saying has no double meaning to it.

They're the ones who started it… But this is somehow less fun than I remembered it to be…? Why is that? Teasing them back has always been fun. It got harder when my older sisters got powers, but I still kept charging in full force… Wait is that it!? Since I'm having trouble charging full-in because of thinking too much…? I liked being able to put everything into whatever Iʻm doing-

"N-no that will be fine" as I succeed in making Lily blush. Still, this won't work for long at this level; I need to upgrade my lying skill if I want to use it on someone else, still this is almost usable, next step; faking being less injur- Hmmm it just gets rid of things that will stop me from thinking like A Gamer. I did babble out some potentially incriminating things in front of Nero… so...

…

It really does seem to be connected to battle. Like using a game move that destroys a planet, but watching it have no effect on the actual game world? Something that happen-no something that only exists as a matter of viewpoint. Still a time and place for everything...

"Alright then, how did I do?" I query once more, acting as if my pause was consideration in case she had anything else to say,

On someone already flustered, 'Lying' is really OP; regardless of not being able to use it as well as I did against Now; well I can master those technique combos later on if I need to, for now I need combat strength for the upcoming fight.-It happened again...

"Your power is great; you may have more Aura than I do, your instincts are good, and your hand-to-hand is strong; not just by themselves either; rather they all support your attacks as a mage greatly." She begins with the positive with a warm and wide smile, "But… you pause at weird places; especially when connecting techniques, and you tend not to listen to those instincts; probably thinking everything through instead." whilst ending with the bad news. "Oh and you jump around too much as well." she says frowning a bit, as if wondering where my bad habits came from.

If I was willing to answer her I would say video games.

Jumping almost makes you invincible in some video games, so I really like doing it.

So… basically… You have power and book smarts, but you lack experience to make proper use of it? Like being Akuma with a crappy player versus Ryu played by a good player? Hmmm no, thats still arrogant; I need more stats to be Akuma. Since Jeanne Jeanne is a girl… maybe I should say that Iʻm Ingrid that is weaker than Bison, or Brigitte from that Atlas game since I'm going to crossdress?

Still... she probably sensed how fast I can regen MP, and so felt that she had to go somewhat seriously against me; could I have won even with her greater control..? No probably not. The difference is still too large. A Gamer's Mind lets me think everything through like someone playing a turn based RPG, rather than a real time platformer which is more what I should be acting like.-Hmm… maybe it's because my Observe is now level 21? Does it auto-activate to a certain extent to ensure that I always notice little differences? Wait… isn't this like having ADD?

…

..

.

No I can still clear my thoughts decently if I'm given a bit of time, it's mostly combat that's being affected.

"So… seven out of ten then?" I decide after a pause, looking thoughtful and attentive despite only having been the first, and only in a way that meant being inattentive to her.

"What!? No thats not it at all Jaune. For your age you're definitely one of the strongest, and if you keep training you may even catch up to me and Arthuria…" Lily tries to reassure me with a smile.

"I meant compared to you and Arthuria being the ten's actually." I calmly correct Lily.

"..Ah… Well.." Lily blinks and seems surprised, "I suppose that…. sounds about right?" while staring intently at my eyes as if seeking something, "Yes.. that is about right." she concludes going quiet.

"I see." I nod my head at our now mutual consensus. So I was about right on my estimates then.

"...Is it really a mage-type Semblance?" Lily asks me suspiciously with an odd gleam in her eyes.

"It's a mage type Semblance in the same way my namesake had a mage-type Semblance." I answer nonchalantly, my smile not wavering a bit despite Lily having just interrupted my thoughts as well as staring at me with enough intensity to nearly be a glare.

..

.Unusually focused…?

"So it's really powerful and multifaceted a Semblance then?" Lily concludes resigned, after a rather heated pause, seeming to give up on making me say anything more.

Difficult...but perhaps two or three more times before she figures out my Semblance? I needed her skill-based style to use as a model create a skill-based mage style, so it can't be helped... I think as I stare at her blankly, as if the answer to what she's asking is obvious. Still… my preparations are complete. I'm ready to go advertise!

Dish Washing: Level 88, new highest leveled skill. I can now apply it somewhat to cleaning other things as well-case 1: Nero didn't want to take a bath, case 2: Siglinde needed her weapons shined quickly for a duel at school, case 3: Now fell into the cake, that I made to make-up to her for giving away her cookies at Ladies Night, so I needed to clean her quickly without stripping her; still from her scream, red face, and quivering legs afterwards it seems painful. Maybe she's just more sensitive? It didn't seem to bother Nero all that much…. Maybe I should test it on Lily since we just fought? Is a great skill for speeding up product creation.

Primary Purpose:Expense Management.

Cleaning:39, I haven't been able to double level this and 'Dish Washing' at the same time, so results are mixed. Another great skill.

Primary Purpose:Expense Management.

Fools Act:Appears to gain a tenth every level, currently moved from 2 seconds to 3.2 seconds at level 7. May be worth it someday, but not yet.

Primary Purpose:Crowd Control(?)

Lying: Level 11: 7% at level 3 moved all the way to 15% increase in lie effectiveness, decrease in reputation loss when caught lying is now 7.5%, and increase in lie acceptance rate is now 3%.

Primary Purpose:Social Skill

Basic Disguise:While it's primarily been used with a separate skill, crossdressing, I now at least have this skill-when I wanted to separate Jeanne Jeanne from myself I ended up learning this technique. Level 11 only though, compared to Crossdressingwhich just hit level 51-it even says it has special effects now, saying that "the disguise is now perfect"whatever that means, Stealth is also useful here, but that skill more helps with not being noticed.

Primary Purpose:Business Skill

Killing Intent:Still level 17.

Detect Blood Thirst:Now level 23-my sisters as scary.

Intimidate: Still level 27.

And all 3 of these are Social Skills as well.

Physical Endurance:level 14… no with that final hit I seem to be 15, and still .25 per level, so it adds 14*.25 or 3.5 to the original 3% to get me 6.5% decrease in damage from physical attacks.

Primary Purpose: Damage Mitigation.

Observe: It's level 21 but while it now gives attributes, status, background, and emotions-it still is missing that bit on weakness(es), or rather it doesn't always seem to work; seems to work less on stronger people-so probably leveling it up more will allow me to see stronger and stronger people in detail, and with that I've been observing everything.

Primary Purpose: Battle Skill, information gathering skill as well.

I have a bunch of other skills, but none of them should be important to my current activities-I haven't gotten an assassin yet, bike riding doesn't mean much when I have no where to actually travel to, and other such things like that.

Anyway, my current strength is good, and my potential seems limitless. It hasn't even been half a year since I got this Semblance but I'm already years ahead-but this is the easy period, so I'm well aware that I can't let this get to my head.

That's why I need to get minions. Minions who can make up for my lack of strength. I have the tools, but lack the experience, yet I have enough other things to do, and persistently think so much when I fight that I'll never be a true match for people of the same level, stats, and skill ranks as I am; so I can't afford to get arrogant.

Still, if enhance my magic with Wind, it'll increase the speed of my magic, and amplify it to high enough levels, I really should be able to fake being at least as strong as Lily and Arthuria now.

Still I have something more important to do right now.

Lily is incredibly skilled, has the greatest combat instinct among my sisters, is smart, and quickly counter anything used against her. I started off being able to use Focused Energy Bolt, but the third time I used it… she almost knocked me out in a single blow in retaliation, showing off just how long that attack took to charge. I needed to combine Basic Aura Skill, Aura Storm, and Aura Burst to overpower her own Aura Skill, could only barely hold on against her Aura Burst, and was nearly helpless when she started using her Semblance.

But… giving her the same 'are you kidding me stare' without blinking as I thought; an ability that A Gamer's Mind allowed me to accomplish-is creepy as hell, so I can't over do it.

I break the silence by saying,

"Anyway, let's clean up." flashing her a smile after returning my expression to normal, "I have something that I want to try, another 'result of training', so let's take a bath together."

"...Pervert." Lily deadpans at me.

"Hmm?.. Ah.. No I meant that," I get flustered and start to babble before A Gamer's Mind crushes it down, "I was training my ability to clean with all the cookies I was making, so I want to see if I'm better at cleaning now. I already asked Nero and she seemed fine with my fast cleaning her, but I need to see if I'm good enough to handle the more sensitive body of a woman as well. Nothing perverted about it." I reassure her honestly, while hoping I'll still be fine after I reach puberty.

"...Hmm.. while it's not as fun now that you don't get embarrassed, I am glad you've finally acknowledged that I am a woman, rather than a girl." replies Lily with the smaller, but gentler smile, that she tends to use while feeling really happy.

XXX

As I stare at my newly equipped title I wonder if the world loves or hates me.

(Perverted Lady-killer)

-Obtained by making over 50 girls faint using amorous means.

-You have a special talent and interest in being a Eroge MC!

-Continue to excel and become a Master Lady-killer!

10% attack/defense bonuses versus female opponents

10% additional attack/defense bonuses versus female opponents in social combat

40% additional attack/defense bonuses versus female opponents in sexual combat

+10 to all stats when fighting women

Increased reputation gain with women by 20%

Decreased reputation gain with men by 10%

Increased reputation gain with men with the 'Pervert' attribute by 80%

Increased sexual drive by 300%

Increased stamina by 60% when affected by increased sexual drive

Increased encounters with Grimm by 30%

If I had to guess, my experiment with 'Advanced Organic Cookies', combined with 'Basic Magic Cookies' ended up making a few overly sensitive people faint. Good thing I only produced 100 individual cookies-I even made it a special thank you to my most loyal customers, ahead of time for a early New Years greetings; or rather my Semblance only tells me the top 100, so I must have made at least a few of them faint.

And with my sisters… all 'mysteriously' deciding to take a bath with me (I call bullshit on that), and all being curious after I speed washed Lily and she fainted…. well Arthuria didn't last any better, but I wasn't able to tell the problem, and while I had a bad feeling with the sounds Rowan made as she fainted, I couldn't deny Sieglinde…. and she confirmed it by enduring it and asking me to do it again…

Seven.

Different.

Times.

And while she made sure to stay in the water… I'm not blind, so I now know exactly why Nero was unaffected but all my older sisters were affected.

This is like a few years back when they had me learn chest massaging technique to help release tension, I honestly think it may have been that rumor that having a boy do it helps increase chest size, so no more dish washing for them. And once my little sisters start showing signs of… enjoying themselves too much, no more for them either. Luckily, soon I'll be old enough that none of my sisters will even want to take a bath with me, and since boys go through puberty around their mid-teens, I won't have to worry, my youngest sister will be old enough to not want me around before then.

The title is too useful to expand my sales though. If I can increase my market coverage, I should be able to sell enough cookies.

But even this shows why I need minions. I need people around so I can escape that sort of situation by pretending I have some other pressing concern.

*ding*

With that final ding I am (temporarily) free.

An extra 40,000 cookies while I go search for Elementals should be plenty.

I'm wearing my crafted chef gear:

Head: Cook Hat (It's crafted as part of a set that I unlocked)-Increases gain in cooking skill slightly.

Neck: None

Ring: None

Shoulders: Basic Cooking Apron (Set)-Protects against fire (low)

Body: Basic Uniform Upper (Set)-Ordinary White Uniform-Resists stains.

Back: None

Arm: Basic Oven Mitts (Set)- Protects against fire (medium)

Leggings: Basic Uniform Lower (Set)-Ordinary White Uniform-Resists stains.

Arm: None

Weapon: Basic Cooking Knife (Set)-Speed boost to cooking.

Boots: Basic Uniform Boots (Set)-Ordinary White Boots-Increase movement speed while cooking.

Shield: None

The set bonus when all of these are in place is a bonus to cooking speed by 10%, a major advantage literally allowing me to start cooking quality products in a time that (even more) shouldn't be humanly possible; and don't ask me about how my separate Cooking Knife speed boost somehow helps me to a certain point regardless of actually using it or not.

When I auto-put on the mascot uniform though, (from a special tab in my inventory-at least it's not stealing inventory space), I get this.

Head: Basic Blue Ribbon (Set)-Resist Magic

Neck: Basic Heart Necklace (Set)-Resist Magic

Ring: None

Shoulders: None

Body: Basic Uniform (U) (Set)-White and Blue Dress-Enhances Charisma

Back: None

Arm: Basic Ladies Gloves (Set)-White Gloves-Resists Stains.

Leggings: Basic Uniform (L) (Set)-Knee Socks-Enhances Charisma

Arm: None

Weapon: None

Boots: Basic Uniform (S)- Blue Slippers.-Resists Stains.

Shield: None

No weapon since Jeanne Jeanne is a mage (I probably need to earn a weapon at a later quest)

And the set bonus reflects that.

Further enhancement to Charisma

And increases magic damage by 5%.

It also has a surprisingly high defensive value, despite being basic, it actually surpasses my Onesie. So it's very magical.

So yeah, the Beowolves are completely and utterly screwed.

Now if only I could perfect the art of slapping somehow...

The original Alice, while starting as an illusionist, later became an Artillery-type mage of the highest order, often partnering with my namesake who could defend her, allowing her to bombard whatever they were fighting at the time. That the Arc family in part probably descended from a dalliance between the two is also something that was rumored at the time so, as long as I'm not a complete copy, I do have the right to use her name.

The storybook version used far simpler illusions but prominently had a knife.

So I need to combine the two concepts along with the legendary leadership abilities of Jeanne d'Arc to truly make this character my own (and avoid lawsuits for patent infringement).

Using the hint option in exchange for doing a quest, specifically a quest for the Elemental, which shouldn't be too hard… I mean Elementals won't think like humans, so if I have to do something to help them out it will probably be something that I can't even think of, and so won't have any trouble doing when I hear about it, plus I can learn what she, (or at least beautiful females is the common perception of many Elemental systems), actually likes and gain reputation from her more quickly.

After all, it's always easier to gain power by borrowing from others than creating from scratch. I really hope that is still the truth in regards to Elementals as well, as if it is not the case; I may gain another less than optimal 'party member'.

Do you want to buy a hint to finding the skill "Basic Summon Elemental" paying by taking a quest from the Elemental that you summon?

"Yes." I say as seriously as I can while wearing girls clothing.

…

..

.

"Crap.." I say as my map gives me 10 different locations that will help me find the skill.

XXX

After scouting out all of the locations, I came to the conclusion of where I wanted to go.

Six led to large mansions in the richer districts of Vale; so they are probably in someone's private collection (perhaps the person got rich by being better at manipulating a natural born elemental Semblance and could teach me; but it's best to assume that it's dangerous), 1 points to the library-the one that I am still banned from (six months being sufficient to make certain it'll be illegal until AFTER the quest is over), another leads to a club-so it's probably the front for something illegal, and the remaining 2 point to bookstores.

Naturally I've marked down all the locations for the future, but the one that I'm actually going to is definitely one of the bookstores.

The first one is quite large, and has an employee working rather than an owner; so I probably won't be remembered. But from going in to skim I saw that the book was in the back-meaning it's probably part of a 'for valued customers only' collection in the back; a major hurdle to jump.

The second one is quite a bit smaller, run by a friendly owner, and appears as if it has a large number of useful books-or at least books that count as instructional enough that I could use them as skill books.

The only problem is that….

(White Fang Member)

Lv 24 Tuskon Mayes

That guy obviously has enough training that he will definitely remember me.

Many people think badly about all the protesting these guys do, but the White Fang is one of the most peaceful Faunus Rights groups around. But peaceful or not, this guys level is high enough that he may actually have rank inside the White Fang; and getting the attention of anyone who may even theoretically want to sponsor Jeanne Jeanne or some other nonsense is just a bad idea.

Still between becoming a thief in one of seven different ways, entering a place that may arrest me, getting involved with somewhere that is likely illegal, and being remembered by a peaceful protest group; the answer is obvious.

And so I approach the friendly looking but quite muscular man with blackish brown hair and hazel eyes, who is potentially a former member of the Reconquista (judging by how his name is derived from an Iberian name), and is probably far stronger than his stats (actually pretty low for his level) and level (higher than my nearly level 15, level 14 by 10) would indicate; with him ominously being dressed in a very inconspicuous short sleeved beige shirt with black accents with a white undershirt.

"How much is this book, Sir?" I ask offering a book to the counter politely (still dressed as a girl).

"5000 Lien. Still, "Liber de spiritibus: Sylphis", one of Paracelsus's four books? Huh.." starts an amused sounding voice, "The subject matter is a bit complex even for adults, are you certain you don't want a simpler book?" ends the voice more seriously, while looking me over with gentle concern.

I shake my head.

"No Sir." as I smile politely at the dangerous person in front of me, "My Mage Type Semblance is strong enough that more accurate books work best for me. Simple books that have lost the essence of the original masterpieces provide an incomplete picture, causing… problems." I reveal the public version of my Semblance , (learning from my good study habits from the time that I just had a high natural INT, working together with my current greatly enhanced INT), to get the conversation over with quickly.

"Oh my." he says sounding a bit started, "So you are a future Magical Girl then?" he finishes with another gentle smile.

"Jeanne Jeanne is already a magical girl actually." I say noting that I'm a mascot, "I just am studying further ways to do my job better."

"Hmm… I see," he starts looking contemplative, "Would you show me?" he finishes while looking at me seriously.

*ping*

...

..

.

"Huh?" I blink looking confused (and hiding that I was alarmed).

"This series of books are quite dangerous in the hands of people who are actually aligned to an Element. I saw it back in Iberia when I wasn't much older than you. A powerful storm created by a young witch of great power. One that caused nearly as much damage to humanity as it did to the Grimm at times." he speaks of something that is classified.

"...Summer Rose?" I venture out a guess at the identity of a Hunter who could be considered a storm controller at her strongest.

"Hmmm.? You recognize that name." blinks Tukson looking astonished.

"I am the mascot of a company associated with the Arc family." I decide to reveal with a shrug.

"Ah!" twitches Tukson quickly looking around in a way someone not trained wouldn't have even noticed, "I see… so that family got another Elementalist huh?" Tukson softly says while looking slightly lost in memories.

While I am curious to know what he is referring to, I finally distracted him enough to read the quest pop-up.

Quest Alert

White Fang Quest: Show Tukson a Good Time!

As a child Tukson witnessed the Faunus War, and later as young man fought in The Reconquista. Because of that, regardless of his level and appearance, the man has a great deal of true battle experience. Show off your control as a Mage to earn both the book you want and the lesser known complete edition that isn't filled with made up propaganda!

Completion Award: 100,000 EXP, Increased closeness with Tukson, Increased closeness with the White Fang, Book: Liber de spiritibus: Sylphis, Book: Liber de Nymphis, sylphis, pygmaeis et salamandris et de caeteris spiritibus, Open up White Fang Quest line.

Completion Failure: 10,000 EXP, Decreased closeness with Tukson, Other depending on degree of failure.

Hmm with how close to 15 I am, I should get quite far within level 16.

If that's the case…

"I accept your offer." I interject before I lose him completely.

"Huh..?" Tukson intelligently responds with.

"I accept the terms of your trade." I elaborate, "Iʻll show you the my magic in exchange for the book." I say seriously ending with yet another slight smile.

"...Ah right. Sure then." Tukson starts, "Show me what you've got."

"I will do my best" I say starting to gathering Aura to my fingertips, gathering them into balls in the middle of the store,

"Wait-!"

I release the balls and begin to juggle all ten of them.

"What-?!"

Then I start to dance, using what would normally be my sisters side of the dance, which decreased my skill slightly despite my practice in 'girl' movements to be a good mascot.

But… it didn't matter. Even in a dress, I survived seven sisters, several 'aunts', and dozens of female cousins.

"That-!?"

Then I activate the full force of my Basic Aura Skill, becoming engulfed in a powerful full body enhancement and start moving even faster.

"Huh.."

Suddenly I'm juggling 20 balls, while continuing a dance at speeds a normal person would be unable to follow.

"..."

Then I toss out all of the balls in a spin.

"!"

Before shooting them all down with a soft "Aura Bullet", which allowed the first incantation to be faster than the second incantation in my mind; allowing me to accomplish the feat of hitting down all 20 marble sized bullets at once, ending my motion in the perfect position to curtsy; which I do while smiling enigmatically at the startled shop owner.

…

..

.

"Alright. I'll let you have it." Tukson agrees after a short pause.

I wonder what he was thinking

But outwardly I give no sign to my thoughts instead cheerfully thanking 'the very nice uncle' for the two books before leaving.

I can't look for any other Skill Book there for a while now…

Still I gained enough EXP to gain a level, didn't use Aura Stormor Aura Burst; simply using ordinary Aura manipulation techniques; just taken to high levels with my non-combat level of control using Cooking.

I'll look at the completion screen after I'm far away from him.

..

.

XXX

Quest Alert

White Fang Quest: Enforcer Adam Taurus

You succeeded in impressing Tukson with how much how little effort it took you to complete his test. As a reward you've gotten 2x reputation with him, 1.5x reputation with the White Fang, and one of the White Fang's enforcers coming to test the true extent of your ability!

Fight the enforcer to prove your worth!

Victory:

Completion Award: 2,000,000 EXP, Increased closeness with Adam, Increased closeness with Tukson, Increased closeness with the White Fang, Open up 'Independent Contractor' Quest line

Completion Failure: 1,000,000 EXP, Decreased closeness with Adam, Decreased closeness with Tukson, Other depending on circumstances.

Defeat:

Completion Award: 500,000 EXP, Increased closeness with Adam, Increased closeness with Tukson, Increased closeness with the White Fang, Other depending on degree of loss.

Completion Failure: 50,000 EXP, Decreased closeness with Adam, Decreased closeness with Tukson, Other depending on degree of defeat.

"What?" I stare at the screen blankly.

He found it moreimpressive that I made the show short.

And how exactly do you 'Fail' at Victory, without an automatic 'Succeed' at Defeat?

…

..

.

*smack* Duh, a DRAW.

..

.

NOPE.

If this 'Adam' is being called, he must be stronger than Tukson. As an enforcer he should be at least be comparable to a B or BB rank Hunter; around level 40 at minimum.

If I can't take Lily down, and this guy is at probably stronger than Sieglinde… If I assume he has 5 extra levels of stats as a man in his 30's; someone old enough to have earned such a coveted position in an otherwise peaceful group-something that stinks of being family/friend to an inner circle-then he should have the stats of at least a full grown level 45.

That's 60 base and 220 more points for 280 points total; regardless of how he acts, probably around a 100 of it is in INT, 50 average in each of STR/DEX/VIT, 20 in WIS, and 10 in LUK; similar to those Ladies Night Hunters. No he probably has more LUK if he has such an illegal sounding title… but he could have more extra stats having to constantly deal with the high intelligence of other Humans on a daily basic…

…

..

.

The conclusion doesn't change.

Even a draw is impossible.

Fine. Then what are my options then?

Fail too badly…

'Other' could mean 'Early Death for Wasting the Enforcers Time', since he's not a recruiter but an Enforcer.

So I have to fight back, yet lack the power to come even close to a draw.

..

.

*sign* I guess the only option is to rely on these books.

At least both copies will give me the skill, through the ranks are different.

Should I live I can copy down the full version to teach to my mage-type sisters once I get good enough.

But that is the future.

Now I just need consume the propaganda version, summon Sylph the Wind Elemental in a deserted area, and fight hard while getting the beep beaten out of-

WAIT…

I can't do that either.

If this 'Adam' wins by a deep enough amount, and doesn't see damage accumulating on me…

He could continue until I die.

Or worse. Discover A Gamer's Bodyand make me wish I were dead.

So I need to get an even closer lost so he doesn't kill me.

But I bet he's like twice Tukson's size, made of muscle, and only communicates through grunts!

And smell bad too!

…

..

.

I do believe thats a sign, proof that I've been crossdressing too long.

Well can't do anything about it.

Lets just hope Sylph is strong enough to help me lose gently.

For defeat!

XXX

Back in the white room huh?

Thinking about it clearly, since the main problem is time, I can just stay in the training room for a few days. I already baked extra cookies as a precaution if I needed more time after all, might as well use it. I'll cheese him by not leaving the house in order to lose properly; since I have 5 points to spend, I can decide what to do

Basic Elemental Skill (Active) Lv 1 EXP 1.56%/MP 50

Summons the Elemental in it's most basic form.

Long ago, humanity realised the might of nature and so attempted to wield it.

Eventually, they were able to communicate with, and summon the elementals to summon them.

The Elemental's form will change as the caster's INT, skill level, and affinity with the Wind grows.

Strongest form you can summon: Wind Elemental Lv 1.

While the skill description is a bit strange, I'm just happy that I start with 10 affinity for wind just because I ate the book; and level 1 means it's unlikely I'll be betrayed.

I made sure to create 5 fresh Basic Magic Cookiesas an offering on each of the points of the Pentagram in the middle of the room; 5 pentagrams providing the points for a super pentagram.

The ritual is really simple too.

"By Ancient Contract I call forth, Sylph, to come and play!"

…

..

.

"Oh? A human is summoning me?

Sylph appears!as catchy music starts to play for a moment.

Without preamble a small fairy like girl appears in front of me.

(The Wind of the World)

Lv. 50 Sylph

In mostly green, with her long grayish-green hair reaching below her waist.

If she wasn't around 15 cm-no closer to 20 cm, it appears she still was growing-then she would have normal sized breasts, so she's not like Now.

But for some reason…

She feels similar.

"If you are Sylph, Elemental Spirit of the Wind, then that is the case." I hedge while wondering why the feeling I'm getting from the two is similar.

"Yes. I am Sylph." the tiny Spirit smiles at me, "Do you require something from me?" she continues with a wink and a widening smile.

"I do. My true name is Jaune Arc." I say seriously using the same style of speech, "I wish to contract with you, as a summoner." I continue with a kneeling bow, "But before that, please accept these offerings." I say pointing the cookies on the Pentagram as well as carefully.

"..."

…

..

.?

"COOKIES!" the Elemental suddenly cheers, "Yay cookies cookies cookies!" flying in circles happily.

Why is she acting so…

Wait…

Wind = Free

Wind = Fast

Wind = Powerful

She's like Nero.

Crap, I summoned the wrong one.

…

..

.

Can't get a do over now.

Have to continue.

Meanwhile the tiny spirit somehow ate all 25 cookies, each nearly the same size as her.

"A girl who could create such a life filled offering can't be evil." The too-late-to-change-my-impression back to being calm Elemental notes, "But the power of one of the Four Spirits can't be given to a weak person." she continues, "...Rather, the weak cannot master the power. Therefore, I shall check to see if you are worthy of my power." she ends sounding slightly sad.

Quest Alert

Elemental Quest Quest: Prove your strength to Sylph

As Ruler of All The World's Wind, Sylph has seen many promising young people try and fail to use her power. Hit her once, proving yourself worthy of being her summoner!

Completion Award: 150,000 EXP, Increased closeness with Sylph, Increased closeness with Elementals, Contract:Sylph, Open up Elemental Quest line, Other depending on degree of success.

Completion Failure: 15,000 EXP, Decreased closeness with Sylph, Other depending on degree of failure.

Looks like if I succeed this I'll get another level, I say, thinking about my already partially filled level. Too bad Wind pretty much rules dodging, so I'm going to fail.

"I accept any test you feel necessary." I solemnly swear despite inwardly feeling depressed.

"I shall test you in a fight. If you can land a single blow on me, I'll lend you my assistance." She continues while lightly smiling.

Yep.. and at level 50 this is going to end with me running around like a moron isn't it?

"I will concentrate all my speed, to land a hit on you, oh great spirit." I say bowing again from my kneeling position.

"Then… here we go!"

A cool wind blows through the still room.

Forming a wall of wind around Sylph.

But I ignore it and continue kneeling delaying the pain.

…

..

.

"Hey, aren't you going to attack already?" Sylph questions, "Using this technique makes me tired, so hurry up and give up.~" then cheerfully says something stupid.

…

..

.

She's an airhead!

"I apologize. I was unaware that we had started" I say, secretly maneuvering my screen to implement my plan, before finally standing up having implemented a small change., "As you are so strong, I feel that a great need to strategize in order to land a hit on you is neccessary." I phrase my statement on a hunch.

...

If she really is getting tired... I silently Observe her seeing her MP going down.

Then I slowly start to buff myself with my longest lasting HP regen. buffs, the ones that even if I had minions, would normally be too inefficient in terms of MP, to actually use in combat, while starting to meditate.

"Your attacks will never hit me." Sylph brags but looks at me expectantly while nodding to herself in approval.

…

Exactly like Nero.I think as my MP goes back to full.

"Hey, give up already…" She says as she starts squirming a bit.

Alright this is about the right time to use that stupid technique that only a moron would use in real combat.

I begin to slowly gather an immense amount of mana to my hand. Then use my other hand to start spinning and compressing the mana slowly but deeply, while activating B.M.to enhance my regen to it's maximum, and delay the start of the technique.

"You haven't given up yet…?" She says while slightly starting to sweat.

The compressed ball continues to grow, grow far beyond a Focused Energy Bolt with almost maddening slowness.

"...Fight properly already!" Sylph huffs waving her hands; but I notice her barrier is still rock solid and ignore it.

I start finishing up the process, feeling that Spiral Energy Boltis starting to charge off of it's expanded frame.

"Hey, hurry up and attack!" Sylph shouts, while I can tell that she actually is starting to sweat slightly.

I continue charging up the modified version of Spiral Energy Bolt, that I called Energy Bomb, which takes somewhat less MP, but is slightly stronger should you charge it the full 30 seconds that it can charge; which takes even longer with my meditations. I also add in some of my shorter HP regen effects, further lowering my MP and increasing my charge time.

..

.

"Funyaa… You must be tired, right? ...Right?" She says just as I finish charging the stupidly large, easy to disrupt, and very volatile technique.

"Don't worry." I say calmly, "After, I eat this cookie for good luck, I'll definitely hit you." as I eat the cookie to improve my HP regen, I move as close to her barrier as I dare to. Before activating the shortest and least efficient of my HP regen moves; having kept my MP as close to full as I could while still creating the proper effect.

..

.

"Ok Jaune, but hurry up. I can't hold on…" Sylph says sounding strained, yet completely trusting.

Exactly like Nero.

With the edge of my EnergyBombjust beyond an arm lengths away from the edge of her wind barrier, I settle stop meditating into order to concentrate on the next part fully.

Aura Skill, Energy Storm, Javelin, Energy Storm, Aura Burst, Power Strike

I force the Energy Bomb to become a Melee attack, using the energy of the Javelin to momentarily make the giant orb of energy into a steel beam sized, unstable, and rectangular shape; which is promptly sent into the wall of wind with enough power to force a genius like Lily into using her Semblance to counter it, before you take into account the Energy Bomb itself.

*BOOOOOOOM*

Agony. Pain. Terror.

But that doesn't stop me from reactivating all my Aura boosts, grabbing ahold of every piece of my body that I can, using up the large amounts of the MP that I gained from leveling up from hitting, nor stop my hands from moving, to place 5 more points into INT joining the 5 I had put in at the start of this plan, or stopping them both my limbs from forcefully shoving more cookies into my mouth to speed eat afterwards; even as I soared towards the wall at an even faster speed than when Lily hit me.

In a canopy of sound, briefly surpassing the constant hum of artillery shells ringing throughout the fourth of July, I continue to feel a searing agony, even as sound fades into nothing.

But even as I no longer have eyes to see with, nor ears to hear with, I find myself calmly withdrawing and devouring cookies, briefly regaining my sense of taste, smell, and balance, before it, and everything else is lost in the same way that bugs are lost on windshield wipers.

But even without arms, I focus on knowingexactly how little Aura I have left, anddon't even slow down in eating cookies in the slightest.

The life of world flows through me, rejuvenating my Ki as I no longer have enough things going on, to need cease my reflection upon the world. I activate Energy Stormto briefly heighten my speed.

An eighth of a minute and twenty cookies later, after activating and re-activating Energy Storm, I stop reaching for cookies; knowing even without eyes, that no more healing cookies exist, and calmly use a Soul Demisedepleting my MP up to all but it's last piece, before going into full meditation mode.

As soon as I have 1 more MP than necessary to use Soul Demise, I once more use the skillto counter the damage from having temporarily lost half my body.

And repeat it again and again.

Even as I regrow back all my parts, I do not pause.

Nor does regaining all my senses disrupt my meditation.

The only thing I care about, is forcing the negative status buffs that only I can see, to disappear from this world.

So I do not stop, nor notice anything else, until they are gone.

…

..

.

"-une! Jaune Jaune!" A voice buzzes in circles around me.

"Hmm? You were saying something, Sylph?" I say unconsciously being less formal to the being that I now know to be similar to the most… energetic, of my sisters.

"Why did you do that, Jaune!" Sylph looks at me angrily, scary as… well a winged pencil pouch honestly isn't very scary to me at all. Though where would the pencil go in-NOPE

NOPE

NOPE

"Because I knew it would work." I say to all appearances having just let her repeat what she said, several more times at me to reduce her momentum.

With eyes that would be as round like saucers had she not been so tiny, Sylph responds to that statement with more anger.

"You LOST all your LIMBS!" the ball of energy shouts at me, "You had nothing BELOW the WAIST! Half your HEAD was GONE!" it shouts with wind gathering,

"HOW. IS. THAT. WORKING!?" and I ignored the tiny hurricane around us blandly, instead looking thoughtful, as if thinking deeply; a lie but one necessary to deal with someone like Nero.

"Bad things happen to people who contract with Elementals," I say without warning as she gasps, "Because of that, only the strong should attempt to gain the attention of an Elemental. So I spent months preparing for this encounter, use the Wind to know that I tell the truth; and if you are still angry at me then I'm willing to listen." I continue softly but firmly.

"Fine! But if it's not good enough-" The ball huffs at me angrily, regardless of my being able to tell from experience that she's more irritated now than anything else.

"I'll make certain to bake and sacrifice 555 cookies, cookies just like the one I gave you as offerings, to appease your anger." I say falling into the routine that I King of Dance, speaking to the Emperor/Empress that I do with my beloved little sister.

"555!? THAT-I mean, of course you will do it, you summoned me, one of the Four Spirits for a full contract, something not done in half a millennium." sounding wiser and more serious than I ever heard her; I perhaps would actually be impressed if she wasn't drooling.

"Then I will work at creating even better cookies for you should you be unsatisfied with my preparations." I reiterate my promise with a bow.

…

..

.

"What." Sylph says flatly looking lost.

Hmmm? What is it now.

"Is something the matter, She Who Rules The World's Wind?" I say using a title absorbed as knowledge from the book I read.

"You managed to summon me!" Sylph says, pointing her finger at me with so much anger, (that were she not of comparable size to a toilet paper roll holder, similar to my sister who gets in the same sort of mood easily, and far less vicious than the experienced Dango; who actually sent killing intent at me), that I was almost worried.

Still… she is obviously distraught so I should explain a bit more.

"That was the entire purpose of my training." I gesture to myself, "Wind is the fastest of all Elements. I see your generosity in using Wind, the Element weakest in direct-defense, to create a Wall of Wind." I say giving her skill and Element proper sounding titles. "Wind is at it's greatest in avoidance."

After a brief pause to take a deep breath I say my honest feelings on the matter.

"'Don't get into a fight you can't win. If you can't avoid that fight then dodge. If you can't dodge then deflect. If you can't deflect then block. If you can't block then survive.' That, including the lack of pauses, if what my grandpa always said. I never fully understood that, until shortly after I gained my power. And since that point I've followed those rules fully. Even as my sister fought, I stayed out of her way despite some part of me wanting to help her. It was part of what made me more focused during that fight. I did only what I could do, and became far stronger as a result. I saved her, because unlike her who put all her energy into winning each fight, I put everything into making sure that we both survived."

I take another deep breath.

"I realised that I was doing too many unnecessary things, and stopped trying to bake the most fancy cake, instead carefully creating the best cake that I could make, to give to Now. I then went into cookie creation. I took losses-great losses-keeping my word, but I still kept my word; despite being tricked. And I trained in the fine control necessary, until I became attuned enough to slightly sense Fire, before truly starting to pursue the Elements. I even visited a true master of Fire, while using a technique inspired off of Wind. Then, I looked specifically for a book on how to summon you. Not Salamander. Not Gnome. Not Undine. But you, Sylph. Because I followed that advice."

"Thats…" Sylph looks deeply touched for a moment before frowning again, "But thats not what I meant!"

Hmm? If that's not it… then I have nothing.

"Hm… Then I honestly have no idea what you mean." I say what I was thinking in a slightly more polite way, "I apologize for making you angry." I continue with sincerity. "Please tell me what is wrong? I will do my best to help."

"I mean…." Sylph starts while still frowning, "You managed to summon me to this world."

What.

..

.

Wait that means…

"So was the ritual wrong?" I ask of how I summoned her.

That book legitimately gave me the skill!

"Not wrong exactly…" the confused Elemental appeared to be thinking uncommonly hard on how to explain what she felt, "Rather… while the… flavor? Of the summoning was slightly different… the power behind it felt... about the same…?" continued the adorable fairy-like creature seeming to not understand what she found wrong with that statement.

Ah I see.

"My ability appears to slightly twist reality." I confidently confide, in something that seemed too fantastic for me to believe but was possibly the case with what just happened. "So I myself could be considered slightly similar to a separate world; though only in passing." I continue on seriously. "So, the nature of my power is very compatible with other powers that already exist." I finish firmly.

"But… to summon a being from another world…" Sylph says looking slightly alarmed.

"Is no problem." I confidently interject. "Look here," I say taking out the stupid fertility medicine from my inventory, "This is from a different world too." I then check the tutorial box.

…

..

.

"And this is another world, one that according to it's residents, my power creates." I say nodding to my other grayish (though not green) haired companion that started to appear in her normal bouncing dance.

…

..

"Who are YOU!?" twin shouts suddenly cut through the silence of the white nothingness.

XXX

Huh…

I didn't know that Now was a minor goddess of Light. And it appears that Sylph as The Elemental of Wind, rather than A elemental of Wind, would from the standards of Now be considered a minor goddess of Darkness. And both have bad experiences with the opposite type.

Good thing I have A Gamer's Mind. Sylph apparently has a full sized form, one where she apparently feels the need to float, on her back, emphasising her pure white thighs as she takes a position like someone reclining to sunbath, except hovering in the air so you can see, at a slight angle, her crotch is only covered by a bathing suit portion of dress, which apparently changes from looking like a leaf bottom, to being closer to a Vacuo dress; with very open slits at the side.

Or at least that's probably the case seeing as I can see a line that is obviously not part of the her dress in that area; which makes me come to the conclusion that she has no panties. I suppose that she could have really thin underwear.. But it would have to be really thin. She also appears to have gained quite a bit… more in terms of breast size, noticeable even though her position isn't perky and upbeat enough to push up her chest like it was in her earlier fairy form. She is still somewhat below Now though. Whose bouncing in an almost hypnotic manner.

Sylphs eyes remain too large for her face, continuing to give her a pretty innocent look despite the fact that she looks so...interesting.

Maybe it's because she's in her full form, but I really do feel like I'm enjoying seeing her legs; oh they're hitting each other again.

Is that a black thong?

They both have really full ass-

What the **** am I thinking?

I need to figure out how to get them to work together, not stare at them like a horny teenaged boy.

Wait… hormones?

Bending reality.

Could titles actually enhance the amount of hormones I have until I start acting like a teenager.

But wouldn't I have-

Wait… did I have any other pop-up?

…

..

.

I grew up again.

I may even be a bit taller already.

But that isn't a good thing.

When I first got my Semblance, I may have internally grown slightly; enough to make it as if I was closer to ten or possibly eleven if I was already a fast grower. My rapid growth afterwards, when I grew up more times; may have actually been belated growth from what was happening internally. Growing up a few more times, would be enough to put me internally at my lower teens, and my title could have helped my hormones grow at an even faster pace. All of it is just little things… but together…

I think I may have just hit puberty.

In fact, I'm almost certain that I just hit puberty. Since while I was thinking this the two of them ripped enough clothes off each other that I can see pretty much everything. And I feel that the already not very comfortable underwear girls wear… just got smaller. So it's official. I'm (regardless of chronological age), a teenager.

…

..

NOPE

I already said that I'm not going to be morons, be like those other people who drooled at my sisters.

First things, first, the title has to go.

But which title do I use now?

I still haven't gained a Cooking title, nor did I gain a Grimm Killing related title.

So I'm left with only.

The Fool

It's Just Business

Basic Poison Taster

and the two new titles I just gained right now,

Apprentice Super Roach

Super Roach

The Fool enhances Lying and Fool's Act, which could be helpful outside of battle.

It's Just Business says it increases the efficiency of any commercial activity; which is almost impossible for me to measure, but could be helpful outside of battle. I got it by turning in my Faction Quest to level up a mode other than Tycoon Mode, so it's safe to assume it helps me regardless of what mode I'm in.

Poison Taster helps against poison, not exactly helpful here.

Apprentice Super Roach is nice but…

Super Roach is pretty amazing.

(Super Roach)

-Obtained by surviving raw damage beyond 5 times your max HP.

-You have a special talent and interest in becoming a Tank!

-Continue to excel and become a Master Super Roach.

20% defense bonus.

50% bonus to HP when taking an attack whose raw damage is at least 5 times your Max HP

+10 to all stats when fighting things that are stronger than you.

Decreased reputation gain with women below friendly by 30%

Increased reputation gain with women at or above friendly by 10%

Increased reputation gain with men by 60%

Increased stamina by 100%

Decreased encounters with Grimm by 20%

It gives me a passive defense boost at all times, is really helpful against someone of a higher level; like that enforcer will be, would also increase my stamina; allowing me to exert myself fully for a longer period of time than should be possible, and reduces the chance that I'll meet new Grimm.

But it directly attacks my chance reputation gain with women, my primary audience for my cookies.

…

..

.

Hormones are scary.

I decided to take off my title in thought, but didn't actually take it off until just now, after I finished staring at their newly revealed lower bodies for around three minutes as they continue to claw at each other.

I don't even get what's so interesting!

As the man of the household, I may have stopped taking baths with my mother years ago, but I still saw the visual difference between a woman and a girl in the past. And seeing as how my oldest sisters are in their mid-teens they're not that different. So it shouldn't suddenly be so interesting out of nowhere, even with a title amplifying the effect. I mean, when you have seven sisters, at some point all of them decide through that strange communication girls seem to have, to play doctor with you. Even my youngest sisters wanted to inspect the difference between boys and girls, while it was pretty much just a chore for me.

…

..

.

Good thing they all checked at least once, otherwise they would find my secret out.

Still I'm getting off-track again.

Just because I've been wearing my titles on for the long term, doesn't mean that I have to keep doing that. So all I have to do is just use Super Roach against the Enforcer, survive the fight, then wear The Fool afterwards so he thinks less of the fight afterwards. Then switch to… the pervert title while killing Grimm for the video, until I get myself past the 120,000 mark in sales, before switching to It's Just Business to mitigate the effect of losing my higher level titles.

It's the perfect plan!

But for now, I need to stop them from fighting, the defensive boost from Super Roach should work best; since the added stats of either of the Lady-Killer titles won't help me if I'm standing around looking stupid due to hormones.

But first,

*changes clothing to Onesie*

I need to look less like I'm going to die if I'm going to stop this.

…

..

.

XXX

Sylph really is an airhead.

Getting them to stop fighting actually pretty easy, before she could really get going, Sylph just stopped and was really startled that I was a boy. I explained that I had been dressed as a mascot, and that compared to reality warping abilities; should she really be surprised, and she seemed to accept that after a pause. She then proceeded to contract with me, I even managed to say, (as something I was actually doing to make Now feel better, but looked like a favor I was doing for her), that I wouldn't try to summon any of the other Elementals until I was able to fully use her power.

It was nice when she hugged me.

It's like having another little sister, though I don't think I want her to ever meet Nero.

And it wasn't even in danger of becoming perverted since she was back in her small form.

I have to make things up to Now later, but I think I found a way. She can take a very minimal form that she rarely used, before transforming into a short sword as one of her weapon forms along with a short-bow, or a large hammer. But with effort she can become a long knife for a short time time, and change cosmetic details a bit; something I can use to increase my mimicry of Alice greatly. And since she is a higher level than me, that translates to her weapon being pretty good, not Crocea Mors good, but better than any Knife I could make on my own. She also said that she had experience with magic; especially healing, but still experience with magic. So I should be able to use her with Aura Burst if I HAVE to in the upcoming battle, something I wouldn't have been able to properly use with my hands alone at my current level of skill. Then I can reward her with cake; she seems to like those more than cookies, then reward Sylph later for the Beowolf Massacre Video.

It's the same as with my sisters. Acknowledge them for different things and they're happy. Make them share and they're unhappy. With my new situation, no more bath time to help them communicate their disagreements in a relaxed setting though.

…

..

.

I can probably take a bath safely with my youngest sisters even with the pervert title. But even that is only 'probably', I've seen real perverts after all; so I can't risk traumatizing them. But by the time I finish selling cookies, it'll be odd to suddenly go back to taking a bath with them. Well I suppose I can use the bath thing earlier as an excuse. No problem with that. I'll also have to keep my distance from my older sisters; but I should be able to accomplish that by just training more intensely.

And the sheer versatility of the power I feel from Sylph is…

Through the Wind, my senses have expanded. I hear constant, yet somehow not uncomfortable whispers; the voice of the Wind itself. I can sense everything around me, not just large things, like trees in the forest, but even small things, like the number of insects crawling on the ground.

When accessing her power, I instinctively felt that I could make a protection similar (but weaker) than the one that Sylph used. It's formal name is Wind Protection. But the true defensive use of this skill is in deflection and avoidance. While it can only deflect smaller things currently, it does it automatically once active, for a set period of time sure, still similar to a buff. It also does enhance my own speed somewhat. While my native compatibility (reading affinity go!) with the Wind is high, I still can't use it with magic as much as I'd like to.

Sylph is surprisingly helpful. She taught me some moves, one called 'Bloody Fissure Thunder Thrust', it's just a fancy name for a high speed lunging attack, that through connection with the Wind does extra damage if used at the start of a fight.

But the second move is the really amazing one.

Lightning Sword Flash, where you move like the Wind, vastly increasing your movement speed. The increase in force is enough to match Aura Burst, but the sheer speed increase is enough to let me leave a slight after-image, (though currently that only happens when it's combined with all my other movement skills), though it has a downside; I actually move too fast to fully keep up with my own movements-so I would probably get sucker punched at my current level; so I have to use the technique carefully, or not at all, at least in it's strongest combined form, when fighting Humans. It does use up Wind Protectionif it's up though. So I may actually be better off using the technique before I put up Wind Protectionto not prematurely dispel my buff, even if it's slower in that case.

And like I thought, Elementals are good at helping cook. After tidying up whatever damage I could to the room (which due to the weight of most of the parts being pretty low was actually not bad with the Wind), I went to cook some Basic Magic Cookies. It appears that I can now impart some temporary +DEXto my cookies. It unfortunately loses most of it's HP/Stam bonuses, so I just made a normal one dozen batch of what I'm now calling my Speed-Cookies,and 3 batches of what I'm now terming my Heal-Cookies.

I'm still not certain about taking on an Enforcer. But I could probably over-power Lily in most cases now; though she would still win in instantaneous output, I can now probably beat her max (albeit I would have to charge longer than she did and be buffed up). While I'm just level 16, my strength is is closer to someone in their mid-20's now. And that's ignoring that I should already have been upgrading toIntermediate Aura Skill, but decided to keep it at Basic. I could have been strong enough to match someone almost level 30 (without extra stats), or be a full match for Lily (though her experience would probably still top me more often than not). So I'm well aware of what my longer term future looks like. As long as I stay calm, I should be able to lose without giving away A Gamer's Body.

So I'm definitely ready for Adam. I repaired my clothes, and started waiting in a clearing in the forest, an uneventful run; lucky since I wasn't in the mood to fight the Grimm; the clearing was even around where I fought that Ursa in fact.

XXX

Theres always Adam.

He's… nice.

Not strong like steroids.

Nor fast like her.

Not lucky like that moron.

But he is still nice.

I bet that's what that asshat thought when he called for me.

Still, to the outside world,

Tukson called. I responded.

Despite his looks, Tukson was one of the original members of the White Fang, practically a grandpa really, but his information's always good, and his hacking skills almost legendary.

The 'little girl' he hacked a picture of, was cute; even I could see that, but so what.

I've been stronger than others my age for years now. While I'm new as an Enforcer, no one, not even a 'specially picked agent' of one of the old Hunter Families should be anything to me.

That isn't 'being melodramatic' as my new student likes to say, (her energy and passion is cute, reminds me of how I was several years ago, before that happened), but honestly she's the one who see's things that don't exist.

I wasn't born with speed like the kid will eventually achieve.

Nor was I born with great strength like that loser.

Nor did fortune shine down my path like that punk.

I'm man enough to admit that I'm while I'm no fool, I'm no genius either.

But I don't need any of that.

Everytime the world brought me down, I just tried harder.

I only kneeled to my Master because her Will was similar to my own; for her power alone.

I am strong. Strong enough to take down lesser Hunters.

And I get stronger by the day.

In 5, maybe 10 years-is what I always thought.

One day I'd lead the White Fang, be strong enough to protect them, strong enough that… thatwould never happen to anyone else.

Compared to that, what was a single girl.

She was tall… or at least taller than she looked on camera, still a midget at less than 155 cm. She looked around my age, so I upgraded her to a 'girl.'

She was just sitting on-I kid you not-a picnic blanket. Sure, the winter in Vale was less bad than other places to the north or south, but…

Is this girl insane?

"Will you join my tea party, good sir?" a high pitched voice asked of me without moving in the slightest.

As expected of an agent.I think inwardly, while outwardly just silently landing on the other side of the clearing.

She turned to me, and very dark blue eyes looked at me, appearing to study my face intently.

"Congratulations on your recent promotion." the girl said with a smile, "I did not expect them to send a Rising Star among the White Fang for this."

As she said it in the same prissy and annoying way as other well-brought up girls, I didn't exactly feel any pressure; people fish for information all the time.

She suddenly looked quite puzzled, before saying something that shifted my perception completely.

"Do you prefer Sir Taurus, or Adam." She continued while brightening up like the sun.

But I didn't really notice that, as I was busy slicing her head off.

*CLANG*

She deflected myiaido, with a knife!

No more warning shots, this time I'll do it for real.

But just as my posture shifted, she suddenly disappeared.

After-image!?

*BANG*

A thrust charged with Lightning would kill most ordinary swordsmen, even without being at a speed that was barely seeable to a professional.

But I wasn't ordinary.

Even as I barely read her movement, my training kicked in. I released my own counter Aura, powerful by itself but nothing compared to hers. Yet overpowering was not the point, deflection was. Naturally she still overpowered me, sending me flying away, but I took no damage and had landed on a tree in defensive position; ready for anything that she could send back at me.

Speeds I could barely see has been the normal since I started training with that woman.

Contrary to my expectations, the girl smiled while looking at my face.

"You are quite the pretty boy aren't you?" she said with a hint of amusement, "Very unexpected of an Enforcer."

And tossed me something.

..

.

What

It was my mask.

My mask… that I didn't even see her steal.

As I felt an immense amount of Aura flowing from the girl, who had information on even an obscure person like me, a threat not just in information, but a true threat in battle as well.

Seems like this'll be fun.

As if that thought had been the signal, she suddenly threw out dozens of blasts of Aura.

Fast, but…

As I quietly dodge the first round, making my way closer to her.

Too many come from your fingers. Reading and reacting to the breath, slight twitches, Ki, and overall flow is the basics of all martial arts.

But even as I got closer, she just smiled.

"Gah." I unintentionally let out my voice, as my leg was hit despite how-

Shit they have some tracking capabilities!

As I weaved my way closer to her, I continued to think, now extending my senses completely.

Each of them are weak, nothing compared to even my weakest attack.

Then I realised it.

That was not the point.

I never was a superman, my endurance came from the will to endure my training, rather than natural talent. The power at her fingertips weren't enough to disable me, but slow me down slightly it did.

She got me to charge like a stupid bull, so she could slow me down enough to finish me!

…

..

.

Three minutes later.

I was full of wounds and had slowed down greatly.

Continuing that barrage probably would have meant my death.

But I never ran, and I wouldn't start today.

So I held my ground, conserving energy, getting ready for the fight of my life.

And she just stood there.

"You really are good, aren't you." she said, smiling at me like she knew something I didn't know, with that same calm poise, same 'lady-like' poise that no Faunus would ever be allowed to have.

Fuck it. I'm going to shove my sword-!

I'll use that technique, I think forcefully calming myself down, while she looks even more amused, as if she sensed my momentary shift in feelings.

As I activated the movement technique my Master taught me; one I had yet to fully master; she moved into close range.

And in several clashes of our blades I felt it.

Average speed was below mine.

Skill was way beneath me.

But the power was absurd enough to make up for it.

The weakest swing of her Knife was nearly at the level as a quick iaido.

The fullest power she used beyond anything but my imperfect moonslice.

And that Knife was light enough that she was attacking faster than me.

At this rate, I'll be dead in ten minutes, I thought while remaining mostly calm; to an amused twinkle in her eyes as we suddenly were even in power, as she-

"Boom" She said, as a larger version of her previous blasts of Aura hit both of us at close range; coming from her palm lightly touching my chest.

As I twitched in the last moment she only got a bit of my shoulder.

Still, I'll be sliced off one piece at a time at this rate.

So I switched back to offense; ignoring the blow she got on my leg as I shifted patterns fully.

But as the clashes moved on to dozens, then hundreds, where I even felt myself starting to overpower her…

It seems that was a mistake.

To counter power, I used speed.

I fell on her like a blazing comet, enough to outpace her Knife fully.

I got a few hits but then...

She-smiled at me-once more.

And wind started weakening my blows.

Needed more study in wind my ass!

So I backed away.

I backed away,

and she let me.

"Like Arthuria in personality, but Lily in fighting style" is what she said.

I wanted to ask who those two were, but I caught myself on time.

Seems like it wasn't enough.

She actually closed her eyes, while smiling.

Then said, "They are like little sisters to me." looking at me with a genuine smile.

I stared at her for a moment,

before realising what she implied.

She is talking trash with me, saying I'm like a little girl!

I snarled and almost snapped, barely managing to keep my cool, not because I forgave that insult, but because I wouldn't win if I did so.

In the clearing widened by our fight I breathed in deep. Keeping my cool, while letting the flames of my fury force a level of control that was previously lacking in my moonslice.

Like Water.

Flowing down a hill.

The motion is natural.

I felt like I understood what my master meant while attempting to change my moonslice into a true Moonslice.

"The waves"

"Will simply"

"Cut"

"Everything."

Yet even as I prepared, feeling connected to the Water that was my birth Element.

She just stood there,looking very calm, peaceful, and proper.

Something that I didn't even dignify with a stray thought.

So I blasted her face in, crushing her attempted counter completely.

As the state of mind shattered, I felt it.

A good clean, solid hit.

Only a high class Hunter could take-

She then stood up only moderately injured, and still smiling; dusting herself off like nothing had happened.

"It may be a bit stronger than Siegy," this absurd girl said just as calmly as when we started this fight, "Still you did very well." she said smiling at, and complimenting me sincerely.

Then she started eating cookies, saying at the dumbfounded look on my face,

"But Jeanne Jeanne is a mascot you see!", even tossing a bag over to me.

Wordlessly I stared at the bag. Then stared at the girl who was barely modest after my Moonslice, shrugged, and ate the cookies.

Best set of cookies I've ever eaten.

I actually felt like my wounds were healing; something happening more fully with her own more minor injuries.

"Now that we've snacked, shall we continue this on to round 2?" she said with another smile at me, and that same sense of amusement.

She didn't have any Aura behind those words.

No sense of intimidation.

It was like it was just a game for her.

Fuck that. I thought. "I've seen enough" is what I said.

And she said that she'd "Look forward to our rematch then." Then she looked at me seriously, "You really are good you know. As a magical-girl, being forced into melee… unless Sir Adam has an objection, may I declare this match a draw?"

I accepted the draw and left.

But, on my way back to report my findings, I couldn't help but think...

I really want to fight her again...

XXX

Good thing that guy was an idiot.

He was level 29, had enough bonus points to be level 35, and since Sieglinde was only had around two levels of bonus points, they were only 3 levels apart in raw stats.

So he was about 10 levels higher than my own estimated stats.

He was 16; and so listed as a year older than Sieglinde, but depending on when he was born… I was still fighting someone who trained hard enough to force growth on himself through training, rather than on gaining experience.

His strikes were heavy.

Thanks to my almost magical growth, I could see both his base and enhanced stats.

His Aura doesn't add to LUK at all.

But it especially appeared to add to INT in comparison to his other stats; but his MP wasn't very large, so I could tell something was up.

Which is why despite his high physical stats, and his style being mostly based on fast and light attacks; each heavy enough that each of his iaido blows needed a Power Striketo even with him, I remained cautious. I had felt his power with his first half serious blow; no way was I going to fight him in close range; especially since I was almost certain that my half-assed swordsmanship was beneath him; and probably not fully applying due to wielding a Knife, so he would definitely beat me in pretty much every blow.

So I went for random, using various combinations of Aura Burst and Energy Storm to overwhelm him and his superior skill. Ripmay be absurdly fast, fast enough to steal his mask, but it was still just a simple bluff.

And if I hadn't decided that I wouldn't have been able to beat him in melee from the moment I saw how much he had trained his base stats…

I wouldn't have stood a chance.

With magic alone, I would have ran out of MP before he ran out of HP.

And that guy was…

A real idiot.

Fighting me should have meant nothing. A meet and greet. Some posturing. But he… I could feel the same feeling as when I protected Nero. For him to feel that way, over such a small matter…

He's really an idiot.

Still, that idiot was good enough that, even though I talked to him whenever I could; using full meditate for even a few seconds, I was still really glad when he backed off to charge a super move.

Over a minute was enough time to meditate a hundreds of MP after all.

Still, I hadn't even been able to use Lightning Sword Flash; I needed even that weak barrier for when I got knocked back and to replace it before I fell through a few dozen trees.

My extreme defensive focus, combined with Super Roach, should have allowed me to take on even a hit from Lily. But I was three-fourths dead from a single blow, and started bleeding as a sign of that. I made stuff up while he was confused about my actually surviving his super move, something that I would have been surprised about had I been on the other side as well, in order to eat the Heal-Cookies.

I even gave him some of them, and bluffed that I actually had enough in me to go a second round.

Ha!

I could see that he still had around 30% of his Aura left, and with almost zero Aura in my tank, I would have become a dressed up pinata; I even had the tattered clothing look down, within the first ten seconds.

But luckily he left. I even managed to say that I would fight him again-with only magic next time-since I had no intention of fighting a dedicated swordsman in a sword fight. Especially since that super move he channeled through his sword; was unstable enough that it was probably incomplete. When he mastered that, and used it in every one of his sword strikes.

NOPE would probably become his default response to everything.

I almost wet my pants when he looked at me intensely after I rechallenged him.

While I was bluffing on being able to fight some more, that just confirmed that he was an idiot.

Since I need to improve my sword technique to keep up with him, I need to go back to being Jaune Arc for a while. He let me have that draw, giving me vital experience, but he's still stronger than I am.

I should be able to make a circuit of the local Grimm, fighting the strongest ones when I have lots of MP, then go to fight the weaklings when I don't have much MP.

I'll even do it in a cheap armor so nobody will notice it's me!

That should provide the weight training I need. That'll help upgrade my control over wind enough to use fully with my magic, and then the video can be done as "Jeanne Jeanne's One Day Cookie Quest". Since if I kill enough weaker Grimm, I can probably pull a horde of them into attacking me, fitting 10,000 in a day.

XXX

I missed it.

The super cook, who makes Super Cookies came.

And I was at the library.

Despite making eating more bags of Super Cookies as I had hands and toes my New Years Resolution,

I missed it.

But she, I had a gender now, revealed what I needed to do earn those cookies.

So I'm going to get stronger.

If I become a Heroine, I'll be strong enough to protect others, and have my cookies, and eat them too!

Nobody will notice that missing broom.

Time to go fight a Beowolf!

AN

So yeah. Monster Girl Quest Elementals. Rather than an ordinary elemental. Due to the propaganda (ironically) being a real technique-if you had the ability to assess other words.

But he won't get the other Elementals for a while, because it's not as easy as gaining levels to master that world's Elementals.

The debut of Jeanne Jeanne.

Taiyang who once could have been Jaunes brother.

Lily the less serious twin.

The funny I was trying for from when Now first thought that Jaune was really tall.

And switching titles since he now feels the full negative effects of his title.

He also made a bunch of girls faint from eating his cookies.

Not everyone is a heavy-weight cookie eating champion like Ruby.

The weapon form for Now.

Adam the awesome.

And Ruby who is about to meet Jaune in a way slightly different than canon.

I hope having a battle from Adam's POV, helps show the marked difference between how Jaune see's his fights (loser spamming skills, losing badly is natural, hilarious if he somehow actually wins) versus (How is this boy/girl doing this?) which is what everyone else thinks.

He also thinks that being able to think so calmly regardless of the circumstances makes him WEAKER than people who can just go with the flow. Then he does (very casually) something almost retarded. Using a stronger skill than The Gamer's 'I killed a Legion Zombie'-a massive blob of HP, when more than 15 levels lower than it. He found the usefulness of Ripin cooking and disarming others. But didn't actually try to take Adam's sword (which at that early stage where Adam was still underestimating him could have actually worked). Same with his Dish Washing and Cleaning skills.

Since he didn't feel any different, he didn't really get how his disguise being perfect actually meant that he would be perceived as a girl even to most levels of 'extra' senses, unless the effect broke, putting it down to Sylph being an airhead instead.

It's also why Sylph was ready to make a contract with him so easily. Since MGQ had female monsters trying to borrow the Elementals powers, but very few males able to use their powers; so she didn't bother looking into how Jaune would use her ability, (based on what he'd been doing in the past according to the wind), so she didn't see anything questionable about helping Jaune out.

I also hope that having Adam have so many extra points, from having fought since he was very little, is realistic to you. And naturally, Adam thinks less of his latent potential than most people around him do; similar yet different from Ruby. As well as hope that the difference in writing style between the two; making Jaune use lots of unnecessary words, and spend a great deal of time talking around a point, versus the more direct, but still starting to silently analyze things as Water Adam, makes sense. I also hope that his plan didn't seem to come out of nowhere-I was trying to get how Jaune really didn't want to test the limits of A Gamer's Body/Mind before, but with familiarity started using it more and more over the story. He also saw when he got his EXP from quests, and so was finally blasé enough to let himself get nearly killed in the space to his level, since the HP bar doesn't go down to nothing instantly, use the level up to regain his stats, just in time for it to go down again, all while healing like mad.

I also tried to set up that he was making a lot of skills that he dismissed as worthless, with the mentioned ones just being a few of them, with how he doesn't mention things unimportant to him. But you can judge how successful that was. For this particular power-up scene. Since I wanted to contrast the idea that, as a Semblance, rather than getting support from Gaia, someone would have their full power as a Gamer; hence all the upgrading going on.

Still, while Jaune had mostly calculated it all out, it wasn't perfect; the Wind that Sylph controls could amplify his own force and do more damage if he was unlucky, so his calculations still relied on some luck. Jaune just saw, between most likely dying to someone called an Enforcer, and only dying if you're unlucky to a potential ally, that he was better off here. But it just wasn't something worth thinking about when he needed to prepare to fight, and before that was affected by Super Puberty.

And yes, Ruby will get the 'Super Cookies', as she thinks of them, someday. Though since she's already a cookie eating champion… ironically she is one of the few who can eat Magic Cookies without any protection from negative side effects.

Jaune is acting logically for him.

I have puberty. Must hide it or I'll get teased.

But he looks even weirder to his sisters; like he forced himself into going with their normal antics, and suddenly doesn't want to go with them anymore. Especially since off screen he just celebrated some birthdays, and gave some Boxing Day gifts; making his shift really strange, despite Jaune himself seeing no problem.

He also didn't feel like he was really doing anything odd talking to Adam. Since he was so calm, the fight was both a really big deal and not a really big deal at the same time. But Adam saw it in a completely different fashion.

He did still catch the 'I want to fight him again Shounen Syndrome', then make excuses for it.

I wanted to fit in more viewpoints, but Jaune still ended up hogging the show.

At least next chapter should work a bit better, since even more viewpoints are opened up now.

Still, Merry Christmas and Happy Boxing Day to everyone.

I'll try to get another chapter, though probably shorter, out on New Years Day.