Sooo, apparently no one knew Ancient Northern well enough to go over the work I had managed to accomplish until the evening of the next day. At least.

Nor were they able to say anything about my translations. The fact made me a very happy camper and not just because it meant that I could leisurely rub their disproved misconceptions they held about me into their faces.

It also meant that instead of giving me more to work with they were all occupied going through what I had written down. Which translated to me having the next day basically for myself to do whatever I wanted to.

The expression on Okawa's face when he had to admit that I actually knew what I was talking about was just the icing on the cake.

A very happy camper, indeed.

Out of this entire situation, an opportunity was born. Until they finished reviewing my work and sort through my translations to catch up with what I did in a couple of hours, nothing was left for me to do on that particular front.

Following this void of stuff to translate, I was left to my own devices. Which, thanks to the free pass I had been given by Okawa to enter and roam through the dig site as I pleased, provided me with the aforementioned opportunity.

And with dig site I meant the underground dungeon of this place. First Beacon, now Kigen; What was up with Remnant and their obsession with dungeons? It seemed unhealthy to me.

Remnant and dungeons… Remnant and Dungeons. RnD. Huh. That would be a nice name for a game, actually. Totally ripped off and unoriginal as hell but hey, what worked once might work again.

…Anyway, being able and allowed to do whatever I desired, within reason of course, my feet ended up carrying me through the underground facilities of the ruins and looking for texts in them no one had touched yet. Which, since this whole excavation has been going on for quite some time, led to me ending up in the deeper parts of the entire structure.

So here I was, underground, happily skipping -yes, I had a literal skip in my step now and then and was proud of it- through a tunnel system which had seen far better days on the search for stone murals or other such sources of information I had not seen before.

And what sources of information they were; The sheer volume of historic information found in these halls was simply breath-taking.

There was just one slight problem with my surroundings. A problem I once again looked over my shoulder to glance at. "So, tell me again: Why are you following me?"

Of course, the question was a rhetorical one and both of us knew it. Strangely enough, my escort did not offer her typical with sarcasm filled comment. She gave me an eye roll which screamed 'duh', instead.

The other three members of team STRQ did not come along for the stroll since it had been deemed unnecessary to have more than one of them accompany me via majority vote. No Grimm meant very little to endanger my person and only one was needed to keep an eye on my well-being under these circumstances.

Nevertheless, on this mission they always had to have at least one pair of eyes on me. Add the fact that Raven was the only one who did not have a problem being in my vicinity and you got the one-woman-escort lil' old me currently was plagued with.

I was pretty sure that was not what Ozpin had in mind when he sent team STRQ with me, but oh well. Not like I cared what he wanted to achieve with this whole shebang. Falling short of his expectations was not something I had any problem with, and it definitely was not something I would lose any sleep over.

Anyway, we were deep down. Way deep down in a part of the structure no one else had set foot. There was already way too much on the upper levels for the researchers to go through. Enough to bog down their advance and keep them on the relatively shallow levels. I was not sure how many underground levels this place had, but it went deep down. That much I knew.

For Reference, the deepest level they had reached was the 7th. I never bothered to ask why they had not ventured deeper, but I did not really care at this point.

We were currently walking through a downwards spiralling tunnel which had started on the 13th level. It would most likely end on the 14th one.

The sheer architectural marvel this place was; I really wanted to find some of the texts which went into the nitty gritty of this civilization's construction techniques.

For ancients with no access to modern technologies and materials, this whole structure was nothing short of marvellous. An architectural wonder.

However, no matter how awe-inspiring the structure was, the decision to venture deeper than anyone before me had a downside. Something which should have been obvious beforehand. It was dark. Like, really dark.

Since the 8th we had to rely on glow sticks to even see where we were going, and we were not able to see very far. After all, why should the expedition members place lights here where they had not been before.

Mounts for torches were present on the walls but said torches had long since been eroded by time, leaving nothing as proof of their existence behind.

Which brought up an interesting point; This civilisation could have existed before the first utilisation of dust. Of course, dust torches were always an option, but it seemed inefficient to me to put dust on a stick which in turn was held by a mount on the wall.

You could just design a mount to hold the dust itself, be it in crystal or in powder form, and forgo the wood component completely. Way more practical use of resources in my humble opinion.

But I digressed. It was fairly ominous to only be able to see 20 to 30 feet, but it was not scary. Having the most dangerous and scary individual on the Island guarding your back had a diminishing effect on fright inducing factors like potential Grimm or supernatural beings jumping out of the darkness.

It took us another ten minutes of trekking before the tunnel finally ended in a large, metal door. After eyeing it for a moment or two, it was rather plain with no engravings, I gave it an experimental push. It did not budge. I just as well could have pushed against the ground under our feet.

A stronger push. Again, nothing. I probably was not able to open it.

This just would not do.

"If you don't mind…", I looked at Raven and gestured towards the obstruction.

Raven only crossed her arms and smirked at me, not moving from her spot. "I would."

"Aren't you supposed to help me?"

"We are supposed to guard you, not help you."

"Tis is just a matter of perspective."

"It really isn't."

Raven would be less than helpful in this endeavour. It did not take a genius to realize this. Well, nothing ventured nothing gained. There was only one course of action I could take.

"C'mon, open you piece of juuuuunk!"

Namely, to bodily throw myself at the door.

It did not take long for me to be at an angle of nearly 60 degrees, with almost my entire weight pressing against the stupidly heavy door. My feet slid backwards in my attempt and I had to stop them from getting to far from my centre of gravity again and again else I would have slipped and ended up as a heap on the floor.

Or with my head in the door.

Yet, despite giving it my all, nothing happened.

"Now that's just pathetic."

Correction; Nothing happened except my already bruised pride being obliterated.

Admitting to myself that opening this damn metal contraption from hell was above my capability I stopped in my futile attempt to catch my breath. I could not do anything about this thing. I had to accept it.

However, me having to accept reality did not mean I had no options left.

Which was why I would resort to the last trick I had up my sleeve. It was a trick which could only be described as 'high risk, high reward'. A trick so suicidal I had to gather up every last piece of courage left in my body.

To Prepare myself to play with something very much like fire centimetres away from gasoline, first I stretched my arms to lose some of the tension my pushing had left in them. Once the tension had been sufficiently bled off, I stepped away from the door and beside Raven.

As nonchalant as I was able to, I threw the brunette an inconspicuous look before focusing on the unrepentant slabs of metal blocking our way.

"You sure you don't want to try?"

"I am sure.", she replied.

"100 percent?"

"Yep."

I crossed my arms and did my best not to make eye contact. " Say nothing more, I understand. The door is quite the obstacle, after all."

"..."

"No one thinks any less of you for this."

"…Did you hit your head right now and I simply did not see it?"

I tried my best to mask any possible tremor in my voice. "It's ok to admit you aren't strong enough."

"…What."

"No worries. Like I have already said, I perfectly understand. This door is a formidable opponent, indeed. It's totally okay to admit that it's too much for anyone to open it, even for a huntress-in-training such as yourself."

There was a blur, followed by a loud cracking sound and the door was suddenly wide open with Raven standing in front of it, one leg still outstretched from the kick she had performed a split-second before.

"Thank you.", I tried to suppress the grin threatening to pull up the corners of my mouth and walked through the now open door and into the room, no, the hall on the other side of it.

"Don't think for a moment I don't know what you have done just now.", her words made the existence of the imminent grin on my face disappear faster than a questionable browser tab did when someone walked into your room.

Since my fate had already been sealed, I chose to spend the rest of my time here looking through what laid behind the door. After all, if I was about to die in the next hours or so, I might as well just do what I came here for before the inevitable happened.

The hall we had entered was twice as tall as the tunnel and easily five times as wide. I did not even waste a moment before I started with a first rudimentary inspection of the hall. Said Inspection took quite a bit of walking since seeing was, again, something quite difficult in the current situation.

It took a couple of minutes to get a general overlay of the room.

The wall on the left side was covered in mosaics depicting grant battles against Faunus and Grimm alike. Sadly, there were no depictions of humans and faunus fighting side by side against the beastly onslaught. I might have been angry at the fact, but since I already had anticipated something along those lines all I could muster up was a 'too bad'.

No need to dwell on the misgivings of already destroyed ancient civilisations, aka spilt milk. Thinking about the existing civilisations and their issues was already enough of a headache.

Banishing this line of thought I pulled out my scroll and took a few photos from the mosaics for later inspection. Being terrible at interpreting art outside the glaring obvious, I had no other choice at the moment.

Maybe, later, when I had the time, I would come back to the photos and see what I could gleam from them. But not now. I was on the clock, after all.

The right wall was covered in plaques with texts carved into them. Which were still in an amazing condition, somehow. I was aware that rain, wind or other such factors were not a factor down here, but they actually looked readable even after what could only be millennia without anyone to care for them.

Standing in front of and looking at them lit up a small idea in my mind. It was a random thought, but a random thought which could lead to Raven not trying to get even sometime later for what I had pulled minutes before. "Want to make this a lesson in Ancient Northern?"

"Sure, I guess.", Raven tried to appear nonchalant but really, she could not mask the sudden pique of interest in her eyes.

"Wonderful.", I tried not to have my voice betray my relief and pointed towards a plaque to our right. "Let's take a look at this then."

Without waiting for an answer, I turned towards it and let my feet carry me to the plaque in question.

"What does it say?", I questioned her after she had walked up beside me, staring at the same segment I had laid my eyes upon.

She did not say anything for a couple of minutes, obviously focusing on the words in front of her. Raven's brows furrowed in concentration. I was perfectly content with just standing there beside her in silence, letting the girl work it out herself.

Finally, after a couple of nods she did unconsciously, the brunette opened her mouth. "Die Bestien de-des Westens bedrohen die Westwacht in immer stie-steigender Zahl. Erst gestern Nacht verloren wir twansig-" "zwanzig", I corrected. "zwanzig gute Man wehrend-" "während" "während wir erfolgreich verhinderten, dass ihrer "ihre" "deesteren-" "düsteren" "düsteren Klauen die Mauern überkamen and unserer-" "unsere", she shot me an annoyed look before she continued. "Häuser erreichten."

"Good.", I meant it. For a first try reading out loud, it was very good indeed. Shaky on the pronunciation, very shaky actually, but I could understand her. "Now translated."

"Translated it would be 'the beasts of the West threaten? Threaten the watch in the west in ever increasing numbers. Just last night we lost twenty good men when we successfully prevented their grim claws from creeping?", she looked at me and I nodded an affirmative. "creeping over the walls and reaching our houses'."

"Basically, yes.", I was more than a little surprised that she managed to translate so much correctly. Something which I could not stop from showing in my voice.

Because, seriously, all of this with just one day and maybe a night of studying anaemic, hastily created material I made, asking me questions and watching what and how I translated sentences yesterday?

Raven managing what she had done just now was more than a little amazing.

…Scratch that, it was not just more than a little amazing. The closest adjective I could use too describe her deed was… actually, I could not think of one, but my point remained.

Even if the words were the ones which had been repeatedly used in the texts Raven had looked over yesterday, something I knew because they were the same ones I worked through, her achieving what she had achieved right now was remarkable and not something most could replicate, let alone I.

It made me extremely jealous, truth be told.

Maybe she had begun to learn the language beforehand? It was a possibility, for sure, but if it were indeed the case, wouldn't it raise the question of where she even found the material to learn it from beforehand?

I for one never found anything substantial in my research before coming here and a nod in the right direction would be more than welcome at this point.

Though I was burning up with curiosity, I was not about to ask. No point in it. Raven would not give me an answer even if I would grovel at her feet. Which would more than likely earn me a sequence of kicks to the face, instead.

Safer to dig into it at a later date and not let my investigation bother Raven.

For now, I would focus on the thing literally right in front of me. "Well, 'Beasts of the West' is probably the most interesting part of the segment."

"The Lost Continent. But isn't it more in the Northwest?", her expression turned thoughtful before a second later she shook her head. "No, never mind. Ancient Northern originates from Solitas. Why are you so excited about this, though? A lot of theories point towards the Lost Continent as the Grimm's birthing place."

"Maybe, but now we have somewhat of a confirmation. It's not just conjecture, anymore.", I began to walk to the left and along the wall. "Let's see if the texts are in chronological order."

"Like a time stream?", Raven's footsteps followed me.

"I have the suspicion we are inside an information or gathering hub of a sort. So yes, something like that.", I never broke stride in my answer, going from text segment to text segment, whispering to myself what was written down in those ancient murals. I did not even bother at this point to read the whole paragraphs. I looked at sentences which stood out to my eyes instead to get an overview.

"Ein weiteres Dorf fiel unter dem ewigen Ansturm." Another village fell under the eternal onslaught.

'Sie brachen aus dem Dickicht wie eine schwarze Springflut, allverschlingend.' They broke out of the thicket like a black tidal wave, all-consuming.

'Jäger im Nordwesten erzählen von Geistern in Tiergestalt. Pechschwarz sollen sie sein, und mit Augen, die glühen wie heiße Kohlen in der Nacht.' Hunters in the northwest talk about ghosts in animal's clothing. Pitch-black they are said to be and with eyes which glow like hot coals in the night.

'Unerklärliches Verschwinden von Bewohnern an den Grenzen unseres Reiches.' Unexplainable disappearances of citizens at the outskirts of our empire.

I stopped, staring the segment in front of me hard enough to make my eyes hurt. I idly took note of Raven stopping once again beside me, but I did not pay her any more attention. My mind was otherwise occupied.

What did this mean? Think, brain, think! You should be able to figure it out. Come oooonnnn-

Of course. Of course, it was that. It made sense. Nothing else did. Nothing else I could think of in the moment, at least. The idea itself was like Christmas coming early.

"I believe these plagues tells us how it all began.", this. This was huge. Like, really huge. It brought a perspective to ancient history here on Remnant I had not found anywhere else. "It actually tells the story."

"What story?"

"The emergence of Grimm.", I made a sweeping motion with my arm. "This right here describes the beginning of humanity's descend into the gilded cages we call kingdoms!"

"And?"

"Raven, don't you get it?!", I spun towards her and grabbed her shoulders, momentarily forgetting whom they belonged to and why the action might have been a bad idea. "No one knows where the Grimm came from. No one! Until now. We have found something marvellous here. Maybe there is more. Cracking one of the greatest puzzles known to humanity; I cannot think of anything which could come close.", except how I ended up on this dirtball. "We could get our place in the annals of history with this discovery, if we chose to."

"A place in the annals of history?", Raven asked, her eyebrow raised. "Careful, a certain headmaster might start to think you hunger for glory with this line of thinking."

And just like that my excitement evaporated. It did every time the headmaster of Beacon was mentioned in hearing range. Or anywhere, really. Speaking of Ozpin, there was something which still eluded me. Something very, very strange.

"I still don't get why Ozpin suddenly tries so hard to push Summer towards me…", I murmured, mostly to myself whilst occupying myself with reading through more plagues.

"Maybe he thinks it is his fault and wants to make it up to her. Or he just wants to emotionally torture you into giving up more about yourself."

"I go with option 2."

Raven let out a thoughtful hum. "Likely, but I don't think so. Summer has been lethargic since the little episode under Beacon. It started to affect her performance in class. Pathetic.", she shook her head and her next words contained quite the sneer. "And here I thought she was finally showing some backbone."

No answer came from me because really, what could I have said in response? Defend Summer? Why should I? It was not like Raven was wrong -one person rejecting her offer for friendship was not a big deal- and I had no reason to do it. Not my responsibility.

I tried to unravel Ozpin's reasons behind assigning me team STRQ, tried to take Raven's input into account but in my head it did not make any sense. Emotionally blackmailing me, some form of guilt trip. It was more in line with his modus operandi than the alternative.

Still, he should have known it would not work; It was me we were talking about.

So, supporting Summer. The chance existed. Simply wanting to help one of his favourite students to get out of a perpetual downtrodden state was enough of a reason. However, to go so far as to scheme together with Flint and bait me into a mission he could assign to team STRQ…

That seemed like too much effort and resources put into something which was basically destined to fail. I drifted off when my brain jumped to a different and yet related line of thought.

Mainly, how Ozpin treated team RWBY in the show. The similarities I could draw between team RWBY and team STRQ and how much effort he apparently expended for both brought me no small amount of amusement, but I discarded my conclusion almost on the spot.

Surely, the headmaster could not be this stupid.

…There was no helping it, I had to voice my thoughts. They were simply too ridiculous for me not to share them.

"Don't tell me he shows you guys favouritism via constant attention, extra training missions and turning a blind eye whenever you break the rules and get into more trouble then you should have.", I snorted from the sheer ridiculousness, but the amusement died quickly from the look I received. "He actually does all of it, doesn't he?"

Could Ozpin actually be this stupid? Rhetorical question, we talk about a typical Dumbledore here. There was nothing both wizards had which could even be loosely associated with common sense.

Something which baffled me a little. Because why would you show blatant favouritism for the team you want in your future employ when by doing so a simple spy near or in Beacon could easily discern which team to neutralize or manipulate?

Apparently, that would be entirely too tactical of a move. Let's make it obvious whom to kill, shall we? It was not like making life difficult for the enemy was one of the important things you had to do when waging a war, wasn't it?

Seriously, If I were in Salem's shoes, I would have killed team RWBY just in case. Ozpin had been this blatantly obvious in the show about who he so obviously wanted to recruit.

And if there was a pattern as indicated by the way he obviously treated team RWBY and team STRQ, not even counting the other teams he most likely had treated like that before them…

Patterns got you creamed in conflicts, Ozpin. Didn't you know?

…damn, now my excitement from finding those plagues had been drowned in thoughts about Ozpin and his plots. Thanks, Raven. Nice of you to kill my joy.

Also, since I had a clean head once more something else came to the forefront of my mind: No mentions of interuniversal travel let alone Mother Earth anywhere.

Once more I did not get any closer to my goal and got lost in something else.

Fuck me.