Chapter 1

Dodging to the side and sliding across the scuffed ground, Jaune thrust his sword towards the midriff of his sparring partner. In response to his move, his mother's gauntlet smacked his paltry stab away, her fist continuing onwards to acquaint itself with his face in a way he really could have done without.

He fell to the hard ground and groaned, slowly recovering from the blow that probably gave him a black eye, again.

Joan Arc stood over him with her usual disinterested gaze. The shadow of her small stature was a great contrast to her actual strength and power over his life. "That's enough for today. Go get some rest."

With those words, she turned away. She walked back to the house, her blonde hair shining in the sunlight. She was probably off to train one of his seven sisters, not that he begrudged them that. As a mage, he would rarely need to rely on melee combat in the future. They, however, might be able to get some use from the harsh training, considering they shared their parents' Knight class.

Being a mage, the swordsmanship skills he had painstakingly acquired progressed at half the speed compared to every other non-melee profession, meaning almost not at all. A researcher had once written a thesis that suggested it leveled roughly four times slower. Jaune couldn't deny it was a useful skill, but he treated it as a last resort since, he, as a mage, would have most of his stat points automatically put into wisdom and intelligence every two levels.

Anyone who actually sought close combat with him would probably just overpower him.

He decided to go back to the house, hole up in his room, and train the one offensive spell he had gained due to his semblance. He paused before his oldest sister's bedroom, distinctly hearing some vague shouting coming from behind the door.

Violet and his mother were arguing. They argued a lot, but he had never found out why, and he had no inclination to.

Jaune knew from experience that he wouldn't be able to make out any words, no matter how much he tried, so he simply ignored it. The man who had once said, "Being a hero means helping people, no matter who they are," had probably never been confronted with what must have been the most vicious, passive aggressive women in existence.

On the way to his sanctuary, he heard a few different conversations between his sisters and, as always, felt like an outsider. Jaune was totally fine with that, he was a lone wolf. No, that was stupid, wolves hunted in packs.

The only lone wolves were the dead ones.

He had read that frogs and bears spent most of their adult lives in solitude, but Jaune didn't really identify well with bears. They were scary, so maybe a frog then? Nodding to himself, Jaune opened the decorated door to his room.

He was Jaune Arc, the lone frog.

He slammed the door shut behind him; on it was a picture of a smiley face stretching out its tongue with the words 'NO GIRLS ALLOWED' beneath it.

He laid on his purple bed, surrounded by the calming atmosphere of the room. He was finally able to relax and unwind from the training that his mother insisted he went through despite his class.

Not that the training was particularly harsh for him, he'd seen the woman train his sisters and he did not want to be in their shoes during that particular activity, but now that he thought about it, Jaune wouldn't want to be in their shoes, like, ever. They did all wear heels after all.

He guessed mum went easy on him due to the unlikeliness of him ever using melee combat as anything other than a last resort. But honestly if as a mage you had no more energy to cast spells and the enemy engaged you in melee combat you were screwed.

Like always when thinking about his training or his family in general, Jaune forced his thoughts to drift off towards other things. Not that he hated either, the young mage just had better things to think about.

Like the fact that tomorrow was his twelfth birthday.

No one knew why, as with most things concerning the Natural Order, but you could only start gaining experience once you were of age, that being twelve.

Weird restriction when you actually thought about it. Maybe it was there to prevent stupid kids from going to hunt earlier than they were actually ready to, since they wouldn't actually gain any experience.

The loot could maybe be worth it though, hmmm.

The budding mage was fairly confident about being able to kill at least one Beowolf alone, so given enough time he would grow powerful enough to generate his own income from the loot Grimm dropped and maybe, a big maybe he admitted, he would be able to move out from this house and finally start something that he had yearned for ever since he had first picked up a book.

An adventure.

-/-

What woke him up the next day, as usual, was the angelic chime of Violet clanging pots together. She had always been the best cook in the household, probably due to the fact she had had to do it since she was seven years old because mother was taking care of the brood literally all the time and Nicholas, their father had left. Or been thrown out. They'd never really been cleared up about that.

Jaune was not going to bother coming down anytime soon.

Today was the day of his first hunt and, as always, he was going to manage alone. Independence had always been a quirk of intelligent people, and that was the answer he was going to stick to if anyone ever asked him why he desired to be responsible for himself at such an age.

Not that hunting Grimm alone was particularly rare. The ones that could be found close to a settlement were always ridiculously weak, due to the frequent culling they went through by the resident hero population.

It wasn't as if having someone helping would actually be beneficial to Jaune's plans. After all, the experience was divvied through how much one had contributed to killing a monster.

Thus, having his mother or, god have mercy, one of his 'eager to prove themselves' sisters with him would hardly give him a chance to actually gain levels.

So he did what everyone should do before going hunting.

Jaune Arc prepared.

Staring dully at the array of adventuring clothing he had prepared beforehand, he lamented the silly restrictions of the different classes.

A mage was unable to wear any kind of armour made from metal. That basically excluded everything his family of knights hoarded.

Oh sure, they probably had some artefact grade items in storage that any class would be able to wear, but he wasn't deluded enough to think he would ever be granted access to those.

He was a son of Arc, but not one who would be trusted with items worth enough lien to buy a mansion. It was a small consolation that his sisters had not been granted entry to the treasury either, and the oldest one, Violet, was 16!

But, maybe if he had shown that he was willing to train harder, he would have gotten the privilege already.

"Enough dwelling on the things I could have done." Shaking his head and reprimanding himself for his counterproductive thoughts, he started dressing.

Brown leather breeches, comfortable adventuring boots, cotton shirt, a hard boiled leather vest, and a plain brown hoodie.

The last things he put on were the leather vambraces he had been gifted for creating the swordsmanship skill (a great achievement for a non-melee class) and his scabbards.

One for the sword he had bought himself from a traveling merchant caravan with his pocket money. He had later found out he'd been ripped off. Figures. The other scabbard was for a dagger. Both weapons were common enough, but the most important part was that they were his.

Lifting a hand, the mage summoned an arcane bolt, its dark purple energy tinged with electric streaks of green. It swirled and unfurled above his palm, signifying that yes, he was as ready as he was ever going to be.

Of course, that was the point where his stomach expressed its displeasure at the lack of sustenance, and Jaune was forced to pull out his box of nonperishable food that he kept in his room in case he didn't feel having a prolonged interaction with his family in the dining room.

Which only happened often enough to warrant refilling the box maybe once a month. He wasn't that antisocial, was he?

After wolfing down a few winter apples Jaune walked over to his circular window, moved the numerous books blocking it to the bookshelf, and opened it. After looking out to make sure there was nobody, he threw himself out and rolled to a stop on the soft grass below.

Marvelling at the peacefulness of the forest, Jaune tried to trudge up the memories from when he had been taught how to move stealthily in a forest. That was the disadvantage of having something you could do, but not actually having the skill for it. Something you had a skill for was never going to be forgotten by the body or the mind.

Looking up, he appreciated the beauty of the sunlight falling through the thick green foliage above. The thickness meant he was maybe a mile away from the village that he lived on the outskirts of.

A sense of trepidation crawled up his spine. It meant he was far away enough to actually start encountering Grimm.

Jaune steeled himself. If there was one thing he actually wanted to have in common with his parents, it was being a good hero. And heroes never felt fear.

Who knew, maybe he would be a better hero than his parents ever were in the end.

Walking some more, he finally found a good tree to climb. Many thick branches close to the ground provided a stepping stone as he simply walked onto it, the rough bark and the uneven leather on the soles of his shoes preventing any chance of slipping.

There was one thing about Vale a lot of people who weren't of the rogue classes didn't take into account. Vale was an area almost entirely covered by thick forests and plains.

And these green monstrosities weren't small like the trees on other continents. They had been growing unperturbed for the last few millennia, meaning they were big and sturdy enough that they could be used to traverse the forests without touching the ground.

They were also the reason why heroes originating from Vale were sometimes referred to as tree-huggers.

Jaune was fairly certain the reason that hunting from the trees wasn't included in A Mage's Book on Combat was because most mages didn't have the necessary attributes to actually traverse the canopy like he was doing right now.

He guessed he did have a few things to be thankful for from his family after all. Even a magic-wielding Arc had access to training beyond what others usually received.

Jaune considered his position to be quite advantageous really; the height provided by the branches he was scrabbling on gave him the distance he needed to work his magic without any threat from the land bound Grimm inhabiting the surroundings.

And if they started climbing his tree, well, Jaune wasn't dumb enough to try some stupid last stand when he could just jump onto another tree. A glimpse of black entered his peripheral vision, making his head snap to that direction.

The Grimm was hidden in the bushes, so he couldn't make out what kind it was, but by the size, he suspected either a Beowolf or a Boarbatusk.

Time to move then. Jaune slowly climbed from branch to branch until he was in a position to see the monster. It was a Beowolf, and a pretty young one at that, apparently attacking some shrubbery.

Damn, he knew young Grimm were dumb, but seeing the thing attacking a bush like it had insulted its best friend really drove the point home.

Arcane energies started swirling over his right shoulder as an arcane bolt formed. He fired it off, the force of its propulsion ruffling his fairly messy hair even further. He immediately started casting another bolt, idly noting his reserves were half empty already. It proved to be unnecessary though.

One attack from his semblance that he was fairly proficient at with half of his mana behind it had been enough to kill the Grimm and make it start disintegrating. He used the option he had recently discovered and absorbed the spell to replenish half the energy it had cost.

Arcane bolt wasn't really a loud spell, with only some sizzling and a heavy-sounding thump once it hit a target were all the noise it made. He rather liked it. He really had gotten lucky with his semblance. It had given him an offensive spell at age nine, so he didn't have to wait to start training it like most other mages who got their first spell at level five.

Still, overly cautious from this being his first outing, he swivelled his head in all directions, looking for other Grimm attracted by the noise.

Seeing none, he jumped and somersaulted off the tree, quickly approaching the place where the Beowolf had been barely minutes ago, or had it been seconds? Time measurement while under the effect of adrenaline was always a bit wonky.

Jaune picked up a few lien pieces the thing had dropped.

Three one-lien coins, enough to buy two apples or a loaf of bread from the baker. And by the position of the sun, he assumed it had only taken him two hours. Four if you considered he was going to have to go back as well. Jaune shrugged; it was a start.

-/-

Dimensional mages have always been considered a bit of an oddity amongst the other mage subclasses. The fact that they only gain their first offensive spell at lv 15, a spell only really useful in the early stages if used in conjunction with a sword, has made the class unbelievably hard to level. And since not many mages are actually able to gain the swordsmanship skill or have the necessary statistics to use it proficiently, the combat effectiveness is dubious at best.

This, of course, means that less dimensional mages pass the combat tests doled out by prestigious hero academies such as Sanctum, meaning that they are less likely to become figures of prestige in hero circles.

In fact, in known history, there have only been five dimensional mages to have ever become well-known professional heroes. Not so coincidentally three of them had a supportive family of melee classes that taught them swordsmanship.

Dimensional mages are therefore considered subpar combat classes. They are however highly valued by any army due to their skills inventory and teleportation, that make an occurrence such as what happened at the battle of Trelavin castle highly unlikely.

But since dimensional mages are as rare as, say, champions or voidcallers, information about them is fairly scarce. As such, this concludes this portion of the book about rare magical subclasses.

Now continuing to the mainstream classes such as ice mage, known for its terrain control and...

Jaune threw his head back into his pillow and groaned. Honestly, how did anyone get so unlucky? If a luck stat existed he was fairly certain his would be a big fat zero.

He had grinded the entire week, made easier by the fact he had the offensive semblance arcane bolt. He'd killed seven Beowolves and two adolescent Nevermore. The memory of that particular day brought a grin to his face. Turns out mocking someone by flying in the sky wasn't a particularly good idea if that person could throw long range magical attacks.

His grin faded once his thoughts drifted back onto the subject of his class. It wasn't a particularly bad one per se. The problem was it had a bad reputation. Oh sure, no one could actually see his subclass; that's how it worked. He was still just Jaune Arc, Mage.

But at some point it was going to come up and make getting good quests and finding capable parties much harder.

Sighing, he thanked the heavens he actually had good prerequisites to succeed with his misfortune, having both swordsmanship already and also an offensive semblance that he had been training for three years.

Jaune knew what he had to do with the revelation of his class. He was going to have to go to his mother and, shudder, ask for harder training.

He could have asked his sisters. It was kind of embarrassing to have to go crawling back to mama after he had all but begged her to lay off the training a bit so he could concentrate on his semblance. But he had hardly known back then he would get a class that basically required swordsmanship, at least according to the book.

Jaune distantly remembered himself playing with his sisters when they were children, but then they had entered their boys-are-icky stage and the rift that had built itself between them had never really healed. That, in the end, solidified his decision to ask good old mum.

At least he knew for a fact that his mother considered it her duty to make him as well-prepared for the outside world as possible before most likely throwing his ass out at age 17.

Sighing, he righted himself and started a reluctant walk towards the study his mother resided in at this hour of the day.

After knocking, he heard a 'come in,' and so opened the door to find his mum slightly surprised that he was willingly coming to her.

"So, my mage subclass was a bit unexpected..."

-/-

Jaune lay on his bed as he was wont to do in his free time, but this time he wasn't reading one of his seemingly endless tomes or practising his semblance. No, Jaune was lamenting the fact that he had asked his mother for additional training.

He hurt in places he didn't even know he had. The pain was mostly focused on his wrists which were growing slightly thicker, his shoulders and shoulders blades which were becoming more defined and muscular, and his legs which felt like they were being attacked by an ascended fire mage.

There was one thing that had been bothering him other than the hellish training though: statistics allotment. After reaching level two he had been assigned two points in wisdom and one in Intelligence, a trend that was going to continue unless he somehow managed to change his class.

He had also gained one point he could freely distribute. The problem, of course, being he didn't know what to use the damn thing for.

Intelligence helped him regenerate the energy he used to power his spells. Wisdom on the other hand simply gave him more energy to work with.

Putting a hand to his chin, the mage wondered about a fitting metaphor, and as many men before him found his answer at the bottom of a barrel. The energy he used was a barrel, the barrel could be made bigger with wisdom. Simple.

Intelligence in this would be the fluid he guessed. So the higher the intelligence the faster the barrel would be filled.

Sounded about right.

Now a common misconception was that wisdom and intelligence affected your actual wisdom and intelligence. Which wasn't true. There were, after all, mages running around with about 120 intelligence who were still being diagnosed as mentally deficient to this day.

The only correlation classes and therefore Stats had with the general intelligence of a person was simply the fact that mages tended to read a lot. This activity naturally made them more educated and maybe one could argue smarter than melee classes.

Nodding to himself. Jaune patted himself on the back for these intricate thoughts he was having, then facepalmed since he still had to decide which stat to put his point into.

Sighing, he opened his status page and, like his mother had argued, put it into Constitution before he could change his mind.

He could still hear her words, which she said came from the 'Arc's Guideline to Being a Badass', "Constitution is the best stat simply because it lets you train more, train harder, and train better. It also is the stat most suited for survivability and you know what they say, living to see another day where you can grow stronger is a victory in itself."

Jaune agreed, but... didn't mages put their points into Intelligence and wisdom to be better spell casters? But he would have to fight with a sword in the early levels, that's what dimensional mages did! But he had an offensive semblance powered by the energy that wisdom heightened!

Noting a chance of his head exploding if he continued to think about this dilemma he ceased all thinking by smacking his head against the wall and started rifling through the leather satchel he had started taking on his hunts after the first day.

After all, it was always a good idea to have some food, water, and bandages with you if you were going out to kill eldritch abominations whose only purpose in life was to kill the human species. Which he coincidentally belonged to.

He had also used it to gather the loot.

It wasn't much, Jaune noted as he spread it on the rough wooden floor of his room. A few lien. He couldn't bring himself to put them into his coin pouch. After all, they had been looted from the corpses of his defeated enemies. Didn't that make them special somehow?

A Beowolf mask, now this was actually a fairly rare drop. The item, of course, was of inferior quality since it came from a young Beowolf, but it should still raise someone physical stats by a small amount if one wore it. The problem being that you would slowly go insane and start lusting after human flesh, in a bad way, if you wore it too long.

The only ones who could wear it without any risk were mind mages, a class distrusted about as much as rogues, thieves. and assassins. Running around wearing the faces of humanity's greatest enemies probably didn't particularly help them either.

Jaune decided he would keep it anyway. Better being slightly insane and alive than dead. After all, a few stats can save lives… No, he corrected himself, have saved lives.

The last items were a few generic feathers from the two Nevermores he'd 360-no-scoped. Not really useful for much else than decoration and fletching for arrows. More valuable as decoration though, rare due to the fact Grimm dissolved after death.

There was always a bit of a weird fascination circling around the Grimm: what were they, why did they hate humanity, and so on. So naturally, Grimm paraphernalia was sometimes in high demand. Only by NPCs (Non-Professional Combatants) though. Hero classes, after all, could just hunt their own trophies.

Jaune picked up the feathers, stood up, and dusted himself off. He was sure they would fetch a few lien from the village's merchants and the price wouldn't change much if he waited. Might as well go sell them now.

Walking on the dirt-trodden path from his family home towards the beaten-down village of Aschen was always an interesting experience. A family of heroes was naturally wealthy, and the village wasn't. The difference in the architecture was immense, since while anyone could build a house, an architect was definitely going to do a better job.

It was a conundrum many people faced, born into a class you did not enjoy and being basically forced into living out the job anyway simply due to the fact you were almost unable to gain the skills necessary to work in your favoured job.

These people were losers, this Jaune had decided after he had gained his swordsmanship skill.

He wasn't suited for it, or maybe he was, genetically, but he had still managed to get it through simple hard work. People who dreamed of things that weren't easy for them, yet did nothing to actually achieve what they wished for, were... he wouldn't say subpar, but Jaune just really couldn't stand their unjustified whining.

Walking past the village gates, he felt a prick of resentment when the villagers took one look at him and started whispering.

The relationship between heroes and NPCs wasn't all that great, especially on the outskirts where the heroes sometimes weren't able to save everybody.

Jaune ignored them like he always did and headed towards the blacksmith.

The shop was empty, as usual. Emmon wasn't really someone who manned the shop much; he rather preferred hammering away at his creations incessantly.

Jaune walked behind the shop and towards the sound of metal clanging on metal. The heat from the forge hit him like a brick in the face once he opened the door to the smithy.

The man didn't notice. He never did, too sunk into his work to take care of his surroundings. Which was maybe the reason he was still unmarried and childless at age 51 despite being the highest level blacksmith in a radius of miles.

"Jaune, what brings you here?" Too sunken into his thoughts to notice the stopping of the loud noise, the young mage almost flinched, but managed to control himself.

A wry grin settled on his face.

"Ah you know, finally started using the sword I bought. Even if it isn't seeing much use I still wanted to buy some things to repair it if it was ever necessary."

"Ah, you're finally twelve then?" It was a rhetorical question. Emmon scratched his scruffy brown beard speckled with grey. "Yeah, I have some whetstones lying around. Could give them to you for the usual hero discount since you're actually going out and killing some beasties now."

His eyes sharpened. Some would say the man's shrewd intelligence was due to the fact blacksmiths had high intelligence to better remember different metals and stuff. Jaune just attributed it to the fact the man had travelled much of the world searching out the greatest blacksmiths for their wisdom.

"But lad, aren't you a mage? Why are you hitting them with a sword?" Did he sound worried?

Jaune tilted his head. Revealing his subclass wasn't something he was going to do anytime soon. "You know, after all the work that went into learning swordsmanship it didn't feel right to not use it to rid the world of some monsters."

The man bellowed, "HAH, a man after my own heart! What use is working on something if the end result is useless? And there is no better feeling than smacking a good sword against the empty head of a young Beowolf."

Emmon turned around and rummaged through one of the piles of his disorganised tools. After a few seconds he emerged unscathed and triumphant, holding a whetstone.

Throwing it to the mage he said a few last words, already turning back to the forge. "You get this one for free, and remember to come to me first if you ever get some boarbatusk tusks. Now off with you. I've got work to do."

Unbothered by the short exchange, Jaune left after saying a final goodbye. He headed towards the general store where the only other male hero in the village resided.

The dreaded general store.

Most villages on the outskirts didn't have Alchemists from whom you could buy potions directly, no adventurers' guild where you could relatively cheaply buy skill books… relatively because the worst ones still cost ten thousand Lien.

Merchants who owned stores usually stockpiled these items just so they could fleece heroes who had no other choice but to buy the items at an often ridiculously inflated price. "Oh, your friend is bleeding out due to an Ursa strike he took to protect some villagers? Sorry, I really can't sell this potion for less than a thousand lien."

There was a reason merchants were the most reviled class amongst heroes. Every other class produced something. The merchants simply hoarded money.

At some point a few decades ago a band of heroes had even been declared rogue because they had refused to help a merchant who was being mauled by a Beowolf.

Jaune didn't really consider the fact he might have been indoctrinated by a family who by the virtue of being knights reviled anyone who was dishonourable.

Because of this, he entered the store of the Albrechts with trepidation.

Just to be greeted by the gap-toothed smile of a little girl who couldn't be older than seven. She recited a clearly often-repeated line. "Welcome to Albrecht's General Store, where you will find everything you need for your day-to-day life."

Jaune's eyes narrowed and his mind sharpened to a point like it always did before a fight. "Can you go get your mother or your older sister, Susie?"

Susie pouted at this and stomped up the stairs, muttering about how no one wanted to do business with her.

Not doing business with anyone of the NPC classes below age twelve was a common courtesy though. Classes like merchant, for example, could only gain experience from, well, mercantile activities.

Oh sure they could still pick up a sword and try to kill some monsters, but before that ever happened humanity would have probably conquered the seven spires, ended racism, and created a contraption that could cure death. Highly unlikely.

"Jaune, what can I do for you." The owner of the store ripped him out of his musings. Despite the name Albrecht's General Store, the proprietor was a good-looking middle aged woman. Albrecht had been her father.

The young mage noted the way she put on a heartwarming smile, bent down a little to be eye level to him, and revealed some of her cleavage at the same time.

He couldn't help but blush and stammer a bit. Noticing he was making a fool of himself, he stopped, closed his eyes, breathed in, and calmed himself.

When he opened them he met her amused ones again and tried to properly articulate what he needed. "I, uh, need a health potion and a man- I mean energy-restoring one."

Damnit.

He'd stuttered and almost used a word a merchant would have no way of knowing. Mana after all was a fairly new word an archmage from Vacuo had suggested after noticing that using the sentence, 'the energy we use to power our spells,' was a bit tedious.

Jaune had even heard they were trying to create a measurement unit for it. He didn't have many illusions about them actually managing that feat but he couldn't dispute it would be useful.

"Sadly we don't have any energy potions on stock, but I think I can part with my last health potion for maybe…" She tapped a finger to her chin as if thinking. "...three hundred Lien."

Jaune almost gaped. A health potion, a minor one in this case, could be acquired from the alchemist guild for maybe 75 Lien. The worst part was that she was going easy on him due to the fact he was young and a local.

"I've only been hunting for maybe a week. I can only give a hundred if I actually want to afford any other equipment."

Jude put on a sad face at that and shook her head. "Sorry, but I can only part with the potion for two hundred if I want to make a profit." A blatant lie.

After concluding the trade that had drained half of his funds he asked her where her son Raynold was. At that, she simply shrugged and told him he was hunting and that she would tell him he was looking for him.

-/-

"I've heard you were looking for me, Jauney." The words broke Jaune from his slumber in the meadow right next to the general store.

Opening his eyes blearily, he was greeted by the slightly-too-round face of Raynold, the fourteen-year-old warrior hovering over him like some kind of demented sun.

He cringed involuntarily at the nickname. Damn, the more he reacted to it, the longer it would persist. Jaune sighed.

"I guess you could say that." A yawn escaped his mouth, which he managed to cover with the back of his hand. "Was just wondering if you also thought we should party up now that I'm of age."

Raynold grinned, his brown eyes almost twinkling." Why, I thought you'd never ask."