Chapter 2

Reaching level five as a mage was the first great milestone. After all, if you didn't have an offensive semblance you had no spells at all, which made the climb substandard to say the least. Most mages picked up some skills with the bow just for this occasion, others got power-levelled by friends or family, and finally, the richest of the rich simply bought a skill book.

Jaune had never really considered how much he had lucked out with his arcane bolt. Well, now he had, and he was almost ashamed of how easy the dreaded level five had been for him.

Only almost though. Nothing to be ashamed of if you used unfairness to be a good hero.

After partying up with Raynold, his hunting speed had quadrupled. Raynold had told him his had tripled. Quite an amazing effect that having one other person with you was.

Jaune and Raynold sometimes didn't get along because of their personalities, the warrior being stereotypically brash, easy to excite, and quick to anger, while the younger mage was more tranquil and calm.

Well, as tranquil and calm as a twelve-year-old could get. Only eight more months until he was thirteen! The birthday in itself wasn't what was important to him, but the fact that he would be one year closer to being able to go to Beacon: the premier academy for heroes on the whole continent.

Walking behind Ray, he ogled the armour the warrior had newly bought from Emmon. It wasn't anything fancy, just standard equipment a young hero could afford. Shoulder pads, greaves, arm braces, and a chestplate. Nothing special, just effective.

Since the melee fighter only used a sword, his defence against Grimm stronger than him was fairly lacking. He could hardly parry a strike from an enraged Ursa after all... Not that they had met one yet. They had hunted mostly Beowolves and some Boarbatusks.

Well, the point was that now he had a higher durability with his armour. Although Jaune wasn't sure if it was economical the way his companion used it. Trading a hit onto your chest for a stab into the face was a fairly effective tactic, but it sure dented the chestplate fast.

Ray had complained more than once about how much it was costing him. It had set him back to the amount he had earned before partying with Jaune! The boy in question had consoled the moping teen with the fact the experience they were getting was noticeably higher.

"See you later Jaune!" They had arrived at a crossing on the edge of the Grimm-infested forest. Ray lived in the village, Jaune in the outskirts of it.

"See you!" He was too far away to hear him. Damn, that probably didn't help Ray's opinion of him.

Jaune had noticed that every time points were put into wisdom, his thoughts became slightly more fleeting, tumbling like a children's toy in a hurricane. Losing yourself in your thoughts could become a terrifying reality.

Every class had their dangers, some more pronounced than others.

Arriving in his backyard, Jaune prepared himself to do what he hated doing most. Making a decision.

At level five you could finally pick a skill which was dependent on your subclass of mage. The part that for him sucked though, was the fact that since dimensional mage was such an obscure subclass, there was no documented skill tree for them.

Fire mages, being the most common type of magic wielders, had entire books dedicated to what the best skill to unlock at a certain time was, how to best use your points, and what equipment suited you best at which level.

Fucking casuls.

No time to dawdle. Might as well see what choices he had. Jaune closed his eyes and let the knowledge that had been waiting for him since the level up flow into him.

Dimensional comprehension.

Inventory.

He spent more than half an hour comprehending the information dumped into his brain and another half an hour summarizing it to a reasonable length. Jaune started rubbing his temples in preparation for the headache that usually came when you spent so long in the trance.

"I guess there is a good side to wisdom," he muttered to himself. The pain wasn't nearly as intense as he thought it would be.

So basically, inventory was a skill that would let him create a dimensional pocket where he could dump all his stuff. The size was dependent on his expertise. Dimensional comprehension, however, was a passive skill that would give him a sixth sense of sorts, the ability to understand dimensions on an instinctive level.

While he was tempted to pick inventory simply for the reason that he could keep the horde of items he had been collecting since he could remember as close as possible, intellectually he knew that dimensional comprehension was the better choice. Only an idiot would not notice the fact that having an instinctive understanding of space would be helpful for somebody who used spatial magic.

He promptly informed the natural order of his choice. Hesitation only lead to doubts after all, and what was the point of delaying the pain of getting several books of knowledge shoved directly into your brain?

A minute after the slight headache that occurred while his body adapted to the 'instinctive' knowledge, Jaune finally managed to normalize his breathing from the rapid wheezes he had been forced to take.

"Well, that wasn't that bad," he muttered.

That's when vertigo hit him and he was thrown to his knees, only barely managing to avoid giving the ground a lasting impression of his face by throwing out his arms. Stomach gurgling, Jaune had but a second before a literal waterfall of bile escaped his stomach and hit the ground between his hands.

Loud gasps for breath resounded through the clearing with momentary interludes of acidic fluid hitting the grass. After a while, Jaune had no more contents to spew out, so his increasingly weak and shaky body contented itself with simply retching on nothing.

The world was spinning, and not in a metaphorical sense. Jaune literally felt the way the planet under him spun, so fast was it he was afraid he would be thrown off any time now. Flashing lights and impending darkness at the edges of his eyes gave him enough warning that he managed, as his last conscious act, to swivel his head so that he wouldn't land nose first in the bile.

His body gave out on him, his mind flickered, and a wet splat resounded through the clearing.

-/-

The first thing that hit him when he started regaining consciousness was the smell, the pungent smell of puke mixed with earth tickling his nostrils like a particularly offensive feather.

The second thing that Jaune noticed was the fact that the world was spinning. Still, well, he didn't as much feel the world spinning like a demented ballerina as he felt his personal coordinates spin through existence in a circular motion.

The vertigo hit him again. Noticeably weaker than the first time, still strong enough that if he had tried to stand up earlier, he would have just fallen face first into his puke again.

Jaune rolled himself onto his back, coincidentally putting the back of his head onto a place one normally wouldn't want to.

The mage couldn't really make himself give a shit at the moment, too busy trying to come to terms with what the fu- ...hell was going on.

This must be due to the skill. He knew that acquiring extrasensory skills led to severe disorientation sometimes, but he'd never read about anyone getting knocked unconscious.

Jaune let the gentle wind caress his shaky body, ignoring the feeling of his clothes clinging to him because of the sweat. Listening to the soft rustling of the leaves as the wind swept through them, he finally managed to relax.

He focused on his newly acquired sense. He felt the way he, as an object made of meat, blood, and magic, spun around an invisible axis at frankly quite frightening speeds. The fear of falling off of Remnant slowly settled as it became obvious such a thing was not going to happen anytime soon. What a relief.

Once he was able to somehow ignore the most powerful new stimuli, he moved onto other things, like the fact that he felt the mana that was in his body and the effect it had on the dimensions(?) around him. His pupils dilated at the sudden understanding about what his mana was doing to his surroundings.

It was threading itself through time, slowing it. He knew that magic users had a habit of living just as long as their vitality-laden counterparts, which didn't make much sense when you put any amount of thought into it.

Well, now he had the answer. Sure, at his level, it wasn't much. Maybe in eighty years of life, he would gain one more month, but he was someone who had only started really being a mage four months ago. He couldn't help but wonder how much additional time ascended mages gained.

"Wait, if I can feel the mana inside my body, can I also feel it once it leaves the body?"

Furrowing his brows, Jaune threw a very weak arcane bolt at a nearby tree and would have shouted in wonder if he hadn't still had a very hoarse voice due to the puking. He had felt the way the arcane bolt travelled through the air! He hadn't been able to feel it before, making the act of manually controlling it quite hard, if manageable with lots of practice.

Now he felt as if he could make the thing do a small jig as it travelled to its target. He created another bolt but held onto it this time. Slowly he managed to turn the naturally round shape of his semblance into a triangle. Well, more of a misshapen ball, but still.

Concentrating fully now, he fired the attack at a fairly thin tree. Due to many hours of practice, his aim was perfect, going directly to the middle of the thing, but he swerved the bolt to the left, making it miss its target by a fraction and hit the tree behind the first one.

Jaune grinned like a madman. Before his new sense, he'd only managed to change the trajectory by maybe half as much. Greedy for even more good news, he brought the skill description forward in his mind.

Dimensional comprehension (passive)

Understand what is there and what isn't. The hidden things are revealed while the obvious is made more obscure.

His grin faltered a bit. It wasn't a skill that you could rank up like his two other skills.

The lowest rank was neophyte, closely followed by novice and so on until reaching the highest rank of grandmaster. Jaune was pretty proud of the fact that he was a novice in swordsmanship and that his semblance had the very high rank (relatively) of apprentice, the third lowest rank being fairly hard to reach without putting a lot of work into it.

Or just half-assedly using the skill for maybe ten years. That would make it to apprentice rank as well.

Rumours said you needed to have at least one skill at journeyman if you wanted to enter Beacon. How they determined your proficiency was, however, a mystery. Probably some kind of artefact.

Well, now that he had access to a new skill it was time to try to find out everything about it. You didn't receive all the information pertinent to it after all.

Jaune then remembered he was lying in his own bile in drenched clothes and that he hadn't eaten anything for, by the position of the sun, twelve hours.

Maybe he should take care of that first.

-/-

A loud slap resounded through the clearing as another one of Jaune's formerly filthy clothes was thrown into a bucket after being scrubbed thoroughly.

"This is taking way too long," the mage mumbled as he washed the last article, his woolen shirt which had gotten the most of the unpleasant fluids spewn onto it. His raw hands suddenly spasmed, releasing the shirt, and it rapidly started being drawn away by the current.

He threw his head back, looking at the green canopy above him. The soft blubbering of the small river he was standing in mocked him with its apparent cheerfulness.

"For fuck's sake." He really was developing into a potty-mouth. But he couldn't help it. Cursing just felt so gooood.

By the position of the sun, he still had a few hours until sunset, his curfew. But delays were always possible, especially in a place that was far enough from the village that Grimm were always a threat.

"Fuck it. My mana is full, the Grimm around here are weak. What's the worst that could happen?" Maybe getting frowned at by mum for missing curfew. He was sure he would find a way to deal with her disappointment somehow.

Clad in only his pants, the only article of clothing other than his shoes that had gotten away unscathed from the incident he was never ever going to talk about, he started a slow trek alongside the river.

There was an outcropping of rocks in the water not too far from here. His shirt had probably caught itself on them and if not, it was just a shirt.

The occasional wind made his wet upper body shiver. Him having a strong and wiry frame didn't really help against the cold. Muttering under his breath, he finally reached the place where rocks jutted out of the river like the tooth of a particularly malformed elder dragon Grimm.

And lo and behold his shirt was there. In the middle of the most rapid current, of course. Throwing his head back again, Jaune wondered who he had offended to get this kind of day. The joy of finding out how much more useful his semblance was with his new skill already faded due to having to wash disgusting clothes.

"No sense in delaying." Jaune pulled off his shoes and socks, but kept his pants on, and then started wading through the water towards his property. The sharp stones at the bottom of the river occasionally cut his feet, making him curse as random intervals. Maybe he should have kept his boots on.

Finally, having reached the shirt, he plucked it from the rock and looked at it. There was a big hole in the chest area. Nothing some sewing couldn't fix, but still annoying. Well, better a shirt with a hole than no shirt at all. He only had six, after all.

He suddenly sensed something on the edge of his range with his new skill, a disturbance in the fabric? He didn't know what to call it.

Jaune moved towards, making it fall entirely into his range, and now he could understand what it was.

It was a hole in reality.

And it was underwater. In the middle of the river, where the water was the deepest.

Sighing, he moved towards the thing and stuck his head under water to maybe catch a glimpse of whatever it was.

He opened his eyes when his head was entirely beneath the water, and saw what appeared to be a cave. The moment he saw it, he couldn't help but breathe in surprise, and had to resurface, sputtering on the water that had found its way into his nose.

"Holy fuck!"

A dungeon, here!

Dungeons were some of the most sought after things by people holding the hero classes, or anyone who wanted a lot of experience and loot. They provided double the experience you would normally get by killing the monsters within, and always had a special item at the end.

They were also something meant for full adventuring parties, no sense in getting too excited, he thought to himself.

The information would still sell for a bit and Jaune wasn't deluded enough to think he and Raynold could even remotely conquer it alone. Raynold would probably try, saying something stupid like,"What is the point of being a warrior if you're as cautious as a rogue?"

Best to keep it to himself then.

Another revelation suddenly hit him like a brick to the face.

He could feel dungeon entrances.

Had all the other dimensional mages before him been able to do so as well? If so, why hadn't they gone public with it? They would have instantly raised the class from its obscurity and low key derision into the ranks of legends.

But anyone who actually enjoyed adventuring would never do that after putting at least some thought into it… If a government or a powerful guild found out about it, you could kiss your freedom goodbye. It was always the needs of the many above the needs of the few in the world they lived in.

Best case scenario the mage would become a respected member of any guild he wanted to join and would lead it to great heights.

Worst case scenario, cast in chains and paraded through the continent, searching out dungeons to help level the heroes of the particular organization that captured you. Your freedom was gone. Probably milked like some livestock in a hope that your children would inherit your class.

Jaune pulled himself out of the river and huddled between the roots of a nearby oak, almost hyperventilating.

Jaune remembered something he had read not a long time ago about his class. Three of the four most famous heroes who had possessed it had been women.

"Fuck."

-/-

The fact that dimensional mages could find dungeons changed everything, upturned every single plan Jaune had made on his development. He let his head hit the rough bark behind him and watched the slowly setting sun.

If any organizations knew about this ability there was no way they would make it public knowledge. As much as humanity was at war with the Grimm and the other creatures inhabiting dungeons, it was also at war with itself.

So he couldn't know if there was some group of people on the lookout for any young dimensional mages who had not learned teleport yet, which was what made the holders of this class particularly hard to pin down.

Best to be cautious then.

Information and fear were swirling through his mind so fast he couldn't think. It was time to go home. As he walked away from the rocky section of the river, Jaune saw, or felt the dungeon disappear from the edge of his senses. Having a new sense was weird. Grammatically and practically.

One thing was clear. He would need to find out what kind of dungeon it was. The chance of it being the weakest variant, a permanent one, was fairly high. It was, after all, located in a remote place where people didn't really have much reason to go to.

As he picked up the bucket with the rest of his clothes and headed home, he continued to think about the issue at hand. The dungeon, IF it was a permanent one, IF he could complete it with Raynold, could throw him ahead of the curve very heavily. He could make sure that if people ever found out about his ability, or if they already knew about it, found out about him being a dimensional mage, he would at least be strong enough to defend himself.

Or in the worst case, escape.

Jaune turned his head to the night sky one last time that day.

"...Fuck."