Chapter 37: Never Tell Me The Odds

It was three o'clock in the night and I was currently locked deep amidst a battle of intense inner turmoil. After getting back to my apartment and slipping into my Inner World, I'd managed to finally experience sleep since getting Katayoki. But, all that amounted to was time skipping forward by a few hours.

With all my powers and the energies coursing through my body — not to mention the fact that I'd spent most of the day leading up to this by relaxing and hanging out with Velvet's team instead of training myself to exhaustion — I woke up feeling as rested and ready to start my day as possible… a little under two hours past midnight.

Feeling bored, I went through my options before settling on accepting all the Gacha I'd been holding onto. That, in turn, led up to the big question I'd been deliberating over for the past hour or so: Do I, or do I not, accept the Mythical Cursed Gacha?

My immediate thought upon considering that was to smash my head against the ground for even thinking about it. But, the gambling addict in me didn't give up without a fight. It argued, rather convincingly I might add, that plenty of negative Gacha pulls had gone a long way in helping me out.

An Item or Summon didn't necessarily have to be brought into the world, while a Scenario could be accepted at my convenience. The only potentially disastrous result would be if the Cursed Gacha gave me another literal Curse like that Annoyance of the Gacha Gods I'd already suffered once.

Cursed Gacha also didn't necessarily mean I would get the highest Mythical Rarity result, but the potential for getting something with a score less than -1,000,000 was terror-inducing. Should I risk it? What are the odds again? One in seven to get the Mythical Rarity, multiplied again by one in four to get a Curse — instead of an Item, Summon or Scenario/Mision; it was impossible to get a Skill, Ability or Perk through Cursed Gacha.

So, one in twenty-eight for the absolute worst case possible…

"God, I'm so stupid…" I accepted reality for what it was and did as I was wont to do.

[Results: Rarity — Mythical -1,175,321 | Daily Dose of Catastrophe (Curse - Gacha)]

"Are you fucking…" I sucked in a deep breath and slowly let out an exhale that must have lasted over a minute.

This was bad, but it was nowhere near the worst thing I could think of for a Mythical Curse. Unfortunately, while this Curse was not a one-and-done thing like the Annoyance of the Gacha Gods and would probably stay with me for the rest of my life — assuming there wasn't some Gacha bullshit somewhere that allowed me to get rid of it — the effect was pretty tame.

Once a day I would be forced into accepting the lowest Rarity Scenario or Mission I had in my reserves. This would happen randomly, so it could be one second after midnight, one second before the next day started or any time in between.

I could preempt this by taking on any negative Scenario or Mission, but that would only delay the inevitable as purposefully not doing the worst Scenario would lower the randomness of when the Curse struck to eventually forcing it to happen before I could accept a lesser evil right after midnight.

So, kind of a raw deal, but not in the immediate sense. That being said, I really really didn't want to find out what an almost Legendary Negative Scenario would entail without being able to blow up entire countries instead of just mountains. So, I looked through my list of potential Scenarios and Missions before realizing that I didn't have any other Negative Scenarios.

Uh oh.

But wait! I still had a bunch of other Gacha to potentially push back whatever insanity I had waiting for me at Brockton Bay. So, I accepted all my other Gacha and started questioning my sanity once again as I hoped for a Negative Mission or Scenario more than anything else.

[Results: Rarity — Unique 4,444 | Iaido (Skill - Generic)]

[Results: Rarity — Unique 6,667 | Monochrome Endowment (Ability - RWBY)]

[Results: Rarity — Unique 8,879 | Stolen Valor (Ability - RWBY)]

[Results: Rarity — Epic 22,821 | Emotional Resonance (Ability - RWBY)]

[Results: Rarity — Epic -76,581 | Summer's Ruin (Mission - RWBY)]

[Results: Rarity — Legendary -999,633 | Mankind's First Extinction (Mission - RWBY Canon)]

I nearly choked after accepting and rerolling the Legendary Meta Gacha Coin I got from "Facilitating Salem's Death." The one Meta Coin gave me two Legendary Cursed Coins and one of them made my predicament with my newest Curse ten times worse quite literally.

I nearly burst a blood vessel when I heard Katayoki break out into an unrestrained fit of laughter at my misfortune. That imbecile! Did he not know the situation we were in?! We went from being forced to face an almost Legendary Bad Scenario to and almost Mythical Bad Scenario!

"We're fucked!" I shouted, not caring if anyone might have heard me. Though, nobody could with how well my new apartment was soundproofed and insulated, not to mention isolated from most of the other people in the building.

"No we're not," Katayoki snorted. "Just work your way up to the most dangerous Scenarios and take your time building up as much power as possible while you're in the positive ones. You have Directives to tell you what it is you need to resolve a Scenario, so just, I don't know, put that aside until you've done everything you can in the simulated Scenario or Mission to get bonus Gachas. Even if you didn't do all that, remember you have Fast Travel Points to escape from any bad spots."

"Ugh, why can't you be less sarcastic and annoying? I'd be more appreciative of your genuinely good advice if it didn't come with all that sass," I grumbled.

"Hey, I don't know if you know this, but you're talking to yourself here, buddy. You and me are part of the same whole, capiche?"

"This is exactly what I'm talking about," I mumbled to myself before giving up on him.

I took a second to appreciate the rest of the "good" pulls from this round of Gacha around and… Yeah, my luck was still trudging through the lowest of lows. Literally, the only good pulls I'd received were the nonstandard Gachas I'd been holding onto by the wayside.

Beating Adam Taurus for a second time gave me the Iaido Skill, which would pair nicely with my preferred method of fighting when modified to be used for my knife throwing. While all my other new Abilities had come from learning Aura techniques from Ruby.

Monochrome Endowment was a unique application of my Semblance that worked by extending Aura Channeling into anything I touched. This would permanently shut people's Semblances down for a time or make it so any weapons that I embued with the endowment achieved the same effect.

Stolen Valor was even more ridiculous as it let me steal more than just the "light of (people's) souls" with either my Semblance or anything affected by Monochrome Endowment. Now, I could subsume memories, experiences, and even their appearances. Everything I stole, I would lose over the same period it took for my soul to dim down to normal, but I could still retain a lot of useful information if I made the effort to memorize it; add in Learning, the Sharingan and my Shadow Clones, and the Ability basically had no more potential drawbacks.

Then there was Emotional Resonance which was just a fancy way of saying "Berserking," but for Aura. Basically, I could use my emotions to amplify my Aura potency, with stronger emotions making for a more potent Aura. I had no idea how high I could amplify my Aura, but even a two or three-times boost would go a long way in helping me face whatever lay behind "Mankind's First Extinction."

"Alright, enough bullshiting around," I smacked the sides of my face to pump myself up before accepting the lowest Rarity Mission I had available; The Battle of Beacon.

Reality warped around me and in the blink of an eye I found myself exactly where I'd been before accepting the Mission, only through the windows of my luxury penthouse suite I could see that the city was being ravaged by a stampede of Grimm.

Directives filled in the blanks where I would have been confused. This Mission posited the following: What if I had not been around to stop Cinder from stealing Amber's powers the first time we met? What if I never ran into her until all her plans for Vale had been set in motion and managed to come to fruition?

Apparently, the answer was that Team CEM would orchestrate this massive attack on the city, the Amity Colessum where the site of the Vytal Festival — a very culturally important and famous festival that was organized every two years — would take place nearly a whole year in the future, as well as Beacon itself. Team CEM would bring in Grimm and the White Fang to make their attack as catastrophic as possible.

The way to resolve this Mission was to contain the damage to the kingdom as much as possible until Cinder inevitably retreated from the chaos she would be leaving Vale in. The Directives were vague, but in this simulation, Cinder would eventually be dealt a devastating blow from someone or a collective effort and forced to retreat even though she has the Fall Maiden powers.

Now, I could just stick to Vale and personally waste all my time trying to single-handedly take out all the forces invading the city. But, to be honest, if I could sustain a thousand Shadow Clones, individually, they'd each probably be strong enough to make an impact by themselves.

So, instead of just minding myself to my predestined task, I decided to head straight for the source. I still ended up making around twenty Shadow Clones to clean out the invaders in the city — there was no sense in leaving any Gacha on the table from killing Grimm or defeating members of the White Fang even if they only amount to Rare Gacha at best.

When I got to Beacon, the whole place was in ruins. Also, there were a bunch of Atlesian robots that were waging an offensive against the school. After a minute or so of clearing everything out at the entrance, I hacked one of the mostly intact robots and found out they had been hacked into following an overwritten subroutine.

"Lapis!" Velvet's familiar voice called out to me and I could sense her as she ran directly toward me. She… wasn't stopping and, in fact, did not stop until she full-on tackled me into a hug which I spun back with as I let her kiss me.

Holy shit, is this what our relationship might become in a year's time? My little timid and shy Velvet turning into this shameless and fierce woman? There were people watching, including the rest of her teammates! Oh well, might as well take advantage of this simulation and indulge; when in Rome and all that other nonsense.

"Hello to you too," I grinned at her.

"What's the situation? Where can we help?" Like a flip had switched, the moment Velvet broke away from the kiss, she was all business. It was honestly very appealing, the way she was looking to me for a way to help out.

"Well, so far, seven of the twenty Shadow Clones I left in Vale have popped to let me know pretty much half the city has been cleared of all invading Grimm. The ones left over should soon be done with clearing the rest, so there's only Beacon itself, the Amity Colosseum and the airspace to take care of. You wanna go take back the school?"

When she nodded back seriously, I beamed, "Great!" I shouted out to everyone present, "Then let's take back Beacon!"

Some people were clearly riding on adrenaline as they let out war cries and shouts of affirmation before following me into the smoldering ruins of their former school. I made four more clones to stick with the four main groups that split off and provided support for them while I hung around back and began fishing for information.

First and foremost, I made my way over to Jaune.

"Hello there," I said, abusing my Stealth and various means of being unnoticeable to ambush him.

"Gah!" Jaune nearly tripped on his ass but managed to catch himself and only stumble slightly backward. "Don't do that!" He demanded.

"Hmm? Taking back to your dear old teacher, are we? Careful, I might just take revenge on the real you that's waiting for me once I'm done here," I said cryptically. To him at least, it must have been the ramblings of a madman.

"What?" He was confused, as he should be.

"Never mind," I waved his concerns away, "Anyway, tell me, how have you been? What have you been up to since you got into Beacon?"

He opened his mouth but failed to speak as I lashed out with a punch that obliterated the Boarbatusk that had been intent on charging into the both of us after demolishing the wall to our right.

"Oh," I looked at my hand and the damage it had done, "Right, why am I even asking? You probably don't know me since we never would have come into contact if Cinder had gotten the Maiden powers the first go around."

I sighed, "Still… It seems like a waste to just not get anything out of this, so could you take out that group Grimm currently charging at us? I'll back you up, but it'd be great to have an approximation for what you should have ended up as, combat-wise anyway."

It took a moment for my words to register before Jaune snapped his head in the direction I mentioned and scrambled to defend himself from a group of two Ursa Minor, three common Beowolves and a pair of Alpha of each species.

As it turned out, Jaune didn't need my help to take down the group. He didn't take them down either, but he did play decent defense and support for the two other people traveling with his group. At the very least, he had enough experience to not take any damage while working as part of a team.

Unfortunately, for being a simulated version of a complete newbie who had half a damn year to train at Beacon, he was severely lacking in my eyes. Why, if I had my way he'd be better than this in the real version of Remnant in less than a month!

If that sounded crazy, it became markedly less so when I considered that every two days of being subjected to my torture was equivalent to around a month of "normal" physical training. After ten more dedicated days of physical training, I'd unlock his Aura and he'd theoretically be as fit as he was in this simulated reality. By then, it would only be a matter of his martial talent to figure out how quickly he could get used to fighting and picking up techniques.

My eyes narrowed as I sensed Adam Taurus' Ki signature well within my Ki Sense range. He'd actually been in it long before I set foot on any part of Beacon's campus, but only now had I connected it to the man considering how odd it was.

Ki signatures tended to remain static no matter what happened, but for whatever reason his was sharper and wilder than I recalled. It was still undeniably him, but difficult to connect the dots along the same vein that it would take even a parent a good look before recognizing their child if they were out of their lives for a long time.

Irritated by the thought of having to deal with him yet again, I slipped away from Jaune's group and made my way over to Adam. When I got within earshot, I could hear him monologuing to the other person in the room.

"...Will make it my mission to destroy everything you love," I could hear Adam say as I walked into the burning and ransacked room.

"Blake! Blake, where are you?!" A voice yelled out from outside the building.

"Starting with her," Adam said as he dramatically raised his red blade and prepared to execute the woman who had been lying helplessly on the floor.

"Hey asshole!" I called out to him as I brought out my knife and held it down by my side.

"Tch," Adam clicked his tongue as he brought his blade down and away from the downed woman and adopted the same stance as me. "Die!" He shouted as he drew out his blade with textbook Iaido form and launched a hypersonic cutting edge at me.

Unfortunately for him, I did the same thing right back with my knife as I threw it at him. As I was significantly stronger and faster than him, my knife cut through the flying edge, his blade, and his heart like a hot knife through butter even if his technique was leagues ahead of mine.

[Congratulations! For killing Adam Taurus, you have earned a Locked Unique Gacha Coin!]

Now, I wasn't sure if it was because I was in Mission/Scenario or if I was genuinely just this apathetic, but I felt absolutely nothing from killing the man. Maybe it'd be different if I knew there was no coming back from this in the real world, but I had the distinct feeling that it wouldn't.

"Here, drink this to recover your Aura," I handed the woman a potion as I touched her exposed arm and flooded her body with Healing Magic.

"Get away from her!" A blond woman with long hair came rushing at me from a hole on the wall leading to the outside.

Completely uncaring about the tremendous amount of momentum she must be carrying while propelling herself towards me with… what looked like shotgun blasts from her gauntlets, I gently waved the potion for the downed woman to take, which she scrambled to do so. Then a split second before the blond connected her punch to my jaw, a completely opaque black plate of Aura appeared between us.

It sounded like a bomb had gone off in the building as my ears rang for a couple moments afterward. During those precious moments when my sense of hearing was discombobulated, the two women on either side of me looked just as uncomprehending.

"Aura Shield," I said — or mouthed, I couldn't really tell.

When the chaos going on elsewhere on Beacon was audible again, I told the blond woman, "Don't do that again. Next time I won't cushion the blow with Aura and let you take the full brunt of it against my Hierro." If that happened, it would be like she didn't have Aura to begin with and punched a meter-thick barrier of solid steel.

I let go of the black-haired woman — Oh, hey, look she has cat ears — after feeling her body reject any more healing and asked, "Are you good?"

"I… Yeah," she picked herself up and activated her own black aura before adding, "I'm good." She looked at Adam's corpse wistfully before tearing her eyes away and saying, "Let's go."

I nodded and followed them until we regrouped with one of the four groups currently retaking the school. With my Shadow Clones, we secured Beacon in less than half an hour and it only took that long because I didn't go out of my way to just kill everything myself.

No, I was too busy internally debating whether or not I wanted to take advantage of this Mission to get more than several tens of thousands of Unique and below Grade Gacha Coins. I mean, with Vale and Beacon already this messed up and the fact that any other damage I did would be erased after the simulation ended, I had half a mind to just say, "fuck it" and see what would happen if I tried to summon a Titan.

What better time than now to see how I would fare against one?

Inevitably, any sense of wrongdoing or "dooming" I might have felt was killed over by cold and calculated logic. Since it wouldn't matter in the end and would only help me deal with the Titans in the real world, I cast Monochrome Endowment on my Knife and systematically dealt every person I came across an untraceable hit; not enough to be noticed, hurt or harm, but enough to activate the "light stealing" of their souls.

I did this a couple hundred times before the Scrolls of everyone I was accompanying started blaring out frantic emergency noises.

"URGENT, EMERGENCY, RAKSHA HAS BECOME ACTIVE. URGENT, EMERGENCY, ETA BEFORE REACHING VALE IS APPROXIMATELY FIVE MINUTES," About half a dozen Scrolls at once screeched from their speakers.

As I listened, I grew the slightest bit concerned when a new alert layered over the one for Raksha, the Titan Beowolf. It was a carbon copy of the first alert, but now Foulcrest, the Titan Griffin was apparently on the way as well. I halfway regretted my decision when Charybdis, the Titan Sea Serpent was added to the lineup. But then stopped caring once Kandula, the Titan Goliath was announced.

So… Maybe in hindsight, I shouldn't have just continued on until the first alert was raised. It probably took some time to detect the first Titan had begun to move, then some additional time to figure out where it was headed, before finally adding even more time on top of all of that to arrange for every Scroll — except mine, probably because it wasn't from this timeline — to announce the emergency alerts.

Yikes.

Anyway, at least I knew more or less where the Titans would be coming from and how long it would take them to reach me — assuming they were heading straight for me.

I decided to confront Raksha, the closest Titan, at full power. Teleporting away from the group of dismayed people who all looked half a step away from suicide — it was understandable given the four fucking Titans heading for us when we were already facing that threatened both the Kingdom and Beacon — I appeared a couple miles up in the sky before assuming my Vasto Lorde form.

When I found the trail kicked up by the Titan's ferocious charge through the forest between us, I concentrated on stacking as many Skills and techniques on top of each other to land the absolute highest possible amount of damage I could in a single attack.

Ki went without saying as it gave me a baseline strength capable of punching around a hundred tons or its equivalent in terms of force. Aura as a baseline doubled my strength. Add my current mastery of the Body Augmentation technique for manipulating Aura and that bonus rose to a five times multiplier. My Vasto Lorde form probably multiplied that by another ten to twenty times and all that amounted to was just my current state of being.

For the actual attack itself, I layered my Sprinting, Melee, Knife Throwing, Iaido, Aura Channeling and Emotional Resonance Skills, and overloaded the knife with all the excess Spiritual Power, Ki and Magicka that I could convert and sustain. The added speed and game-like increases to raw damage output left my knife steaming and casting mirages on the world from holding so much ungodly power. Then, before I finally threw the knife at the rapidly approaching Titan, I activated my Sandevistan while throwing it as hard as I possibly could.

One moment there was a wide-stretching forest that expanded as far as the eye could see into the horizon. A forest that was rapidly being torn through like it was made of play dough and paper by the five-story tall monstrosity that was Raksha… And in the next moment, there was a narrow chasm that cut through everything from the ground to the clouds in the sky, including the Titan who fell over mid-stride from its body being sliced cleanly in half.

[Congratulations! For achieving Continental-level destruction potential, you have a Locked Legendary Gacha Coin!]

[Congratulations! For killing the Titan, Raksha, you have earned a Locked Legendary Gacha Coin!]

Ok, then. Guess, I'm already strong enough to bring ruin to entire continents if I used all my strength. It made sense when I listed out all the things I put into the attack that proved it, but I could hardly believe it even as I stared at the aftermath while floating many miles up in the air.

The trench I'd carved didn't look like much more than a thin line running up as far away as I could see, but I knew that was just because of my perspective. If I dropped down to ground level, the damage left a deep scar that ran for thousands, if not tens of thousands, of feet underground and stretched for dozens if not hundreds of miles into the distance. It was honestly kind of horrifying since I couldn't tell where the attack stopped and whether it hit any settlements before doing so.

Good thing, I didn't try this in the real world.

I shook my head and focused on my priorities. There were still three other Titans approaching and I could already see Foulcrest's infinitesimally small figure hundreds of miles away in the distance.

Since my full power was overkill on a level that was better left away from the planet, I decided to recalibrate my strength by teleporting near the Titan Griffin, after catching up to a few thrown knives, before attacking the beast with just my knife, Aura, Body Augmentation and Aura Channeling.

To my surprise, that alone was good enough to carve chunks out of the massive bird-like Grimm's body. It wasn't enough to outright kill it in a single blow, but I was still considerably faster than the beast, so it would only be a matter of time before I cut out enough of it before it's soulless husk of body started disintegrating.

Of course, the fact that I didn't end the fight instantaneously and resigned myself to cutting it to pieces gave Foulcrest the chance to fight back. When it quickly figured out that it couldn't hope to hit me with its body, it cast a hazy brown fog that acted like acid against my Aura. I didn't like the fact that it was eating my reserves at a rate of several percentage points per second, so I teleported out of the fog and launched a Cero at the Titan.

[Congratulations! For killing the Titan, Foulcrest, you have earned a Locked Legendary Gacha Coin!]

Looking down at the Titan's corpse which was collapsing into ash, I saw that the trees and ground below it, where the fog persisted, were currently melting and eroding into weathered bedrock.

Curious and perhaps the slightest bit arrogant to the point where even I considered myself stupid, I decided to approach the fading fog and reach into it with my hand. I turned off my Aura but activated my Hierro and watched as my skin slowly reddened up like I was getting a sunburn, only several dozen times faster than it would normally take.

When I took my hand out of the corrosive fog, I didn't even need to use Healing Magic on myself as Salem's Curse acted autonomously to return my hand back to perfect condition. It was a feat I guessed would take perhaps only a second of casting Healing to achieve the same effect. Still, I was glad to see it in action and confirm that I didn't need to do anything to activate it.

I spent the next ten or so minutes making my way toward the other two Titans and killing them with contemptuous ease. The Titans were all in a league of their own, far and above even the Ancient Grimm, but I was apparently at least two leagues above even them. I mean, when I could bring out Trick Vanish and make them unable to use their trump cards it made the fight considerably less dangerous; and I meant dangerous for everyone else.

Every single Titan had their own gimmick. Raksha was known for being the fastest, Foulcrest had its acid field of death, Charybdis could bring with it the wrath of the ocean in the form of a thirty-foot-tall tsunami, and Kandula was renowned for having the toughest armor of any recorded Grimm in history.

Raksha, I'd outsped and instantly killed by overestimating it. For Foulcrest, I'd deliberately endured its corrosive field. Charybdis, I'd silenced with Trick Vanish and consequently didn't even need to prepare any other countermeasures before killing it miles away from the coast.

As for Kandula? Well, it certainly lived up to its hype as I barely even scratched it with the same level of power I was cutting into Foulcrest and Charybdis with. But, the moment I escalated with my Skills, it died right after I broke through its thick armor plating. All it took was adding Sprinting and Melee to my previous blend of Skills and enhancements. That left a whole host of my other Skills and cheats unneeded to take down the most physically unkillable of all the Titans.

It would have been sad if it didn't mean I could accomplish the same thing in the real world and get rid of their underlying threat whenever I wanted. Alas, it felt both cheap and empowering for each of their Deaths to give me a Legendary Gacha Coin.

One wouldn't know it because I had so many unfair advantages, but these Titans were each capable of destroying any of the great Kingdoms and probably even ruining continents themselves if they felt like it. Perhaps none could do so as flagrantly as I could with individual attacks changing the landscape for hundreds of miles, but over time and if they attacked strategically, it was entirely possible with their powers.

Too bad for them that I existed with my current level of strength.

[Congratulations! For killing the Titan, Charybdis, you have earned a Locked Legendary Gacha Coin!]

[Congratulations! For killing the Titan, Kandula, you have earned a Locked Legendary Gacha Coin!]

I went back to Beacon and found Cinder in my Ki Sense range. She was currently in the middle of fighting someone I didn't recognize inside of Ozpin's office. From what I could sense, it looked like she was about to land a killing blow so I hurried up… which in my current Vasto Lorde state amounted to virtually teleporting right into drop-kicking her as I used the Sonido technique.

[Congratulations! For killing Cinder you have earned a Locked Epic Gacha Coin!]

And just like that, the Mission was over and I was back in my apartment. I even had the foresight to use Trick Vanish on myself right before killing Cinder to seal away the attracting lure that would remain on my Soul for the next day or so.

It wouldn't bode well for anyone if I inadvertently caused the same multi-Titan attack on the real Vale, now, would it? Not when I'd literally just hours ago promised Ironwood I'd be more responsible than that.

Anyway, I had a veritable truckload of Unique Grade Gacha Coins and even more for each succeedingly more common variant as well as all those Legendaries and the one Epic I got from killing Titans and Cinder. I only used the Epic and Legendary Gacha Coins before accepting the Final Release Scenario. That would be my second to last positive Scenario before I'd take on Summer's Ruin and do away with my Daily Dose of Catastrophe for the day.

[Results: Rarity — Legendary 550,000 (Locked) | Intrinsic Reconstitution (Ability - RWBY)]

[Results: Rarity — Legendary 128,000 (Locked) | Remnant: Dark Force (Skill - RWBY)]

[Results: Rarity — Legendary 999,999 (Locked) | Semblance Evolution: True Death Field (Ability - RWBY)]

[Results: Rarity — Legendary 500,000 (Locked) | Darkness Essence (Item - RWBY)]

[Results: Rarity — Legendary 600,000 (Locked) | Black Hearted (Perk - RWBY)]

[Results: Rarity — Epic 15,000 (Locked) | Worldwide Fast Travel Point (Consumable - Generic)]