The training chamber shimmered faintly with simulated sunlight. It wasn't truly real, of course, just the simulators attempt to emulate the world outside the dream. Here, Jaune could access the full breadth of his stats, not just 10%.
For the past two days, he'd been working nonstop with his squad, killing as many Rank 1 Grimm in their patrol sectors as they could find. The results were… acceptable, but not great. He'd hoped for more.
A flick of thought brought up his status screen in front of him.
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[Jaune Arc]
[Rank: 1]
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Aura: 2
Will: 3
Body: 1
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Runes: 13
Rune Skill: [Weakness]
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Not bad, all things considering. His Rank 1 progress was steady. Nothing flashy but nothing wasted either. Unlike before when he was Rank 0, he was balancing all three attributes, though lately he'd been leaning toward Will and Aura. The Body stat was important, sure, but Weakness had changed how he approached combat entirely.
His Rune skill was a weapon that thrived on control and focus. The more Will he had, the deeper its power and reach. The more Aura he had, the longer he could sustain it and the more opponents it could affect at once. In contrast, Body could wait.
Right now, though, his attention wasn't on numbers.
It was on the dull gray block hovering before him. A meter-thick metal cube—one of countless targets generated by the simulation. Floating above it was a transparent display, charting his progress in real time: precision, Aura density and efficiency. Each cut registered as a line of white text.
He exhaled, letting Aura flow through his arms. Then, with a flash, he slashed downward. The training sword sliced cleanly through the block. Sparks and dust drifted.
[Echo Perfomed: 0]
Jaune clicked his tongue. "Useless…"
He'd been at this for hours.
Aura Echo—or whatever Raven had called it—was supposed to let one project Aura outward, to make it real and to impose its presence on the world itself. He understood it in theory. But practice? That was another story.
He could move Aura within himself, use it to trigger Weakness. But manifesting it externally as pressure or shaping it into something that bent the rules of reality? He was nowhere close.
And neither Raven nor Qrow had been around lately to offer guidance. The Rank 2s were always busy—missions, patrols or logistical clean-ups after the operations. Asking them for training was like asking the wind to stop blowing.
He'd even asked Ren, but his friend had simply shaken his head. "That's beyond me. Most Rank 1s can't impose Aura like that," he'd said.
Even Pyrrha, with her uncanny precision and control, hadn't reached that level, as strong as she was.
Jaune sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. Raven had mentioned that once you reached Rank 2, certain things simply became instinctive—your Aura naturally resonated with the world around you and could impose your power with nary but a thought. But to reach that point? Rank 1s had to crawl through understanding the rune into Comprehension.
He wasn't sure what the next step was supposed to be. He wasn't even sure what his next Rune should be. Weakness had shown him one truth of combat—finding the cracks in everything—but there had to be another layer, something deeper.
He took another stance. Sword low. Breath steady.
And then he kept cutting. Over and over.
[Echo Performed: 0]
[Repetition Count: 1,037]
The sound of metal against metal filled the simulation chamber. The progress bar inched upward by fractions. Slow. Painful. But movement nonetheless.
Jaune exhaled and lowered his sword. The metal cube was scarred and half-melted from repeated strikes, yet the readout above it hadn't moved past a fraction of a percent.
"…Not working," he muttered.
He dispelled the construct and sat cross-legged in the center of the chamber. Closing his eyes, he drew his Aura inward and then outward again—feeling it wrap around him like a second skin. Warm, alive and responsive. It flowed through his veins as naturally as breath.
Feeling it wasn't the problem.
He just didn't know how to impose it—how to make the world acknowledge it.
Raven's demonstration replayed in his mind. A single strike that echoed like two, as though her Aura had refused to fade after the first blow. The afterimage of her attack had hit just as hard as the real one.
He'd tried to replicate it dozens of times. Channeling Aura into his blades only caused them to glow. Beautiful, but hollow. The weight behind the strikes never changed. The glow didn't cut sharper or hit harder. It was still just light and energy.
Jaune opened his eyes, let out a long sigh, and reached for the pair of blades beside him. He set them down gently.
Then, he pulled the rifle from his back.
The Runic tech rifle gleamed faintly under the chamber's light, black steel lined with traces of blue lines that pulsed before fading. It was standard issue to all operatives—crafted from alloys infused with the power of a rune during creation. It didn't need anything else extra. The rune's power was woven into the weapon's bones.
Aura flowed into it naturally, feeding the internal mechanism that conjured each shot into existence.
In other words, it was already doing what he couldn't: forcing Aura to interact with reality.
He rose, shouldered the weapon, and aimed at a target. The rifle hummed softly. He squeezed the trigger.
Three flashes and three dull thuds.
Each shot drained a small, almost imperceptible portion of his Aura.
Jaune lowered the rifle and stared at it for a long moment. "Still nowhere…" he murmured.
The door behind him hissed open.
He turned, half expecting one of his friends—but instead, a familiar, darkly dressed figure stepped through the light.
"Kid," Qrow greeted, voice low and casual as always.
Jaune blinked. "Qrow? Where've you been? You and Raven just vanished after the last briefing."
Qrow shrugged, one hand automatically reaching for the flask at his hip before stopping mid-motion. He stared at it, frowned, then sighed. "Right. No booze in the dream. Forgot."
He dropped his hand and glanced around the chamber. His attire was the same as always—black cargo pants tucked into combat boots, a dark long-sleeved shirt beneath a tattered trench coat.
Jaune tilted his head. "You're not wearing a Rune Frame?"
Qrow snorted. "Those things are good for Rank Zeros and Ones. After Rank Two, they start becoming more of a suggestion that something really useful and by Rank Three, they're dead weight."
Jaune was surprised. Rune frames were extremely durable. Able to tank hits from powerful grimm with ease. To call them dead weight... it seemed like Rank 3s were... simply invincible. And to think... there were grimm on that level out there, roaming the Dream Realm.
It was a scary thought.
Qrow looked Jaune over, gaze flicking to the rifles and blades on the ground. "You still working on what my sister showed you?"
"Yeah," Jaune admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. "But I'm getting nowhere. I can feel my Aura just fine, but I can't make it do anything. Can't make it echo or even make it resonate. It's like there's a wall there."
Qrow hummed thoughtfully, walking forwards with his gloved hands in his coat pockets, until he stopped directly in front of Jaune. The older huntsman studied the boy's face for a moment — the frustration, the exhaustion, the focus behind his eyes. Then he exhaled, letting himself drop down into a seated position with the kind of ease that came only from long habit and old injuries.
He patted the floor beside him. "Sit."
"Uh… okay?"
He hesitated a moment, lowering himself across from Qrow, legs folding awkwardly beneath him. "We're… meditating?"
Qrow gave a half-smile. "Nah. I just figured this might be easier to explain sitting down. Standing makes it sound like I'm lecturing, and I hate lecturing."
Jaune chuckled under his breath but couldn't help noticing how calm Qrow looked. It was strange — he'd seen the man fight before, had seen the quiet power that came when he transformed into a monstrous crow beast and cut through both air and flesh with ease. But here, in the simulation's artificial light, Qrow looked... very normal. Just a grumpy, if somewhat handsome man in his late thirties.
Jaune leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "So… you're gonna teach me how to impose my Aura on the world? Like Raven?"
Qrow scratched the back of his head. "Teach's a strong word. I can explain it, maybe. Raven's the better one at showing it. But since she's currently—" he paused, frowning slightly, "—busy, I'll do my best."
"Busy?" Jaune repeated. "Where is she, anyway? I haven't seen her around the base at all. I figured you two were off together doing Rank 2 stuff."
Qrow's mouth twitched in amusement. "She's sulking."
Jaune blinked. "…Sulking?"
"Yep."
"Like… arms crossed, quiet, 'don't talk to me' kind of sulking?"
"The very same."
Jaune stared at him. "Raven Branwen? The badass woman?"
Qrow's smirk deepened. "Guess even the scary ones need a moment sometimes."
Jaune opened his mouth to ask why, but Qrow lifted a finger and shook his head. "Don't. Trust me, kid. You don't wanna poke that nest. Let her brood. She'll come out of it when she's ready."
"...Right." Jaune rubbed his arm, unsure if he should laugh or just nod.
Qrow leaned back on his hands and stared up at the simulated skylight — the projected sun above a fake sky that was somehow brighter than real daylight. "Alright," he said finally. "Let's talk about what you've been struggling with."
Jaune straightened a bit. "Aura Echo?"
"Yeah. The whole imposing-yourself-on-the-world bit."
He tilted his head, studying Jaune again. "See, you're thinking of it too literally. You keep trying to force Aura to do something. Push harder, channel deeper or light up brighter. But Aura doesn't respond to muscle. It responds to meaning."
Jaune frowned slightly. "Meaning?"
Qrow nodded slowly. "You're using Aura like it's just a type of energy, like fire or lightning. You pour it into your swords and expect it to cut harder. But Aura isn't just. There is a metaphysical component to it. It's the self. It's every thought, conviction and fragment of your soul given form, grown stronger through the system."
He leaned forward slightly, tone quiet but sharp. "An interesting thing that you probably don't know, is that grimm don't usually attack animals whenever they escape into the realm world. Only after all humans in the area are dead. Only and only then will they attack animals. And this applies to all animals, regardless of how big their size is. Do you know why that is?"
Jaune thought for a moment, then nodded. "Because they can sense us. Our life force. But... no... wait... technically if it was a bigger creature, they would have more life force wouldn't they? Like an elephant or a whale? So... how?"
"Good thoughts." Qrow snapped his fingers. "The answer is... presence. The presence of sapient life force. See there is a difference between sentience and sapience and Grimm are drawn to sapient life force more so that simple sentient life. Maybe they're even repelled by it. Either way, they feel us. They sense what we are because our souls make great ripples in the world. That's what presence is, kid. Aura's just the visible form of that."
He gestured vaguely around them. "The world runs on rules. Physics, thermodynamics, causality — all those invisible laws. You throw a rock, it falls. You light a fire, it burns. But Aura? Aura cheats."
"Cheats?"
"Yup. Aura's will made real. It's your declaration that says, 'I exist, and the world will acknowledge that.' When you release it, you're telling reality that your soul has weight — enough weight to bend it, even if just a little."
Jaune frowned, eyes distant. "So… it's not about how much Aura I have. It's about how much the world believes in it?"
Qrow chuckled. "Close. It's about how much you believe in it. The world doesn't care. But the System — that weird cosmic nonsense that gives us ranks and stats and screens — it does. It recognizes willpower and turns it into something measurable."
He waved his hand lazily, summoning his own faint status screen — a translucent blur of light that Jaune couldn't read but felt in the air. "Will, Aura and Body — they sound simple. But they're not just physical attributes. They're symbolic. Body's the vessel. Aura's the spirit. Will's the bridge."
Jaune tilted his head. "Bridge?"
"Between what you are," Qrow said, "and what you want the world to be."
The words hung there for a moment — heavy, abstract, but strangely resonant.
Jaune frowned slightly. "Then… when Raven used Aura Echo—"
"She wasn't pushing Aura," Qrow interrupted. "She was asserting that her strike should not end there. Her will refused to let the motion die. And so, the world, or whatever damn thing governs both realities, was forced to bend and acknowledge that."
He leaned forward again, resting his elbows on his knees. "That's the trick, kid. Aura obeys your conviction, not your commands."
Jaune stayed quiet for a while, thinking.
Qrow gave him a small smirk. "Let me put it another way. The System, this entire Dream nonsense — it's parasitic. It takes power from Grimm and hands it to us. Every time we kill one, we don't just get experience or runes or whatever you see on that screen — we're literally stealing their law. Their existence runs on raw instinct — hunger, hatred, the will to devour. The System strips that away, refines it, and gives us a sliver of it in a form we can understand. Rune fragments. We then channel that spark of something else's essence into our own power."
He paused, tone dipping quieter. "So, in a sense, we're all thieves. We plunder monsters for the fuel to shape the world."
Jaune's eyes widened slightly. "That's… kind of dark."
Qrow shrugged. "Maybe. But it's the truth. Every bit of power we gain, every Rank we climb, is built on the bones of something that used to want us dead. The System's doing the same thing — asserting its will on reality, forcing its own laws over the old ones. It's the biggest example of 'presence' there is."
"So… when we fight, we're copying that?"
"In a way." Qrow smirked. "The System shows us the blueprint. You want to learn how to impose your will? Look at what it's doing right now. It's rewriting the laws of existence, one dead Grimm at a time. You just have to learn to do that on a smaller scale."
Jaune blinked slowly, trying to digest the weight of that. "You make it sound like Aura's… alive."
"It is," Qrow said simply. "Aura's the living part of your soul. It's why people say it grows when you grow. You get stronger, not because the System says you do, but because your self expands. You become more real to the world."
He leaned back again, eyes half-lidded. "That's why you can't simply just fake an Aura Echo. You can't brute-force your way through it. You can only manifest what's already inside you. The moment your belief wavers, the echo dies."
Jaune stared down at his hands. "So it's not technique…"
"It's conviction," Qrow said. "And understanding. You need to understand what your Aura means to you. For Raven, her Aura's a storm — unyielding, cutting and relentless. For me…" He gave a dry laugh. "Mine's more like a curse that refuses to die. It bends and breaks, but it doesn't stop moving."
He tilted his head. "What's yours, kid?"
Jaune hesitated. "I… don't know."
"Then that's your first step," Qrow said softly. "Figure out what your Aura is. Not what you want it to be. What it already is. Everything else comes after."
The silence stretched between them, thoughtful. The hum of the simulation faded into the background, and for a long moment, Jaune just sat there, breathing slowly, feeling his Aura pulse beneath his skin.
It was there. Steady warm and familiar. But what was it, really? Protection? Resolve? Or something else entirely?
Qrow stood after a while, stretching his shoulders. "Don't rush it," he said. "Most people never figure this part out till they're halfway through Rank Two. Some never do at all. Just keep training. And think about what you want your presence to say to the world."
Jaune looked up at him. "What does yours say?"
Qrow paused in the doorway, glancing back with a faint, crooked grin.
"That no matter how many times I fall," he said, "the damn world still has to trip over me."
And with that, he left — the hiss of the door closing behind him, leaving Jaune alone in the glowing chamber, staring at his hands, the faint shimmer of his Aura reflecting in his eyes.
The hum of energy pulsed faintly beneath his skin.
Jaune frowned.
"Conviction and will huh...? So... what does that mean if my Aura feels hollow?"
Yes, Jaune's Aura felt empty, like a void that was trying to grab onto something.
A devouring force born for power.
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AN: Extra chapters are available on patreon.