"Would you all be okay if I tried it on more than one person at once?" he asked. "The stacked version. Weakness and Plunder together?"
For a moment, there was a pause, then Nora's hand shot up so fast it nearly smacked Ruby in the face. "Yes! Me! Try it on me!"
Ruby's followed an instant later, eyes sparkling with curiosity. "Sure, yes. Try it on me as well."
Yang leaned back against the wall, arms folded, a grin slowly stretching across her face. "You didn't even have to ask, you know?"
Jaune nodded his thanks. "Alright. Just tell me if anything feels wrong."
He began with Pyrrha, anchoring himself in familiarity before reaching further.
Weakness settled over her first, then Plunder followed immediately after, the tether forming with a cold, almost gentle certainty. When Jaune felt the surge of strength pour into him, he turned towards Ruby next.
The moment he reached for her with his rune, something felt off.
The tether didn't leap forward like it had before. It dragged and resisted him, not rejecting him outright, but forcing him to push harder and to pour more of his Will into the attempt. It felt like trying to force a paper through thickened glue.
Jaune frowned but said nothing. He focused and pressed forward until the tether finally latched.
The strength flowed again, layering itself atop what he already held. It was exhilarating, but the system window that bloomed into his vision pulled his attention away.
.
Aura: 15
Will: 15
Body: 15
.
His stats read fifteen.
Not sixteen.
A quiet confusion settled into his chest.
Ruby rolled her shoulders, grimacing slightly. "Okay, yeah. That is definitely worse than Weakness by itself."
"Hey Ruby, just to confirm... what are your stats at?" Jaune asked, keeping his voice even.
Ruby glanced at her own interface. "Seven across the board?"
Jaune nodded slowly and turned to Nora. When he reached out the resistance this time was undeniable.
The tether fought him openly now, his Will stat was grinding against something unseen that refused to yield easily. Jaune clenched his jaw and pushed.
The tether finally snapped into place.
The surge hit him again, smaller than before but still potent. His stats updated once more.
.
Aura: 16
Will: 16
Body: 16
.
Sixteen.
Only one point gained.
Jaune's frown deepened.
"Nora," he asked, "your stats?"
She blinked at her window. "Seven. Same as Ruby."
Pyrrha nodded. "Mine as well."
That confirmed it. Three tethers and three targets. Full suppression and plunder on all of them. And yet the returns were diminishing.
Yang stepped forward, cracking her knuckles. "Alright. My turn."
Jaune turned to her and reached out, yet nothing happened.
He pushed harder.
Still nothing.
It wasn't resistance this time. It was a firm, absolute denial, as if the rune itself had placed a hand against his chest and refused him passage. Jaune recoiled slightly, heart thudding.
Yang raised a brow. "What's wrong?"
Jaune released both runes at once.
The tethers dissolved. The cold vanished. Strength drained from his body like water slipping through open fingers. Pyrrha, Ruby, and Nora all exhaled as warmth and balance returned to their limbs.
"Back to normal," Ruby confirmed.
Jaune straightened slowly. "It seems that Plunder caps at three people."
Ren nodded, unsurprised. "Hmm, I suspected there would be limitations. You looked a little odd when you saw your stats. Was there something wrong with them?"
Jaune nodded. "Yeah. I only gained two stat points from Ruby and one from Nora. It seems that the more people I Plunder stats from, the less I get in return, though their stats still reduce by the same amount."
"Might be due to the physical proponent weight of each stat point after the 10 stat cap," Blake added quietly from the side.
Jaune nodded. "Yeah, you're probably right. It might probably improve with comprehension or mastery, but I'm not too sure."
Yang grinned. "Still scary."
They didn't stop there.
Jaune next attempted to use Plunder on an active rune, focusing on Ruby's Accel in an effort to replicate Roman Torchwick's ability to steal runic energy directly. The attempt failed completely. The runic energy of Accel resisted him revealing a clear limitation in Plunder's current form.
Jaune next attempted to use Plunder on an active rune, focusing on Ruby's Accel in an effort to replicate Roman Torchwick's ability to steal runic energy directly. The attempt failed completely. The runic energy of Accel resisted him revealing a clear limitation in Plunder's current form.
Ruby blinked, then grinned and bounced lightly on her heels. "Well, that didn't work. I'm still fast."
Jaune exhaled slowly, withdrawing his aura. The conclusion settled over the room without needing much discussion. Plunder understood theft, but not that kind of theft. Active runic energy wasn't an objects to be taken, at least not yet. The Steal rune that Roman had wielded went further and deeper than Plunder currently could. If Jaune wanted to be able to the same, he would need growth through comprehension or mastery before it could even begin to challenge that territory.
Physical objects, on the other hand, told a very different story.
Weiss formed a shard of ice between them, its edges sharp and pristine. Jaune reached out, and the shard teleported through the air as if it had always been in Jaune's hand, slipping free of Weiss's control as easily as singing his abcs. It didn't cost him much Aura to use it that way either.
Weiss stared at the empty space where her construct had been. "I dislike how effortless that looked."
Pyrrha raised a metal training weight with her Ferrous rune. Jaune tugged once, and it tore away from her grasp, snapping into his palm with a solid clang.
They pushed the experiment further after that, increasing the size and mass. Each time, the aura cost grew heavier, until he finally shook his head and stopped. The limit felt clear. Whatever he tried to plunder could not exceed roughly his own body weight without costing too much aura to steal away.
Combat came last, and it changed the mood of the room entirely.
Ruby went first, stacking Accel twice and vanishing into a streak of red. Jaune layered Weakness and Plunder over her and moved. He didn't dominate her, but he was still able to keep up, matching her bursts of speed closely enough to force her to disengage.
Ruby skidded to a stop, eyes wide and laughing. "Okay. That is officially terrifying."
Yang stepped in next, runic energy flaring bright. She charged with her fists crackling, and Jaune met her head on. With her strength siphoned and his own amplified, he pushed through her shockwaves and explosions with minimal discomfort, forcing her back inch by inch until she broke away, shaking out her arms.
She laughed, breathless, flashing him a grin. "Guess you really took the punch out of my punchline."
The rest of them groaned at her pun.
"What? That was a good one!"
Jaune couldn't help but fire back one of his own. "Seems like they had an explosive reaction to that one in particular."
Yang chuckled and walked away while Pyrrha was already stepping forward, spear in hand, eyes shining.
Jaune raised his hands quickly. "Sorry, Pyr. Our spars go kinda crazy now. So... not tonight?"
She nodded and lowered her weapon, accepting it without complaint.
By the time the testing finally wound down, Plunder had revealed its nature. It was not infinite and it was certainly not absolute, but when synchronized with Weakness, it became brutally efficient. When Jaune reached comprehension, it would probably turn from a dangerous tool into something truly monstrous.
For now, that was enough.
Jaune was a little tired of testing, and wanted to exit the dream realm. He felt a tiny craving for pancakes. Probably due to Nora's influence.
After bidding goodbye to his friends, he prompted the exit authority of the system and left the dream.
.
.
(Atlas City, LUCID facility research bunker)
The lab had its walls swallowed by sound, turning every hum of machinery into a distant murmur and every breath into something private. Shadows pooled in the corners and along the ceiling, broken only by narrow bands of light that hung overhead like watchful eyes, illuminating just enough to remind the room that it was awake.
A man sat at the center of that place, relatively quiet in a wheelchair, practically motionless except for his hands. They moved with practiced precision across a hovering holo screen. The light from it painted his spectacled face in shifting hues of green and pale blue. His brow was furrowed and his jaw was set.
Every few moments his fingers would pause as he pressed them to his temples, kneading slowly as though the thoughts inside his head were pressing back.
The screen responded to his touch with silent obedience. Data cascaded downward in neat columns. Heart rate, neural synchronization and other such parameters. Values rose and fell in careful patterns, hovering just short of thresholds marked in red. At the center of it all rotated an anatomical display. Female. Human in shape, though the deeper layers revealed something far more complex. Pathways glowed where artificial runic energy flowed, intersecting with unfamiliar structures that pulsed faintly, as if alive in their own right.
The man studied it for a long time then started typing yet again.
The final inputs were deliberate, with each motion seemingly carefully measured. When he confirmed the sequence, the projection froze for a breathless moment before its color shifted.
Green.
The glow spread across the display, soft but unmistakable. Success, in the quiet language of machines.
He leaned back slightly, shoulders sagging as a low breath escaped him. For a moment, he simply stared at the screen, as if afraid it might change its mind. When it did not, his gaze drifted away, drawn toward the far end of the lab.
There stood a tank, massive and transparent, its curved surface catching and refracting the dim light. Within it, a glowing viscous green fluid churned slowly, illuminated from below like a submerged star.
Floating at its center was a beautiful girl.
Her body was suspended in perfect stillness, held aloft by the fluid as if cradled. Thick cables and thinner wires connected her to the surrounding machinery, running from her back, her arms, her temples. They pulsed faintly, carrying power, data, something more intimate than either. Her luminous orange hair fanned around her head, drifting lazily, and her face was an expression of calm—almost serenely at rest.
Almost.
A faint twitch passed beneath her eyelids.
The fluid rippled in response, gentle waves spreading outward as if the tank itself had noticed. Another small movement followed, then a slow, deliberate shift.
Her eyes began to open.
.
.
AN: Atlas arc!
Advanced chapters are available on patreon