There was no time for words.
The moment Adam and Grise appeared, the rooftop became a battlefield.
Jaune instantly condensed Weakness and Plunder onto the two of them, causing a slight strain on their expressions as they felt their strength bleed away.
Pyrrha's hand snapped outward toward Grise, fingers tightening as she reached for the iron in his blood, attempting to seize his movement from within. At the same time, Jaune vanished from where he stood with an echo step, ignoring that his steps were cratering the rooftop.
He reappeared in front of Grise in a blur of motion, both swords already in motion as they carved forward in a crossing strike aimed to bisect him cleanly.
Grise summoned a geometric formation of blades which materialized in front of him, interlocking into a layered shield that hummed with runic energy. The formation caught Jaune's strike with a metallic shriek, halting the attack for a fraction of a second.
That was all it lasted.
Jaune's Weakness rune flared.
The structure unraveled under his influence, the cohesion of the swords breaking down as if their very existence had been compromised. The formation softened, melted, and collapsed into useless slurry mid contact.
Jaune pushed through.
But his vision was obscured for just an instant by the dissolving metal.
Grise took advantage of it.
His body flickered, and somehow he had swapped places with a sword clone the moment the barrier gave way. The clone shattered under Jaune's follow through, dispersing into fragments that scattered across the rooftop.
Jaune did not slow.
He had already known that the Grise in front of him had been a clone. He was no longer relying on sight, after all.
His perception had already extended outward, his Weakness sense mapping the battlefield in ways his eyes could not. He felt the disturbance behind him, the subtle shift of intent and motion.
Grise was there.
Hidden behind one of his larger floating swords, poised to strike.
Jaune pivoted sharply.
Grise's blade came in from the blind side, angled toward Jaune's back. Jaune's swords met it in a precise block, steel ringing as the two collided.
The force pushed him back a step.
Then the air filled with danger.
Multiple beams of condensed sword energy cut toward him, dozens of them, slicing through space in layered trajectories that threatened to overwhelm him completely.
Jaune leapt backward while his rune flared, reaching out toward the incoming attacks.
For a brief moment, he felt something shift. The beams did not simply pass through his influence.
They slowed and warped.
Their structure faltered as his perception touched them at a deeper level than before. Not just matter now, but energy. Kinetic force. Even the air that carried them.
Jaune swung, deflecting the weakened beams aside, redirecting their paths just enough to keep them from striking true. The rooftop behind him erupted in jagged lines as the attacks carved through stone and shadow rock alike.
Then he stopped.
Because Pyrrha had already engaged Adam.
She thrust forward with her spear, the weapon extending in a direct, lethal line toward Adam's chest. Adam shifted smoothly, stepping just outside its path.
The spear changed.
It split mid motion, branching outward into multiple metallic tendrils that shot forward like a sudden blooming of steel, each one aiming to pierce and entangle.
Adam's blade spun.
A clean, fluid motion.
Every branch was cut apart in an instant, fragments scattering as his weapon carved through them with effortless precision.
Jaune did not interfere. He had already turned back to Grise and their clash resumed immediately.
Blades met in rapid succession, each strike answered by another, the pace escalating until it blurred. Tens of exchanges occurred within seconds, neither side yielding ground as sparks and fractured metal filled the space between them.
Grise's swords moved with supreme precision, each swing supported by additional blades that hovered and struck from unpredictable angles. Jaune countered with instinct and adaptation, his Weakness rune disrupting incoming attacks just enough to create openings.
Around them, the Mistral team moved in to attack as well.
Baris surged forward, halberd blazing as he brought it down toward Adam in a powerful overhead strike. The weapon carried weight, runic energy flaring along its edge as it descended.
Adam glanced at it and smiled. It was brief, almost amused looking smile.
Then he vanished.
A portal opened and closed in the span of a heartbeat. Adam reappeared directly behind Baris, his blade already in motion, cutting toward the man's neck with lethal precision.
Pyrrha's rune snapped onto Baris, seizing his blood and pulling him sideways just enough to shift him out of the blade's direct path.
It saved his life, but not entirely.
The strike still landed.
Baris's arm was severed cleanly at the elbow, the limb falling away as his weapon dissolved with it. Blood sprayed outward as he staggered, a scream tearing from his throat.
Jaune moved.
He appeared between them just as Adam's follow up strike descended, both swords raised to meet it. The impact rang out, force surging through Jaune's arms as he absorbed the blow.
At the same time, Grise attacked again.
A storm of swords launched toward Baris, aiming to finish him while he was vulnerable.
Jaune shifted his stance, one blade holding Adam back while the other moved in a precise arc, deflecting the incoming projectiles away from the injured man.
"Go!" Jaune shouted, his voice cutting through the chaos. "Get out of here!"
The remaining Mistral operatives hesitated.
Jaune's gaze snapped toward them. "Get to the base! Call for help! The Rank 3's. Ozpin, Ironwood, anyone! Tell them what we told you earlier!"
In the back of his mind, the conclusion had already formed.
Adam and Grise had not hesitated against them. They had not shown the slightest concern about cutting these operatives down.
If they were part of Sleepless, they would not be treated like this. Unless Sleepless had a habit of eliminating its own forces without hesitation.
The probability was low.
Which meant, that, at least, Jaune could trust them.
Baris clenched his teeth, pain evident but control returning through sheer force of will. "Move!" he barked to his team. "Fall back!"
They obeyed and turned to run.
Adam moved to pursue but Jaune stepped into his path. Their blades met again, locking for a fraction of a second.
Then Jaune felt something different.
Portal energy gathered along Adam's weapon, layered with dense kinetic force that pulsed along the blade like a coiled storm.
Behind him, Grise reappeared.
A sword drove forward, aimed directly at Jaune's back.
Pyrrha intervened and a burst of metal surged in a violent storm of fragments that launched toward Grise from behind, forcing him to abandon the strike or be impaled.
Grise chose neither.
His body shattered into a storm of swords that scattered outward, each piece moving independently as they attempted to cut through Jaune from all directions.
Jaune's rune flared.
The swords lost cohesion the moment they touched his influence, their edges softening, their forms collapsing into harmless slurry before they could connect.
In front of him, Adam moved.
The blade came down and Jaune met it, pouring everything he had into the defense.
Will surged into the world, flooding into his swords as he invoked an overpowered Aura Echo under pressure. The technique layered impact upon impact, amplifying his counterforce in rapid succession.
The world twisted.
Color inverted around the point of contact, reality itself seeming to buckle under the strain of the collision. The ground beneath them cratered violently, stone and shadow erupting outward as the force dug deep into the street below.
Jaune held.
His Aura Echo climbed to an unprecedented number.
Thirteen.
It was the highest he had ever reached in a moment like this.
At the same time, he diverted a massive portion of his aura into his Weakness rune, counteracting the runic energy infused within Adam's strike. The dual strain burned through him, pushing his limits as he fought to maintain balance between offense and disruption.
For a single, suspended instant, neither moved.
Then the force broke.
The explosion of energy hurled them apart.
Jaune was thrown backward, skidding across fractured ground as he forced himself to stay upright. Across from him, Adam slid back as well, blade lowering slightly as the energy around it dissipated.
The battlefield quieted around them, as if the world itself needed to catch its breath after the collision.
Then something fell.
A dull, metallic clatter broke through the tension.
Jaune's eyes dropped.
Crocea Mors.
The blade had split apart again, its structure unable to withstand the strain it had just endured. Fractures ran jagged along its length before the weapon gave out completely, pieces breaking away and striking the ground in scattered fragments.
Even Lux Aeterna, still in his grip, was not unscathed.
Thin cracks spiderwebbed along its surface, faint but unmistakable, glowing slightly where runic interference had bitten too deeply into its structure.
Jaune frowned.
That attack...
That was twice now that Adam had shattered his blade.
That specific attack carried something else. A special slicing effect that wasn't just ableto cut through matter, but through space itself. The damage wasn't purely physical, but fundamental, as if the integrity of the weapon had been severed on a deeper level.
Problematic didn't even begin to cover it.
Beside him, Pyrrha raised her hand instinctively, metal already beginning to stir around the broken pieces. Her aura reached for Crocea Mors, ready to pull it back together and restore its shape.
Jaune stopped her.
"Don't, bother." he said quietly.
She hesitated, confusion flickering across her face. "Jaune—"
"It won't hold," he continued, shaking his head slightly. "Not against that."
Without another word, he released Lux Aeterna as well.
Both weapons dropped.
The sound echoed strangely loud against the ruined street.
Pyrrha's expression shifted from confusion to something sharper. "Jaune… what are you doing?"
Across from them, Adam had already turned his attention away.
His gaze tracked the direction the Mistral team had fled, calculating, distant. A portal began to form at his side, space folding inward as runic energy condensed into a familiar, circular distortion.
He stepped toward it and just as he did, the portal collapsed.
It destabilized violently, its edges flickering before imploding inwards in a burst of warped energy. Adam was forced back a step, his footing adjusting as the failed construct dispersed into nothing.
Jaune raised a finger.
He clicked his tongue.
Three times.
"That," he said lightly, "won't work anymore."
A chilling smile followed.
Something in it made both Adam and Grise frown.
Jaune Arc was up to something. He tilted his head slightly, watching their reactions.
His Weakness had improved ever so slightly.
He could feel it now, fully.
After pushing past that threshold earlier, after forcing his perception to grasp something as intangible as air and kinetic force, the scope of what he could influence had widened.
Adam's portals were not immune either.
They were constructs. Formations of runic energy stabilizing warped space. And now…
Now Jaune could touch that.
He could weaken the intangible and destabilize it. Break it apart before it ever fully formed.
In the quiet space of his thoughts, Jaune had already tested more than that during the fights that they had.
He had tried to plunder Adam's weapon and Grise's as well.
But, unfortunately, it hadn't worked.
Both weapons were not simple constructs. They were manifestations of runic energy itself formed from a rune. They were structured, sustained, and reinforced by their wielders. His current Plunder which wasn't even at comprehension, could not strip away something like that yet.
Adam's blade in particular felt… different.
Unlike Grise's which was born from his own rune, Adam's had a thread of Perpetuity woven through it, sustaining the parent imbued rune that defined the weapon.
Jaune had even tried to weaken their weapons directly.
They responded but Aura flowed and their structure reformed. The blades reconstituted themselves almost instantly.
It seemed that both Adam and Grise had come prepared against him and his capabilities quite well. Which meant that Jaune simply continuing to destabilize their blades was inefficient.
So Jaune stopped trying.
He didn't need to steal their weapons nor did he need to break them either. No matter how much of an advantage it would give him and Pyrrha in their fights.
Instead...
His right hand lifted slowly and darkness gathered.
It did not swirl like aura or shine like runic energy. It condensed into a thick and heavy form. As if shadow itself was being compressed into something tangible.
A spear formed.
Black, smooth and perfectly shaped.
It drank in the dim light around it, its surface absorbing rather than reflecting.
Then more appeared.
From Jaune's shadow body, additional arms extended outward, unfolding from his torso in an unnatural, fluid motion. Four extra limbs, each one forming from the same dense black substance.
Each one held a similar spear.
Pyrrha's breath caught. Shock flickered openly across her face, her composure cracking for the first time since the fight had begun.
Across from them, Adam and Grise did not speak, but their expressions changed.
The ease was gone and in its place was something heavier.
Recognition and wariness.
Jaune could feel it.
Something stirring beneath his skin. Something that had been quiet for too long.
Hibernating and Sleeping.
Waiting.
But now…
It was awake.
A slow, creeping presence unfurled within him, like something stretching after a long rest. It was not violent. But it was there, pressing against his thoughts, brushing against his senses with a hunger that felt almost curious.
Jaune's smile widened slightly.
"Allow me," he said, his voice quieter now, layered faintly with something that did not entirely belong to him, "to introduce you to a very greedy friend of mine."
Jaune's body sank into shadow.
The ground beneath him rippled as he vanished, slipping through darkness like it was water.
He reappeared behind them from their long casted shadow
Adam and Grise turned.
And paused.
Jaune was no longer the same.
The familiar blonde hair was gone, replaced by something darker, strands of shadow that shifted subtly as if alive. His face had lost its natural color, replaced by a smooth, blackened surface that held no human warmth.
Only contrast remained.
White eyes and a smile. A pale, unnatural curve that held no teeth and yet felt more unsettling than any grin could be.
"Gula."