Chapter 400: 400. Finality (Part 7)

Jaune floated above the air with his domain spreading around him like an invisible second sky, its conceptual boundaries encompassing the thousands of awakened gathered around the core of the Crimson Moon.

Beneath him, the crimson landscape was fractured and scarred from the battle that had already taken place, enormous pieces of the moon floating in the distance where they had been torn apart by the collision of powers that had long since surpassed anything resembling an ordinary fight.

The awakened below were still recovering from the attack that had nearly erased them, many of them staring upward at Jaune with expressions that ranged from disbelief to outright awe.

Jaune barely noticed.

His attention was concentrated on three people standing within the radius of his domain, each one a Rank 3 who had already experienced firsthand just how insignificant that title could become when standing before Tyrian.

Velik stood with his shoulders squared, his expression tense but focused.

Raven's arms were folded, her eyes fixed upon Jaune with the same sharp scrutiny she had possessed throughout the battle.

Qrow looked considerably less composed, his gaze repeatedly flicking between Jaune and the distant Tyrian as though he were trying to determine whether what Jaune was proposing was genius or insanity.

The answer, Jaune suspected, was probably both.

The concept of inversion was difficult to explain because it was difficult to explain the nature of what Jaune himself had become.

Inversion was a very odd technique that was borne from a comprehended Mastery-level Runic ability, one Jaune had gained through the knowledge inherited from Tyrian's Knowledge Rune and the fragments of understanding purchased through his father's final sacrifice.

Nicholas Arc had spent his life manipulating the boundaries of what Runes could accomplish, studying the laws surrounding them and searching for ways to circumvent restrictions that should have been absolute.

Jaune had inherited a portion of that understanding through the power of Knowledge, and the memories that Nicholas had willingly surrendered, had filled in the remaining gaps.

What Jaune had discovered was that a Rune possessed something deeper than its visible function.

Every Rune had a conceptual flow, a direction in which its authority naturally expressed itself. Weakness took strength away. Plunder took possession away from another and transferred it to the user. Nullification suppressed, erased, or rejected.

Those were the directions in which the concepts themselves moved.

Inversion attacked that direction.

It used Nullification in an abnormal fashion, not to suppress an external phenomenon, but to suppress the conceptual flow of the Rune itself. Once the Rune's natural direction was nullified, its authority had nowhere to proceed except backward. Jaune was effectively forcing the concept to turn around and express itself through its opposite.

At Rank 2, Inversion would have been viable to properly use in combat, however... Jaune was already at the pinnacle of what Rank 2 could accomplish when he learnt the power of inversion.

Unfortunately for him, Jaune's opponents at the time, were Rank 3s. There was no practical opportunity to experiment with something that dangerous. If Jaune had attempted it and failed, there wouldn't have been a second chance.

But after reaching Rank 3, the equation of inversion changed.

At Rank 2, Jaune could have inverted individual Runes.

Weakness could become Amplification while Plunder remained Plunder, and Plunder could become Charity while Null continued functioning normally.

Null itself could be turned into Evolution while the other two remained intact.

The three concepts had been separate enough that Jaune could manipulate one without necessarily compromising the others.

Rank 3 had destroyed that simplicity.

His three Meta Runes had been fused into a singular Supreme Rune, Devour.

Plunder, Weakness, and Null were no longer three independent authorities housed inside the same body. They had become the foundations of one existence. The concepts had reached consensus and created something new.

Devour was the result of their combined direction, and because of that, Jaune could no longer simply reach inside himself and turn one portion backward.

Inversion would affect the entire Rune.

That created two problems.

One, as long as the inversion was active, Jaune would lose access to the breadth of the power of Devour. Second, Tyrian would be able to use Knowledge on Jaune's body and be able to understand the comprehensive power that permeated him. After all, the function of Nullification was no longer present to shield Jaune.

That didn't mean it was useless, however. Inversion had it's own strengths. It could empower Jaune's body without weakness to an even greater degree and evolve his physical might to something that was simply Empyrean in nature.

And... it wasn't limited to Jaune alone. It could also be used to strengthen others.

"Inversion: Amplify."

The world changed.

Golden light erupted from Jaune's body and moved through the conceptual space of his domain, spreading outward in enormous streams that seemed to disregard distance entirely. The energy reached Qrow first.

His body immediately dissolved into a storm of black feathers, but unlike before, the transformation did not stop at a single flock of ten. His consciousness multiplied through the Rune, and each manifestation expanded with terrifying speed.

One crow became ten. Ten became a hundred. A hundred became a thousand. Each bird grew until it reached a full hundred kilometers in size, their wings spanning enormous portions of the sky.

Qrow's consciousness existed within every single one, his awareness spread across the flock like a living network. The black birds practically became the battlefield. Their wings could eclipse entire regions of the crimson moon, and whenever one moved, the atmosphere screamed around its passage.

Qrow's voice echoed from several directions at once. "Jaune."

"Yes?"

"What the hell did you do?"

"I told you. I need your help. It would be too troublesome to explain right now what I've just done, but just help me jump this guy. We need to keep him away from the other awakened, and I'm not strong enough to both fight against him and protect you all at the same time."

"Ahh. Fine, damnit. Here I was thinking that I could just sit back and watch the fireworks."

Jaune watched the enormous flock circle.

Qrow's laughter came from a hundred throats simultaneously. "Well... my damn rune has never felt like this, before, let me tell you. Feels like a whole damn new Rank of power."

His flock suddenly expanded outward. Each crow's presence became heavier, denser, more absolute.

Jaune nodded. "Good."

Raven was next.

Her entire body became engulfed in darkness.

Unlike Qrow's transformation, there was no explosive expansion. Raven's form simply became deeper and deeper until it seemed to have substance. The crimson light surrounding her began disappearing into the blackness, swallowed by an absence that was not quite darkness and not quite nothingness.

Then the phenomenon of Eclipsing manifested.

A blade appeared in her hand and was blacker than the shadows around it.

Its edge seemed to possess no thickness whatsoever, as though the concept of an edge had been reduced to its purest possible expression. Raven lifted it experimentally and made a single horizontal swing.

The resulting arc traveled through the air. It crossed several kilometers before touching a floating fragment of the moon.

The fragment disappeared. The runic energy holding the rock together simply ceased. Raven stared at the blade.

"That wasn't possible before."

Jaune nodded. "Amplification pushed your ending Ending your phenomena far enough to interact with higher conceptual energy."

Raven looked toward Tyrian.

"Not ending anymore. It's called Eclipsing now."

"...Right..." Jaune nodded.

"Will it work against Destruction?"

"Try it."

Raven swung again and a black arc crossed the heavens. Tyrian noticed it and a spear of monochromatic Destruction appeared in his hand and he hurled it toward the incoming attack.

The two concepts collided and the resulting explosion tore through the surrounding space. But the black arc did not disappear and was even able to push through ever so slightly.

Raven's eyes widened.

The Destruction spear began losing its energy at the point of contact.

Eclipse was not destroying Destruction in the ordinary sense but was ending the Destruction Rune's active expression.

Both Tyrian spear and her arc of Eclipse collapsed.

Raven lowered her blade.

"Interesting."

Velik's transformation was the most overwhelming.

Darkness erupted outward from his body and formed an enormous domain that swallowed the surrounding terrain. The soldiers of black night emerged by the thousands, then millions, their forms filling the darkness like an army that had no end.

But Velik's true advantage came from the Shadow Stalker that existed within his domain. The creature's form shifted constantly, never remaining stable for more than a moment. Its limbs stretched into tendrils, its body became a gate, its fingers became blades, its torso dissolved into shadows and emerged somewhere else entirely.

Vast shadow gates opened throughout the battlefield as he tested his power.

Velik stared.

"My domain is... two hundred kilometers."

Velik looked around and his expression changed as he realized what had happened.

"My Stalker and Grimm domain are being incorporated into the range. You... what kind of power...? And yours is even greater...

Velik looked toward Jaune and Jaune could only nod.

"Maybe we can truly jump with guy together, huh? Doesn't sound quite so impossible after all this."

While Velik was speaking, Jaune then transferred the next portion of energy.

Creation.

The energy he had previously devoured from Tyrian now moved through the expression of Charity and into the three Rank 3s. Qrow felt the foreign power circulate through every member of his flock. Raven felt Creation enter her shadows. Velik's army became capable of utilizing the energy to create temporary weapons, bridges, structures, and pathways through the battlefield.

More importantly, the energy Jaune gave them would retain the ability to interact with the bizarre constructs Tyrian had been producing.

"Use it," Jaune said. "It's still his energy, but it's mine now. I already devoured it. I'm simply giving pieces of it back to you."

The three of them nodded and got ready to fight. The entire time, Tyrian had been quiet and visually observing. Jaune could even feel Tyrian's Knowledge fully observing him.

"You're not hidden anymore, Jaune Arc.

Jaune looked up and Tyrian floated in the distance, staring at him.

"Inversion? Your Rune truly is remarkable."

He paused.

"No. Not just your rune but your mind and your body. A form without weakness."

Jaune remained still. Tyrian stared at him as though seeing a completely different creature. The words carried across the battlefield. Without Devour actively hiding Jaune from Knowledge, Jaune's body was laid bare to it's pseudo-omniscience.

Tyrian could finally see what Jaune had hidden.

He smiled, and oddly enough, greed was shown upon his form.

For a moment, Jaune saw an almost predatory hunger in Tyrian's expression as he stared at the inverted version of Jaune's Supreme Rune.

Then Tyrian's eyes shifted toward Qrow, Raven, and Velik and his expression faded.

Jaune knew exactly why.

He had not expected four Rank 3s to now be capable of combatting him. The ensuing fight was going to be extreme troublesome for him to go through.

Jaune turned toward the three beside him.

"Follow my lead."

Jaune disappeared and Tyrian barely had time to react. In an instant, Jaune's domain clashed against Tyrian's and and visibly started to push his back. Jaune's domain might have been smaller in size, however with amplification coming into play, strengthening it, it's density had increased to twice of what it currently was.

Jaune's fist then struck Tyrian's face, and the impact sent Tyrian flying.

Before he could recover, Raven's black arc descended from above. Tyrian raised a Destruction shield and the two collided.

Eclipse cut into Destruction and Tyrian's shield fractured. A flock of colossal crows immediately slammed into him from the side.

Tyrian's body twisted and Creation erupted outward, forming thousands of spears of matter and plasme. However, Velik's shadow gates swallowed them and the spears emerged somewhere else.

Jaune was waiting there and he grabbed one.

Creation energy flowed through his fingers and he crushed it, throwing the remaining fragments back.

Tyrian created a wall of plasmatic matter and the fragments shattered against it. An instant later, Jaune came through the wall and his fist struck Tyrian's stomach.

Tyrian's torso exploded and was launched away from the impact zone. Jaune's own arm disintegrated from the residual Destruction runic energy surrounding the impact however, his flesh immediately regenerated.

Tyrian's eyes widened.

Jaune's speed and power had reached an incredibly terrifying level, amplified to the extreme using the power of inversion.

Jaune punched again and this time Tyrian vanished into a pocket space. However, Velik's shadow stalker was already there, creating a shadow gate to breach into Tyrian's spatio-coordinate.

Its tendrils wrapped around the pocket space and twisted. The space that Tyrian had created bent sideways and Tyrian was forced to emerged directly into Qrow's flock. A hundred enormous crows descended and Tyrian created a titanic Destruction shield to

The crows that struck it vanished into monochromatic radiance, but the sheer amount of mass and bodies forced the shield into destabilizing.

Then, Raven's Eclipse swept through it and the sphere disappeared. Tyrian escaped by destroying the rest of his own body in a giant bomb of energy.

His consciousness escaped through space and emerged elsewhere in his domain, recreating a body. Jaune was already moving and he crossed the distance before Tyrian could finish recreating his body.

His knee struck Tyrian's chest and Tyrian's hastily created armor of Creation shattered from the supreme force of the blow that detonated the air with an expansive impact, visibly pushing back the streams of crimson energy of the moon out of the way.

Jaune's hand grasped forward, intending to catch Tyrian before he could escape, however, before he could do so, Tyrian's body exploded, and Jaune was left holding nothing.

"He's escaping!" Velik shouted.

"No," Raven answered.

A shadow gate opened and Tyrian emerged only to see that Raven's sword was already there. The blade descended and Tyrian created Destruction.

Eclipse and Destruction collided with the black and monochromatic energies tearing against each other, each attempting to erase the other from existence.

Raven gritted her teeth.

"He's... becoming stronger!"

Jaune appeared beside her.

"Then don't fight him alone."

Jaune punched the Destruction energy away. His flesh disintegrated, but the attack buckled and Raven's Eclipse passed through it.

The Destruction field ended and Tyrian stared at the four of them with vitriol in his eyes.

"Teamwork? How wonderful."

Tyrian was getting overwhelmed.

There was no other word for it.

The four Rank 3s moved with a coordination that made their individual abilities seem almost designed for one another.

Qrow's Black Calamity provided an enormous distributed body that could attack from thousands of directions simultaneously.

Raven's Eclipsing phenomena gave them a weapon capable of directly contesting the destructive authority Tyrian had previously used to erase everything in his path.

Velik's Darkness also provided the battlefield itself with a variety of tools that could directly content with Tyrian's space ability.

Jaune was the center of it all, moving through the chaos with a speed and physical power that even Tyrian's Knowledge's predictive capabilities struggled to follow.

That wasn't to mention that each of their domains were actively clashing against Tyrian's to ensure that he couldn't manifest enough power to contend against them individually.

Tyrian created would create a thousand plasma lasers and Velik would open a thousand shadow gates to redirect them back towards him from impossible angles.

Tyrian would then create massive attacks of Creation and Destruction. However, Raven would cut it.

Jaune would also directly descend into the battle with his pure flesh tanking and blowing through gigantic portions of Tyrian's manifestations, injuring him and forcing him to detonate his body to escape. However, every time Tyrian regenerated, Jaune was already there and every time Tyrian tried to kill Jaune directly, Jaune simply fought through the destruction with his body.

That was what astonished Tyrian most.

Jaune was no longer using Devour to consume the attack but pure flesh. His fist would enter a Destruction field and the flesh would vanished, yet almost immediately afterwards, the flesh would return, as good as new and Jaune would continue punching.

His body was being torn apart at the seams by directly colliding with Destruction, yet the inverted power of Amplification acting upon his body without weakness continuously rebuilt him faster than Tyrian could destroy him.

The result was monstrous.

Jaune became a golden blur that simply refused to stop. Shields upon shields were being destroyed the moment they were made. The battle continued, becoming a cycle of destruction and regeneration.

Yet even so, the same fundamental problem remained.

They couldn't put Tyrian down.

No matter what the four of them did to attack him, whether it was drag him out of conceptual space, or destroy most of his body, Tyrian would somehow be able to escape and come out almost unscathed a moment later.

The biggest issue wasn't contending against the power of Destruction or Creation, but rather, contending against Knowledge.

The rune was simply out predicting all of their attacks and coming up with counters in such a perfect fashion that in the long run, Tyrian would simply win the the battle from just pure attrition.

Worse still, his reserves showed no indication of stopping while Jaune's were steadily decreasing from sustaining the evolved capabilities of three extra combatants.

At this rate, it was only a matter of time before Jaune would be forced to use choice once again to reset everything.

'Damn it. What do I do?' Jaune asked himself for what seemed to be the hundredth time.