Solo Arc

Solo Arc Chapter 15: Into the Meat Grinder

Jaune and his growing army all pop out of the gates entrance right into a central square of an old military outpost of some kind. They look around slowly while Jaune commands his knights to keep a look out while his archers climb the walls.

Jaune has everyone get into a formation where Vivian, Ruby, Coco, Velvet with a copy of Cocos gun, Nora in grenade mode, and Ren with his gun blades ready, were all in the center of the square with Jaunes archers providing lookout positions from their wall vantage points. The knights all go to a front line position with their other melee fighters all looking around a their surroundings wondering why they were in an old time military fort.

Jaune noticed the state of the fort and it looked like it recently was attacked, only problem was there seemed to be no bodies around them. They looked closer at everything and saw stone work buildings, some reinforcement posts to the walls from well made carpentry, and what seemed to be limited electrical gear such as simple lights, and basic radios.

Weiss walked over to a radio with a knight accompanying her to keep her safe while everyone else spread out in pairs and she turned it over to see a large gash in the radio with blood splatter all over it. She yelps and drops it while taking a step back. The knight immediately goes in front of her with sword and shield ready to prepare for whatever she saw.

Jaune and Yang run over with Iron in tow and check around her before seeing the radio. Yang asks, "What's wrong Ice queen? Something up with the radio?"

Weiss glares at her for the unnecessary title before focusing on the radio again, "I found this radio and I think we might be in a past event in time. This place is too old to be anything from modern day, I think it might be a fort of the great war or even older. We only have simple lights and radios as the sign of any technology here. And this radio... has blood on it. I don't think the owner survived."

Jaune checks the radio while Yang scans the surroundings and he also recoils at the deepness of the gash and the thickness of blood splatter on the brick sized radio. He shows it to Yang who frowns in fear and concern and asks Jaune, "Do you see anything about this place in your quest log yet?"

Jaune checks with the system but is met with a very worrying response.

~Influence... Salem... Control... A- gate... enemy... 20... stronger... careful... reward... limited... system... interference... be careful... Jaune...~

Jaune curses out loud and brings his squad back to the others. Weiss and Yang join the others in their front line formation and explains to them the situation. As he explains the situation everyone slowly but surely become more worried and fearful of their surroundings.

Jaune breaks down the situation, "Okay the system has been partially blocked."

Simin asks with worry clear in his voice, "Has it ever been blocked before? Or is this new?"

Jaune confirms his fears, "This is new, in the past Salem has been able to interfere with a gate and make it stronger or more numerous, usually these gates go up like a half grade from B to B+ and those are from the system So her influence has been limited. However natural gate are ones she can interfere with even more cause she made them so my connection to them is weaker allowing her more control and influence. Like the one you guys helped me with in the park. That gates strength was all her handiwork. Now though? She has interfered with this gate despite it being a gate made by the system."

Coco asks next while keeping her eye on the surroundings as the group has begun to hear growls and shifting movements between the buildings around them, "So she is getting stronger way faster than we originally thought she would?"

Jaune nods and continues, "Yeah. And this makes me even more worried we have gone from a B ranked gate all the way to an A- ranked gate. Nearly a full grade while under the systems protection. So we need to be careful, this gate might be as dangerous as the A ranked one we fought in the park. Maybe more."