Chapter 394: 394. Finality (Part 1)

The word had barely left Jaune's mouth when the three runes answered, and the first sensation was not pain.

It was disagreement.

Weakness, Plunder, and Null had each become something far greater than the simple authorities they had possessed when he first created them, and each had developed its own understanding of what it meant to exist.

They were not three pieces of an ordinary mechanism waiting to be fitted together but were instead, three complete systems of law, independent answers to the question of what reality was allowed to do.

Weakness understood the world through the reduction of strength, the stripping away of resistance and the discovery of the point at which something could no longer maintain its own form.

Plunder understood it through possession, through the taking of what belonged to another and the incorporation of that stolen existence into itself.

Null understood it through rejection and through the denial of laws—the refusal to acknowledge that a phenomenon had any authority to continue existing.

Under ordinary circumstances, bringing those three principles into a single conceptual structure would have been an undertaking so difficult that even Rank 3s could spend years attempting it.

The runes would resist one another, each insisting that its own interpretation of reality was the correct one, and the Rank 2 attempting the merger would have to discover a consensus between them before the process could proceed.

That consensus was the true threshold of Rank 3.

It was not enough to simply possess three Mastery-level runes. One had to effectively attempt to convince them to become something greater than the sum of their individual parts.

For Jaune, however, that problem was not an issue. Null's power was so great that it could decide that all disagreements were irrelevant.

The moment the three authorities touched, the concept of conflict itself was rejected. There was no violent collision of opposing principles or endless struggle between Plunder and Weakness over which would govern the newly forming structure.

There was also no attempt by Null to force the other two into submission. The contradictions simply ceased to possess the authority to remain contradictions. The laws that should have prevented the merger from occurring were rendered null, and the laws that should have governed the process were rendered null alongside them.

The three runes did not negotiate or compromise.

They simply became a single thing because the possibility of them remaining separate had been denied.

Jaune felt the change take place within his spirit, and for the briefest instant, he experienced the impossible sensation of the three runes becoming one without any of them being lost.

Their individual colors and textures collapsed inward until the only thing that was left was rotating ring of pure golden radiance.

The light was not merely bright but possessed a certain weight to it.

The weight of Runic Energy.

It pressed against the boundaries of his spirit with the force of something that had never been meant to fit inside a human being, and Jaune instinctively braced himself for the inevitable rupture.

He expected his spirit to crack or the pressure to tear through his body and force its way into the surrounding world in an uncontrolled explosion of runic energy. Instead, the pressure met the boundary of his spirit and the boundary ceased to be a boundary.

His spirit expanded.

At first, it was only a small widening, a subtle loosening of the space surrounding the three runes, but then the expansion accelerated with a speed that made the ordinary passage of time feel almost irrelevant.

One meter became ten, ten became one hundred, a hundred became a kilometer.

The crimson dust beneath him stirred as the invisible pressure spread outward, and the atmosphere of the Sleeper's core seemed to bend around the growing presence of his soul. Jaune could feel the expansion not as a physical movement but as an extension of his own awareness, as though the world itself had begun to unfold inside his mind.

Ten kilometers.

One hundred.

Two hundred.

The radius continued to grow until it reached a vast circular boundary surrounding his body, and then it stopped. The space within that boundary belonged to him. Almost exactly in a way ownership as a territory was.

Jaune had effectively claimed the space of 200 kilometers as his authority. As an extension of his own perception. Every centimeter of the two-hundred-kilometer radius was suddenly present within his mind. He could feel the density of the crimson atmosphere, the movement of the runic energy flowing through the barrier, the distant pressure of Tyrian's domain, the scattered positions of the Rank 3s, the ruined battlefield beyond the core.

He could perceive the world in every direction without turning his head, without opening his eyes, without needing to decide where to look. His spirit had become a domain, and the domain had become an extension of himself.

Then the transformation of runic energy reached into his physical body.

The energy that flooded out from the newly formed rune washed over him and entered every part of his flesh, through his bones, through the very structure of his being.

Jaune felt the difference immediately.

He had experienced the sensation of increasing his physical stats through Plunder before and had felt his strength rise after stealing from an enemy.

But this was not an increase.

t was an entirely different order of existence. The energy was not merely making his body stronger but was changing the rules by which his body existed. His flesh began to melt, not into nothingness, but into a luminous, liquid-like substance. Jaune's arms, his legs, his torso, his head, all of it became part of a single mass of glowing red flesh liquid, and for a moment he floated within the Crimson Moon Realm as little more than a sphere of radiant matter.

The transformation resembled the way he could reduce matter to slurry through Weakness, but there was no destruction involved. Nothing was being lost. His body was being rewritten.

The liquid swirled around itself, revolving in a slow, deliberate motion, and then began to take shape again. The mass gathered into the form of Jaune Arc, the familiar outline of his body emerging from the glowing substance as though it had been sculpted from liquid metal. His hair formed first, bright golden strands that moved like liquid in an invisible current, settling around his shoulders in a shoulder-length mass that seemed to possess a life of its own.

His face followed, then his neck, his shoulders, his chest, his arms, his legs. Every part of him reassembled into a perfectly sculpted human form, and yet the result was not human in any meaningful sense. The transformation had washed away every injury, every scar, every mark left by battle, every genetic defect and every imperfection that had once belonged to his body. He floated there, naked as the day he had been born, staring at his hands with an expression of genuine shock.

The hands were his, but they were not merely hands.

He could perceive them through his eyes, through his skin, through every cell that composed them. Each cell possessed the awareness of the whole body, and the whole body possessed the awareness of every cell.

He took a breath, and every cell of his body took a breath.

He could smell through his skin, taste through his flesh, feel the movement of the air against every part of himself. His heart was beating, but it was also beating in every cell. His brain was functioning, but it was also present in every cell.

The distinction between organ and body had ceased to exist.

Jaune stared at his hand for a long moment, then slowly turned it over, watching the golden light of his new form move across the skin. He could feel the structure of his body in a way that he had never experienced before, and the realization came to him with a strange, almost detached clarity.

If his brain were destroyed, he would still be able to think. If his heart were pierced and dissolved, he would still be able to function. If his entire body were reduced to a single surviving cell, that cell would still contain the complete structure of Jaune Arc.

He could regrow from it, almost instantly, restoring his full form as though the destruction had never occurred. His body had become a contradiction in its entirety, a human shape that no longer obeyed the limitations of human biology.

It was a body without Weaknesses.

The irony was not lost on him. Of the three runes that had brought him to this point, Weakness had been the one that had begun to lag behind. It had once been the most straightforward of his abilities, allowing him to melt matter into slurry, to reduce weaker enemies to helplessness and to strip away the strength of opponents who could not resist its authority.

But as Plunder and Null entered his arsenal, Weakness had begun to seem less useful against the enemies he was now facing. Why weaken an attack when he could simply nullify it? Why melt an enemy when he could steal their abilities and turn them against them? Yet now, as he stood within the Crimson Moon Realm in his newly transformed body, Jaune understood that Weakness had not been left behind.

It had been waiting for this moment.

He looked inward, toward the new rune that had stabilized within his soul, and for the first time, he understood what it meant to possess a Supreme Rune. The circle of rotating golden light was no longer three separate authorities.

It was a single, unified concept, and its presence was so immense that Jaune could feel it pressing against the boundaries of his own understanding. The light rotated slowly, like honey suspended in glowing amber, and it radiated an ethereal pressure that seemed to pull at everything around it.

The rune was not merely consuming energy. It was drawing everything that was not a part of it toward itself, as though the very concept of separation had become something it could hunger for. The golden liquid light moved in a clockwise direction, gradually emanating heat and pressure like an infinite energy generator, and Jaune felt the name of the rune settle into his mind with absolute certainty.

Devour.

He exhaled, and the breath that left his lungs was so long and so dense that it stirred the vast runic energy within the barrier of the Sleeper's core. The crimson atmosphere rippled around him, and Jaune instinctively reached outward with his new domain, wrapping a small portion of it around his body. The golden light condensed into clothing, flowing across his skin in liquid-like amber threads that formed a simple, elegant outfit around his naked body. He looked down at himself for a moment, then lifted his head toward the distant battlefield.

The transformation was complete. The process that perhaps have taken years had been completed in the span of a single blink.

And then he disappeared.

One moment Jaune stood within the barrier of the Sleeper's core, and the next, the space where he had been was empty.

The air rushed inward to fill the vacuum, and the crimson dust beneath him spiraled upward in a small, violent cloud. Jaune passed through the barrier as though it were made of air, his Devour rune acting as if the barrier did not exist.

The dense, impenetrable structure of the Sleeper's core was simply devoured, leaving a small Jaune-shaped hole in its wake. He emerged on the other side and stared toward the vast battlefield that had been ruined by Tyrian's descent.

The Rank 3s had already won against the Rank 3 Grimm, thanks in large part to Raven and Qrow's assistance. Lionheart had been killed, Raven delivering the final blow, and the surviving Rank 3s had regrouped to determine how they might breach the barrier surrounding the Sleeper's core.

But then Tyrian had broken through from the inside, emerging in all his new glory and suppressing them almost instantly with his new domain. Jaune could feel the man's presence from where he stood, a vast, oppressive force that was slowly growing in size. It had already eclipsed Jaune's own domain by three times, and it showed no sign of stopping.

Tyrian was integrating the Supreme Runes into his spirit and was now using the power of Creation to construct conceptual matter cages around each of the Rank 3s. In the same span, his domain continued to expand as the runes settled into his body.

The cages were holding the Rank 3s in place, keeping them from escaping or engagin him. Although Velik, Raven, and Qrow were straining against them harder than the others, Tyrian was constantly reinforcing the structures, recreating them whenever they began to crack.

It was no trouble for him.

The pressure of his domain was immense, and Jaune could feel the way it was slowly spreading outward, threatening to engulf the entire battlefield.

Yet Jaune's own domain was not clashing with it.

That was the first thing he noticed. The two domains occupied the same conceptual space, but they did not interact. There was no collision of authorities, or attempt by one to suppress the other.

Jaune's domain simply existed within Tyrian's, untouched by its pressure. The unique properties of Devour made it able to do so. The rune did not merely resist the dominion laws of Tyrian's domain but treated them as though they had never existed.

Tyrian raised his hand.

Ten distinctively small spots of monochrome light appeared around him, each one radiating the unmistakable presence of Destruction. The lights transformed into spears, and the spears raced forward toward the Rank 3s.

If they struck, the result would be instantaneous. The Rank 3s would die, their runic energy absorbed into Tyrian's body, supplementing Salem's resurrections and bringing him closer to becoming the full vessel of Salem.

The spears crossed the distance between them in an instant, and Jaune could feel the pressure of their destruction as they approached.

Then, the spears disappeared.

Tyrian's eyes widened.

"What?!"

The word was barely audible, but Jaune heard it clearly. The space between him and the Rank 3s ceased to exist, and Jaune Arc appeared directly in front of Tyrian, close enough that he could have reached out and touched him.

He had devoured the distance between them. Tyrian's eyes widened further as he saw Jaune standing there in his new golden threads, his body radiating the pressure of a Rank 3 and his expression calm and almost conversational.

"Yo. You've been making a big mess of things, haven't you?"

Jaune's hand moved before Tyrian could react. The motion was so fast that it barely seemed to happen, and Tyrian's attempt to dodge was meaningless. Jaune's hand penetrated his chest with ease, passing through flesh and bone as though they were nothing more than a thin layer of mist.

His fingers reached into Tyrian's core spirit and closed around the object within. Jaune felt the presence of Choice immediately, the Supreme Rune's authority pressing against his hand with a force that was almost overwhelming.

The rune had the appearance of a Möbius strip shifting through three different dimensional states, its body resembling a snake biting its own tail. It was a thing of impossible geometry, a conceptual structure that seemed to exist in more than one reality at once.

He pulled.

The rune came free with a violent surge of energy, and cracks of monochrome light erupted across his hand, spreading up his flesh and destroying it. The pain was immediate, sharp and absolute, but Jaune barely reacted.

The Supreme Rune of Choice floated in the air for a single instant, suspended between them, and Tyrian reached forward instinctively, his hand stretching toward the stolen authority. But the rune was already gone. Jaune had placed it into his spirit, and the moment it entered him, the golden light of Devour shifted, its rotation accelerating as it began to draw the new Supreme Rune into itself.

Jaune reached his other arm forward, intending to Steal another of Tyrian's Supreme Runes, but the attack never reached its target. A sudden explosion of monochrome light erupted between them, forcing both combatants backward.

The light was so intense that it swallowed the space around them, and when it cleared, Jaune's body was partially crumbling into ashes. The destruction had spread across his flesh, consuming it in an instant, but Jaune simply watched as the damaged parts of his body fall off and turn into nothingness.

Then, his flesh regenerated and all the damage was reformed. Within the span of a heartbeat, he was whole again.

Tyrian stared at him.

His face was twisted into an expression of absolute rage, his eyes wide with apoplectic anger, his teeth grinding together as he realized what had happened. His domain had stopped growing, and the pressure of his expanding power receded as though something had begun to consume it from within.

Jaune could feel the difference immediately. The vastness of Tyrian's domain was still immense, but it was no longer growing unchecked. The Supreme Runes were no longer settling into his spirit with the same ease, and the pressure of Salem's sleeping mind seemed to have become more distant.

Tyrian's voice came out as a dual echo, two distinct tones overlapping in a single furious cry.

"JAUNE ARC!"

Jaune looked at him, his expression emotionless.

"In the flesh."

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AN: This is final Arc before the epilogue. I hope you have all enjoyed your reading experience so far.