28 Becoming an aspirant Grimm slayer part 2

|Ryu-Bang P.O.V|

Normally, I wouldn't condone my disciple purposefully taunting and prolonging his battle with his opponent more then necessary, especially when this adversary is a Grimm.

Over his long career, I have seen many talented and promising huntsman perish due to their carelessness, afterall the grimm only need you to make a single mistake for things to start snowballing out off control. One mistake can put you at a disadvantage, which will generate negative emotions and attract even more of them and put you into a even more disadvantageous position until the situation becomes completely hopeless.

But I'm willing to forgive it in this instance since I know my student is only doing so in order to try and learn its attack patterns and devise better strategies while doing so, afterall that's one of the reasons I took Jaune as my disciple in the first place aside from his combat talent, his great temperament.

Jaune is someone that is very cautious and doesn't do stupid things like trying to show off or go ahead without any plan, he's also very calm and calculative as he has shown when he was able to stay composed even when he challenged a older student while having no combat experience himself, lastly he is very decisive and strong-willed as shown when he barged into the dojo and demanded be taken as a direct disciple.

That is the main reason he has no issues with bringing him to a grimm infested forest, not only does he posses the necessary traits to become a huntsman but it will also serve to temper not only his combat skills but also his mind. Jaune is the type of genius that grows faster under pressure, so real combat is much more effective than simple spars back on the dojo, not that any of his other disciples stand much of a chance at this point.

That's the whole reason that he chose to guard his disciple while remaining out of his sight, not having himself in Jaune's immediate vicinity may allow Jaune to feel more pressured and less safe, therefore stimulating his growth.

But regardless, even if he's letting it pass this time, he'll certainly not tolerate it happening again from now on. Not taking the battle seriously and holding back to prolong the battle are not things that he wants his disciple to make a habit of. So from now on he'll be subjected to heavy punishment if this behavior is seen.

And so Ryu-Bang continued observing the battle while looking for the next group of Grimm for Jaune to fight.

...

|Jaune's P.O.V|

The fight with my first Grimm has in the end proven itself to be extremely fruitful, after the first move exchange in which I was able to get an idea in regards to my opponents strength and confirm that I was able to beat it without too much hassle, I proceeded to employ my usual routine of observing and learning my opponents before dispatching of them.

Not that it took to long to learn everything that I could from it, Grimm are not exactly known for being very deep or using complicated attacks so after dodging and running around using my superior mobility for a few minutes I finally finished it by delivering a flurry of blows with similar strength to the previous uppercut.

I quickly took a brief glance at my Scroll and saw the number representing my current aura level [aura level: 100%], and that shouldn't be possible since I used several aura techniques, that made me remember that my current Scroll can't give me accurate measurements whenever I use my semblance. My base aura amount was able to be seen after I made many upgrades to my personal Scroll but whenever I amplify it, the amount just gets stuck in 100% until I use up all the extra aura and go below my base amount.

So far I haven't seen adjusting my Scroll as a priority, specially considering how occupied my days are but in the future this is something that I must fix since knowing exactly how much aura I'm using in each fight will be essential to measure my improvements.

After the fight was over, I was still in my peak form so I just waited in place as master lured the next group of Grimm towards me, going out to find them myself would not be a good idea since it would increase the chances of me stumbling into one that I couldn't take on yet.

...

After that fight, the next came not long after and as he continued to fight he had forgone trying to study his opponents and just focused on deleting them quickly and efficiently.

A grimm by itself had very limited intelligence, especially ones as young as the one he was facing due to his master's choice, but when put together their teamwork is quite passable even between different species of Grimm so their threat is not something he could just ignore.

It has also became very obvious that his master's training philosophy is complete different from that of common combat schools. There you would start at 10 and spend the first two years only going through the basics to just then have some contact with live grimm, they would be put on a controlled environment with a captured grimm and made to face it as more of a form of hardening their will then to teach how to kill them.

Compare that with his current situation: instead of making him face just one repeatedly until he is finally acostumed to it to just then increase the number, his teacher just keeps sending him progressively larger groups without letting him catch his breath causing him to be constantly on his toes and always under pressure.

When the number increased to 2 and 3 he could still handle it well and use of his mobility to his advantage to isolate and eliminate them one by one, though the larger number and their constant attempts to corner him did make did make maneuvering around them slightly more troublesome.

Grimm behavior can be measured in a spectrum of passive and aggressive, where one stands being dependant from its species, age and the amount of negative emotions nearby. With some being more passive and cautious as they get older and going berserk whenever there's too much negative energy nearby.

Jaune used that to his advantage by targeting one of the beowolfs and instigating its aggression before using his great mobility to disengage and start a tactical retreat, this would cause the one member of the group that was provoked to chase more vigorously than the rest that were more passive and only trying to slowly encircle him, that would make one of them slowly become separated from the group and a much easier target, he would repeat the process as needed.

A good comparison is how in some online MMOs, it is common tactic to whenever faced with a group of enemies to attack one of them from a distance to attract 'agro' and make then retreat to separate it from its group. What he did was basically that with a few extra steps.

But he quickly started realizing that once the number of enemies kept increasing, such tricks were no longer effective and he had no choice but to face them and he started to fight and struggle as he was constantly surrounded and overwhelmed by his enemies. But with it came a realization:

'My enemies can be said to be apex predators, created by the God of darkness with the sole purposed to destroy all creations. They're endless, unwavering, relentless, brutal and without a single shred of mercy, they aren't fighting to survive but solely to kill. If I want to beat them then I will need a different aproach to combat.'

Then he came to a realization 'If I want to more effectively defeat them, then first I must be prepared to become something even worse.' So he decided to be less cautious and methodical and more ruthless, not only to his opponents but also to himself. He has accepted that when overwhelmed he must be willing to sacrifice something in order to cease the advantage, being too meek or indecisive to do so will only make the price you must pay in the end much larger.

Instead of just prolonging the fight by fighting cautiously, he instead would now purposefully receive an attack, taking advantage of his large Aura reserves in order to quickly get rid of his targets. This has made the fights much shorter which in the wilds translates to much less variables or chances of more Grimm showing up to make things worse.

So as he continued the fights he started to subconsciously start treating his targets less like opponents that needed to be overcome and more like a predator that must be 'hunted' by him. This different aproach to combat had directly increased his effectiveness in dispatching of his enemies.

But each fight was still taking away a huge chunk of his aura and if he didn't have the 'breathing technique: second wind' to revitalize him then he would have already collapsed due to the many bruises in his body and exhaustion.

Many huntsman trainees think that they're invincible as long as they have aura and can't be harmed but that's not the case. That is to say that even if it can prevent any lacerations from a strong bite, his bones can still be shattered by the force.

Even with his aura preventing their teeth and claws from puncturing his skin and dispersing much of the energy from the attacks, it was still enough to bruise him and cause some pain, his clothes had been almost completely shredded with many claw marks being seen on it and there was many white lines and purple spots on his skin from where the attacks landed on him.

That is mostly from surprise attacks that were made from behind him which made it nearly impossible for him to react. That's obviously because in order to dodge an attack he must first see it and since he doesn't have eyes in the back of his head this would be impossible.

If his opponents weren't grimm then he could just use his aura sense to detect them even while behind him, but since they don't have aura then it is impossible to do so and although he can use his aura to sharpen his senses such as hearing, the effect is currently much inferior to a faunus natural hearing and it's hard to concentrate on one sound when you have many beowolfs growling and shuffling around you.

The only technique that he has that could work is his aura sonar but on the time that he needs to use it he'll easily be hit by the attack anyways. As it turns out, trying to crouch in order to send a pulse of aura tends to leave you wide open.

If things continued as they were, no matter how much aura he had it would be eventually exhausted between him using aura techniques in order to overcome his physical shortcomings and constantly being hit by attacks aimed at his back.

So he immediately started thinking of countermeasures in order to make up for this weakness. He briefly considered to send a wave of aura through the air instead of along the ground but the aura consumption of such a move would be worse then just getting hit, despite not being useful now he decided to keep the idea for later.

But in the middle of fighting he had another epiphany:

'What if I tried to instead use my legs?'

The crushing fist style as suggested by its name is a martial art that focuses on the top half of the body and doesn't really uses the legs as a form of attack, because of that Jaune has become much more familiar with channelling aura through his arms and became much more skillful at it, so whenever he learned a technique he would focus on performing it with his arms and never tried to use it with his legs.

If he was able to send aura waves from his feet then he would be able to use aura sonar much more easily while in the middle of combat and will always be aware of the exact position of his enemies at all times, this realization has also made him aware that there was still many unexplored possibilities on his abilities that he should explore.

With renewed inspiration, Jaune eagerly started to test out the possibility and tried to copy the method of channeling aura through his hands to use it on his feet, obviously this wasn't something that he could pull out in a single try since he needed to familiarise himself with using the technique with his leg since he had to account for the difference between those limbs.

So after dispatching of his current group of enemies and waiting for his next one to appear while familiarizing himself with the move, he was then finally ready to put it in action.

The next group that his teacher had lured over then had arrived and they consisted of 8 beowolfs, at this point he was already getting tired of facing the same type of Grimm over and over, he was really hopping that the next group would be different for a change.

Before the fight he took a quick glance at his Scroll in order to see how much aura he had [aura level: 65%], this meant that he had already used up all of the buffer that he got from his semblance and had now only his original aura amount to work with, but he still wasn't worried since his 65% was still much larger than someone else's 100%.

So seeing them aproach him he just lifts one of his legs and starts to infuse it with a lot of aura preparing his new technique.

The group of Grimm doesn't stay idle and immediately charge at him from all sides with murderous intent.

'Well, let's see how useful this will be.'