Food:
This food was lovingly cooked by your mother, Juniper Arc, and contains a range of vitamins and nutrients integral to your development. The toast is slightly charred and the butter used on it is one day past its sell-by-date. There are tens of thousands of microbes living within it.
Some of them are good for you.
-/-
Jaune scowled and picked at what would have normally been a rather nice breakfast if not for the rather obnoxious text scrolling across his vision. He waved a hand in front of his face as if to swat a fly away, but his hand simply went through it.
"Is something wrong, sweetie?" asked his mother.
-/-
Juniper Arc:
Lvl. 18
Mother to eight children and loving wife of Nicholas Arc, this is your mother, and she has raised you since you were a baby. Though not initially happy to be a mother, or to have Nicholas Arc's interests, she has come to love both. Is currently in a good mood because of the copious amounts of sex she and your father had last night.
-/-
"I'm not hungry," said Jaune, pushing the plate away. He hadn't been before, but he certainly wasn't now. There were some things a son didn't want to know. "I think I'm going to spend today outside, mom. Get some fresh air."
"Really? And you don't think you should be doing that on a full stomach?"
"I'll eat out if my appetite returns."
Juniper frowned and came around to place her hand against his forehead. He didn't feel sick, and he had a suspicion he knew what the blue boxes were anyway. A teenager who spent most of his time playing videogames wasn't going to mistake them. "You don't feel like you have a fever."
"It's probably just an upset stomach. I'll be fine."
"Maybe so. Here." She reached into a drawer and came out with some money that she handed to him. "Here's a hundred lien."
-/-
Lien:
The currency of Vale, which has been used for the last 246 years. Lien is named after an ancient term '"lien" which means assets used as collateral for a debt that have been seized. It later became a term for currency because you could pay assets "in lien" for goods.
-/-
The history lesson was neither needed nor appreciated, but it was also something he hadn't known so unless he was making this up, then he was being given information he couldn't otherwise know. That was the same for what his mom and dad had gotten up to. Jaune took the money with muttered thanks and excused himself before his sisters woke up.
It was early outside, and misty, with the sun not yet having broken through the clouds and the grass still wet with dew. Ansel was quiet at those times, with only the earliest risers up and about as everyone else woke up and ate their first meal of the day. Typically, he'd have still been in bed, but it was hard to sleep in ever since this became a thing. His body had this strange obsession with only ever sleeping long enough for an arbitrary bar to be filled, and then he would instantly wake up so refreshed that he might as well have dunked his head in ice-cold water.
"Okay," said Jaune, once he'd made his way to a small stretch of grassland and trees that the locals affectionately called a park. There was a single set of swings that he was too heavy to really use nowadays, but they made for a good seat. "So, I may have unlocked a... what is it called? A Semblance? I didn't even think that was possible without unlocking aura first."
He knew he didn't have his aura unlocked because his father had never told him how or wanted to teach him, and he'd have been a lot cooler within Ansel if he had it. Jaune also knew he didn't have it unlocked because his "stats page" told him so.
Oh, and he had a stats page now...
-/-
Jaune Arc
Lvl 1.
Title: n/a
HP: 100/100
MP: 50/50
Str: 5
Con: 5
Dex: 5
Wis: 5
Cha: 5
Aura: Locked
Semblance: The Game
-/-
Yeah.
That was a little odd.
Either this was the most in-depth dream he'd ever had (and he needed to stop playing games until the early hours of the morning) or his Semblance was taking the form of an RPG game. Both sounded unlikely, but the latter was definitely more so. Jaune pinched his arm as hard as he could.
HP: 99/100
"Ow!" he cursed. "What, what? That was a pinch! How am I 1% dead from a pinch!?"
Did HP mean life and death? It did in a lot of games, and that was worrying, but there were others where it meant passing out and being taken back to a safe spot. That was something he really didn't feel safe testing out, so he rubbed his arm and grasped the swing's chains again. The pain hadn't even been that much but losing any points of HP was scary when they were tied to your survival.
And 100 seemed really low. Sure, there were RPGs which had smaller numbers but also smaller damage, but aside from putting his life in danger there wasn't really any way to test it. If this were a game then he might have his character go outside the walls to see how hard the Grimm hit, but that was because he knew he'd have the safety of a save point to fall back on.
"Save. Uh. Save slot 1. Save game. Load game." Nothing. "Worth a shot. Tutorial...?"
Nothing. Damn. On the other hand, maybe he didn't need a tutorial. He knew what most of the stats represented from years of playing similar games. Strength was power, Constitution was health and endurance, Dexterity was quickness and reflexes, Wisdom was usually tied to magic or intelligence-based skills (and was often called Int instead of Wis, but he'd seen games with both), and Charisma was the useless stat for getting a discount at shops.
Aside from very rare classes in some RPGs that made use of it, Charisma was the dump stat, because it really didn't matter how well you played the lute or flirted when you had a BBEG that wasn't going to stop their plans for world domination just because you winked at them.
The typical approach he took was to max out strength and health in most games, and then keep dexterity at enough of a level to make sure he wasn't missing enemies, though he sometimes went for a mage character. They were usually too squishy though, and he liked to relegate them to side characters while his character played the big, beefy damage dealer.
"If this is real life, though...?" Jaune gripped the chains tighter. "How would I even level up? The only monsters to fight are Grimm. Would they give me EXP now...?"
He didn't fancy his chances against them if they did, and he didn't even have a weapon. Where was his convenient tutorial? Where were his introductory quests? Actually, scratch that. Most of those involved a village burning down and a hero orphaned. He did not want that kind of adventure. Instead, Jaune surged to his feet, up off the swing set, and took a deep breath.
"Okay. Fine. If it doesn't want to tell me how this works, then I'll just have to experiment!" He moved around the park area until he found a hefty looking rock. "It's not a barbell but I guess I could train with this. If this is a dream then what's the harm?"
Stooping, and remembering dad's instructions to lift with your legs and not your back, he slid his hands under the rock and stood back up. It was heavy but not terrible, and he could balance it on his hip. With a grunt, he let it fall to the grass with a thud, then knelt and repeated the process. He'd seen videos of guys in gyms doing an exercise like this.
After a few minutes his arms were hurting, and he felt a little sweaty.
But he kept going.
A few more minutes had him breathing harder and pausing on every squat. It turned out his legs were hurting more than his arms, and he was probably exercising them even more than he was his biceps through this. He paused to catch his breath for a minute, then, with a groan, squatted and got back to work.
Ten minutes was what he managed, and that left him wondering just how unfit he truly was. Worse yet, he hadn't been magically assigned a point in Strength or Constitution, despite working himself to the point of exhaustion.
"O—Okay. Ow." Jaune panted and fell to the grass on his butt. "I—I guess I can't cheat the system that way."
In all fairness his strength was currently at five, and if he could gain a point in it with just 15 minutes exercise, then that'd be ridiculous. It would mean he could double his strength in under two hours. Still, what was the point of a stats-based system if the only way to improve it was to spend weeks exercising at a gym? Wasn't that just real life? Maybe that was what this was. Maybe instead of being in a game, he was seeing his own capabilities in game format, and this was just some convoluted way of logging his progress.
No. He had levels, and that wasn't normal. People didn't just wake up and gain a level, and Semblances weren't – to the best of his knowledge – so useless. If he had his Semblance, then it had to do something more than just tell him how weak he was.
"M—Maybe exercise is a bad idea because I can't keep doing it without getting tired. I should try training my Dexterity or Wisdom instead."
/-/
Through intense study and gruelling research, you have gained +1 point in wisdom.
Jaune's groan was audible, as was the thunk of his head on his wooden bedroom desk. He angled his head, checked his scroll and the stopwatch app he'd left running to see how long that took. The blinking lights read 08:35:45 and counting.
Eight hours of pure study to gain a single point of wisdom.
And that was before any scaling took effect! Most games had you scale past weaker enemies and training types, so you couldn't safely spam the same thing. Eight hours, though! That was insane. His stomach was grumbling, his throat was dry and his head pounded with an oncoming migraine. Never in his life had he studied so hard, or so much at one time.
And he didn't feel any smarter, even if 1 point of Wisdom was basically a 20% increase in his smarts. His MP had gone up by 10, now at 50/60. "I must need to sleep or eat to refill it," he mumbled, too drained to do much of anything. "Ugh. I don't think I can keep doing this. W—What the hell. And if I have to do eight hours of physical exercise for a single point in Str or Con then I'll never manage it."
He could pull off maybe one hour a day, so he might be able to gain a single point in eight days, which was fine, but surely no better or worse than the gains anyone would get for that much working out. This reminded him of those times his dad had told him if he stopped playing games and started working hard at life, he'd be "gaining stats" like those videogame characters. He always snorted and ignored him before.
Now he was paying the price.
"There has to be a quicker way of doing this." Jaune pushed his textbooks away and dragged his laptop in front of him and logged online. "Guides. RPG mechanics. How to exploit an RPG system. Come on, internet. You've never let me down."
It let him down.
A lot of exploitation in real games involved coding errors or bugs that meant you could "farm" exp in one way or another. There was no telling if that would work for him, and he wasn't going to go try it with the Grimm outside the walls. Ansel wasn't big enough to have a martial arts dojo with sparring either, though maybe he could convince his father to teach him self-defence. Nicholas was adamant against teaching him to fight Grimm, but he probably wouldn't have an issue with unarmed self-defence. It wasn't like his son was going to fight monsters with his bare hands.
Either way, Jaune wrote his findings down on a notepad.
Physical exercise raises Str and Con but takes too long.
Studying raises Wisdom but takes 8 hours for one point.
Agility challenges will probably raise Dex as well and take as much time.
Cha...?
Jaune tapped his pen nib on the pad, sucking on his teeth as he looked down at the three-letter abbreviation. Charisma was well and truly a dump stat in every game he played, but that was because it wasn't useful to his characters. A quick search online brought up the usual definition for it in an RPG format.
Charisma shows how easily you make friends and to what extend you can get others to do what you want, with wit and charm and a casual gesture. Poor charisma means that people feel uncomfortable around you and tend to avoid you. Extraordinary charisma means people are in awe of you; they are dumbfounded by your wit, wisdom and brilliance, and you are known widely as one of the most attractive people in society.
"Attractive...? Brilliant...? Popular...?"
Jaune glanced to the door to make sure no one was listening in, then licked his lips and delved a little further. It pretty much agreed with what he'd seen in most RPG games but, again, it had never been a big deal there.
Most of the games he played didn't give a player many options to flex their charisma. They were heroic adventure games with fighting and monsters. If the stat worked as it did here as in games, then that wouldn't be the same. Jaune considered some of the pretty girls at school who ignored and laughed at him. He then imagined them fawning over him and hanging on his every word, while his former bullies laughed at his jokes, and everyone wanted to be around him.
Charisma sounded awesome when he put it like that...
"Daaad," said Jaune, sliding up to his father as he reclined in a chair by the fire.
Nicholas Arc
Lvl. 70
Your father, a huntsman of no small renown, is a powerful and firm man with an ironclad set of morals. He believes that family should come first before everything, and he would lay his life down for any one of his children without a moment's thought. He is concerned about what his son wants, as he desperately doesn't want to teach him to be a huntsman and throw his life away like so many of Nicholas' former friends have.
Okay. That was a lot to unpack. Jaune swallowed and did his best to ignore the obvious signs of worry he could see coming from his father. "Yes son? What is it?"
"Um. I wanted to ask you about something. And it may sound weird..."
Nicholas hummed. "Go on."
"What is charisma?"
That obviously wasn't the question his father was expecting, and it took him a moment to process it. He smiled when he did, relaxing into his seat and gesturing for Jaune to take one nearby. Jaune could tell his old man had the wrong idea about this – he probably thought Jaune was having girl trouble.
"Charisma. Hm. Well, it's a catch-all term for a lot of people. I'd say that charisma is how you hold and present yourself to other people. There are some dangerous folks online who will have you believe charisma is muscles or the size of your manhood or how many girls you can bag, but the reality of it is that charisma comes in many forms. It can be a charismatic leader, a reliable doctor, or, yes, a flirt."
That sounded about right. "How does you get better at it? Can you train it?"
"I'd say a lot of it is internal and often unconscious. While you can dress better and take more care of your looks, you also need to maintain eye contact, be a good conversationalist and stand up to pressure." Nicholas hummed. "As for training, I suppose practice makes perfect. I know it isn't a fun answer but talking to a lot of people will make you a better conversationalist, and learning from mistakes will do more for you than anything else. You could try listening to a few podcasts and videos online but you really need to be careful for frauds trying to sell you things." His voice hardened. "Charisma is not mistreating women, son. That is the domain of insecure men who look to mask their insecurity through the act of blaming women for all their ills."
"I'm not going to be like that!"
"I know you won't be." His father chuckled. "I'd say growing up with seven sisters kind of makes it impossible for you to end up like that. It's usually lonely and unsuccessful men who fall into that trap. But, as my father used to say, ask enough people and someone will say yes. Why, your mother had no interest in me when we first met, but I kept persevering and I kept trying, and through years of failure I won her over."
He was falling into nostalgia, and Jaune would have normally found an excuse to run off, but he chose to listen this time, just to see if anything might be applicable.
"Becoming charismatic is something you can force because it's a state of mind more than it is a talent you're born with. You can dress better, try harder, and you can adapt and learn from your mistakes. I made so many with your mother, but instead of giving up and complaining about how she wouldn't give me a chance, I tried new things, adapted, and listened to what she wanted. I'm not saying you should change who you are to win someone over, but if a person doesn't like the way you talk about comics, then don't talk about comics to them. If they like you with a beard, or clean-shaven, or with long or short hair, then ask yourself if that's okay. Some guys will get so worked up and accuse people of wanting them to change who they are, but is a hairstyle really your entire identity? Of course it isn't."
"So..." Jaune cut in. "What you're telling me is that I should randomly ask people out?"
"Uh. No..."
"No. That could work." Jaune stroked his jaw. It would be painful to be rejected so many times, but it could work. If he went and fought Grimm and failed then he died, but if he tried to flirt with women and failed then the worst that happened was he got embarrassed. It was much lower risk. "I can ask girls out and talk to loads of people, and watch podcasts and lessons online."
"Um. Son. I don't think—"
Jaune jumped off his seat. "Thanks, dad! You're the best!"
Nicholas Arc watched his son go and wondered if he should do something to stop what was sure to be an oncoming disaster. He made to stand, then gave up and sat down again. Maybe this would be a good learning experience for him.
"At least he didn't ask me to train him..."
/-/
"-not you, it's me. I'm not really looking for a relationship right now."
The pretty woman laughed as she said it, but she was clearly worried he'd take it poorly or become one of those assholes he'd seen around the place that wouldn't take no for an answer. Jaune stepped back instead, smiling awkwardly.
"No. It's fine. Sorry to have bothered you."
There was a pit in his stomach as he walked away, but it was short-lived.
Through repeated rejection, you have gained +1 Charisma.
Progress.
It brought a smile to hiss face and washed away the sense of despair at, as his Semblance put it, "repeated" rejection. He'd spent the night asking girls out, anyone who looked single and anyone who looked like they wouldn't take offence. He must have asked ten girls out by now, across a few of Ansel's smaller bars. He'd also chatted with random people, for no reason other than to see if he could farm his Charisma by doing so.
And he had made more progress in two hours of weak flirting than he had in eight hours of heavy study.
-/-
Jaune Arc
Lvl 1.
Title: n/a
HP: 100/100
MP: 60/60
Str: 5
Con: 5
Dex: 5
Wis: 6
Cha: 8
Aura: Locked
Semblance: The Game
-/-
Three whole points of Charisma in the span of two hours. In any other game he'd have said that was stingy, but this was real life and he had decades ahead of him. This wasn't a game he'd get bored of after 30 hours. He wasn't in a rush.
It was strange how fast Charisma rose compared to Wisdom, and it must have had something to do with the risk involved, or maybe the fact he was using it on real people. Studying or working out alone was slow, and that made sense. His Str and Con would probably rise faster if he fought Grimm, and his Wis might rise faster if he invested in private lessons with someone, but those were hard to achieve. He'd need money for the latter and a weapon and combat skills for the former, not to mention aura.
But he didn't need anything to trawl bars and get rejected by women. He didn't need anything to stop and chat with the local shopkeeper when his mom sent him out to pick up groceries. He didn't need anything to put himself out there and interact with people he would have otherwise ignored, and the results were impossible to deny.
"Hey there," he said, approaching an older woman with long black hair drinking alone. "I couldn't help but notice you and want to come say hello."
"Oh?" The woman eyed him with stark red eyes, looked him up and down, then snorted. It was obvious she wasn't impressed, but he'd dealt with that a lot already. It didn't burn quite as much as it did at the start. Probably because he felt too excited to be gaining skill points. "You've got guts, kid, but I'm really not interested."
In all honesty she looked old enough to be his mother anyway, but that didn't mean she wasn't pretty. Jaune cleared his throat and reached into his pocket. Her eyes sharpened, and he froze, suddenly nervous. When he drew out his wallet, she relaxed and so did he. "C—Can I buy you a drink, miss?"
"Stammering already?" There was a note of teasing to her, but also some grudging respect. Or amusement. He had the feeling she was humouring him. "Sure thing. Oi," she waved down the barman. "Two beers." Their drinks came and the woman tapped hers to his. "Cheers."
Jaune had tasted beer before but he had never really been "out" like this, nor had so much in one night. The taste was a lot less horrible when you had a lot of it at once, and it was now just a warm sensation in his stomach.
"S—So," he stammered, and slurred a little. "What brings a beautiful woman like you to Ansel?"
His cheesy opening line earned him another snort, this time into her beer. That was good, right? He was making her laugh. Sure, it was laughing at him, but he'd read that being funny was a good way to make someone like you.
"How old are you, kid?"
"Seventeen. I'm legal to drink."
"Heh. I have a daughter who is your age." The woman's red eyes tracked him as his own widened. "Didn't expect that, did you?"
"No! I mean, you don't look a day over twenty-five!"
Her eyes crinkled. "Smooth, brat. Surprisingly smooth." Still smirking, she tilted her body to him, a finger against her bottom lip. "Tell me, what would you do if I were to take you out back and pin you against a wall, hmmm?"
His face flooded with colour. He'd been asking women out all night, but that was to train his charisma stat. He hadn't considered that one might say yes – not that she was. He could tell teasing when he heard it, having grown up with his sisters. Jaune swallowed and gathered his nerves. "I'd show you the time of your life."
The woman burst out laughing.
Jaune's face burned.
"Oh good lord," she roared, slapping her knee. "You would, would you? Cocky brat. I'm almost tempted to put your boasts to the test, but I'm not that interested in stealing a boy's first time. Heh. Though it would be fun to watch a hapless virgin fumble around." Her eyes flashed, and he almost imagined they were glowing. "What do you say to that? Should I give you a chance to... what was it again? Blow my mind?"
This was going in a direction he wasn't sure if he should be excited about or not. Oh, a part of him was excited. Very excited. But the romantic side of him kept shouting that they hadn't gone out on a date, and that they hadn't even held hands, gazed into one another's eyes and expressed their love yet.
There was an order to these things!
"Nerve already cracking?" she teased.
"N—No! I'm just... um... lost in your eyes."
Another snort, another flash of intense amusement, like a cat watching the dying struggles of a bird it had snatched out the sky. It was while he was watching her, and stumbling over his hormones, that he finally paid attention to the blue box beside her.
-/-
Raven Branwen
Lvl: 64
Title: The Spring Maiden
A deadly woman and former huntress of Beacon Academy famed for her skill with the blade. Raven Branwen was once trusted by Headmaster Ozpin but broke from him and her team due to irreconcilable differences and now leads the Branwen tribe, a group of bandits and killers. In doing so, Raven Branwen abandoned her husband and daughter, though she uses her Semblance to keep a cursory eye on both. Is in Ansel scouting the village as a potential target for a raid.
-/-
She what...?
Jaune inspected what he had been calling a person's "bio" again and gulped as he read it through. The cold truth of her presence in his home village doused his hormones like a bucket of ice. He was suddenly very, very afraid.
/
Quest:
The Branwen tribe are hidden outside of Ansel, and are considering an attack on the village to steal valuables and enslave the young to sell as slaves or ransom back to their families. Raven has come ahead of her tribe to scout the village as a potential target. So far, she thinks the attack will be remarkably easy. You must stop them.
Success: +Exp. +Rep with Vale. +Rep with Ozma. -Rep with Raven Branwen.
Failure: Capture. Slavery. Thirst for revenge. Dark backstory.
/
Jaune downed his beer to hide his shock, panic and the sudden urge to scream. There were quests now!? Since when? The answer was obvious in that it had probably been always, because it wasn't like a game wouldn't have a story. Crap, crap, crap. And what were those consequences? How was he meant to beat off an entire tribe of bandits?
Was this his origin story at work? Was his Semblance, which seemed to think he was the main character in a videogame, trying to give him a cliché backstory where his village was destroyed, and where he had to embark on a quest to save his enslaved family? That was unfair! He'd barely had any time to grind his stats!
Okay. I can't not do anything. Crap, crap, crap. Um. Think, Jaune. Think. I can't fight them all. Raven is Lvl. 64 and I'm Lvl.1. Dad is Lvl. 70, though. Maybe he could? But there will be a lot of them. It's not just her.
"So, kid," said Raven, still playing along with his flirting. "Does my date for the evening have a name?"
"Um. Yes. Jaune. Jaune Arc. Short, sweet—" He cut himself off, then doubled down. "And the son of Nicholas Arc, one of the strongest active huntsmen in Vale!"
Her eyes narrowed. "Really? Nicholas Arc, you say? The name sounds familiar."
"Yep. Dad studied at Beacon and graduated there, and he's been fighting Grimm ever since. He's super cool and super strong." That much was true, but it might not be enough to convince Raven that she should back off. It was time to bullshit. "And he's been training a whole lot of people up here to protect Ansel against Grimm and criminals."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. Dad is basically a teacher to, like, forty people, and he's been instructing them for years now. He teaches me too, and I'm going to be applying to Beacon soon. We had Grimm attack a few days ago and you can't even see the damage because the villagers rushed out and slaughtered them." Jaune laughed. "It wasn't even a competition!"
"Sounds like there are strong people here," said Raven, frowning as she took a drink.
"Oh, for sure. Ansel is basically a retirement home for old huntsmen and huntresses. We have a bunch of old vets here who come out if there's ever any real danger, but they usually don't have to. Still, they have some strong Semblances."
Raven's fingers tapped her glass. "I didn't realise Ansel was so well-protected."
"Yep. I mean, there's a reason we're so relaxed here. Grimm and bandits don't stand a chance, and almost everyone knows how to use a weapon. I have seven sisters and every single one of them is being trained to be a huntress. Two of them are even back from Beacon for the holidays and they're teaching us some of the lessons from there."
Raven hummed, narrowed her eyes, then sighed and finished her drink.
-/-
Quest Succeeded:
You managed to convince Raven Branwen that attacking Ansel would be more effort than it is worth, and that she should search for easier pickings elsewhere. There are always easier pickings, and the wisest predator knows that even the smallest injuries can be damaging in the long run.
By tricking a powerful foe into backing down, you have earned +3 Charisma.
You have gained +1 Level.
You have gained +5 Stat points.
You have gained +Rep with various factions. You have lost Rep with Raven Branwen.
New Title Unlocked: Unknown Saviour of Ansel.
Effect: You saved Ansel, though no one will ever know it. When using this title, all people within Ansel will be predisposed to like you and will think of you more favourably.
-/-
Jaune Arc
Lvl 1.
Title: Unknown Saviour of Ansel
(5/5 points to allocate)
HP: 100/100
MP: 60/60
Str: 5
Con: 5
Dex: 5
Wis: 6
Cha: 11
Aura: Locked
Semblance: The Game
-/-
He'd done it. Somehow. Just. It had to be because of the points he'd put into Charisma. Jaune was shaking in relief. This was no game. This was his life, his home, and his family, and if Raven and her people had attacked then there would have been untold chaos.
"It's late and I should go," said Raven, setting her glass down. "But, you know, you've been quite the gentleman tonight." Her finger brushed his chin. "You're a little young for my tastes but I'm sure I could make an exception. How about you spend the night at my camp, hmmm?"
A camp where bandits were waiting, and where he already knew she would keep prisoners to be sold as slaves or ransomed back to their families. He didn't think so. Any attraction he'd felt was ash now, and he was sure the only accommodation he'd find with her would be a cage.
"I—I can't. S—Sorry." He didn't have to fake his stammer. "I think my nerves have gotten the best of me."
Raven laughed. "Oh dear. Well, a little goodbye gift then."
She leaned in and her soft lips touched his. They tasted of alcohol, smoke, and blood – but he might have imagined that last part based on what he knew about her. Jaune stood rooted as a woman twice his age, and who was also a monster, stole his first kiss.
He felt ill.
By flirting with and kissing a woman, you've gained +1 Charisma.
He didn't feel like he'd earned it.
"Come find me outside the gates if you change your mind, Jaune." Raven winked and sashayed out the bar, looking back over her shoulder invitingly. He didn't follow, and he wouldn't leave the village for at least a few days.
In fact, he was going straight to his father to tell him what had happened, though maybe he'd make up a story about how he'd seen the woman sneaking around and found her name and face on wanted posters online.
But first, he had 5 stat points to allocate wherever he wanted to.
The answer was obvious.
He couldn't have possibly fought his way past an entire tribe of bandits, and he couldn't have hoped to beat Raven in a straight fight. This world was full of people as strong as her, and he'd never catch up if he tried to do things their way. Jaune opened his status and dumped all his points into the one place that made sense.
-/-
Jaune Arc
Lvl 2.
Title: n/a
HP: 110/110
MP: 60/60
Str: 5
Con: 5
Dex: 5
Wis: 6
Cha: 17
Aura: Locked
Semblance: The Game