Relic of the Future: Chapter 44

"You may begin when ready. I'll wait until you make the first attack."

Whitley paused. "You'll wait?"

"Sure." Jaune adopted a resting pose with both hands atop his sword, leaning on it. "If you want to plan briefly, that's fine. Just be aware that if you try and make this last five minutes, I'll be forced to do something. We don't have all day."

"A minute or two, though?" the young man asked.

"Fine with me."

Weiss and Whitley exchanged some downright dangerous smiles with one another. It was his first warning he'd messed up – though not the only one. The two stepped close to one another and readied their weapons. Rather than attack, however, Weiss fell to one knee and focused on the ground in front of her. Whitley brought the revolver up before his face, touching his other hand to its side in what looked to be a prayer-like gesture.

Twin Schnee crests etched from white light spread out on the ground beneath them, two seals overlapping.

[...]

White Nevermore began to flutter about the two, not in the numbers Winter could manage, but a good ten or twelve between them.

[...]

Fifty, sixty, seventy – they stopped at eighty Nevermore, and judging by the way Whitley wavered, the process was taxing enough that he could expect it not to happen again. All in all, they were proficient at it, though not nearly as much as Winter was – or Weiss in the future. They had been able to use this mid-combat, parrying a blow, falling back and instantly summoning Grimm as a distraction. Right now, these two needed time and focus.

"Ten, nine, eight…" Jaune counted down, making sure they heard. He knew they had when they scattered – vanishing into the mist of white, avian forms. "Four, three, two, one." Crocea Mors came up. Jaune sighed. "Begin," he groaned.

The avalanche struck.

The force of it alone knocked him back a few feet. Nevermore cut themselves to ribbons on the sword held before him, but there was no way he could actually swing it. Doing so would have required insane upper arm strength, especially with so many Nevermore smothering him. Instead, he closed his eyes and pushed his aura to the fore.

Killing eighty Nevermore wasn't reasonable. It would wear him out, not to mention distract him and let the two try to summon more, if they could. Besides, summons had never been Weiss' main tool of the trade. Glyphs were.

And with his eyes closed, through the repeated stinging of beaks and claws on his aura, he felt the glyph come to life beneath him.

[...]

It blasted some Nevermore back, but the majority continued to hound him like a swarm of angry rapier wasps, stinging, pecking and flapping against every part of his body.

[...]

He scraped it off quickly, still ignoring the constant barrage from the Nevermore. His aura trickled away, but it was a slow loss, and the Nevermore were slowly dying – either against his sword or being crushed underfoot as he moved.

—Relic of the Future: Chapter 44