The Daily Grind

Within the last three hours, Jaune had slowly but surely managed to increase the time that he could hold his breath from the five minutes he'd already trained up to, to a little under half an hour. He did this by lining his lungs, heart, and brain in aura, to slow down his heart rate, relax his muscles and prevent his autonomic nervous system from rendering him unconscious. The actual biology of what he was doing was a little more complicated than he could explain even to himself. Thankfully, as it turns out, when it comes to using aura, where there's a will there's a way. Now all he needed to do was actually get to the castle's basement without getting caught.

The name of the game tonight wasn't to get away without anyone finding out. Jaune wasn't stupid enough to believe that the sun was going to rise the next morning without his disappearance being noticed. He knew for a fact that there were dozens of cameras and recording devices trained on his living area at all times. No… It wouldn't take long for his presence to be missed. For that reason, the real goal at the moment was misdirection. Jaune wanted his family and the rest of their staff to believe that he'd left the castle in a conventional way, like by using a door or even by climbing the walls. What he didn't want them to suspect was that he'd dropped down the well.

In all likelihood, it wouldn't be all that hard for Jaune to keep his family from suspecting the well. So far as anyone else in the castle was concerned, he still didn't have access to his aura, which meant escaping through an underground waterway was completely impossible. The fact of the matter was that using the well might still be impossible, but it was a risk that he was willing to take.

After mentally compiling a list of the cameras, bugs and audio equipment that he'd managed to locate over the years, Jaune took a deep breath and reemerged from under the blankets. It was time to get moving, which meant that it was time to grab the bag of tricks.

The bag of tricks was just that. It was a canvas sack filled to the brim with every poorly conceived escape tool, plan, and idea, that Jaune had ever thought of, and it was so useless that his parents had never even bothered to confiscate it. It was something of a family joke that Jaune would make yet another foray over the walls, where he'd be scooped up like a toddler by a squad of his father's men. The idea behind letting him keep the bag was to make it obvious that they knew about his efforts and they weren't concerned that he'd succeed. Their attitude was supposed to be demoralizing; it was supposed to break his spirit. It hadn't. It only made him focus on making his plans less transparent, with several layers of varying complexity. It also gave him a bunch of props to use as a distraction.

While making sure to avoid being seen on any of the cameras that he was aware of, Jaune began picking every lock for every security door between him and the rest of the building. As he moved, he destroyed audio recording devices, barred choke points with furniture, and just generally made a mess of the castle's security. He didn't go so far out of his area of the castle that his father's men would swarm him, but he did create several different avenues of escape that they'd need to repair. Taking advantage of his familiarity with the camera rotation timing and guard patrol schedules, Jaune went out of his way to throw at least three grappling hook ropes over the walls, unlock at least two secret passageways into less travelled areas of the castle and acid burn his way through at least one sewer grate leading towards the moat.

10 extremely nerve wracking minutes later, when he was finally finished dropping a wide variety of red herrings in just as many different locations, Jaune very carefully snuck his way down into the basement, making sure to re-lock all of the doors behind him.