Ughh, by the spirits! What happened?

Jaune woke up lying on the dusty concrete ground. He pressed his hands to his eyes hoping for the wave of dizziness that immediately assaulted upon waking, to disappear.

He didn’t feel sick or injured just mildly uncomfortable, groggy and quite sticky.

Why aren’t I in pain? I feel like I should be in pain. Where’s the thing that attacked me? Did the potion work?

Jaune sat upright and gasped at the thick layer of gore all over his body and the surrounding area, next to him lying on the ground was a mess of obliterated flesh.

“Well, there’s the monster.” He spoke aloud.

The situation was certainly baffling to him. He uses a potion he found in an abandoned warehouse during a desperate fight with a monster he had never seen or heard of before only to wake up and find it a devastated pile of ground meat on the floor

What happened though? I shouldn’t have had that type of strength even with a rampage potion. Did someone save me? If they did, where did they go?

He had honestly expected he would either never wake up again or to wake up lying in some side street, his rampaged self-realising it would be better to just run.

Hmm, Jess turning up could’ve also been a good guess as well.

Jaune pulled himself to his feet, he felt surprised at just how good he felt. Lighter, healthier, more aware, filled with a sense of energy, though a grumble of his stomach did make him realise he was quite hungry.

Damn near death really gets the blood flowing.

Wait…

No fucking way.

He froze as he felt something deep within him. A power he had wished for so many years.

He had reached E rank.

Jaune was still for a long moment, at a loss for words. He had waited 19 years for this and now that it was here, he wasn’t sure what to do.

He took a deep breathe.

“FUCK YES!” he cheered. He stood up unsteadily and felt within for his newfound strength.

Alright what do I have? Mana? Ki? Or an anomaly? Well mana and ki doesn’t really explain the obliterated monster… or does it? I’ll be honest I don’t really understand either energy beyond theory. Difficult to teach something you can’t feel or use. I had used magical artefacts before but I had to use mana batteries and all I really did was hit a button or activate it through my aura.

Jaune felt deep within himself.

I don’t feel anything, no mana, no ki, am I supposed to sense them if I had either? Fuck how do you activate an anomaly? Wait… is this it?

As he pushed down on a feeling in the centre of his skull, he felt something like a pulse leave his body as every sense sharpened to the extreme. Colours paled around him, leaving everything in a muted state.

He looked around quickly noticing red specks. As he approached the closest, he saw it was a megaroach, the giant insect rummaging through garbage. As Jaune looked he realised every red speck was an animal.

Ok some sort of sensory power, not bad.

In the distance though was a red speck shining much brighter and even further there were more. A deep feeling of hunger lanced through his stomach, so powerful Jaune was brought to his knees.

Before he even knew what was happening, his sword was clutched in his hands and he was sprinting towards the nearest red light.

He moved rapidly; E rank wasn’t that strong but it was a substantial increase from when Jaune was previously F.

Jaune turned a corner sharply and set his eyes on his prey. A dire-rat, simply a giant rat with some more canine and feline features, mainly the longer legs and sharpened claws. They were one of the weaker E rank monsters, able to be fought off by untrained F ranks, provided they were physically fit.

The dire-rat turned in surprise to see Jaune lunging at it with sword slashing through the air. It shrieked as high-quality steel parted its flesh.

Jaune was unused to his new power and speed though, causing him to over shoot his attacks. The dire-rat bit onto Jaunes forearm but in his haze of hunger he just kept cutting the rat until it was torn apart.

With its death Jaune felt sweet relief to his hunger, the remnants of its soul filling the void in him.

What was that hunger? I know remnants from dead monsters work to strengthen ascended but I've never heard mention of this pain.

Jaune got to his feet unsteadily, he began to feel the bites on his forearm and concerningly the hunger was still in the back of his mind, fortunately muted and no longer overwhelming.

He felt the strangest feeling within him, a sense of fulfilment, like he had gained something he was missing. Like an empty slot had been filled.

Jaune pursued that feeling within him, finding something like a switch within his soul. No, not a switch, it’s like… like a shelf with something upon it, an item of clothing, perhaps a hat?

He followed his convoluted metaphor and did what was natural with hats, he put it on.

Jaunes body suddenly began to contort, bone snapped and flesh re knitted, despite this he felt no pain. The feeling was so natural Jaune revelled in it, feeling as if he was scratching an itch, he had for such a long, long time.

The transformation was complete and Jaune struggled to wriggle out of his no longer fitting clothes. Once he had worked out, he stretched, feeling his tail lash through the air and his quadrupedal form relax.

He saw the grey fur on himself and the sharp claws, he saw the skinless tail and the snout now in his vision. He had become a dire-rat.

For a moment he was elated. A shapeshifting power, those are really fucking rare.

Then he was disappointed. Man, did my anomaly really have to be transforming into a giant rat? Couldn’t have been anything else?

Then there was bargaining. Dire-rats aren’t so bad, they metamorphosis at rank C so if I get to that point that’ll a pretty good power boost.

But Jaune was wrong, he had yet to realise the scope of his new power. He realised it when he tried to return to his human form. At first, he tried to just release it, taking off the metaphorical hat.

Alright no more fucking hat metaphor it makes no sense.

He searched within himself finding a new light besides that of the dire-rat, he felt the new form settle over him and once again his bones snapped into place returning him to his human form.

Hmm, not really new form. I am human after all, original form? My power doesn’t seem to really differentiate them besides the obvious.

Jaune took a deep breath as he pulled his clothes to him, covering his nakedness.

Clothes are going to be a bitch, aren’t they?

He was still focussed on those two lights, those two forms. Human and Dire-rat. Jaune tried to glean as much information as he could from his visualisation. He made a breakthrough when he changed his view, instead of looking at those forms as closely as he could.

He took a step back. And he saw more. Dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions, an infinite number of slots, or forms. But they were empty, Jaune couldn’t use them cause those metaphorical pegs had no hats on them.

What? How do I get new forms? Wait… it’s fucking obvious, isn’t it? I killed a Dire-rat, I got a Dire-rat form. Holy shit that’s amazing.

Jaune stood up letting out a sigh, he pulled the last of his clothes back on, an uncomfortable endeavour considering they were crusted with dried blood.

Damn how am I going to explain this? He was already dreading what his siblings would say if they saw him.

Turns out he wouldn’t have to wonder, ten minutes after he began heading home from his life changing encounter a voice yelled down at him from a nearby roof top.

“There you are Jaune! Do you have any idea how worried I was?!” A feminine voice shouted.

Oh boy.

The woman jumped from the 4-storey building and landed softly in front of him. She wore leather armour from some dark scaled beast and in her hands was a frankly oversized long bow. Her silvery platinum hair, a trait of the Blackwell family, was tied in a loose bun, a streak of lime dyed hair hanging down the side of her face and all three of her eyes glowed a soft forest green as she glared angrily at her brother.

Jessamine Blackwell, high C rank ascended and the 6th child of Salene and Victor Blackwell. Jess was an expert in the fields of archery, stealth and tracking fitting the ranger archetype like a glove. Her anomaly had given her three eyes, each with an unbelievable level of visual acuity and the ability to see through solid objects, combined with her formidable control over ki and its use in subtler arts, it was clear she was a very highly ranked person in the Adventurers Association.

“I told you to come home over an hour ago! Better yet why are you covered in dire-rat blood?! Do you need a potion? I don’t see any wounds but I’m not omniscient.”

She was about to continue on a lengthy tirade but a very tired Jaune held up his hand and stalled her. “I’m fine Jess, I just took a little detour and fought a dire rat, I lost track of time a bit and didn’t realise. I’m sorry about that by the way.”

Jess frowned, crossing her arms. “You shouldn’t be fighting.”

Anger flared in Jaune “Don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t do! You know damn well I am not the fragile thing you seem to think I am! I was trained by father just the same as you!”

She groaned in frustration. “Why can’t you understand? You’re too weak, all it takes it one moment of bad luck on these little fights of yours and you’re dead! F ranked don’t have anywhere near the same durability as even an E rank, you have none of the energies in your body that would keep you from dying from something as tame as a hard hit to the skull. Face it you’ll never be an adventurer like the rest of us!” Jess shouted before continuing in a gentler tone, like an adult reassuring a child. “That doesn’t make you any lesser, you could still become a wealthy merchant or even a manager for one of the big adventurer guilds. You already help with magical item trades.”

Jaunes face blanked. “Do not treat me like child Jess. You don’t even realise how patronising you sound.” With that he turned and simply walked away.

Jess held out a hand and was about to call out to him but her words died in her throat. What’s so different about him tonight? His aura? She thought to herself.

As Jaune walked away he felt a twinge of guilt, his anger was very real, he had heard the other careers path speech many times from his father and Jess before and it always struck a very sensitive nerve. Jess was never that blunt though and that had hurt Jaune more, but things had changed, Jaune wasn’t F ranked, he was an ascended, granted an E rank but still a higher being than what he once was. Just being Ascended even at the lowest rank increased your lifespan to well over a hundred. Jaunes own mother, an S rank was 143 years old and looked in her late twenties, she was considered young for someone of such a high rank as well.

Why didn’t I tell her? Should I tell her? She’s always been supportive, surely it would be something to celebrate. The black sheep of the family has finally ascended, he’s no longer a disappointment to the Blackwell name.

But Jaune didn’t tell her, something in him recoiled at the thought of revealing his rank, that his ascendency should be a secret. The largest feeling though was that same sting of shame. He was ascended yes but he was bottom E tier, so far below even the second lowest rank in the family, a peak D tier.

Within each rank there were 5 tiers, bottom, low, mid, high and peak. Jaune would have to get through all 5 to reach rank D and the difficulty of each stage increased exponentially.

As he saw it, he would still be viewed as a stain as long as he was below rank C, after all on the official records he was marked as a rank D with no interest in fighting. His mother of course decided it wouldn’t do for the noble Blackwell house to have an unranked son and even then Jaune was still seen negatively in the noble circle.

Least it got me out of those annoying arranged marriage requests the others get. Silver lining.

Despite the sibling's arguments they ended up walking side by side, it was a 20-minute walk after all and they were headed in the same direction.

There was silence between them, Jaune too caught up in his thoughts on his new situation and Jess feeling just a touch awkward.

“Why aren’t you wearing your hair dye?” She broke the silence.

Jaune looked at her confused. “Huh? What was that?”

“Your hair, its silver.” She clarified, pointing to his head.

He reached up, pulling a lock of hair in front of his eye. It was indeed silver like the rest of his siblings and not blackened from the dye he applied that morning.

What the fuck? What happened to my dye? Oh, shit the transformation, that probably removed it.

“Oh yeah...” He rapidly searched for an excuse. “Uhh, the new dye I bought gave me a bad reaction so I washed it out.” A half-truth.

“What kind of dye to you buy?” she said with a frown.

Jaune shrugged. “Just a cheap chemical one.”

She looks at her brother concerned. “Why are you buying cheap stuff? I know the rest of the family doesn’t treat you very well but surely you must have plenty of savings from your trades, it's not like father would refuse to give you an allowance, especially for dyes.” a look of anger crosses her face. “Elliot isn't stealing from you again, is he? I'll feed him imp liver if he is.”

Jaune couldn’t help but snort in laughter. “What? No, I mostly avoid that prick and I never gave him much in the first place. No, I bought a cheap one because I couldn’t be assed to get one of the magic ones. Besides I'd rather save money than waste it on an expensive dye, speaking of actually, since when did you start with the green streak?”

She touched the lock of green hair. “Eh, I don’t know. Everyone in our families got silver hair, why not be a little unique.” She looked away seeming embarrassed as she spoke quieter. “And Violet dyed half her head purple.”

Her brother sniggered at her. “Well, that’s a classic. Little Jessamine following along behind cool sister Violet.” Jaune said just a tad mockingly.

“Hey!” An aggrieved tone in her voice. “Technically you’re the originator of hair dying.”

Jaunes brows furrowed. “I don’t exactly dye my hair out of choice, I'd happily go without but dearest mom doesn't want me being recognised without the false rank ring.”

His sister sighed. “I-I know and I’m sorry you have to hide yourself; it is an unfair thing to ask you to do.”

“Like the fake ID that names me Jaune Belle, F rank commoner?”

“Thats just egregious.” She scowls.

“Hmm, mother must be creatively bankrupt to come up with that last name. Though I suppose we knew that already with how she named 5 of her children in a row with J names, first you then the triplets Jack, Jacob and Jacque, and she has the gall to name me Jaune.”

Jessamine giggled. Their mother was many things, good at names was not one them.

“Thank the spirits father vetoed naming Ben, Jake.”

This time she burst out laughing. “What? I didn’t know that!”

Jaune grinned “All true, father told me himself.”

Jess looked hesitant for a moment. “... Do you and father talk again?”

He sighed. “No, I'm still angry at what he did. I know I was a little shit back then but it didn’t justify his actions. I don’t know when I'll be ready to talk to him again.”

Jaune felt an ache in his chest, he and his father had once been very close, but not anymore, they hadn't really talked for 4 years.

“Has something happened Jaune? You feel... different.”

He froze for a brief second. “Huh? What do you mean?”

Jess shrugged. “I don't know, it just feels like something changed.”

“Weird. You’ve been away for a few weeks doing... whatever it was you were doing.”

She gave him a withering look. “I was in Kolis, raiding a new C rank dungeon that appeared.” She spoke. “Do you still do aura training?”

He blinked at the subject change. “Yeah, a bit, why do you ask?”

“You must’ve had a breakthrough. Usually, I can just about feel your aura, but now it’s like a whisper. I have to really focus to get even a hint of it.”

Oh shit, yeah of course. Hitting E rank would upgrade my aura, wouldn’t it?

It was a strange sense of tragic irony, that the only unranked in the Blackwell would be a 1 in a million prodigy at aura control.

“Guess I did. Kind of pointless though, not much use for an aura when you’re an F.”

She scoffs. “Don’t say that. There’s still plenty of use, it lets you get away with lying when someone higher ranked should notice it, and even if you can’t use aura attacks yourself you can still defend from them.”

“I’m pretty sure anyone high enough rank to use aura attacks could just punch my head off anyway.”

“What if they’re trying to be discreet?”

Jaune gives his sister a disbelieving glance. “Have you ever seen an aura attack? A hammer to the skull in a crowded market would be more discreet.”

“I’ll admit I never really paid attention to aura stuff, not my thing.”

As they walked, they had moved through abandoned city scapes and to wide open fields with very well-maintained stone paths. The rolling vistas of fields and trees would seem strange in a city, until you remembered the sheer scale of the city that held nearly a hundred million and could easily hold a hundred million more.

Soon they came to the Blackwell estate, a large and mostly flat estate built in a cross between a modern mansion and a medieval fort.

The two siblings entered their home and Jess turned to her brother, noticing him looking oddly at one of the bound wind elementals that worked to clean the house.

“Jaune?”

“Hmm, yeah?” He turned to her.

“What’s so interesting about the elementals?”

Jaune shrugged “Nothing really, I’ve always just found them weird, don’t you?”

“...Yeah, guess they are.” Jess responded, giving Jaune a concerned look. “Are you sure you’re, okay? You don’t have a concussion, do you?”

“No don’t worry about it I’m fine.” He shakes his head. “I’m pretty sure I would’ve passed out if I had a concussion.”

Jess still looked worried. “You should still see Violet, just in case.”

“Trust me I’m fine, I don’t want to bother her, she’d probably charge me anyway. I'm going to go to bed. unlike you ascended, F rank have to sleep every night.”

“Alright, goodnight then... you should probably clean yourself up before you go to sleep though.” she says gesturing to his clothes, still coated by dried blood, wrinkling her nose.

“That… is a good point.” He bid Jess a goodnight before moving off to his room.

As he walked away, he let out a deep breath. Simply being near that bound wind elemental had brought the hunger back in full force.

When he entered his room he activated his sensory power, which he had deemed Life sight. Through the walls of the mansion, he could see red specks. Some were dull and some were brightly lit up, those he could recognise as having something he didn’t have.

Those bright specks he could tell were the bound wind elementals. Which made the darker red points other humans, his siblings.

Jaune focused in on one, and felt it’s aura. Amelia. One of his older sisters, third eldest and twin sister to Adrien.

From the direction she should be in the alchemy lab. Damn, isn’t it like 1 am?

He moved into the bathroom connected to his room and undressed. Jaune brushed his fingers over his forearm.

I distinctly remember a dire rat chewing my arm to the bone.

There wasn’t even a scar left behind on his skin. He pulled open a cabinet and looked through it before finding what he was after, a razor blade.

He held it to his arm with a bit of trepidation before he pushed the blade in and pulled, creating a long but shallow slice in his arm that bled quite profusely.

Jaune watched the wound and saw it begin to seal, within a minute the bleeding had stopped and in the next 5 it had stitched together. 10 minutes after the cut it was undetectable.

Well, add regeneration to the list of powers. Not as powerful as a proper regen power but it’s certainly good. Makes sense though, most shape shifters had better than average regeneration.

Jaune showered off the conglomerated filth and blood that was stuck to his body. Afterwards he looked at himself in the mirror, the upgrade to E rank hadn’t actually changed his appearance much, maybe a little more muscular but he already had an athletic build.

He felt at the switch within him and triggered his transformation, soon instead of a human standing in front of the mirror, it was instead a dire rat standing on its hind legs with its paws on the sink.

Well, this is certainly disconcerting.

Jaune moved his head around, feeling surreal as the dire rat in the mirror did the same. He returned to his human feeling regret at not hunting some more monsters.

Damn, should’ve looked a little more, could’ve found an imp maybe even a gigaroach.

He activated his life sight, wondering if it would be visible, his sisters 3 eyes glowed brighter when she activated her x-ray vision.

As he looked into the mirror, he saw his eyes change, his sclera became pure black, the iris a bright crimson that glowed softly, and finally the pupil which turned an odd milky white.

Wait, those eyes. I recognise them.

Jaune racked his brains trying to remember where he saw those same eyes.

The monster, the one I killed when I ascended. Of course, I would get it as a form. So, I can use its abilities when I'm not transformed into it. There must be a way to fully become it though, then I could find out what it is.

He searched within himself, looking for its switch. Finding it mysteriously absent at first glance.

Where is this damn form?

He spent over 10 minutes trying to find it. Until, tucked away in a corner of his soul he found a strangely dim light.

Wait... is it this? Ah ha!

Jaune began transforming, his bones turned to sludge and his skin melted into red goo. The sudden tremendous agony came as a complete surprise to him, he tried to scream but his mouth had already dissolved.

It felt like the air itself was tearing his flesh to ribbons. He hurriedly halted the transformation, pushing himself to become human again. Jaune felt his flesh begin to pull itself back together, with it came the sweet relief of his skin not being stabbed by a billion serrated knives.

Spirits, no wonder that thing was berserk when I found it.

He stayed huddled on the ground afterwards trying to forget the pain.

The transformation was so much slower as well, whatever that thing is, it’s unnatural, I felt like my entire body rejected its form. Lucky thing I can still use it’s one useful power.

Jaune walked out of his bathroom and collapsed into his bed, exhausted from all that had happened.

Why now? Why ascend now? What caused it? I have heard near death experiences can kickstart an ascendancy but I’ve had close calls before, the potion could've factored in as well. Such a powerful effect could’ve kickstarted my system, add in the almost dying part and boom. Finally, not a failure.

He smiled as he lay back.

Does it really matter?

His life had irrevocably changed but right now all that mattered was sleep, and tomorrow would be his first hunt.