512Prologue:
Jaune Arc lived an average life. He went to an average school. He got average grades. He played video games. To be honest he played more video games than he should but they served as an escape from his averageness. A replacement for the one dream he had since he was eight. To be a huntsman. Something which his family namely his parents weren't exactly supportive of.
In fact the word was in essence banned from the house even with casual mentions of it getting the side eye from his parents.
Still with all the confidence of an eleven year old he knew it was what he wanted to be. Which was why when he had asked his parents about attending a primary combat school he had been summarily rejected. He admitted to himself he had said some things he shouldn't have. Namely words that under normal circumstances he would have been in deep trouble for but technically speaking his parents couldn't ground him if he hid in his room and refused to speak to them.
Sighing to himself he flopped on his bed staring at the wooden ceiling blankly. He knew he wouldn't give up. He would become a Huntsman. He would fake his way into an academy if he had to.
"I'm going to become a Huntsman." He said to the air. Unlike most times when speaking to air the air responded.
New Quest has been Created.
Become a Huntsman
Become a Licensed Huntsman with any of the four Kingdoms of Remnant.
Accept/Decline
"Eh?"
Jaune stared blankly at a cheerful blue screen hovering in front of his eyes. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. The image remained. He sat up slowly and the screen followed remaining the same distance away from his face. He turned his head and the screen rotated. He cautiously reached out his hand pawing at the air rather foolishly and his hand went through the screen.
He frowned sitting cross legged in a staring contest with the screen. At eleven years old he knew enough to know that seeing floating screens that as far as he could tell were intangible was not a good sign. Had he gone crazy?
He frowned and shook his head. He didn't feel crazy.
On the other hand did crazy people know they were crazy?
Well probably not he admitted to himself. If they knew they were crazy then they likely wouldn't be sane enough to be labeled as crazy. His head turning in circles was disturbed as another screen appeared.
+1 Intelligence for Contemplating the Nature of the Human Condition
Jaune blinked as he felt a strange sensation like a click in his head. He waited but nothing else occurred.
Humming to himself he carefully crawled off his bed the screen still maintaining its distance from his head. It actually made it rather hard to see the rest of the room behind it he thought continuing to advance on the screen. In the next instant he realized he should have given this idea a little more thought as he walked straight into his room's wall.
With a groan he raised his hand to his injured face only to realize that the pain was already gone. He felt around his nose and felt no discomfort of any sort. He noticed another bar had appeared in the corner of his vision a red bar. It wasn't in front of his face like the other screen though it was seemingly imprinted onto his eyeball. As he watched it flashed red then disappeared
All right Jaune thought, the hallucination was getting worse. Or given that the bar had now just disappeared was getting better. Growling in rising frustration he looked at the remaining screen and swiped his hand through the air willing the annoying screen to just go away.
It vanished leaving no sign it had been there.
What. What had he done differently?
Now that it was gone Jaune found himself looking around his room confusedly. He half expected something else to pop up but nothing did.
He stood there for a long couple of minutes before he gave into the temptation to interact with this strange hallucination. He had never been very good at managing his curiosity. The questions was how? He had willed the screen to go away so maybe he could will it back?
"Game." He stated. Nothing happened.
"Uh, Screen?" he said a little less confidently.
Still nothing appeared and he frowned trying to think of a game terminology that might activate the strange screens.
He frowned for a long moment before an idea came to him, "Help."
Instantly a panel appeared in front of his eyes.
Welcome to the Help Page:
Here are the current possible commands.
Stats
Skills
Inventory
Cautiously he spoke to the air feeling a cross between foolish and insane, "Stats."
Suddenly another screen appeared in front of him.
Stats:
Name: Jaune Arc
Level: 1
HP: 60
AP: 0 (Locked)
Mana: ?
Strength: 6
Agility: 4
Vitality: 6
Sense: 2
Intelligence: 5
Luck: ?
Available Ability Points: 10
The bottom and top stat were greyed out and when Jaune focused on it a dialogue box appeared popping off to the side.
Luck Stat: How Lucky the Player is. At a level of ? the stat cannot be adjusted. The player will experience a ? level of luck.
Well that was unhelpful. Frowning he refocused on the Ability Points. Those looked far more interesting. Jaune shook his head he was having a very vivid hallucination. But…
Jaune frowned looking again at the points. He had played enough games to know what Ability Points were and it was that part of him that contemplatively focused on the screen and mentally commanded for five points to be added to his strength score.
Add Five Points to Strength, Confirm?
Jaune nodded not sure if he was nodding to himself or the screen. He confirmed the input and suddenly his strength stat turned up to eleven and he felt his body shift and contort in a vaguely uncomfortable way. He looked at his arms and saw muscles there that had definitely not been there before.
In awe he felt his arms and then his legs. He looked back up at the screen a true believer.
A thought occurred to him. With this maybe he could become a Huntsman. With this interface he could easily increase his bodies stats and with that achieve his dream. He raised his hand to redistribute the rest of his points before he hesitated. He had actually earned one intelligence point from just thinking things through. Maybe the rest of his stats could be handled in the same way?
He dropped to his palms and began to do push-ups which with his increased strength stat he found to be incredibly easy. He frowned in thought before he grinned as he switched to one hand making the exercise moderately more difficult. He did push-ups for a while falling into a rhythm internally spacing out.
He hadn't received a notification though he noted. Maybe he was doing this wrong... Maybe there was another condition that needed to be met-
+1 Strength for vigorous physical exercise
Jaune couldn't have wiped the smirk off his face if he tried. He pulled up his state screen and saw his strength now sat at 12.
He looked at the rest of his stats and his smile sunk slightly. He wasn't sure how to train those off the top of his head. Agility would probably involve using physical coordination to do things but he wasn't sure how to train that in his room so that was immediately out. Vitality seemed to be a measure of how sturdy he was and was directly related to his HP but aside from maybe whacking himself with the nearest blunt object there didn't seem to be a great way to train that either. Which left him with Sense and Intelligence. He had to come to a realization for his Intelligence to improve so that didn't seem to be something he could easily train.
That left him with Sense, he focused on the Stat and the description popped up.
Sense Stat: How finely attuned the senses of the Player are.
Jaune frowned. How could he train that?
A light knocking at his door sounded and he turned to that.
"Jaune?" the soft voice of his mother called out.
Jaune didn't respond his frustration from earlier surging back full force. He waited straining his ears to hear is she had gone away. Eventually he heard the soft foot falls walking away down the corridor and he kept straining his ears till they had vanished.
It was only then that he saw the new pop up.
+1 Sense for listening to your surroundings
The smirk returned to his face. So using his senses would train them? With this he could probably get the senses of a faunas!
Getting over his elation he realized there were two entire commands he hadn't examined at all.
"Skills," he said and obediently a window popped open.
Skills:
Gamers Mind: Level Max
Dancing: Level 50
General Studies: Level 25
The skill list was surprisingly short Jaune thought frowning at it. What qualified as a skill? Did he have to have a certain level of practice in it or were there other qualifications? Also why the heck was his Dancing Skill so High?!
Jaune shook his head refocusing and then selected the final option from the help page.
"Inventory," and the screen changed showing rows upon rows of empty blue boxes. Jaune looked at the boxes for a moment before he turned gazing about his room looking for a good object. Spotting a watch his family had given him for his birthday sitting on his bedside table he walked over and grabbed it before hesitantly pushing it into the blue frame.
The watch disappeared with a ripple and then reappeared in one of the frames. Jaune pulled his hand back looking down in shock at his empty palm.
If he had any remaining doubts that would erased them.
Jaune contemplatively rubbed his chin. This was a lot.
He swiped his inventory away reflexively and the first screen reasserted itself.
New Quest has been Created.
Become a Huntsman
Become a Licensed Huntsman with any of the four Kingdoms of Remnant.
Accept/Decline
Jaune stared at the screen hard. This whole screen thing was weird. At a certain level it seemed downright insane. Still, he wanted to be a huntsman. More than anything. With all the confidence of an eleven-year-old he hit accept.
The screen disappeared and Jaune found his vision clear of all the boxes for the first time in a bit.
Now what?
Jaune thought about what he knew of Huntsman. They were extremely physically capable. Which meant…
He stood there for a couple more moments before he sighed and got to the floor and began to do push-ups.
Authors Note:
Well I know this was short and is probably a semi lackluster to my return to fanfiction. Still I already have the next chapter nearly done which should be significantly longer. This idea had been nagging at me for awhile and seeing as for the first time in a while my spare time lines up with my motivation to write I thought I should use it.
This is partially inspired by the system of Solo Leveling with my own pieces added in. One thing that always got me with gamer stories is when the numbers became too intensive. What the essence of a Gamer story in my opinion is giving a character a system that let's them get stronger like how a game character would. The numbers are all relative and in the end only meaningful in how each author applies them.
The other thing I should note is that I am not particularly happy just giving magic out in RWBY given the lore reasons that have been revealed in Universe. So this is my compromise a system powered by magic but no casting of it. Where this magic came from will be revealed in due time.
I will hopefully see you all in the next episode.
Authors Note 7/14/2024: I have been working on my other original writing projects (spacebattles Shirate or RoyalRoad nfkipp) that I would love if anyone wanted to check out. The White Mage of the Fist, in particular, is a passion project of mine.