Jaune exploded forwards.
The instant Nicholas finished speaking, the floor beneath Jaune's feet detonated.
Sandstone erupted outward in every direction as he crossed the distance between them in a blur of motion. His body became little more than a streak of black and gold as he launched forward with enough force to flatten buildings.
Long before the attack had even begun, however, Jaune had already activated two runes.
Weakness and Plunder. The invisible effects settled over Nicholas Arc, or at least, they should have. Jaune's eyes narrowed when his father didn't even react.
Nicholas simply stood there with his hands in his pockets, calmly watching his son close the distance.
However, Jaune could still feel the extra power flow into him from his father, which meant that his runes were clearly working as intended. His father just had an exceptional poker face.
Even his emotions were oddly enough, unbothered.
Then the twin blades descended. The darkness forged from Gula carved downward with enough force to split the entire pyramid in half.
Yet they never reached their target.
Clang.
The sound echoed throughout the chamber as both blades stopped abruptly in midair, akin to them having hit an impenetrable shield.
Except... the weapons had simply struck empty space instead of any impenetrable shield. Jaune's father had done something to create some sort of impenetrable shield in front of him that could block attacks in their entirety.
The impact generated a tremendous rebound of force that rippled back through Jaune's arms.
For the briefest instant, the entire room shook from the force of the shockwave.
Nicholas didn't move, simply observing the attack with an equal look of slight curiosity and boredom. Inherently ironic.
Jaune immediately released the blades. The weapons dissolved back into liquid darkness before flowing around his right arm.
The shadow compressed and condensed before reforming into a gauntlet over his fist. Without hesitation, he punched forward.
"Break."
Crack.
The air shattered and visible fractures spread through the invisible barrier as if the very air was to be torn apart. Shards of broken and frozen atmosphere fragmented apart as though reality itself had become glass.
The barrier seemingly collapsed. Yet before Jaune could advance, his special instinct screamed. He stopped and his body twisted before forcing another punch forwards.
"Break."
Another section of air shattered directly in front of him and cracks spread outward as fragments dissolved.
Jaune immediately jumped backward.
His expression darkened.
'So that's how it worked. His rune isn't creating any barriers but freezing the air itself.'
Every particle, molecule and tiny component of the atmosphere had been locked in place. Frozen within time.
Normally that wouldn't matter, except Jaune's Break rune fundamentally required an action to occur.
Something had to progress from one state into another. Breaking was still a process and all processes required time to be completed.
If time itself had been halted...
Then the concept of breaking became impossible.
What Jaune had been breaking was the surrounding air rather that the actual time-frozen air.
Which meant that... this rune wasn't a solution.
His eyes narrowed further.
'This rune is another failure.'
Another rune rendered ineffective. No matter, he still had others that he could try. And if those failed as well...
His thoughts drifted toward a possibility he had been deliberately avoiding. Toward the rune he still hadn't been able to create.
Toward the thing he had been chasing all this time.
After all...
There wasn't enough time left to continue experimenting. Nicholas shrugged casually in an almost apologetic manner. His smile widened slightly.
"As you currently are, you still can't beat me. So... what are you going to do next? "
The words carried no arrogance, only certainty. "After all, you still haven't created that particular rune yet."
The shadow gauntlet flowed again and darkness extended outward. A spear formed within Jaune's grasp. Its black surface reflected no light. Jaune spun it once before lowering the tip toward his father. However, a small amount of shadow slipped through Jaune's feet and into the stone, before slinking away.
"So you know exactly what rune I've been trying to make."
Jaune continued, ignoring the mocking grin. "I figured the situations I've been getting into recently were a little too coincidental."
The spear blurred and dozens of thrusts exploded forward. Each strike moved fast enough to create shockwaves in the air, however, each strike stopped against the invisible wall.
"I kept running into Sleepless members with meta runes and particularly powerful Grimm that are supposedly rare."
Another thrust.
"Seems it was all your doing."
Nicholas looked genuinely shocked. Or at least he pretended to.
"What?"
He placed a hand against his chest.
"You think I have the ability to puppet people and Grimm into doing my bidding?"
The expression lasted less than a second before he smiled again.
"You're absolutely right. Not too bad of a performance from an evil mastermind, eh?"
The spear struck the barrier again and again.
Nicholas casually stepped forward, every movement looked completely relaxed. "But in any case, it's gotten you quite close."
Jaune's eyes remained fixed on him. The spear continued moving. The attacks themselves weren't important anymore.
They were simply pressure and distractions.
Ways to test reactions.
"So it's true..."
Nicholas didn't answer and Jaune's gaze sharpened.
"Your Sleepless leader. Whoever that person is, can control the creatures of Grimm."
Nicholas stepped through another barrage without concern. "You know what's really interesting about my version of Foresight?"
Jaune remained silent but his father continued anyway. "Every conversation I have... has already occurred."
The statement sounded insane, yet Jaune knew it wasn't.
"At first it took some getting used to but eventually I adapted."
His eyes gleamed.
"The act of learning from your future self is quite fascinating. The act of experiencing something, always happens twice."
Jaune regarded his father's rambling expressionlessly. Then he reached out with his free hand and activated his rune.
Plunder.
The rune's stealing tendrils travelled through Jaune's weakness sense that was feeling his father's emotions.
The moment the connection formed, Jaune attempted to steal his dad's thoughts.
However, before he could succeed, the reality corrected itself and the connection disappeared, as if reset.
One moment the mental bridge existed and the next moment it had never existed at all. Jaune felt the familiar sensation of temporal interference.
His father had simply rewound the interaction.
Returning the connection to zero.
Nicholas Arc possessed three runes.
Insight.
Foresight.
Time.
Any one of them would have been terrifying. Together they bordered on absurd. Insight allowed Nicholas to perceive and comprehend concepts with impossible clarity. This included other people's Runes, intentions, comprehension qualities and other aspects that Jaune didn't even know about.
Foresight allowed him to observe future outcomes. All forms of future outcomes and possibly even possible futures.
And his third rune, Time...
Time was different.
It was unlike any other meta rune in existence. An impossibility born from contact with the Supreme Rune, Knowledge.
Jaune wasn't entirely sure exactly how Nicholas had achieved that. However Sleepless was sinister and they had powerful infiltration capabilities. Jaune wouldn't put it past them to be able to sneak someone near the rune. In any case, the how remained unknown. But the results spoke for themselves.
Jaune knew of three major applications that the rune could do.
The first was freezing time, or rather, specific things. Jaune wasn't entirely sure it was possible for a Rank 2 to actually freeze the concept of time. As strong as a meta rune was, that didn't mean that it could break all conventional rules.
There were limits.
The second was reversing it. Like what his father had just done to the connection of Plunder, when Jaune attempted to steal his fathers thoughts.
The third...
The third was significantly more problematic. And... Jaune was currently experiencing it firsthand. His father raised a fist with the motion looking almost casual.
Ordinary.
Yet Jaune's instincts exploded into action, weakness Sense screaming as an invisible pressure of meta runic temporal energy surrounded him.
Every hidden eye within his shadow widened and the voice of Gula echoed in his mind.
'Move, Jaune. Dodge! Get away!'
Yet his body refused to cooperate. The world suddenly felt heavy and slow. Jaune's perception stretched. An instant became an eternity and a heartbeat became a lifetime.
His thoughts accelerated while his body lagged impossibly behind. Nicholas's fist continued traveling forward at perfectly normal speed.
To Jaune, however, it appeared inherently paradoxical. Devastatingly fast and devastatingly slow.
His own movements felt trapped within molasses. His muscles responded, just not quickly enough.
Time.
His father was manipulating his perception. Forcing Jaune to experience an unprecedented amount of time within a single moment.
The result was horrifying. Because while Jaune's mind could process everything occurring around him...
His body remained bound by reality and bound by motion. Bound by cause and effect.
And those things now felt impossibly slow.
The fist approached.
Closer.
Closer.
Jaune clenched his teeth. Perhaps against most Rank 2s he was invincible. Perhaps against nearly every enemy he had ever faced he possessed overwhelming advantages.
Perhaps his collection of runes that he had gathered to be able to fight his father, bordered on absurd.
But none of that mattered here.
Not against Time.
Not against a rune capable of deciding when actions happened. Or if they happened at all. And without creating a rune capable of opposing that authority...
Jaune understood a simple truth.
He could not win.
The realization settled into his mind with cold certainty as Nicholas's fist continued advancing toward his face.
However before his father's fist could hit his face, Gula erupted from his shadow.
The stalker surged upward from the darkness beneath his feet like a living nightmare, its body unraveling into dozens of elongated spikes that tore through the air toward Nicholas from every conceivable angle.
Shadow and umbra intertwined together seamlessly, creating a forest of black spears capable of skewering almost any Rank 2 alive. Under ordinary circumstances, the attack would have forced even veteran awakened onto the defensive.
Unfortunately, Nicholas Arc was not an ordinary awakened. The moment the spikes entered his vicinity, they stopped.
There was no collision.
One instant they were moving and the next they simply existed in a state between moments, frozen perfectly in place as though reality itself had become a painting. Each individual spike remained suspended in the exact position it had occupied before impact.
Nicholas did not even spare them a glance. His fist continued traveling toward Jaune's face without interruption.
And Jaune watched it happen.
Slowly and painfully.
His weakness sense was screaming and every instinct he possessed was demanding action.
Move, dodge, counter, retreat.
Anything.
Yet his body refused to obey.
The discrepancy between thought and action had become so extreme that it felt as though he had been separated from his own flesh. His mind remained sharp and active, desperately calculating possibilities, while his body lagged impossibly behind, trapped beneath the effects of Time.
Then the fist touched his face. At first the sensation seemed almost insignificant. A simple point of contact.
Yet the moment Nicholas's knuckles met his skin, Jaune immediately understood another reason why Time was regarded as one of the most terrifying runes in existence.
The impact spread over what felt like an eternity.
He felt every fraction of pressure as it traveled across his cheek. He felt the compression of skin, the shifting of muscle fibers, the minute transfer of force through bone and flesh. The experience unfolded in impossible detail, allowing him to perceive layers of reality that no human mind was ever meant to observe.
A normal punch lasted less than a second. This one seemed to last forever as is head began to turn and his jaw strained and his teeth rattled.
The force propagated through his skull. Again and again and again.
Not because the punch was repeating, but because his perception had become trapped inside a single moment, stretched to such absurd lengths that his mind could do nothing except endure it.
To an outside observer, Nicholas's fist had connected for less than an instant. To Jaune, it felt as though he spent ten minutes being punched.
Ten minutes existing solely to experience one impact and ten minutes trapped within a moment that refused to end. By the time the effect finally shattered and the world resumed its normal pace, Jaune almost felt relieved simply to experience motion again.
His body blasted backward.
Sandstone exploded around him as he crashed through one wall and into another. The entire lower chamber shook from the impact. Dust and rubble erupted outward, filling the air with clouds of pulverized stone.
For several seconds nothing moved and then the rubble shifted. Large cracks spread through the ground beneath the collapsed debris.
A moment later Jaune rose to his feet.
He rolled his shoulders once before wiping a trickle of sand from the corner of his mouth. Comparatively speaking, the attack itself had barely injured him. His body was simply too durable at this point. The real danger had never been the punch.
It was the helplessness and the sensation of existing completely out of sync with reality. The feeling of being fully aware while simultaneously unable to act.
That was what made Time so problematic.
His eyes drifted toward Gula. The stalker remained frozen.
Dozens of shadow spikes still hung suspended in the air exactly where they had been moments earlier. The attack looked almost artistic now. Like a sculpture carved from darkness rather than a living creature attempting murder.
Nicholas leisurely walked toward the immobilized construct.
"Hm."
He circled around the frozen spikes while studying them with obvious interest.
"So this is your little stalker friend."
Nicholas continued his examination as though he were studying an interesting machine rather than a living nightmare. His fingers brushed against one of the immobilized tendrils.
"Not bad. It grew quite interestingly. Using shadow runic energy with umbra intertwined. Not a bad choice."
A thoughtful look crossed his face.
"I personally would have tried imbuing its umbra with light runic energy just to see what happened."
He shrugged.
"Though I suppose experimentation can only take you so far."
With a casual wave of his hand, the frozen spikes suddenly shuddered. Time resumed for Gula and Jaune's stalker instantly recoiled.
It withdrew with startling speed, abandoning its attack entirely as it retreated into Jaune's shadow. Multiple eyes briefly opened within the darkness beneath Jaune's feet before narrowing suspiciously toward Nicholas.
The creature's unease was obvious. Even Gula understood danger. Within Jaune's mind, a familiar voice echoed.
"How are we looking?"
Jaune kept his gaze fixed on his father but his response came instantly.
"Not yet. I need to experience more of his power properly before I condense it."
His expression darkened slightly. "Otherwise we're going to end up creating another useless rune like Stop. And honestly, Break isn't looking much better right now. Practically useless. Probably won't last any longer than another 10 minutes."
Nicholas sighed dramatically and pointed toward Jaune.
"Ah. I suppose you're speaking with your stalker."
Jaune's eyes narrowed.
"Let me guess."
Nicholas smiled knowingly.
"You want to draw out every aspect of my power in its entirety, don't you?"
Inside his mind, Gula immediately answered.
"Insight."
Jaune silently agreed. Most people would have focused on Time or even feared Foresight. Yet Insight was arguably the true foundation of Nicholas Arc's terrifying reputation.
Insight allowed him to understand people.
Not merely observe them.
It let him dissect motivations, predict reactions and identify weaknesses as well as determine the most effective course of action in any interaction. Combined with Foresight, the synergy became monstrous.
Insight allowed him to analyze the mindset of a person. Foresight allowed him to see whether that prediction was correct.
The two abilities reinforced each other endlessly. If Insight reached an incorrect conclusion, Foresight would reveal the mistake. If Foresight presented an undesirable future, Insight would help determine the actions required to avoid it.
Together they transformed every conversation into a carefully optimized sequence of choices.
Jaune had seen other versions of Insight before.
Pietro Pollendina's comprehension focused heavily on engineering and invention. Arthur Watts's version revolved around machinery and whatever horrifying processes had created the Centurions.
Yet Nicholas's Insight had developed along an entirely different path.
His focus was people.
Human thought. Human behavior. Human nature.
After all, runes were never truly identical.
The same rune could manifest in wildly different ways depending upon the individual. Comprehension shaped development and understanding shaped function. Two people could create identical runes and arrive at entirely different destinations.
Nicholas understood people, therefore his Insight became terrifying.
His father shrugged casually.
"Don't worry, kiddo. I won't use that ability again on you. At least not for a while. Time perception is quite troubling to be able to counter."
Then he raised his hand and beckoned forward.
"Anyway... let's see all the other tricks you've got."
The gesture was casual and almost playful. As though they were sparring rather than attempting to kill one another.
Jaune stared at him, then slowly smiled. Not because he was confident or because he had discovered a solution to Time.
But because the trap was ready.
Jaune's smile widened ever so slightly and inside his mind he spoke a single command.
"Gula. Do it."
Across the chamber, Nicholas's smile mirrored Jaune's own and widened in response.
"Sneaky."
The entire pyramid exploded.