Leon had a theory that his semblance evolving into a higher form wasn't a unique trait he possessed , but rather simply made easier because of his falna. there had been documented cases in the past were a hunter pushed their semblance to it's current limit in a highly stressful situation like a grim horde. in a very small handful of these cases new uses or benefits suddenly manifested in their semblances and the hunters get the faint impression of growing heavier. leon believed that if the full potential of a semblance was dug out it was difficult but not impossible to cause the semblance to evolve into a higher form.
Leons original semblance didn't actually have that much potential to dig out so it was easier for his falna to just upgrade it when he leveled up. the potential of his current semblance however was leagues higher than his original to the point he still was discovering uses for it. so far he had a larger storage , extreme regeneration , passive strengthening , spell fueling , inefficient life draining and minor heal others that was also inefficient. leon also knew that his devil's due skill also used his semblance to work but he considered it a separate ability since it didn't just need the semblance to work.
The tournament lasted for a whole month during which time a few things had happened. first was that leons plan had worked and cardin mellowed out considerably , not to say he was pleasant to be around merely that he stopped looking down on everyone. ironically the match up that knocked cardin down the most pegs was between him and jaune. leon had been secretly dragging jaune to train during the last four weeks and he had grown by leaps and bounds in the process.
The only people aware of this change were those who knew jaune personally and interacted with him often. the training hadn't been easy either for jaune as leon effectively beat him half to death before healing him and repeating the process. normally leon wouldn't use such a brutal method to train someone but jaune was lacking even the basics of combat and leon didn't want to be here spending years fixing them. this lead leon to this brutal but very effective "sink or swim" type training. jaune was actually pretty talented once he set his mind to something and as a result he completed leons crash course in combat training.
Cardin mocked jaune as worthless and unworthy to be a hunter but once jaune figured out that he was actually not weaker than cardin the match was flipped on it's head. cardin tried to use his usual suppress and beatdown method of combat but jaune had learned to be vicious after leons training and slashed cardins ankles while blocking. this took out a good chunk of cardins aura while also tripping him. once on the ground cardin couldn't recover before jaune stabbed at him till his shield broke and ended the match.
It was a huge upset that only team rwby and jnpr had seen coming and cardins team looked nervously at jaune who they had been bullying since school started. jaune paid them no mind however as he was a bigger person than that. cardin himself just stayed on the ground trapped in denial at losing to jaune who he considered the most worthless person in beacon. this marked the largest improvement in cardins attitude as well as in his grades as he started to actually listen to the other professors.
All of the students might not have fixed their weaknesses but they at least started to do so by the end of these four weeks. to be honest leon felt kinda bad for the foreign competitors who would face his students during the vytal festival. he knew for a fact that the lessons he put his own students through weren't covered by the other academies. this meant there was bound to be a gap in skill between his students and the foreign students. this gap would only grow larger however as leon still had three months after this before the foreigners would arrive. the best part was that leons class isn't part of the schooling they would get when they came here since he was a unique existence at beacon.
_________________________________________________
P@trEon: patreon.com/user?u=81578854