“Hello, John Newman, aka the Gamer, aka my future boss!” that was the sound to which John woke up to on the following Thursday, the voice of the Fateweaver amplified by what John felt like was a foghorn. “I am Magoi Magus, aka Anathema, aka your personal Fateweaver – as previously agreed. Are you awake? Please come out with pants on if you are! There are children in my proximity.”

“Well, I am now,” John grumbled, raising his upper body from the sheets with a glance at the alarm sitting on the high rim of the enormous bed. It was exactly seven in the morning.

“Tell that fuck to get some fucking sense of fucking common fucking sense,” Eliza cursed her way through her half-awake state, as John peeled himself out of the group hug. Aside from Aclysia, everyone else refused to get out of bed for this. Admirably, Rave didn’t even notice any of this going on. Her only reaction was to pull the blanket, moved partly off her by John’s movements, back over herself and whisper something about five more minutes.

John tapped on his clothing set, immediately putting himself in his orderly suit, despite him feeling more like a water bolt somebody cast incorrectly and instead creating a sorry puddle on the floor. Gamer’s Body fixed that within moments, but the fact remained that this was not a way he liked to be woken up.

He stomped his way to the upper deck and looked downwards. He found a small, but only comparatively, boat in front of the gate that separated his harbour from the open sea.

“Could you pretty please let us in?” Magoi’s voice boomed out once more.

John grabbed his phone and sent him a text message that he should stop shouting about and then fidgeted with the menu. First, he opened the metal gate and then he had to redraw the piers so that Magoi had somewhere to anchor. In the process he had to block any way for the yacht to move out, but that was not a problem at the moment. At least the back, where the vessels that rested within the yacht would be ejected from, was still unoccupied.

The boat with the name ‘Travelling Magus’ written on the side of its white hull came to a halt, and John told Aclysia to invite them to the conference room while he went to brush his teeth. When he did arrive in there, Aclysia had already briefed Magoi on the situation.

“Basically, nothing we say here will stay private,” John informed him. “Just assume that somebody is watching. We tried dismantling all cameras and microphones around, but I haven’t had this thing for too long, so we might have missed something.”

“Ah, that reminds me of the great scrying war on Australia where the enemy used emus to…” Magoi stopped when he got tapped on the shoulder. He turned his head, the top hat on top of his raptor mask dangerously tilting at one point during the movement. “Yes, dear?”

“Honey, you are about to ramble and then none of us are getting anywhere until dinner,” the person talking was Magoi’s wife, a person who was obviously just as eccentric as he was. How did John know this? Well, because they wore matching outfits.

Her husband was wearing an English style butler suit, she was wearing an English maid outfit, which was different from the French one in that it was more modest. Not that she needed to hide her body; John didn’t need to see her naked to analyse that he was looking at a total MILF, although the lack of visible face was obstructing things somewhat. Yes, just like Magoi, she was wearing a raptor skull mask, although she put a cute little melon with a pink bowtie on top of hers. Her name was Mabirl Magus.

“Ah, you are so right, what would I do without you?”

“Die because you forgot how to cook?”

“At least anything tasty, cannot add that flavour of love myself!”

“Aww, you are making me blush, give me a kiss!”

The tips of the masks met. The groaning that then resounded came from the three children behind the Magus parents. Although calling them children was only true in the sense that they were offspring from the two of them, they weren’t young enough to warrant that description.

The oldest, at an age of forty but with the appearance of a mid-twenty, was Magnus Magus, someone who had inherited his father’s natural fascination with Illusion Barriers, but sadly not his talent. Nevertheless, he was quite adept at what he did and worked himself quite far up the Fateweaver ladder before it all came tumbling down. He had long hair that John guessed to be a very dark shade of brown rather than black, he was also quite tall and muscular, although the genes from his parents kept his overall frame slim. In grand summary, with his dark coat and suit he looked like a normal Fateweaver.

The middle child, in her mid-thirties in real age, was a Stefanie Magus. She was a learned water mage, having chosen to accompany her father not because she was searching for work but because she was just taking a vacation from her job at New Atlantis. While John had a million questions about the fact that there was a new Atlantis already, he decided to spare her his curiosity.

Lastly was a girl minorly younger than John, which meant she was also 18, although barely. She didn’t talk to anyone in the room, just sat down in the comfiest looking chair around and began gaming. Apparently, she was a bit closer to her father in talent but was lacking any sort of work ethic. Her name was Lee Magus.

They were all quite good-looking people, but John didn’t really feel attracted to any of the females among them. He was satisfied and his Wisdom highly recommended him to not flirt with the daughters and/or wife of the high Fateweaver about to be employed by him.

“I really need to get another family,” Magnus grumbled; none of them were wearing any unusual get-up. They were almost shockingly normal in their current year clothes. “Father, why are we not getting to the point?”

“How boring, okay then, let’s talk about what we both should get from this contract… somewhere where we won’t be spied on if possible,” Magoi tapped his cane on the floor. “This barrier is peculiar. I should be able to take control and just separate everything from the internet to allow us privacy, but control is hardwired to you, John.”

“Just another facet of the bullshit,” John laughed and then guided them off the ship and to the I.D. Gate. He placed his phone in the hands of Aclysia, the whole of the Magus family quickly doing the same as they went inside the empty space. The weaponized maid then placed them inside her inventory. As usual, within there, all connection was lost, and even if that wasn’t enough, there was no way for soundwaves to be stored inside the inventory. If there had been, John would have been pulling stupid shenanigans aeons ago.

“This is also very peculiar, it emulates an advanced technique,” Magoi sounded very happy about these new things presented to him. “Ah, how I like fresh stuff, always funny with you, John. Now, I wonder if…”

“1000%, is that as high as you can casually go?” John asked, the room changing from the darkness to a tranquil grassland. “I remember you boasting you could reach ten-thousand percent. It seems your health has deteriorated quite a bit since then though.” That last part was delivered in a worried tone. What the Observe sheet had said about John being his ‘probably last’ employer and the fact that Magus was five levels lower than before was quite worrisome.

“Ah, straight to the point, yes, my health hasn’t been the best lately,” Magoi admitted. “Doing what I did at Warsaw isn’t advisable for someone my age, you know, taking drugs, putting on a mask that sends my powers into an unsustainable overdrive and all that. Getting hit by a stray rock on the head certainly didn’t help. I can increase the flow of time here further if I can prepare, up to 70 to 1 should still be possible, but I won’t be able to hold it for forever. A 10 to 1 ratio is as good as it’s going to get, I am afraid.”

“No sweat of my back, it’s still really far up there,” John told him and stretched again. “Although you could have written me that you would arrive a day late. I was sitting there in anticipation all Wednesday.”

“If by that you mean you were walking through barriers all day,” Magoi joked.

“That is not untrue,” John admitted. “Anyway, why don’t we go over how this whole employment thing is going to look like. Are your kids staying too?”

“I am,” Magnus grumbled his way into the conversation. “I am not as good as my father, but I am able to get a 3 to 1 barrier going easily and I need a new job. I promise to work hard!” He slammed a fist against his chest in a respectful, military gesture.

‘This guy is kind of intense,’ John thought. “Sure, what about you two?”

“I am heading back to New Atlantis, was just seeing my father off,” Stefanie answered, as was expected. “Going to be hard to visit him on the east-coast. Can you conquer your way over to the west ASAP? Would save me a lot of flying.”

“What’s wrong with flying?” Sylph popped into existence with the smell of a flowerbed. The tiny, fairy-like elemental began zooming about the place. “I like flying! Look! I can move horiz- horizon- lying direction and standing direction! Whoosh!”

“Begone, devil’s tongue!” Stefanie exclaimed and distanced herself from the air spirit.

“You will have to excuse her, bad experiences with your kind,” Lee finally spoke up, moving a notepad she was drawing on in front of Sylph and slowly shoving her back as the tempest elemental cried out in a lack of understanding. With a poof, she disappeared to contemplate the meaning of her existence for all of ten seconds. Then she was suddenly talking about waffles with Gnome. “Myself, Dad is sending me back to the Everest to attend some classes or whatever.”

Mabirl then stole the notepad by balancing it on the tip of her walking stick. “Young girl, you will speak with respect and not squander your talents by getting into this ‘e-sports’ thing!”

“What, should I squander my talent by becoming a housewife instead?”

“That is an alternative, yes,” Mabirl said. “Just make sure he is a nice young man with a strong grip on morality. Not this one though,” the stick travelled over to John, “no offense, but as a mother I don’t want my girl to end up in a harem. I, in no way, condemn your lifestyle but I also don’t want my family to partake in it.”

“None taken,” John assured as Lee grabbed her notepad back and grumblingly retreated. “So you three will be staying, right?”

“Right, let’s get over the details,” Magoi clapped his hands and thus created a table out of thin air. “Do you have pen and paper on hand?”

John pulled both out of his inventory, “Since yesterday.”

What followed was a lengthy discourse about what Magoi’s exact position was in this new guild. Starting with what he gained from it, they came to a quick understanding of a flexible payment, a guarantee that John would stand with his name (and action if necessary, save for cases that could threaten the guild as a whole) for the safety of him and his direct family and that Magoi would be part of whatever real council/government body would eventually be put together.

After some further negotiation, Magoi ensured himself that the Fateweavers that Collide would employ would all go through him and that a new vassal guild under the name of the Magus Magi would be created for that effort. Furthermore, that vassal guild would be given funding to create a university. John easily conceded on all of the points, especially the last one since it would mean that he got a supply of America original Fateweavers in the future. Magoi also negotiated that Magnus would be the first choice in succession for all of this, for whenever the old Fateweaver would pass on.

In return for all of these things, Collide would be able to call upon those Fateweavers as its members, meaning that the services were largely free and that they would run maintenance. Magoi did make sure, however, that he wouldn’t run time dilations with John too often.

“But why though?” John asked as he closed the window. He would have been lying if he said he wasn’t nettled by this. That enormous time dilation was his easy way to getting very strong very fast.

“Because I was born in 1776, but I am 431 years old,” Magoi told him quite clearly. “You do the math on that one.”

“You are telling me that you spent 189 years in time dilations?” John asked. Asking that made him wonder how much time he had spent inside them.

“And that I still age inside them, yes, with 200 I didn’t care much. Frankly, last year I didn’t care much, but after the war I am really feeling that old age in my bones, and I don’t want to spend my life’s evening sitting around as a means to speed up your progress,” Magoi informed him. “I spent most of my life working to amass an absurd amount of wealth, I am going to spend it on blackjack and nice food. Thus, I am going to help you once a month.”

“If you still want the help, I am happy to go in my father’s stead,” Magnus chimed in.

That would still add another ten days of grinding to each month with Magoi’s help alone. Magnus, while not quite as good, was still vastly outclassing John’s own time dilation. “Can you do the intermediary barrier thing in here?” John wanted to know, both from Magoi and Magnus.

They both could, although it took the son about ten minutes to set up what his father could do with a snap of his fingers. That didn’t irk John too much, from what he understood Magoi was simply too good and Magnus had worked his way above average to pretty good territories. Some sons had just too great fathers.

However, Magnus could not fateweave, that was a bit of a bummer. ‘Still though, there is no way to not accept this…’ John thought. “One more thing,” he spoke out loud, however. “I respect your wish that you get to spend your time how you want, but in case I need to get a lot of power very quickly, an absolute emergency, I will need you to make an exception.”

“That is acceptable,” Magoi told him. “Would you count tomorrow’s meeting you have with the leader of Thorne as such an emergency?”

“Not really,” John said. “More like if I had to fight Tilgun tomorrow.”

“That is truly acceptable then.”

“I still would like to ask for you to lend me your time ratio change for the rest of this day,” John stretched. “It might not be an emergency, but it’s probably going to be dangerous.”

“Sure thing!” Magoi declared and clapped his hands together. Two houses appeared, not any two houses but John’s family house from back in Springfield. He could practically feel the High Fateweaver winking at him from behind his bone mask. “My family and I will be using that one. Going to get the best out of Stefanie’s vacation.”

“You go do that,” John smirked. “You want your smartphones back? Aclysia would deposit them elsewhere otherwise. Full disclosure, I am getting mine back, I think the part Thorne can’t know about is done with.”

“I have my newspaper, I am happy!” Magoi declared, Lee wasn’t quite as happy about being separated from her handheld for 10 days, so the electronics were brought in with Aclysia. They all knew they had to be wary about what was said around them, so John just wrote a short message to Rave telling her that the deal was done and that he was going to grind for the rest of the day.

‘From now until I call it quits, let’s say 10PM real time…’ the meeting was supposed to take place at noon on Friday, but he had to get to and then find the specific place it mentioned so he would best move out about three hours earlier and he wanted to be well-rested for all of it. ‘That’s about 130 hours, so over 5 days. Not the best use, but it checks out.’