It was the following day and John was taking things very slow. He spent his morning looking at his Stats. He had exactly 50 points to spend, so that was quite something. Torn between several possibilities, John did his usual elimination thought process.

‘I think I am good on Wisdom for the time being,’ he decided. ‘Hell, I think I am good on MP in general, so putting points into Intellect isn’t really necessary either. Charisma also feels like a finished project for the moment. However, and this is pretty stupid, if I might say so myself, Libido sounds so very tempting…’

If he had points to spend and knew not where to put them, it was basically always the smartest to dump them into Endurance. No amount of damage he could theoretically do mattered if he didn’t have the HP to take on punishment in return. Plus the usual reason of giving his familiars more time to help him.

Strength and Agility both had good arguments for the occasional raise as well. Physical Stats could just come in handy in several situations and he didn’t want to fall behind on Agility so much that he couldn’t follow enemies with his own eyes. Well, that specific example wasn’t a point anymore, given that Possession was more influenced by his mental than physical abilities. In general, however, the point of not getting outpaced too much stood.

So why did he want to dump into Libido? Actually, one logical reason. It would get all his Stats to 100. There was bound to be some sort of Achievement for this. On the illogical side, the Gamer just really, really wanted to indulge more in his depravity and whatever Perks he would get, along with the Stat itself providing a boost to his sex life. Libido did increase his own sensitivity while also making sex with him better, although the former was a much more pronounced effect than the latter. It was a pretty selfish Stat and pure vanity. He still wanted to do it.

‘…With all the good decisions I have made recently, I think I can get away with doing something stupid,’ he thought and lowered his hand on the plus button. Then he stopped. Not because he had thought otherwise, his resolve was quite firm on this, but because he had realized something. ‘I think it would be best if I do this before I have some kind of orgy… yeah, let’s give myself a challenge!’ “I won’t have sex until the boss is downed!”

That declaration came suddenly and to the shock of all the girls that were lying in the bed around him.

“Master,” Aclysia was the first one to speak up, “this may take days, are you sure you can survive that?”

“Yes, Aclysia, I still control my Libido, not the other way around,” he answered, dismissing the Stat Screen. Siena gave him a doubtful look, of the slightly joking variety. Which of his last two statements she was doubting, that was up for interpretation. “Okay, look, this isn’t a particularly well-thought out idea, it’s basically just me having decided something stupid and fun and piling more stupid and fun on top of it.” He gave everyone a wide grin. “But what’s life without doing something like that every now and again, huh? At the very least, the sex we’ll have once the boss is down will be one of the most amazing victory rounds I have ever had.”

Getting pent up for a few days and then releasing it all after also doubling his Libido wasn’t something he would normally do. Celibacy was basically just one step down from edging. However, right now he was in a mood for it, so he decided to do it. Whether he would regret it in a few days, if it even took that long, remained to be seen.

“Alright, next point on the day order…” John stretched and Gnome took that pause in his speech to interject what she thought he would say next.

“…we work on your Class Level, right?” she asked. “Probably while getting some items again?”

She was close, but not quite there, so John had to shake his head. “No, not quite. That’s the point after the next one. For now, I need to have a chat with Magoi about some things.” That caused some confusion, and John took a deep breath to start the explanation.

_______________________________________________________________________

Be it Super Mario, Dark Souls, World of Warcraft, Europa Universalis, Minecraft or whatever other game came to mind, whenever things got difficult, there was a common thread. It connected genres that had no business being connected, span through the ages of video game development and was essential to almost all game design.

Death.

Whenever there was a level or a boss or a scenario that was just ready to fuck the player up the ass without using as much as a drop of spit as lube, death was the way to learn. Well, that and maybe quickloading, but the difference wasn’t all that big. The point was that the player was reset to a point earlier or transported back to a safe place to try again.

Normally, John would not have that luxury. All his abilities aside, he was still a person and people die when they are killed. However, there was something, someone, here that allowed him to resolve that issue in his favour.

Magoi Magus listened to John over the edge of his newspaper. The man was a Fateweaver, one of the founding members of the guild even, and Fateweaving was the art of creating a barrier in which people were teleported away from the jaws of death moments before it happened. John was aware of how it worked, at least on a theoretical level.

Every barrier, no matter who had created it, was ultimately a blessing bestowed by Gaia to give the people she separated from the mundane world a space to solve their affairs in. As such, every Illusion Barrier was a part of Gaia and every last one of them fed into the supreme deity’s consciousness. In other words, Gaia knew everything.

More than what currently was, she also knew what would be. In this world, future telling was an art of getting into a certain mindset that allowed the mind to combine all current information into a seemingly unavoidable outcome. It was something beyond predicting, but it was still based on what a person knew. Gaia, knowing everything inside a barrier, could make 99,999% accurate predictions of the immediate future for everything included in that space.

Of course, every prediction made in a world that didn’t have a written fate was flawed, if only minutely. She could read the body and mana of the people inside, but as long as she didn’t also check (and control) what everyone was thinking, the cascading effects down the line made highly accurate predictions of the future impossible. Immediate future was possible because, whatever action somebody took, Gaia had a faster reaction speed than anyone could act.

However, it seemed she delegated that sort of knowledge to her vast subconscious. This was evident by her actually getting surprised by some of John’s antics, as well as the fact that people had eventually found some sort of magical flow inside barriers that continuously kept track of the future within. To what end was another mystery, the common thought was that they were there to properly know when a barrier could collapse naturally.

Whatever it was, Fateweavers had learned to tap into that stream. In a purely mechanical fashion, however. They couldn’t read it, trying to do so caused the human brain to simply collapse. It was to know the position of every single grain of sand on a beach, leaf on a tree, molecule in the air and strand of muscle. The people who attempted and simply forgot, their mind shutting out all of that unnecessary knowledge, were the lucky ones. More commonly was the complete shutdown of all non-vital brain functions. Ego, personality, memories and thoughts, all caved under the absolute weight of information and that was it. It could be treated, but usually left the individual different.

John himself had gone through a similar problem once, but Gaia had fixed him right up. Whether it was the quickness of the help, Gaia’s perfection at that craft or Gamer’s Body that had caused his mind to stay intact was another thing John couldn’t know for certain.

The way Fateweavers got around that problem was to not interact with the stream themselves. Rather, they attached something to it. Something like a warning system, that measured the predictions as they streamed. Due to the sheer girth of information passing through at any given second, the technique could only go a few seconds into the future. Should it detect a human death, the system would go off and teleport the corresponding person out of harm’s way.

As to why that didn’t create a feedback-loop, what with the person that should die in the prediction then not dying because of the prediction, thus the prediction not being made in the first place, thus causing the prediction to be made, the answer lay in the way the Fateweaving was attached to, not completely part of, the barrier.

It had to be part of the barrier itself, but also had to remain undetectable by the actual prediction system. Were it spotted in the barrier, the system would create a paradox, causing the Fateweaving to fail. It was, therefore, more like a small soap bubble attached to a larger one. Attached, kind of one unit, but still separated by enough factors to prevent a paradox.

It was no wonder it had taken people thousands of years to create that complicated of a system. That was just the breakdown of it anyway, the application was likely even more complex, even if Magoi made it seem easy. He had once said that it was incredibly difficult to learn, but once one had the trick figured out, also very easy to apply. John was going to trust him on that.

Anyway, that solved the problem of dying for John and the Artificial Spirits, who counted as quasi humans thanks to their soul pattern being so similar. Elementals had their own ways of cheating death. One that John could no longer stomach.

He had been prepared for some deaths amongst his elementals. At least so he had thought. However, each time it happened, it felt like someone was chipping away at his soul with a frozen pick. That was in addition to the guilty conscience he got from letting them experience that sort of pain. He could no longer stomach that. Much less the likely even worse losses that would befall them during the boss fight.

As such, the thing John needed to know was whether the Illusion Barrier could be modified in such a matter.

“Hmmmm,” Magoi folded his newspaper, put it on the table, and stroked his chin, for once without his mask. Even the High Fateweaver had to expose his skin to the air sometimes. His hairless head was covered with a number of scars, three of which were particularly large. The man had lived anything but a safe life and age was catching up to him these days. “You’re asking me for something no Fateweaver has done before.”

“I know,” John returned. He had asked about this before, because their lives were obviously dear to him. Until now, he had been quite happy with having Escape Rope for all situations that could be potentially dicey. It had sufficed, Instant Dungeons were not in the habit of being absurdly difficult, only appropriately challenging.

There was no reason to request the development of a new technology when there was no need for that technology. However, with the Raid he was pretty sure that they would have to attempt the boss over and over again. A three-day cooldown just wouldn’t cut it. He wanted to dodge the pain wherever possible.

If there was no way for it to work, then that would be terrible, but he would get through it somehow. If the elementals died, that was awful, but not a tragedy, if he died (almost died, rather), he got teleported out, and the rest of the party with him. They would all pull themselves together and get the Raid done despite the pain, because they shouldn’t let this sort of levelling opportunity pass. There was no way something like the Catch-Up Buff would appear again anytime even remotely soon.

“Can it be done?” he asked, annoyed that there was no basis of this sort of research he had ever found. Elementals weren’t an exceedingly rare craft. There should have been numerous attempts at getting this done. To be fair, the average person likely didn’t experience their elemental dying at John’s current frequency.

“In theory…” Magoi hummed. “They have souls, after all. If they’re enriched enough, which those girls’ souls definitely are, they should have a signature that can be tracked within the prediction stream.” His fingers danced over the surface of the table. “…Whether it actually works when the theory is applied to the math or praxis is difficult to discern.”

John made a displeased expression. “You would need test runs, is that it?” He could provide that, but he really, really didn’t want to.

“Yes… maybe,” Magoi seemed to have a sudden idea, taking out his phone.

“Oh? Here I thought our youngster technologies were beyond your analogue supremacy,” John poked at the old man’s love for all things vintage and physical. “Why don’t you send your news with a pigeon or something?”

“I could do that, but that would take a little bit longer,” Magoi waved him off. “You need to know the difference between what is convenient,” he raised his phone, “and what is proper,” he put up the paper.

“Whatever you say, High Fateweaver,” John mused to himself. Then, in a more serious tone, he asked, “Who are you contacting?”

“Someone who is better at figuring out theoretic stuff than I am,” Magoi responded. “I am very much someone who learns by doing. Since that isn’t an option, I am going to get someone who is better at all the number crunching.”

That someone, as it turned out about 30 minutes later, was Magnus Magus, Magoi’s oldest child. John could absolutely see it. Since Magnus was so sadly untalented, he would have read all the books and practically breathed all the theories. While he would not be able to put the solutions into place himself, he would be able to come up with them.

“Think we can isolate the soul-pattern of elementals within the information of the prediction stream?” Magoi asked, once Magnus had been informed about the whole situation.

Magnus shook his head, causing his long, almost black hair to wave and land on his lean, muscular shoulders. “With just six subjects and no test runs, it’s impossible to find a general pattern…” his stern voice trailed off and Magoi looked a bit disappointed, but more so expectant of what would come out of his son’s mouth next.

It occurred to John that Magoi was lying to him, at least in part. That he was a practical thinker was likely true. That he wasn’t as adept at number crunching as his son was a bit questionable. That he needed his son to bounce ideas off of was absolutely false. ‘He already knows how to do this, at least in theory,’ John realized, glancing back and forth between father and son. ‘But he is waiting for Magnus to figure it out himself.’

John wondered if he could do such a thing. Stand next to his own, less able son and just pull out of their life and thoughts to let them do as they needed on their own. Do something slower and likely worse than he could, just so they could learn. It was an uncomfortably hard question. As was whether pulling out completely would be the right choice, when his child could require the guidance.

Somehow, though, the look on Magoi’s face, disappointed and expectant, also had something tranquil about it that John couldn’t understand. Was that the way parents looked at their children? Would he only be able to feel that way when he was a father himself? It looked equally terrifying and desirable.

Magnus finally spoke up and John was separated from that train of thought. “The general approach is impossible. The specialized route could work. We’ll have to use a pre-human soul pattern version of Fateweaving that works around John’s specific pattern.”

“Right, right,” Magoi said with a proud smile on his lips. The fact that he had already known that was the answer was leaking out of each of his happy pores. “Well then, let’s get to figuring it out,” the High Fateweaver said and gently nudged his son towards the tower he was using as his home. They left John just standing there.

“Don’t you need me for that?” John shouted after them. If they were trying to recognize his soul pattern, whatever that was exactly supposed to be, it sounded like they would need to keep looking at his aura or something.

But Magoi just shook his head. “Oh no, you just go along and do your things.” Then he closed his door behind him.

Scratching the back of his head, John decided to just go along with the flow.

He needed to get a Class Level and more items anyway.