How to Fuck Up 101

This realization hit him like the fist of Ladra Cu would’ve, very fucking much. Had she planned on him forgetting his phone? Did she listen to him through his phone? Could she trace the Bond? John’s mind was starting to spiral out of control as he got a pop-up, pulling him out of this circle:

Quest Complete!
You’re never alone
+300 XP
+25 RP with members of the Faction
+1 Reality Fragment
+1 Green Goo (Var. 447)
+1 Essence Chest (Fateweaver Edition)
Quest will remain active until midnight or until all Bonus Objectives are completed.

Magoi looked at John with a tilted head, “Everything okay? Seeing as how you’ve accepted the contract, that basically concludes this interview. You can take the Master’s Eye with you if you want, but I need you to put the Lifeline on right now if you need to leave.” John then quickly put the crystal into his inventory and the ring onto his right hand.

Lifeline effect activated! You can now no longer talk about the Lifeline.

Before his eyes, the ring on his finger vanished from view, leaving no trace of its existence behind except for the feeling around John’s finger.

“Now then, shall we? If you ever want a rematch, and if I’m in town, you can send me a message through the Eye,” Magoi chuckled as he said that, and the world around them flashed back to ‘normal’ again. They were in the dojo again; all the people around them were still in roughly the same position.

“Wait, you’re already done? But you were only gone for a second!” exclaimed Kaen, obviously confused.

Kwang had an answer for that though, “Magoi presumably used time dilation to give themselves more time in the Barrier than outside,” to which the Fateweaver nodded.

With that out of the way, John was giddy to get going and to get his phone back as soon as possible, but he was held back by both Wotan and Hannah. Hannah spoke up first, “I’ll assume you have passed the interview? We’ll start your introduction next Monday, as soon as possible. You’ll get a message some time today or tomorrow with things you should do before you get in on Monday.”

As John nodded, Wotan then took the word, “I would like to talk with you about my granddaughters’ at some point, and maybe about how you can take some work from us. But you seem to be in a hurry for some reason; I will delay this talk until then.”

Both then let go of John, who then ran through the door. Surprisingly, Kim followed him outside, calling after him about his clothes. He had forgotten that he was still wearing his adventuring outfit, but thankfully, he didn’t even have to stop to change his gear, switching to his uniform mid-jump. Kim and Kaen ran after him, calling to him to remember his promise.

They didn’t run long though, and soon John was alone on the streets. Well, as alone as you can be around 6 pm. But seeing as how no one talked to him, it was a lot more alone than before, where he was surrounded by people. He soon noticed just how much he appreciated the company of all the people around him, even after a short time like a couple of hours.

Seeing as how tedious his run back to school would be, John decided to spruce things up a bit and use his Parkour to shorten the distance, completely non-magical, even though the desire to use Flash Step was big. Instead of keeping to the simple pedestrian walks, he quickly scaled over a nearby wall and took the shortest route to the school.

This was now the first time John actually used the skill in a way that meant traveling over some distance. So far, he had simply used it in combination with his Acrobatics skill to move over objects, but never to actually get to a certain point. Now there were different path colors along the ground and walls, showing him how difficult these were. And thanks to his phone HUD, it apparently showed him a rough estimate of time as well.

There was a medium difficult way that would take him roughly an hour and a half, and it seemed like it would go straight up to some rooftops and then over to the school. Deciding to follow that route, John then jumped up to a fire exit and climbed up the stairs.

The estimate shown on his display was pretty accurate, as it was now shortly before nightfall and John just arrived at the gates of the school. Now that he was standing in front of the school, he had to wonder how he would get in as the school was surely locked. Sure, getting over the outer wall was no problem, his skills saw to that, but how would he actually get into the building? It’s not like he had a skill to open stuff… maybe he could Meditate to get such a skill? Or maybe the cleaning crew was still around, and some door was unlocked?

While he thought about his options, he already climbed over the wall separating the property from the outside. He knew that there were some night guards around, the school told their students that much, but he had no idea where they were or how many there were. His best option was probably to use Detection at certain points to see if anyone was around. He also once again equipped his adventuring gear, obscuring his face with the hood of the cloak (and the helmet of the armor) and switching back to the black mode of the Wasteland Angel to be as dark as possible.

While he snuck around in the dark, John had another idea to get into the school. What if he’d use his already existing Barrier to do so? He was pretty sure that he could enter that from any point it encompassed, so he should be able to enter it from somewhere outside of the school.

Now, the question was where that would be… But maybe his new tool could help him! Pulling out the Master’s Eye John first took the time to Observe it.

Master’s Eye
A Fateweaver’s multi-tool. It is able to find Barriers, give information about them, access the Fateweaver knowledge pool, and do many other things. It is also a symbol of status inside the organization. Only a Fateweaver can use these tools.

Well, thankfully he technically was a Fateweaver now. Concentrating his magic into the device, it seemed to connect with the HUD Sarai had put into his Transreceptive Eye, and now he was able to see the information given to him by the crystal. He saw a small radar like widget, showing him various waves in multiple colors going on around the school. Were there multiple Barriers in the school? That didn’t seem safe, but then again it probably didn’t really bother anyone. There was one line on the radar glowing in rainbow colors, and seeing as how his Barrier had a Rainbow Wolf as a boss, John suspected that to be his Barrier. The closest point he would be able to enter that Barrier from was a wall close to the gymnasium.

As he approached the point where he could enter the Barrier, John tried to feel out with his Bond seeing if he could sense the connection to the Barrier. And indeed, he did. Looking at the Eye again, there were two Barriers that overlapped on that point, the rainbow one and a deep green one.

Trying to feel out with his magic, he then got pulled into one of the Barriers, evident by the shattering of reality around him.