It had been an interesting ten days for Lee Magus, to put it mildly. More than that, it had been an interesting month.

That her parents would eventually call her to Fusion had been a foregone conclusion the moment she heard about the first teacher packing their bags. Lee had spent the majority of her life in some kind of school run by Fateweavers. Whether that was a small-scale operation like the outpost in England she had grown up around or the Mountain of Time where she had been schooled once she hit puberty.

Thanks to the time spent there and who her father was, Lee got to know all of the most powerful Fateweavers that were currently alive. She got to see the leaders of world-renowned guilds in the corridors. The Enlightened Lady of Korea. The heir of the Mandate. Lady Luna of Romulus’ Empire. A Valkyrie sent by Odin’s Sons. Generals of the Blood of the Proletariat and the Purest Front. She got to see a spark of Prometheus’ flame during a delegation. Was flirted with by a son of the Great Sultan, eager to expand his harem. Her father had not taken well to that. It was not the only incident she had seen in her time at the Mountain of Time. The world over, the services of the Fateweavers were coveted, the attention of Gehnigm greatly valued.

When the first person packed their bag, she knew the Fateweavers as an institution were done. More soon followed. The studies she always found dull became painfully slow as the number of teachers dwindled down to the mediocre and the sizes of the classes swelled to enable the schedule.

Lee had always been faster than anyone else in her class. She didn’t know why, raw talent she guessed, but she grasped what was talked about instinctively. While everyone else was slowly munching through the texts the teachers gave them, Lee had read them twice and still had enough time to pull out her phone and start up Tetris. She didn’t take notes, didn’t learn outside of class, and still always landed in the top 10 of the class. It didn’t matter that she didn’t come first. If she ever did try to get a good result in a test, it was only to get her mother off her back for a few weeks or because her father promised her an increase in her allowance if she did.

Magoi and Mabirl cared more for her education than she did.

So, it didn’t come as a surprise when they pulled her out of there. Early in the month, they told her they had gotten things in line and that she would be moving in two weeks. Lee hadn’t minded. She had no good friends among her classmates. She wasn’t exactly anti-social. She could hold conversations just fine, could even be charming or funny. She just didn’t care about any of them. Not enough to forego gaming hours, certainly.

That was the lifestyle she had thought she would continue.

Then her parents had told her that John Newman would personally greet her.

What was the view Lee Magus had of the president of Fusion? That was complicated. During their first meeting she thought he was just another powerful character. Like that sultan’s son, out to amass benefits for nobody but himself. Usually, that would have been the end of her interest. Because he was her father’s employer, however, she did read up on him. Only a little bit at first, checking what he did this month. Then the tales of his exploits expanded. As did the amount of people reporting on it. Soon, there was an ocean of tales about him.

Lee read it all.

Sometimes she had wondered if she had turned into a crazy stalker, but it wasn’t as if she was obsessed with him. She was perfectly fine with letting some stories pass her by and she didn’t keep a photo of him on her at all times. The ‘worst’ she did was make sure she always had certain video files at hand.

She was a fan of him, that was all. John Newman seemed so genuine to her, in all that he had. His exploits amused her, his goals resonated with her, his quips during interviews had her chuckle and he was just so incredibly attractive. As were all of the women he surrounded himself with. There was little on most of them in the media, but Lee got to know a fair bit about Jane ‘Rave’ Hollmey and, at the very least, what everyone else looked like. She became incredibly interested in Rave as well.

Sometimes, Lee wondered what it would be like to be part of that harem. They were the nightly fantasies of a girl that had some REALLY horny days. She always left it at fantasies. She didn’t delude herself, neither did she fall in love with John’s image. She understood that she was watching a person on a screen. What she saw could have been far removed from who he truly was. Refusing to fall for anything but the genuine person, Lee went on and just watched him for some sinful entertainment.

And then she had met him. John, Rave, Gnome and Aclysia, all of them had looked even better in person than on her 4K screen. He was every bit as charming and genuine as the videos had made her believe. Something had clicked during their meeting and she had just talked to him as if she had known him for years. She made shameless jokes in front of her family, acted suggestively, and only felt disappointed when he didn’t reciprocate as intensely as she had expected.

Afterwards she realized that she had, on the second meeting, actually fallen for him.

‘Welp,’ she had thought with a delightful knot in her stomach, ‘that’s going to be difficult to ignore.’ What else was she going to do with that emotion? Embrace it? Absolutely impossible. ‘I could never be part of a harem.’ She had started her PC, tried to concentrate on gaming. She didn’t have a lot of fun. She couldn’t sleep well either. ‘Or could I?’ the question surfaced the next morning.

Until, after several hours, she spontaneously realized that, yes, she could. Was she fundamentally opposed to being part of a clique of incredibly attractive women that all loved the same guy? No, that just depended on the women and the guy involved. Since she was already pretty certain on the guy, the girls were the only open question. They had already offered her an in as well.

Lee only had to overcome her anxiousness about initiating the process. Several hours deliberating if this really was a good idea, if she cared enough about this to cut into her gaming hours. Surprising herself, she did.

One call to Rave, and Lee’s ten tumultuous days started.

Hanging out with the Lightbearer was the first time in her life Lee felt that there was a point to having friends. Rave was charming, she was quippy, she responded to banter immediately, she was beautiful and she oozed confidence. Talking to her wasn’t the kind of dull conversation she was used to from people she only knew because she was **** to sit in the same room as them. Lee could be as witty and sassy as she wanted and Rave just pulled along seamlessly.

Somehow, their conversations flowed back and forth and eventually Lee just declared, “You’re lucky you have the most fantastic ass in the world.”

“Usually, people call my tiger a dick,” Rave had laughed.

“No, moron,” Lee had rolled her eyes. “I mean that down there.” She pointed at the magnificent double-spheres that marked the transition to Rave’s long legs. “My butt is pretty flat.”

“’Cause ya sit on it all day,” Rave had said. “Ya know Nia?” Lee shook her head. She didn’t, not really. “Nia had an average butt too. Ya know what fixes that? Workouts!” Little Miss Magus had not been convinced by that statement. The only time in her life she had ever worked out had been during exhaustive family trips. Magic was the entire reason why she was still thin and fit. She was well aware that she would be at least ten kilos up, given the amount of greasy pizza she consumed.

Before the day was over, she was not only completely certain that she, if nothing else, wanted to have Rave as an actual friend but was also introduced to every other girl in the harem, save for Lydia. None of them seemed to have anything wrong with them, at first glance. Some were more sympathetic than others, but somehow she just knew she wanted to get to know all of them better. They were all just so interesting and friendly.

Somehow, she agreed to work out with Nia the next day. Lee wasn’t even sure if she agreed because she wanted to keep going on this social experiment or because Rave was just so charming.

The day after that, Lee had felt as if she was dying. Shame might have done it, if the sheer physical exhaustion after working out hadn’t made her too out of breath to be embarrassed about anything. Working out with Rave, Nia and Metra was absolutely nothing short of frustrating. Lee felt no connection to sport itself, but she did refuse to give up while these girls were watching. Not with how much she immediately liked Rave, not with how Metra challenged her to go on and not with how Nia continuously cared for her.

Nia, who she would hang around a lot in the days that followed. Rave was often busy, as was Metra, but Nia somehow had a few hours for Lee every day. After two days, Lee came to the conclusion that she liked Nia even more than Rave, however that was possible. The enigmatic way the pariah behaved engaged Lee’s problem-solving skills. Even if the two didn’t talk a lot, Lee was always entertained around Nia. It certainly helped that the blonde sometimes did the most surprising things. Like cuddle Lee while she recovered from thirty minutes on the bike machine or pull an absolutely adorable mixture between magpie and cat out of nowhere.

When she wasn’t hanging out with Nia, Lee had often visited the Elemental Islands. Hours she could have spent gaming, she instead spent getting to know these other girls. The reason, to find out whether she could be in a harem with them, never fully vanished but it did lose its importance with time. The primary motivating factor became getting to know these interesting, sexy girls. Ladies that she could have called her friends.

At one point she talked to Stirwin. It was a visit more out of interest of what the crocodile was like. Little did she know that the Celestial Devourer was an expert advice-giver. One way or another, their conversation came to Lee’s lack of work motivation.

“Perhaps you should accompany Beatrice on her work for a day,” Stirwin had told her. “I’m certain I could arrange that. Your school will not mind, I will make sure of it.”

Lee had been confused how that would help her in any way. Having met the passive maid, the young Fateweaver did not think watching her work would help with her own morale. It was an excuse to get out of the classroom for a day though, so she took it.

Beatrice turned out to be every bit as intriguing as Nia was and watching her did give Lee an epiphany. Watching her, working for her and having to deal with Beatrice’s sass. “Statement: as a gamer, I expect you to be able to sort this table in less than 10 minutes.” “Statement: you are experiencing muscle soreness and require protein intake.” “Advice: stop with the pizza.” “Question: are you certain looking up the answer would not be quicker?”

Lee, for the second time that week, felt absolutely inferior to somebody and it was awfully enticing. After all of these years wasting away in boredom in her uncomfortable school chair, she finally came into contact with real work. Office work, admittedly, finance, in particular, very much boring stuff but boring stuff that needed to be done. Something that had a tangible impact on the world. Not only that, but she did it alongside Beatrice.

On first glance, the passive maid seemed to be just that: an emotionless servant. Over the course of the day, and thanks to all of the sassy berating, little Miss Magus realized that Beatrice took pride in getting her work done. It wasn’t exactly the work itself that the woman with the short, white hair found her fulfilment in. It was being useful. That helped Lee realize why she had never liked going to any form of school. It wasn’t that she particularly disliked Fateweaving or working. She just despised learning for arbitrary, theoretical tests to no real end. She wanted her powers to be used practically, not spend years honing them under guidance.

It was the school system itself that she disliked. Knowing that made her more eager to get done with it and start doing her own thing. Not really a help with her motivation at the moment, but it did make her happier to look to the future.

Lee and Beatrice had hung out beyond that work as well. For all of the sass she had given, Beatrice had received in equal measure and apparently that warmed her up to the young Fateweaver. That led to the end of her first week in the Hudson Barrier.

Monday had passed largely like the days before. Lee just realized how much her mood had improved In less than nine days. She hadn’t even known that only gaming on her own had been dragging her down, but now she was flying on cloud nine. By then she was absolutely certain: if it were these girls, she could be part of a harem. No, she WANTED to be in a harem with these girls.

Then she had somehow got to game a day with John himself. It was awesome, it was embarrassing, it made her incredibly horny and it left her confused. Sure, she wasn’t exactly a people’s person, but she could read the Gamer well enough to know that he was clearly interested in her. Yet, he switched back and forth between flirting with her and trying his best to avoid anything remotely romantic or sexual. She was almost saddened by this, definitely mildly frustrated. Now that she was so certain that she wanted to be among his girls, would she not get to because the Gamer himself wasn’t interested in her?

Lee wasn’t going to give up because of some small setbacks in what had been, otherwise, an awesome gaming session though. Through those hours, she had gotten to confirm everything that she had read and what the other girls told her. Not absolutely everything, sure, but the day to day of his character. The parts that were easily faked for the media.

Lee loved what she saw. Did she love him? Hard to say. Certainly, she was convinced that her infatuation was justified. No man that kept so many awesome girls around could be secretly rotten at the core. His abilities as a lover were self-evident. If nothing else, losing her virginity to him was something she was definitely willing to do. She also wanted to stay with him and see how they worked out in an intimate setting. If that worked for a prolonged period, which Lee thought it would, then she would be set for life.