“Oh wow,” I mutter as I get close to the building the aikido group’s dojo is in.

I’ve made it a habit to passively ‘scan’ the area around me by method of spreading my mana around, and I from outside the building itself I can pinpoint not just the dojo room, but each of the 2-4-6-7-8 people plus sensei.

As I enter the dojo room itself I give the group a nod and sit down off the side of the mats to wait. Hm, I’m pretty sure that’s waterbending, and the qi users are doing the qi equivalent. Tidal something? Ah, yes, [Tidal Dance Technique]!

After some time, they’re done with the lesson, and a few goes to change or shower as Sensei greets me. “Hello Lars.”

“Hello Sensei. Hi other people.”

“Wow, ‘other people’?”

“Well, I remember Jasper’s name. So hi Jasper. Sorry other people, I don’t remember your names. But that’s not important-”

“Yes it is! You can’t just-”

“Okay, okay.” I say, holding out a hand. “I’m Lars, your name?”

Man I’m getting really good at handshakes, but I don’t think that warrants an actual ability. Maybe I’ll remember their names this time.

“Oh yeah, as I was observing I had a few questions. Uhh, first off, is that still even aikido? With all the mana and ki and stuff you guys were using?”

“Ahah, you noticed?”

“How could I not? Even from outside the building! Well, I have usually have some mana out to sense my surroundings, but even without that I’d notice the flow while sitting here. Did you synchronize or something?”

“Yes, training is better when you synchronize.” Sensei answers. “And is still aikido. Perhaps more aikido. The word is made of ai, ki, and do, after all.”

“Ah, I know the -do ending means ‘the way of’ or ‘path of’ or something along those veins, is the ki, uh, ki? Ai… Love?”

“Haha, knowledgeable again!” He nods. “Ai means to join, combine, put together.”

“So, the way of combining ki?”

“One would translate it as ‘the way of harmonious spirit’ or the way of unifying ki’, or life energy. Others also use proper ki in aikido.”

“Oh yeah, Sensei went to some aikido meeting in japan!”

“Yes, very informative. A lot of knowledge was shared. Unfortunately, many disagreements. Some say ki is not real ki. Some say other thing… inner power? That is real ki. Some said no magic allowed in aikido, because no ki. But let’s not speak of the bad things.”

He pauses for a moment, looking thoughtful.

“But you would like to know, I’m sure. Four big groups: One says to not use any ki or magic, that is not real aikido. One says only ki, another says ki and magic is fine, is more of a spiritual thing. Last one says inner power only. I say everything is fine, it is about the mind and wellbeing. As long as you enjoy it, then it is good, if not, then it’s not good.”

“Huh, so were any techniques or anything shared? Oh, did you make some sort of group with contact information or a forum to share info?”

“Yes and yes. Most people want to share, at least some things. Learned a lot about ki and cultivation.”

I really wanna take the bait, but… “You will tell me of that later, but I have other questions. Like, can you all attune to elements now? Is that a thing ki can do?”

One of the other guys speaks up “Wait, I thought mana couldn’t sense ki?”

“They don’t mix, no, but that makes it really obvious when there’s ki somewhere.”

“Huh, but how did you know, then?”

“Because if I can probe you just a little bit, I can detect the Water affinity itself.”

“Probe?”

“Well, when you’re asleep I take this tube and stick it up- Nah, I just try to get some mana to enter you body. Well, at this stage it’s more like poking you, but even last time it was no more invasive than a needle.”

“That’s still pretty invasive, though!”

“I guess, but let’s stay on topic for once. How did she, you-” I turn to the sole female “Switch to having ki instead of mana?”

She blushes and look away embarrassedly, and one of the guys also turn a bit red, causing the rest of the group to laugh.

Jasper explains: “You know how you theorized that it might be possible to swap between mana and ki if you somewhat got rid of all of one and put the other there instead?”

“Wait, that actually worked? How did she do that?”

“Oh, that’s the funny part, you see, those two were enjoying each other,” he says with a grin “and she was-”

“Shut up!” Oh wow, I didn’t know people could get that red without severe internal bleeding.

The boyfriend coughs. “In the heat of the moment she accidentally used up all her mana and I accidentally inserted my ki, and- uh, that’s basically what happened.”

“Accidentally inserted it he says.” Pfft. “But you know, putting it that way just makes me more curious of the details. Not because my question wasn’t answered, but because I’d like to know what was so exciting that she didn’t even notice mana deficiency.”

“Don’t you dare tell them!”

“Hey, I’m not gonna probe, but that must’ve been pretty recent, so how did she catch up to everyone else? Heck, aren’t you even stronger than Sensei, in ki, at least?” The last part said to the boyfriend.

“The way of unifying ki.” Sensei says cryptically.

Wait…

“Oh. Ooooh. Of course pair- slash yin-yang cultivation is a thing. And it’s really that effective?”

As it turns out, by the help of her boyfriend she could skip right past the first stages where you gather Essence and go right for Ki, and having the pair cooperate is faster than cultivating separately in basically every aspect.

From there I ask the group a bit about the progression they’ve made and add that to my mental chart of how cultivation works.

Starting from scratch, the internet in general considers someone to be a cultivator once they can gather Essence, which would then be the ‘first stage’. They need to realise, or ‘find’ their Essence Heart, which seems to be more ‘spiritual’ than physical, after which they must gather a bunch of Essence, make channels (or ‘veins’) through the body and figure out how to convert it to ki.

Once you have qi, you just gather more and more of it, and you can improve your channels. With his help (and the Water Temple) she skipped right to this ‘third stage’ and then ‘backtracked’ to the Essence Heart and channel things, which appears to be a lot easier when you already have ki.

What comes after that was a bit unclear from what I read online, but a short time before I left for the US Sensei broke the ‘bottleneck’ to the fourth stage, by amassing enough ki that it liquefied. Again, spiritual thing, it’s not actually a liquid, just behaves more like one.

“As opposed to what?” I ask, and they explain that it usually feels like a sort of dust cloud or gas or something. They couldn’t even agree how to explain it so yeah.

As the others collected enough ki, Sensei helped them advance as well, and they’re all fourth stage now. Well, except the boyfriend, who’s the stage after that. He admits he doesn’t quite understand how, but normal ki becomes… purer when he ‘washes’ it with the liquid ki.

It also works with her ki when they pair cultivate (insert lenny face here), and the refined ki apparently makes basically everything easier and/or more effective, so she’s rapidly catching up to him. The pair’s current goal is to make her cross that threshold, then see if they can liquify the purified qi.

On the other hand, Sensei thinks he’s about to reach that critical mass, but for now all he can do is to cultivate more ki. He’s also pretty strict in that they should understand everything they have learned before trying to advance, which everyone agrees is a good idea.

“Hey, you all have water affinities, and I know Jasper has that Wood ability and thus probably affinity, but do you have any others?”

Yes? No? No. Well, not that they know of, but they also haven’t particularly tried. I imagine ki could do something similar to aspect magic; it can at least attune to affinities, so if it could then use that for something… Hmm, [Imbuing] might be possible with ki. Note to self: Try to teach Jasper or something that.

When I ask about ki-based abilities, the answer is similar, though they have learned more techniques in the Water Temple. Most of them can use [Water Mirror], and make it actually function like a mirror when horizontal. Vertically is harder, but both Jasper and Sensei can walk on water by focusing on holding it still rather than reflectiveness.

Not that it’s hard to walk on water at these temperatures; the lake is used for skating and thick enough that the ski-track-making-machine have made the usual shortcut across the entire thing. Of course, they’ve made progress with the tidal dance techniques, too and can both push and pull with the [ - : Tidal Cycle] sub-ability.

Training in that department has been halted until the lakes that again, though. That said, a couple of them braved the frigid waters until the ice got too thick to easily break through, though only with a magic user to use the mana bubble trick and keep them warm. Apparently they can all hold their breath for ten or more minutes, too.

“Cold, huh. I bet it’s possible to get some kinda ki-based ice-elemental powers. Oh well.”

We talk a little bit more, with people leaving to change and/or shower and some of those popping back for a little while, before I exit the building with Jasper. I got most of what I wanted to know of his progress as we talked, but he has plenty of questions for me and all the crazy stuff I’ve done. I wanted to say something against that, but… no, he’s right.

I humor him, thought, and all I ask in return is that I get to try to teach him [Imbuing], and other affinities. It’s easier said than done, so after twenty minutes of basically no progress I switch to instead trying to forcibly make his hand take on various aspects.

Naturally, this sees much more success, though not necessarily progress towards some ki equivalent to [Aspect magic]. He manages to figure out how to attune to Ice ki, at least, though the tidal dance technique doesn’t seem to work on snow or ice at all, so he can’t really do anything special with it.

When we go home we’ve made no progress; the only thing I really gained was a bruise, which I decided not to heal because A: Not getting too used to magic fixing every small issue and B: I deserved that snowball. And C, I guess: turns out cultivators get kinda ridiculous physical strength.

I settle back into a comfortable routine and nothing happens for a week, then a couple more. Well, nothing that’d get more than a paragraph or so in a story. I keep experimenting with/on Jasper, who in turn suggests all kinds of forms to take on and puppets to make.

While sales of items locally is dying off since I have essentially saturated the market, though more and more people get interested, my services are pretty hot, and I travel to other places in europe every few days. Despite doubling the ‘base’ price for youthful rejuvenation, demand is only increasing, so most of my (honestly crazy) income comes from that.

That income (and the method to earn it) is why I’ve gotten a lawyer, and aside from getting an overview over laws that might be relevant for my services, their first job was to take the forms I’d written and make them… more legalese. Cover more bases. That and make a much shorter and simpler human-readable form with references to the ‘real’ thing.

People are starting to set up conventions for magic and such, too, even as specialized as one for shapeshifting. And they’re intent to make it work, too, judging by the amount they’re offering me to do one keynote and a talk, but mostly just be there. It’s gonna be set in Oslo, because apparently we’re some kinda shapeshifting capital?

I follow up the pregnant wolfkin, too, and playing with the wolf pups is tons of fun. A lot of the wolves have attuned to ice, making their fluffy white coat… heavier, and overall looking pretty… cool. It seems like they’ve started to actively teach each other skills and abilities, which is interesting, to say the least. Not that they have that advanced knowledge yet, and it’s mostly just the wolfkin, but I mean, knowledge is the basis of civilization!

As for the space guys, through repeated tests and prototypes we’ve concluded that reaching space might be possible with the magic we currently know of, but because of the reduced effectiveness of anything relying on air higher up, we either gotta bring some fuel or accelerate a lot harder to reach our goal of the Kármán line.

Finally, there’s Lucas, who can properly fly now. Studying his still changing mana physique has been interesting, even though it’s not very useful, but on the other hand, raising him is a blast, sometimes more literally than I prefer. I’ve let him play a bit with kids and otherwise just be around people, but only when both Leda and I are there to keep him under control.

Oh yeah, and seeing his mind develop is utterly fascinating. Seeing him go from a minimal, instinctual understanding of the world… At this point I’d say he understands the world about as well as a four or five year old, though no five year old would have a detailed and intimate understanding of aero- and thermodynamics with such lacking social and empathy skills.

Wait no, a kid with pretty strong autism might be like that. Well, either way Leda tricked me into agreeing to take a trip to Iceland ‘and other places’ now that he can properly fly, so damage control mode is on, and I have started taking them a bit around the country for those ‘other places’. Next up, Iceland.