“So, do you liquify refined ki to reach the sixth stage as we thought, or?”

“Yeah, well, kinda. Actually, it would be better if we just explained what the manual says.”

Apparently it counts stages differently than us, and what we count as the first three stages it sees as just one - the foundation building stage, and those at that level are Foundation Cultivators. As we already knew, it is about noticing and gathering essence, realizing one’s spirit heart and opening your inner channels, before finally being able to convert essence into ki, and then manipulating said ki.

Now, all of that is just one stage because it assumes you have a place with at least some ki in the surroundings, and because essence is a kinda life-force, so don’t really want to use it. On the other hand, it makes for fairly pure ki, and you need to use a lot of it to do long term harm; it will replenish itself naturally, and you can of course help with that.

After that comes the ki refinement stage (and Ki Cultivators). It consists of what we considered the fourth and fifth stages, where you gather enough ki to liquify it, then use the liquid ki as a sort of filter to refine or purify normal ki. From there it involves, as we had guessed, getting enough refined ki to liquefy that, and the manual suggests that, in turn, should be used to ‘purify the body’.

We had no real idea of what came after that, but going by wuxia/xianxia tropes we assumed you’d form a ‘core’ at some point, and eventually make a ‘spirit’. Hard to guess anything specific, given how diverse those genres are. As it turns out, the next stages in the manual are the ‘core formation stage’ (Core Cultivators) and the ‘spirit awakening stage’ (Spirit Cultivators)

It mentioned, almost as a side note, that you should refine all your ki during the first parts of core cultivation, and continue to refine all ki you take in after that, both liquid and normal. Apparently liquid ki is really hard to manipulate liquid ki, and practically impossible outside your body, so they’re used differently. It’s a lot more potent within the body, though, and you can turn it back if need be.

There’s infinite variations in how you could form a core, with different overall methods and specialized techniques. Even between two people who otherwise practice the same techniques there’s probably gonna be difference, but it all starts by forming a ‘core seed’ from liquid refined ki and some essence you have also refined. From there you must grow the seed, and that’s where different techniques, overall methods, environments, herbs, pills, etc. come in.

Eventually it will reach a critical mass of sorts, after which the core will start to solidify. You could double down on your cultivation to start this immediately, but as long as you don’t, you can hold it off for a little while, the core. The manual suggests you do this so that you can condense it in the best possible environment - One with dense ki and essence.

If you don’t have a suitable location nearby, or just don’t like how things turned out, you can scatter the core and start over, and the manual even suggests so. - once fully formed it’s both hard, painful, and dangerous to shatter the core, so you should treat it like you only have one chance.

If we, for consistency, continue having more stages in our framework than the manual, I suppose that’d give us core seeding, core growth, and core solidification. Either way, the couple’s current focus is to refine their ki and start purifying the body until they feel ready to start forming a core, and the rest of the cultivators will just try to catch up.

There’s not much else to say or do, but I stay behind on the couple’s request as Jasper and Sensei leaves. My suspicions are confirmed when they say they want to take me up on my earlier offer, and while I consider declining, the possibility of having willing ki-using test subjects is too much to pass up.

A little while later, we hop off the probably-not-street-legal flying cloud (they got a flying artifact!) outside their home. Better to do this in private, given the, uh, objective. As we already knew, I can affect their skin as long as they don’t resist, and when they cooperate I can even shapeshift their arms. Next up I shapeshift myself, and then it’s stripping time. For me, that is.

“Ohmybob, you’re like a barbie doll down there!”

“Yeah, that’s the point.”

“Your voice too! You’re like, neither female nor male!”

Androgynous, yeah. Anyway, state what you want and I’ll show what I can do until you find, err, a product you like.”

As my consciousness reboots for another day I gently cup my sore groin and apply healing magic. “Oww, I shouldn’t have let myself be convinced for that. And I can’t even take payment for most of that time…”

“Aww, was it that bad?”

“Well, it was certainly pleasurable, and please stop poking my butt, but even four of me wouldn’t have half the libido of one you you guys.”

“Aww, can’t keep up with the rabbits?” She says, turning over to wake boyfriend. If those terms even apply right now.

“Those things do not belong to rabbits.”

“Couldn’t you just have changed your libido?”

“Well, I could, but I feel like that’s really dangerous territory. I don’t think you can perfectly return to how you were after any shifting, at least not those that affect you in complex, hormone, and mood kinda ways.”

“So we’re stuck like this?”

“I’d be okay with-” She starts before I cut her off.

“Okay, stop right there you filthy scum, you’ve violated my holes and I don’t need my ears to be added to that list. And no, that’s not what it means, though I’ll leave you like that if you want. Just call me if you need to be turned back.”

“Ohh-kay”

Aaand since they’ve resumed the night’s activities, I’ll just take a shower and leave.

Huh, does this count as me being promiscuous? Well, extreme conservative kinda people would say that, but they’d say that about anything other than holding hands before marriage. Their opposites would probably say no. Meaning the answer is probably, as per usual, somewhere in between.

Now what to do today… feel like there’s something I planned to do yesterday, before I got sidetracked. So I went to the Den, pups were born (before I got there), Tåke was- oh, she’s gonna be mad at me for that. Uh, time to buy some bribery.

I head to a certain store, a little place that specialize in cured meats, if the meaning of that word even carries through in translation to english. Either way, it’s a cozy sort of place with a very friendly shopkeeper, and I leave there not only with the big ol’ salami I planned to buy, but also some good meat for myself to snack on here and there.

From there I drop off those purchases back home, before heading to the Den and finding Tåke hanging out with the fresh mother (and the expecting ones). Since she pointedly ignores me, I silently sit down and start grooming her.

Mm. It’s nice to have quiet breaks like this from time to time.

And now that she seems slightly less angry, I bust out the stick of meat, and boy do these bitches want in on that. The salami I mean, but I planned to give the entire thing to Tåke… Well, sharing is caring, and after that I will share caring by teaching them how to better groom each other, since it seemed like they also wanted in on that.

Oh gods no, why did it have to be while I’m here! I am not prepared! I don’t even have the contact info for the medical professionals… Okay, so step one, get her to the ‘clinic’. Step two, get someone to call the professionals. Step three, let nature do its thing and hope for the best, I guess?

The Den is really not a comfortable place for this, but a blanket to lie on is the least I can offer. During the process I manage to stay calm, and eventually the new mother’s grunts, growls, and occasional shout are joined by one, and then two mewling voices, and the medical professional, a female veterinarian, arrives just as things quiet down, the little ones start feeding.

I hadn’t considered it, and figured the first twins were chance, but it seems like the wolfkin have a significantly higher chance of birthing multiple pups or babies or whatever we’ll call em. They’re smaller, too, though that only makes sense with a larger, uh, litter.

At the end of it all the sun has dipped below the horizon, and I feel thoroughly tired. I would say I can’t imagine how tired the mother must be, but between the pack bond and the various forms I’ve taken and things I’ve done, I might have the most accurate idea of anyone who hasn’t given birth themselves.

And let’s just say I don’t exactly plan to leave that group.

The next day I don’t feel like doing anything, so I decide to go over the letters -actual physical paper letters!- that have slowly been filling up the little box I put them in to contain them. Given that I haven’t publicly stated my address anywhere, I’m kinda impressed at how many people have taken the effort to find it and then write a physical letter to me.

Especially when it come to the thankfully rare hate letters. I mean, if you don’t like me or what I do, why even bother? As I dig through the pile, which could be described as ‘not immediately important but also not junk mail’, I find both the results of the blood samples from way back when I got Leda and Tåke tested, as well as the DNA tests from the youth rejuvenation.

I had completely forgotten those.

So shapeshifting can change your DNA, though for my customer/patient it didn’t do so to any significant degree. It did, however, change whether a lot of the genes were expressed or not. As for my blood samples, they… uhh… to quote the doctors: ‘had we not taken the samples ourselves, we would not believe this to be the blood of a living human.’

So yeah, and that’s just my samples. Tåke’s had similar results, and Leda’s, well, despite the dry clinical language their enthusiasm bleeds through, and they must be quite disappointed I haven’t responded to agree to more tests. I suppose I can contact them after going through the rest of this.

I would never have thought I’d get fan mail, but getting it in paper form wasn’t that surprising after getting it electronically to the email I set up for that kinda stuff. It’s a bit more surprising when I open a letter and find what appears to be a mix between a nuked meme, a shitpost, and a dick pic. Upon second look (and reading the letter) I find it to just be a rune pattern of sorts that just looks like a cartoony dick and balls.

As for the runes and what they supposedly do, I’ll keep that in mind (just in case), but burn the letter.

There’s also a couple booby-trapped letters, ranging from one which made a flash when I opened it, to one which dissolved the ink of the text, making it unreadable. At least, I think it did that; but it activated as I opened it, so… The worst, and first I opened, uses a form of mind magic to continuously redirect my eyes to the first sentence, though once I realize it’s not hard to counter.

They write a bit about some uses they’ve found for mind magic, stating that the redirect was a test to see if I ‘really know as much as you imply in your videos’, and they want to meet me for further discussion. They didn’t date the letter, though, so no idea how long they’ve been awaiting response, or whether they expected one to begin with, for that matter, but while it sounds interesting, ‘suspicious letter with in-built test’ is pretty sketchy. A good warning to check letters before I open them, though.

A couple days later I have another meeting with that school, and while I still haven’t committed to anything, they go over a draft they made, then I go over the one I made, and finally we go over similarities, differences, and the whys to come up with at least a first version of how the two most basic magic subjects could look.

I reiterate that I haven’t made any promises or anything, but, well, it seems like it could be interesting? We discuss the different forms of magic and how much of those should be taught, but they agree that it’s probably best to focus on a form of magic which follows normal physics closely, and from there we discuss specific spells and then suddenly we’ve talked for two hours and have to leave it at that.

I assume they think I’m likely to accept and well, I am, but we’ll have more meetings, including another one tomorrow, then try to set things up for e-meetings. For now, though, it’s customer time.

In the next meeting with the school, we manage solidify the curriculum to three levels, and agree that some testing would need to happen before determining how fast students go through them - I have learnt all of that in less than a year, but I also have a broader foundation of knowledge and more or less spent all my time learning magic, so it’s not exactly same as the one lesson per week they’ll have, but one level per semester or at least year should be doable.

After returning home, I spend the next few days more or less living in the Den with the wolfkin. The air has a metaphorical positive buzz now that the expecting mothers are becoming actual mothers. Between sharing their happiness I can’t help but look around at the behavioural changes this bring, though, and it’s clear that the three sociologists who are coming here every day think the same; they’re taking notes like their lives depend on it.

The wolves are a bit wary of them, but the wolfkin seem to see them as mostly harmless, and with us humans trusting them things work out. With the Den being a cave and all, mobile coverage has been spotty at best, but with a bit of my time (and money), and some discussions with the telecom companies, I get some pretty good agreements going.

So I set up a relay antenna up top to give phone coverage inside, and also set up a local network powered by small mana-electrical generators. With stable internet in place new possibilities opens up, but mostly it’s just for entertainment. That, and educating the wolfkin.

They say the internet is for porn. And cats. And sometimes, furry porn. But ignoring the baser influences and avoiding the distracting cats, it also contains more or less the sum of all human knowledge, and between movies mostly targeted at kids, online schooling, indian youtube tutorials, and Wikipedia (Oh knowledge, we share!), we should find ways to let the wolfkin teach themselves not only language and social rules and norms, but things beyond that.

I’m also the manager or administrator or whatever you’ll call it for the social media presence of ‘The Wolfkin Den’. And to quote the YouTube page description: We believe in give and take, so expect videos with updates from the Pack, the little ones playing, or whatever else we believe others might find interesting, funny, or otherwise valuable.

We made the obvious videos first: One introducing the channel and what it’s about, one introducing the people (human or otherwise) who’ll be featured the most, and one with the wolf pups venturing out of the Den, to the great Outside, for the first time.

The wolfkin pups are still newborn, of course, and we leave them and their mothers alone; as lovely as it would be to share, we collectively decided that if any of us was in their situation we’d probably not want the disruption. ‘We’ here being the ‘council’ as someone jokingly called it, consisting of me, Hilde, the sewing/designer lady, and two more people who frequent the Den. Taking the roles of advisors we have a few scholars, of which only two have ever been here.

Speaking of Hilde, she’s been ignoring me (outside ‘council’ business), and I don’t think apologizing would do all that much good, so I’ve left her alone. At this point she doesn’t seem to mind me being nearby while she’s feeding the pups, be they wolf or wolfkin, but I already know, so it might just be that.

Either way, when I send a loose pulse of mana, which has become something akin to knocking in the Den, she signals that I can enter. I glance at the ‘Nursery’ sign someone has put on the wall as I push the fabric to the side and enter, finding Hilde nursing a wolfkin pup, next to the pup’s mother and sister. Along the edge of the room you have napping, resting, and nursing pups and mothers of both kinds, and I can’t help but smile.

I take a note out of the wolfkin’s slowly forming culture and sit down behind her, saying a single word: “Groom?”

She doesn’t answer, for a while, but then she nods, and I hop a bit closer, then start at her shoulders.

I make sure to avoid being too intimate, and simply sit there quietly brushing her fur and untangling any knots I find, while lightly massaging stiff muscles here and there.

Soon the child is satisfied and she hands him over to his mom, and not long after I have no more places to safely groom, so I stop.

Neither of us says anything for a while.

“I’m sorry. I should not have done it. I…”

Silence descends.

She turns her head to me, “Can you do the front too?”

I nod.