After the birthday party the only ones left in the mansion were Yuuki, her father and the staff. Everyone else either left to their own properties or returned to work. Yuuki was currently sitting in her father’s plain office full of paperwork.

“First of all, do you know our main objective?” He asked with a professional tone.

“Ensuring the survival of the state?”

“No. Ensuring the survival of people. Primarily our fellow countrymen. While it is impossible to prevent all death and suffering, our job is to minimise it. If a country decides to invade us, we use manipulation to make sure it doesn’t happen. If we have a diplomatic mission, our job is to make sure everything goes smoothly. If a country has a horrible tyrant, we might help the common folk and even his own advisors organize to overthrow him.”

“Violent uprisings rarely work. A new despot will fill the power vacuum most of the time.”

“That is why it must be done slowly. It might take decades to ensure a safe and relatively bloodless transfer of power. It’s almost never goes perfectly, but the point is to minimise casualties.”

Yuuki sat in silence for a while thinking. “Why?”

Her father smiled warmly. “Because our goal is to create a world where all countries and races can live in peace. Of course, it will take thousands, if not tens of thousands of years, but that is what our goal is.”

“It seems like a needlessly complicated way to ensure safety.”

“Do you know how I knew you did not feel emotions?”

“You can sense other people’s emotions, correct?”

“Not exactly. Rather than just sensing it, kitsune are able to feel what others feel. Their happiness, their sorrow, their pain, everything. That is why the more desperate of our kind eat memories: what they are really after are the emotions in those memories. But that is also why we abhor hurting others more directly: we can also feel their pain.” He paused for a moment. “We don’t usually use it on other kitsune because, for one, it is considered rude, but it also has its dangers. Two kitsune could get stuck in an infinite feedback loop of emotions.”

“I see. I thought the loop had a function in mating.”

Her father was taken aback a bit. “Well… that is a use for it...” He was trying very hard to keep a straight face. “So, aside from that, do you have any questions?” He attempted to change the topic.”

“Why aren’t there more of us? Even if 90% of our relatives were forced to stay in a different country due to being undercover, I thought our extended family would be far greater considering a kitsune’s natural survival abilities, extremely long lifespan, heightened libido and lack of proper contraception due to the technology level.”

Her father coughed in his hand to cover his face for a second. She just called our entire race horny with a straight face. “That is because we have large workloads, so we wait for the previous child to reach adulthood before having another one, to ensure that no child grows up without enough attention.”

“I see.” Yuuki thought for a bit before turning around and looking at the door. “Incoming flying unit, ETA 30 seconds, potential hostile. Awaiting orders.” She said while continuing to stare.

“Don’t worry, it’s a friend. Let’s go meet her.” He stood up and opened the door. Yuuki followed behind him. They got to the entrance of the mansion just before they heard a knock.

“Oh, hi Jack!” In the door stood a human female with pitch black hair, pale white skin, pointed ears and slightly glowing red eyes. Speaking revealed two large upper canines. The woman went for a hug.

“Nice to see you, Helen.” Yuuki’s father replied and reciprocated the hug.

After the hug ended Helen extended a hand toward Yuuki. “Hello, you must be Yuuki. I’m Helen, nice to meet you.” She said with a big smile on her face.

Yuuki just wordlessly looked at her father. After a sigh, he answered the unasked question. “She will be your teacher from now on. Just treat her as you treat us.”

“Understood.” Yuuki turned back to the woman and shook her hand.

“I’ll be in my office, I have a lot of work to do.” Jack looked at her daughter. He was about to tell her to behave, but he realized it wasn’t needed. “Enjoy yourself.” He pet her head and left toward his office.

“Alright, I think we should go outside for the lesson.” Helen motioned toward the door.

“Is sunlight not an issue?” Yuuki raised an eyebrow.

“No, why would it be?” The vampire lady asked, clearly confused.

“Never mind.” And with that Yuuki walked out the door.

--

The mansion did not have a garden exactly, because it was just out in the middle of a field with a few large trees around it to provide shade. There wasn’t a single road or even path in the tall sea of green. Helen and Yuuki were in the shades of the trees, sitting on the ground.

“Alright, let’s start with the basics. What do you know about mana?”

“It is a form of highly unstable energy that can be stored and manipulated by souls to take different forms.”

Helen just stared for a bit, realizing this wasn’t going to be a low level lecture like she had previously believed. “Right… do you know its source?”

“It exists over an infinite area surrounding the material planes in the 4th and 5th spacial dimensions and flows into our realities through souls.”

The vampire was completely dumbstruck. Not only was a 5 year old explaining things as if she were a professor, she was doing it with a blank expression. “Yeah, correct.” At this point she had basically given up to teach anything new and just wanted to make sure that Yuuki’s knowledge didn’t have any important gaps. “Do you know what magical friction is?”

“All materials have a certain value that dictates how easily mana can flow through it. For example when flowing through one meter of raw iron, around 12% of the used mana will dissipate back into either its original source. The exceptions are souls, which can mana can flow through perfectly.”

“Not just souls.”

“Of the materials I’m aware of, there are none which are even good magical conductors. The only ones that are at least decent would be gold and platinum.”

Helen seemed a bit confused at the remark. “Both of those are perfect conductors.”

“Only to a point. With a larger magical flow, it would begin to have resistance.”

“No, that’s not the material’s fault. If you have too much mana condensed in one place, it just punches a hole in reality and seeps back into the Aether. And also, unless that is what happens, magical friction will have some of the mana go into the magical flux, which we just commonly call ‘ambient mana’.”

“I see. I did not notice that during my experiments.”

Helen did not know what to think. Just what kind of perspective did this little girl have to think that enough mana to distort space was the normal amount to experiment with? “And what about aura?”

“It is the area that a soul ‘claims’. It makes control over the area inside the aura easier.”

“Correct.” At least this answer wasn’t over the top. She also realized that teaching the basics could be a lot easier if she just gave Yuuki some books to read. “Can you read and write?”

“I cannot.” Yuuki decided that explaining she knows 18 languages from a different world would be useless information.

If vampires needed to breathe Helen would’ve let out a large sigh. Finally, something normal for a five year old! She took out a piece of paper from her bag she carried on her side and sat down next to Yuuki so they could look at it together. “Alright, here are the different letters.”